Plural Marriage
Mormon apologist John J. Stewart admits that “there are at least two points of doctrine and history of the Church about which many LDS themselves—to say nothing of non-members—feel apologetic or critical. One of these is its doctrine and history regarding plural marriage. There is probably no other Church subject on which there is so much ignorance and misunderstanding and so many conflicting views” (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 8).
On pages 21 and 22 of the same book, Mr. Stewart states:
So gross have been the falsehoods circulated against it, and so strong the feelings created over it, that it may be an understatement rather than an over-statement to say that within the Church itself misunderstanding and lack of understanding about it are more nearly universal than a correct understanding of it. This despite the fact that seven of our nine Church presidents have lived plural marriage, and that this principle still is and always will be a doctrine of the Church.
The revelation sanctioning the practice of plural marriage was given by the Prophet Joseph Smith on July 12, 1843. This revelation is still printed in the Doctrine and Covenants—one of the four standard works of the Mormon church. The following is taken from this revelation:
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines—
Behold, and lo, I am the Lord thy God, and will answer thee as touching this matter.
Therefore, prepare thy heart to receive and obey the instructions which I am about to give unto you; for all those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same.
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For behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory. . . .
And again, verily I say unto you, if a man marry a wife by my word, which is my law, and by the new and everlasting covenant, they shall pass by the angels, and the gods, which are set there, to their exaltation. . . .
Then shall they be gods, because they have no end. . . .
God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. . . .
Was Abraham, therefore, under condemnation? Verily I say unto you, Nay; for I, the Lord, commanded it. . . .
Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. . . .
David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, . . . and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me.
David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me. . . .
And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me; and those who are not pure, and have said they were pure, shall be destroyed, saith the Lord God. . . .
Let no one, therefore, set on my servant Joseph; for I will justify him. . . .
And again, as pertaining to the law of the Priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he can not commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.
And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified. (The Doctrine and Covenants, published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1966, 132:1-4, 19, 20, 34, 35, 38, 39, 52, 60-62)
In the beginning Mormon church leaders claimed they did not believe in the practice of plural marriage. In the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, printed in 1835, there was a section which absolutely denounced the practice of polygamy.
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A photograph of Section 101 of the 1835 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants. This section, which condemns the practice of plural marriage, was deleted from the Doctrine and Covenants in 1876.
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In section 101:4 it was stated: “Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in the case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.”
This section was printed in every edition of the Doctrine and Covenants until the year 1876. At that time the Mormon leaders inserted section 132, which permits a plurality of wives. Obviously, it would have been too contradictory to have one section condemning polygamy and another approving of it in the same book! Therefore, the section condemning polygamy was completely removed from the Doctrine and Covenants.
Just when and how the practice of plural marriage started in the Mormon church has caused much controversy. There is evidence, however, to show that it was secretly practiced when the church was in Kirtland, Ohio. In the introduction to volume 5 of Joseph Smith’s History of the Church, the Mormon historian B. H. Roberts stated that the “date in the heading of the Revelation on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant, including the Plurality of Wives, notes the time at which the revelation was committed to writing, not the time at which the principles set forth in the revelation were first made known to the Prophet.”
Suppressed 1831 Revelation
Joseph Fielding Smith, who was LDS church historian and later became the tenth president of the church, made this statement in a letter written to J. W. A. Bailey in 1935:
The exact date I cannot give you when this principle of plural marriage was first revealed to Joseph Smith, but I do know that there was a revelation given in July 1831, in the presence of Oliver Cowdery, W. W. Phelps and others in Missouri, in which the Lord made this principle known through the Prophet Joseph Smith. Whether the revelation as it appears in the Doctrine and Covenants as [sic] first given July 12, 1843, or earlier, I care not. It is a fact, nevertheless, that this principle was revealed at an earlier date.(Letter dated September 5, 1935, typed copy)
In 1943 Joseph Fielding Smith told Fawn Brodie about this revelation, but he would not allow her to see it: “Joseph F. Smith, Jr., the present historian of the Utah Church, asserted to me in 1943 that a revelation foreshadowing polygamy had been written in 1831, but that it had never been published. In conformity with the church policy, however, he would not permit the manuscript, which he acknowledged to be in possession of the church library, to be examined” (No Man Knows My History, 1971, p. 184, footnote).
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Michael Marquardt, a student of Mormon history who became very disturbed with the church’s policy of suppressing important records, became interested in this revelation. He found that some Mormon scholars had copies of the revelation, but had to promise not to make any additional copies. Finally, however, Mr. Marquardt learned what appears to be the real reason why the revelation was suppressed: because the revelation commanded the Mormons to marry the Indians to make them a “white” and “delightsome” people!
Now, to a Christian who is familiar with the teachings of the Bible, the color of a man’s skin makes no difference. In Mormon theology, however, a dark skin is a sign of God’s displeasure. In the Mormon publication Juvenile Instructor (vol. 3, p. 157), the following statement appeared: “We will first inquire into the results of the approbation or displeasure of God upon a people, starting with the belief that a black skin is a mark of the curse of heaven placed upon some portions of mankind. . . . We understand that when God made man in his own image and pronounced him very good, that he made him white.”
The teaching that a dark skin is the result of God’s displeasure comes directly from Joseph Smith’s Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon teaches that about 600 B.C. a prophet named Lehi brought his family to America. Those who were righteous (the Nephites) had a white skin, but those who rebelled against God (the Lamanites) were cursed with a dark skin. The Lamanites eventually destroyed the Nephites; therefore, the Indians living today are referred to as Lamanites. The following verses are found in the Book of Mormon and explain the curse on the Lamanites:
And it came to pass that I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations. (Book of Mormon, I Nephi 12:23)
And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity . . . wherefore, as they were white, and exceeding fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
(2 Nephi 5:21)
And the skins of the Lamanites were dark, according to the mark which was set upon their fathers, which was a curse upon them because of their transgression . . . (Alma 3:6)
The Book of Mormon stated that when the Lamanites repented of their sins “their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites” (3 Nephi 2:15). The
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Book of Mormon also promised that in the last days the Lamanites—i.e., the Indians—will repent and “many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white and delightsome people” (2 Nephi 30:6).
[Note: 2 Nephi 30:6 has been changed in modern editions of the Book of Mormon to read “a pure and a delightsome people.” See also: “What’s Hidden in the New Headings,” Racism]
These teachings have caused the Mormon church some embarrassment. The anti-Mormon writer Gordon H. Fraser claims that the “skin color” of the Indians converted to Mormonism “has not been altered in the least because of their adherence to the Mormon doctrines” (What Does The Book of Mormon Teach? p. 46).
Spencer W. Kimball, who on December 30, 1973, became the twelfth president of the church, feels that the Indians are actually becoming a “white and delightsome people.” In the LDS General Conference, October 1960, Mr. Kimball stated:
I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today . . . they are fast becoming a white and delightsome people. . . . For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. . . . The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation.
At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter were present, the little member girl-sixteen-sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents—on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather. . . . These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness. One white elder jokingly said that he and his companion were donating blood regularly to the hospital in the hope that the process might be accelerated. (Improvement Era, December 1960, pp. 922-23)
While Spencer W. Kimball seems to feel that the Indians are to be made white by the power of God, Michael Marquardt, a student of Mormon history, learned that Joseph Smith’s 1831 revelation says they are to be made “white” through intermarriage with the Mormons. Because of this fact Mormon leaders seemed to feel that it was necessary to suppress this revelation. Only the most trusted men, such as Dr. Hyrum Andrus, were allowed a copy of it. It was only after a great deal of research that Mr. Marquardt was able to obtain a typed copy of it. We printed this revelation in its entirety in Mormonism Like Watergate? (pp. 7-8). The important part of the revelation reads as follows:
Verily, I say unto you, that the wisdom of man, in his fallen state, knoweth not the purposes and the privileges of my holy priesthood,
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but ye shall know when ye receive a fulness by reason of the anointing: For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles.
After the contents of the revelation are given, the following appears:
Reported by W. W. P. About three years after this was given, I asked brother Joseph, privately, how “we,” that were mentioned in the revelation could take wives from the “natives” as we were all married men? He replied, instantly ‘In the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah; and Jacob took Rachel, Bilhah Zilpah; by revelation—the saints of the Lord are always directed by revelation.
According to what Mr. Marquardt could learn, the original revelation is preserved in a vault in the LDS church historical department. The paper on which it is written has the appearance of being very old. There is also a second copy of the revelation in the church historical department. This appears in a letter from W. W. Phelps to Brigham Young. The letter is dated August 12, 1861. Dr. Hyrum Andrus, of Brigham Young University, actually quoted part of this revelation as it appears in the letter, but he was very careful to suppress the fact that the wives to be taken were Lamanites:
The Prophet understood the principle of plural marriage as early as 1831. William W. Phelps stated that on Sunday morning, July 17, 1831, he and others were with Joseph Smith over the border west of Jackson County, Missouri, when the latter-day Seer received a revelation, the substance of which said in part: “Verily I say unto you, that the wisdom of man in his fallen state knoweth not the purposes and the privileges of my Holy Priesthood, but ye shall know when ye receive a fulness.” According to Elder Phelps, the revelation then indicated that in due time the brethren would be required to take plural wives. (Doctrines of the Kingdom, by Hyrum L. Andrus, Salt Lake City, 1973, p. 450)
The reader will notice that in his quotation from the revelation, Dr. Andrus suppressed the important portion concerning marriage to the Indians.
In 1976 we were able to examine a microfilm of the original revelation, but we found it difficult to determine when it was actually recorded. From Phelps’ letter to Brigham Young we know that the revelation had to have been recorded by 1861. As we understand it, the first document—containing only the revelation
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and Phelps’ comment—appears to be older than the letter dated August 12, 1861. It is possible that the revelation could have been recorded any time between 1831 and 1861. W. W. Phelps served as scribe on a number of occasions during Joseph Smith’s lifetime. If the revelation and the note at the bottom were written at the same time, then obviously the revelation could not have been written until sometime after 1834. It could be, however, that Phelps added the note at a later time. It will not be possible to decide this vital question unless Mormon leaders allow scholars to closely examine the document itself and any other material relating to it.
Regardless of when the revelation was actually written on paper, we have found definite historical proof that such a revelation was given in 1831. The proof is derived from a letter written by Ezra Booth and published in the Ohio Star only five months after the revelation was given! In this letter, Ezra Booth stated:
In addition to this, and to co-operate with it, it has been made known by revelation, that it will be pleasing to the Lord, should they form a matrimonial alliance with the Natives; and by this means the Elders, who comply with the thing so pleasing to the Lord, and for which the Lord has promised to bless those who do it abundantly, gain a residence in the Indian territory, independent of the agent. It has been made known to one, who has left his wife in the state of N.Y. that he is entirely free from his wife, and he is at liberty to take him a wife from among the Lamanites. It was easily perceived that this permission, was perfectly suited to his desires. I have frequently heard him state, that the Lord had made it known to him, that he is as free from his wife as from any other woman; and the only crime that I have ever heard alleged against her is, she is violently opposed to Mormonism. (Ohio Star, December 8, 1831)
This letter furnishes irrefutable proof that Joseph Smith gave the revelation commanding the Mormons to marry the Lamanite women. On March 6, 1885, S. F. Whitney, Newel K. Whitney’s brother, made an affidavit which furnishes additional evidence that there was a revelation on this subject:
Martin Harris . . . claimed he had a revelation when he first came to Kirtland for him to go to Missouri, and obtain an Lamanite squaw for a wife to aid them in propagating Mormonism. Martin told me soon after Joseph, the prophet, left Kirtland, that, two years before, he had told him that as his wife had left him he needed a woman as other men. (Naked Truths About Mormonism, Oakland, California, January, 1888, p. 3)
It is interesting to note that Martin Harris, one of the three
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witnesses to the Book of Mormon, was one of “seven Elders” present when the 1831 revelation was given.
Like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young taught that the Indians would “become ‘a white and delightsome people’ ” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 143). While Brigham Young never released the 1831 revelation, there is evidence that he was familiar with its teaching that the Indians should be made white through intermarriage. In a book published in 1852, William Hall commented:
About the time of the breaking up of the camp at Sugar Creek, the people were called together and several speeches delivered to them by Brigham Young, and others. The speech of Young was in substance as follows:
“. . . We are now going to the Lamanites, to whom we intend to be messengers of instruction. . . . We will show them that in consequence of their transgressions a curse has been inflicted upon them—in the darkness of their skins. We will have intermarriages with them, they marrying our young women, and we taking their young squaws to wife. By these means it is the will of the Lord that the curse of their color shall be removed and they restored to their pristine beauty . . .” (The Abominations of Mormonism Exposed, Cincinnati, 1852, pp. 58-59)
Juanita Brooks gives the following information concerning the marriage of Mormons to Indians at the Salmon River Mission:
Very early, some of the Mormon leaders recommended that the missionaries marry Indian women as a means of cementing the friendship between the races. . . .
The Elders who were sent to the Salmon River Mission were given similar instructions by Brigham Young and his party, who visited them in May, 1857. At least three different missionaries tell of them, all under date of Sunday, May 10, 1857. Milton G. Hammond says simply, “The president and members of the Twelve all spoke. Pres. Young spoke of Elders marrying natives.” . . .
As a result of these teachings, at least three of the brethren married Indian women. . . . As to the Indian women whom they had taken as wives the “L.D.S. Journal History” of April 9, 1858, records: “Two squaws who had married the brethren refused to come, fearing the soldiers would kill all the Mormons.” (Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 12, pp. 28-30)
T. B. H. Stenhouse provides further information concerning the Salmon River Mission:
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Before any of the married brethren could make love to a maiden with the view of making her a second, third, or tenth wife, he was expected to go and obtain Brigham’s permission. . . . He sent at one time a mission to Fort Linahi, Salmon River. . . . When Brigham and Heber afterwards visited the missionaries to see how they were succeeding, Heber, in his quaint way, told them that he did not see how the modern predictions could well be fulfilled about the Indians becoming “a white and delightsome people” without extending polygamy to the natives. The approach of the United States army, in 1857, contributed to break up that mission, but not before Heber’s hint had been clearly understood, and the prophecy half fulfilled! Heber was very practical, and believed that the people should never ask “the Lord” to do for them what they could do themselves, and, as all “Israel” had long prayed that the Indians might speedily become a “white and delightsome people,” he thought it was the duty of the missionaries to assist “the Lord” in fulfilling his promises. This was not the first time that a Mormon prophet attempted to aid in bringing to pass the prophecies of “the Lord.” More than one missionary appears to have thoroughly understood him! (The Rocky Mountain Saints, 1873, pp. 657-59).
In 1857 John Hyde, Jr., made the following comments: “. . . Brigham now teaches that ‘the way God has revealed for the purification of the Indians, and making them “a white and delightsome people,” as Joseph prophesied, is by us taking the Indian squaws for wives!!’ Accordingly several of these tawny beauties have been already ‘sealed’ to some of the Mormon authorities” (Mormonism: Its Leaders And Designs, pp. 109-10).
William Hall claimed that “Brigham Young was married to two young squaws, . . . near Council Bluffs.” So far we have been unable to find any additional documentation for his statement. If Hall’s statement is correct, Brigham Young must have left these Indian women behind, because we do not find them mentioned as Young’s wives in Utah. According to John D. Lee, on May 12, 1849, Brigham Young said that he did not want to take the Indians “in his arms until the curse is removed.”
Pres. B. Y. Said that he did not aprehend [sic] any danger from the Indians. Neither did he feel, as Some of the Brethren do, he does not want to live amoung [sic] them & take them in his arms until the curse is removed from of [sic] them. . . . But we will take their children & shool [sic] them & teach them to be clenly [sic] & to love morality & then raise up seed amoung [sic] them & in this way they will be brought back into the presance [sic] & knowlege [sic] of God . . . (A Mormon Chronicle, The Diaries of John D. Lee, vol. 1, p. 108)
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It would appear, then, that Brigham Young would not follow Joseph Smith’s revelation to take “wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just.” Even though the revelation said that “their females are more virtuous than the gentiles,” Brigham Young built up his “kingdom” with women who were already “white” and “delightsome.” If Brigham Young did not follow the 1831 revelation to marry the Lamanites, we must remember that he was only following Joseph Smith’s example, for Smith also married “white” women. Even though Brigham Young suppressed Joseph Smith’s 1831 revelation and chose “white” women in preference to the Lamanites, he did at least encourage others to marry them “that the curse of their color shall be removed and they restored to their pristine beauty.”
Since Brigham Young’s time the church has tended to frown upon interracial marriage with the Indians, even though there is no written rule against the practice. Apostle Mark E. Petersen has been especially vocal against interracial marriage. Apostle Petersen and other Mormon leaders who are opposed to intermarriage are probably very disturbed now that the 1831 revelation has come to light. The fact that they have suppressed this revelation could well mean that they do not really believe that it came from God. They have been involved in a cover-up to protect the image of Joseph Smith.*
At any rate, we know from many sources that plural marriage was being considered by the Mormon leaders in the early 1830s. Joseph F. Smith, the sixth president of the church, once stated: “The great and glorious principle of plural marriage was first revealed to Joseph Smith in 1831, but being forbidden to make it public, or to teach it as a doctrine of the Gospel, at that time, he confided the facts to only a very few of his intimate associates. Among them were Oliver Cowdery and Lyman E. Johnson . . .” (As quoted in Historical Record, 1887, vol. 6, p. 219).
Mormon Apostle John A. Widtsoe said that “The evidence seems clear that the revelation on plural marriage was received by the Prophet as early as 1831” (Joseph Smith—Seeker After Truth, p. 236).
*In their new book, The Mormon Experience, page 195, Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington and his assistant Davis Bitton, finally come to grips with the reality of the 1831 revelation: “A recently discovered document is a copy of a purported revelation of 1831 that instructed seven missionaries in Missouri as follows: ‘For it is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles.’ “
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The Mormon writer John J. Stewart claims that Joseph Smith may have entered into plural marriage “in the early or mid-1830’s.” On page 31 of his book Brigham Young and His Wives, he states that “Nancy Johnson” may have been Joseph Smith’s first plural wife. Eli Johnson felt that Joseph Smith was “too intimate” with his sister Nancy. This may help explain why Smith was mobbed in March, 1832. In any event, less than a year after Joseph Smith gave the revelation to marry Lamanites his name was linked with Nancy Johnson.
While Joseph Smith was still living in Ohio his name was also linked with Fanny Alger. The Mormon writer Max Parkin commented about this matter: “The charge of adulterous relations ‘with a certain girl’ was leveled against Smith by Cowdery in Missouri in 1837; this accusation became one of the complaints the Church had against Cowdery in his excommunication trial in Far West, April 12, 1838. In rationalizing Cowdery’s accusation, the Prophet testified ‘that Oliver Cowdery had been his bosom friend, therefore he entrusted him with many things’ ” (Conflict at Kirtland, 1966, p. 166).
