Four days after John C. Bennett penned his 27 June 1842 letter, Joseph Smith published in the 1 July issue of the Times and Seasons a letter “To the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and to All the Honorable Part of the Community.” Smith’s explanation of his former counselor’s behavior was that Bennett had approached “some Nauvoo women” who “knew nothing of him but as an honorable man, & began to teach them that promiscuous intercourse between the sexes, was a doctrine believed in by the Latter-Day Saints, and not only sanctioned, but practiced” by Smith and others. When “the women” asked Bennett why the prophet “preached so much against it,” Bennett reportedly replied that such action was necessary because “of the prejudice of the public, and that it would cause trouble in [Smith’s] own house.”
Bennett’s promised expose, an open letter dated 15 July, detailed Smith’s polygamous proposals to several Nauvoo women, including Sarah Pratt, wife of Apostle Orson Pratt, and Nancy Rigdon, daughter of Sidney Rigdon of the First Presidency. Bennett claimed that while Pratt was a missionary in Europe, Smith had confided to him that he was smitten by the “amiable and accomplished” Sarah Pratt. According to Bennett’s account, Smith told him that he wanted Sarah for “one of his spiritual wives, for the Lord had given her to him.”
The Bennett story further related that shortly after Smith’s admission of affection toward Sarah Pratt, Smith and Bennett allegedly went to Sarah’s house with some of the doctor’s sewing. In the course of the visit, Smith reportedly said, “Sister Pratt, the Lord has given you to me as one of my spiritual wives. I have the blessings of Jacob granted me, as he granted holy men of old, and I have long looked upon you with favor, and hope you will not deny me.” “I care not for the blessings of Jacob,” the feisty Sarah was said to have replied; “I have one good husband, and that is enough for me.” After another attempt by Smith to convince her of the correctness of polygamy, she reportedly told him, “Joseph, if you ever attempt any thing of the kind with me again, I will make a full disclosure to Mr. Pratt on his return home.” “Sister Pratt,” Smith is said to have replied, “I hope you will not expose me; if I am to suffer, all suffer; so do not expose me. Will you agree not to do so?” “If you will never insult me again,” Sarah countered, “I will not expose you unless strong circumstances require it.” “If you should tell,” Bennett quoted Smith, “I will ruin your reputation; remember that.”
According to Bennett, Sarah kept her word, though ensuing circumstances made it difficult. Sarah later recalled the details herself: “Shortly after Joseph made his propositions to me … they enraged me so that I refused to accept any help from the tithing house or the bishop.” She added that “Bennett, who was of a sarcastic turn of mind, used to come and tell me about Joseph to tease and irritate me” (Wyl 1886, 61). Even after Orson Pratt returned from his mission, Sarah kept the incident to herself. Public difficulties between Joseph and Orson did not surface until a year later. Bennett claimed the problems at this point resulted from Smith’s approaching Sarah and kissing her.
When Sarah told Orson of Smith’s behavior, Bennett reported in his 15 July account, Pratt became enraged and told Smith “never to offer an insult of the like again.” Though full details of the confrontation between the two men are unknown, subsequent events indicate that Smith not only denied Sarah’s account but accused her of being Bennett’s paramour. A veiled reference to this accusation against Bennett may be evident in a harsh 22 July Times and Season article. The paper charged that though Bennett “professed to be virtuous and chaste, yet he did pierce the heart of the innocent, introduce misery and infamy into families, reveled in voluptuousness and crime, and led the youth that he had influence over to tread in his unhallowed steps; he professed to fear God, yet did he desecrate His name, and prostitute his authority to the most unhallowed and diabolic purposes; even to the defiling of his neighbor’s bed.”
