The Smoot Hearings (January 1904 to February 1907) examined far more than the specific charges brought against Smoot. The entire structure of the Mormon church was closely scrutinized by the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections. A great deal of attention was devoted to the church’s commercial and political activities, although post-Manifesto polygamy commanded the center ring throughout the investigation.
President Joseph F. Smith, the first witness called by those protesting against Smoot, was subpoenaed to appear before the investigating committee in early March 1904. His five days of testimony, together with that of other church authorities, confirmed the accusations of critics who claimed church leaders were in violation of laws against polygamous activities. Members of the hierarchy admitted to serious infractions of both church and civil law. President Smith, defending his unlawful cohabitation with his five wives, pleaded for understanding. He explained that he preferred “to meet the consequences of the law rather than abandon my children and their mothers; and I have cohabited with my wives—not openly, that is, not in a manner that I thought would be offensive to my neighbors—but I have acknowledged them; I have visited them” (Proceedings 1:129).
Despite Smith’s emotional defense for his illegal actions, investigators found his behavior inexcusable. They reminded him of the pledges he had made to secure his personal amnesty and were particularly piqued that he had fathered eleven post-Manifesto children. They frowned upon the church president’s rationalization of his post-Manifesto cohabitation in his statement that “since the admission of the state there has been a sentiment existing and prevalent in Utah that these old marriages would be in a measure condoned. They were not looked upon as offensive, as really violative of law; they were, in other words, regarded as an existing fact, and if they saw any wrong in it they simply winked at it” (ibid., 1:130).
Though admitting his own illegal cohabitation, Smith adamantly insisted that since the Manifesto “there has never been, to my knowledge, a plural marriage performed with the understanding, instruction, connivance, counsel, or permission of the presiding authorities of the church, in any shape or form” (ibid., 1:129). Investigators subsequently turned the church inside out to link Smith directly to new polygamy, but the evidence proved inconclusive.
The post-Manifesto plural marriage most talked about in Washington during the hearings was the June 1896 union of Apostle Abraham H. Cannon with Lillian Hamlin. George Q. Cannon had been deeply grieved by the death of his missionary-son David. His sorrow was the more poignant because the young man had not yet married and hence would have no kingdom in the hereafter. Reminded of the leviratic practices of the Old Testament, George Q. Cannon spoke to his son Abraham about “taking some good girl and raising up seed by her for my brother David.… He told me to think the matter over, and speak to him later about it. Such a ceremony as this could be performed in Mexico, so Pres. Woodruff has said.” Abraham later suggested to his father, in the presence of the entire First Presidency and his uncle Angus Cannon, that the proxy wife should be his cousin Annie Cannon, Angus’s daughter.1 But Abraham’s brother, Frank J. Cannon, later indicated that it was David’s fiancée, Lillian Hamlin, who was married to Abraham in “fulfillment of the biblical instruction that a man should take his dead brother’s wife” (Cannon and Higgins 1911, 176).
Abraham H. Cannon died of meningitis one month after the marriage to Hamlin, so he was beyond reach of the Smoot investigators. But they were after bigger game in Joseph F. Smith, and his alleged complicity in the Cannon marriage offered a way to get at him. Abraham’s plural wife Wilhelmina, who had threatened him with divorce on several occasions, told the Senate committee that her husband had admitted to her in early June 1896 his intention to marry Hamlin. According to Wilhelmina’s testimony, Cannon left Salt Lake City for Los Angeles by train on 18 June 1896 with Elder and Mrs. Joseph F. Smith, Lillian Hamlin, and others. He returned to Salt Lake City on 1 July, seriously ill. But before his 19 July death Wilhelmina said he admitted to her his marriage to Hamlin.