The reader will remember that Oliver Cowdery was one of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon. In a letter dated January 21, 1838, Cowdery plainly stated that Joseph Smith had an “affair” with Fanny Alger:
When he [Joseph Smith] was there we had some conversation in which in every instance I did not fail to affirm that what I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger’s was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deviated from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself. (Letter written by Oliver Cowdery and recorded by his brother Warren Cowdery; see photograph in The Mormon Kingdom, vol. 1, p. 27, and below)
(Oliver Cowdery Letterbook, p. 81. HM 63646-63653. The Huntington Library, San Marino, CA.)
Mormon writers admit that there was a connection between Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger. However, they claim that Fanny Alger was Joseph Smith’s plural wife and that he was commanded by God to enter into polygamy. Andrew Jenson, who was the assistant L.D.S. church historian, made a list of 27 women who were sealed to Joseph Smith. In this list he said the following concerning Fanny Alger: “Fanny Alger, one of the first plural wives sealed to the Prophet” (Historical Record, p. 233). John A. Widtsoe stated: “It seems that Fannie Alger was one of Joseph’s first plural wives” (Joseph Smith—Seeker After Truth, p. 237).
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The Mormon writer John J. Stewart provides further information:
Benjamin F. Johnson, another close friend to Joseph . . . says, “In 1835, at Kirtland, I learned from my sister’s husband, . . . ‘that the ancient order of Plural Marriage was again to be practiced by the Church,’ This, at the time, did not impress my mind deeply, although there lived then with his family [the Prophet’s] a neighbor’s daughter, Fannie Alger, a very nice and comely young woman . . . it was whispered even then that Joseph loved her.” Johnson, a Church patriarch at the time of writing, put his finger on the beginning of Oliver Cowdery’s and Warren Parrish’s downfall—Parrish was the Prophet’s secretary: “There was some trouble with Oliver Cowdery, and whisper said it was relating to a girl then living in his (the Prophet’s) family; and I was after wards told by Warren Parrish, that he himself and Oliver Cowdery did know that Joseph had Fannie Alger as wife, for they were spied upon and found together.” . . . “Without doubt in my mind,” says Johnson, “Fannie Alger was, at Kirtland, the Prophet’s first plural wife, in which, by right of his calling, he was justified of the Lord, . . .” One of the charges against Cowdery when he was excommunicated was that he had insinuated that Joseph was guilty of adultery. (Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, pp. 103-4)
In his history of the church, John Whitmer, one of the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, also told that “plurality of wives” came into the church in the 1830s.
In 1842 Joseph Smith wanted to marry Newel K. Whitney’s daughter Sarah Ann Whitney. At that time he gave a special revelation concerning polygamy. Orson F. Whitney stated:
This girl was but seventeen years of age, but she had implicit faith in the doctrine of plural marriage. . . . The revelation commanding and consecrating this union, is in existence, though it has never been published. It bears the date of July 27, 1842, and was given through the Prophet to the writer’s grandfather, Newel K. Whitney, whose daughter Sarah, on that day, became the wedded wife of Joseph Smith for time and all eternity. (The Contributor, vol. 6, no. 4, January 1885, p. 131, as cited by H. Michael Marquardt in The Strange Marriages of Sarah Ann Whitney to Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, Joseph C. Kingsbury and Heber C. Kimball, p. 1)
This revelation was suppressed by Mormon leaders, but in 1973 Michael Marquardt obtained a typed copy and published it in his pamphlet The Strange Marriages of Sarah Ann Whitney . . . page 23. In this revelation we find the following:
Verily, thus saith the Lord unto my servant N. K. Whitney, the thing that my servant Joseph Smith has made known unto you and your family and which you have agreed upon is right in mine eyes. . . . These are the words which you shall pronounce
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A photograph of The Contributor, Jan. 1885, page 131. Orson F. Whitney tells of a special revelation Joseph Smith received when he wanted to marry Newel K. Whitney’s daughter.
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upon my servant Joseph and your daughter S. A. Whitney. They shall take each other by the hand and you shall say, You both mutually agree, calling them by name, to be each other’s companion so long as you both shall live. . . . If you both agree to covenant and do this, I then give you, S. A. Whitney, my daughter, to Joseph Smith, to be his wife. . . . Let immortality and eternal life hereafter be sealed upon your heads forever and ever.
The reader will notice that this revelation on polygamy is dated a year earlier than the one published in the Doctrine and Covenants.
The 1843 Revelation Examined
The 1843 revelation (now published in the Doctrine and Covenants) was apparently given to convince Emma Smith (Joseph’s wife) that polygamy was right. William Clayton, who wrote the revelation as Smith dictated it, provides this intimate information:
On the morning of the 12th of July, 1843; Joseph and Hyrum Smith came into the office. . . . They were talking on the subject of plural marriage. Hyrum said to Joseph, “If you will write the revelation on celestial marriage, I will take it and read it to Emma, and I believe I can convince her of its truth, and you will hereafter have peace.” Joseph smiled and remarked, “You do not know Emma as well as I do.” . . . Joseph then said, “Well, I will write the revelation and we shall see.” . . . Hyrum then took the revelation to read to Emma. Joseph remained with me in the office until Hyrum returned. When he came back, Joseph asked how he had succeeded. Hyrum replied that he had never received a more severe talking to in his life. . . .
Joseph quietly remarked, “I told you you did not know Emma as well as I did.” Joseph then put the revelation in his pocket. . . . Two or three days after the revelation was written Joseph related to me and several others that Emma had so teased, and urgently entreated him for the privilege of destroying it, that he became so weary of her teasing, and to get rid of her annoyance, he told her she might destroy it and she had done so, but he had consented to her wish in this matter to pacify her, realizing that he . . . could rewrite it at any time if necessary. (History of the Church, by Joseph Smith, Introduction to vol. 5)
Brigham Young said that,
Emma took that revelation, supposing she had all there was; but Joseph had wisdom enough to take care of it, and he had handed the revelation to Bishop Whitney, and he wrote it all off. . . . She went to the fireplace and put it in, and put the candle under it and burnt it, and she thought that was the end of it, and she will be damned as sure as she is a living woman. Joseph used to say
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that he would have her hereafter, if he had to go to hell for her, and he will have to go to hell for her as sure as he ever gets her. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 17, p. 159)
The revelation was not printed until 1852 and did not appear in the Doctrine and Covenants until 1876. As we have shown, the revelation on polygamy is now printed as section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Upon careful examination it can be seen that this revelation is filled with inconsistencies. The first problem is the date it was given. The date on the revelation reads July 12, 1843, yet Lorenzo Snow, who became the fifth president of the church, testified that anyone who lived in plural marriage prior to the time the revelation was given was living in “adultery under the laws of the church and under the laws of the State, too” (Temple Lot Case, p. 320).
We find that Joseph Smith was married to at least twelve women prior to July 12, 1843. According to Lorenzo Snow’s statement, this would make Joseph Smith an adulterer. In an article published in the church’s own Millennial Star on July 25, 1857, we read as follows: “The Latter-day Saints, from the rise of the Church in 1830, till the year 1843, had no authority to marry any more than one wife each. To have done otherwise, would have been a great transgression” (Millennial Star, vol. 19, p. 475). In order to get out of this dilemma Mormon leaders now claim that Joseph Smith received the revelation prior to the time he wrote it down and that the date on the revelation is the date the revelation was written down, not the date it was actually received. Joseph Smith’s History of the Church, however, says that the revelation was actually given on July 12, 1843: “Wednesday, 12.—I received the following revelation. . . . Revelation on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant, including the Plurality of Wives. Given through Joseph, the Seer, in Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, July 12th, 1843” (History of the Church, vol. 5, pp. 500-501).
The revelation on polygamy contradicts section 58, verse 21 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which reads as follows: “Let no man break the laws of the land, for he that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land.”
In order to practice polygamy in Nauvoo the Mormons had to break the law of the land, for the State of Illinois had laws against both adultery and bigamy (or “the crime of marrying while one has a wife or husband still living from whom no valid divorce has been effected”). The Mormon church leaders understood that polygamy was a crime. In an article published in the church’s own Times and Seasons on November 15, 1844,
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the following appeared: “The law of the land and the rules of the church do not allow one man to have more than one wife alive at once . . .” (Times and Seasons, vol. 5, p. 715).
After the Mormons came to Utah, Brigham Young commented: “If I had forty wives in the United States, they did not know it, and could not substantiate it, neither did I ask any lawyer, judge, or magistrate for them. I live above the law, and so do this people” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 361).
Just before he was murdered Joseph Smith was indicted be cause of his practice of polygamy. The following is found in the Church Chronology under the date of May 25, 1844: “Sat. 25.—Joseph Smith learned that the grand jury at Carthage had found two indictments against him, one of them for polygamy” (Church Chronology, p. 25). According to Wesley Walters, the actual charge in the county records was “adultery.” Joseph Smith was murdered shortly after this, but had he lived, it is very possible that he would have gone to prison for being a polygamist.
In his revelation Joseph Smith used the polygamous practices of David and Solomon as justification for polygamy. In the Doctrine and Covenants we read: “Verily, thus saith the Lord . . . you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants . . . David and Solomon, . . . as touching the principle and doctrine of having many wives and concubines . . . David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me . . .” (132:1, 39).
This is in direct contradiction to the teachings of the Book of Mormon. In the Book of Mormon, page 111 [Jacob 2], verses 23 and 24, we read:
For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.
Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.
Notice that the revelation states that David and Solomon were justified in their polygamous practices, whereas the Book of Mormon states that it was an abominable practice. In a letter to Morris Reynolds, dated July 14, 1966, Apostle LeGrand Richards admitted that he was unable to reconcile this contradiction (see Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? p. 205).
Joseph R Smith, the sixth president of the church, gave the following testimony in the “Reed Smoot Case”:
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THE CHAIRMAN. That is the Book of Mormon?
MR. SMITH. Yes, sir; that is the Book of Mormon.……………………………..
THE CHAIRMAN. Is the doctrine of polygamy taught in that revelation?
MR. SMITH. Taught in it?
THE CHAIRMAN. Yes.
MR. SMITH. It is emphatically forbidden in that book.
THE CHAIRMAN. In that book it is emphatically forbidden?
MR. SMITH. It is.
(Reed Smoot Case, vol. 1, p. 480.)
Orson Pratt once admitted that “The Book of Mormon, therefore, is the only record (professing to be Divine) which condemns the plurality of wives as being a practice exceeding abominable before God” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 6, p. 351).
The Doctrine and Covenants contains this statement: “. . . I, the Lord his God . . . commanded Abraham to take Hagar to wife” (132:65). This is in direct contradiction to the account given in the Bible, for the Bible says nothing about God commanding this but rather that “Abram hearkened to the voice of Sarai” (Gen. 16:2). Why, then, did Sarai give Hagar to Abram? Simply because she did not believe that she could have a child in her old age. It is obvious that God was not involved in this transaction, for Genesis 16:5 makes it clear that Sarai had sinned in this matter: “And Sarai said unto Abram, my wrong be upon thee. . . .”
Although some of the kings mentioned in the Old Testament had many wives, Deuteronomy 17:17 condemned this practice: “Neither shall he multiply wives to himself, that his heart turn not away. . . .”
There is no mention in the New Testament of any of the apostles practicing polygamy. In fact, in 1 Timothy the bishops and deacons were instructed to have only one wife: “A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife. . . . Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife . . .” (I Timothy 3:2, 12).
The Mormon church uses the Old Testament to justify the practice of plural marriage. While it is true that it was practiced by the people of the Old Testament, that does not mean that it was right in the sight of God. These people also committed many other sins which God will not allow us to commit now that Christ has revealed the perfect way. The people in the Old Testament also had slaves, and cursed their enemies. To say that plural marriage is right because it was practiced in the Old Testament makes no more sense than to say that God approves of slavery since it was also practiced in the Old Testament.
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Christ came to set us free from these Old Testament practices. For instance, divorce was common in the Old Testament, but Jesus said “. . . Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives; but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). Polygamy, as well as divorce, was instituted by man, not God. Jesus said that the perfect pattern for marriage was that the “twain shall be one flesh” (Matt. 19:5).
In the revelation on polygamy (Doctrine and Covenants 132:54) Emma Smith, Joseph’s wife, is threatened with destruction: “. . . I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not my law.” It is interesting to note, however, that it was Joseph who was destroyed. He was killed less than a year after this revelation was written, while Emma lived until 1879 and was a bitter enemy to polygamy.
The Doctrine and Covenants 132:64 reads: “And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her; for I will magnify my name upon all those who receive and abide in my law.”
Apostle John Henry Smith testified as follows in the case concerning “the application of John Moore, for naturalization”:
Q. Do you understand that revelation to be to this effect—that if the first wife refuses to consent to her husband taking a second wife, she shall be damned? A. I understand that principle; and a good many women have taken that chance. Under the Mormon theory they shall be damned. (Reminiscences of Early Utah, by R. N. Baskin, 1914, p. 95)
In section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants it is plainly stated that a man must obtain the consent of the first wife in order to be justified in taking more wives: “. . . if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified . . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 132:61).
Joseph Smith certainly did not follow the rules of his own revelation, for he took plural wives without his first wife’s consent. Emily Dow Partridge claimed that she was married to Joseph before Emma gave her consent:
. . . the Prophet Joseph and his wife Emma offered us a home in their family, and they treated us with great kindness. . . . I was married to Joseph Smith on the 4th of March 1843. . . . My sister Eliza was also married to Joseph a few days later. This was done
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without the knowledge of Emma Smith. Two months afterward she consented to give her husband two wives, providing he would give her the privilege of choosing them. She accordingly chose my sister Eliza and myself, and to save family trouble Brother Joseph thought it best to have another ceremony performed. Accordingly on the 11th of May, 1843, we were sealed to Joseph Smith a second time, in Emma’s presence. . . . From that very hour, however, Emma was our bitter enemy. We remained in the family several months after this, but things went from bad to worse until we were obligated to leave the house and find another home. (Historical Record, vol. 6, p. 240)
Joseph F. Smith, the sixth president of the church, was questioned as follows:
SENATOR PETTUS. Have there been in the past plural marriages without the consent of the first wife?
MR. SMITH. I do not know of any, unless it may have been Joseph Smith himself.
SENATOR PETTUS. Is the language that you have read construed to mean that she is bound to consent?
MR. SMITH. The condition is that if she does not consent the Lord will destroy her, but I do not know how He will do it.
SENATOR BAILEY. Is it not true that in the very next verse, if she refuses her consent her husband is exempt from the law which requires her consent?
MR. SMITH. Yes; he is exempt from the law which requires her consent.
SENATOR BAILEY. She is commanded to consent, but if she does not, then he is exempt from the requirement?
MR. SMITH. Then he is at liberty to proceed without her consent, under the law.
SENATOR BEVERIDGE. In other words, her consent amounts to nothing?
MR. SMITH. It amounts to nothing but her consent (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 1, p. 201).
Many other Mormons married without obtaining the consent of the first wife. Joseph Smith told Heber C. Kimball to take a second wife and not to let his first wife know anything about it. Heber C. Kimball’s daughter related:
. . . my father, . . . was taught the plural wife doctrine, and was told by Joseph, the Prophet, three times, to go and take a certain woman as his wife; but not till he commanded him in the name of the Lord did he obey. At the same time Joseph told him not to divulge this secret, not even to my mother, for fear that she would not receive it. . . . This was one of the greatest tests of his faith he had ever experienced. The thought of deceiving the kind and faithful wife of his youth . . . was more than he felt able to
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bear . . . his sorrow and misery were increased by the thought of my mother hearing of it from some other source, which would no doubt separate them, and he shrank from the thought of such a thing, or of causing her any unhappiness. Finally he was so tried that he went to Joseph and told him how he felt—that he was fearful if he took such a step he could not stand, but would be overcome. The Prophet . . . inquired of the Lord; His answer was “Tell him to go and do as he has been commanded, and if I see that there is any danger of his apostatizing, I will take him to myself.” (Life of Heber C. Kimball, by Orson F. Whitney, pp. 335-36)
In Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? page 207, we show that Apostle Orson Pratt published certain rules governing the practice of polygamy. One of those rules was that a man must obtain the consent of the first wife before entering into the practice of plural marriage, yet Pratt himself married two of his wives without the knowledge or consent of any of his other wives.
One thing that is very obvious when reading section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants is the fact that Joseph Smith was already in the practice of plural marriage before he ever inquired of the Lord to see if it was right. The first verse of section 132 tells that Joseph Smith inquired of the Lord to see if plural marriage was right, but verse 52 shows that he had already taken wives before the revelation was given, for it commands Emma (his first wife) to receive the other women that had already been given to Joseph: “And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph . . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 132:52).
Some people have tried to excuse this by saying that the date on the revelation was only the date it was written down and not the date it was actually given, but anyone who honestly examines this argument must admit that it doesn’t make any difference when the revelation was given. Whether it was given in 1843 or years before isn’t important. Regardless of the date it was given, verse 52 plainly states that Joseph had already entered into the practice of polygamy.
It is interesting to note that section 132 not only says that plural marriage is justifiable in God’s sight, but also concubinage: “Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness . . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 132:37).
The Mormon leaders seem to be puzzled as to why the Lord gave the revelation on polygamy to Joseph Smith. Apostle John A. Widtsoe stated: “We do not understand why the Lord commanded the practice of plural marriage.” (Evidences and Reconciliations,
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1960, p. 393). One of the most popular explanations is that the church practiced polygamy because there was a surplus of women. The truth is, however, that there were less women than men.
Apostle Widtsoe admitted that there was no surplus of women:
The implied assumption in this theory, that there have been more female than male members in the Church, is not supported by existing evidence. On the contrary, there seems always to have been more males than females in the Church. . . .
The United States census records from 1850 to 1940, and all available Church records, uniformly show a preponderance of males in Utah, and in the Church. Indeed, the excess in Utah has usually been larger than for the whole United States, . . . there was no surplus of women. (Evidences and Reconciliations, 1960, pp. 390-92)
The sociologist Kimball Young says that “under polygamy some men would have to remain unwed. . . . it was not uncommon for a man to select a plural mate from among recent arrivals of converts in Salt Lake City” (Isn’t One Wife Enough? 1954, p. 124)
[See also: Problems in the LDS Essay on Plural Marriage]
The Mormon leaders were evidently worried that the missionaries would take the best women. Heber C. Kimball, a member of the First Presidency, admonished: “I say to those who are elected to go on missions, . . . remember they are not your sheep: they belong to Him that sends you. Then do not make a choice of any of those sheep; do not make selections before they are brought home and put into the fold. You under stand that. Amen” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 6, p. 256).
Stanley P. Hirshon adds this instructive information:
Kimball always kept an eye out for romance. “Brethren,” he instructed some departing missionaries, “I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. The brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here, and bringing on the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake.” (The Lion of the Lord, New York, 1969, pp. 129-30)
The shortage of women was so great that some of the men were marrying girls who were very young. Fanny Stenhouse stated: “That same year, a bill was brought into the Territorial Legislature, providing that boys of fifteen years of age and girls of twelve might legally contract marriage, with the consent of their parents or guardians!” (Tell It All, 1875, p. 607).