Though he did not initially expose Smith, Orson Pratt refused to become part of the 11 May 1842 move to withdraw church fellowship from Bennett. Pratt insisted “he knew nothing against the man.” Sarah’s brother-in-law, William Allred,1 in a 5 July letter to Bennett wrote: “Mr. Pratt would write, but he is Afraid to. He wishes to be perfectly still, until your second letter comes out—then you may hear.”2 Chauncy Higbee reported in another letter to Bennett that the Pratts were privately saying “if Smith ever renews the attack on them, they will come out against him, and stand it no longer” (Bennett 1842, 45). The day before Bennett’s piece appeared in the Sangamo Journal, visitors to Nauvoo heard Smith renew the public attack on Sarah Pratt by calling her a “***** from her mother’s breast.”3 To complicate matters further for the Pratts, Bennett’s 15 July letter urged Sarah to come forth and confirm the details of Smith’s polyandrous proposals to her.
As may have been his custom during personal turmoil, Orson Pratt sought solitude. When a note he left behind was interpreted as suicidal, Smith “caused the Temple hands and the principle men of the city to make search for him” (Ms History, 15 July 1842). Ebenezer Robinson later remembered the excitement: “Apostle Pratt had been told Joseph wanted Orson’s wife as his own plural wife and John C. Bennnett was accused of having committed adultery with his wife. Both men denied these charges. Under these circumstances his mind temporarily gave way, and he wandered away, no one knew where” (Robinson, Return 2 [Nov. 1890]:287).
The missing apostle was found five miles below Nauvoo and immediately brought back. Smith called a public meeting to explain the unusual events. The official account of the meeting states that Smith “gave the public a general outline of John C. Bennett’s conduct” (Ms History, 15 July 1842). Brigham Young, who was probably at the meeting, was more expansive two days later in a letter to Orson’s brother Parley, who was still a missionary in England: “Br Orson Pratt is in trubble in consequence of his wife, hir feelings are so rought up that he dos not know whether his wife is wrong, or whether Josephs testimony and others are wrong and due L[ie] and he [has been] decived for 12 years or not.” Brigham told Parley that Orson “is all but crazy about matters, you may aske what the matter is concirning Sister P.—it is enoph, and doct. J. C. Bennett could tell all about [crossed out in original: “it if he”] himself & hir—enoph of that—we will not let Br. Orson goe away from us he is to good a man to have a woman destroy him.”
Nauvoo and the surrounding area were buzzing with rumors about the Pratts. The 29 July Sangamo Journal editorialized that if Orson were to capitulate to “the denunciations and schemes of Joe Smith—if he fails to defend the reputation of himself and of the woman he has vowed to protect before high heaven—he will fix a stain upon his character which he can never wash out.” Pratt stood by his wife. Brigham Young said that during this period he and other members of the quorum labored constantly with “Elder Orson Pratt, whose mind became so darkened by the influence and statements of his wife, that he came out in rebellion against Joseph, refusing to believe his testimony or obey his counsel.” When Pratt insisted “he would believe his wife in preference to the Prophet,” according to Young, “Joseph told him if he did believe his wife and follow her suggestions he would go to hell.”4 Even the threat of losing his quorum membership did not deter Pratt; he responded fearlessly to quorum president Brigham Young’s hints that his position might be in jeopardy, advising Young to ordain Amasa Lyman “in my stead” (Watson 1968, 120-21).
Joseph Smith was not directly involved in the “excommunication” of the rebellious Pratts on 20 August 1842. He was walking a tightrope, secretly courting both thirty-eight-year-old Eliza R. Snow and seventeen-year-old Sarah Ann Whitney, while fighting extradition to Missouri as “an accessory to an assault with intent to kill” former governor Lilburn W. Boggs.5 Smith was also at odds with his long-time friend and counselor Sidney Rigdon over a reputed polygamous proposal on 9 April 1842 to Rigdon’s unmarried daughter Nancy.6 George W. Robinson, a prominent Nauvoo citizen married to another of Rigdon’s daughters, wrote to James A. Bennett, a New York friend to the church, on 22 July that “Smith sent for Miss Rigdon to come to the house of Mrs. [Orson] Hyde, who lived in the under rooms of the printing-office” (Bennett 1842, 245-47). According to Robinson, Nancy “inquired of the messenger … what was wanting, and the only reply was, that Smith wanted to see her.” Robinson claimed that Smith took her into a room, “locked the door, and then stated to her that he had had an affection for her for several years,7 and wished that she should be his; that the Lord was well pleased with this matter, for he had got a revelation on the subject, and God had given him all the blessings of Jacob, &c., &c. and that there was no sin in it whatever.” Robinson reported that Nancy “repulsed him and was about to raise the neighbors if he did not unlock the door and let her out” (ibid.).
