In 1852, when the Mormons announced their practice of polygamy to the world, there were no federal laws prohibiting it. But national opposition based on moral and religious objections quickly grew. War provided only a brief respite. Many Mormons viewed the Civil War as divine retribution for the government’s refusal to provide redress for the Saints’ losses in Missouri and Illinois. As war fever swept the country, church leaders predicted the nation’s collapse. “It seems that many [easterners] are looking with some hope,” Brigham Young wrote to Utah congressman William H. Hooper, “apparently not yet realizing that the corruption of the nation has sealed its doom … the people whom the very great majority have striven to obliterate, will step forward and sustain the falling banner and continue to honor the Heaven inspired constitution bequeathed to us [as] so rich a legacy by our forefathers” (G. Larson 1971, 28). Apostle John Taylor, too, anticipated that the nation would be “shaken to its center and … continue to fall and to crumble until it is no more” (JD 11 [11 Dec. 1864]: 26).1 When the government emerged from the Civil War essentially intact, however, the country refocused on the abolition of Mormon polygamy.
Clergymen, women’s leaders, newspaper editors, and federal appointees raised their voices demanding legislative action to wipe out polygamy in Utah. The Salt Lake evangelical ministry attacked plural marriage with particularly rabid ferocity. Local ministers provided the media with much anti-Mormon propaganda to “keep the Mormon question in the American press and Utah out of statehood” (G. Larson 1971, 53).2
Public reaction towards plural marriage was reflected in the 14 March 1860 House Report on a proposed anti-polygamy bill. “Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to whether marriage is a civil or a canonical contract,” the bill declared, “the whole civilized world regards the marriage of one man to one woman as being alone authorized by the law of God, and that while the relation of husband and wife exists, neither can be lawfully married to another person.” Referring specifically to Utah, the report expressed shock at the “open and defiant license which, under the name of religion and latitudinous interpretation of our Constitution, has been given to this crime in one of our Territories.”
During debate on the issue, Illinois congressman McClernand expressed a typical sentiment against plural marriage. “As to polygamy,” he argued, “I charge it to be a crying evil; sapping not only the physical constitution of the people practicing it, dwarfing their physical proportions and emasculating their energies, but at the same time perverting the social virtues, and vitiating the morals of its victims.” He aligned the system with political despotism, which he reasoned “invariably begets among the people who practice it the extremes of brutal bloodthirstiness or timid and mean prevarication.… It is a scarlet whore. It is a reproach to the Christian civilization; and deserves to be blotted out” (Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 1st session, 1860, 1514).
The idea that polygamy would result in genetic abnormalities was a common one. A presentation at the New Orleans Academy of Sciences in 1861 “demonstrated” physical abnormalities prevalent in the “new race” of polygamists: “The yellow, sunken, cadaverous visage; the greenish-colored eye; the thick, protuberant lips, the low forehead; the light, yellowish hair, and the lank, angular person, constitute an appearance so characteristic of the new race, the production of polygamy, as to distinguish them at a glance. The older men and women present all the physical peculiarities of the nationalities to which they belong; but these peculiarities are not propagated and continued in the new race; they are lost in the prevailing type.”3
Numerous legislative packages were drafted in Congress to prevent this “new race” from taking hold. It was not until the Republican administration of Abraham Lincoln, however, that lawmakers passed the first of many bills which attempted to legislate polygamy out of existence. President Lincoln, a follower of the Mormon saga since his early experience with the church in Illinois, initially seemed content to let the Mormons be, despite the Republican party platform. During the early years of the Lincoln administration Mormon journalist T. B. H. Stenhouse asked the president what course he intended to pursue respecting the Mormons. “When I was a boy on the farm in Illinois,” he replied, “there was a great deal of timber on the farms which we had to clear away. Occasionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn and too heavy to move, so we plowed around it. That’s what I intend to do with the Mormons” (Nibley 1974, 369).4 But church leaders feared Lincoln’s administration. Brigham Young, as reported by Wilford Woodruff, prayed “daily that the Lord will take away the reigns of government of the wicked rulers & put it into the hands of wise good [men].” In addition to dramatically reducing the size of Utah territory on three separate occasions, Lincoln ordered an army of California volunteers to occupy Utah in 1861. Specifically responding to the sending of troops to Utah, Brigham Young further added that the “feelings of Abe Lincoln is that [President James] Buchanan tried to destroy the mormons & Could not. Now I will try my hand at it” (Kenney, 5 [11 Dec. 1861]: 605-06). Young worried about Lincoln’s intent. “I believe Abe Lincoln does intend to bring destruction upon this people if he Can and has the power,” he said during a political meeting (ibid., 609).
