Eight | ANNOUNCING THE PRACTICE
As the advance companies from Nauvoo began regrouping at Sugar Creek, Iowa, people lowered their guard and discussed polygamy more openly. Eliza R. Snow, now one of Brigham Young’s plural wives, noted in a February 1846 diary entry that “we felt as tho’ we could breath more freely and speak one with another upon those things where in God had made us free with less carefulness than we had hitherto done.” Another of Young’s wives, Zina, then visibly pregnant with her legal husband Henry Jacobs’s child, remembered of the Sugar Creek Camp: “We there first saw who were the brave, the good, the self-sacrificing. Here we had now openly the first examples of noble-minded, virtuous women, bravely commencing to live in the newly-revealed order of celestial marriage. ‘Woman; this is my husband’s wife!’ Here, at length, we could give this introduction without fear of reproach, or violation of man-made laws” (Tullidge 1877, 369).
After crossing Iowa, the Mormons wintered in the Council Bluffs/ Winter Quarters area near present-day Omaha, Nebraska. Plans and preparations were undertaken during the winter of 1846-47 which allowed a vanguard company of pioneers to travel west in the spring. They arrived in the Great Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847. Upper California, as the region was then called, was Mexican territory until the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo annexed it to the United States. Brigham Young, perhaps anticipating the results of the Mexican War, had informed U.S. president James K. Polk in the summer of 1846, while the Mormons were still in Iowa, “As soon as we settle in the great basin we design to petition for a territorial government bounded on the north by the British and on the south by Mexican domains and east and west by the summits of the Rocky and Cascade Ranges.”
Church leaders actually intended to establish a Mormon theocratic kingdom, based on the leadership of a pre-designated Council of Fifty, independent of U.S. government interference. Pragmatic considerations, however, forced church leaders to give temporary allegiance to the United States. The Council of Fifty acted as a shadow government; council members often doubled as officials in the territorial hierarchy. John M. Bernhisel was selected by the Council of Fifty to pursue territorial status in Washington. Soon thereafter, Thomas L. Kane, a friend to Mormonism with political savoir-faire, advised: “You are better without any government from the hands of Congress than with a Territorial government. The political intrigues of government officers will be against you.… You do not want corrupt political men from Washington strutting around you.”1 Church leaders took his advice, and Almon Babbitt was dispatched to the nation’s capital with a statehood petition. Brigham Young was to be governor of the state, his first counselor, Willard Richards, secretary of state, and his second counselor, Heber C. Kimball, chief justice. But federal officials were not in the mood to allow Mormons full control over their own affairs, as they had enjoyed in Nauvoo. Utah was granted territorial status on 9 September 1850.
Once established in the Great Basin, church leaders were less concerned about hiding polygamy than they had been in Illinois. “That many have a large number of wives,” U.S. Army officer John W. Gunnison, leader of a government survey crew to Utah, noted in 1850, “is perfectly manifest to anyone residing among them, and indeed, the subject begins to be more openly discussed than formerly” (pp. 66-67). Brigham Young first publicly announced his own polygamous practices on 4 February 1851. “I have more wives than one,” he declared to the territorial legislature; “I have many and I am not ashamed to have it known” (Kenney 4 [4 Feb. 1851]: 12).
The privilege of plural marriage in Utah was extended to a much broader segment of the Mormon community than at Nauvoo. Phineas Cook, a Mormon millwright, left an interesting account of Young’s invitation to take a second wife. Preparing to move south to the Sanpete Valley to establish a mill at Young’s direction, Cook told Brigham that his “wife was nearly tired out and we wanted to get away as soon as we could. He said he had the advantage of me, for when his women got tired, he could take them home and change them for fresh ones.” Later that evening when the two were engaged in private discussion, Young told him that “he wanted me to get all the wives I wanted, and it was his council that I should do so” (Kunz, 87).
Though the Mormons were living in isolation, hundreds of miles from other settlements, their polygamous behavior became increasingly apparent to the outside world. Apostle John Taylor, for example, husband to fifteen wives, defensively argued in July 1850 during a public discussion in Boulognesur-Mer, France, that “we are accused 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” (Shook 1914, 184).