Nancy’s brother, John, recounting the incident years later in an affidavit, remembered that “Nancy refused him, saying if she ever got married she would marry a single man or none at all, and took her bonnet and went home, leaving Joseph.” Nancy withheld details of the situation from her family until a day or two later, when a letter from Smith was delivered by Smith’s personal secretary, Willard Richards. “Happiness is the object and design of our existence,” the letter began. “That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another.” The letter went on to teach that “whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.… Our Heavenly Father is more liberal in his views, and boundless in his mercies and blessings, than we are ready to believe or receive.”8
Nancy showed Smith’s letter to her father and told him of the incident at the Hyde residence. Rigdon demanded an audience with Smith. George W. Robinson reported that when Smith came to Rigdon’s home, the enraged father asked for an explanation. Smith “attempted to deny it at first,” Robinson said, “and face her down with the lie; but she told the facts with so much earnestness, and the fact of a letter being present, which he had caused to be written to her, on the same subject, the day after the attempt made on her virtue,” that ultimately “he could not withstand the testimony; he then and there acknowledged that every word of Miss Rigdon’s testimony was true” (ibid., 246). Much later, John Rigdon elaborated that “Nancy was one of those excitable women and she went into the room and said Joseph Smith you are telling that which is not true you did make such a proposition to me and you know it [crossed out in original: “the woman who was there said to Nancy are you not afraid to call the Lords anointed a cursed liar no she replied I am not for he does lie and he knows it”]” (“Life Story,” 166).
Robinson wrote that Smith, after acknowledging the incident, claimed he had propositioned Nancy because he “wished to ascertain whether she was virtuous or not, and took that course to learn the facts!” (Bennett 1842, 246). But the Rigdon family would not accept such an explanation. They were persuaded that the rumors about the prophet’s polygamy doctrine had been confirmed. The issue continued to be a serious source of contention between the two church leaders until Smith’s death in 1844. According to John Rigdon, Sidney told the family that Smith “could never be sealed to one of his daughters with his consent as he did not believe in the doctrine” (“Life Story,” 167). Rigdon preferred to keep his difficulties with Smith private, but Bennett’s detailed disclosures made this impossible.
A Mormon newspaper, The Wasp, printed on 20 July a number of sworn statements by prominent Nauvoo citizens affirming Joseph Smith’s “high moral character” and declaring him not guilty of any of Bennett’s published accusations. Orson Pratt would not sign the letter, nor would Sidney Rigdon or George W. Robinson. A public meeting was called on 22 July to obtain an “expression of the public mind in reference to the reports gone abroad, calumniating the character of Pr[esident] Joseph Smith.” A resolution presented by Wilson Law9and published in the 1 August 1842 Times and Seasons declared “That, having heard that John C. Bennett was circulating many base falsehoods respecting a number of the citizens of Nauvoo, and especially against our worthy and respected Mayor, Joseph Smith, we do hereby manifest to the world that so far as we know him [he is] a good, moral, virtuous, peaceable and patriotic man.”
The Nauvoo Saints must have been shocked when “two or three” persons, including Orson Pratt, voted against the proposed resolution. The minutes of the meeting do not record Pratt’s explanation for his vote, but as soon as he finished speaking, Smith jumped to his feet and said to Pratt: “Have you personally a knowledge of any immoral act in me toward the female sex, or in any other way?” “Personally, toward the female sex,” Pratt replied, “I have not.” Pratt elaborated, but his comments were again not recorded. After Pratt’s rebuttal, William Law, Heber C. Kimball, and Hyrum Smith bore “testimony of the iniquity of those who had calumniated Pres. J[oseph] Smith’s character” (TS 3 [1 Aug. 1842]: 869).
