Far West was chosen as a site for Mormon resettlement in the summer of 1836 by Missouri church leaders W. W. Phelps and John Whitmer. By the fall of 1838 the city had mushroomed to nearly five thousand inhabitants. As in Ohio earlier, original settlers resented the Mormon presence. Disputes between the Saints and Missourians soon escalated to the point of bloodshed. On 30 October 1838 an undisciplined unit of the Missouri state militia attacked a small Mormon colony at Haun’s Mill, killing seventeen men and boys. The next day militia leaders arrived at Far West demanding that Mormons surrender their leaders, weapons, and property and leave the state. Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, and other prominent Mormons were jailed during the fall and winter of 1838-39 on a long list of trumped-up charges ranging from arson to murder. By the end of April nearly all Missouri Mormons had resettled in the area surrounding Quincy, Illinois.
Difficult as it was, the exodus proved to be the unifying and strengthening force the Saints needed. As soon as Smith reached Illinois after escaping from jail in the spring of 1839,1 he began building a Mormon city on the banks of the Mississippi at Commerce. Renamed Nauvoo, Smith’s city rapidly developed into one of the largest in the state. A special mission “to go over the great waters” to Great Britain sent the twelve apostles on a quest that brought the first of thousands of European Mormon emigrants to America. By the summer of 1841 Nauvoo was home to nearly seven thousand citizens. The thriving metropolis boasted paved streets, schools, dozens of shops, two sawmills, a steam-powered flour mill, a foundry, a tool factory, numerous gardens and orchards, and a cooperative farm on the outskirts of the city. A Nauvoo Agricultural and Manufacturing Association had been incorporated, and a large hotel, the Nauvoo House, was planned. The most ambitious project was a limestone temple that would eventually rise sixty feet above a prominent hill overlooking the Mississippi River.
Much of the city’s progress was due to a colorful newcomer on the Mormon scene: John Cook Bennett. Bennett, a Campbellite minister in Ohio, was acquainted with Sidney Rigdon and other Campbellites-turned-Mormon. The self-trained lawyer, doctor, thirty-third-degree Mason, brigadier general in the Illinois Invincible Light Dragoons, and quartermaster general of Illinois arrived in Nauvoo in August 1840. The absence of the missionary-apostles and the periodic illness of Rigdon may have contributed to a power vacuum in the church. Glib, bombastic, and seemingly aristocratic Bennett filled this void by ingratiating himself into the inner circles of the church; his rapid rise to the hierarchical pinnacles of Mormonism remains virtually unprecedented.
Some long-time church members were uncomfortable with Bennett’s influence on Smith. But Smith, not always a shrewd judge of people, was so impressed by his new convert that he adopted many of Bennett’s personal mannerisms, including his oratorical style, his military dress and bearing, and his habit, no doubt enhanced by Smith’s sometime-secretary W. W. Phelps’s own penchant for alliteration and Latinisms, of using a wide variety of foreign phrases for emphasis in written communication.2 In a 5 January 1841 address, Smith went so far in his enthusiasm for Bennett as to rank the doctor above the ancient apostle Paul. “[Paul] was a good orator,” Smith explained, “but Doctor Bennett is a superior orator, and like Paul is active and diligent always employing himself in doing good to his fellow men” (Ehat and Cook 1980, 59).
When the apostles returned in the summer of 1841 they discovered that, in their absence, Bennett had engineered passage of the liberal Nauvoo charter through the Illinois legislature to create a virtually autonomous city-state and had been “unanimously” elected mayor. In addition, Bennett had either been named or appointed major general of the Nauvoo Legion,3 master in chancery for Hancock County, chancellor of the newly established University of Nauvoo, chief justice of the Nauvoo Municipal Court, and a director of the Nauvoo Agricultural and Manufacturing Association. A January 1841 revelation had declared: “I have seen the work which he hath done, which I accept if he continue, and will crown him with blessings and great glory” (D&C 124:17). Perhaps even more impressive was his 8 April 1841 calling by Smith as “Assistant President” of the church, an appointment that, in the eyes of many Saints, placed him between the prophet and the Quorum of the Twelve.