The Smoot investigations focused on the question of who had married Abraham H. Cannon and Lillian Hamlin. Government investigators suspected Joseph F. Smith. The church president denied involvement in the matter. When Salt Lake Tribune editor Patrick H. Lannon prompted John Henry Smith to ask his cousin privately if the charges were true, Joseph F.’s response was again an emphatic “No, sir” (Pusey 1982, 189). When the Senate committee asked the church president who had married the couple, he said he did not know but presumed a marriage had taken place “because they were living together as man and wife.” When they asked what inquiry he had made into the situation, the frustrated investigators were told, “I made no inquiry at all.” “Did you not have any interest in finding out” whether there had been a marriage, attorney Robert W. Tayler persisted. “Not the least,” Smith replied (ibid.).
Even Reed Smoot was nervous about Smith’s curious testimony. After the church president returned to Utah in April 1904, Smoot wrote to him that a Mrs. Stanley was going to state before the committee that Lillian Hamlin told her she “was married to Abram H. Cannon by President Jos. F. Smith, at sea etc.” In reply, Smith informed Smoot on 9 April, “She simply lied.… I have been told by one of her most intimate friends that she herself denies ever having told such a story.” To sooth Smoot’s concern about the trip Smith explained that “I cannot recall a moment when I was in the presence of Mrs. Cannon that my wife was not with us. My wife was seasick while crossing the channel to Catalina Island, and I was with her during the voyage.” Smith suggested that conditions of the trip did not allow for the marriage; the voyage “did not occupy more than two hours and scarcely that long, I think. The boat was filled with excursionists and we all took Deck passage.… Hugh J. Cannon, a brother of Abraham’s was also in our party and was a witness to all our pastime and enjoyments.”
Despite the explanation, Smoot harbored reservations on the matter. Two years later he seemed to be playing the devil’s advocate in a 10 May 1906 letter to President Smith. “[Senator Beverage] said that he had just been reading your testimony in relation to the marriage of Abram H. Cannon,” Smoot wrote. “He did not understand how you, a member of the First Presidency of the Church, could go on a trip with A. H. Cannon and be introduced to a young lady as his wife and have them occupy the position of husband and wife toward each other, it being six years after the issuance of the Manifesto … and not complain of one of the Apostles so acting, and of no action being taken by the Church, unless the Church approved of new marriages or at least allowed them.”
Though Cannon family tradition credits Joseph F. Smith with marrying Lillian Hamlin to Abraham H. Cannon outside U.S. jurisdiction during the excursion to Catalina Island, recent evidence tends to suggest an alternative possibility. Historian D. Michael Quinn in his 1985 analysis of post-Manifesto marriages presents intriguing circumstantial evidence that on 17 June 1896 in the Salt Lake Temple Joseph F. Smith sealed Lillian Hamlin to the deceased and previously unmarried David H. Cannon (pp. 83-84). Abraham H. Cannon stood as proxy for his brother in the ceremony and apparently also acted as proxy in fulfilling the request of their father, George Q. Cannon, that he “raise up seed” for David. Eight months after Abraham’s death Lillian Hamlin gave birth to a daughter “Marba” (Abram spelled backwards). Although the child was named a benefactor of Abraham H. Cannon’s earthly estate, in the Mormon scheme she would be David’s daughter in the hereafter.
Thus Joseph F. Smith may have been truthful, if not completely forthcoming, in denying allegations that he had married the couple on the high seas. Though he did perform the marriage, it could have been a proxy sealing uniting a dead man and his fiancée.2 But government investigators were understandably frustrated with Smith’s testimony. Smith himself felt that he had done little to further Smoot’s chances for being permanently seated. After the church president’s 22 March 1904 testimony, Smoot’s secretary Carl Badger recorded in his diary that Smith said over and over to church attorney F. S. Richards, “I am sorry for Reed. I am sorry for Reed” (see also Bergera 1983).
Others were concerned about the testimony given at the hearings as well. Badger wrote to a friend, “I hope our people will look at this matter in its true light; we have got to learn our lessons, and instead of shouting about the opportunity which we have had of teaching our faith to the world, we ought to dot down the unpleasant but obvious fact, that the lesson which the world is learning from the testimony thus far given is, that we have failed to keep our word. I wish our people could come to the conclusion that this investigation has not been wholly creditable to us” (Badger to R. S. Collett, 21 March 1904).
