The Smoot Hearings and the 1891 testimony of Wilford Woodruff, George Q. Cannon, and Joseph F. Smith before the Master in Chancery had demonstrated that church leaders were capable of obscuring details to protect the church and themselves. At the conclusion of the Smoot Hearings, Carl Badger reflected on his disappointment at the casuistry of members of the Mormon hierarchy. “I believe our honor is more to us than anything on earth,” he wrote in a personal letter. “If as a people we had strictly observed the Manifesto, I believe that our example would have challenged the admiration of the world; but we have thought that there is something higher than honesty, and behold our confusion.” Badger yearned for “simple honesty, the facts … a remedy from which we shrink—but I pray for the last time, I wish it were possible for me to hurl in the teeth of the world the accusation and the boast: While you have been cruel, we have been honest” (Badger to “My Dear Charlie,” 22 June 1906, Badger Collection).
Badger was not the only one to view with disappointment the testimony of church leaders. Many recalled the belief of Apostle John Henry Smith, later recanted, that “the [Woodruff] Manifesto is only a trick to beat the devil at his own game” (Proceedings 4:13)1 and saw Joseph F. Smith’s 1904 Manifesto and subsequent official statements as more of the same conniving. In the face of past inconsistencies in statements and actions of church leaders, powerful Quorum of the Twelve president F. M. Lyman led the 1904 task force which set about to convince the Saints and others that the church was now intent on suppressing polygamy.
During an 8 December 1906 conference at Colonia Juarez, the heart of post-Manifesto polygamy country, Lyman warned “those who feel that their rights are curtailed who cannot obtain the privileges which belong to them. We do not want men to trouble us. The Bishop & High Council must take care of such characters if necessary cast them out. No plural marriages are to be permitted. No man in the world is authorized to solemnize such marriages” (Anthony W. Ivins Journal, 8 Dec. 1906). Lyman consistently warned members of his quorum that “it was the duty of the 12 to instruct people where we visit that plural marriages have ceased” (ibid., 7 July 1909). He even went so far as to make a public example of a friend who unwisely claimed to have entered into an unauthorized plural marriage. The quorum president instigated ecclesiastical and civil actions which resulted in the man’s excommunication and imprisonment.
In 1909 church authorities established a committee consisting of apostles Lyman, John Henry Smith, and Heber J. Grant to investigate new polygamy.2 The group was authorized to “call into council” anyone suspected of encouraging plural marriage (George F. Richards Diary, 14 July 1909). The majority of summoned witnesses were uncooperative and evasive. Lyman commented during one such cross-examination that “he answers just like the other brethren who are in the same position.… One would think these brethren had rehearsed their pieces” (Joseph Musser Journal, 22 July 1909). But some spoke their mind. The bishop of the Grantsville (Utah) Ward, for example, argued that “no matter what policy the church may adopt if the Lord will reveal to a man that he should take a plural wife & indicate the way that he can get in it, it is all right for him to take her” (Anthony W. Ivins Journal, 20 Sept. 1909).
By mid-1910 church leaders had recognized a need for an official policy for dealing with new polygamists. In an 8 September Quorum of the Twelve meeting Reed Smoot proposed that “all new cases should be excommunicated from the church and that action should be taken at once. Also that the church should not retain any man taking a plural wife after the Manifesto in a church position where people were asked to support him” (Smoot Journal, 8 Sept. 1910, Smoot Collection). Smoot again proposed the plan on 27 September. But his fellow apostles “thought that a wholesale slaughter should not be made of those who were induced to take plural wives by Taylor, Cowley, Woodruff and Merrill before Pres Smith’s declaration of April 1904, but drop them as fast as conditions will permit without making a great stir about it” (ibid., 27 Sept. 1910).