Despite his “heavenly accolade” and lofty church position, Bennett’s relationship with Smith began to crack in early 1842. Details of the falling out have become muddled by accusations, denials, and countercharges, but a power struggle fueled by disagreements about polygamy seems to have been the major cause. Polygamy, a criminal act under the 1833 Illinois Anti-bigamy Laws,4 was so unacceptable to monogamous nineteenth-century American society that Smith could introduce it only in absolute secrecy. Despite Smith’s explicit denials of plural marriage, stories of “spiritual wifery” had continued to spread.5 Oliver Olney, a Nauvoo Mormon, wrote in his 1842 journal of rumors that “an introduction of principles that would soon be, that the ancient order of God that was formerly, would again have its rounds, as it was in the days of old Solomon and David. They had wives and concubines in abundance, as many as they could support. The secret whispering was, that the same will eventually be again” (p. 5).
Reactions to the rumors varied. Most Saints, many with rigid New England Puritan backgrounds, found polygamy as distasteful as adultery. Joseph Smith’s younger brother, Don Carlos, for example, was reported to have said in June 1841: “Any man who will teach and practice ‘spiritual wifery’ will go to hell, no matter if it is my brother Joseph” (Robinson, The Return 3 [Feb. 1891]: 28). But others apparently accepted polygamy without reservation. The Quorum of Twelve Apostles, though not without exception, proved to be the main source of support from 1843 on. Accustomed to Smith’s revelations which introduced gospel principles “line upon line, precept upon precept,” the majority of the Twelve was prepared by Smith to live polygamy as part of the “restitution of all things.”6
Considerable difficulty for the church was caused by a small group of Mormons who enthusiastically equated Smith’s teachings with “free love.” John C. Bennett evidently subscribed to this notion. Smith, according to his 1 July 1842 account in the Times and Season, received a letter shortly after Bennett arrived in Nauvoo warning him that the doctor was a “very mean man, and had a wife, and two or three children in McConnelsville, Morgan county, Ohio.” Though Bennett had been known in Ohio as early as 1833 by some church leaders, his marriage was apparently a well-kept secret in Nauvoo (TS 2 [1 June 1841]: 431-32). Smith sent Bishop George Miller to Ohio to investigate. Shortly after the January 1841 revelation praising Bennett’s “work,” Miller wrote that Bennett appeared to be an adventurous malcontent who had lived in at least twenty different places and believed himself the “smartest man in the nation … always ready to fall in with whatever is popular.” Miller added that the doctor’s wife, Mary, had “left him under satisfactory evidence of his adulterous connections,” and “it has been Dr. Bennett’s wish that his wife should get a bill of divorcement, but as yet she has not” (TS 3 [1 July 1842]: 842).
This report did not prevent Smith from appointing Bennett assistant president to the church in early April 1841. But three months later Smith received another communication pointing out that “Bennett had a wife and children living” (ibid., 840). This letter, from Smith’s brother Hyrum and William Law soon became public knowledge. Bennett, who had been courting Nauvoo women as a bachelor, found his position among the Saints declining when his marital status became known. Smith alleged that Bennett was so distraught over the exposure that he attempted suicide by poison, and declared that the “public impression” was that Bennett was so “ashamed of his base and wicked conduct, that he had recourse to the above deed to escape the censures of an indignant community” (ibid.). Smith and Bennett remained on relatively good terms for several months after the “suicide attempt,” and in mid-January 1842 they engaged in a friendly series of debates on the issue of “Lamanites and Negroes.”