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The early Mormon leaders certainly did allow their young people to marry at an early age. Mosiah Hancock was only 11 years old when he was “sealed” to a “young girl.” According to his journal, he was “born in Kirtland, Ohio, on April the 9th, 1834.” (“The Mosiah Hancock Journal,” typed copy, p. 1). On pages 20 and 21 of the same journal, he recorded:
On about January 10, 1846, I was privileged to go in the temple and receive my washings and annointings. I was sealed to a lovely young girl named Mary, who was about my age, but it was with the understanding that we were not to live together as man and wife until we were 16 years of age. The reason that some were sealed so young was because we knew that we would have to go West and wait many a long time for another temple.
Stanley P. Hirshon provides this additional information:
“Make haste and get married,” Remy heard Young preach. “Let me see no boys above sixteen and girls above fourteen unmarried.” . . . In 1857 The New York Times, reporting the sealings to old men of two girls aged ten and eleven, estimated that most girls married before they were fourteen. . . . Troskolawsski knew one bishop who was sealed to four of his nieces, the youngest thirteen years old. . . . On August 1, 1856, he put on the stagecoach for Ohio twelve-year-old Emma Wheat, who was being forced into a marriage she detested. (The Lion of the Lord, pp. 126-27)
Sorrows of Polygamy
The fact that plural marriage brought great sorrow to many of the women involved can hardly be denied. Heber C. Kimball once remarked: “There is a great deal of quarrelling in the houses, and contending for power and authority; and the second wife is against the first wife, perhaps, in some instances” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, p. 178).
Brigham Young also spoke of the problems:
A few years ago one of my wives, when talking about wives leaving their husbands said, “I wish my husband’s wives would leave him, every soul of them except myself.” That is the way they all feel, more or less, at times, both old and young (Journal of Discourses, vol. 9, p. 195).
Sisters, do you wish to make yourselves happy? Then what is your duty? It is for you to bear children, . . . are you tormenting yourselves by thinking that your husbands do not love you? I would not care whether they loved a particle or not; but I would cry out, like one of old, in the joy of my heart, ‘I have got a man from the Lord!’ ‘Hallelujah! I am a mother . . .’ ” (p. 37).
Zina Huntington, a wife of Brigham Young and a defender of
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the doctrine of polygamy, counseled:
It is the duty of a first wife to regard her husband not with a selfish devotion . . . she must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy . . . we believe in the good old custom by which marriages should be arranged by the parents of the young people. (New York World, November 17, 1869, as cited in The Lion of the Lord, pp. 229-30)
It is almost impossible to conceive of the sorrow that the Mormon women went through. Joseph Lee Robinson, who was himself a polygamist and a faithful member of the church, frankly admitted: “Plural marriage . . . is calculated in its nature to severely try the women even to nearly tear their heart strings out of them . . .” (Journal and Autobiography of Joseph Lee Robinson, p. 50, microfilm in LDS Genealogical Library).
Kimball Young relates some of the heartaches of polygamy:
When James Hunter took his second wife, the first who had accompanied the couple to the Endowment House for the ceremony could not sleep and walked the floor all night as she thought of her husband lying in the arms of his new bride. . . .
A person brought up in a polygamous household . . . told this story: “There is one real tragedy in polygamy that I can remember. One evening a man brought home a second wife. It was in the winter and the first wife was very upset. That night she climbed onto the roof and froze to death.” (Isn’t One Wife Enough? pp. 147-48)
At one time conditions became so bad in Brigham Young’s family that he offered to set all his wives free:
Now for my proposition; it is more particularly for my sisters, as it is frequently happening that women say they are unhappy. Men will say, “My wife, though a most excellent woman, has not seen a happy day since I took my second wife,” “No, not a happy day for a year,” says one; and another has not seen a happy day for five years. . . .
I wish my own women to understand that what I am going to say is for them as well as others, and I want those who are here to tell their sisters, yes, all the women of this community, . . . I am going to give you from this time to the 6th day of October next, for reflection, that you may determine whether you wish to stay with your husbands or not, and then I am going to set every woman at liberty and say to them, Now go your way, my women with the rest, go your way. And my wives have got to do one of two things; either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this world, and live their religion, or they may leave, for
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I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone, rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I will set all at liberty. “What, first wife too?” Yes, I will liberate you all. . . .
I wish my women, and brother Kimball’s and brother Grant’s to leave, and every woman in this Territory, or else say in their hearts that they will embrace the Gospel—the whole of it . . . say to your wives, “Take all that I have and be set at liberty; but if you stay with me you shall comply with the law of God, and that too without any murmuring and whining. You must fulfil the law of God in every respect, and round up your shoulders to walk up to the mark without any grunting.”
Now recollect that two weeks from to morrow I am going to set you at liberty. But the first wife will say, “It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial to me for him to have more women;” then I say it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children. If my wife had borne me all the children that she ever would bare, the celestial law would teach me to take young women that would have children. . . .
Sisters, I am not joking, I do not throw out my proposition to banter your feelings, to see whether you will leave your husbands, all or any of you. But I know that there is no cessation to the everlasting whining of many of the women in this Territory; . . . if the women will turn from the commandments of God and continue to despise the order of heaven, I will pray that the curse of the Almighty may be close to their heels. . . .
Prepare yourselves for two weeks from to morrow; and I will tell you now, that if you will tarry with your husbands, after I have set you free, you must bow down to it, and submit yourselves to the Celestial law. You may go where you please, after two weeks from tomorrow; but, remember, that I will not hear any more of this whining. (Sermon by Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pp. 55-57; also printed in Deseret News, vol. 6, [Oct. 1, 1856] pp. 235 (column 4)-236)
Jedediah M. Grant, second counselor to Brigham Young, depicted the tragic situation in similar terms: “And we have women here who like any thing but the celestial law of God; and if they could break asunder the cable of the Church of Christ, there is scarcely a mother in Israel but would do it this day. And they talk it to their husbands, to their daughters, and to their neighbors, and say they have not seen a week’s happiness since their husbands took a second wife” (Deseret News, vol. 6, [Oct. 1, 1856] p. 235, column 1; also Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, p. 50).
Even Joseph Smith’s home was not exempt from the problems caused by plural marriage. The Mormon writer John J. Stewart said: “Thus did Satan sow the seeds of discord in the
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A photograph of the Journal of Discourses, Vol. 4, page 55. Brigham Young offered to set all his wives free.
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Prophet’s own home, cause a torment of mind to Emma, distress to Joseph, and lay the groundwork of the apostate Reorganized Church, eventually taking Emma and their sons outside the true Church” (Brigham Young and His wives, p. 33).
In his thesis “Emma Hale—Wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith” (p. 104 of typed copy), Raymond T. Bailey admitted that it was “public knowledge that there were quarrels between Emma and Joseph especially during the Illinois period of their lives.” On April 17, 1844, the Warsaw Signal reported [page 2, column 1] that Joseph Smith had “turned his wife out of doors. ‘Sister Emma’s’ offence was, that she was in conversation with Mr. E. Robinson, and refused, or hesitated to tell the Prophet on what subject they were engaged. The man of God, thereupon, flew into a holy passion, and turned the partner of his bosom, and the said Robinson, into the street—all of which was done in broad daylight, and no doubt in the most approved style.”
In his journal and autobiography, Joseph Lee Robinson (the brother of “E. Robinson” who is mentioned above) frankly admitted that Joseph and Emma had a fight over the doctrine of polygamy:
. . . Angeline Ebenezers wife had some time before this had watched Brother Joseph the Prophet had seen him go into some house that she had reported to sister Emma the wife of the Prophet it was at a time when she [Emma] was very suspisous [sic] and jealous of him for fear he would get another wife . . . she was determined he should not get another if he did she was determined to leave and when she heard this she Emma became very angry and said she would leave . . . it came close to breaking up his family . . . the Prophet felt dreadful bad over it, he went to my brothers and talked with Angelene on the matter, and she would not give him any satesfaction [sic], and her husband did not reprove his wife, and it came to pass, the Prophet cursed her severely . . . I thought that I would not have a wife of mine do a thing of that kind for a world, but if she had done it she should get upon her nees [sic] at his feet and beg his pardon. . . .
The book Mormon Portraits provides further insight into Joseph’s family troubles:
Mr. W.: “Joseph kept eight girls in his house, calling them his ‘daughters.’ Emma threatened that she would leave the house, and Joseph told her, “All right, you can go.” She went, but when Joseph reflected that such a scandal would hurt his prophetic dignity, he followed his wife and brought her back. But the eight ‘daughters’ had to leave the house.”
“Miss” Eliza R. Snow, . . . was one of the first (willing) victims of Joseph in Nauvoo. She used to be much at the prophet’s house
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. . . he made her one of his celestial brides. . . . Feeling outraged as a wife and betrayed as a friend, Emma is currently reported as having had recourse to a vulgar broomstick as an instrument of revenge: and the harsh treatment received at Emma’s hands is said to have destroyed Eliza’s hopes of becoming the mother of a prophet’s son. (Mormon Portraits, by Dr. W. Wyl, 1886, pp. 57-58)
The Mormon writer Claire Noall acknowledged: “Willard realized that Emma had refused to believe that any of the young women boarding at the Mansion when it was first used as a hotel had been married to Joseph. She had struck Eliza Snow at the head of the stairs, and Eliza, it was whispered, had lost her unborn child” (Intimate Disciple, a Portrait of Willard Richards, 1957, p. 407).
There are some members of the Mormon church who maintain that Joseph Smith did not actually live with his wives here on earth. There is an abundance of evidence, however, to show that he did. For instance, Benjamin F Johnson made the following statement in an affidavit dated March 4, 1870: “After a short period, President Smith . . . came again to Macedonia (Ramus), where he remained two days, lodging at my house with my sister as man and wife (and to my certain knowledge he occupied the same bed with her)” (Historical Record, vol. 6, p. 222).
Number of Wives
Andrew Jensen, who was an assistant Mormon church historian, listed 27 women who were married to Joseph Smith (see the Historical Record, pp. 233, 234). The Mormon author John J. Stewart, however, credits Joseph Smith with even more wives: “. . . he married many other women, perhaps three or four dozen or more . . .” (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 31). Fawn M. Brodie includes a list of forty-eight women who may have been married to Joseph Smith (see No Man Knows My History, pp. 434-65). Stanley S. Ivins, who was considered “one of the great authorities on Mormon polygamy,” said that the number of Joseph Smith’s wives “can only be guessed at, but it might have gone as high as sixty or more” (Western Humanities Review, vol. 10, pp. 232-33).
[Also see a list at: Wives of Joseph Smith and Wives of Brigham Young]
Before his death Stanley S. Ivins prepared a list of eighty-four women who may have been married to Joseph Smith during his lifetime. We published this information in the book Joseph Smith and Polygamy (pp. 41-47). While Mr. Ivins was not certain that every woman listed was actually married to Smith, he pointed out that there may have been others who were married to Joseph Smith whose names did not appear on the list. In
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preparing this list Mr. Ivins did a great deal of research in the Nauvoo temple records, the Endowment House records and other genealogical records. After Mr. Ivins’ study was completed, some of the temple records in the L.D.S. genealogical library were restricted and are no longer available to the general public.
Before listing the last eleven names on his list, Stanley S. Ivins stated:
On April 4, 1899, eleven of the wives of Joseph Smith, all long since dead, were sealed to him by proxy. A not[e] accompanying the record of the sealing said: “The sealings of those named below were performed during the life of the Prophet Joseph but there is no record thereof. President Lorenzo Snow decided that they be repeated in order that a record might exist; and that this explanation be made.” This incident suggests that others of the many dead women to whom Smith was sealed, by proxy, may have been married to him during his life. . . .
At the end of his paper Mr. Ivins remarked: “In addition to these dead women, Joseph Smith was sealed to at least 229 others, up to March 18, 1881. (Additional note: Sealed to 246 Dead Women.)” (Joseph Smith and Polygamy p. 47).
In the Preface to the second edition of her book No Man Knows My History, Fawn Brodie states: “. . . over two hundred women, apparently at their own request, were sealed as wives to Joseph Smith after his death in special temple ceremonies. Moreover, a great many distinguished women in history, including several Catholic saints, were also sealed to Joseph Smith in Utah. I saw these astonishing lists in the Latter-day Saint Genealogical Archives in Salt Lake City in 1944.”
The Apostle John A. Widtsoe admitted that women were sealed to Joseph Smith after his death and without his approval: “After the death of the Prophet, women applied for the privilege of being sealed to him for eternity. . . . To these requests, assent was often given. . . .Women no longer living, whether in Joseph’s day or later, have also been sealed to the Prophet for eternity” (Evidences and Reconciliations, Single Volume Edition, 1960, pp. 342-43).
If the Mormon doctrine concerning plural marriage were true, Joseph Smith would have hundreds of wives in the resurrection. Some of the women Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball married, who were previously married to Joseph Smith, would have to be surrendered to Joseph in the hereafter. Lucy W. Kimball testified:
The contract when I married Mr. Kimball was that I should be his
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wife for time, and time only, and the contract on the part of Mr. Kimball was that he would take care of me during my lifetime, and in the resurrection would surrender me, with my children, to Joseph Smith. . . .
I decline to answer whether I had any children while I was sealed to Joseph Smith. I have nine children since I was married to Heber C. Kimball. (The Temple Lot Case, 1893, p. 379)
In an article published in Western Humanities Review (vol. 10, pp. 232-33), Stanley S. Ivins observed that “Brigham Young is usually credited with only twenty-seven wives, but he was sealed to more than twice that many living women, and to at least 150 more who had died.”
The Mormon writer John J. Stewart lists the names of fifty-three women who were sealed to Brigham Young, and then he adds: “There were perhaps one or two others, plus the some 150 women whom he had sealed to him; also a few women who were sealed to him after his death” (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 96).
In a speech delivered January 24, 1858, Apostle Ezra T. Benson indicated that Young had about “fifty or sixty” wives (see Journal of Discourses, vol. 6, pp. 180-81).
Stanley P. Hirshon lists seventy women who may have been married to Brigham Young (see Lion of the Lord, pp. 190-221). On pages 188 and 189 of the same book, he relates:
. . . Young often joked about his wives. “Tell the Gentiles,” he once observed, “I do not know half of them when I see them.” Later, asked the usual question by a Gentile governor of Utah, Young answered: “I don’t know myself! I never refuse to marry any respectable woman who asks me, and it is often the case that I separate from a woman at the marriage altar, never to meet her again to know her. My children I keep track of, however. I have fifty-seven now living, and have lost three”
Brigham Young boasted of his ability to obtain many wives:
“Brother Cannon remarked that people wondered how many wives and children I had. He may inform them, that I shall have wives and children by the million, and glory, and riches and power and dominion, and kingdom after kingdom, and reign triumphantly”
Brigham Young,
Journal of Discourses, vol. 8, p. 178
“I could prove to this congregation that I am young; for I could find more girls who would choose me for a husband than can any of the young men” (vol. 5, p. 210).
Although Brigham Young was constantly marrying new wives, he claimed that “there are probably but few men in the world who care about the private society of women less than I
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do” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p. 99).
Heber C Kimball, a member of the First Presidency, had forty-five wives, but he claimed that in the resurrection he would be able to have thousands:
Supposing that I have a wife or a dozen of them, and she should say, “You cannot be exalted without me,” and suppose they all should say so, what of that? . . . Suppose that I lose the whole of them before I go into the spirit world, but that I have been a good, faithful man . . . do you think I will be destitute there. No, the Lord says there are more there than there are here . . . there are millions of them, . . . we will go to brother Joseph and say, “Here we are brother Joseph; we are here ourselves are we not, with none of the property we possessed in our probationary state, not even the rings on our fingers?” He will say to us, “Come along, my boys, we will give you a good suit of clothes. Where are your wives?” “They are back yonder; they would not follow us.” “Never mind,” says Joseph, “Here are thousands, have all you want.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, p. 209)
The Mormon men certainly believed that they could have all the wives they wanted. Kimball Young stated: “One of the informants for this study said that her uncle had ‘some hundreds of wives sealed to him for eternity only’ ” (Isn’t One Wife Enough? p. 146).
According to Stanley S. Ivins, the Endowment House Records reveal that on November 22, 1870, Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt had himself sealed to 101 dead women. On November 29, 1870, he was sealed to 109 dead women.
The same day (November 29, 1870) 91 dead women were sealed to his brother, Parley P. Pratt, who had died in 1857.
Mr. Ivins found that the St. George Temple records show that Wilford Woodruff—who later became the fourth president of the church—was sealed to 189 dead women in a period of slightly over two years (January 29, 1879 to March 14, 1881).
Moses Franklin Farnsworth was sealed to 345 dead women in a two-year period. At one time we thought that Mr. Farnsworth held the record for the largest number of dead women sealed to him. New evidence, however, has forced us to revise that conclusion. On April 5, 1894, the Apostle Abraham Cannon recorded the following in his diary:
THURSDAY, APRIL 5th, 1894. . . . I met with the Quorum and Presidency in the temple. . . . President Woodruff then spoke . . . “In searching out my genealogy I found about four hundred of my femal[e] kindred who were never married. I asked Pres. Young what I should do with them. He said for me to have them sealed to me unless there were more that [than?] 999 of them. the doctrine
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A photograph of the Journal of Discourses, Vol. 4, page 209. Heber C. Kimball, a member of The First Presidency, maintained that there will be thousands of women in heaven to choose from.
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startled me, but I had it done . . .” (“Daily Journal of Abraham H. Cannon,” April 5, 1894, vol. 18, pp. 66-67, Brigham Young University Library)
Taking Other Men’s Wives
The fact that Joseph Smith asked for other men’s wives was made very plain in a sermon delivered in the tabernacle by Jedediah M. Grant, second counselor to Brigham Young. In this sermon, delivered February 19, 1854, Jedediah M. Grant stated:
When the family organization was revealed from heaven—the patriarchal order of God, and Joseph began, on the right and on the left, to add to his family, what a quaking there was in Israel. Says one brother to another, “Joseph says all covenants are done away, and none are binding but the new covenants; now suppose Joseph should come and say he wanted your wife, what would you say to that?” “I would tell him to go to hell.” This was the spirit of many in the early days of this Church. . . .