Joseph F. Smith, who was ill, had not been involved in quorum meetings in which disciplinary measures for new polygamists had been discussed. Smoot visited the ailing church president on 28 September and urged him to make a public statement in the upcoming General Conference “to prove to our people we are sincere in our opposition to new polygamy” (ibid., 28 Sept. 1910). During a quorum meeting on 5 October, the apostles spent two hours discussing what to do with known post-Manifesto polygamists. Smoot again proposed dropping them from their church positions, but his motion would not carry. First Presidency counselor Anthon H. Lund suggested at least that they not present for a sustaining vote at the coming General Conference the leadership of the church’s auxiliary organizations in order to “avoid presenting any such person.” The quorum agreed upon the wording of a circular letter to be sent to all stake presidents instructing excommunication for anyone “who advises, counsels, or entices any person to contract a plural marriage … as well as those who solemnize such marriages, or those who enter into such unlawful unions” (Clark 1965-75, 4:210).
The 8 October Salt Lake Tribune sent out a shockwave when it listed more than two hundred Mormon men, including six apostles, who had taken post-Manifesto wives. President Anthon H. Lund, addressing General Conference later that day, called attention to the numerous accounts of new polygamy being reported. He stressed that plural marriage was against the rules of the church, then read the letter of instructions the quorum had prepared for stake leaders. Joseph F. Smith, speaking after Lund, cited his 1904 manifesto. “After the Church had spoken thus plainly,” he said, “we took it for granted that none of its members would be found disobeying its voice. But in the face of this action, emphasized repeatedly in private and public by us, and by the apostles as well, we now find that some person or persons have assumed authority to solemnize plural marriages, and that men and women have entered into polygamous relations through having been married under such pretended authority.” Without providing names, he announced that “some of the violators of this official action of the Church have been tried on their fellowship, and have been excommunicated. But there are rumors afloat (and some of these rumors appear to be well founded) that there are still others equally guilty, and it is to such cases that we desire to direct your attention” (ibid., 217-18).
Over the weekend the demand for the Saturday Tribune was so great that the paper reissued the list of new polygamists on Monday with a few added names. The editor of the paper sarcastically explained that he wished to publish the revised list of two hundred twenty names “to bring it to the attention of Apostle Francis M. Lyman, who at Logan recently declared ecclesiastical war against this class of men, whom he designated as ‘skullduggers.’” “In this list alone,” the paper continued, “is furnished enough to keep the president of the twelve busy disciplining and excommunicating while we look up some more cases for him.” The paper considered the church’s efforts to purge polygamy insincere. “Apostle Lyman’s recent little splurge of indignation was no more and no less than a bluff—which fooled nobody in particular, and least of all The Tribune.”
The accusations of the Salt Lake City paper were of special concern to Reed Smoot, who would soon have to return to Washington and face President Taft and other government leaders. Though the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve on 8 November had decided to remove from ecclesiastical positions men who had taken post-Manifesto wives, Smoot worried about President Smith’s less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of the measure (John Henry Smith Journal, 8 Nov. 1910). On 15 November the senator and F. M. Lyman met with the First Presidency to clarify the issue. Smoot noted in his diary that church leaders were in essential agreement that “All cases between the Woodruff manifesto and 1904 should be dealt with according to the circumstances and if drawn into by Apostles they would not be excommunicated but would be relieved of all positions in the church where the people were asked to vote for them.” President Smith withheld his approval on the latter point until the following day but then appeared to agree.
Two of the new polygamists listed in the 8 October Salt Lake Tribune were ex-apostles Matthias Cowley and John W. Taylor. At the time of their resignations both men presumed that when the storm had blown over they would be reinstated to their former positions. One of Taylor’s plural wives told a son that in 1905 Joseph F. Smith had said to both men, “You brethren are called upon to make this sacrifice, but you will lose nothing from it. When things quiet down you will be reinstated” (Samuel W. Taylor interview with Nettie M. Taylor, 15 Jan. 1936, 6, Taylor Collection). Cowley expressed the same understanding to another of Taylor’s sons in 1937: “When we were in council relative to our trouble, brother [Charles W.] Penrose remarked, ‘These brethren (Taylor and Cowley) are not on trial nor have they committed any offense, but if they are willing to offer the sacrifice and stand the embarrassment, we will admit them back after the situation clears’” (Raymond W. Taylor to Samuel W. Taylor).