In a retrospective newspaper account months later, Martha Brotherton, a young Nauvoo woman, reported that during the same week the debates were held she was privately approached by Brigham Young and asked “were it lawful and right … could [you] accept of me for your husband and companion?” Young stated that “Brother Joseph has had a revelation from God that it is lawful and right for a man to have two wives; for as it was in the days of Abraham, so it shall be in these last days … if you will accept of me, I will take you straight to the celestial kingdom.” Brotherton reported that when she hesitated, Young left the room and returned ten minutes later with Smith. “Well, Martha,” she reported the prophet as saying, “just go ahead, and do as Brigham wants you to.… I know that this is lawful and right before God.… I have the keys of the kingdom, and whatever I bind on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever I loose on earth is loosed in heaven.” Martha begged for time to consider the offer, then left for St. Louis, where she published her story in the 15 July 1842 St. Louis Bulletin.
Even before Martha left Nauvoo, rumors of the incident began to circulate. Hyrum Smith, believing the prophet’s public posture that polygamy was not being practiced, publicly addressed the Saints on 7 April 1842 “in contradiction of a report in circulation about Elders Heber C. Kimball, Brigham Young, himself, and others of the Twelve, alleging that a sister had been shut in a room for several days, and that they had endeavored to induce her to believe in having two wives.” Joseph, who addressed the group after Hyrum, added, “There is no person that is acquainted with our principles who would believe such lies” (HC 4:585-86).7
Joseph and Hyrum were not the only Smiths denying the polygamy accusations being thrown against the church. Emma Smith was using her powerful position as president of the church’s all-female Relief Society to protect the prophet from scandal and to suppress the polygamy rumors. “A Record of the Organization and Proceedings of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo,” in the handwriting of secretary Eliza R. Snow, provides substantial evidence of Emma’s opposition to polygamy. In the organizational minutes of 17 March 1842, Emma remarked that members should “deal frankly with each other to watch over the morals and be very careful of the character and reputation of the members of the Institution.” The meaning of her comments became clear during the 24 March meeting when she reported “Clarissa Marvel was accus’d of scandalous falsehoods on the character of Pres[iden]t. Joseph Smith without the least provocation.”
Clarissa, who had lived with Don Carlos Smith’s widow, Agnes Coolbrith Smith, for a year had thought she detected a relationship between Joseph Smith and his widowed sister-in-law—a relationship Bennett also accused Smith of pursuing (Bennett 1842, 256). After considerable pressure from Emma and others, Clarissa marked an X by the statement: “This is to certify that I never have at any time or place, seen or heard any thing improper or unvirtuous in the conduct or conversation of either President Smith or Mrs. Agnes Smith. I also certify that I never have reported any thing derogatory to the characters of either of them.”
During the society’s 30 March meeting Emma read a secret epistle to the group from Joseph and others warning against “iniquitous characters … [who] say they have authority from Joseph or the First Presidency” and advising them not to “believe any thing as coming from us, contrary to the old established morals & virtues & scriptural laws, regulating the habits, customs & conduct of society.” The sisters were urged to denounce any who made polygamous proposals and to “shun them as the flying fiery serpent, whether they are prophets, Seers, or revelators: Patriarchs, Twelve Apostles, Elders, Priests, Majors, Generals, City Councillors, Aldermen, Marshals, Police, Lord Mayors or the Devil, [they] are alike culpable & shall be damned for such evil practices: and if you yourselves adhere to anything of the kind, you also shall be damned.”8
The prophet repeated his warning in a 10 April public address, pronouncing a “curse upon all adulterers, and fornicators, and unvirtuous persons, and those who have made use of my name to carry on their iniquitous designs” (HC 4:587). Though not mentioned by name, “spiritual wifery,” or polygamy, was obviously intended. This was made clear during the Relief Society meeting of 16 March 1844. Emma spoke of “J. C. Bennets spiritual wife system. That some taught it as the doctrine of B[rother] Joseph—she advised that all abide the book of Mormon and D[octrine] and Covenants &c then read that Epistle of President J. Smith written in this Book of Record”—the 30 March 1842 epistle on “the old established morals.” Emma “exhorted [the sisters] to follow the teachings of Pres. J[oseph] Smith from the stand—said their could not be stronger language used than that just read and that these are the words of B[rother] Joseph her husband.”