What would a man of God say, who felt aright, when Joseph asked him for his money? He would say, “Yes, and I wish I had more to help to build up the kingdom of God.” Or if he came and said, “I want your wife?” “O Yes,” he would say, “here she is, there are plenty more.” . . . Did the Prophet Joseph want every man’s wife he asked for? He did not . . . If such a man of God should come to me and say, “I want your gold and silver, or your wives,” I should say, “Here they are, I wish I had more to give you, take all I have got.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, pp. 13-14)
In his book Mormon Portraits (pp. 70-72), Dr. Wyl presents some revealing information:
Joseph Smith finally demanded the wives of all the twelve Apostles that were at home then in Nauvoo. . . . Vilate Kimball, the first wife of Heber C. Kimball, . . . loved her husband, and he, . . . loved her, hence a reluctance to comply with the Lord’s demand that Vilate should be consecrated. . . . They thought the command of the Lord must be obeyed in some way, and a “proxy” way suggested itself to their minds. They had a young daughter only getting out of girlhood; and the father apologizing to the prophet for his wife’s reluctance to comply with his desires, stating, however, that the act must be right or it would not be counselled . . . asked Joe if his daughter wouldn’t do as well as his wife. Joe replied that she would do just as well, and the Lord would accept her instead. The half-ripe bud of womanhood was delivered over to the Prophet.
The fact that Joseph Smith asked for Heber C. Kimball’s wife but actually married his daughter is verified in the book The Life of Heber C. Kimball, written by Apostle Orson F. Whitney:
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Before he would trust even Heber with the full secret, however, he put him to a test which few men would have been able to bear.
It was no less than a requirement for him to surrender his wife, his beloved Vilate, and give her to Joseph in marriage!
The astounding revelation well-nigh paraly[z]ed him. He could hardly believe he had heard aright. Yet Joseph was solemnly in earnest. . . . He knew Joseph too well . . . to doubt his truth or the divine origin of the behest he had made. . . .
Three days he fasted and wept and prayed. Then, with a broken and a bleeding heart, but with soul self-mastered for the sacrifice, he led his darling wife to the Prophet’s house and presented her to Joseph.
It was enough—the heavens accepted the sacrifice. The will for the deed was taken, and ‘accounted unto him for righteousness.’ Joseph wept at this proof of devotion, and embracing Heber told him that was all the Lord required. . . .
The Prophet joined the hands of the heroic and devoted pair, and then and there, . . . Heber and Vilate Kimball were made husband and wife for all eternity. (Life of Heber C. Kimball, pp. 333-35)
Helen Mar, the eldest daughter of Heber Chase and Vilate Kimball, was given to the Prophet in the holy bonds of Celestial Marriage (p. 339).
Joseph Smith was apparently worried concerning adultery. Joseph Lee Robinson recorded the following in his journal and autobiography:
. . . God had revealed unto him [Joseph Smith] that any man that ever committed adultery in either of his probations that that man could never be raised to the highest exaltation in the celestial glory, and that he felt anxious with regard to himself that he enquired of the Lord that the Lord told him that he Joseph had never committed adultery.
John D. Lee tells that Joseph Smith took H. B. Jacob’s wife while Mr. Jacobs was absent: “. . . in his absence, she was sealed to the Prophet Joseph and was his wife” (Confessions of John D. Lee, p. 132).
Juanita Brooks states that “Zina Diantha Huntington” was the woman who was married to Henry B. Jacobs and later sealed to Joseph Smith. She states that after she was sealed to Joseph Smith she continued to live with Jacobs, and that later she “renounced Jacobs and joined the family of Brigham Young” (On The Mormon Frontier, The Diary of Hosea Stout, vol. 1, p. 141, footnote 18).
In the Historical Record (vol. 6, p. 233), assistant church historian
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A photograph of the Journal of Discourses, Vol. 2, page 14. Jedediah M. Grant, second counselor to Brigham Young, frankly admits that Joseph Smith asked for some men’s wives.
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Andrew Jensen confirmed the fact that Zina D. Huntington married Joseph Smith and later became the wife of Brigham Young: “Zina D. Huntington, afterwards the wife of Pres. Brigham Young, sealed to the Prophet Oct.27, 1841, Dimick B. Huntington officiating.”
Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs is listed as wife number five in Stanley Ivin’s list: “5. ZINA DIANTHA HUNTINGTON JACOBS. . . . wife of Henry B. Jacobs. . . . Married Jacobs March 7, 1841. Married Joseph Smith, October 27, 1841. On February 2, 1846, she was sealed to Smith for eternity and to Brigham Young for time. She lived with Young as his wife, and died August 29, 1901” (Joseph Smith and Polygamy, p. 42).
Fawn M. Brodie relates:
Zina left Jacobs in 1846 to marry Brigham Young. William Hall asserted that he had heard Young say publicly to Jacobs: “The woman you claim for a wife does not belong to you. She is the spiritual wife of brother Joseph, sealed to him. I am his proxy, and she, in this behalf, with her children, are my property. You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirits.” Jacobs apparently accepted Young’s decision as the word of the Lord, for he stood as witness in the Nauvoo temple in January 1846 when Zina was sealed to Brigham Young “for time” and to Joseph Smith “for eternity.” (No Man Knows My History, p. 443)
Juanita Brooks further explains: “. . . Zina had been moved to Winter Quarters. She now renounced Jacobs and joined the family of Brigham Young, traveling west in 1848 in a wagon provided by him and driven by her brother Oliver” (On The Mormon Frontier . . . vol. 1, p. 141, footnote 18).
Ann Eliza Young, who had been married to Brigham Young, charged that Joseph Smith was guilty of adultery:
Joseph not only paid his addresses to the young and unmarried women, but he sought “spiritual alliance” with many married ladies. . . . He taught them that all former marriages were null and void, and that they were at perfect liberty to make another choice of a husband. The marriage covenants were not binding, because they were ratified only by Gentile laws. These laws the Lord did not recognize; consequently all the women were free. . . .
One woman said to me not very long since, while giving me some of her experiences in polygamy: “The greatest trial I ever endured in my life was living with my husband and deceiving him, by receiving Joseph’s attentions whenever he chose to come to me.” . . .
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Some of these women have since said they did not know who was the father of their children; this is not to be wondered at, for after Joseph’s declaration annulling all Gentile marriages, the greatest promiscuity was practiced; and, indeed, all sense of morality seemed to have been lost by a portion at least of the church. (Wife No. 19, 1876, pp. 70-71)
John A. Widtsoe admitted that Joseph Smith was sealed to married women, but he claimed that they were not to be his wives until after death:
Another kind of celestial marriage seems to have been practiced in the early days of plural marriage. It has not been practised since Nauvoo days, for it is under Church prohibition. Zealous women, married or unmarried, loving the cause of the restored gospel, considered their condition in the hereafter. Some of them asked that they might be sealed to the Prophet for eternity. They were not to be his wives on earth, in mortality, but only after death in the eternities. . . . Such marriages led to misunderstandings by those not of the Church. . . . Therefore any ceremony uniting a married woman, for example to Joseph Smith for eternity seemed adulterous to such people. Yet, in any day, in our day, there may be women who prefer to spend eternity with another than their husband on earth.
Such cases, if any, and they must have been few in number, gave enemies of the Church occasion to fan the flaming hatred against the Latter-day Saints (Evidences and Reconciliations, 1960, p. 343).
John A. Widtsoe’s statement that Joseph Smith did not live with the married women to whom he was sealed is certainly false. Patty Bartlett Sessions, the wife of David Sessions, made it very clear in her private journal that she was married to Joseph Smith for both “time” and “eternity”: “I was sealed to Joseph Smith by Willard Richards Mar 9, 1842, in Newel K. Whitney’s chamber, Nauvoo, for time and all eternity, . . . Sylvia my daughter was present when I was sealed to Joseph Smith. I was after Mr. Sessions’ death sealed to John Parry for time on the 27th, March, 1852, GSL City” (Journal of Patty Sessions, as quoted in Intimate Disciple, Portrait of Willard Richards, 1957, p. 611).
The following information concerning Patty Sessions is found in Stanley S. Ivins’ list of 84 women who may have been married to Joseph Smith: “34. PATTY BARTLETT SESSIONS. Wife of David Sessions. . . . Married Sessions, June 28, 1812. Married Joseph Smith on March 9, 1842. Her husband Sessions died about 1850. . . . On July 9, 1867, she was sealed to Joseph Smith
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in the Endowment House . . .” (Joseph Smith and Polygamy, p. 44).
Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, the wife of Adam Lightner, stated: “Joseph said I was his before I came here and he said all the Devils in Hell should never get me from him. I was sealed to him in the Masonic Hall, over the old brick store by Brigham Young in February 1842 and then again in the Nauvoo Temple by Heber C. Kimball . . .” (Affidavit of Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, as quoted in No Man Knows My History, p. 444).
In a speech given at Brigham Young University, Mrs. Lightner related:
He [Joseph] preached polygamy. . . . It was given to him before he gave it to the Church. An angel came to him and the last time he came with a drawn sword in his hand and told Joseph if he did not go into that principle he would slay him. . . .
I asked him if Emma knew about me and he said, “Emma thinks the world of you.” I was not sealed to him until I had a witness. I had been dreaming for a number of years I was his wife. I thought I was a great sinner. I prayed to God to take it from me for I felt it was a sin, but when Joseph sent for me he told me all of these things. . . .
Joseph came up the next Sabbath. . . . My husband was far away from me at the time, … I went forward and was sealed to him. Brigham Young performed the sealing and Heber C. Kimball the blessing.
I knew he had six wives and I have known some of them from childhood up. I know he had three children. They told me. I think two of them are living today, they are not known as his children as they go by other names. (Speech by Mary E. Lightner, Brigham Young University, April 14, 1905, typed copy)
Andrew Jenson admits that Mary Elizabeth Rollins was sealed to Joseph Smith (see Historical Record, vol. 6, p. 234). In Stanley Ivins’ list we find the following: “22. MARY ELIZABETH ROLLINS LIGHTNER. . . . wife of Adam Lightner. . . . Married Lightner on August 11,1835 . . . On January 17,1846, she was sealed to Joseph Smith for eternity and to Brigham Young for time. However she remained with her legal husband and came to Utah with him in 1863. Her death was on December 17, 1913.” It would appear, then, that Mary E. Lightner had two different husbands for “time” and a third for “eternity.” The Mormon writer John J. Stewart confirms this in his book Brigham Young and His Wives: “17. Mary Elizabeth Rollins. . . . The wife of a non-Mormon, Adam Lightner. Sealed to the Prophet Joseph in February, 1842, at the age of 23, and again January 17, 1846, at
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which time she was sealed to Brigham for time” (p. 89).
Stanley P. Hirshon tells of another married woman entering polygamy:
. . . Augusta Adams Cobb,. . . married Henry Cobb, a prosperous Boston merchant, about 1822 and bore seven children.
Augusta lived quietly until Young came east to preach in the summer of 1843. She heard him, converted to Mormonism, and with her two smallest children headed for Nauvoo. . . . Augusta continued on to Nauvoo and on November 2, 1843, without divorcing her first husband married Young. A few months later she briefly returned to Boston, where she saw her other children and told Henry she was leaving him forever. . . .
Augusta returned to Nauvoo and on February 2, 1846, was sealed to Young for eternity. The following year Henry Cobb, still in Massachusetts, divorced her. (The Lion of the Lord, pp. 192-94)
The Mormon writer John J. Stewart confirms the fact that Mrs. Cobb was married to Brigham Young in 1843: “5. AUGUSTA ADAMS. . . . Married to Brigham November 2, 1843, at the age of 40, and sealed to him February 2, 1846. She had several children by a previous marriage” (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 86).
From these facts it is hard to escape the conclusion that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were living in adultery. John D. Lee stated: “Some have mutually agreed to exchange wives and have been sealed to each other as husband and wife by virtue and authority of the holy priesthood. One of Brigham’s brothers, Lorenzo Young, now a bishop, made an exchange of wives with Mr. Decker, the father of the Mr. Decker who now has an interest in the cars running to York” (Confessions of John D. Lee, p. 165).
A recent study by Michael Marquardt has brought to light the total disregard that Joseph Smith had for the sacred vows of marriage. As we have previously brought out, on July 27, 1842, Joseph Smith gave a special revelation that Sarah Ann Whitney was to become his plural wife. According to the assistant church historian Andrew Jenson, Sarah Ann Whitney was married to Joseph Smith by her father, Newel K. Whitney: “Sarah Ann Whitney, afterwards the wife of Pres. Heber C. Kimball, married to Joseph July 27, 1842, her father Newel K. Whitney officiating” (Historical Record, vol. 6, pp. 233-34).
In Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? page 581, we pointed out that Michael Marquardt discovered photographs of a letter written by Joseph Smith himself and addressed to Bishop Newel K. Whitney and his wife. The letter is very interesting
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because Smith asks the “three” of them—presumably Mr. and Mrs. Whitney and their young daughter Sarah Ann, to whom Joseph Smith was secretly married—to come see him by night. In the letter, Joseph Smith makes it very clear that he does not want them to come when Emma, his first wife, would be present:
. . . all three of you can come and see me in the fore part of the night, . . . the only thing to be careful of, is to find out when Emma comes then you cannot be safe, but when she is not here, there is the most perfect safety: . . . I think Emma wont come tonight if she dont dont fail to come tonight, I subscribe myself your obedient and affectionate, companion, and friend. Joseph Smith
Since finding photographs of this important letter in the George Albert Smith Collection at the University of Utah Library, Michael Marquardt has completed some very important research concerning this whole affair. He has published his findings under the title, The Strange Marriages of Sarah Ann Whitney to Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, Joseph C. Kingsbury and Heber C. Kimball. Among other things that Mr. Marquardt discovered is the fact that Joseph Smith actually performed a “pretended” marriage ceremony between Sarah Ann Whitney and Joseph C. Kingsbury so that his own relationship with her would not be noticed. Mr. Marquardt cites the following from “The History of Joseph C. Kingsbury,” a document that is now in the Western Americana section of the University of Utah Library:
. . . on 29th of April 1843 I according to President Joseph Smith Couscil [sic] & others agreed to Stand by Sarah Ann Whitny [sic] as supposed to be her husband & had a prete[n]ded marriage for the purpose of Bringing about the purposes of God in these last days as spoken by the mouth of the Prophets Isiah [sic] Jeremiah Ezekiel and also Joseph Smith, & Sarah Ann Should Recd a Great Glory Honor, & eternal lives and I Also Should Recd a Great Glory, Honor & eternal lives to the full desire of my heart in having my Companion Caroline in the first Resurection [sic] to claim her & no one have power to take her from me & we both shall be Crowned & enthroned together in the Celestial Kingdom of God. . . .
Mr. Marquardt has also found that Joseph Smith signed a document in which he stated: “I hereby certify, that I have upon this the 29th day of April 1843, joined together in Marriage Joseph C. Kingsbury and Sarah Ann Whitney, in the City of Nauvoo, Illinois.” That a man professing to be a prophet of God would perform a “pretended” marriage to cover up his own iniquity is almost beyond belief.
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In his pamphlet, Mr. Marquardt goes on to show that after Joseph Smith’s death, Sarah Ann Whitney continued to live with Joseph C. Kingsbury in this “pretended” marriage—he referred to her as “Sarah my Supposed wife.” While living with Kingsbury she became pregnant with Apostle Heber C. Kimball’s child. Seven months later (January 12, 1846), she was married to Kimball for time and sealed to Joseph Smith for eternity in the Nauvoo Temple, but she continued to live with Kingsbury until after the child was born. All these facts are well documented in Michael Marquardt’s pamphlet.
Some people have wondered how Joseph Smith could convince his people that polygamy was right in the sight of God. The answer is that the Mormon people were taught to follow their leaders in all things. When Smith announced that plural marriage was revealed by God, the Mormons were forced to accept it. Also the fact that Smith was very appealing to women must have helped him establish the doctrine. Mormon doctrine concerning women probably played an important role in preparing them to enter into plural marriage. Mormon leaders taught that a woman was inferior and that her salvation depended on a man. Brigham Young once stated: “The man is the head and God of the woman, but let him act like a God in virtuous principles . . .” (Sermon of Brigham Young, as quoted in Journal of John D. Lee, 1846-47 and 1859, edited by Charles Kelly, 1938, p. 81). On page 114 of the same journal, John D. Lee related:
Just in time I received a letter from Nancy the 1st stating that she had not forgotten that in the moment of passion that I was the man to whom she was to look for salvation spiritually or temporally . . . I read the letter to Pres. B. Young. His counsel was to tell her that inasmuch as she claimed salvation at my hands that she must come to me and place herself under my guidance and control and protection and respect the priesthood and my standing as a saviour but on no other consideration whatever.
Kimball Young further documents this attitude:
. . . Daisy Barclay, herself brought up in a plural family, remarks: “Polygamy is predicated on the assumption that a man is superior to a woman . . . Mormon tradition . . . teaches woman to honor and obey her husband and look upon him as her lord and master.” As a daughter of the second wife of Isaac Lambert once complained, “Mother figures you are supposed to spend your life taking care of a man, and he is God” (Isn’t One Wife Enough? p. 280).
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Strange Marriages
On July 25, 1857, the following appeared in an article in the Latter-Day Saints Millennial Star:
Among ancient Israel, marriage was forbidden within certain degrees of consanguinity. . . . The Polygamist was not only laid under the same restraints as the Monogamist, but placed under additional restraints in regard to the persons whom he should select as additional wives. He was not permitted by the law of Moses to marry the sister of his wife. (See Leviticus xviii.18.) Neither was he permitted to marry a mother and daughter. “And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness; they shall be burnt with fire both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.” (See Leviticus xx.14.) . . . the Polygamist Israelite was under a law restricting him within certain limits. Though he had a right to marry many wives, yet he had no right to marry a mother and daughter or two sisters. (Millennial Star vol. 19, pp. 473-74)
It is strange that the Mormon leaders would print these Old Testament rules because they certainly did not follow them. The Mormon writer T. Edgar Lyon admits that Apostle Orson Pratt was inconsistent in this regard:
This controversy also illustrates one of the inconsistencies of the Mormon contention that their polygamy was Biblical. They did not abide by the rules of plural marriage as set forth in the Bible. Pratt himself had married two sisters. Others had done the same thing and even married mothers and daughters. (“Orson Pratt—Early Mormon Leader,” M.A. thesis, University of Chicago, 1932, p. 104)
Although the early Mormon leaders wanted to return to the Old Testament practice of putting adulterers to death, they did not want to accept Leviticus 20:14, which said that when a man married “a wife and her mother” they should be put to death. If they had accepted this, Joseph Smith would have been one of the first to die, for he had married a woman and her mother. Fawn Brodie stated: “The prophet married five pairs of sisters: Delcena and Almera Johnson, Eliza and Emily Partridge, Sarah and Maria Lawrence, Mary Ann and Olive Grey Frost, and Prescinda and Zina Huntington. Patty and Sylvia Sessions were mother and daughter” (No Man Knows My History, p. 336).
The fact that Patty and Sylvia Sessions were mother and daughter is verified by the Mormon writer Claire Noall: “Sylvia Lyon, Patty’s daughter and the wife of Windsor J. Lyon, was already sealed to Joseph. This afternoon she was to put her mother’s hand in the Prophet’s” (Intimate Disciple, p. 317).