But opposition from apostles F. M. Lyman, Reed Smoot, and Smoot’s colleagues in the Senate made it impossible to return the two to the quorum. Carl Badger noted in a 21 February 1907 letter to his wife that Smoot said “if Taylor and Cowley are brought back and placed in the quorum of the apostles nothing will save us from the wrath of the American people.” Badger agreed: “To think of it as being possible is to make the Church out a hypocritical fraud” (Badger Collection).
Cowley, less combative than John W. Taylor, did not initially harbor ill feelings towards other church leaders. “I have no fault to find, no opposition, no kicking, no grumbling,” he wrote to Jessie N. Smith in 1906. “I love all of my brethren, although there are times when I think some of them do not know my heart, and are laboring under misunderstanding of the causes and motives which have prompted my course.” Cowley was particularly gracious toward “our beloved leader, Pres. Joseph F. Smith. He is not responsible for the unhappy conditions that have been forced upon us. I know he is awfully tried. God bless and protect him forever” (Smith 1953, 462). John W. Taylor felt less generous towards his brethren. Visited in Mexico by apostles John Henry Smith, Francis M. Lyman, and Anthony W. Ivins, Taylor accused the church of cowardice in giving up plural marriage in the face of government pressure.
The failure to reinstate Cowley and Taylor into the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as promised estranged them even more from other church leaders. For their part in taking additional plural wives and encouraging others to do so, they were summoned to appear before the Quorum of the Twelve on 13 October 1910. Neither man responded. Francis M. Lyman issued another summons for Taylor on 15 February 1911. Three days later, Taylor stormed into the office of the First Presidency, ordered President Lund and Patriarch John Smith out and demanded an interview with President Joseph F. Smith and his counselor John Henry Smith. For more than two hours he reportedly shouted threats (George Albert Smith Letterbooks, 18 Feb. 1911). Nevertheless, Taylor’s trial before his former quorum members began on 22 February 1911. Throughout the questioning Taylor maintained a non-penitent, arrogant attitude, saying that he wished never again to be associated with his quorum in time or eternity. On 28 March he was excommunicated for “insubordination to the government and discipline of the Church.”
Reed Smoot, who had been in Salt Lake for the Taylor trial, was convinced that the upsurge in opposition to new polygamy was a result of the numerous newspaper and magazine articles flooding the country. He reiterated his long-standing position that to lessen outside criticism church action should be taken against all cases of post-1890 polygamy. “The church or church authorities cannot or will not be believed,” he argued, “if men violating the rules … are sustained as officers of the church” (Smoot Journal, 16 March 1911).
After returning to Washington, Smoot sent a 31 March telegram to Joseph F. Smith repeating his recommendation to remove new polygamists from church positions. The senator expressed disappointment at President Smith’s reply. “He does not understand the feeling of the people,” Smoot wrote in his diary on 2 April of his church leader; “the country will not accept excuses and they will not consider it humiliating a man to punish him for same. It is evident no action against the persons taking polygamist wives before 1904 will be taken.”
Five days later President Smith requested Smoot to make arrangements for releasing a statement through the Associated Press that had been prepared for General Conference. This statement answered charges of new polygamy made by various news articles. To Smoot’s disappointment the statement made no mention that new polygamists would be released from their positions. Concerned that President Roosevelt would not be satisfied, Smoot wired for more specific directions. “If the President inquires about new polygamy,” Smith wired back on 11 April, “tell him the truth, tell him 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.” Careful not to expose his own involvement in post-Manifesto marriages, Smith defended post-Manifesto polygamists as individuals who “married in good faith.” “Under the circumstances,” Smith asked Smoot, “could we consistently be expected to humiliate them by releasing them?”
Those who married plural wives after April 1904 or who encouraged others to do so were a different matter in the minds of church leaders. John W. Taylor and many other new polygamists were excommunicated. But Matthias Cowley, though more of an influence in performing post-Manifesto marriages than Taylor, did not meet the same fate. Appearing before the quorum on 10 May 1911, Cowley was much less defiant than Taylor had been, though his testimony was no less revealing. He laid the blame for his “performing surreptitious plural marriages on his ‘file leaders,’ “from whom he claimed to have received authority. He also viewed the “announcements of Presidents as ‘bluffs’ for the world and not as taking away authority already conferred” (Charles A. Penrose Journal, 10 May 1911).