Despite the prophet’s anti-polygamous teachings “from the stand,” a small group of Smith’s inner circle, including Bennett, were aware that polygamy was being practiced. Bennett’s liberal interpretation of Smith’s teachings and his personal thirst for power resulted in his disaffection from Smith and eventual downfall from the Mormon hierarchy. During a 7 May parade and sham battle of the Nauvoo Legion attended by Bennett’s close friend, Judge Stephen A. Douglas, and other dignitaries from Carthage, Smith refused Major General Bennett’s request to “take command of the first cohort.” He also declined Bennett’s second request to take a position at the rear of the calvary, instead choosing his “own position” at the head of the ranks. Smith’s young son, Joseph III, later recalled that in the sham battle Bennett “lost control of colonel Brower’s horse which he was riding, and it ran away with him. There followed quite a commotion, and some thought a conspiracy to injure Father had been sprung, with confusion as a cloak” (Anderson and Hulmes 1952, 47). The official church account of the incident also saw Bennett’s actions of the day as a plot to have Smith killed (HC 5:4).
Though the conspiracy theory is accepted by some, it is possible that Bennett was merely trying to enhance his own position with the dignitaries by embarrassing Smith. Bennett had earlier announced in the 30 April Nauvoo Wasp that “a sham battle will be fought between the mounted Rifle-men under the immediate command of Lieutenant General Smith, and the Invincibles under the immediate command of Major General Bennett.” Smith, a military novice, unfamiliar with the command of troops, would have been no match for Bennett’s military expertise in the maneuvers. One of Smith’s closest Nauvoo friends suggested that Joseph’s likely response to such an attempt would have been to belittle Bennett. Though he was “social and eaven conviv[i]al at times,” Benjamin F. Johnson said of Smith, “He would alow no arogance or undue liberties[,] and criticism Even by his associates was Rarely Acceptble & Contradiction would Rouse in him the Lion at once For by no one of his Fellows would he be Superseded or disputed” (Zimmerman 1976, 19-20).
If church leaders did conspire to unseat Bennett from his positions of power as he later charged, the sham battle was the turning point. Four days later the first public move to align Bennett with the “spiritual wifery” rumors was undertaken. Church leaders on 11 May drew up a document which announced that the hand of fellowship would be withdrawn from Bennett because “having been labored with from time to time, to persuade him to amend his conduct,” he would not toe the mark of chastity (TS 3 [1 July 1842]: 842).
Six days later on 17 May, Smith sent a letter to church recorder James Sloan instructing him to “be so good as to permit Bennett to withdraw his name from the Church record, if he desires to do so, and this with the best of feelings towards you and General Bennett” (Bennett 1842, 40-41). Two days later at a Nauvoo City Council meeting, Bennett turned over the mayorship to Smith “on account of the reports in circulation in this city this day, concerning the ex-Mayor, and to quiet the public mind.” Asked if he had anything against Smith, the former counselor responded that he had “no difficulty with the heads of the Church.” He further avowed that “any one who has said that I have stated that General Joseph Smith has given me authority to hold illicit intercourse with women is a liar in the face of God.” Smith, not satisfied with Bennett’s answer, requested a more detailed response: “Will you please state definitely whether you know anything against my character, either in public or private?” “I do not,” replied Bennett. “In all my intercourse with General Smith in public and in private, he has been strictly virtuous” (HC 5:38-39.)9
Had Bennett been willing to leave Nauvoo at this point, things would have been much easier for Smith and the church. But the former mayor evidently thought his difficulties with the church would be resolved. “I intend to continue with you,” he informed the city council on 19 May, hoping that “the time may come when I may be restored to full confidence, fellowship, and my former standing in the church” (ibid.). On 25 May, Bennett was told that the document withdrawing his fellowship was to be made public. Alleging that his non-Mormon mother would be devastated by the details of his disfellowshipment, Bennett pleaded for her sake that the document not be published. Smith relented on condition that Bennett make a confession of his involvement in “spiritual wifery” before his Masonic brethren. The next evening, reportedly weeping like a child, Bennett asked forgiveness before one hundred men in the Masonic Hall. To the astonishment of many, Smith pleaded mercy for his former counselor.