Young’s fears were not entirely correct, however. Lincoln did not wish to destroy the Mormon people, only to prevent their practice of polygamy. His wishes were fulfilled through the legislative efforts of Vermont congressman Justin Morrill. Morrill, a devout anti-polygamist, had failed on numerous occasions to secure passage of legislation before Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-bigamy Act into law on 1 July 1862. The intent of this legislation was to “punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States and to disapprove and annul certain acts of the territorial legislature of Utah.”
Despite the successful passage of this legislation, church leaders felt that it ultimately would have no effect on them. They were convinced that the Civil War would usher in the Millennium, and they would become the political salvation of the American government. Brigham Young, addressing the Utah territorial legislators on 19 January 1863, said that though “we are called the State Legislature,” the time will come when “we shall be called the Kingdom of God.” Young felt sure that while “our government is going to pieces, the time will come when we will give laws to the nations of the earth.… We should get all things ready, and when the time comes, we should let the water on the wheel and start the machine in motion” (JH, 19 Jan. 1863). John Taylor agreed: “The Almighty has established this kingdom with order and laws and everything pertaining thereto … that when the nations shall be convulsed, we may stand forth as Saviours … and finally redeem a ruined world, not only in a religious but in a political point of view” (JD 9 [13 April 1862]: 342).
Despite all the clamor about the Morrill Act, it remained essentially a dead issue for nearly five years. It might have remained that way indefinitely had not the Mormons been anxious to see the law removed from the books. In early 1867 the Utah territorial legislature sent a petition to the U.S. Congress requesting that the Morrill Act be repealed since “the judiciary of the Territory has not up to the present time, tried any case under said law though repeatedly urged to do so by those who have been anxious to test its constitutionality” (G. Larson 1971, 61). But federal officials viewed the Mormon move as an attempt to legitimize polygamy. They sought answers through the House Judiciary Committee as to why the law was not being enforced in Utah. Investigation revealed that the absence of aggressive judges committed to the anti-polygamy campaign had caused the law to be “practically a dead letter in the Territory of Utah” (House Reports, 39th Congress, 2nd session. no. 27, 1867).
Nearly all probate judges in Utah were Mormon bishops, unlikely to convict polygamists for practicing what they themselves believed to be the “law of God.” The position of the church was that the Morrill Act was unconstitutional, a violation of the First Amendment which included a provision that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Though a few legal scholars supported the position of the Saints, their voices were drowned out by the overwhelming majority who opposed the practice.
Though the federal government’s primary Utah focus appeared to be on eradicating polygamy, Mormon allegiance to church leaders, which eclipsed loyalty to the country, was the chief underlying concern of politicians. Vice-President Schuyler Colfax, after visiting Salt Lake City in the fall of 1869, argued that “it is time to understand whether the authority of the nation or the authority of Brigham Young is the supreme power in Utah; whether the laws of the United States or the laws of the Mormon Church have precedence within its limits” (New York Independent, 2 Dec. 1869).
A series of bills was presented to Congress in the late 1860s in an attempt to strengthen the Morrill Act, although none became law. To get around the problem of Mormon judges, the Cullom Bill was introduced. Under the provisions of this legislation, the appointive power of the Utah governor was to be expanded to include not only local judges but sheriffs and notaries as well. Probate courts were to be denied criminal jurisdiction, and believers in plural marriage were to be excluded from jury duty in polygamy-related court cases. Wives would be permitted to testify against husbands, fines and punishments were prescribed, and polygamists were barred from holding political office, voting, or becoming naturalized.
Debate over the proposed Cullom Bill caused considerable stir throughout the country. Some, remembering the exorbitant cost of the Utah Expeditionary Force, were afraid that the government might make an additional attempt to use military force to settle the Mormon question. Others were content to let polygamy run its course. “Mormon polygamy we think may be safely left to the corrective power of advancing civilization,” the New York Sun editorialized; “The building of the Union Pacific Railroad has struck it a blow the effects of which it can escape only by flight to some remoter region” (in MS 32 [8 March-12 April 1870]: 151-210).