But Cowley, unlike Taylor, wanted to stay in the church. “I want you brethren,” he said, according to the official minutes, “to prove John W. Taylor a false prophet when he said that I would be excommunicated from the Church. If there is anything I can do to make good our honor to the nation and to the saints I am willing to do it. I want you to know that I am not rebellious and never have been and if I have erred it has been because of these circumstances and the example of my brethren. I am in harmony with you and I would like you to put me upon my honor to make that good in the future. I would rather die than be cut off from the Church.”
Cowley, “deprived of the right and authority to exercise any of the functions of the Priesthood,” remained in a state of limbo until he signed a prepared statement for the First Presidency in 1936. “I have been deceived,” the statement began, “and … wherever and whenever I have given counsel or taken action contrary to the principles, rules, and regulations of the Church, as adopted by the Church and in force, I have been wholly in error in counsel, and my actions have been null and void. This I now plainly see and freely confess, and humbly and with a contrite spirit of true repentance I ask forgiveness” (Deseret News, 1 April 1936). Though he was accepted into full fellowship, Cowley apparently had signed the statement for reasons other than confession. He admitted to a son of John W. Taylor that “they held us up, in the eyes of the lay members of the church, and the nation, as the ‘ring leaders’ when in fact we were no more guilty than those who supposedly took action against us” (Raymond Taylor to Samuel W. Taylor, 3 May 1937).
Cowley and Taylor were not out of harmony with church leaders from 1890 to 1904. Though they may have been “sacrificial lambs” when they resigned their quorum positions for involvement in post-Manifesto polygamy, the action against their church membership was because of post-1904 activities. The two ex-apostles interpreted Joseph F. Smith’s 1904 declaration differently than other church leaders. Taylor, in his 22 February 1911 trial, explained his view that “the Lord was anxious to put everybody upon his own responsibility and take the responsibility from the Church.”
Cowley and Taylor were only two of many who interpreted the 1904 statement this way. Several prominent Salt Lake and Davis County patriarchs were also excommunicated for holding these views and for performing plural marriages. When he received word of the patriarchs’ involvement, President Smith issued another church-wide directive to stake presidents. “Having reason to believe that some members of the Church are secretly engaged in advising and encouraging others to enter into unauthorized and unlawful marriages,” he warned, “we direct your special attention to them, with a request that any information received by you from time to time relating to cases of this character be followed up and investigated with a view to having this class of offenders placed on trial for their fellowship in the Church, as we regard them equally culpable with actual offenders” (Clark 1965-75, 4:301).
Mormon polygamists who today rationalize plural marriage on the grounds that polygamy can be rightly maintained by a special dispensation of priesthood authority independent from the church organization usually refer to themselves as Fundamentalists. Most Fundamentalists trace their authority to President John Taylor, who, on the underground at the John W. Woolley home in Centerville, Utah, in September 1886, allegedly “asked the Lord if it would not be right under the circumstances to discontinue plural marriages.” Taylor’s son, John W., claimed he found among his father’s papers after his death the response to this question—”a revelation given him of the Lord, and which is now in my possession, in which the Lord told him that the principle of plural marriage would never be overcome” (Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 29 March 1892). In his 22 February 1911 trial before the Quorum of the Twelve, young Taylor explained that several individuals, including Joseph Fielding Smith (later to become church president), took the document and made a copy of it.3
Fundamentalists insist that President Taylor secretly commissioned several priesthood holders to continue the practice of plural marriage as individuals rather than as church representatives. John W. Woolley’s son, Lorin C. Woolley, in a 1912 account of the events at the Woolley home related a visionary experience of President Taylor wherein he supposedly told Woolley and others one morning that “I had a very pleasant conversation all night with the Prophet Joseph.” Regarding a proposed document which would surrender plural marriage, Woolley has Taylor saying, “Brethren, I will suffer my right hand to be cut off before I will sign such a document.”
