Commenting
on early non-LDS reactions to the practice of baptism for the dead, the editors
of The Joseph Smith Papers: Documents
Volume 8 (dealing with Feb to Nov 1841), wrote:
The practice of baptism for the dead made national
news in the summer of 1841 when the New-York
Tribune, among other papers, reported that Latter-day Saints had performed
a vicarious baptism for the nation’s first president, George Washington, and
for its most recently deceased president. William Henry Harrison, who died on 4
April 1841. The Ohio Observer commented:
The Mormon doctrine is, that all who are so unhappy
as to leave the world without embracing the fulness of the gospel, or the
Mormon faith, will have a second probation after death, and have the gospel
preached to them again . .. Many of the spirits in prison do repent and
believe, but being disembodied they cannot literally comply with the command
and our Savior to be baptised.—Hence if they have living friends in the body,
the duty of these friends is to come and be baptised in their stead. Neither is
this an idle speculation or dead faith among them.—Many have actually been
baptised for their deceased friends. (T. Coe, “Mormon Interpretation of 1 Cor.
15:29,” Ohio Observer [Hudson], 26
Aug. 1841, [2]) (Brent M. Rogers, Mason K. Allred, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and
Brett D. Dowdle, eds. The Joseph Smith
Papers: Document Volume 8: February-November 1841 [Salt Lake City: The
Church Historian’s Press, 2019], xxxi)