Earlier that afternoon of 26 May, while addressing the Relief Society, Smith made a similar request, though not specifically naming Bennett: “Hold your tongues about things of no moment—a little tale will set the world on fire. At this time the truth on the guilty should not be told openly—we must use precaution in bringing sinners to justice [for] in exposing their heinous sins, we draw the indignation of a gentile world upon us.” As soon as Smith had finished, Emma, perhaps feeling that Joseph’s comments had been directed towards her, addressed the group in strong anti-polygamy tones: “Sin must not be covered, especially, those sins which are against the law of God and the Laws of the country—all who walk disorderly must reform, and any knowing of heinous sins against the law of God, and refuse to expose them, becomes the offender.”
Though Bennett’s accounts of his two years in Nauvoo whitewash his own behavior, he was clearly in a privileged position to witness Smith’s involvement in polygamy. William Law, a member of the First Presidency (1841-44), wrote in 1871 that although he did not know in 1842 of Smith’s involvement in polygamy, he believed “now that John C. Bennett did know it, for he at that time was more in the secret confidence of Joseph than perhaps any other man in the city” (Stenhouse 1873, 198). Bennett’s 1842 book, The History of the Saints: Or an Expose of Joe Smith and the Mormons, offers considerable evidence that he knew of several of Smith’s earliest polygamous relationships. He referred in code to seven women who can be identified as plural wives of the prophet. For example, “Miss L***** B*****” (Louisa Beaman), the first of Smith’s plural wives sealed to him through a marriage ceremony, was noted in Bennett’s book. In addition, he correctly reported that the couple had been married by Joseph Bates Noble—a fact that only a handful of people knew at the time (Bennett 1842, 256).10
Noble, brother-in-law to Louisa Beaman, indicated in 1880 that Smith first approached him about Louisa in the fall of 1840. “To convince [me] of the truth of [this],” he said, “was no small matter. Joseph bore testimony that he had received a revelation on this principle [plural marriage] in Kirtland, but the Lord told him not yet. The Angel of the Lord came to him in Nauvoo and told him the time had come” (St. George Minutes). The prophet then requested Noble “to step forward and assist him in carrying out the said principle” by sealing him to Beaman (Roberts 1930, 2:201).11 Apostle Erastus Snow spoke in 1883 of “his first wife’s sister: Louisa Beeman, being the first Morman that entered Plural Marraige in this last dispensation, Br[other] Nobles officiating in a grove Near Main Street in the City of Nauvoo. The Prophet Joseph dictating the ceremony and Br[other] Nobles repeating it after him” (Larson and Larson 2:610).12
Bennett’s first-hand awareness of Smith’s polygamy evidently led him to think an assistant president of the church had the same right to take “spiritual wives” and encourage others to do so as did the church president. This presumption not only strained his relationship with Smith but threatened to expose Smith’s own polygamous behavior, bringing reproach upon the church. Oliver Olney confirmed in his 16 June 1842 diary that Smith and Bennett had “moved together in all their windings. If Bennett had not moved ahead so fast all would have been well now, as I look at things with them.” And Smith may have been commenting on this very point when Erastus Snow heard him say at the time, “many of the Elders were doing things because they saw him [Joseph] do them, but many by this means would fall” (St. George Minutes).
The first public hint of the difficulties caused by the introduction of polygamy to Nauvoo are detailed in the “Minutes of The High Council of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nauvoo Illinois.” Several 1842 entries describe individuals charged with “unchaste and unvirtuous conduct” under the pretense that church leaders had sanctioned such behavior. On 20 May 1842, for example, Chauncy Higbee’s case was considered. The minutes note that “three witnesses testified that he had seduced them and at different times been guilty of unchaste and unvirtuous conduct with them and taught the doctrine that it was right to have free intercourse with women if it was kept secret &c and also taught that Joseph Smith authorized him to practise these things &c.”