The refusal of Pratt, Rigdon, and Robinson to certify his “high moral character” no doubt infuriated Smith. Addressing the Saints on 25 August, he admonished the Twelve and others to “support the character of the Prophet, the Lord’s anointed.” He lashed out at “O[rson] Pratt and others of the same class [who] caused trouble by telling stories to people who would betray me, and they must believe these stories because his Wife told him so!”10 “And as to all that Orson Pratt, Sidney Rigdon, or George W. Robinson can do to prevent me,” the prophet concluded, “I can kick them off my heels, as many as you can name” (Ms History, 29 Aug. 1842).
Three hundred eighty elders, responding to Smith’s plea for support, volunteered for assignments to “disabuse the public mind in relation to the false statements of Dr. J. C. Bennett.”11 To provide them with ammunition, the church press printed on 31 August a special edition of “Affidavits and Certificates, Disproving the Statements and Affidavits Contained In John C. Bennett’s Letters.” To discredit Sarah Pratt’s accusations, the publication included a 23 July 1842 letter from Stephen A. Goddard to Orson Pratt which claimed that while Sarah was staying with the Goddards in October 1840 “from the first night until the last, with the exception of one night, it being nearly a month, the Dr. was there as sure as the night came.” The letter described the alleged Bennett/Pratt relationship in lurid detail: “One night they took their chairs out of doors and remained there as we supposed until 12 o’clock or after; at another time they went over to the house where you now live and came back after dark, or about that time. We went over several times late in the evening while she lived in the house of Dr. Foster, and were most sure to find Dr. Bennett and your wife together, as it were, man and wife.”
The special edition included a sworn statement from Goddard’s wife, Zeruiah, that “their conduct was anything but virtuous, and I know Mrs. Pratt is not a woman of truth, and I believe the statements which Dr. Bennett made concerning Joseph Smith are false, and fabricated for the purpose of covering his own iniquities, and enabling him to practice his base designs on the innocent.” Hancock County sheriff J. B. Backenstos also provided a sworn affidavit testifying that during the previous winter (1841-42) he had accused Bennett of “having an illicit intercourse with Mrs. Orson Pratt … when said Bennett replied that she made a first rate go.” But Backenstos’s statement may be dismissed as slander—during the winter mentioned, Orson was in Nauvoo, and Sarah sick and pregnant with their daughter Celestia Larissa.
Years later, when totally disaffected from Mormonism, Sarah gave her account of the Goddard incident. She claimed that when she confronted Mrs. Goddard about her published accusations, “She began to sob. ‘It is not my fault,’ she said. ‘Hyrum Smith came to our house, with the affidavits all written out, and forced us to sign them. Joseph and the Church must be saved, said he. We saw that resistance was useless, they would have ruined us; so we signed the papers.’”12 Unlike most “officially certified apostates,” the Pratts refused to leave Nauvoo. Orson wrote in the 2 September 1842 Wasp that, contrary to rumor, he had not “renounced ‘Mormonism,’ left Nauvoo, &c.” He elaborated in the article that he had not turned against the church, though privately and publicly assailing Smith, because “the lustre of truth cannot be dimmed by the shadows of error and falsehood.” Pratt confirmed his determination to stay near the church two weeks later in the 26 September Wasp when he asserted that he and Sarah were not “preparing to leave and expose Mormonism” but intended to make “NAUVOO OUR RESIDENCE, AND MORMONISM OUR MOTTO.”
Though the Pratts and Rigdons refused to denounce Mormonism, Bennett’s serialized expose continued to pose a threat to Smith. The church press provided a protective canopy for the prophet by continually denouncing Bennett’s accusations, especially those linking Smith to polygamous behavior. The Times and Seasons on 1 September 1842, for example, editorialized that “the public mind has been unjustly abused through the fallacy of Dr. Bennett’s letters” and reminded readers that the church’s rule for marriage was “that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband.”