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The sociologist Kimball Young stated:
Of our family records, 19 per cent of them report that the men married sisters. . . . Of these 30 cases all but one marriage were to full sisters; in this one it was to a half-sister. In one family a man married four sisters; in another he took twins as numbers one and two and a half-sister as wife number three. In still another a man married two sisters and their widowed mother! (Isn’t One Wife Enough? p. 111)
Joseph Carey wanted to marry a certain widow, but she only consented if he would agree to also marry her two daughters when they grew up. They were then in their early teens. A few years after he wed the widow, she accompanied him to the temple where he married his two stepdaughters on the same day (p. 142).
Fanny Stenhouse, a former polygamist wife, wrote:
It would be quite impossible, with any regard to propriety, to relate all the horrible results of this disgraceful system. . . . Marriages have been contracted between the nearest of relatives; and old men tottering on the brink of the grave have been united to little girls scarcely in their teens; while unnatural alliances of every description, which in any other community would be regarded with disgust and abhorrence, are here entered into in the name of God. . . .
It is quite a common thing in Utah for a man to marry two and even three sisters. . . . I know also another man who married a widow with several children; and when one of the girls had grown into her teens he insisted on marrying her also, having first by some means won her affections. The mother, however, was much opposed to this marriage, and finally gave up her husband entirely to her daughter; and to this very day the daughter bears children to her stepfather, living as wife in the same house with her mother! (Tell It All, 1874, pp. 468-69)
Stanley P. Hirshon states: “Some Utah matches were even more startling. A man named Winchester married his mother, and Young himself sealed a mother and daughter to their cousin, Luman A. Shurtliff. . . . He also sealed an elderly man to a fifty-seven-year-old woman and her fourteen-year-old granddaughter” (The Lion of the Lord, p. 126).
The anti-Mormon writer Joseph H. Jackson charged that Joseph Smith “feigned a revelation to have Mrs. Milligan, his own sister, married to him spiritually” (The Adventures and Experience of Joseph H. Jackson . . ., 1846, p. 29). That Joseph Smith believed that a man could be married for eternity to his own sister has been confirmed by an entry added to Joseph
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Smith’s private diary after his death. It appears under the date of October 26, 1843, and reads as follows:
The following named deceased persons were sealed to me (John M. Bernhisel) on Oct. 26th, 1843, by Pres. Joseph Smith—
Maria Bernhisel, Sister—
Brother Samuel’s wife, Catherine Kremer
Mary Shatto (Aunt)……………………………………
Recorded by Robt. L. Cambell
July 29, 1868
(Joseph Smith’s Diary, October 26, 1843, church historical dept.)
The reader will notice that Bernhisel claims that he was sealed to his own sister by Joseph Smith. Now, if the doctrine of Celestial Marriage were true, in the resurrection John Bernhisel would find himself married to his own sister, Maria Bernhisel!
Stanley P. Hirshon claims:
. . . Catherine, who lived with Kimball’s family for twelve weeks, found plural marriage revolting. After the Twelve began taking Smith’s wives, she heard Kimball might be sealed to his own daughter, Helen, the prophet’s youngest widow. But in Catherine’s presence Helen, . . . boldly told her mother: “I will never be sealed to my Father, . . . I will never be sealed to my Father; no, I will sooner be damned and go to hell, if I must. Neither will I be sealed to Brigham Young.” (The Lion of the Lord, p. 67)
There is evidence that John Taylor, who became the third president of the church, promised his sister that she could be sealed to him in the event that she could not be reconciled to continue with any of her husbands. L. John Nuttall recorded the following:
Monday Feb 25/89. . . . Agnes Schwartz & her daughter Mary called this morning to see Prest. Woodruff, on her family matters. which he promised to write to her about. She said that her brother John the late President John Taylor had told her some 30 years ago that if She could not be reconciled to continue with any of her husbands she might be sealed to his brother William or himself. and she now wanted to be sealed to him. This is a very curious proceeding & which I dont understand. (Journal of L. John Nuttall, vol. 2, pp. 362-63 of typed copy at the Brigham Young University Library)
God and Christ Polygamists?
At the time the Mormon church was practicing polygamy the leaders of the church became very bitter against the one-wife
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system. Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was reported by the Deseret News as saying:
I have noticed that a man who has but one wife, and is inclined to that doctrine, soon begins to wither and dry up, while a man who goes into plurality looks fresh, young and sprightly. Why is this? Because God loves that man, and because he honors his word. Some of you may not believe this, but I not only believe it but I also know it. For a man of God to be confined to one woman is small business . . . I do not know what we should do if we had only one wife apiece. (Deseret News, April 22, 1857, p. 4, column 3)
In a sermon reported in the church’s Deseret News on August 6, 1862, Brigham Young stated:
Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire. . . . Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers. . . .
Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord’s servants have always practised it. “And is that religion popular in heaven?” It is the only popular religion there . . .
(Deseret News, August 6, 1862, p. 1, column 4)
(See photo next page)
Apostle George A. Smith boasted:
We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if they envy us our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow minded, pinch-backed race of men, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. They ought to be ashamed of such conduct, and the still fouler channel which flows from their practices . . . (Deseret News, April 16, 1856)
Brigham Young said that the “monogamic system” had been a “fruitful source of prostitution and whoredom throughout all the Christian monogamic cities of the Old and New World . . .” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 128).
The following appeared in the church’s Millennial Star: “. . . the one-wife system not only degenerates the human family, both physically and intellectually, but it is entirely incompatible with philosophical notions of immortality; it is a lure to temptation, and has always proved a curse to a people” (vol. 15, p. 227).
George Q. Cannon claimed that the children of polygamists,
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“besides being equally as bright and brighter intellectually, are much more healthy and strong (Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, p. 207).
Brigham Young also believed that polygamy “is far superior to monogamy for the raising of healthy, robust children!” (p. 317).
Brigham Young taught that Adam was a polygamist: “When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives with him” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, p. 50).
(click to view)
Some of the Mormon people believed “that Joseph Smith the Prophet taught that Adam had two wives” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 26, p. 115).
Some of the leading authorities of the church went so far as to proclaim that both the Father and the Son were polygamists. Jedediah M. Grant, second counselor to Brigham Young, made these comments:
Celsus was a heathen philosopher; and what does he say upon the subject of Christ and his Apostles. . . . He says, “The grand reason why the Gentiles and philosophers of his school persecuted Jesus Christ, was, because he had so many wives; there were Elizabeth, and Mary, and a host of others that followed him.” . . .
The grand reason of the burst of public sentiment in anathemas upon Christ and his disciples, causing his crucifixion, was evidently based on polygamy. . . . A belief in the doctrine of a plurality of wives caused the persecution of Jesus, and his followers. We might almost think they were “Mormons.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 1, pp. 345-46)
Apostle Orson Hyde asserted:
It will be borne in mind that once on a time, there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; . . . no less a person than Jesus Christ was married on that occasion. If he was never married, his intimacy with Mary and Martha, and the other Mary also whom Jesus loved, must have been highly unbecoming and improper to say the least of it.
I will venture to say that if Jesus Christ were now to pass through the most pious countries in Christendom with a train of women, such as used to follow him, . . . he would be mobbed, tarred, and feathered, and rode not on an ass, but on a rail. . . .
At this doctrine the long-faced hypocrite and the sanctimonious bigot will probably cry, blasphemy! . . . Object not, therefore, too strongly against the marriage of Christ . . .
(Journal of Discourses, vol. 4, pp. 259-60)
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A photograph of the Deseret News, August 6, 1862. Brigham Young claimed that Monogamy is a system “established by a set of robbers.”
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Apostle Orson Hyde continued:
I discover that some of the Eastern papers represent me as a great blasphemer, because I said, in my lecture on Marriage, at our last Conference, that Jesus Christ was married at Cana of Galilee, that Mary, Martha, and others were his wives, and that he begat children.
All that I have to say in reply to that charge is this—they worship a Savior that is too pure and holy to fulfill the commands of his Father. I worship one that is just pure and holy enough “to fulfill all righteousness;” not only the righteous law of baptism, but the still more righteous and important law “to multiply and replenish the earth.”
(Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, p. 210)
When the “Gentiles” stated that polygamy was one of the “relics of barbarism,” Brigham Young replied: “Yes, one of the relics of Adam, of Enoch, of Noah, of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, of Moses, David, Solomon, the Prophets, of Jesus, and his Apostles” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 328).
“The Scripture says that He, the LORD, came walking in the Temple, with His train; I do not know who they were, unless His wives and children”
Brigham Young,
Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, p. 309
Orson Pratt commented:
. . . it will be seen that the great Messiah who was the founder of the Christian religion, was a polygamist, . . . the Messiah chose to . . . by marrying many honorable wives himself, show to all future generations that he approbated the plurality of wives under the Christian dispensation. . . .
We have now clearly shown that God the Father had a plurality of wives, one or more being in eternity, by whom He begat our spirits as well as the spirit of Jesus His first Born, and another being upon the earth by whom He begat the tabernacle of Jesus, as his only begotten in this world. We have also proved most clearly that the Son followed the example of his Father, and became the great Bridegroom to whom kings’ daughters and many honorable wives were to be married. We have also proved that both God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ inherit their wives in eternity as well as in time; . . . it would be so shocking to the modesty of the very pious ladies of Christendom to see Abraham and his wives, Jacob and his wives, Jesus and his honorable wives, all eating occasionally at the same table, . . . If you do not want your morals corrupted, and your delicate ears shocked and your pious modesty put to the blush by the society of polygamists and their wives, do not venture near the New Earth; for polygamists will be honored there, and will be among the chief rulers in that Kingdom.
(The Seer, p. 172)
If none but Gods will be permitted to multiply immortal children, it follows that each God must have one or more wives. (p. 158)
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A photograph of the Journal of Discourses, Vol. 2, page 210.
Apostle Orson Hyde claimed that Jesus was a polygamist.
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A photograph of The Seer, page 172.
Apostle Orson Pratt claimed that both God the Father and Jesus were polygamists.
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Fanny Stenhouse told of a woman who wanted to be sealed to Jesus Christ:
One of the wives of Brigham Young—Mrs. Augusta Cobb Young . . . requested of her Prophet husband a favor of a most extraordinary description. She had forsaken her lawful husband and family . . . to join the Saints, . . . when the lady of whom I speak asked him to place her at the head of his household, he refused: . . . finding that she could not be Brigham’s “queen,” and having been taught by the highest Mormon authorities that our Savior had, and has, many wives, she requested to be “sealed” to him! Brigham Young told her (for what reason I do not know) that it really was out of his power to do that, but that he would do “the next best thing” for her—he would “seal” her to Joseph Smith. So she was sealed to Joseph Smith, . . . in the resurrection she will leave him [Young] and go over to the original Prophet. (Tell It All, p. 255)
Stanley S. Ivins found evidence to show that Augusta Cobb Young was sealed to Joseph Smith as Mrs. Stenhouse indicated (see Joseph Smith and Polygamy, p. 46).
It is interesting to note that some members of the Mormon church still maintain that God and Christ are polygamists. John J. Stewart, writing in 1961, explained:
Now, briefly, the reason that the Lord, through the Prophet Joseph, introduced the doctrine of plural marriage, and the reason that the Church . . . has never and will never relinquish the doctrine of plural marriage, is simply this: The major purpose of the Church is to help man attain the great eternal destiny suggested in that couplet . . .plural marriage is the patriarchal order of marriage lived by God and others who reign in the Celestial Kingdom. As well might the Church relinquish its claim to the Priesthood as the doctrine of plural marriage.
(Brigham Young and His Wives, pp. 40, 41)
Plural marriage was a common practice among God’s chosen people. . . . Mary, Martha, Mary Magdalene and many other women were beloved of Jesus. For a person to say that he believes the Bible but does not believe the doctrine of plural marriage is something akin to saying that he accepts the Constitution but not the Bill of Rights
(p. 26).
Writing in 1966, John J. Stewart continued to maintain that plural marriage “is the patriarchal order of marriage lived by God and others who reign in the Celestial Kingdom . . .” (Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, p. 69).
Apostle LeGrand Richards, however, does not seem to agree with this idea (see his letter in Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? p. 228).
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Essential to Salvation
“The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.”
Brigham Young,
Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269
After a special conference held in 1852, the Mormon church leaders began to devote much of their time to the preaching of polygamy. During the period that the Mormon church was openly practicing polygamy, the leaders of the church were declaring that it was absolutely necessary and essential for exaltation. One woman testified as follows in the Temple Lot Case: “Yes, sir, President Woodruff, President Young, and President John Taylor, taught me and all the rest of the ladies here in Salt Lake that a man in order to be exalted in the Celestial Kingdom must have more than one wife, that having more than one wife was a means of exaltation” (Temple Lot Case, p. 362).
Sixth president Joseph F. Smith spoke with clarity on the issue:
Some people have supposed that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity, or non-essential to the salvation of mankind. In other words, some of the Saints have said, and believe that a man with one wife, sealed to him by the authority of the Priesthood for time and eternity, will receive an exaltation as great and glorious, if he is faithful, as he possibly could with more than one. I want here to enter my protest against this idea, for I know it is false. . . . Therefore, whoever has imagined that he could obtain the fullness of the blessings pertaining to this celestial law, by complying with only a portion of its conditions, has deceived himself. He cannot do it. When that principle was revealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith . . . an angel of God, with a drawn sword, stood before him and commanded that he should enter into the practice of that principle, or he should be utterly destroyed. . . .
If then, this principle was of such great importance that the Prophet himself was threatened with destruction, and the best men in the Church with being excluded from the favor of the Almighty, if they did not enter into and establish the practice of it on earth, it is useless to tell me that there is no blessing attached to obedience to the law, or that a man with only one wife can obtain as great a reward, glory or kingdom as he can with more than one. . . .
I understand the law of celestial marriage to mean that every man in this Church, who has the ability to obey and practice it in righteousness and will not, shall be damned. I say I understand it to mean this and nothing less, and I testify in the name of Jesus that it does mean that.
(Journal of Discourses, vol. 20, pp. 28-31)
[Bold in quotations is added for emphasis and does not appear in originals.]
In 1891 the president and apostles of the Mormon church made the following statement in a petition to the President of the United States:
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We, the first presidency and apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, beg to respectfully represent to Your Excellency the following facts:
We formerly taught to our people that polygamy or Celestial Marriage as commanded by God through Joseph Smith was right; that it was a necessity to man’s highest exaltation in the life to come.
That doctrine was publicly promulgated by our president, the late Brigham Young, forty years ago, and was steadily taught and impressed upon the Latter-Day Saints up to September, 1890. (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 1, p. 18)
In addition, the Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star carried the following comments:
And we, . . . are believers in the principles of plural marriage or polygamy, . . . as a principle revealed by God, underlying our every hope of eternal salvation and happiness in heaven . . . we cannot view plural marriage in any other light than as a vital principle of our religion
(Millennial Star, vol. 40, pp. 226-27).
Upwards of forty years ago the Lord revealed to His Church the principle of celestial marriage. . . . the command of God was before them in language which no faithful soul dare disobey.
For, behold, I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant, and be permitted to enter into my glory. . . .
Damnation was the awful penalty affixed to a refusal to obey this law. It became an acknowledged doctrine of the Church; it was indissolubly interwoven in the minds of its members with their hopes of eternal salvation and exaltation in the presence of God. . . . Who could suppose that . . . Congress would enact a law which would present the alternative to religious believers of being consigned to a penitentiary if they should attempt to obey a law of God which would deliver them from damnation!
(vol. 47, no. 45, Nov. 9, 1885, p. 711)
William Clayton claimed that he learned from Joseph Smith that “the doctrine of plural and celestial marriage is the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on the earth, and that without obedience to that principle no man can ever attain to the fulness of exaltation in the celestial glory” (Historical Record, vol. 6, p. 226).
George Q. Cannon said that if he “had not obeyed that command of God, concerning plural marriage, I believe that I would have been damned” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 23, p. 278).
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A photograph of the Journal of Discourses, vol. 20, pages 28-31.
Joseph F. Smith, who became the sixth president of the church, stated that a man with one wife could not received as great an exaltation as a man with more than one.
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Brigham Young declared on August 19, 1866: “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269).
At one time Joseph Smith told Heber C. Kimball that if he didn’t enter into polygamy “he would lose his apostleship and be damned” (Life of Heber C. Kimball, p. 336, fn.).
Kimball Young stated: “One man recalled a Stake conference in Southern Utah where the brethren were bluntly told to marry in polygamy or ‘resign their church offices’ ” (Isn’t One Wife Enough? p. 108).
The Mormon writer John J. Stewart, writing in 1961, still upheld the teaching that plural marriage leads to exaltation: “Plural marriage is a pattern of marriage designed by God as part of His plan of eternal progress to further His kingdom and exalt His children” (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 71).
Lying About Polygamy
Apostle John A. Widtsoe boldly asserted: “The Church ever operates in full light. There is no secrecy about its doctrine, aim, or work” (Evidences and Reconciliations, Single-Volume Edition, p. 282). On page 226 of the same book, Apostle Widtsoe said: “From the beginning of its history the Church has opposed unsupported beliefs. It has fought half-truth and untruth.”
John A. Widtsoe’s claim that the Mormon church operates in full light and has from the beginning fought half truth and untruth can hardly be supported by existing facts. Actually, untruth and secrecy were used by the church leaders to cover up the doctrine of polygamy. Mormon writer William E. Berrett acknowledged: “In 1840 the doctrine was taught to a few leading brethren who, with the Prophet, secretly married additional wives in the following year. . . . Only the secrecy surrounding its practice prevented a wholesale apostacy from the Church in 1844” (The Restored Church, pp. 247, 249).
As we have already shown, the early editions of the Doctrine and Covenants contained an article which condemned the practice of polygamy. Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders used this article as a shield to hide behind. Mormon writer John J. Stewart agrees that “the marriage article, in Oliver Cowdery’s handwriting, sustains monogamous marriage and denies any LDS practice of plural marriage. Joseph was not yet ready to publicly acknowledge this doctrine, even though he had spoken of it in confidence to a few close friends” (Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, p. 103)
An example of how the “marriage article” was used to counteract
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the report that polygamy was being practiced is found in the Mormon publication Times and Seasons for September 1, 1842:
Inasmuch as the public mind has been unjustly abused through the fallacy of Dr. Bennett’s letters, we make an extract on the subject of marriage, showing the rule of the church on this important matter. The extract is from the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, and is the only rule allowed by the church.
“. . . Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy; we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.”
(Times and Seasons, vol. 3, p. 909)
Joseph Smith emphatically denied accusations linking him to polygamy. In 1838 he answered some questions for the Elder’s Journal. Question number seven was: “Do the Mormons believe in having more wives than one?” The answer was: “No, not at the same time” (Elder’s Journal, as cited in History of the Church, vol. 3, p. 28).
At one time Joseph Smith was accused of “drinking, swearing, carousing, dancing all night, &c., and that he keeps six or seven young females as wives. . . .” (Letter by Parley P. Pratt concerning Augustine Spencer’s accusations, in History of the Church, vol. 6, pp. 354-55.)
