Mormon reaction to the “Wilford Woodruff Manifesto,” as the press release subsequently became known, was mixed. Apostle Abraham H. Cannon noted in his 26 September 1890 diary that there was “considerable comment and fault-finding among some of the Saints.” Many longtime church members, steeped in the philosophy that plural marriage was essential for the highest degree of exaltation, wondered about the eternal consequences of the announcement. Just four years earlier George Q. Cannon, in a powerful 1 May 1885 editorial in The Juvenile Instructor, had warned against the “Vain and delusive hope” that the “people of god” would renounce plural marriage. “To comply with the request of our enemies,” he adamantly argued, “would be to give up all hope of ever entering into the glory of God, the Father, and Jesus Christ, the Son.” Cannon denounced the “costly bargain” which the Saints were asked to make: “So intimately interwoven is this precious doctrine with the exaltation of men and women in the great hereafter that it cannot be given up without giving up at the same time all hope of immortal glory.”
The absence of the signatures of First Presidency counselors George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith on the Manifesto also concerned some Saints. Others wondered why the document began with the unusual “To Whom It May Concern” rather than the authoritative “Thus Saith the Lord” usually associated with revelatory pronouncements. Skepticism outside Mormonism, considering past difficulties, was not surprising. The 26 September 1890 Salt Lake Tribune commented, “We cannot resist the thought that this was not prompted by President Woodruff at all, but that it was prompted by shrewd men in the Church, and that the object is purely political.” The same editorial charged that George Q. Cannon had probably persuaded Woodruff to issue the Manifesto as a smoke screen which would “give the country an idea that we had abandoned polygamy because of our respect for the laws.” On 27 September the Tribune declared that the “manifesto was not intended to be accepted as a command by the President of the Church, but as a little bit of harmless dodging to deceive the people of the East.”
Territorial governor Arthur L. Thomas, a strong critic of Mormon polygamy, also viewed the Manifesto skeptically. “The general sentiment is a hope it is in good faith,” he was quoted in the 30 September Deseret News, “but many things lead to doubt.” He noted that the statement “does not come in the usual channel” and that while submission to the law was advised, “there is no injunction to obey the laws.” He added that the Manifesto did not address the question of unlawful cohabitation, nor did it say whether “polygamy is wrong or the law is right.” The 2 October Tribune summed up the reaction: “No Gentile in Utah believes [the Manifesto] is to be what it purports to be, or what the outside world believes it to be.”
But to the church press the meaning of the Manifesto was clear. “Anyone who calls the language of President Woodruff’s declaration ‘indefinite,’” the Deseret Evening News editorialized on 30 September, “must be either exceedingly dense or determined to find fault. It is so definite that its meaning cannot be mistaken by any one who understands simple English.” On 3 October the paper added, “Nothing could be more direct and unambiguous than the language of President Woodruff, nor could anything be more authoritative.” As to his part in the press release, Woodruff wrote in his 25 September journal: “I have arrived at a point in the History of my life as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints where I am under the necessity of acting for the Temporal Salvation of the Church. The United State[s] Governme[n]t has taken a Stand & passed Laws to destroy the Latter day Saints upon the Subje[c]t of poligamy or Patriarchal order of Marriage. And after praying to the Lord & feeling inspired by his spirit I have issued the following Proclamation which is sustained by My Councillors and the 12 Apostles” (Kenney, 9 [25 Sept. 1890]: 113-14).
As to its text, the Manifesto contained several incorrect statements. For example, the plural marriages claimed by the Utah Commission and denied in the text of the Manifesto have since been well documented. And there were only three apostles present at the 24 September council meeting to sustain President Woodruff’s statement: Marriner W. Merrill, F. D. Richards, and Moses Thatcher (Marriner Wood Merrill Diary, 6 Oct. 1890).1 Full acceptance by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve did not take place until 2 October and not until after three days of lengthy debate. Apostle John Henry Smith related that apostles Lorenzo Snow, Franklin D. Richards, Moses Thatcher, and Francis Lyman immediately approved the Manifesto when the full quorum met on 30 September. But others, including Smith himself, “were not fully clear upon it” (John Henry Smith Journal, 30 Sept. 1890). Outspoken apostle John W. Taylor, though acknowledging “the hand of the Lord” in the action, remained unsettled on the issue. “My father when President of the Church,” he said, “sought to find a way to evade the conflict between the Saints and government on the question of plural marriage, but the Lord said it was an eternal and unchangeable law and must stand” (Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 30 Sept. 1890).