Polygamy-related public relations in far-away France were difficult enough; in Utah they were nearly impossible. In 1851 federal officials arrived in Salt Lake City to administer the new territorial government and immediately clashed with church leaders. Mormons, viewing the easterners as political hacks, refused to cooperate with them. Unable to wrest political control from the Mormon hierarchy, four of the officials left the territory and returned to Washington. A 19 December 1851 letter from the four to U.S. president Millard Fillmore complained that the church was “overshadowing and controlling the opinions, the actions, the property, and … the lives of its members; usurping and exercising the functions of legislation and the judicial business of the Territory.” In addition, claimed the federal officials, the Mormons openly sanctioned and defended “the practice of polygamy, or plurality of wives” (“Report of Messrs.”).
The report of the officials, though discounted by the Mormons, made it difficult to continue disguising polygamy. To counter negative publicity on Mormon issues, Brigham Young sent his counselor Jedediah M. Grant east to coordinate church public relations. As part of his campaign Grant penned three extensive letters and submitted them to the New York Herald. The only letter of the three published (9 March 1852) denied charges of treason and other alleged Mormon crimes and defended polygamy.2 James G. Bennett, editor of the Herald, unimpressed with Mormon rhetoric on the issues, particularly polygamy, took Grant to task in an editorial. W. W. Phelps, erstwhile Mormon editor and apologist, came to Grant’s aid, engaging Bennett in a verbose debate in the columns of the paper. “Of two evils,” Phelps wrote, “a Mormon chooses neither but goes in for all good and more good; which, if, as Solomon said, a good wife is a good thing, then the more you have the more good you have” (Ferris 1856, 250).3 On 15 July 1852 Phelps wrote, “The constitution has no power over religion, neither has Utah’s Congress.… The federal authorities have no control over morality—that belongs to the good old book, the word of the Lord” (New York Herald, 15 July 1852).
Utah’s appointed representative in Congress, John M. Bernhisel, was incensed at the indelicacy of Phelps’s letter.4 He wrote Brigham Young on 14 August that conditions for statehood were improving “until this inconsiderate and untimely letter made its appearance, reviving former prejudices and adding fresh fuel to the fire which had burned so furiously for several months.” With his finger on the national pulse, Bernhisel feared that “so far as considering us a religious people, very many here and elsewhere, regard us among the most immoral and licentious beings on the face of the globe.… I therefore beg, entreat and implore Judge Phelps, as an elder brother, to write no more letters nor dialogues on this subject, upon which the nation is so sensitive.”5
Jedediah M. Grant, in his printed letter to the Herald, had intimated he was going to ask Apostle Orson Pratt to “publish an exposition of the Peculiar Doctrine” of polygamy. The levelheaded Bernhisel advised Brigham Young in his 14 August letter that “no such publication had better be made, for the public mind is exceedingly sensitive on that subject, not at all prepared to receive it, and its effect would be decidedly injurious.” Church leaders, however, evidently felt that the time was right to go public with the doctrine they had been denying for nearly two decades. Brigham H. Roberts, prominent Mormon historian, theologian, and church leader, theorized in his retrospective analysis of the decision that the church “owed it to frankness with the world to make the official proclamation.” He pointed out that many Mormons were in doubt as to what course they should pursue. “In the absence of an official announcement it had become a source of embarrassment.” Women particularly were in a difficult position, Roberts noted, “for their standing must have become equivocal had [the announcement] been much longer delayed” (Roberts 1930, 4:57-58).
Orson Pratt, widely respected among Mormons for his theological insight, was selected to introduce the doctrine officially during a church conference on 29 August 1852. Pratt announced that he had unexpectedly been called upon to address the crowd on the subject of “a plurality of wives.” Denying that the practice had been instituted to “gratify the carnal lusts and feelings of man,” he argued that its chief purpose was to provide righteous men and women the opportunity to have “a numerous and faithful posterity to be raised up and taught in the principles of righteousness and truth.” After citing scriptural evidence that biblical prophets practiced polygamy, Pratt speculated that Jesus’ relationship with Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene may have been polygamous.