As soon as President Smith arrived back in Utah, pressures began to build for him to make a statement on new polygamy.3 Reed Smoot, in a 22 March 1904 letter to his colleague E. H. Callister, wished that “President Joseph F. Smith would see his way clear to announce at this coming April Conference that since his visit to Washington he had learned that public sentiment outside of the State of Utah is opposed to a man living in unlawful cohabitation.” Smoot hoped “that hereafter” President Smith’s “advice would be to the Mormon people to arrange their affairs so as to obey the law, and further, that he himself intends to do so. It is my opinion that if this is not done that there will be considerable trouble ahead for our people.”
Callister responded five days later that he did not think making such a statement would be “very wise.” “I do not think we will have any more manifesto on the polygamy subject,” he reported, “as long as Joseph F. is at the head.” But Callister had misread the situation. On 2 April church attorney Franklin S. Richards urged President Smith to say something “to the Conference in regard to the investigations going on in Washington” (Anthon H. Lund Journal, 2 April 1904). Two days later Lund observed in his journal that “we had a counsel meeting in which we discussed the wisdom of saying something to pacify the country. R[udger] Clawson feared that it would do no good but make many hearts ache. He thought that it would be a second manifesto and we had had manifestos enough.” But Lurid “favored letting the Saints know our status as they are beginning to doubt our sincerity or rather that of Pres. Smith before the investigations committee.” In early April the Quorum of the Twelve decided “that we speak to the conference concerning our present conditions and have Pres. Smith make an official declaration that plural marriages should not be celebrated and any one who should undertake to do so would be liable to be cut off from the Church. Bro. Owen [Woodruff] was much opposed to anything against the principle which had given him birth and which would tend to obliterate it” (ibid., 6 April 1904).
On Sunday, April 7, President Smith did indeed present a “Second Manifesto” to the Saints for their sustaining vote. “Inasmuch as there are numerous reports in circulation that plural marriages have been entered into contrary to the official declaration of President Woodruff, of September 26, 1890,” he began, “I, Joseph F. Smith.… do hereby affirm and declare that no such marriages have been solemnized with the sanction, consent, or knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” President Smith was emphatic in his declaration that plural marriages were prohibited: “If any officer or member of the church shall assume to solemnize or enter into any such marriage he will be deemed in transgression against the church, and will be liable to be dealt with according to the rules and regulations thereof and excommunicated therefrom.”
Referring to charges that church leaders were “being dishonest and untrue to our word” respecting the 1891 amnesty, Smith characterized this as “nonsense.” The president called for church sanction of the statement: “I want to see today whether the Latter-day Saints representing the church in this solemn assembly will not seal these charges as false by their vote.” The conference vote, like the 6 October 1890 vote on the Wilford Woodruff Manifesto, supported the measure (Roberts 1930, 6:401).
Though the 1904 Manifesto sought and obtained Mormon confirmation of President Smith’s statements before the Smoot hearings, most Saints knew little of the covert post-Manifesto polygamy that church leaders had been supporting. Public approval of President Smith’s statements proved that church members were willing to “follow the Prophet,” but close study shows that Smith’s Manifesto said nothing new. The utterance, like the Woodruff Manifesto, neither specifically forbade plural marriages outside the United States nor clarified the question of unlawful cohabitation.4 The Second Manifesto was, in the words of President Smith himself, only a “reconfirmation of the Wilford Woodruff Manifesto” (JH, 6 April 1904, 6).