An especially difficult issue to resolve was the matter of continued cohabitation with plural wives. Frank J. Cannon thought Woodruff initially viewed the Manifesto as forbidding future cohabitation, but George Q. Cannon, during a 7 October meeting of church leaders, stressed that “a man who will act the coward and shield himself behind the Manifesto by deserting his plural wives should be damned.” Woodruff himself added: “This Manifesto only refers to future marriages and does not affect past conditions. I did not, could not, and would not promise [the nation] that you would desert your wives and children. This you cannot do in honor” (ibid., 7 Oct. 1890).
Another unsettled matter was whether the Manifesto was to be presented to the Saints for a sustaining vote in General Conference. Abraham H. Cannon noted in his 2 October journal that “some felt that the assent of the Presidency and Twelve to the matter was sufficient without committing the people by their votes to a policy which they might in the future wish to discard.” This controversy was not resolved until 5 October. Abraham H. Cannon noted in his journal that a telegram from Representative John T. Caine was read to the assembled church leaders, indicating that the government “could not accept President Wilford Woodruff’s Manifesto without its acceptance by the conference as authoritative against the statements of the Utah Commission and Governor A. L. Thomas.”
The next day George Q. Cannon, while addressing the assembled Saints in General Conference, used Doctrine and Covenants 124:49 as the basis for his plea to have the Manifesto accepted by the church. He eloquently argued that when God gives a commandment and the Saints are hindered from carrying it out by “their enemies”—in this case the United States government—then it is for God to accept their offering and to require that they no longer live the commandment. After Cannon had spoken, Woodruff took the stand and assured his followers that he had not acted hastily in the matter. “The step which I have taken in issuing the Manifesto has not been done without earnest prayer before the Lord.… It is not wisdom for us to make war upon sixty-five million people. It is not wisdom for us to go forth and carry out this principle against the laws of the nation and receive the consequences. This is in the hands of the Lord and He will govern and control it” (Cowley 1909, 570-71).
Following the remarks by Cannon and Woodruff, Orson F. Whitney, a talented poet, musician, and a future apostle, then read the Manifesto to the assembled Saints. Silence prevailed until someone from the gallery called for a second reading. After this request was granted, Quorum of the Twelve president Lorenzo Snow moved that the declaration be accepted as “authoritative and binding.” Many of the thousands in attendance abstained from voting. Apostle Marriner W. Merrill noted in his 6 October diary that the motion was “carried by a weak voice, but seemingly unanimous.” Future events were to show that assent of church leaders and laymen was anything but unanimous, however. “We were all greatly astonished,” plural wife Lorena Eugenia Washburn Larsen recalled. “It seemed impossible that the Lord would go back on a principle which had caused so much sacrifice, heartache, and trial.” Describing what must have been the anguish of many Saints, she added: “I thought that if the Lord and the church authorities had gone back on that principle, there was nothing to any part of the gospel. I fancied I could see myself and my children, and many other splendid women and their families turned adrift, and our only purpose in entering it, had been to more fully serve the Lord. I sank down on [my] bedding and wished in my anguish that the earth would open and take me and my children in. The darkness seemed impenetrable” (Bergera 1977).
Others, however, evidently felt the light had finally come. Annie Clark Tanner, who like many other women had endured an unhappy marriage as second wife, recorded that when she first heard of the Manifesto, “a great relief came over me.… At that moment I compared my feelings of relief with the experience one has when the first crack of dawn comes after a night of careful vigilance over a sick patient. At such a time daylight is never more welcome; and now the dawn was breaking for the Church. I suppose its leaders may have realized, at last, that if our Church had anything worthwhile for mankind, they had better work with the government of our country rather than against it” (Tanner 1976, 130).