Pratt next asserted that four-fifths of the world believed in a plurality of wives. The practice could provide an opportunity for every Mormon woman to be a wife and mother. Monogamy, reasoned Pratt, invited immorality. Prostitution could be prevented “in the way the Lord devised in ancient times; that is, by giving to his faithful servants a plurality of wives.” Realizing the possibility of a political backlash, Pratt concluded: “I believe they will not under our present form of government (I mean the government of the United States), try us for treason for believing and practicing our religious notions and ideas. I think, if I am not mistaken, that the Constitution gives the privilege to all the inhabitants of this country, of the free exercise of their religious notions, and the freedom of their faith, and the practice of it.… And should there ever be laws enacted by this government to restrict them from the free exercise of this part of their religion, such laws must be unconstitutional” (Deseret News, Extra, 14 Sept. 1852).
After Pratt’s discourse, Young took the stand and explained the circumstances surrounding the preservation of Joseph Smith’s revelation on “celestial marriage.” He announced that the document “contains a doctrine, a small portion of the world is opposed to; but I can deliver a prophecy upon it.… It will sail over, and ride triumphantly above all the prejudice and priest-craft of the day; it will be fostered and believed in by the more intelligent portions of the world, as one of the best doctrines ever proclaimed to any people” (ibid.).
Despite that optimistic forecast, church leaders recognized the difficulties in convincing the non-Mormon populace of the divine origin of Smith’s revelation. They hoped to counter the inherent bias against polygamy through publishing a periodical defending it. Two weeks after his public announcement, editor Orson Pratt was on his way to Washington, D.C., to establish The Seer. He announced in the first issue of the magazine that it would expound “the views of the Saints in regard to the ancient Patriarchal Order of Matrimony, or Plurality of Wives, as developed in a Revelation, given through JOSEPH the SEER.” Though Pratt’s efforts with the publication were herculean, it would not sell. It was Bernhisel’s dire predictions of negative public reaction to polygamy that proved prophetic rather than Young’s.
European Mormons were evidently aghast at the church’s announcement of polygamy. English missionary Thomas D. Evans noted that the Saints had “heard nothing of that principle, and it brought on a great deal of persecution.” His future wife, Priscilla Merriman of Tenby, England, related a scene which may have been typical of the reaction. One of the Mormon girls in her branch had come to her “with tears in her eyes” asking if it were true “that Brigham Young has ninety wives?” (Carter 1958-75, 14:270, 282). Thomas B. Stenhouse, also a Mormon missionary at the time, later wrote that during the first six months polygamy was preached 1,776 British Saints left the church (1873, 202).6
Most Utah Mormons were aware that church leaders were secretly practicing polygamy long before it was publicly admitted. Thus the official announcement in Salt Lake City was not nearly so devastating as in Europe. In Utah polygamy-related problems arose both from the federal government’s opposition to the practice and from the belief that Utah’s territorial government was controlled by Mormon despots. The passage of the Democrat-sponsored Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, granting popular sovereignty on slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, unleashed a flood of opposition to the Democratic party, culminating in the organization of the Republican party, which demanded that polygamy and slavery, “twin relics of barbarism,” be purged from American society. Democratic chair of the Senate Committee on Territories Stephen A. Douglas, not wishing to imply support of polygamy by the party’s support of slavery, declared on 12 June 1856 that the Mormons were a traitorous group whose allegiance to Young superseded their commitment to the country. He proposed the “absolute and unconditional repeal of the Organic Act—blotting the territorial government out of existence—upon the ground that [the Mormons] are alien enemies and outlaws, denying their allegiance and defying the authorities of the United States” (G. Larson 1971, 22-23).
Despite Douglas’s barrage, the Democratic party continued to advocate popular sovereignty. In the words of 1857 Democratic president-elect James Buchanan, territories and states should be “perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way subject only to the constitution of the United States” (Richardson 1896-99, 5:431). Brigham Young was in complete agreement. “It is not the prerogative of the President of the United States,” he argued in 1856, “to meddle with this matter, and Congress is not allowed, according to the Constitution, to legislate upon it.… If we introduce the practice of polygamy it is not their prerogative to meddle with it.” Young was determined to make Utah “a sovereign State in the Union, or an independent nation by ourselves” (JD 4 [31 Aug. 1856]: 40).