As on previous occasions when their beliefs were assailed, however, Mormon resolve was strengthened by opposition. On 13 January 1870 nearly three thousand Mormon women gathered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle to protest the Cullom Bill. Though the meetings were orchestrated by the Mormon hierarchy, observers, who viewed Mormon women as meek subservients in their husbands’ harems, were surprised by their spunk. The meeting was “perhaps one of the grandest female assemblages in all history,” a reporter for the New York Herald reported. “We venture to say,” he added, “that whatever may be the individual reader’s opinion of the merits or demerits of Mormon institutions, it will not be denied that Mormon women have both brains and tongues. Some of the speeches give evidence that in general knowledge in logic and in rhetoric the so-called degraded ladies of Mormondom are quite equal to the Women’s Rights women of the East” (in MS 32 [8 March 1870]: 151). One month later, on 14 February, Utah became the second territory to grant female suffrage, a move that dramatically strengthened Mormon voting power.
Despite the controversy, the Cullom Bill passed the House on 23 March. Mormon leaders were terribly disappointed. At a mass meeting on 31 March, a memorial to Congress was adopted by “citizens of Salt Lake City.” “We … are believers in the principle of plural marriage or polygamy,” the petition declared, “not simply as an elevating social relationship and a preventive of many terrible evils which afflict our race, but as a principle revealed by god, underlying our every hope of eternal salvation and happiness in heaven.” Encouraging the Senate to reject the Cullom Bill, the petitioners expressed the predicament they would be in should the bill become law. “It gives us no alternative,” they argued, “but the cruel one of rejecting God’s command and abjuring our religion, or disobeying the authority of a government we desire to honor and respect” (“Memorial”).
Various lobbying efforts kept the Cullom Bill from reaching the Senate floor. But President Ulysses S. Grant, riding his post-Civil War popularity, personally favored a strong-arm approach in dealing with the “Mormon menace.” General J. Wilson Shaffer, who had won recognition in re-establishing federal control in the southern states, was appointed governor of Utah, and James B. McKean became chief justice. Both appointees accepted their position with the same sense of mission they had followed in helping abolish slavery, the “first relic of barbarism.”
McKean immediately trained his sights on Brigham Young, indicting the church president on charges of “lascivious cohabitation.” The judge made no attempt to cover the fact that the issue was in reality “Federal Authority against Polygamic Theocracy.” He announced that “The Government of the United States, founded upon a written constitution, finds within its jurisdiction another government claiming to come from God—imperium in imperio—whose policies and practices are in grave particulars, at variance with its own. The one government arrests the other in the person of its chief and arraigns it at the bar. A system is on trial in the person of Brigham Young” (Salt Lake Tribune, 9 Oct. 1871).
McKean’s plans were shattered by the 15 April 1872 Englerecht decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which denounced the method of jury selection in the case. “Jury unlawfully drawn; summons invalid; proceedings ordered dismissed; decision unanimous, all indictments quashed,” the 16 April 1872 Salt Lake Herald tersely reported. President Grant, who felt that the federal government had been embarrassed by the Englerecht decision, in his 1872 message to Congress called for “the ultimate extinguishment of polygamy.” In February 1873 he outlined the necessary legislation, and on 23 June 1874 the Poland Law gave U.S. district courts in Utah exclusive civil and criminal jurisdiction, thus limiting probate courts to estate and divorce settlement.
Despite the Poland Law, church leaders were elated over what they viewed as victories in the defeat of the Cullom Bill and the Supreme Court’s ruling in Englerecht. They were convinced that their position on plural marriage was sound and would be vindicated in court action. In mid-1874, church leaders met with the U.S. attorney in Salt Lake City and agreed to arrange a test case to determine the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy laws. George Q. Cannon, Utah’s territorial delegate to Congress and second counselor to Brigham Young, felt that there was “universal belief” among Mormons that the polygamy law was unconstitutional. He correctly observed that “many eminent lawyers, both in and out of Congress” also held this position (Cannon Letterbooks, 10 Jan. 1879). The individual selected to be the “test balloon” was Young’s personal secretary, avowed polygamist George Reynolds, who reported in his 21 October 1874 diary that Cannon approached him on the street and told him he had been selected for the case.
Reynolds was indicted for bigamy in October 1874 by a grand jury. Proving him guilty was a difficult task though he provided witnesses himself. His second wife, Amelia Jane Schofield, was eventually subpoenaed and admitted to her polygamous marriage. Though Reynolds was found guilty, the conviction was overturned by the territorial supreme court on grounds of irregularity in empaneling the jury. In a second trial one year later, Reynolds was again found guilty, on the basis of the testimony of his plural wife given in the first trial. Chief justice Alexander White’s charge to the jury in the second trial became the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court’s eventual ruling against Reynolds. “In matters of opinion, and especially in matters of religious belief,” White argued, “all men are free. But parallel with and dominating over this is the obligation which every member of society owes to that society; that is, obedience to the law” (Deseret Evening News, 10 Dec. 1875).