The women testifying against Higbee were Margaret and Matilda Nyman and Catherine Fuller Warren. The report of the Nymans was later printed in the 29 May 1844 Nauvoo Neighbor. The sisters said that Higbee had advised them that Smith approved of “spiritual wifery” but gave instructions to keep the matter a secret because “there was no sin when there is no accuser.” Catherine Fuller Warren in her 20 May 1842 testimony responded to charges of “unchaste and unvirtuous conduct with John C. Bennett and others” by admitting to having intercourse not only with him but with Chauncy Higbee and the prophet’s younger brother, Apostle William Smith. Speaking in her defense, however, she insisted that the men had “taught the doctrine that it was right to have free intercourse with women and that the heads of the Church also taught and practised it which things caused her to be led away thinking it to be right.”
Another Nauvoo woman, Mary Clift, testified in high council affidavits of 29 August and 4 September 1842 that she was pregnant with Gustavius Hills’s child. She said he told her that “the heads of the Church practiced such conduct & that the time would come when men would have more wives than one.” Hills was excommunicated, as was Higbee. Despite Catherine Warren’s testimony implicating William Smith along with Bennett and Higbee, instead of being excommunicated, he was sent on a mission to Tennessee. Retained in his apostleship, he became presiding church patriarch on 24 May 1845.13
Bennett continued to reside in Nauvoo at the Robert Foster home until mid-June. Though Joseph Smith had opposed exposing Bennett, pressures from his wife and others, combined with testimony before the high council, apparently caused him to change his mind. On 18 June he spoke “his mind concerning the iniquity & wickedness of Gen. John Cook Bennet, & exposed him before the public” (Kenney 1983-85, 2 [18 June 1842]: 179). Bennett, who may have thought his difficulties with Smith were on the mend, was incensed at the sudden turn of events.14 He left Nauvoo a few days later, insisting that his life was in danger, and wrote a 27 June letter to a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper, the Sangamo Journal, promising to expose Mormonism. The 8 July edition of the Journal, after receiving the letter, called publicly upon Bennett to “come out NOW.… To produce ‘documentary evidence,’ that the public may form opinions that cannot be gainsaid.”
1. Smith and several others spent six months in jail at Liberty, Missouri. On 6 April 1839 they were taken to Daviess County for trial. After several days of testimony a change of venue was granted for Boone County. On 15 April the prisoners and guard set out for their destination. But before they had traveled far, the sheriff, according to Hyrum Smith, said, “I’ll take a good drink of grog and go to bed. And you may do as you have a mind to.” As soon as the guards were comfortably drunk, the prisoners escaped to Illinois (HC 3:321).
2. TS 2 (1 June 1841): 431-32 reflects church leaders’ view of Bennett: “General Bennett’s character as a gentleman, an officer, a scholar, and physician, stands too high to need defending by us; suffice it to say, that he is in the confidence of the Executive, holds the office of Quarter-Master-General of this State, and is well known to a large number of persons of the first respectability throughout the state. He has, likewise, been favorably known for upwards of eight years by some of the authorities of the Church.”
3. The city charter granted the power to “organize the inhabitants of said city, subject to military duty, into a body of independent military men, to be called the ‘Nauvoo Legion.’” The legion was subject to the call of the mayor in executing the laws and ordinances of the city and responsible to the governor for public defense.
4. The law, enacted 12 February 1833, read: “Bigamy consists in the having of two wives or two husbands at one and the same time, knowing that the former husband or wife is still alive. If any person or persons within this State, being married, or who shall hereafter marry, do at any time marry any person or persons, the former husband or wife being alive, the person so offending shall, on conviction thereof, be punished by a fine, not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisoned in the penitentiary, not exceeding two years” (Revised Laws, 198-99).