The question of whether the Manifesto was a divine manifestation or a political ruse designed to “beat the devil at his own game” has long been a subject of debate. George Q. Cannon, during the 6 October General Conference, explained to the Saints: “We have waited for the Lord to move in the matter; and on the 24th of September, President Woodruff made up his mind that he would write something, and he had the spirit of it. He had prayed about it and had besought God repeatedly to show him what to do. At that time the Spirit came upon him, and the [Manifesto] was the result” (Conference Reports, Oct. 1890). Woodruff himself, in a 20 August 1891 meeting of the First Presidency, church lawyers, and some apostles, said, “Brethren, you may call it inspiration or revelation, or what you please; as for me, I am satisfied it is from the Lord” (Quinn 1985, 50).
But many church leaders viewed the Manifesto as purely a political proclamation. Apostle Marriner W. Merrill, for example, noted in his diary, “I do not believe the Manifesto was a revelation from God but was formulated by Prest. Woodruff and endorsed by His counselors and the Twelve Apostles for expediency” (in Bitton, Guide, 238). And counselor Joseph F. Smith, responding to Heber J. Grant’s 21 August 1891 question about whether the Manifesto was a revelation, answered, “No.” Smith explained that he regarded the document as inspired given the conditions imposed by the government on the church. But “he did not believe it to be an emphatic revelation from god abolishing plural marriage” (Quinn 1985, 83). However, Woodruff, despite subsequent contradictory actions, said on 21 October 1891 that “the manifesto was just as authoritative and binding as though it had been given in the form of ‘Thus saith the Lord’” (ibid., 51).
Whatever inspired the document, the Manifesto did not produce the abrupt about-face in the church’s position that Mormons today tend to imagine. Both John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff had already begun authorizing fewer plural marriages. Woodruff declared in 19 October 1891 court testimony: “After I was appointed president of the Church I looked the question over and … was convinced that … plural marriage would have to be stopped in this church altogether; it was not ourselves, who were suffering, but a large portion of the people, who had not entered into it.” He further testified that “after I was made president of the church—I did not advocate the principle … it was upon that ground that I issued that manifesto, by I will say, as I viewed it, by inspiration: I believed it was my duty.”
Woodruff, perhaps more pragmatic and certainly less combative than John Taylor, recognized the necessity of changing the church’s public position on polygamy. Continued opposition to the government was clearly foolhardy. The government had both the power and the resolve to destroy the church’s influence in the territory if it did not publicly capitulate on the polygamy issue.
Woodruff defended his actions in several public statements. His sermon to a group of Logan Saints, reported in the 7 November 1891 Deseret Evening News, posed the issue in the form of a question: “Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue—to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the head[s] of families in the church … or after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law?” Woodruff insisted that the Lord had shown him “by vision and revelation exactly what would take place if we did not stop this practice. He has told me exactly what to do, and what the result would be if we did not do it.” The church president was adamant about the revealed nature of the decision: “I should have let all the temples go out of our hands; I should have gone to prison myself, and let every other man go there, had not the God of heaven commanded me to do what I did do.”
Woodruff’s anticipation of the Millennium undoubtedly influenced his timing in issuing the Manifesto. He was convinced that maintaining church temples, where ordinances for the living and the dead could be performed, was “more important than continuing the practice of plural marriage for the present” (Marriner Wood Merrill Diary, 6 Oct. 1890).2 Mormons had long been taught that Joseph Smith established the “Kingdom of God” to prepare for the imminent second coming of Christ. The political kingdom, as embodied in the Council of Fifty, had ceased to function. If Woodruff allowed the spiritual kingdom, the church, to be sacrificed for plural marriage, there would be no organization left to prepare for Christ’s coming.
