{"id":3781,"date":"2016-04-14T08:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-14T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/?p=3781"},"modified":"2026-07-01T12:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T18:40:06","slug":"the-late-war-between-the-united-states-and-great-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/the-late-war-between-the-united-states-and-great-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"CES Reply: The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This is an excerpt from &#8220;A Reply from a Former CES Employee.&#8221; The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"\"><a href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/CESReply.pdf\" target=\"_self\" class=\"emd_dl_red_darker\" download>Download CES Reply<\/a><\/div>    <style>            \r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker {\r\n        -moz-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        -webkit-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #f5978e;\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #f24537), color-stop(1, #c62d1f) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #f24537 5%, #c62d1f 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#f24537', endColorstr='#c62d1f');\r\n        background-color:#f24537;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topleft:0px;\r\n        border-top-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-topright:0px;\r\n        border-top-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomright:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-right-radius:0px;\r\n        -webkit-border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        -moz-border-radius-bottomleft:0px;\r\n        border-bottom-left-radius:0px;\r\n        text-indent:0;\r\n        border:1px solid #d02718;\r\n        display:inline-block;\r\n        color:#ffffff !important;\r\n        font-family:Georgia;\r\n        font-size:15px;\r\n        font-weight:bold;\r\n        font-style:normal;\r\n        height:41px;\r\n        line-height:41px;\r\n        width:200px;\r\n        text-decoration:none;\r\n        text-align:center;\r\n        text-shadow:1px 1px 0px #810e05;\r\n    }\r\n    .emd_dl_red_darker:hover {\r\n        background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #c62d1f), color-stop(1, #f24537) );\r\n        background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #c62d1f 5%, #f24537 100% );\r\n        filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#c62d1f', endColorstr='#f24537');\r\n        background-color:#c62d1f;\r\n    }.emd_dl_red_darker:active {\r\n        position:relative;\r\n        top:1px;\r\n    }<\/style>\n<p>This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells&#8217; &#8220;Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony.&#8221;\u00a0<span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy&#8217;s words are in green, the color of life,<\/span>\u00a0while mine are in black, the color of darkness.<\/p>\n<p>_____<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">9. <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/latewarbetweenun00inhunt#page\/n5\/mode\/2up\">The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain<\/a>: This was an 1819 textbook written in King James Version style language for New York state school children, one of them very likely being Joseph Smith. The <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/readercontain00hunt#page\/n15\/mode\/2up\">first chapter<\/a> alone is stunning as it reads incredibly like the Book of Mormon:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Now it came to pass, in the one thousand eight hundred and twelfth year of the christian era, and in the thirty and sixth year after the people of the provinces of Columbia had declared themselves a free and independent nation; <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">That in the sixth month of the same year, on the first day of the month, the chief Governor, whom the people had chosen to rule over the land of Columbia; <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Even James, whose sir-name was Madison, delivered a written paper to the Great Sannhedrim of the people, who were assembled together. <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">And the name of the city where the people were gathered together was called after the name of the chief captain of the land of Columbia, whose fame extendeth to the uttermost parts of the earth; albeit, he had slept with his fathers&#8230; <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>You and I have a very different definition of \u201cstunning.\u201d Since this was deliberately written to sound like the King James Bible, the only way it can be said to be \u201cincredibly like the Book of Mormon\u201d is to be surprised that any other book would also choose to mimic the KJV. No one would be stunned to acknowledge that this reads \u201cincredibly like the King James Bible.\u201d In fact, nobody would be likely to say that at all, even though the phrases you later insist were lifted out of this book can all be found in the Bible, too, which is where the <i>Late War<\/i> authors got them.<\/p>\n<p>In substance, this textbook is absolutely nothing like the Book of Mormon. The story is completely different; the characters are completely different.