Six months pregnant, Emma Smith also defended her husband from charges of polygamy. In a 5 September 1842 letter to Illinois governor Thomas Carlin, who on 2 August had signed an order for Smith’s arrest and delivery to Missouri officials on the Boggs charges, Emma and other Relief Society sisters petitioned for executive clemency. Emma argued that Bennett was an “unvirtuous man and a most consummate scoundrel, a stirrer up of sedition, and a vile wretch unworthy of the attention or notice of any virtuous man.” She condemned his “bare-faced, unblushing falsehoods” and contrasted her husband as a “man of integrity, honesty, truth, and patriotism. We have never, either in public or private, heard him teach any principles but the principles of virtue and righteousness” (HC 5:147).
Both to confirm his public stance and to further portray Bennett as a licentious scoundrel, Times and Seasons editor Joseph Smith on 1 October 1842 explained: “We have given the above rule of marriage [monogamy] as the only one practiced in this church, to show that Dr. J. C. Bennett’s ‘secret wife system’ is a matter of his own manufacture.” Smith’s denial, supported in petition by the Relief Society and individual Nauvoo citizens, served as sufficient evidence to most Mormons that Bennett, not Smith, was the moving force behind the polygamy stories.
Bennett, stripped of his Mormon power base and accused in the church press of deviant acts including “adultery, fornication, embryo infanticide and buggery” (“Bennettiana”), approached the Pratts and Rigdons for testimony corroborating his accusations against Smith. On 10 January 1843 he wrote a letter to Sidney and Orson, explaining that he hoped to collaborate with Missouri authorities to extradite Smith. “We shall try [him] on the Boggs case, when we get him into Missouri,” Bennett wrote. “The war goes bravely on; and, although Smith thinks he is now safe, the enemy is near, even at the door. He has awoke the wrong passenger” (HC 5:250-51).
Bennett had underestimated the loyalty of Rigdon and Pratt. After Rigdon passed the letter to him, Pratt delivered it immediately to Smith. Though Smith was concerned over Bennett’s impending actions, he was elated with Pratt’s allegiance.13 Two days later on 20 January Smith called a meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve to consider Pratt’s case. According to the official minutes, Smith made what some apostles may have found to be a startling announcement: “As there was not a quorum when Orson Pratt’s case came up before[,] he was still a member—he had not legally been cut off.” Quorum president Brigham Young added that all he personally had against Orson “was when he came home he loved his wife better than David,” a cryptic reference to Smith. Smith, speaking of Sarah Pratt’s accusations, then turned to Orson. “She lied about me,” he said. “I never made the offer which she said I did.”
Even in these intimate councils of the church Smith had to hide his involvement in plural marriage. Hyrum Smith, in attendance at the 20 January meeting, was not yet aware of his brother’s polygamy. Joseph could not have admitted his involvement without disillusioning Hyrum, who was strongly opposed to the idea. Sarah Pratt was not invited to the proceedings at which her husband’s church membership was reconsidered and never retracted her statements. Yet one hour after the adjournment of the 20 January meeting, the Pratts were rebaptized in the Mississippi by Joseph Smith. Afterwards, according to the minutes, “Orson received the Priesthood and the same power and authority as in former days.”14
By mid-February 1843 Nauvoo seemed as tranquil as the frozen Mississippi. The Pratts had been rechurched. Smith had met with the Rigdon family, who “expressed a willingness to be saved. Good feelings prevailed, and [Joseph and Sidney] again shook hands together” (ibid., 270).15 But beneath the apparent calm, rumors about Smith and polygamy would not rest. In a 21 February address he described “the saints grumbling.” “If the stories about Jos. Smith are true,” he said, “then the stories of J. C. Bennet are true about the Ladies of Nauvoo”—ladies who “are [said] to be wiles to Jos Smith. Ladies[,] you know whether it is true[.] no use of living among hogs without a snout” (Smith Diary, 21 Feb. 1843).