Still there were definite political dimensions to the Manifesto as well. Public statements to the contrary, the First Presidency privately counseled that plural marriage was not to be abandoned nor were polygamists to discontinue connubial relationships with their plural wives. Though some church leaders, such as Lorenzo Snow, began living with only one wife, most continued to violate the unlawful cohabitation statute. And until 1904 scores of new plural marriages were authorized and performed in Mexico, Canada, and even in the United States.
Byron Harvey Allred was evidently one of the first individuals permitted to marry a plural wife after the Manifesto. He and his first wife brought to the October 1890 conference a woman he had intended to take as a plural wife. The adoption of the Manifesto placed them in a difficult position, and they sought counsel from the First Presidency. President Woodruff explained that because of the agreement entered into by the Manifesto, no more plural marriages would be solemnized in the United States and suggested that Allred go where polygamy could be practiced without violating the law. Joseph F. Smith, who was also present, advised Allred that “many Saints had already moved to Mexico for that very purpose, and others were going” (Allred 1968, 199).
Though polygamy was illegal in the area of Mexico where Mormons had settled, Mexican officials, as previously noted, did not enforce such regulations.3 As church president, Joseph F. Smith later explained how President Woodruff avoided duplicity in authorizing new plural marriages outside of the United States. In an 11 April 1911 telegram to Senator Reed Smoot, Smith, who served in the First Presidency longer than any other man, verified that “Prest. Cannon was the first to conceive the idea that the Church could consistently countenance polygamy beyond confines of the republic where there was no law against it, and consequently he authorized the solemnization of plural marriages in Mexico and Canada after manifesto of 1890” (Smoot Collection).4 Walter M. Wolfe, former Brigham Young Academy faculty member, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Elections and Privileges, during the 1904 Reed Smoot hearings, explained how the system worked. For example, Ovena Jorgensen, a student at Brigham Young Academy in 1898, went with her prospective husband, William C. Ockey, to request President Woodruff’s permission to marry polygamously. Brushing them aside with a wave of his hand, the church president said “he would have nothing to do with the matter, but referred them to President George Q. Cannon.” They were given a letter from Cannon to President Anthony W. Ivins of the Juarez Mexico Stake and were subsequently married by him in Mexico (Proceedings 4:11).
A handful of plural marriages performed in Mexico were apparently approved by President Woodruff in the month following the announcement of the Manifesto. But in November he temporarily stopped signing recommends because, according to Abraham H. Cannon’s 2 November 1890 diary, “one young man [Christian F. Olsen] who recently had this privilege, came back and allowed the knowledge of it to go out, and thus put the church in danger.” Yet some statements by the church president himself, as well as by other members of the First Presidency, promoted both continued cohabitation and new plural marriages in the church. During a joint First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve meeting on 2 April 1891, for example, Woodruff announced that “the principle of plural marriage will yet be restored to this church, but how or when I cannot say” (Quinn 1985, 61).
Furthermore, during a 7 October 1891 meeting of church leaders with stake presidents and bishops, Joseph F. Smith advised: “God will not justify you in kicking out your families and stultifying yourselves in the eyes of all good men. We do not want you to leave your wives because of the Manifesto. Tell your people to take care of their families just as they have always done” (Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 7 Oct. 1891). Cannon further observed the proceedings of a joint meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency later that day. “We got to the point where we realized that polygamy is no longer a law of the church,” he wrote, “and so far as our present families are concerned, we must support and honor them; though if we live with them it is at our peril” (ibid.).
