Of the Mormons, Joseph Smith was the prophet, but it would be fair to ascribe the parentage of the sect to that emotional upheaval of the twenties and thirties which broke down barriers of caste and politics, ruptured many of the ordinary Christian churches, and produced new revelations and new prophets by the score. Joseph Smith was merely one of these, more astute perhaps than the others, having much of the wisdom of leadership, as Mohammed had had before him, and able to direct and hold together the enthusiasm that any prophet might have been able to arouse. History teaches that it is easy to provoke religious enthusiasm, however improbable or fraudulent the guides or revelations may be; but that the founding of a church upon it is a task for greatest statesmanship. The discovery of the golden plates and the magic spectacles, and the building upon them of a militant church has little part in the conquest of the frontier save as a motive force. It is difficult for the gentile mind to treat the Book of Mormon other than as a joke, and its perpetrator as a successful charlatan. Mormon apologists and their enemies have gone over the details of its production without establishing much sure evidence on either side. The theological teaching of the church seems to put less stress upon it than its supposed miraculous origin would dictate. It is, wrote Mark Twain, with his light-hearted penetration, "rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable--it is 'smouched' from the New Testament and no credit given." Converts came slowly to the new prophet at the start, for he was but one of many teachers crying in the wilderness, and those who had known him best in his youth were least ready to see in him a custodian of divinity. Yet by the spring of 1830 it was possible to organize, in western New York, the body which Rigdon was later to christen the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." By the spring of 1831 headquarters had moved to Kirtland, Ohio, where proselyting had proved to be successful in both religion and finance.