5. Though “spiritual wifery” in Mormon usage much later came to be equated with promiscuous intercourse or “free love,” this was evidently not the contemporary Nauvoo meaning. “Polygamy,” “spiritual wifery,” “spiritual marriage,” and “plural marriage” were all apparently interchangeable in Mormon and non-Mormon contexts during the early 1840s. Emily Dow Partridge, a plural wife to Smith and later to Brigham Young, for example, uses “spiritual wife” as a reference to herself and others: “Spiritual wives, as we were then termed, were not very numerous in those days and a spiritual baby was a rarity indeed” (“Autobiographical Sketch,” 72). Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, another plural wife to Smith, added that in Nauvoo “spiritual wife was the title by which every woman who entered into this order [plural marriage] was called” (Whitney 1882, 15).
Bathsheba Smith, wife of Apostle George A. Smith, explained in court testimony that during the Bennett fracas the church “preached against him from the stand, and against plural marriage, the secret wife system, secret marriages. The spiritual wife system was the system by which a man had two wives at the same time” (Complainants, 362). And Ebenezer Robinson, who was introduced to polygamy by Hyrum Smith, when asked, “did you understand from Hyrum Smith in 1843 that polygamy & spiritual wifery was identical?”, responded, “I did” (Robinson to Briggs). Heber C. Kimball in 1855 chided the Saints for opposing the “spiritual wife doctrine the Patriarchal Order, which is of God” (JD 3 [6 Oct. 1855]: 125).
6. Smith was obviously anxious when the apostles returned from Europe that they be introduced to polygamy by him, rather than by Bennett or someone else. Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Heber C. Kimball, wrote that when her father, Brigham Young, and John Taylor docked in Nauvoo, 1 July 1841, Smith was waiting at the landing. She noted that Smith “seemed unwilling to part with my father and from that time kept the Twelve in Council early and late.” She added that her mother “never dreamed that [Smith] was during those times revealing to them the principles of Celestial Marriage” (Whitney, “Retrospection”). George A. Smith, the prophet’s cousin, arriving in Nauvoo 13 July, detailed in a 9 October 1868 letter to Joseph Smith III, that “at one of the first interviews” after he arrived from England, Smith surprised him by teaching him the new doctrine of “Patriarchal Marriage.”
7. To discredit Martha Brotherton, the 27 August 1842 Wasp, a Nauvoo newspaper, denounced Bennett as “the pimp and file leader of such mean harlots as Martha H. Brotherton and her predecessors from old Jezebel.” After Brotherton’s death, however, according to Salt Lake Endowment House Records, Brigham Young was sealed to her by proxy on 1 August 1870.
8. Though the epistle was read to the Relief Society on 30 March, it was not included in the minutes until 25 September. Vienna Jacques, a member of the Relief Society in Nauvoo, related similar rhetoric in an 1876 interview with Joseph Smith III. She recalled going to Emma Smith in Nauvoo to ask her about the “subject of spiritual wifery”: “She told me she had asked her husband, the prophet, about the stories which were being circulated among the women concerning such a doctrine being taught, and that he had told her to tell the sisters of the society that if any man, no matter who he was, undertook to talk such stuff to them in their houses, just to order him out at once, and if he did not go immediately, to take the tongs or the broom and drive him out, for the whole idea was absolutely false and the doctrine an evil and unlawful thing” (Anderson and Hulmes 1952, 263-64).
9. Hyrum Smith added that during this time he witnessed a private confrontation between his brother and Bennett in which the prophet charged: “Doctor! Why are you using my name to carry on your hellish wickedness? Have I ever taught you that fornication and adultery were right, or polygamy or any such practice? [Bennett] said You never did. Did I ever teach you anything that was not virtuous—that was iniquitous, either in public or private? He said You never did” (Wasp, 27 July 1842). Bennett, however, claimed in his 2 July Sangamo Journal letter that Smith, with loaded pistol, coerced him into making the favorable statements. “The peace of my family requires that you should sign an affidavit,” Bennett reported Smith as saying, and “make a statement before the next city council, exonerating me from all participation whatever, whether directly or indirectly, in word or deed, in the spiritual wife doctrine, or private intercourse with females in general, and if you do not do it with apparent cheerfulness, I will make catfish bait of you.” Francis M. Higbee, a close friend of Bennett and son of one of Smith’s close friends, swore in a 30 June 1842 affidavit that “Joseph Smith told [me] that John C. Bennett could easily be put aside or drowned, and no person would be the wiser for it, and that it ought to be attended to … fearing as he said, that Bennett would make some disclosures prejudicial to said Smith” (Sangamo Journal, 15 July 1842).