\u00a0 There\u2019s no mention of the War of 1812 in the Book of Mormon, and there are no lengthy religious sermons in the Late War. It would certainly help your argument if at some point when the Jaredites were fighting, Napoleon were to show up. I guess we have to wait until you talk about the next candidate you propose as a Book of Mormon source.<\/p>\n<p>Also, did Joseph plagiarize <i>View of the Hebrews <\/i>or <i>The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain<\/i>? When did Captain Kidd enter the picture? Don\u2019t you have to make up your mind on this? Because the Book of Mormon production process you\u2019re now suggesting has Joseph poring over all different kinds of manuscripts \u2013 from childhood textbooks to Ethan Smith to that trusty, error-filled 1769 version of the KJV, rummaging through Captain Kidd\u2019s letters and stories and maps of every tiny village across a 2,000 mile radius as well as maps of African islands \u2013 and lifting a word here, a two-or-three word phrase there, and somehow cobbling them into 265,000 words of an internally consistent, theologically complex, and Semitically-influenced tome that is markedly different from any and all of his supposed source materials.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Along with the above KJV language style presence throughout the book, what are the following Book of Mormon phrases, verbatim, themes, and storylines doing in a children\u2019s school textbook that was used in Joseph Smith\u2019s own time and backyard? A mere decade before the publication of the Book of Mormon?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Okay, let\u2019s take a look.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Devices of \u201ccurious workmanship\u201d in relation to boats and weapons.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">A \u201cstripling\u201d soldier \u201cwith his \u201cweapon of war in his hand.\u201d<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color: #008000;\"> \u201cA certain chief captain&#8230;was given in trust a band of more than two thousand chosen men, to go forth to battle\u201d and who \u201call gave their services freely for the good of their country.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Fortifications: \u201cthe people began to fortify themselves and entrench the high Places round about the city.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Objects made \u201cpartly of brass and partly of iron, and were cunningly contrived with curious works, like unto a clock; and as it were a large ball.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cTheir polished steels of fine workmanship.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cNevertheless, it was so that the freeman came to the defence of the city, built strongholds and forts and raised up fortifications in abundance.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Three Indian Prophets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cRod of iron.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">War between the wicked and righteous.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Maintaining the standard of liberty with righteousness.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Righteous Indians vs. savage Indians.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">False Indian prophets.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Conversion of Indians.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Bands of robbers\/pirates marauding the righteous protagonists.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Brass plates.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cAnd it came to pass, that a great multitude flocked to the banners of the great Sanhedrim\u201d compared to Alma 62:5: \u201cAnd it came to pass that thousands did flock unto his standard, and did take up their swords in defense of their freedom&#8230;\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Worthiness of Christopher Columbus.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Ships crossing the ocean.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">A battle at a fort where righteous white protagonists are attacked by an army made up of dark-skinned natives driven by a white military leader. White protagonists are prepared for battle and slaughter their opponents to such an extent that they fill the trenches surrounding the fort with dead bodies. The surviving elements flee into the wilderness\/forest.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Cataclysmic earthquake followed by great darkness.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Elephants\/mammoths in America.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Literary Hebraisms\/Chiasmus.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Boats and barges built from trees after the fashion of the ark.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">A bunch of \u201cit came to pass\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Many, many more <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/wordtreefoundation.github.io\/thelatewar\/\">parallels.<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">The staggering parallels and similarities to the Book of Mormon are astounding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Consider me both unstaggered and unastounded.<\/p>\n<p>I probably should go through each of these one by one, but so many of them are ridiculous on their face that they don\u2019t merit comment. Wow, two books referencing ships crossing the ocean? And both books <i>also<\/i> have elephants in them? What are the odds?!