Marvin S. Hill

Many of the earliest Mormons, including [Oliver] Cowdery, Martin Harris, Orrin P. Rockwell, Joseph Knight and Josiah Stowel, were rodsmen or money diggers but became Mormons for religious reasons.

Even Joseph's 'calling for the end of slavery by 1850' in his Presidential campaign is not so liberal as Brodie supposes.... Joseph Smith was, therefore, to some degree a racist, a segregationist, a colonizer, and only incidentally a supporter of abolition. He had some elements of liberalism in his thinking, but these had definite limits. His record... is marked with ambiguity.