Yet on 4 March Smith was secretly sealed to nineteen-year-old Emily Partridge. Four days later he was sealed to her twenty-three-year-old sister, Eliza. And one week later the 15 March 1843 Times and Seasons reported: “We are charged with advocating a plurality of wives, and common property. Now this is as false as the many other ridiculous charges which are brought against us. No sect has a greater reverence for the laws of matrimony or the rights of private property; and we do what others do not, we practice what we preach.”
By mid-fall 1843 Smith had been sealed to at least seven other women: Almira Woodward Johnson (m. 5 April 1843), Lucy Walker (m. 1 May 1843), Helen Mar Kimball (m. May 1843), Flora Woodworth (m. May 1843), Rhoda Richards (m. 12 June 1843), and Maria and Sarah Lawrence (m. late summer or fall 1843).16
1. William Moore Allred, born near Nashville, Tennessee, 24 December 1819, converted to Mormonism in 1832. He married Sarah Pratt’s sister Orissa Bates 9 January 1842.
2. Allred to Bennett (Bennett 1842, 46). The serious illness of Orissa B. Allred is documented in William Allred’s journal.
3. The expletive, probably “whore,” is omitted from the Sangamo Journal, 1 Aug. 1842.
4. Wilford Woodruff observed in his 10 September 1842 journal: “There was a counsel of the Twelve held for four days with Elder Orson Pratt to labour with him to get him to recall his sayings against Joseph & The Twelve but he persisted in his wicked course & would not recall any of his sayings which were made in public against Joseph & others sayings which were unjust & untrue. The Twelve then rejected him as a member of their quorum & he was cut off from the Church. Dr John Cook Bennet was the ruin of Orson Pratt” (Kenney 1983-85, 2 187).
5. Boggs (1792-1860), elected lieutenant governor of Missouri in 1832, became governor upon resignation of Daniel Dunklin in 1836. He issued the infamous Mormon “extermination order” in October 1838. The attempt on Boggs’s life occurred 6 May 1842.
6. Though an August date is often used for this incident, Bennett reported that it occurred on the day of Ephraim Marks’s funeral (9 April 1842). This earlier date seems to be supported by the difficulties Smith and Rigdon were having during this time. For example, the prophet dictated a letter to Rigdon on 12 May “concerning certain difficulties, or surmises which existed” (HC 5:6). The next day Smith received back from Rigdon a letter and walked to the post office to talk with Rigdon concerning “certain reports put in circulation by Francis M. Higbee about some of Elder Rigdon’s family” (HC 5:8). On 28 June Smith and Bishop George Miller visited the Rigdon family and “had much conversation about John C. Bennett, and others, much unpleasant feeling was manifested by Elder Rigdon’s family, who were confounded and put to silence by the truth” (HC 5:46). A 1 July 1842 letter Rigdon wrote to Smith also dramatizes this conflict: “I write this in the greatest confidence to yourself and for your own eye and no other … I am your friend and not your enemy as I am affraid you suppose. I want you to take your horse and carriage on tomorrow and take a ride with me out to the Prarie.” Rigdon stressed secrecy: “Say not a word to any person living but to Hiram only. [A]nd no man shall know it from me” (Smith Collection).
7. Smith’s interest in Nancy Rigdon had apparently been noticed by her father during the Kirtland years. Clark Braden testified that a “bitter quarrel between Rigdon and Smith shortly before they left Kirtland was because Smith wanted to have Nancy Rigdon a girl of 16 sealed to him” (Braden 1884, 202). William C. Smith (not Joseph’s brother) added that “I went to school with Athalia Rigdon, and there was talk among the boys about sealing. I think there was difficulty between Joseph Smith and Rigdon with reference to having Rigdon’s daughter sealed to Smith” (ibid., 391).