Church leaders sought and ultimately obtained an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. On 6 January 1879 chief justice Waite, in the landmark decision Reynolds v. the United States, delivered the opinion which upheld the Utah territorial court decision, first by declaring that Congress had the right to legislate territorial law, and second by upholding the 1862 Morrill Act. “Laws are made for the government of actions,” he declared, “and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.” Waite argued that allowing a religious organization to go against society’s established behavioral norms would have the effect of making the “professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances” (United States, 166-68). In essence, Reynolds settled the question of whether religious belief could be accepted as justification for an act made criminal by the law of the land. Mormons, as the articulate George Q. Cannon put it, afterwards viewed “the Supreme Court of the United States on one side and the Lord on the other” (Cannon 1879, 6).5
The initial Mormon reaction of shock and disbelief at the court’s decision quickly turned to defiance. An obvious conflict between the law of God and the law of the land existed in the minds of church leaders. Yet Mormon scripture strongly denounced civil disobedience. “Let no man break the laws of the land,” an 1831 revelation had commanded, “for he that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land. Wherefore, be subject to the powers that be” (D&C 58:21-22). A 2 August 1833 revelation had further explained that “that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me” (ibid. 98:5-6). On 17 August 1835 the entire church voted to accept as its “Declaration of Belief” the principle that “we believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside” (ibid. 134:5).
Despite the ideals expounded in these scriptures, Mormons ignored Reynolds and continued their practice of polygamy. “The fools seem to think it is an easy thing to Measure arms with the Lord of Hosts,” Mormon poet Charles Walker wrote in his 6 December 1879 journal; “the Step they are now taking will bring stile, anarchy, misery, and bloodshed upon the Nation. Meanwhile the Saints are as calm as a summer’s morning, and not a soul seems to care or to be the least concerned about the infamous decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of America” (Larson and Larson 1980, 1:474). Quorum of the Twelve president Wilford Woodruff went a step farther in a public letter to the church. “Now Latter-day Saints, what are we going to do under the circumstances?” he wrote; “God says, ‘we shall be damned if we do not obey the law.’ Congress says ‘we shall be damned if we do’ … Now who shall we obey? God or man? My voice is that we will obey God” (Woodruff, “Epistle”).6
Acting church president John Taylor in a 13 June 1879 interview with the New York Tribune denounced chief justice Waite’s opinion as “so much bosh.” Asked what effect he thought the court’s decision would have on the Mormons, Taylor replied, “I don’t know that it will have any effect except to unite us and confirm and strengthen us in our faith” (Hollister). Taylor saved his strongest words for the Saints. In October 1879 General Conference, after accusing Congress of a “shameless infraction of the Constitution of the United States,” he thundered: “God will lay his hand upon this nation … there will be more bloodshed, more ruin, more devastation than ever they have seen before.… We do not want them to force upon us that institution of monogamy called the social evil. We won’t have their meanness, with their foeticides and infanticides, forced upon us” (JD 20 [8 Oct. 1879]: 319-20).
Despite the defiant position of Taylor and other church leaders after Brigham Young’s 1877 death, there is some evidence in the decade preceding his demise that Young may have been waning in his support for polygamy as had Joseph Smith during the last year of his life. Government opposition was not the only difficulty with polygamy. Many Mormons had entered polygamy, particularly during the Mormon Reformation of the mid-1850s, because they had been led to believe the Millennium was imminent. When this event was not forthcoming, many found themselves in unsatisfactory marriages which they wished to have Young dissolve. These divorces greatly disturbed him. In 1876 he closed the Endowment House on Temple Square, where most polygamous sealings were taking place. It was during this period that he apparently first began advising church leaders to marry only one wife.7 In 1871 Young reversed his previously held position that polygamy was essential to reaching the highest degree of heaven by announcing that “a man may embrace the law of celestial marriage in his heart and not take the second wife and be justified before the Lord” (Kenney 7 [24 Sept. 1871]: 31).8
Other church leaders evidently did not support Young’s revised position. Apostle Joseph F. Smith, son of the martyred Hyrum Smith, announced to an 1878 assembly of Mormons: “Some people have supposed that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity, or non-essential to the salvation or exaltation 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 solemn protest against this idea, for I know it is false” (JD 20 [7 July 1878]: 28).