In 1922, Fundamentalist Joseph W. Musser recorded several oral accounts of the 1886 revelation from Lorin Woolley and Daniel Bateman, another individual reported to be in attendance at the 1886 meeting. Musser’s consolidated these accounts and arranged for their publication in 1929 in what has become the standardized version of the event accepted by the majority of Fundamentalists. Whereas the 1912 account referred only to the month of September 1886, the 1929 account specifically dates the incident as 26-27 September 1886. This expanded account details a visit to Taylor not only from Joseph Smith but from Jesus Christ as well. An eight-hour meeting is said to have been held on 27 September. Those present—John Taylor, George Q. Cannon, L. John Nuttall, John W. Woolley, Samuel Bateman, Charles H. Wilkins, Charles Birrell, Daniel R. Bateman, Samuel Seden, George Earl, Julia E. Woolley, Amy Woolley, and Lorin C. Woolley—were reportedly put “under covenant that he or she would defend the principle of Celestial or Plural Marriage, and that they would consecrate their lives, liberty and property to this end” (Joseph Musser Journal, 12 March, 9 April, 14 June, 5 July, and 6, 7, 10, 13 Aug. 1922).
Musser records that President Taylor called together Samuel Bateman, Charles H. Wilkins, George Q. Cannon, John W. Woolley, and Lorin C. Woolley and gave them authority both to perform plural marriage ceremonies and to ordain others with authority to perform polygamous marriages, thus insuring that children would be born to polygamous parents each year thereafter to the Millennium. The account relates one of the most important prophetic statements in Fundamentalist history. “In the time of the seventh president of this Church,” Taylor reportedly said, “the Church would go into bondage both temporally and spiritually and in that day … the One Mighty and Strong spoken of in the 85th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants would come.”4
Numerous Fundamentalists since have declared themselves the One Mighty and Strong. Such claims became a serious enough concern during President Joseph F. Smith’s administration that the First Presidency published a lengthy discussion of the matter in the 13 November 1905 Deseret News. Those proclaiming themselves the “One Mighty and Strong” were declared “vain and foolish men” who make the claim to “bolster up their vagaries of speculation, and in some cases their pretensions to great power and high positions they were to attain in the Church.” During a special priesthood meeting on 8 April 1912, President Smith announced that the “One Mighty and Strong to deliver as referred to in the D and C Sec. 85 has no application to the Church at present” (A. W. Ivins Journal, 8 April 1912).5
President Smith made a total of nine public statements denouncing new polygamy during his administration (Clark 1965-75, 5:194). His successor, Heber J. Grant, seventh president of the church, experienced no fewer difficulties. Though a polygamist himself, Grant was pragmatic and moved in wealthy and powerful circles where plural marriage was the chief stumbling block preventing Mormon entrance into mainstream America. During the April 1931 General Conference, Grant added a new dimension to his campaign to eradicate Mormon polygamy. In addition to excommunication—”the limit of Church jurisdiction”—he further announced that “we have been … [and] are entirely willing to give such legal assistance as we legitimately can in the criminal prosecution of such cases.” Explaining the need to distance orthodox Mormons from polygamists, he added: “We are willing to go to such limits … because we wish to do everything humanly possible to make our attitude toward this matter so clear, definite, and unequivocal as to leave no possible doubt of it in the mind of any person” (ibid., 292).
During a 25 July 1937 interview conducted in London, Grant expanded his view that the demands of the law superseded any commandment to live polygamy. “We never believed polygamy was wrong,” the church president said, “and never will.” Despite the fact that Grant had violated his 1891 amnesty agreement with the government, had attempted unsuccessfully to take Fanny Woolley as a post-Manifesto plural wife, and had been found guilty of “unlawful cohabitation” in 1899, he declared in his newspaper interview that “one of the cardinal rules of the Church is to obey the law. So long as polygamy is illegal we ourselves will strictly enforce the law” (Salt Lake Tribune, 26 July 1937).