10. The exact number of women sealed to Joseph Smith during his lifetime is difficult to assess. Assistant church historian Andrew Jenson documented twenty-seven from statements of the women themselves or witnesses to the ceremonies (Historical Record 6:233-34). D. Michael Quinn (1973, 278) identifies thirty-four, Fawn Brodie (1975, 435-65) and Danel Bachman (1975, 333-36) both name forty-eight, while Stanley S. Ivins, after extensive research in Nauvoo Temple records, Salt Lake Endowment House records, and other genealogical records, put forth eighty-four women as possible wives of the prophet. None of these studies undertakes the near-impossible task of determining if these women were connubial wives, eternal or “celestial” wives, or merely linked by name to Smith. In addition, the numbers do not reflect the hundreds of women—such as Josephine Bonaparte, Madam Victor Hugo, St. Therese, St. Helene (mother of Constantine), and Matilda (empress of Germany)—who were sealed to him by proxy after his death (Tinney 1973).
11. Noble was likely rewarded for his part in marrying the prophet to Beaman by being allowed to take a plural wife himself. William Clayton recorded in his 17 May 1843 journal that “J. B. Noble when he was first taught this doctrine set his heart on one & pressed [Smith] to seal the contract but [he] never could get opportunity. It seemed that the Lord was unwilling. Finally another came along & he then engaged that one and is a happy man” (Ehat 1982, 69).
12. Apostle Erastus Snow also identified Louisa Beaman as “the First wife that Joseph had sealed to him in the holy order of Plural Marriage” in a discourse on 17 December 1876 (Larson and Larson 1:438). Erastus’s wife, Artimesia Beman Snow, added elsewhere: “My sister, Louisa Beman, next older than myself, was the first woman given in plural marriage. She lived and died a good, faithful Latter-day Saint, true to the principles she embraced and is now rejoicing with her husband, our beloved Prophet, in the eternal worlds” (Larson 1971, 747).
13. Catherine Fuller Warren’s testimony consists of five documents. The one dated 25 May 1842 names William Smith twice (Hutchins 1977, 33). Quorum of the Twelve president Lorenzo Snow later referred to William Smith’s guilt: “Brigham Young was once tried to the very utmost by the Prophet, and for a moment his standing in the Church seemed to tremble in the balance. Wm Smith, one of the first quorum of apostles in this age had been guilty of adultery and many other sins. The Prophet Joseph instructed Brigham (then the Pres. of the Twelve) to prefer a charge against the sinner, which was done. Before the time set for the trial, however, Emma Smith talked to Joseph and said the charge preferred against William was with a view to injuring the Smith family. After the trial had begun, Joseph entered the room and was given a seat. The testimony of witnesses concerning the culprit’s sins was then continued. After a short time Joseph arose filled with wrath and said, ‘Bro. Brigham, I will not listen to this abuse of my family a minute longer. I will wade in blood up to my knees before I will do it.’ This was a supreme moment. A rupture between the two greatest men on earth seemed imminent. But Brigham Young was equal to the danger, and he instantly said, ‘Bro. Joseph, I withdraw the charge’” (Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 9 April 1890).
14. It is possible that Bennett’s public admissions of “spiritual wifery” were a pre-arranged plan to protect his friend William Smith and others from exposure. Similar circumstances are seen, for example, in the case of Joseph Smith’s secretary William Clayton. Writing in his 19 October 1843 journal, Clayton noted that when Emma Smith found out that his plural wife (sealed to him by Joseph Smith) was pregnant, she was very upset. Joseph told him to “keep her at home and brook it and if they raise trouble about it and bring you before me I will give you a awful scouraging & probably cut you off from the church and then I will baptise you & set you ahead as good as ever” (Tanner and Tanner 1982).