However, the two statements were interpreted differently. The Wilford Woodruff Manifesto was not intended, by those who issued it, to stop polygamy. Virtually all church leaders, either by action or assent, disregarded the Woodruff Manifesto. President Woodruff himself may have married at least one post-Manifesto wife (Quinn 1985, 62-65). Carl Badger succinctly analyzed the 1890 statement after listening to Joseph F. Smith’s Washington testimony. “The truth of the matter,” he wrote in a letter, “is that very few of our people have been willing to admit that the Manifesto was a revelation.” He further observed that “the leading authorities have not encouraged this view, but rather that the necessities of the cause compelled that we openly give up what we secretly clung to” (Badger to Ed Jenkins, 18 March 1904). Although the 1904 Smith Manifesto, like the Woodruff Manifesto, was presented as church policy rather than revelation, violators soon learned that fourteen years of ambiguity on the matter had ended; the church was now committed to ending plural marriage.5
The first official step after April conference was to brief absent apostles on the recent statement. Quorum president Francis M. Lyman sent identical letters on First Presidency stationery to John W. Taylor, John Henry Smith, Reed Smoot, and undoubtedly others on 5 May 1904, informing them of the official declaration and requesting their “co-operation in emphasizing the same in your private conversations and counsels as well as your public utterances, to the end that no misunderstanding may exist among our people concerning its scope and meaning; but on the contrary, that all may [be] given to distinctly understand that infractions of the law in regard to plural marriage are transgressions against the Church punishable by excommunication” (Lyman Letterbooks).6
Francis M. Lyman’s 9 July letter to recalcitrant polygamist and apostle George Teasdale was even more pointed: “Every member of our council, must sustain the stand taken by President Smith and must not talk nor act at cross purposes with the Prophet. What has already been done is shaking the confidence of the Latter-day Saints. We are considered as two-faced and insincere. We must not stand in that light before the Saints or the world.” Lyman then announced the beginning of an anti-polygamy crusade: “The Presidency hold me responsible to see to it that the members of our council be thoroughly advised that we will not be tolerated in anything out of harmony with the stand taken by President Joseph F. Smith before the Senate Committee on the subject of Plural marriage. We must uphold his hands and vindicate the Church” (Lyman Letterbooks).7
Despite the efforts of the church to harmonize official statements with the private posture of its leaders, the government was not through investigating Reed Smoot. His hearings were extended into 1905 and 1906 in hopes that such key witnesses as John W. Taylor, Matthias F. Cowley, Marriner W. Merrill, Anthony W. Ivins, and George Teasdale could be persuaded to testify. Smoot wrote President Smith that several senators were asking why the church did not force Anthony W. Ivins to make the trip. Though Ivins had attended the world’s fair in Saint Louis during September 1904, he refused to testify in Washington. Several years later he told a son why he had not gone: “It is none of the Senate’s business what the Mormons were doing in Mexico, and further, I refused to perjure myself” (H. G. Ivins, 5).8
Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias M. Cowley were at the top of the government’s most-wanted list. Carl Badger blamed much of Smoot’s difficulties on the two. “Apostles Taylor and Cowley must come to Washington,” he affirmed to a friend. “I think we are greatly indebted to [Taylor] for all this ‘unpleasantness,’—if you can refer to a national scandal as such” (Badger to Ed Jenkins, 16 March 1904).
President Smith sent Taylor a telegram in Raymond, Alberta, requesting that he go to Washington. He refused: “I must ask you to excuse me from complying with your request, both on account of my business interests and my own positive disinclinations to do so.” Noting that he was a subject of the Canadian government, Taylor added in his 16 March 1904 letter, “In my official labors as an apostle in the Church, I hold myself entirely subject to your directions, but in a matter so personal and purely political, concocted for the purpose of prying into the domestic relations of men who are in no wise amenable to this class of schemers, nor even to the department of the U.S. government represented by this honorable committee, I must ask to be excused from entering upon a task so humiliating.”
Carl Badger was keenly aware of the church’s predicament over the refusal of many leading Mormons to appear in Washington. Badger told Smoot that he was discouraged with church leaders and voiced his opinion that “something must be done with those who have violated the pledge against the taking of new wives.” Smoot, convinced that the new polygamy was church approved, answered, “Nothing will be done; I believe they were authorized to take the wives” (Badger Journal, 18 Dec. 1904). But the perceptive Badger recognized that the government would not be satisfied until someone paid the price for the church leaders’ violation of their pledges. The youthful secretary was especially concerned over the position the church would find itself in if Taylor and Cowley did not soon testify. He wrote to Ed Jenkins on 24 March 1904 that “we are in a bad place.… I do not hesitate to say that it will be a shame and a disgrace if they do not come” (Badger Collection).