President Grant had a well-qualified counselor to assist him in suppressing polygamy. J. Reuben Clark, Jr., a respected legal scholar, had extensive experience with the federal government as an adviser to the State Department and as ambassador to Mexico. Clark, like many young Mormons of his generation, had assumed that Wilford Woodruff’s 1890 Manifesto ended the polygamy issue once and for all. But investigations into new polygamy revealed that Apostle John W. Taylor, husband of one of Clark’s cousins, had married several post-Manifesto plural wives. Another cousin had become the post-Manifesto plural wife of a Salt Lake City patriarch. Clark’s aunt, Fanny Woolley, who had been courted after the Manifesto by Heber J. Grant, later became the plural wife of stake president George C. Parkinson in a 1902 Colorado ceremony performed by Apostle Matthias Cowley. The bishop of Clark’s ward in Grantsville, Utah, had also married a plural wife in 1900 and as late as 1909 was advocating that “if [people] could find a way to get in, it would be all right to take a plural wife.” The most bitter polygamous pill for Clark to swallow was the disclosure that his venerated uncle, Patriarch John W. Woolley, had been excommunicated in 1914 for performing plural marriages.6
These discoveries of polygamy so close to home, especially those tarnishing his mother’s maiden name, caused Clark acute embarrassment. Though relatively unfamiliar with the arguments for new polygamy due to his near-constant absence from Utah, Clark, as a rank-and-file church member, drafted a 1923 anti-polygamy statement he hoped the First Presidency would adopt in fall General Conference. Although President Grant did not adopt Clark’s brief, he was already waging a campaign against Fundamentalists, particularly Clark’s cousin, Lorin C. Woolley. Grant dismissed Woolley’s claims to special authority, insisting that the man was a “pathological liar,” and saw to it that he was excommunicated for “pernicious falsehood” in January 1924 (Anderson 1979, 146).
After Clark’s April 1933 appointment to the First Presidency, Lorin C. Woolley tried to link his cousin in various ways to his Fundamentalist claims. President Clark ultimately put the rumors to rest, after Woolley’s death, by asserting that “whether [Lorin] knew he was falsifying I did not know, but he did not tell the truth” (Quinn 1983, 183).
One of Clark’s initial assignments upon joining the First Presidency was to write a lengthy document outlining the church’s opposition to polygamy. This position paper was approved by the other members of the First Presidency and issued as an “Official Statement.” “As to this pretended revelation,” the statement, as published in the 18 June 1933 Church Section of the Deseret News, read, “the archives of the Church contain no such revelation; nor any evidence justifying a belief that any such revelation was ever given. From the personal knowledge of some of us, from the uniform and common recollection of the presiding quorums of the Church, from the absence in the Church Archives of any evidence whatsoever justifying any belief that such a revelation was given, we are justified in affirming that no such revelation exists.” Whether unintentionally so or not, Clark’s statement proved to be incorrect on virtually every point. Though church leaders did not have the original revelation, they owned the copy which John W. Taylor had given Wilford Woodruff in 1887. Furthermore, Heber J. Grant was in attendance at the 22 February 1911 Quorum of the Twelve meeting when the 1886 revelation was discussed and entered into the minutes.
One month after the First Presidency issued the statement, Frank Y. Taylor donated the original handwritten 1886 revelation to the Church. A year later President Grant’s counselor and cousin, Anthony W. Ivins, noted in a 1934 letter to the wife of Fundamentalist leader Rulon C. Allred: “The … purported revelation of John Taylor has no standing in the Church. I have searched carefully, and all that can be found is a piece of paper found among President Taylor’s effects after his death. It was written in pencil and only a few paragraphs [and] had no signature at all. It was unknown to the Church until members of his own family claimed to have found it among his papers. It was never presented or discussed as a revelation by the presiding authorities of the Church” (Anthony W. Ivins Papers, 10 Feb. 1934, LDS Church Archives).7
Though the Mormon position is that the authenticity of the 1886 revelation has not been verified, the First Presidency has never released the paper for critical scrutiny. Even if tests proved the document to be in John Taylor’s hand, the official Mormon position would still be that the revelation was not submitted to a General Conference of the Saints for approval and was therefore not binding. Fundamentalists would argue that when God has spoken, he does not need the confirming vote of the church. They would also point out that the church has systematically suppressed critical documents related to the 1886 revelation. Not only the original handwritten copy, but the journals of George Q. Cannon, John Taylor, and Francis M. Lyman, as well as portions of the L. John Nuttall journals have been tightly controlled by the First Presidency. Even serious Mormon scholars are denied access to these documents.