8. Bennett obtained a copy of the letter and published it in the 19 August 1842 Sangamo Journal. In the 27 August 1842 Wasp, Sidney Rigdon wrote: “I am fully authorized by my daughter, Nancy, to say to the public through the medium of your paper, that the letter which has appeared in the Sangamo Journal, making part of General Bennett’s letters to said paper, purporting to have been written by Mr. Joseph Smith to her, was unauthorized by her, and that she never said to Gen. Bennett or any other person, that said letter was written by said Mr. Smith, nor in his handwriting, but by another person, and in another person’s handwriting.… I would further state that Mr. Smith denied to me the authorship of that letter.” A copy of this letter labeled, “The Letter of the Prophet, Joseph Smith to Miss Nancy Rigdon,” is in the Smith Collection. The letter was printed in HC 5:134-36 with a B. H. Roberts footnote: “It is not positively known what occasioned the writing of this essay; but when it is borne in mind that at this time the new law of marriage for the Church—marriage for eternity, including plurality of wives under some circumstances—was being introduced by the Prophet, it is very likely that the article was written with a view of applying the principles here expounded to the conditions created by introducing said marriage system.”
9. Wilson Law, ironically, along with his brother William and others, became disillusioned with Smith when they became confident he was indeed involved in polygamy. The Laws published the Nauvoo Expositor, which in the summer of 1844 publicly exposed Smith’s involvement in polygamy.
10. Joseph Smith III, president of the rival Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in the mid-1870s quizzed Sarah Pratt on these stories about his father. “Sister Pratt,” Smith asked, “it has been frequently told that I dare not come to you and ask you about your relations with [my father], for fear you would tell me things which would be unwelcome to me.” “You need have no such fear,” Sarah is reported to have replied, “your father was never guilty of any action or proposal of an improper nature in my house, to me, or in my presence, at any time or place. There is no truth in the reports that have been circulated about him in this regard” (Anderson and Hulmes 1952, 69-71). But Smith was disinclined to believe any evidence connecting his father with polygamy. In her account of the visit Sarah said: “I saw that he was not inclined to believe the truth about his father, so I said to him: ‘You pretend to have revelations from the Lord. Why don’t you ask the Lord to tell you what kind of a man your father really was?’” (Wyl 1886, 61).
11. Letters were arriving from missionaries requesting information to combat Bennett’s claims. An example is an undated letter (probably July 1842) from Apostle John E. Page, who was in Pittsburg: “The disclosures of Bennett has done much to injure the cause of the Kingdom here the people are anxiously looking for the full and effectual downfall of Mormonism through a Judas of a Bennett—it becomes you and Brothers Young and Kimball to show your selves men of the God of Israel this once to put down the slanders of Bennett and Martha Brotherton.… The people believe that Bennett is a villian and effectually exposing villians—But the thinking Public are looking for S[idney] Rigdon and his daughter, O[rson] Pratt and wife, the Higbees and others to finish the work of Death to Mormonism” (Joseph Smith Collection).
12. The Goddard story had serious problems that even Sarah did not point out. Bennett had been appointed 4 October 1840 to work with Smith on drafting the Nauvoo Charter. On this same day he was also selected as a delegate to lobby for passage of the bill through the state legislature at Springfield, nearly one hundred miles distant. That Bennett could draft the complicated documents, make the necessary trips to Springfield, and be with Sarah Pratt every night except one during a one-month period seems improbable. In addition, it seems likely that had Bennett and Sarah been involved in a sexual liaison as public as the Goddard story implies, objections would have been raised when Smith called him to be “assistant president” six months later. Furthermore, despite the numerous cases of church action against sexual sins brought before the Nauvoo High Council, Sarah Pratt’s name is never mentioned.
Fabricated stories designed to protect both individuals and institutions in Nauvoo are seen elsewhere. Sidney Rigdon in the 18 June 1845 Messenger and Advocate reported that Parley P. Pratt, in speaking of the means by which church leaders should sustain Smith, advised that “we must lie to support brother Joseph, it is our duty to do so.” Not only were church leaders willing to violate the law to promote polygamy, they did not hesitate to blacken the character of individuals who threatened to expose the secret practice of plural marriage.