Church authorities and lay members, familiar with the private statements of the First Presidency, were shocked when they read the October 1891 testimony of their leaders before the Master in Chancery. Seeking to obtain the return of the church’s escheated property, Woodruff, Cannon, and Smith all testified that not only had polygamy ceased, but cohabitation was discontinued. Woodruff’s testimony was particularly pointed. Asked what was his “object and purpose in issuing the manifesto,” he testified that “It was to announce to the world that the plural marriage had been forbidden by the church and that it could not be practised hereafter.” His testimony was explicit: “Q. State whether or not it would be contrary to the law of the church, for any member of the church to enter into or contract a plural marriage. A. It would be contrary to the laws of the church. Q. What would be the penalty? A. Any person entering into plural marriage after that date, would be liable to become excommunicated from the church. Q. Do you understand that that language was to be expanded and to include the further statement of living or associating in plural marriage by those already in the status? A. Yes, sir; I intended the proclamation to cover the ground, to keep the laws—to obey the law myself, and expected the people to obey the law.… Q. Was the manifesto intended to apply to the church everywhere? A. Yes, sir. Q. In every nation and every country? A. Yes, sir; as far as I had a knowledge in the matter. Q. In places outside of the United States as well as within the United States? A. Yes, sir; we are given no liberties for entering into that anywhere.… Q. Unlawful cohabitation, as it is named, and spoken of, should also stop, as well as future polygamous marriages? A. Yes, sir, that has been the intention. Q. And that has been your views and explanation of it? A. Yes, sir, that has been my view.”
Charles Walker, a colorful St. George poet, commented on Woodruff’s testimony in his 20 October 1891 journal: “This announcement by him as Pres. of the Church has caused an uneasy feeling among the People, and some think he has gone back on the Revealation on Plural Marriage and its covenants and obligations” (Larson and Larson 1980, 2:723). Several church leaders viewed the situation similarly. But at a 12 November meeting of church leaders, Woodruff explained his stance. Apostle Abraham H. Cannon recorded in his journal that Woodruff said “he was placed in such a position on the witness stand that he could not answer other than he did. Yet any man who deserts and neglects his wives or children because of the Manifesto should be handled on his fellowship.” Cannon concluded that “our talk resolved itself into this[:] that men must be careful to avoid exposing themselves to arrest or conviction for violation of the law and yet they must not break their covenants with their wives.”5
The First Presidency’s public interpretation of the Manifesto differed consistently from their private feelings. In a 5 February 1899 interview with the New York Herald, President George Q. Cannon explained if a man’s wife was barren, he might “go to Canada and marry another wife. He would not be violating our laws, and would not be in danger of prosecution unless the first wife should follow him there from Utah and prefer a charge of bigamy against him. He might go to Mexico and have a religious ceremony uniting him to another that would not violate our law.” But the issue involved more than “barren wives.” Discussing a particular case before the Quorum of the Twelve the following year, Cannon reviewed what had been the church’s posture respecting “new polygamy” after the Manifesto. “When the Manifesto was issued,” he explained, “we did not pledge ourselves to abandon our plural wives, nor even to cease to perform plural marriages outside of the government; and when our people get the idea that we have bound ourselves to the whole world they manifest ignorance. A man may go to some countries and not violate their laws by taking a plural wife and living in plural marriage” (JH, 16 Aug. 1900). First Presidency secretary George F. Gibbs subsequently wrote that “President Woodruff’s manifesto … was not intended to apply to Mexico, and did not, as the church was not dealing with the Mexican government, but only with our own government” (Quinn 1985, 49).
The casuistry of Mormon leaders was obviously self-protective. As guardians of the church, they were motivated to defend the religious institution and its tenets, including plural marriage, at all costs. This commitment to plural marriage had repeatedly dictated situational responses to ethical dilemmas since the early 1830s. Apostle Matthias F. Cowley, in testimony before the Council of the Twelve on 10 May 1911, articulated the rationale for such duplicities: “I have always been taught that when the brethren were in a tight place that it would not be amiss to lie to help them out. One of the Presidency of the Church made the statement some years ago … that he would lie like hell to help his brethren” (Minutes).
Whether inspiration or political expediency or, more probably, both prompted the Manifesto, the action lessened tensions with the government and hastened statehood. With the church publicly opposing polygamy, the government had no reason to continue to punish polygamists. Judge Charles S. Zane, who had so firmly prosecuted polygamists prior to the Manifesto, demonstrated in his court decisions that he intended to uphold the law but not to carry out a vendetta against the church. He adopted a policy of leniency with those brought before him and supported general amnesty for those previously convicted.