“The suppression of Church records in the past,” Fundamentalist writer Fred Collier argued in 1981, “especially in a selective way by denying those who believe in the old ways access even to the General Archives has created a great suspicion for the Church in the minds of thousands of Fundamentalist believing people, who feel that the problem is not in a genuine lack of extant evidence but in its inaccessibility in the hands of those whose purposes the truth would not serve.… The real problem is not so much the lack of evidence to demonstrate its veracity [e.g., the 1886 revelation of John Taylor] as it is with the problems which it creates for the Church if accepted as authentic” (pp. 2, 12).
1. During this period considerable attention was given to the authorship of the Woodruff Manifesto. George Reynolds, secretary to the First Presidency, testified at the Smoot Hearings that he, Charles Penrose, and John R. Winder edited the work for publication (Proceedings 2:52-53).
Thomas J. Rosser, in a sworn statement, described a 24 May 1908 meeting in Bristol, England, where a variety of questions were asked of Penrose. When asked if the Manifesto was a revelation he answered, “Brethren, I will answer that question, if you will keep it under your hats. I, Charles W. Penrose, wrote the Manifesto with the assistance of Frank J. Cannon and John White. It’s no revelation from God, for I wrote it. Wilford Woodruff signed it to beat the Devil at his own game” (Newson 1956, 6-8).
Penrose’s involvement with the writing of the Manifesto is supported by a statement of Matthias F. Cowley, who declared during a Quorum of the Twelve meeting 10 May 1911: “Brother Penrose told me once in the city of Mexico, that he had written the manifesto, and it was gotten up so that it did not mean anything and President [Joseph F.] Smith had told me the same.” D. Michael Quinn has documented the editing steps in which Woodruff’s handwritten manifesto of 510 words was cut to 356 words on 24 September 1890. That morning the First Presidency was busy with other matters and asked George Reynolds, Charles W. Penrose, and John R. Winder to “take the document and arrange it for publication.” After this group worked on it for a time, George Q. Cannon “suggested several emendations, which were adopted.” At 2:30 p.m. the revised work was read to the meeting of the First Presidency and three apostles, and “one or two slight alterations were made in it.” Afterwards George Reynolds incorporated the document into a telegram—the published version of the Wilford Woodruff Manifesto (Quinn 1985, 44-45).
2. George F. Richards later became a member of this committee and served as its secretary. See Richards Journal, 14, 15, 22 July, 22 Sept. 1909.
3. The John Taylor Papers in LDS Church Archives contain a typewritten copy of the revelation with the notation: “Revelation given to John Taylor, September 27, 1886, copied from the original manuscript by Joseph F. Smith, Jr., August 3, 1909.” Quinn has noted that in 1887 John W. Taylor gave President Wilford Woodruff a collection of John Taylor articles, including the 1886 revelation, which was eventually deposited in the Joseph F. Smith Collection in LDS Church Archives. Quinn points out that John W. Taylor was correct in 1911 when he said he had the original 1886 revelation in his possession. Taylor’s brother, Frank Y. Taylor, donated it to the First Presidency on 18 July 1933 (1985, 28-29).
4. For a discussion of this 1886 event from a mainstream Mormon perspective, see M. Anderson 1979. A comparable study from the Fundamentalist point of view is Collier 1981.
5. For a thorough discussion of the “One Mighty and Strong” issue, see Wright 1963, 27-50.
6. For details on these situations, see Quinn 1983, 180-81; Parkinson 1967, 251; Minutes of the Quorum of the Twelve, 10 May 1911; and A. W. Ivins Journal, 20 Sept. 1909.
7. The most significant mainstream Mormon work on the background of the 1886 revelation is M. Anderson 1979; see also Jessee 1959.