According to the History of the Church, on May 26, 1844, Joseph Smith absolutely denied the accusation that he was living in polygamy: “What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers” (vol. 6, p. 411).
Mormon writer John J. Stewart admits that “due to the extreme prejudice existing against the doctrine, it had to be kept as confidential as possible, and even public denials of it made” (Joseph Smith the Mormon Prophet, pp. 67, 68). The following notice was published in the Times and Seasons, volume 5, page 423:
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1844.
NOTICE.
As we have lately been credibly informed, that an Elder of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter-day Saints, by the name of Hiram Brown, has been preaching polygamy, and other false and corrupt doctrines, in the county of Lapeer, state of Michigan.
This is to notify him and the Church in general, that he has been
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cut off from the church, for his iniquity; and he is further notified to appear at the Special Conference, on the 6th of April next, to make answer to these charges.
JOSEPH SMITH,
HYRUM SMITH,
Presidents of said Church.
[see photo on next page, below]
Joseph Smith’s brother Hyrum, who was a member of the First Presidency of the church, also secretly practiced plural marriage while denying it openly. Besides the statement quoted above, on March 15, 1844, Hyrum Smith stated:
. . . brother Richard Hewitt . . . states to me that some of your elders say, that a man having a certain priesthood, may have as many wives as he pleases, and that doctrine is taught here: I say unto you that that man teaches false doctrines, for there is no such doctrine taught: neither is there any such thing practised here. And any man that is found teaching privately or publicly any such doctrine, is culpable, and will stand a chance to be brought before the High Council, and lose his license and membership also: therefore he had better beware what he is about. (Times and Seasons, March 15, 1844, vol. 5, p. 474)
The Times and Seasons records a further denial: “We are charged with advocating a plurality of wives, and common property. Now this is as false as the many other ridiculous charges which are brought against us. . . . we do what others do not, practice what we preach” (vol. 4, p. 143).
In the Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star there appeared another repudiation of polygamy: “But, for the information of those who may be assailed by those foolish tales about two wives, we would say that no such principle ever existed among the Latter-day Saints, and never will: . . . the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants; and also all our periodicals are very strict on that subject, indeed far more so than the bible” (Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star, vol. 3, p. 74).
In the June 19, 1844, issue of the Nauvoo Neighbor, a Mormon publication, Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum set forth a number of falsehoods with regard to polygamy. When this material was reprinted in the History of the Church, it was altered to cover up the fact that Joseph and Hyrum had not told the truth (see Mormonism—Shadow or Reality? p. 247).
After Joseph Smith’s death, the Mormon leaders still tried to keep the doctrine of plural marriage secret. John J. Stewart stated: “. . . the doctrine had to be kept confidential until after the Saints reached Utah” (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 31).
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A photograph of the Times and Seasons, vol. 5, page 423.
Joseph Smith orders a man cut off from the church for preaching polygamy.
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On May 1, 1845, the following statement appeared in the Times and Seasons (vol. 6, p. 894):
Sidney Rigdon, I see by the papers, has made an exposition of Mormonism, charging Joseph Smith and the Mormons with polygamy, &c. . . . As to the charge of polygamy, I will quote from the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, which is the subscribed faith of the church and is strictly enforced. . . . “Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have but one wife, and one woman but one husband. . . .”
Again, another article published in the Times and Seasons, November 15, 1844 proclaimed: “The law of the land and the rules of the church do not allow one man to have more than one wife alive at once . . .” (vol. 5, p. 715).
When someone stated that Joseph Smith taught polygamy, the Latter-Day Saints’ Millennial Star, volume 12, pages 29-30, called it a lie:
“12th Lie—Joseph Smith taught a system of polygamy.
“12th Refutation.—The Revelations given through Joseph Smith, state the following . . . ‘We believe that one man should have one wife.’ Doctrine and Covenants, page 331.”
As late as 1850 John Taylor, who became the third president of the church, denied that the church believed in the practice of plural marriage, when he himself at the time had six living wives. In a public discussion in Boulogne-Sur-Mer, France, he stated:
We are accused here of polygamy, and actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit of belief: . . . I shall content myself by reading our views of chastity and marriage, from a work published by us, containing some of the articles of our Faith. “Doctrine and Covenants,” page 330 . . . Inasmuch as this Church of Jesus Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again (A tract published by John Taylor in 1850, p. 8; found in Orson Pratt’s Works, 1851 edition).
Finally, in 1852, after years of deception, the Mormons publicly admitted that they were practicing polygamy.
The Manifesto
President John Taylor said that he believed in keeping all the
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laws of the United States except “The law in relation to polygamy” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 20, p. 317).
Thomas G. Alexander, assistant professor of history at Brigham Young University, admitted that members of the Mormon church defied the law:
Some maintain that because Mormons were law abiding they gave up plural marriage after the Supreme Court declared the anti-polygamy acts constitutional. But long after the 1879 Reynolds decision, Church members brought to bar for sentencing told federal judges that the law of God was higher than the law of the land and deserved prior obedience. The Manifesto officially ending polygamy as Church practice was not issued until 1890, and excommunication for practicing plural marriage did not come until 1904. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1966, p. 128)
The Mormons continued openly to preach polygamy until the year 1890. During this time the leaders taught that plural marriage was going to be a permanent part of the church and that it would never be stopped. Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, commented:
The principle of plurality of wives never will be done away, although some sisters have had revelations that, when this time passes away and they go through the veil, every woman will have a husband to herself. (Deseret News, November 7, 1855)
Some quietly listen to those who speak against the Lord’s servants, against his anointed, against the plurality of wives, and against every principle that God has revealed. Such persons have half-a-dozen devils with them all the time. You might as well deny “Mormonism,” and turn away from it, as to oppose the plurality of wives. Let the Presidency of this Church, and the Twelve Apostles, and all the authorities unite and say with one voice that they will oppose the doctrine, and the whole of them will be damned. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, p. 203)
I speak of plurality of wives as one of the most holy principles that God ever revealed to man, and all those who exercise an influence against it, unto whom it is taught, man or woman, will be damned, . . . the curse of God will be upon them . . . (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 211)
It would be as easy for the United States to build a tower to remove the sun, as to remove polygamy, or the Church and kingdom of God. (Millennial Star, vol. 28, p. 190)
President John Taylor boldly asserted:
God has given us a revelation in regard to celestial marriage. I did not make it. He has told us certain things pertaining to this
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matter, and they would like us to tone that principle down and change it and make it applicable to the views of the day. This we cannot do; nor can we interfere with any of the commands of God to meet the persuasions or behests of men. I cannot do it, and will not do it.
I find some men try to twist around the principle in any way and every way they can. They want to sneak out of it in some way. Now God don’t want any kind of sycophany like that. . . . If God has introduced something for our glory and exaltation, we are not going to have that kicked over by any improper influence, either inside or outside of the Church of the living God. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 25, pp. 309-10)
Apostle Orson Pratt added these resolute comments about polygamy:
God has told us Latter-day Saints that we shall be condemned if we do not enter into that principle; and yet I have heard now and then . . . a brother or sister say, “I am a Latter-day Saint, but I do not believe in polygamy.” Oh, what an absurd expression! What an absurd idea! A person might as well say, “I am a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, but I do not believe in him. “One is just as consistent as the other. . . . If the doctrine of polygamy, as revealed to the Latter-day Saints, is not true, I would not give a fig for all your other revelations that came through Joseph Smith the Prophet; I would renounce the whole of them, because it is utterly impossible, according to the revelations that are contained in these books, to believe a part of them to be divine—from God—and a part of them to be from the devil . . . I did hope there was more intelligence among the Latter-day Saints, and a greater understanding of principle than to suppose that any one can be a member of this Church in good standing, and yet reject polygamy. The Lord has said, that those who reject this principle reject their salvation, they shall be damned, saith the Lord . . .
Now I want to prophecy a little. . . . I want to prophecy that all men and women who oppose the revelation which God has given in relation to polygamy will find themselves in darkness; the Spirit of God will withdraw from them the very moment of their opposition to that principle, until they will finally go down to hell and be damned, if they do not repent . . . if you want to get into darkness, brethren and sisters, begin to oppose this revelation. Sisters, you begin to say before your husbands, or husbands you begin to say before your wives, “I do not believe in the principle of polygamy, and I intend to instruct my children against it.” Oppose it in this way, and teach your children to do the same, and if you do not become as dark as midnight there is no truth in Mormonism. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 17, pp. 224-25)
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A photograph of the Journal of Discourses, vol. 5, page 203. Heber C. Kimball stated that a person might just as well deny Mormonism as to oppose polygamy.
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President Brigham Young was very emphatic in proclaiming that the church could never give up polygamy:
Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned; . . . take this revelation, . . . and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned. (Deseret News, November 14, 1855)
I heard the revelation on polygamy, and I believed it with all my heart, and I know it is from God . . . “Do you think that we shall ever be admitted as a State into the Union without denying the principle of polygamy?” If we are not admitted until then, we shall never be admitted. (Deseret News, October 10, 1866)
George Q. Cannon, who was a member of the First Presidency, unabashedly preached:
There has been some agitation . . . respecting plural marriage, and some people, calling themselves Latter-day Saints, have been almost ready to go into the open market, and bid for a State government, at the price of conceding this principle of our religion. . . . They are ready to sell out their belief as Latter-day Saints . . . for the sake of obtaining a little recognition of their rights as citizens. . . . Can such persons retain the Spirit of God, and take such a course as this? No. they cannot. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 26, pp. 7-8)
If plural marriage be divine, as the Latter-day Saints say it is, no power on earth can suppress it, unless you crush and destroy the entire people. . . . If you are sentenced to prison for marrying more wives than one, round up your shoulders and bear it; prepare yourselves to take the consequences. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 20, p. 276)
As the principle of patriarchal marriage is the one now so savagely attacked, this is the one such persons are preparing themselves to yield. I view such men as apostates already in heart. They are more dangerous than our open enemies. . . . if there are any in the Church who cannot stand the pressure instead of talking compromise, let them withdraw quietly from the Church. (Juvenile Instructor, vol. 20, p. 156)
Apostle George Teasdale bore this testimony concerning plural marriage:
I believe in plural marriage as a part of the Gospel, just as much as I believe in baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. The same being who taught me baptism for the remission of sins, taught me plural marriage, and its necessity and glory. Can I afford to give up a single principle? I can not. If I had to give up one principle I would have to give up my religion. . . . I bear my solemn testimony that plural marriage is as true as any principle
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that has been revealed from the heavens. I bear my testimony that it is a necessity, and that the Church of Christ in its fulness never existed without it. Where you have the eternity of marriage you are bound to have plural marriage; bound to; and it is one of the marks of the Church of Jesus Christ in its sealing ordinances. (Journal of Discourses, vol. 25, p. 21)
Wilford Woodruff, who later became the fourth president of the church and issued the manifesto in 1890 which was supposed to stop the practice of polygamy, openly declared in 1869: “If we were to do away with polygamy, it would only be one feather in the bird. . . . Do away with that, then we must do away with prophets and Apostles, with revelation and the gifts and graces of the Gospel, . . . and finally give up our religion altogether. . . . We just can’t do that . . .” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, p. 166).
The Latter Day Saints Millennial Star summarized the issue sharply:
. . . the God of Israel . . . commanded Joseph Smith, . . . and the Latter-day Saints, to obey this law, “or you shall be damned,” saith the Lord. Now, . . . the Congress of the United States, and the supreme judges of the nation, stand forth and say, “You shall be damned if you do obey it.” . . . God says, “We shall be damned if we do not obey the law.” Congress says, “We shall be damned if we do.” It places us precisely in the . . . position that it did the Hebrews in the fiery furnace, and Daniel in the den of lions. . . . Now who shall we obey? God or man? My voice is that we obey God. . . . The Congress of 1862, and the supreme judges of 1879, in their acts and decisions, have taken a dangerous and fearful step; their acts will sap the very foundation of our government, and it will be rent asunder . . . (vol. 41, pp. 242-43)
The Mormons did everything they could to escape the federal deputies. Kimball Young describes their tactics in the book, Isn’t One Wife Enough:
In addition to false names, disguises, and ruses, a whole system of information gathering, signaling, and spotting informers was developed. For example, the church authorities would pass the word down to the smaller communities of movements of federal deputies out of Salt Lake City in the direction of any particular town.” (p. 396)
At very early ages children were introduced into conspiratorial operations. Not talking to strangers, being part of a warning system, and being taught outright falsification were all elements in their training during those years which would certainly not be considered normal today. (p. 402)
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Wilford Woodruff had an armed guard to protect him. In a letter written in 1887, Woodruff wrote: “I have a large stout man who goes with me every ______ [where?] night and day carries 2 pistols & a double barrel shot gun and sayes [sic] he will shoot the marshals if they come to take me (Don’t tell anybody this) so I am _____ well garded [sic] . . .” (Letter from Wilford Woodruff to Miss Nellie Atkin, dated September 3, 1887, microfilm copy of the original in our possession).
Mormon Leaders Yield
The U.S. Government continued to increase the pressure against polygamy, but the Mormons were determined to continue the practice. In an article published in the Millennial Star in 1865, the Mormon people were told that they could not give up polygamy and that there would not be a revelation to suppress the practice:
It is time that members of the Government and the public at large should understand the true state of the question, and the real issues involved in these propositions. The doctrine of polygamy with the “Mormons,” is not one of that kind that in the religious world is classed with “nonessentials.” It is not an item of doctrine that can be yielded, and faith in the system remain. “Mormonism” is that kind of religion the entire divinity of which is invalidated, and its truth utterly rejected, the moment that any one of its leading principles is acknowledged to be false. . . .
The whole question, therefore, narrows itself to this in the “Mormon” mind. Polygamy was revealed by God, or the entire fabric of their faith is false. To ask them to give up such an item of belief, is to ask them to relinquish the whole, to acknowledge their Priesthood a lie, their ordinances a deception, and all that they have toiled for, lived for, bled for, prayed for, or hoped for, a miserable failure and a waste of life.
All this Congress demands of the people of Utah. It asks the repudiation of their entire religious practice to-day; and inasmuch as polygamy is, in “Mormon” belief, the basis of the condition of a future life, it asks them to give up their hopes of salvation hereafter . . . in requiring the relinquishment of polygamy, they ask the renunciation of the entire faith of this people. . . .
There is no half way house. The childish babble about another revelation is only an evidence how half informed men can talk . . . those who so unwisely seek to stir up the Government to wrath, will yet learn there is but one solution of the “Mormon” problem—”Mormonism” allowed in its entirety, or “Mormonism” wiped out in blood. (Millennial Star, October 28, 1865)
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Under the date of April 6, 1884, Abraham H. Cannon recorded in his journal: “At a Priesthood meeting . . . the strongest language in regard to Plural Marriage was used that I ever heard, and among other things it was stated that all men in position who would not observe and fulfill that law should be removed from their places.”
Shortly before the revelation known as the Manifesto (which put a stop to the practice of polygamy) was given, Lorenzo Snow, who later became president of the Mormon church, was declaring that no such revelation would come. When Lorenzo Snow was on trial for practicing polygamy, Mr. Bierbower, the prosecuting attorney, predicted that if he was convicted, “a new revelation would soon follow, changing the divine law of celestial marriage.” To this Mr. Snow replied:
Whatever fame Mr. Bierbower may have secured as a lawyer, he certainly will fail as a prophet. The severest prosecutions have never been followed by revelations changing a divine law, obedience to which brought imprisonment or martyrdom.
Though I go to prison, God will not change His law of Celestial Marriage. But the man, the people, the nation, that oppose and fight against this doctrine and the Church of God, will be overthrown. (Historical Record, p. 144)
Although Lorenzo Snow said that the “severest prosecutions have never been followed by revelations changing a divine law,” Mormon church President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto in 1890. He claimed that it was given to stop the persecution the church would have to go through if they continued to practice polygamy. He stated: “The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would happen if we did not stop this practice . . . all ordinances would be stopped . . . many men would be made prisoners . . . I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write . . .” (Evidences and Reconciliations, 1 vol. ed., pp. 105-6).
Mormon writer John J. Stewart says that “President Wilford Woodruff issued the manifesto . . . suspending the general practice of it in the Church, while still retaining it as a doctrine” (Brigham Young and His Wives, pp. 29-30).
Before Wilford Woodruff became president of the Mormon church he stated that the church could not give up polygamy (see Journal of Discourses, vol. 13, p. 166). After he became president he even claimed to receive a revelation that he should not yield to the pressure of the government. Under the date of December 19, 1889, Apostle Abraham H. Cannon recorded in his journal:
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During our meeting a revelation was read which Pres. Woodruff received Sunday evening, Nov’r 24th. Propositions had been made for the Church to make some concessions to the Courts in regard to its principles. Both of Pres. Woodruff’s counselors refused to advise him as to the course he should pursue, and he therefore laid the matter before the Lord. The answer came quick and strong. The word of the Lord was for us not to yield one particle of that which he had revealed and established. He had done and would continue to care for His work and those of the Saints who were faithful, and we need have no fear of our enemies when we were in the line of duty. We are promised redemption and deliverance if we will trust in God and not in the arm of flesh . . . my heart was filled with joy and peace during the entire reading. It sets all doubts at rest concerning the course to pursue.
Because Wilford Woodruff had previously taught that polygamy could not be discontinued and had even claimed to receive revelation to that effect, the other leaders of the Mormon church were confused by his Manifesto.