Sarah Pratt was not the only woman to suffer from this policy. The 27 August 1842 Wasp, for example, branded Martha H. Brotherton a “mean harlot,” and Nancy Rigdon suffered the same treatment after she opposed Smith’s polygamous proposals. Stephen Markham, a close friend of Smith, certified in the 31 August 1842 “Affidavits” that he saw Nancy Rigdon in a compromising situation with Bennett. He claimed “many vulgar, unbecoming and indecent sayings and motions” passed between them and testified that he was convinced they were “guilty of unlawful and illicit intercourse with each other.” George W. Robinson, on Nancy’s behalf, countered with a sworn statement on 3 September 1842 (Bennett 1842, 252) that Markham was lying. Explaining that he was present on the occasion Markham referred to, he pointed out that Nancy was sick and that “Dr. John C. Bennett was the attending physician.” Sidney Rigdon also swore out a refutation and employed an attorney to sue Markham. Bennett in his book (p. 248) added that “the young men in the city came forward and gave certificates against Markham, stating that they believed Markham willfully and maliciously lied to injure the character of Miss Rigdon, and to help Smith out of the dilemma.”
After Joseph Smith’s death in 1844, Orson Hyde attempted to further blacken Nancy Rigdon’s character in order to tarnish her father’s claim to church leadership. Her conduct was “notorious in this city,” Hyde charged; she was “regarded generally, little, if any better, than a public prostitute.” He defended the prophet’s actions toward her as efforts to “reprove and reclaim her if possible” (Hyde 1845, 27-29).
Jane Law, wife of Smith’s counselor William Law, was also blacklisted for rejecting Smith’s polyandrous proposal. Mrs. Law said she was told by the prophet in 1844 that “the Lord had commanded that he should take spiritual wives, to add to his glory.” She added that “Joseph had asked her to give him half her love; she was at liberty to keep the other half for her husband” (Young 1876, 61). Her husband wrote in a 20 January 1887 letter to the Salt Lake Tribune that after her rejection, Smith considered the couple apostates. “Jane had been speaking evil of him for a long time … slandered him, and lied about him without cause,” Law reported Smith as saying. But Law, like Orson Pratt, Sidney Rigdon, and George W. Robinson, would not suffer a woman he viewed as innocent to be unjustly slandered. “My wife would not speak evil of … anyone … without cause,” he noted; “Joseph is the liar and not she.” In addition to defending the honor of his wife, Law insisted that Sarah Pratt was a “good, virtuous woman.”
13. Because Rigdon had given the letter to Pratt instead of to him, Smith suspected his counselor’s motives. Though the evidence was weak, Smith continued to accuse Rigdon of collusion with Bennett on various occasions throughout the fall of 1843. Rigdon always maintained that “as there seems to be a foolish notion that I have been engaged with J. C. Bennett, in the difficulties between him and some of the citizens of this place, I merely say in reply to such idle and vain reports that they are without foundation in truth” (Wasp, 23 July 1843).
14. In 1878, before an audience of RLDS Mormons, Orson Pratt was reported to have based his 1842 difficulties on “a wicked source, from those disaffected, but as soon as he learned the truth he was satisfied” (MS 40 [16 Dec. 1878]: 788). Both Bennett and Sarah Pratt were “disaffected” at the time, but so were numerous other possible sources, including Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Olney, George W. Robinson, Francis Higbee, Chauncy Higbee, Nancy Rigdon, and Martha Brotherton.
15. Less than six weeks later Smith was again charging Rigdon with being an accessory with Bennett to “destroy me and this people.” Smith threatened to publish withdrawal of Rigdon’s fellowship in the Times and Seasons. Rigdon answered, “I can assert in truth, that with myself and any other person on this globe there never was nor is there now existing anything privately or publicly to injure your character in any respect whatever. All that has ever been said by me has been said to your face, all of which you know as well as I” (JH, 27 March 1843).
16. The traditional Mormon apologetic for differences between truth and reality in Smith’s denials of polygamy is that he and others were actually using “code words” or “code phrases” for denying Bennett’s “spiritual wifery,” but not plural marriage. This is, however, incorrect, for Smith denounced not only “spiritual wifery” but “plurality of wives” under any circumstances except when the first wife was deceased. His 5 October 1843 diary entry makes this clear.