In the pre-Civil War paranoia of the late 1850s, Young’s rhetoric was interpreted as treasonous. President Buchanan, after receiving a 30 March 1857 resignation letter from Utah judge W. W. Drummond, became convinced the Mormons were in a state of full rebellion. The ex-judge complained that Mormons looked only to Brigham Young for leadership, were bound by secret oath to resist the laws of the country, employed a body of enforcers to kill those who opposed Mormon rule, destroyed the Utah Supreme Court records, harassed federal officials, and slandered the American government on a daily basis.
Drummond’s inflammatory letter, underscoring as it did similar complaints of polygamy and anti-American sentiment from other territorial officials, prompted Buchanan to action. Fearful of Mormon secessionary action, he appointed a new slate of territorial officials for Utah, providing them with a military escort of some 2,500 soldiers. He defended his actions in his December 1857 message to Congress by declaring that Brigham Young’s power was “absolute over both church and state.” Declaring that he felt bound to “restore the supremacy of the Constitution and laws within its limits,” Buchanan said he felt “confident of the support of Congress, cost what it may, in suppressing the insurrection and in restoring and maintaining the sovereignty of the Constitution and laws over the Territory of Utah” (Richardson 1896-99, 5:454-56).
Church leaders in Utah failed to anticipate Buchanan’s severe reaction, expecting him to be more understanding of their position than his hard-driving opponent, John C. Fremont. Respecting the president’s position on polygamy, Brigham Young, in a 25 March 1857 letter to Apostle John Taylor, had written: “It is currently reported that President Buchanan fondles or has administered kindly to six or more ‘Cyprians’ [prostitutes] and may not be so severe in his legislative enactments against the Polygamists of Utah.… Had the helm of state been put into the hands of Fremont the pot would have boiled over a little sooner.”
When the Saints were informed during a 24th of July celebration in Big Cottonwood Canyon that a U.S. Army of occupation was on its way to the territory, fear gripped the people. Young felt compelled to use his gubernatorial powers to declare martial law. “Our opponents have availed themselves of prejudice existing against us to send out a formidable host to accomplish our destruction,” he declared. Noting that no investigating committee was sent to the territory, Young argued that the action “compels us to resort to the great first law of preservation and stand in our own defense, a right guaranteed to us by the genius of the institutions of our country and upon which the government is based” (Young Ms History, 15 Septe. 1857).
Ultimately “Buchanan’s Blunder,” as Mormons and other critics irreverently termed the military occupation of the territory, cost nearly $15 million. After initial resistance, the Mormon populace acquiesced to the intrusion of imposed officials and troops, and the outbreak of Civil War in 1861 diverted the federal government’s attention from the “Mormon problem.” But it was only a temporary reprieve. The church would not be relieved of government pressure to abandon polygamy until the early 1900s.
1. Wilford Woodruff quoting Kane, in JH, 26 Nov. 1849; see also Kenney 3 (26 Nov. 1849): 496.
2. All three letters were published in pamphlet form by the church. Copies were sent to influential politicians, including President Fillmore, and to major newspapers.
3. Phelps, a noted toastmaster, made this same statement in a toast on “Mormonism and Marriage,” MS 14 (24 July 1852): 643.
4. Bernhisel’s philosophy on marriage is an interesting study in itself. Celibate until age forty-four, he married a forty-year-old widow with six children in 1845. The following year he married six plural wives. But shortly before his initial departure for Washington he reverted to monogamy with his youngest wife, though not formally divorcing the others. While he accepted polygamy in principle, he opposed its open promulgation and practice. For a treatment of his position, see Van Wagoner and Walker 1982, 15-18.
5. Bernhisel remained sensitive to such letter writing throughout his tenure. On 14 December 1854 he wrote to Young: “I wish that those brethren who indulge in the thoughtless practice of writing letters on the subject of poligamy…would cease to do so. These letters find their way into the newspapers, and aggravate and perpetuate that deep rooted and bitter prejudice which is operating so much to our injury” (LDS Archives).
6. B. H. Roberts, however, disagreed that polygamy was at the root of the excommunications. Citing the excommunication figure 2,164 for the six months preceding the announcement on plural marriage, he viewed the action as having only minimal effect on church membership (1930, 4:58-59).