Church leaders sent Apostle John Henry Smith to Mexico to bring back Cowley, who was known by the pseudonym “Westlake.” The wayward apostle could not be found. Angered, Smith ordered church leaders in Mexico to “trace Westlake immediately.” The next day he appeared. After a long conversation with John Henry, “Westlake decided he would not go with me,” Apostle Smith reported (Pusey 1982, 192). Francis M. Lyman was sent on a similar mission to Canada to bring back John W. Taylor. He too returned empty-handed.9 President Smith, upon learning that both Cowley and Taylor refused to testify in Washington, wrote to Smoot on 9 April that “Elders Taylor and Cowley have stated their own cases, and they will have to abide the results themselves” (Smoot Collection).10
The status of the two apostles was as much discussed in quorum meetings as in Washington. Church attorney Franklin S. Richards urged President Smith as early as 18 April 1904 not to present Taylor and Cowley’s names for a sustaining vote in the next conference, advising that “if they did not come and take full responsibility of the conduct to cut them off of the Quorum, and, if necessary, to excommunicate them” (Badger Journal, 18 April 1904). Badger noted in his 12 February 1905 journal that “from all I can learn, if anything is done with Cowley and Taylor, by the leaders of the Church, it will be because they are forced to do something.”
Smoot suffered much pressure from his fellow senators. “If the Church is not guilty of new polygamy, why are the apostles avoiding subpoenas,” he was asked, “why are they hiding now?” “Why does the Church sustain them in their positions?” Carl Badger recognized that something would have to happen soon to relieve the pressure on Smoot. “If nothing is done [about Cowley and Taylor] at the October Conference,” he wrote to his wife Rose in Utah on 9 April 1905, “I would not be in Senator Smoot’s shoes for one million cold cash—to be candid, I would not now” (Badger Collection). Smoot, obviously reaching the same conclusion as his secretary, decided not to support Cowley and Taylor in fall conference when their names were presented to the Saints for a sustaining vote.
Smoot’s position with regard to Cowley and Taylor was supported by many church leaders, including Cowley and Taylor themselves. John Henry Smith noted that he and others “favored Taylor and Cowley doing something to ease public sentiment both at home and abroad” (Pusey 1982, 192). According to Taylor’s wife Nellie, Cowley and Taylor agreed to tender their resignations in an altruistic gesture designed to help both Smoot and the church. “It was better to smooth things over with the Government,” she said, “keep Smoot in the Senate … [by] deposing Cowley and Taylor. Then, when conditions were more favorable, the two could be reinstated.” This motion was voted unanimously by the Quorum of the Twelve according to her testimony (Samuel W. Taylor 8 Jan. 1936 interview with Nellie E. Taylor, Taylor Collection). Anthony W. Ivins, recognizing the political implications of the Taylor and Cowley resignations, wrote Heber J. Grant when he heard of the action: “It might be all right if it were going to deceive anyone except ourselves. We will be the only ones fooled” (Quinn 1985, 103).
Though Cowley and Taylor submitted their resignations on 28 October, church leaders decided to pocket them until the time was most advantageous to disclose them publicly.11 The First Presidency made Smoot aware that the resignations could be used to improve his position if needed. Smoot wrote to First Presidency secretary, George F. Gibbs, on 6 December 1905, “I[f] you decide to use resignations do not make them public until I ask advice as to best time to do it” (Smoot Collection). The next day Smoot was notified that “if you think case will be opened again or you are likely to be expelled by all means withhold resignations and do not make mention of them to any person. F. M. Lyman will be here tomorrow when we will telegraph.” At 3:55 p.m., on 8 December, Gibbs wired, “F. M. Lyman here. When you become convinced action should not be delayed any longer let us know.” Twelve minutes later Gibbs wired again, “Brethren beginning to feel J. W. Taylor and Cowley should not be sacrificed unless required by C[ommittee] on P[rivileges] and E[lections] to save you” (Smoot Collection).12
Smoot wired the next day that he thought he would not be expelled. He also informed the First Presidency, “I have concluded in my own mind that public announcement of resignations [of Cowley and Taylor] made at this late day would have an unfavorable effect upon the country and Senators,” but that he wanted to meet with the president of the United States and “tell him in confidence and—perhaps one or two friends on the committee and ask their advice.” Smoot did not feel comfortable having his fellow apostles become scapegoats to “save my expulsion or to save me.” “If Taylor and Cowley have done no wrong,” he wired the First Presidency, “and their acts meet with the approval of the Brethren for Heavens sake don’t handle them but let us take the consequences” (Smoot Collection).