After the Manifesto
Russell R. Rich commented:
When the statement called “The Manifesto,” which was signed by President Wilford Woodruff, was voted upon for acceptance by the membership of the LDS Church . . . it appeared that there was a unanimous vote of support for abandonment of the practice of plural marriage. As time passed, however, it became apparent that not even among the general authorities of the church was there unanimous support for abolishing the practice. (Brigham Young University Leadership Week: Those Who Would Be Leaders, by Russell R. Rich, p. 71)
In October, 1891, Wilford Woodruff testified that the Manifesto not only prohibited any more plural marriages, but that it also forbade the unlawful cohabitation of those who were already married in polygamy:
Q. Your attention was called to the fact that nothing was said in that manifesto about the dissolution of existing polygamous relations. I want to ask you, President Woodruff, whether in your advice to the church officials, and the people of the church, you have advised them that your intention was, and that the requirement of the church was, that the polygamous relations already formed before that should not be continued; that is, there should be no association with plural wives; in other words, that unlawful cohabitation as it is named and spoken of should also stop, as well as future polygamous marriages? A. Yes, sir; that
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has been the intention. (Testimony of Wilford Woodruff, as quoted in Reminiscences of Early Utah, p. 246)
While Wilford Woodruff and other Mormon leaders were publicly stating that members of the church should observe the law, they were secretly teaching that it was alright to break the law concerning unlawful cohabitation. This is evident from a number of entries in the journal of the Apostle Abraham H. Cannon. For instance, on October 2, 1890, he wrote: “It was, however, resolved that ‘we use our private influence at present to prevent our brethren from going into Court and promising to obey the law; and as soon as possible we take steps to get some favors from the government for those who already have more wives than one.’ “
Under the date of October 7, 1890, Apostle Cannon records some of the statements by Mormon church leaders:
Geo. Q. Cannon [a member of the First Presidency]: “I feel like saying ‘Damn the law.’ We can expect neither justice nor mercy in the administration of the law with the present corrupt administrators. . . . my family understand [sic] that my liberty depends on refraining from visiting them in their homes, and they are contented.” W. Woodruff [President of the Church]: “This manifesto only refers to future marriages, and does not affect past conditions. I did not, could not and would not promise that you desert your wives and children. This you cannot do in honor.” . . . Angus M. Cannon: “Because of the manifesto many will feel justified in promising to obey the law when brought into Court. I would not feel justified in such a course, but many may.” (“Daily Journal of Abraham H. Cannon,” October 7, 1890, BYU Library)
Under the dates of October 17 and 18, 1890, Apostle Cannon recorded the following in his journal:
Uncle David . . . told me that he had a conversation with Lindsey Sprague, a deputy marshal, who told him that there were papers out for my arrest . . . I got Chas H Wilcken to investigate the matter for me and he learned that it was a fact that a warrant was issued and in Doyle’s hands for my arrest. . . . Saturday, Oct. 18th, 1890. . . . Bro. Wilcken came and informed me that he had bought Doyle off, and had got his promise that I should not be molested, nor should any other person without sufficient notice being given for them to escape, and to get witnesses out of the way. He gave Bro. Wilcken the names of some 51 persons whose arrest he intended to try and effect. . . . A messenger was therefore despatched to give these people warning. Thus with a little money a channel of communication is kept open between the government offices and the suffering and persecuted Church members.”
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Although the leaders of the Mormon church had promised to obey the law of the land, many of them broke their promises. Few people, however, realized to what extent until the leaders were called to testify in the “Proceedings Before the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate in the Matter of the Protests Against the Right of Hon. Reed Smoot, a Senator From the State of Utah, to Hold His Seat.” Frank J, Cannon reported:
The first oracular disclosure made by the Prophets, on the witness stand, came as a shock even to Utah. They testified that they had resumed polygamous cohabitation to an extent unsuspected by either Gentiles or Mormons. President Joseph F. Smith admitted that he had had eleven children borne to him by his five wives, since pledging himself to obey the “revealed” manifesto of 1890 . . . Apostle Francis Marion Lyman, . . . made a similar admission of guilt, though to a lesser degree. So did John Henry Smith and Charles W. Penrose, apostles. . . . So did a score of others. . . . And they confessed that they were living in polygamy in violation of their pledges to the nation and the terms of their amnesty, against the laws and the constitution of the state, and contrary to the “revelation of God” by which the doctrine of polygamy had been withdrawn from practice in the Church! . . . Bishop Chas. E. Merill, the son of an apostle, testified that his father had married him to a plural wife in 1891 . . . Mrs. Clara Kennedy testified that she had been married to a polygamist in 1896, in Juarez, Mexico, by Apostle Brigham Young, Jr. . . . There was testimony to show that Apostle George Teasdale had taken a plural wife six years after the ‘manifesto‘ . . . It was testified that Apostle John W. Taylor had taken two plural wives within four years, and that Apostle M. F. Cowley had taken one; and both these men fled from the country in order to escape a summons to appear before the Senate committee. (Under the Prophet in Utah, pp. 268-70)
Joseph F. Smith, sixth president of the church, testified as follows in the Reed Smoot Case:
THE CHAIRMAN. Do you obey the law in having five wives at this time, and having them bear to you eleven children since the manifesto of 1890?
MR. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, I have not claimed that in that case I have obeyed the law of the land.
THE CHAIRMAN. That is all.
MR. SMITH. I do not claim so, and I have said before that I prefer to stand my chances against the law.” (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 1, p. 197)
MR. TAYLER. You say there is a State law forbidding unlawful cohabitation?
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MR. SMITH. That is my understanding.
MR. TAYLER. And ever since that law was passed you have been violating it?
MR. SMITH. I think likely I have been practicing the same thing even before the law was passed.” (Ibid., p. 130)
THE CHAIRMAN . . . you are violating the law?
MR. SMITH. The law of my State?
THE CHAIRMAN. Yes.
MR. SMITH. Yes, sir.
SENATOR OVERMAN. Is there not a revelation published in the Book of Covenants here that you shall abide by the law of the State?
MR. SMITH. It includes both unlawful cohabitation and polygamy.
SENATOR OVERMAN. Is there not a revelation that you shall abide by the laws of the State and of the land?
MR. SMITH. Yes, sir.
SENATOR OVERMAN. If that is a revelation, are you not violating the laws of God?
MR. SMITH. I have admitted that, Mr. Senator, a great many times here. (Ibid., pp. 334-35)
The Apostle Francis M. Lyman testified as follows:
SENATOR HOAR. . . . You have said more than once that in living in polygamous relations with your wives, which you do and intend to do, you knew that you were disobeying this revelation?
MR. LYMAN. Yes. sir.
SENATOR HOAR. And that in disobeying this revelation you were disobeying the law of God?
MR. LYMAN. Yes. sir.
SENATOR HOAR. Very well. So that you say that you, an apostle of your church, expecting to succeed, if you survive Mr. Smith, to the office in which you will be the person to be the medium of Divine revelations, are living and are known to your people to live in disobedience of the law of the land and of the law of God?
Mr. LYMAN. Yes, sir. (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 1, p. 430)
Charles E. Merrill, the son of Apostle Marriner W. Merrill, testified that he took a plural wife after the Manifesto and that his father performed the ceremony:
Mr. TAYLER. And the next marriage took place in 1891?
MR. MERRILL. Yes, sir.
MR. TAYLER. Who married you in 1891?
MR. MERRILL. My father.
…………………………………..
MR. TAYLER. Was your father then an apostle?
MR. MERRILL. Yes, sir. (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 1, p. 409)
Walter M. Wolfe, who was at one time professor of geology at Brigham Young College, claimed that Apostle John Henry
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Smith made this statement to him: “Brother Wolfe, don’t you know that the Manifesto is only a trick to beat the devil at his own game?” (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 4, p. 13).
Anthony W. Ivins, who later became a member of the First Presidency of the Mormon church, was appointed by the church leaders to perform plural marriages in Mexico after the Manifesto. Stanley S. Ivins, the son of Anthony W. Ivins, told us that his father received instructions after the Manifesto to perform marriages for time and all eternity outside the Mormon temples. He received a ceremony for these marriages, which Stanley S. Ivins had in his possession. He was sent to Mexico and was told that when the First Presidency wanted a plural marriage performed they would send a letter with the couple who were to be married. Whenever he received these letters from the First Presidency, he knew that it was alright to perform the ceremony. He performed regular marriages as well as plural marriages and kept a record of each marriage in a book. After his father’s death Stanley S. Ivins copied the names of those who had been married in polygamy into another book and then gave the original book to the Mormon leaders.
Wallace Turner relates the following:
In Salt Lake City I talked to . . . Stanley S. Ivins, one of the great authorities on Mormon polygamy. His father was Anthony W. Ivins, who was an apostle and first counselor to President Heber J. Grant.
Anthony Ivins was an elder in the church in the mid-1890s when he was called in and told to go to Mexico to be president of the stake there. He was told that he was to have authority to perform plural marriages for those who were sent to him for that purpose. He would be able to identify them from the letters of introduction they would present, he was told.
After Anthony Ivins died in 1934 . . . his family found the records of these marriages among his papers. They were turned over to the LDS church. More than fifty polygamous marriages were easily identifiable, beginning in June, 1897, when three men from Utah were married at Juarez, just across from El Paso. They had crossed over into Mexico just for the marriage ceremony, then went back into the United States. However, Ivin’s refused to perform marriages for the regular population of the Mormon colonies because the men lacked the letters from salt Lake City which he considered to be his authority for the ceremony. However, by 1898 polygamous marriages were being performed routinely in Mexico by other Mormon leaders. (The Mormon Establishment, by Wallace Turner, 1966, p. 187)
Stanley Ivins claimed that his father continued to perform
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plural marriages for the church until the year 1904, some fourteen years after the Manifesto.
In the Reed Smoot Case, Walter M. Wolfe testified:
MR. WOLFE. In the summer of 1897 I was in Colorado. On my return, at the beginning of the school year, I found that Ovena Jorgensen was not in attendance. She returned to school some time during the month of October. Shortly after her return, she came to my house and asked to see me privately. She said: “Brother Wolfe, I have something that I must tell you, the reason why I have been late in coming back to school. I have been married.” I said, “Not in polygamy.” She said: “Yes, sir; in polygamy. I have married Brother Okey.”
……………………………………………….
MR. WORTHINGTON. I say, it was in October, 1897, that she told you?
MR. WOLFE. Yes, sir … she said that some years before she had gone into service at the house of this man Okey; that he had loved her and she loved him. He had asked her to marry him and she had declined, saying that it was impossible on account of the manifesto…. In August, 1897, Okey and the girl went together to see President Wilford Woodruff, and they laid the case before him. He brushed them aside with a wave of his hand and said he would have nothing to do with the matter, but referred them to President George Q. Cannon. George Q. Cannon asked if the girl had been through the Temple and received her endowments. They told him no. He said that that must be done first and then he would see as to the rest of it. They went through the Temple and the girl received her endowments. Then they were given a letter by President George Q. Cannon to President Ivins, of the Juarez Stake, and they went to Mexico.
THE CHAIRMAN. Who was this letter to?
MR. WOLFE. President A. W. Ivins, of the Juarez Stake.
THE CHAIRMAN. Mexico?
MR. WOLFE. Mexico; yes, sir. They went to Mexico, and there the girl told me the marriage ceremony was performed, and they returned to Utah. (The Reed Smoot Case, vol. 4, pp. 10-11)
Stanley S. Ivins confirmed the fact that his father, Anthony W. Ivins, performed the marriage ceremony and recorded it in his record book. Stanley Ivins claimed that Walter Wolfe’s testimony concerning this marriage hurt the church’s image so much that the First Presidency of the church sent Anthony Ivins a letter requesting him to go back to Washington, D.C. and give false testimony before the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate. The First Presidency of the Mormon church actually wanted him to lie under oath and State that he did not perform the ceremony. Mr. Ivins stated that his father refused to go back to Washington and lie about the
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marriage, even if Wolfe’s testimony did damage the image of the church.
Frank J. Cannon, the son of George Q. Cannon and formerly the senator from Utah, gives this important information:
Late in July, 1896, when I was in New York on business for the Presidency, I received a telegram announcing the death of my brother, Apostle Abraham H. Cannon. . . . I realized that my father would have a greater stroke of sorrow to bear than I. . . .
I found him and Joseph F. Smith in the office of the Presidency . . . “I know how you feel his loss,” he said hoarsely, “but when I think what he would have had to pass through if he had lived—I cannot regret his death.” . . . With a sweep of his hand toward Smith at his desk—a gesture and a look the most unkind I ever saw him use—he answered: “A few weeks ago, Abraham took a plural wife, Lillian Hamlin. It became known. He would have had to face a prosecution in Court. His death has saved us from a calamity that would have been dreadful for the Church—and for the state.”
“Father!” I cried. “Has this thing come back again! And the ink hardly dry on the bill that restored your church property on the pledge of honor that there would never be another case—” I had caught the look of Smith’s face, and it was a look of sullen defiance. “How did it happen?”
My father replied: . . . “I was asked for my consent, and I refused it. President Smith obtained the acquiescence of President Woodruff, on the plea that it wasn’t an ordinary case of polygamy but merely a fulfillment of the biblical instruction that a man should take his dead brother’s wife. Lillian was betrothed to David, and had been sealed to him in eternity after his death. I understand that President Woodruff told Abraham he would leave the matter with them if he wished to take the responsibility—and President Smith performed the ceremony.” . . . here was the beginning of a policy of treachery which the present church leaders, under Joseph F. Smith, have since consistently practised, in defiance of the laws of the state and the “revelation of God,” with lies and evasions, with perjury and its subornation, in violation of the most solemn pledges to the country, and through the agency of a political tyranny that makes serious prosecution impossible and immunity a public boast. (Under the Prophet in Utah, pp. 176, 177, 179)
John Henry Hamlin, the brother of Lillian Hamlin, testified as follows in the “Reed Smoot Case”:
MR. TAYLER. What relation are you to Lillian Hamlin?
MR. HAMLIN. Brother.
………………………………..
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MR. TAYLER. And whom did she marry?
MR. HAMLIN. I only know what I heard.
MR. TAYLER. What was your family conviction and understanding about that?
MR. HAMLIN. That she was married to a Mr. Cannon.
………………………………
MR. TAYLER. An apostle of the church?
MR. HAMLIN. I believe so. I understand so.
MR. TAYLER. That was in the summer of 1896, was it not?
MR. HAMLIN. Yes, sir.
MR. TAYLER. And where did you understand she was married?
MR. HAMLIN. On the Pacific coast.
MR. TAYLER. By whom?
MR. HAMLIN. Well, our understanding was that President Joseph F. Smith married her. (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 2, pp. 67-68)
Mrs. Wilhelmina C. Ellis, who had been a plural wife of the Mormon Apostle Abraham H. Cannon, testified:
MR. TAYLER. How old were you when you married Abraham Cannon?
MRS. ELLIS. Nineteen.
MR. TAYLER. You were a plural wife?
MRS. ELLIS. Yes, sir.
………………………………
MR. TAYLER. When did he marry Lillian Hamlin?
MRS. ELLIS. I do not know the date.
MR. TAYLER. I do not care about the exact date.
MRS. ELLIS. After June 12 and before July 2.
MR. TAYLER. Of what year?
MRS. ELLIS. 1896.
MR. TAYLER. He was at that time an Apostle?
MRS. ELLIS. Yes, sir.
……………………………….
MR. TAYLER. Did he say he was going away that day, or that evening, to California?
MRS. ELLIS. He told me to pack his grip or his satchel and told me he was going on this trip.
MR. TAYLER. What did he say about Miss Hamlin?
MRS. ELLIS. Of course I understood, in fact he said she was going with him and President Smith.
MR. TAYLER. And President Smith?
MRS. ELLIS. Yes, sir.
MR. TAYLER. And that they were going to be married?
MRS. ELLIS. Yes, sir.
……………………………..
MR. TAYLER. . . . What did Mr. Cannon say to you shortly before his death about his having married Miss Hamlin?
MRS. ELLIS. He told me he had married her and asked my forgiveness.
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MR. TAYLER. What else did he say about it?
MRS. ELLIS. He said he had never had a well day since he had married her. I think it killed him.
MR. TAYLER. You have stated, have you not, . . . that he also told you that Joseph F. Smith married him?
MRS. ELLIS. No, sir; I have never said that.
MR. TAYLER. You have never said that?
MRS. ELLIS. No, sir; not that he told me.
MR. TAYLER. You have stated frequently that Joseph F. Smith did marry them?
MRS. ELLIS. Yes, sir.
……………………………
MR. TAYLER. Did you not know they were married on the high sea?
MRS. ELLIS. Only from reports.
MR. TAYLER. . . . It was an inference from the fact that your husband said he was going to marry her, and went away to California for that purpose, and that Joseph F. Smith went along with them. From that you inferred that Joseph F. Smith had married them?
MRS. ELLIS. Yes, sir. (vol. 2, pp. 141-44)
In his testimony, Joseph F. Smith denied that he performed the marriage ceremony, but he acknowledged that he did go on a trip with Lillian Hamlin and Apostle Cannon at the time when the marriage was supposed to have taken place:
MR. SMITH. . . . The first time I ever saw her [Lillian Hamlin], . . . was some time in June—I do not remember the date—1896. I was at that time president of the Sterling Mining and Milling Company. . . . I was asked by the board of directors to accompany Abraham H. Cannon to Los Angeles . . . I accompanied Abraham H. Cannon and his wife on that trip, and had one of my wives with me on that trip.
………………………….
MR. TAYLER. When did you first learn that Lillian Hamlin was his wife?
MR. SMITH. The first that I suspected anything of the kind was on that trip, because I never knew the lady before.(vol. 1 p. 111)
MR. TAYLER. Were you out in a boat from there [Los Angeles]?
MR. SMITH. Yes, sir.
……………………………..
MR. SMITH. . . . no one ever mentioned to me that they were or were not married. I simply judged they were married because they were living together as husband and wife.
………………………………
MR. TAYLER. Did you say anything by way of criticism to Abraham Cannon?
MR. SMITH. No, sir.
MR. TAYLER. For going about with this wife?
Mr. SMITH. No, sir; I did not. (vol. 1, pp. 127-28)
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Joseph F. Smith went on to testify that the church was “very sensitive” about charges that plural marriages were performed after the Manifesto, but then he had to admit that he had let the Cannon affair pass without making any inquiry:
MR. TAYLER. What inquiry did you make to find out whether Abraham H. Cannon, one of the twelve apostles of the church, had made a plural marriage?
MR. SMITH. I made no inquiry at all.
……………………………….
MR. TAYLER. Did you have any interest in finding out whether there had been MR. SMITH. Not the least. (vol. 1, pp. 476-77)
The evidence we have presented seems to show that it was Joseph F. Smith himself who performed the marriage ceremony.
Abraham H. Cannon’s widow, Mrs. Ellis, was questioned about his diary, but she had not seen it “since his death.” Many diaries belonging to Apostle Cannon have recently come to light. Unfortunately, however, if Cannon kept a diary at the time of his marriage in 1896, it has not been made public. Even though we do not have Cannon’s diary for June of 1896, Michael Marquardt has pointed out some references in his diary for 1894 which throw important light on this marriage and on the attitude of the Mormon leaders concerning polygamy after the Manifesto.
The reader will remember that Frank J. Cannon quoted his father George Q. Cannon as saying: “. . . President Smith obtained the acquiescence of President Woodruff, on the plea that it wasn’t an ordinary case of polygamy but merely a fulfilment of the biblical instruction that a man should take his dead brother’s wife. Lillian was betrothed to David, and had been sealed to him in eternity after his death. . . .”
According to the diary of Abraham H. Cannon, April 5, 1894, his father George Q. Cannon, a member of the First Presidency, lamented the fact that his sons could not raise up seed to David through polygamy: “My son David died without seed, and his brothers cannot do a work for him, in rearing children to bear his name because of the Manifesto.”