One polygamist who benefited from the relaxation of government prosecution was Charles L. Walker. Reporting to Beaver judge James A. Miner on 13 September 1892, he listened as the clerk read the indictment “charging me with the crime of unlawfull cohabitation against the peace and dignity of the People of the. US &c.” Walker pleaded “guilty to the charge,” but promised to obey the law in the future, after which the judge remarked, “Mr. Walker I shall dismis your case with costs.” Walker said that he was “in embarresed circumstances and could not pay the costs.” The judge replied that he would consider the case overnight and pronounce sentence in the morning. Standing before the judge the next day, Walker detected “a rougish twinkle in his eye” which he interpreted as “an omen of good.” “Mr. Walker,” the judge declared, “I have considered your case, and I shall dismiss you with a fine of 6 cents.” Walking to the clerk’s desk, the relieved man laid down a dime. When told there was no change, Walker replied, “keep the 4 cents … in interest against the U.S.” (Larson and Larson 1980, 2:749-50).
Such lenient judicial rulings against Mormon polygamists upset many of the church’s enemies. But the action ultimately ushered in a new era of positive Mormon/non-Mormon relationships. Much of the improved political atmosphere can be directly traced to church leaders’ newly formed allegiance with the Republican party and the willingness of many Gentiles to accept Mormonism minus polygamy.
1. The Manifesto was incorrect on several other points as well. Though Woodruff may have not been teaching or advocating polygamy, his counselors and several apostles were. As the 3 October 1890 Salt Lake Tribune wryly noted: “Our recollection is that [Woodruff] says he knows nothing of such marriages. That is, he personally has not given his written consent to them. He was not present at the marriages. No one has told him since. Hence, he knows nothing of them.”
Regarding the Manifesto’s explanation of why the Endowment House was torn down, the 2 October Tribune correctly noted that the claim that the “Endowment house was torn down because there were to be no more plural marriages, no one believes at all; because, on point of fact, the Endowment House had been raided by United States Marshals and was considered contaminated. It was on dangerous ground and was liable to be seized by the receiver in the escheat cases. It was so public that it was impossible to carry on the usual business without danger of discovery, and in the meantime, the Logan Temple had been completed. Finally, as was testified to in the cases before Judge Anderson last autumn, such a place was not necessary for the celebration of plural marriages.” In addition, the work generated by demolishing the building served as an effective public works project for unemployed Mormons brought to the city to improve the Mormon position at the voting polls.
Perhaps Woodruff’s most interesting claim in the statement was that he was submitting to the laws of the land which forbade polygamy. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1879 had declared the anti-polygamy legislation of 1862 constitutional. Eleven years passed before the church began professing obedience to the law.
2. Woodruff is considered the “Father of Mormon Temple Work.” For details on this aspect of his life, see Van Wagoner and Walker 1980, 398-99.
3. Church president Heber J. Grant noted in a 15 November 1935 letter to Katherine H. Allred that “for a period of time after the issuing of the manifesto, plural marriages were performed in Mexico, the officials of the Mexican government expressing the desire that more Mormon children should be born in that Republic, as the Mormons were the best citizens of Mexico.”
4. On 21 April 1911, George F. Gibbs, secretary to the First Presidency, wired Smoot that “the use of [Canada] was a mistake on our part, please strike it out, as the word ‘Mexico’ only should be used” (Smoot Collection).
5. Woodruff had always held this view. In a May 1882 letter to Moses Franklin Farnsworth he had counseled: “Concerning your families, I think it would be wisdom for our brethren to have one wife under the roof where he lives, if his circumstances will permit it. But we do not intend to cast off any of our wives and children because of the Edmunds bill, or any other Bill, but to exercise what prudence and wisdom we can in these matters” (Carter 1958-75, 3:194-96). In his 3 October 1885 journal Woodruff wrote: “I would rather be shot dead in the Streets or struck with lightening than to Desert my children Break my Covenants turn my wives into the Street” (Kenney, 8 [3 Oct. 1885]: 337); see also ibid., 520.