Quorum president Francis M. Lyman wrote back one week later on 15 December to advise, “You may feel at perfect liberty to use the resignations … where you need to use them. They were not given for your benefit, but for the relief of the church” (Lyman Letterbooks). Smoot returned to Utah for the Christmas holidays and on 1 January 1906 met with President Smith. Together they agreed that on his return to Washington he would tell President Roosevelt that during Quorum of the Twelve investigations Taylor and Cowley had admitted to taking plural wives since the Manifesto, but that it had been done outside the United States. On his four-day train trip back to the capitol, Smoot changed his mind. “If I went to President Roosevelt and told him Taylor and Cowley had admitted their guilt,” he later wrote to President Smith, “the President in his blunt, honest, and personal way would immediately ask me whether they had been excommunicated, and if not, why not.” So Smoot, recognizing that Roosevelt would be “displeased with our adopted policy,” decided against discussing the situation with the president.
In early spring, as General Conference neared, influential apostle Charles W. Penrose wrote to Smoot on 9 March asking that he try to extend the Washington investigations until after conference. “Action may be taken[,] and I believe will[,] then which ought to be placed in a legitimate way upon the record of your case” (Smoot Collection). Two days later Smoot received a letter, dated 7 March 1906, from Apostle Heber J. Grant, who was in Liverpool, England. “It has been my earnest and constant prayer,” the future church president wrote, “that Brothers Taylor and Cowley might be preserved from the shafts of the enemy. I feel sure that if they were sacrificed that it would only be one more concession and that in the near future something else would be demanded” (Smoot Collection).
During conference weekend the Taylor and Cowley resignations were officially accepted on grounds that the two apostles were “out of harmony” with their brethren. The resignations dismayed many Saints who recognized the involvement of a majority of General Authorities in new polygamy and did not accept the “out of harmony” explanation. They instead viewed the much-loved apostles as sacrificial lambs. Anthony W. Ivins noted that in Mexico it was commonly believed “that Brothers Taylor and Cowley were dropped for political reasons only” (Minutes of the Quorum of the Twelve, 10 May 1911). During a 22 July 1909 meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve, some apostles were also openly skeptical about Cowley and Taylor being “out of harmony.” Orson F. Whitney reported that “the Saints don’t consider that they were out of harmony, but simply a necessary sacrifice.” Rudger Clawson modified this view somewhat. “Bros. Taylor and Cowley offered to harmonize themselves with the quorum,” he explained, “they admitted they had been out of harmony, but offered to put themselves right.” After considerable discussion, quorum president F. M. Lyman snapped, “I want this body of men to understand they did not harmonize themselves with the quorum” (Joseph Musser Journal, 22 July 1909).13
After the resignations of Taylor and Cowley, events seemed to flow more smoothly for the church and Senator Smoot. Though the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections recommended his expulsion, the full Senate, influenced by President Roosevelt, refused to act on the recommendation. Smoot was a senator for thirty years and became chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee.
Meanwhile the church began the difficult task of convincing the Mormon and non-Mormon populace that polygamy was past history. In 1907, the First Presidency, with unanimous approval from the Saints in General Conference, issued a statement entitled, An Address: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the World. This sixteen-page document restated the basic beliefs of the church and affirmed that Mormons did not intend to mix politics with religion, were politically loyal to the United States, and did not support polygamy. A clarification was added that those few individuals who continued to practice plural marriage were in defiance not only of civil law but of church law as well. However, these few renegades would prove a perpetual problem for a church anxious to convince a twentieth-century America that Mormons were as anti-polygamous as anyone.
