of his eight-month trip to the South, where he witnessed first-hand the effects of the slave trade and the slave markets at New Orleans. Early Mormon connection Shortly after his return to Indiana in 1829, Harding left for an extended trip to the East, where he spent the summer in Palmyra, New York. During his visit, Harding was an overnight guest at the home of Joseph Smith Sr. who was the father of Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of Mormonism, a religious movement of which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is the largest denomination. Harding also met with several early Mormon leaders including Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery. About twenty years after his service as the governor of the Utah Territory, the aging Harding wrote a letter in 1882 that is quoted in The Prophet of Palmyra, an anti-Mormon book, describing his recollection that as a boy, he had seen young Smith Jr. fishing in the same Palmyra mill pond that he has also frequented in his youth. Harding also reported that Martin Harris occasionally visited his parents when the Harding family was living near Palmyra before their migration to Indiana. In addition, nearly sixty years earlier, in 1829, he and Harris listened as Cowdery read from a few of the yet unpublished manuscripts of the Book of Mormon in the candlelight of Joseph Smith Sr.'s log home. Harding also recalled that he had been given the first sheet of the freshly-printed Book of Mormon title page, which he gave to a saint named Robert Campbell, who later donated it to the LDS Church at Salt Lake City. During his visit to Palmyra, Mormon leaders also asked Harding to become a Mormon missionary in London, England, but he declined the request and returned to Indiana in late 1829. Indiana lawyer and abolitionist Harding opened a law practice in Versailles, Indiana, in December 1829, and by 1830, was an active abolitionist. He began delivering anti-slavery speeches at gatherings near his home in southeast Indiana, which included active pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. In the 1830s and 1840s, Harding's interest in the anti-slavery issue continued to increase and as he became a leader in the abolition movement in Indiana. Harding, who believed that slavery was unconstitutional, had anti-slavery views similar to other moderate abolitionists such as Salmon P. Chase, William Jay, Joshua Reed Giddings, and James G. Birney;