No matter what conclusion people may reach regarding the true nature of Mormonism, all can agree that the system and its followers did not suddenly appear, from out of nowhere, when the latter day "Church of Christ" was established on April 6, 1830. Some observers trace the movement's roots back to the early part of the 19th century, within the confines of the Joseph Smith, Sr. family. Other students of the "Restoration" claim its beginnings were set in motion in the Garden of Eden, if not before that time -- if not before the very origin of life on this planet.

In 1978 Franklin Kelly wrote: "during the first decade of the nineteenth century the idea that American nature was in fact the remains of the biblical Garden of of Eden gained currency. The United States came to be identified as a redeemer nation, isolated in its untouched natural grandeur from the decaying edifice of the old world." Early Mormonism promoted this same ideal -- of America as the original Land of Promise and the destined scene of a millenarian epic which would bring to pass the culmination of the "seventh dispensation."

Kelley goes on to quote from a pamphlet published in 1785, entitled The Golden Age: or, America Discovered by an Angel to Celadon in Several Entertaining Visions:

The story concerns a man named Celadon, who wishes to know what the future holds for the new nation. One night, as he sits musing under a tree by the banks of a stream, he falls into a trance-like state. An angel appears and reveals to him America's destiny. -- He sees a landscape of "spacious cities... thriving towns... a thick conjunction of farms, plantations, gardens." The vision culminates with Celadon observing the untouched wilderness of the West and imagining the day when it, too, will be transformed into a pastoral paradise.

The present, imperfect state of the settlements in this region will, I am well aware, prevent many persons from forming just views concerning the splendor of its scenery. In so vast an expansion the eye perceives a prevalence of forest which it regrets . . . this temporary defect, from a long acquaintance with objects of this nature, and a perfect knowledge from experience of the rapid progress of cultivation, I easily overlook and am, of course, transported in imagination to that period in which, at a little distance, the hills, and plains, and valleys around me will be stripped of the forests which now majestically and even gloomily overshadow them, and be measured out into forms enlivened with all the beauties of cultivation.

The true believer in the sanctity of progress could thus see beyond the "present, imperfect state" of the American scene into a glorious future of ordered prosperity.... Thomas Cole, who was so often preoccupied with nostalgic musings about the glories of the past, could write:

In looking over the yet uncultivated scene, the mind's eye may see far into futurity. Where the wolf roams, the plough shall glisten; on the gray crag shall rise temple and tower -- mighty deeds shall be done in the now pathless wilderness; and poets yet unborn shall sanctify the soil...