1. See details of this situation in Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 2 Nov. 1890 and 19, 24 Oct. 1894.
2. Joseph Musser reported a 16 February 1914 meeting in his diary with Apostle F. M. Lyman which sheds light on the Cannon-Hamlin situation. Grilled on his polygamy beliefs, Musser remarked that he “heard one of the members of the 1st Presidency … (since dead) justify his son in entering the relation.” “Yes,” Lyman replied, “Geo. Q. Cannon did bring reproach upon the church in letting Abram H. Cannon get into it. He was responsible for Abram’s act. Abram didn’t need the girl—he had a large family, and he destroyed his usefulness in the church. Such men as he, Geo. Q., Apostles Merrill, Teasdale, Cowley, Woodruff and Taylor … bro[ugh]t reproach upon the church, and had done wrong.”
3. Stanley S. Ivins noted in his 29 November 1934 journal the concerned comments of a post-Manifesto plural wife regarding Smith’s testimony: “I met K. K. Steffenson at lunch [about a month ago] and we got to talking about post-manifesto polygamy. His sister was a postman wife of one of the . He said that she had refused to be married by anyone but Pres. Smith and he had married her in the Salt Lake Temple. When he later testified at the Smoot investigation that there had been no authorized post-manifesto plural marriages, she was upset and had her brother, K. K., go to see Pres. Smith about it. He told K. K. to tell his sister that her marriage was O.K., but he had had to say what he did in Washington to protect the Church.”
4. Church leaders obviously intended to continue living with their plural wives. Carl Badger reported in his journal that after Smoot wrote the First Presidency in the latter part of 1904 asking that “unlawful cohabitation be given up,” he was told to “leave these things alone” (22 Dec. 1904).
5. Compelling evidence that some church members in Mexico were forewarned of Smith’s impending declaration and moved up their dates for plural marriages accordingly is discussed by Jorgenson and Hardy 1980, 26.
6. On this same day, Lyman also informed various apostles that permission to perform sealings outside temples was also withdrawn. In a separate letter to John W. Taylor and George Teasdale, he wrote: “As you are aware until within a few years ago the custom prevailed in Canada, Arizona and Mexico … to marry for time only on account of the inconvenience and expense of attending a journey to a temple.… President Woodruff and President Snow, each in his time, authorized some of the Apostles, and perhaps others, to perform sealings for time and eternity in behalf of young couples of those places, and that this authority has been exercised quite freely until this time.” Lyman announced the change in policy: “The council of First Presidency and Apostles have now deemed it expedient and wise to withdraw this authority from those brethren, leaving it solely in the hands of him who holds the keys thereof, and a resolution to this affect has been unanimously passed by the council” (Lyman Letterbooks).
7. Teasdale was a key figure in post-Manifesto plural marriages. Not only did he marry at least two plural wives himself (see Marriner W. Merrill Journal, 17 May 1900; Anthon H. Lund Journal, 24 Jan. 1904; and Orson Pratt Brown Journal, 39), he encouraged and performed many more such marriages. Had it not been for his age and poor health (he died in 1907), he would likely have been dropped from the quorum along with Taylor and Cowley.
8. Reed Smoot in an undated letter to Joseph F. Smith suggests Ivins was likely advised not to go to Washington. “It would seem unwise to me,” the senator wrote, “to have brother Ivins come here to testify, and he is the only one who could testify on this point [the alleged George Q. Cannon authorization letters to Ivins]” (Smoot Collection). Abraham O. Woodruff and George Teasdale were definitely urged by President Smith to remain out of the country during the hearings (see Quinn 1985, 100; George F. Gibbs to George Teasdale, 20 Aug. 1904 and 6 Jan. 1905; First Presidency [Smith, Winder, Lurid] to Teasdale, 2 Nov. 1905—all in Joseph F. Smith Letterbooks).