Even more emphatic than the statements of Joseph F. Smith in stressing continued polygamy were those of the church’s most militant polygamist, President John Taylor. Pressures both from within and without the church during the 1880s were working to influence Taylor to abandon the practice of polygamy. To put to rest any rumors that he might do so, he defiantly argued from the pulpit that “the people of the rest of the country are our enemies” and “we must not yield to them.… When they enact tyrannical laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit. God is greater than the United States. And when the Government conflicts with Heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of Heaven and against the government.” “Polygamy,” Taylor insisted, “is a divine institution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined. I defy the United States. I will obey God” (Salt Lake Tribune, 6 Jan. 1880).
1. These statements were viewed by government leaders as evidence of lack of loyalty to the United States. Territorial governor Harding, who listened to such speeches or read them in the Deseret News, thought church authorities were guilty of treason. Reporting to Secretary of State William H. Seward on 3 September 1862, he noted that church leaders constantly taught that “the government of the United States is of no consequence; that it lies in ruins; [and] the prophecy of Joseph Smith is being fulfilled to the letter.” Harding explained that Smith’s prophecy predicted the government would be destroyed and that the Saints would step in and “enjoy the possession of the land and also what is left of the ruined cities and desolated [places].” Mormons, according to Harding, believed Zion would be built up not only in Utah, but “the Great Center of their power and glory, is to be in Missouri [where] the Saints under the lead of their prophet, were expelled years [ago]” (G. Larson 1971, 28)
Long after the Civil War had ended, church leaders still considered the event a divine act of retribution. Wilford Woodruff, for example, after reading an account of lives lost and monies expended during the war, noted in his 5 March 1885 journal: “This shows the inspired Man what it costs a Nation to Kill the Prophets and Apostles & shed the Blood of the Lords Anointed” (Kenney 8 [5 March 1885]: 307).
2. Since the First Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed religious freedom, anti-polygamy factions branded plural marriage as unreligious. Representative Cullom of Illinois, for example, argued that “polygamy has gone hand in hand with murder, idolatry, and every secret abomination.” Cullom claimed that “instead of being a holy principle, receiving the sanction of Heaven, it is an institution founded in the lustful and unbridled passions of men, devised by Satan himself to destroy purity and authorize whoredom” (Congressional Globe, 41st Congress, 2nd session, 17 Feb. 1870: 1373).
Representative Ward of Illinois argued against the Mormon position that God had “commanded” polygamy, making it a valid religious tenet. “The God that sacrifices women to the lusts of men under the form of a plurality of wives is a God that I do not worship,” he declared. Ward compared Mormon practices to other unfortunate beliefs: “It is in the name of religion that the widow mounts the funeral pyre in India. It is in the name of religion that helpless infants are sacrificed in the waters of the Ganges. It was in the name of religion that thousands of human beings were sacrificed to the Aztec gods upon the bloody altars of Mexico” (Congressional Record, 43rd Congress, 1st session, 2 June 1874: 447).
3. Paper presented by Samuel A. Cartwright and C. G. Forshey, based primarily on quotations from the report of U.S. Army Assistant Surgeon Robert Bartholow, “Effects and Tendencies of Mormon Polygamy in the Territories of Utah” (in Ivins 1956, 238).
4. See Brigham Young’s account of this story in JD 10 (4 June 1864): 306.
5. Cannon had earlier attributed the expansion of Mormonism to the fact that the church practiced polygamy. “All the prosperity, seemingly, that we enjoy,” he advocated, “has been bestowed upon us since the proclamation of that principle and its adoption by us into our faith and practice. There has been an almighty power hedging us round about and encircling us from that day until the present time” (JD 14 [11 June 1871]: 165-66). After the Reynolds decision was announced, Cannon, who was in Washington, D.C., saw little protection for the Saints other than God. Writing to John Taylor on 8 January 1879, he lamented that the justices “appear willing to leave us to our fate, or the fate our enemies would mete out to us. Now it is up to the Lord to preserve us” (Cannon Letterbooks).
6. Woodruff had previously declared in 1879: “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 rap the very foundation of our government, and it will be rent asunder, and the God of heaven will hold them responsible for these things” (MS 41 [21 April 1879]: 243.
7. Apostle John Henry Smith remembered Young’s counsel on this matter: “President Young once proposed that we marry but one wife” (Anthon H. Lund Journal, 10 Jan. 1900).
8. Young’s position on this matter fluctuated. Two years later, he announced that a “man who did not have but one wife in the Resurrection that woman will not be his but [be] taken from him & given to another” (Kenney 7 [31 Aug. 1873]: 152).