After the death of the prophet, Sidney Rigdon put in a claim for precedence in authority, claiming that right by virtue of his office as counselor to the prophet now martyred. The priesthood of the church assembled as a body to hear the cause, President Brigham Young presenting the counter claims of the Twelve Apostles as the proper presiding authority in the absence of the First Presidency. Sidney Rigdon was rejected by that body of the priesthood; [147] and shortly after left Nauvoo full of disappointment and bitterness; but he never in those trying days, or in any of the subsequent years of his life, by hint or direct charge or confession, revealed any "fraud" in which Mormonism is supposed to have had its origin; but on the contrary, as we shall see, emphatically reaffirmed his true relationship to the work, and his faith in it. [Footnote 147: _Millennial Star,_ Vol. 25, pp. 215, 279.] There is one person, however, who undertakes to say that Sidney Rigdon "revealed" the secret concerning the origin of the Book of Mormon. This is Clark Braden, who quotes one James Jeffries of St. Louis, as saying in substance that in the fall of 1844, Rigdon in several conversations admitted to him the existence of the Spaulding manuscript; that it traced the origin of the Indians from the lost tribes of Israel; that the manuscript was within his reach for several years; that "He (Rigdon) and Joe Smith used to look over the manuscript and read it on Sundays. Rigdon said Smith took the manuscript and said 'I'll print it,' and went off to Palmyra, New York." On this "testimony," the Reverend Clark Braden comments: "On his way from Nauvoo to Pittsburg (in the fall of 1844) he (Rigdon) called on his old acquaintance, Mr. Jeffries, in St. Louis, and in his anger at the Mormons, he let out the secrets of Mormonism, just as he told the Mormons he would if they did not make him their leader." [148] This "evidence," however, since it costs him nothing to set aside such palpable absurdity, Mr. Schroeder, with a show of bigness and condescension, discredits by saying: "an alleged admission of Sidney Rigdon to James Jeffries I consider of doubtful value." [149] In this case, as in that of the item presented by Mrs. Ellen E. Dickinson, to the effect that it was "remembered" by some of the Conneaut witnesses in 1834, that the "Spaulding manuscript was the translation of the Book of Mormon"--the "evidence" manufactured in support of the Spaulding theory of origin, becomes a little too raw for Mr. Schroeder, and his gorge rises at it, and with an air of superiority he "considers it doubtful!" [Footnote 148: "Braden-Kelly Debate," p. 42.] [Footnote 149: _American Historical Magazine,_ Jan., 1907, p. 75 and note 115. _Ante_ p. 55 and Note.]