9. Evidence suggests, however, that John W. Taylor, like Ivins, Woodruff, and Teasdale, was instructed not to go to Washington. Several accounts imply that when F. M. Lyman was in Alberta, Canada, attempting to bring Taylor back, he was told in a dream not to insist on Taylor’s testifying before the Senate committee. See Samuel W. Taylor 8 July 1937 interview with Raymond, Alberta, stake president H. S. Allen, and George Henry Budd to Nellie Todd Taylor, 5 May 1932, both in Samuel W. Taylor Collection. Carl A. Badger’s 8 September 1905 journal entry also verifies the Lyman incident.
Regardless of whether Taylor and/or Cowley had been advised against testifying, Smoot was relieved they did not come to Washington. In a 10 May 1906 letter to Joseph F. Smith, he wrote: “From the intimations I have received, I think that it would be just as well for Cowley and Taylor to keep out of the way until the adjournment of congress. Burrows and Owens think that if the case were reopened and Taylor were subpoenaed, that he could give them light upon a great many points” (Smoot Collection).
10. A few days later, on 15 April, Smith wrote Julius C. Burrows, chair of the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections: “It is with regret, that I inform you of my inability to procure the attendance of Messrs. John Henry Smith, George Teasdale, Marriner W. Merrill, John W. Taylor, and Matthias F. Cowley before the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections.” Explaining that “illness” made it impossible for Smith, Teasdale, and Merrill to testify, Smith concluded, “I am powerless to exert more than moral suasion in the premises” (Clark 1965-75, 4:85-86).
11. Copies of both resignations are in the Smoot Collection.
12. Using code names, Gibbs sent a letter further explaining this action and admonishing, “if you will cast aside for ever all thought of making a sacrifice of zoanthropia [Taylor] and whimper [Cowley] you will begin to see your way brighten, for such a thing cannot be done simply in the hope of avoiding drastic legislation, nor for the purpose of convincing friends that the ziamet [President] is honest” (9 Dec. 1905, Smoot Collection).
13. According to the official minutes, Apostle Charles W. Penrose gave what may be considered a post-1904 view of the “harmony” issue during a 10 May 1911 Quorum of the Twelve meeting: “The charge was made that Brothers Taylor and Cowley were out of harmony with the Twelve with regard to marrying plural wives themselves and encouraging others to take plural wives. They [Taylor and Cowley] said they would answer if they could have five minutes to talk with President Smith, President Smith refused to talk with them and therefore they refused to tell whether they had taken other wives. The question of the scope of the manifesto [Woodruff] was also discussed. The other brethren of the quorum maintained that it covered every place and they [Taylor and Cowley] claimed it referred to the United States. Then the question of their resigning came up. They were out of harmony with regard to plural marriages and they resigned, the matter was kept quiet for a number of months with the hope that they might reconcile themselves with the Brethren later. They seemed to take the ground that they had the right to go ahead and in this were out of harmony.”
In fairness to Taylor and Cowley, however, they were not out of harmony with their pre-1904 quorum. Anthony W. Ivins pointed this out in a 29 January 1923 letter to Price W. Johnson: “The view was taken that the manifesto applied only to the United States, and not to Mexico, or other foreign countries” (Ivins Letterbooks, LDS Archives). Furthermore, as previously discussed, a majority of the pre-1904 quorum, as well as the First Presidency, privately supported post-Manifesto polygamy. The only 1890 apostle to view the Woodruff Manifesto with worldwide application was F. M. Lyman, who led the post-1904 efforts of the hierarchy to purge polygamy from the church. Joseph Eckersley explained in his 2-6 September 1903 journal that after stake president Joseph Robinson had written to the First Presidency requesting clarification on post-Manifesto marriages they sent Apostle Matthias Cowley to conduct a conference. Eckersley noted a private conversation with Cowley who informed him of the “feeling of the authorities respecting the ‘Woodruff Manifesto’ and that Apostle Lyman stood alone on his construction of its meaning and was not in harmony with the rest of the Apostles on that subject.”