From an entry in Apostle Cannon’s diary for October 24, 1894, it would appear that the Mormon leaders had decided that a plural marriage could be performed in Mexico to raise up seed to David. Although the diary has been damaged at this Point and a few words are missing, the remaining portion shows that the Mormon leaders did not take the Manifesto seriously:
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After meeting I went to the President’s Office and —–— Father [George Q. Cannon] about taking a wife for David. I told him David had taken Anni[e] —–— cousin, through the vail in life, and suggested she might be a good pe—–— sealed to him for eternity. The suggestion pleased Father very much, and Angus was there, He spoke to him about it in the presence of the Presidency. —–— not object providing Annie is willing. The Presidents Woodruff and Smith both sa[i]d they were willing for such a ceremony to occur, if done in Mexico, and Pres. Woodruf[f] promised the Lord’s blessing to follow such an act. (“Daily Journal of Abraham H. Cannon,” October 24, 1894, vol. 18, p. 170)
We may never know if Annie was “willing” to enter into this plural marriage, but we do know that less than two years later Lillian Hamlin was married to Apostle Cannon. Mrs Wilhelmina C. Ellis, who had been one of Cannon’s plural wives testified:
MRS. ELLIS. He said he could marry her out of the State—out of the United States.
…………………………
MR. TAYLER. What conversation did you have with him then about his going away and about his getting married again? What did he say first about going?
MRS. ELLIS. He told me he was going to marry her for time and that she would be David’s wife for eternity. (The Reed Smoot Case, vol. 2, pp. 142-43)
Apostle Cannon’s journal not only reveals that the Mormon leaders approved of polygamy after the Manifesto, but it shows they were considering the idea of a secret system of concubinage wherein men and women could live together without being actually married:
Father [George Q. Cannon] now spoke of the unfortunate condition of the people at present in regard to marriage. . . . I believe in concubinage, or some plan whereby men and women can live together under sacred ordinances and vows until they can be married. . . . such a condition would have to be kept secret, untill the laws of our government change to permit the holy order of wedlock which God has revealed, which will undoubtedly occur at no distant day, in order to correct the social evil. . . . —Pres Snow. “I have no doubt but concubinage will yet be practiced in this church, but I had not thought of it in this connection. When the nations are troubled good women will come here for safety and blessing, and men will accept them as concubines.”—Pres. Woodruff: “If men enter into some practice of this character to raise a righteous posterity, they will be justified in it . . .” (“Daily Journal of Abraham H. Cannon,” April 5, 1894, vol. 18, p. 70)
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As we have shown earlier in this book, Joseph Smith’s revelation on polygamy also said that concubinage was justifiable in God’s sight: “Abraham received concubines and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness . . .” (Doctrine and Covenants 132:37).
“Manifesto a Deception”
After their investigation the Committee on Privileges and Elections submitted a report in which the following was stated:
A sufficient number of specific instances of the taking of plural wives since the manifesto of 1890, so called, have been shown by the testimony as having taken place among officials of the Mormon Church to demonstrate the fact that the leaders in this church, the first presidency and the twelve apostles, connive at the practice of taking plural wives, and have done so ever since the manifesto was issued . . . as late as 1896 one Lillian Hamlin became the plural wife of Abraham H. Cannon, who was then an apostle . . . it was generally reputed in the community and understood by the families . . . that they had been married on the high seas by Joseph F. Smith. Lillian Hamlin assumed the name of Cannon, and a child to which she afterwards gave birth bears the name of Cannon. . . .
George Teasdale, another apostle of the Mormon Church, contracted a plural marriage with Marion Scholes since the manifesto of 1890. . . . Charles E. Merrill, a bishop . . . took a plural wife in 1891. . . . The ceremony . . . was performed by his father, an apostle in the Mormon Church. It is also shown that John W. Taylor, another apostle of the Mormon Church, has been married to two plural wives since the issuing of the so-called manifesto.
Matthias F. Cowley, another of the twelve apostles, has also taken one or more plural wives since the manifesto. . . . Apostles Taylor and Cowley, instead of appearing before the committee and denying the allegation, evade service of process issued by the committee for their appearance, and refuse to appear after being requested to do so. . . .
It is also proved that about the year 1896 James Francis Johnson was married to a plural wife, . . . the ceremony in this instance being performed by an apostle. . . . To these cases must be added that of Marriner W. Merrill, another apostle; J. M. Tanner, superintendent of church schools; Benjamin Cluff, jr., president of Brigham Young University; Thomas Chamberlain, counselor to the president of a stake; Bishop Rathall, John Silver, Winslow Farr, Heber Benion, Samuel S. Newton, a man named Okey, who contracted a plural marriage with Ovena Jorgensen in the year 1897, and Morris Michelson about the year 1902. . . .
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It is morally impossible that all these violations of the laws of the State of Utah by the contracting of plural marriages could have been committed without the knowledge of the first presidency and the twelve apostles of the Mormon . . .
SUPPRESSION OF TESTIMONY BY MORMON LEADERS.
It is a fact of no little significance in itself, bearing on the question whether polygamous marriages have been recently contracted in Utah by the connivance of the first presidency and twelve apostles of the Mormon Church, that the authorities of said church have endeavored to suppress, and have succeeded in suppressing, a great deal of testimony by which the fact of plural marriages contracted by those who were high in the councils of the church might have been established beyond the shadow of a doubt. Before the investigation had begun it was well known in Salt Lake City that it was expected to show on the part of the protestants that Apostles George Teasdale, John W. Taylor, and M. F. Cowley, and also Prof. J. M. Tanner, Samuel Newton and others who were all high officials of the Mormon Church had recently taken plural wives, and that in 1896 Lillian Hamlin was sealed to Apostle Abraham H. Cannon. . . . All, or nearly all, of these persons except Abraham H. Cannon, who was deceased, were then within reach of service of process from the committee. But shortly before the investigation began all these witnesses went out of the country.
Subpoenas were issued for each one of the witnesses named, but in the case of Samuel Newton only could the process of the committee be served. Mr. Newton refused to obey the order of the committee . . . John W. Taylor was sent out of the country by Joseph F. Smith on a real or pretended mission for the church. . . .
It would be nothing short of self-stultification for one to believe that all these most important witnesses chanced to leave the United States at about the same time and without reference to the investigation. All the facts and circumstances surrounding the transaction point to the conclusion that every one of the witnesses named left the country at the instance [sic] of the rulers of the Mormon Church and to avoid testifying before the committee. . . . The reason why the said witnesses left the country and have refused to come before the committee is easy to understand, in view of the testimony showing the contracting of plural marriages by prominent officials of the Mormon Church within the past few years.
It was claimed by the protestants that the records kept in the Mormon temple at Salt Lake City and Logan would disclose the fact that plural marriages have been contracted in Utah since the manifesto with the sanction of the officials of the church. A witness who was required to bring the records in the temple at
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Salt Lake City refused to do so after consulting with President Smith. . . .
The witness who was required to bring the records kept in the temple at Logan excused himself from attending on the plea of ill health. But the important part of the mandate of the committee—the production of the record—was not obeyed by sending the records, which could easily have been done. In the case of other witnesses who were believed to have contracted plural marriages since the year 1890 all sorts of shifts, tricks, and evasions were resorted to in order to avoid service of a subpoena to appear before the committee and testify. . . .
Aside from this it was shown by the testimony, and in such a way that the fact could not possibly be controverted, that a majority of those who give the law to the Mormon Church are now, and have been for years, living in open, notorious, and shameless polygamous cohabitation. The list of those who are thus guilty of violating the laws of the State and the rules of public decency is headed by Joseph F. Smith, the first president, “prophet, seer, and revelator”. . . .
The list also includes George Teasdale, an apostle; John Henry Smith, an apostle; Marriner W Merrill, also an apostle; Heber J. Grant, an apostle; M. F. Cowley, an apostle; Charles W. Penrose, an apostle; and Francis M. Lyman, who is not only an apostle, but the probable successor of Joseph F. Smith as president of the church. Thus it appears that the first president and eight of the twelve apostles, a considerable majority of the ruling authorities of the Mormon Church, are noted polygamists. . . .
These facts abundantly justify the assertion made in the protest that “the supreme authorities in the church, . . . the first presidency and twelve apostles, not only connive at violation of, but protect and honor the violators of the laws against polygamy and polygamous cohabitation.”
It will be seen by the foregoing that not only do the first presidency and twelve apostles encourage polygamy by precept and teaching, but that a majority of the members of that body of rulers of the Mormon people give the practice of polygamy still further and greater encouragement by living the lives of Polygamists, and this openly and in the sight of all their followers in the Mormon Church. . . .
And not only do the president and a majority of the twelve apostles of the Mormon Church practice polygamy, but in the case of each and every one guilty of this crime who testified before the committee, the determination was expressed openly and defiantly to continue the commission of this crime without regard to the mandates of the law or the prohibition contained in the
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manifesto. . . . those who are in authority in the Mormon Church, of whom Mr. Smoot is one, are encouraging the practice of polygamy among the members of that church, and that polygamy is being practiced to such an extent as to call for the severest condemnation in all legitimate ways. (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 4, pp. 476-82)
Finally, some sixteen years after the Manifesto was issued, President Joseph F. Smith was brought to trial for unlawful cohabitation. The following appeared in the Deseret News: “. . . President Smith appeared forthwith and entered a plea of guilty and was fined three hundred dollars. The fine was promptly paid and the defendant discharged” (Deseret Evening News, November 23, 1906).
Heber J. Grant, who served as the seventh president of the Mormon church from 1918 until 1945, was also convicted of unlawful cohabitation after the Manifesto was issued. This occurred in 1899, some nine years after Woodruff issued the Manifesto (see the Daily Tribune, September 9, 1899). In 1903 Heber J. Grant fled the country to avoid being arrested again. Charles Mostyn Owen testified as follows:
THE CHAIRMAN. Where did you say Grant was?
MR. OWEN. Grant is in England.
THE CHAIRMAN. When did he go to England?
MR. OWEN. He left suddenly on the night of the l0th of November last year—1903.
……………………………..
MR. OWEN. . . . he made a statement before the students of the State university at Salt Lake City, in which he held out in a very objectionable manner his association with two women as his wives. . . . I went before the county attorney and swore to an information for him, and a warrant was issued on that information. Before Mr. Grant was served, however, he left the country.
……………………………..
THE CHAIRMAN. Has he returned since that time?
MR. OWEN. No, sir.
SENATOR PETTUS. Is he still an apostle?
MR. OWEN. Yes, sir. (Reed Smoot Case, vol. 2, pp. 401-2)
Because of the insincerity of the Mormon leaders after the Manifesto thousands of people in Utah are still living in polygamy today. Mormon author John J. Stewart wrote the following regarding current polygamist groups:
Secondly, Satan is exploiting the doctrine and history of plural marriage in our Church by persuading many men and women to rebel against current Church policy on the matter, and thus forfeit their membership in the Church and Kingdom of God. More
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than seventy years after the first Manifesto was issued, as a step in suspending the practice of plural marriage, apostate sects are mushrooming throughout Mormondom in greater numbers than ever before, with the basic doctrine that plural marriage must be lived regardless of what the Church policy is. (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 15)
On November 21, 1955, Newsweek magazine reported that “Utah polygamists may well number 20,000.” Ten years later Wallace Turner said that “one expert estimates that as many as 30,000 men, women and children live in families in which polygamy is practiced” (New York Times, December 27, 1965). The Mormon writer Leonard J. Arrington felt that this was a “far-fetched estimate.” Ben Merson, on the other hand, seems to feel that more than 30,000 people are involved:
In Utah . . . the practice of polygamy has never ceased. It is more widespread than ever. And increasing year by year.
In metropolitan Salt Lake City alone, 10,000 are living in plural marriage. . . .
“Today in Utah,” declares William M. Rogers, former special assistant to the State Attorney General, “there are more polygamous families than in the days of Brigham Young. At least 30,000 men, women and children in this state are now living in plural households—and the number is rapidly increasing.” Thousands more live in the adjoining states of Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona—plus sizable populations in Oregon, California, Canada and Mexico.
The majority live in Utah. And, says Rogers, neither the state law, . . . nor the Mormon church, which prohibits it on pain of excommunication, has been able to stem the rising tide of plural marriage.
Strangely, it also remains the chief obstacle to law enforcement. For 72 percent of Utah’s 900,000 citizens are Mormon. And while most practice monogamy, they are aware of their polygamous heritage. . . . This, coupled with the Mormon history of persecution,” says Rogers, “makes them sympathetic toward the Fundamentalists. They feel that prison—and excommunication—is too harsh a penalty. And they refuse to testify against their polygamous neighbors.”
So do the non-Mormons, who are referred to as Gentiles. (Ladies Home Journal, June 1967, p. 78)
Those who believe in practicing polygamy today are usually known as “fundamentalists,” because they claim to go back to the fundamental doctrines of Mormonism.
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The Dilemma
The Mormon leaders find themselves in a rather strange situation. On the one hand, they have to uphold polygamy as a righteous principle, but on the other, they have to discourage the members of the church from actually entering into its practice. If they repudiated the doctrine of polygamy they would be admitting that Joseph Smith was a deceiver, and that the church was founded on fraud. If, however, they openly preached and defended the doctrine, many people would probably enter into the practice and bring disgrace upon the church. Their position is about the same as a person saying, “My church believes in water baptism, but we are not allowed to practice it.” Because of this peculiar dilemma, church leaders prefer that there is not much discussion of polygamy. Mormon writer Klaus J. Hansen depicted the sentiment in these words:
Admittedly, descendants of polygamous families still proudly acknowledge their heritage; but many Mormons clearly wish it had never happened. A leading historian at the leading state university in Utah for years avoided any mention of the subject; references to it in graduate theses were eradicated with the remark, “Too controversial!” Preston Nibley, it will be remembered, wrote an entire book on Brigham Young without mentioning the dread word once. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Summer 1966, p. 107)
To show the confusion of the Mormon leaders in regard to polygamy we have only to quote from a statement made by Apostle Bruce R. McConkie. In the same statement he says that millions of people have gained eternal exaltation by the practice of polygamy, that Joseph Smith and other Mormon leaders entered the practice in virtue and purity of heart, that polygamy will be practiced after the second coming of Christ; yet he states that anyone who enters polygamy today is living in adultery, has sold his soul to Satan and will be damned in eternity:
. . . the Lord frequently did command his ancient saints to practice plural marriage . . . the whole history of ancient Israel was one in which plurality of wives was the divinely accepted and approved order of matrimony. Millions of those who entered this order have, in and through it, gained for themselves eternal exaltation in the highest heaven of the celestial world . . . the Prophet and leading brethren were commanded to enter into the practice, which they did in all virtue and purity of heart . . . plural marriage was openly taught and practiced until the year 1890. At that time conditions were such that the Lord by revelation withdrew
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the command to continue the practice. . . . Obviously the holy practice will commence again after the Second Coming of the Son of Man and the ushering in of the millennium. . . .
Any who pretend or assume to engage in plural marriage in this day, when the one holding the keys has withdrawn the power by which they are performed, are guilty of gross wickedness. They are living in adultery, have already sold their souls to Satan, and (whether their acts are based on ignorance or lust or both) they will be damned in eternity. (Mormon Doctrine, 1958, pp. 522-23)
Is it any wonder that many Mormon people are confused over the practice of polygamy? They are taught that Joseph Smith entered polygamy in “virtue and purity of heart,” yet they are taught that if they follow his example they are living in “adultery.”
The Mormon people are taught that plural marriage is still practiced in heaven and will be practiced in the millennium. John J. Stewart stated: “. . . the restoration of the Church and Gospel of Jesus Christ, is to prepare for the second coming of the Savior, which is nigh at hand; to help usher in His great millennial reign, when the Gospel in its fulness including plural marriage, will be lived by worthy members of the Church” (Brigham Young and His Wives, p. 73).
Apostle Orson Pratt once stated: “Does not everything that is consistent and reasonable, and everything that agrees with the Bible show that plurality of wives must exist after the resurrection? It does . . .” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 14, pp. 244-45).
Since the Mormon people are taught that polygamy was right in Joseph Smith’s time and that it will be practiced in heaven, is it any wonder that many of them are entering into the practice today? As long as the Mormon leaders continue to publish Joseph Smith’s revelation on polygamy (Doctrine and Covenants, 132), there will, no doubt, be many people who will enter into the practice. They cannot completely repudiate this revelation, however, without repudiating their doctrine concerning temple marriage as the two doctrines are found in the same revelation.
Although the Mormon leaders will not give up the idea that this revelation is from God, they have already repudiated many of the teachings of the earlier leaders with regard to polygamy. For instance, Brigham Young taught: “The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into Polygamy” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269). The Millennial Star (vol. 15, p. 226), contained this statement: “The order of plurality of wives is an everlasting and ceaseless order, designed
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A photograph of the Deseret News, Sept. 17, 1873. Brigham Young maintained that a man with just one wife will have her taken from him and given to a polygamist in heaven.
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to exalt the choicest men and women to the most superlative excellence, dominion, and glory.”
Today, however, Mormon leaders teach that polygamy is not essential for exaltation. Bruce R. McConkie flatly stated: “Plural marriage is not essential to salvation or exaltation” (Mormon Doctrine, 1958, p. 523).
Brigham Young once became so zealous to establish polygamy that he declared a man who would not enter into polygamy would have his wife taken from him in the resurrection and given to another:
Now, where a man in this church says, “I don’t want but one wife, I will live my religion with one.” He will perhaps be saved in the Celestial kingdom; but when he gets there he will not find himself in possession of any wife at all. He has had a talent that he has hid up. He will come forward and say, “Here is that which thou gavest me, I have not wasted it, and here is the one talent,” and he will not enjoy it, but it will be taken and given to those who have improved the talents they received, and he will find himself without any wife, and he will remain single forever and ever. . . . I recollect a sister conversing with Joseph Smith on this subject. She told him: “Now don’t talk to me; when I get into the celestial kingdom, . . . I don’t want any companion in that world; and if the Lord will make me a ministering angel, it is all I want.” Joseph said, “Sister, you talk very foolishly, you do not know what you will want.” He then said to me: “Here brother Brigham, you seal this lady to me.” I sealed her to him. This was my own sister according to the flesh. (Deseret News, September 17, 1873)
Mormon leaders today would not think of teaching that a man with only one wife would have her taken from him and given to a man who had taken more. Bruce R. McConkie states: “In our day, the Lord summarized by revelation the whole doctrine of exaltation and predicated it upon the marriage of one man to one woman” (Mormon Doctrine, p. 523).
Although Mormon leaders have changed many of the teachings concerning polygamy, they still teach that it was a righteous practice in Joseph Smith’s time. John J. Stewart makes it very clear that it is still an “integral part of LDS scripture”:
. . . the Church’s strictness in excommunicating those advocating and practicing plural marriage today has apparently been misconstrued by not a few loyal Church members as an acknowledgment that the evil falsehoods . . . and other misconceptions about plural marriage, are true, and that the Church’s near silence on the doctrine today is further evidence that it regrets and is embarrassed by the whole matter of plural marriage. Such an
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inference is, of course, unjustified and unrealistic. The Church has never, and certainly will never, renounce this doctrine. The revelation on plural marriage is still an integral part of LDS scripture, and always will be. If a woman, sealed to her husband for time and eternity, precedes her husband in death, it is his privilege to marry another also for time and eternity, providing that he is worthy of doing so. (Brigham Young and His Wives, pp. 13-14)
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