<\/p>\n<p>These \u201cstaggering parallels\u201d were not discovered by means of reading both texts and looking for common themes or passages; they were discovered by means of a computer analysis looking for identical words in thousands of different texts. Conceptually, the passages containing these \u201cparallels\u201d are generally referencing starkly different things and events, and they are using similar short phrases to describe stuff with no relationship to each other. Furthermore, none of the identical phrases are longer than five words long \u2013 i.e. \u201cand it came to pass,\u201d a Biblical phrase &#8211;\u00a0 and almost all are only two or three words long.<\/p>\n<p>So you provide things like the quote \u201cpartly of brass and partly of iron, and were cunningly contrived with curious works, like unto a clock; and as it were a large ball\u201d as if that phrase appears in the Book of Mormon, which it doesn\u2019t. Mormons, however, would read that phrase and assume it has reference to the Liahona, which was an item made of brass and of \u201ccurious workmanship.\u201d But the Late War is here describing a torpedo, an item as unlike a Liahona as it is possible to be. So for this to be a Book of Mormon source, one has to think Joseph Smith scoured this text to find a phrase \u2013 \u201ccurious works\u201d &#8211;\u00a0 and modify it into \u201ccurious workmanship\u201d and add \u201cbrass\u201d and \u201cball\u201d and apply it to a concept that has no corollary whatsoever in <i>Late War.<\/i> What kind of plagiarist goes to that much trouble? What kind of writer could possibly work that way?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the phrase \u201crod of iron\u201d is in <i>Late War<\/i>. It\u2019s on page 15, and it reads like this:<\/p>\n<p><i>Then will we rule them with a rod of iron; and they shall be, unto us, hewers of wood and drawers of water.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>The phrase \u201crule them with a rod of iron\u201d is a Biblical phrase used twice in the Book of Revelation \u2013 see verses 2:27 and 12:5 \u2013 and a variation is in the Old Testament in\u00a0Psalm 2:9, which says \u201cThou shalt break them with a rod of iron.\u201d In both Late War and the Bible, the rod of iron is a weapon, probably used to smack people over the head. Nowhere in the Book of Mormon do we find a seven-word quote from \u201cLate War,\u201d so the Biblical \u201crule them with a rod of iron\u201d becomes merely \u201crod of iron.\u201d And, furthermore, Lehi\u2019s rod of iron is some kind of a long handrail used to guide people through mists of darkness toward the Tree of Life, utterly unlike a rod of iron you rule people with, and with no head-smacking in sight.<\/p>\n<p>Three identical words; two completely unrelated concepts. Yet we\u2019re supposed to presume this is where Joseph got the idea for Lehi\u2019s \u201crod of iron?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This gets very absurd very quickly.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">This <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/wordtreefoundation.github.io\/thelatewar\/\">outstanding web page<\/a> outlines very clearly and simply just how devastating the Late War is to the Book of Mormon and its claims.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Whereas <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mormoninterpreter.com\/the-late-war-against-the-book-of-mormon\/\">this outstanding web page<\/a> is utterly devastating to the seriously flawed analysis of your outstanding web page.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">Rick Grunder <a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rickgrunder.com\/parallels\/mp193.pdf\">states<\/a> in his paper:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">\u201cThe presence of Hebraisms and other striking parallels in a popular children\u2019s textbook (Late War), on the other hand \u2013 so close to Joseph Smith in his youth \u2013 must sober our perspective.\u201d \u2013 p.770<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Lindsay <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jefflindsay.com\/LDSFAQ\/late-war.html\">states<\/a> on his blog:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYes, there are parallels, but scattered, weak, and not very helpful to a would-be plagiarizer.\u201d \u2013 p. 1<\/p>\n<p><em>Tomorrow: The First Book of Napoleon<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<em>Thisis an excerpt from \"A Reply from a Former CES Employee.\" The entire document can be downloaded for free.<\/em>This is a line-by-line response to Jeremy Runnells' \"Letter to a CES Director: Why I Lost My Testimony.\"\u00a0<span style=\"color: #008000;\">Jeremy's words are in green, the color of life,<\/span>\u00a0while mine are in black, the color of darkness._____ ... <a title=\"CES Reply: The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/the-late-war-between-the-united-states-and-great-britain\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about CES Reply: The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain\">Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3781"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5148,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3781\/revisions\/5148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}