Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 23

POLYGAMY UNVEILS ITSELF

THE "runaway officials," as the Mormons love to style judge Brocchus and his associates, found cold comfort awaiting them at Washington. The Mormon version of the story was ahead of them. Colonel Kane, with his invaluable and unblushing partisanship, had been called to the aid of his distressed friends, or co-religionists; and the retreating officials were not of a calibre to cope with his smooth falsehoods. Their report of the despotism they found in the distant valley was no less incredible for being true. They labored besides under the odium of having quit the fight; and there are no people more unthinkingly, instinctively intolerant of failure, or retreat, than those of America. After a season of unprofitable discussion, the three Gentile officers received a curt order to resume their posts or resign. They wisely chose the latter alternative, and others were appointed to their place.

It is plain from the letter he wrote to President Fillmore that Young was very uneasy over the situation for a time. Doubtless he wished he had been less violent in denouncing Brocchus -- but having taken the plunge, it was not in his nature to draw back. He soon saw that drawing back was needless. Fate had given him the inestimable advantage of an unearned victory in the first clash between the new kingdom of the Saints and the govenment of the United State; and Brigham made the most of it. In the remotest hamlet where two or three Latter Day Saints were gathered together was told the story of how Brigham, "The Lion of the Lord," had defied the power of the United States, and driven an unjust judge from Zion. When real peril approached, a few years later, the memory of this initial triumph was an inspiration to Mormon courage and endurance.

The new judges and secretary were not appointed until August, 1852. They served without any friction with the Mormon population, and two of them died in office. By an odd coincidence, the month of their appointment was likewise the month when the doctrine most closely identified with Mormonism in the public mind was proclaimed to the world.

We have seen that Mormon polygamy began in clandestine fashion in the early days at Nauvoo -- if indeed it did not date from Kirtland. Joseph Smith first taught the doctrine to a select few of his followers; then growing bolder, he issued his revelation establishing polygamy as the crown and capstone of his marriage system. As noted before, that revelation bears witness that Joseph had anticipated precept by performance; he had taken plural wives before writing down the heavenly mandate authorizing him to do so. Verse fifty-two of that revelation reads:

"And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those THAT HAVE BEEN GIVEN unto my servant Joseph."

This phrase could be used only to refer to polygamous marriages already accomplished.

How large a harem Joseph collected before his death is uncertain; but six of his widows were afterwards married to Brigham Young alone. The murder of Joseph was a direct result, in part, of his efforts to secure as his "spiritual wives" women who were already married to members of his church. Before his death, polygamy had become so ingrained in the Mormon faith and practice that of the four branches into which the church divided after that catastrophe, three believed and exemplified the doctrine of plural marriage.

The "Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," with headquarters in Missouri, alone has always maintained that Joseph Smith had nothing to do with polygamy, and has laid the blame for the doctrine on other persons, particularly on Brighani Young. This piece of religious casuistry is too absurd to call for extended refutation; but though Brigham did not invent polygamy, he was an early and enthusiastic convert to it. He had five or six wives at the time of Joseph's death. He had sixteen or seventeen at the expulsion from Nauvoo; and perhaps twenty at the first settlement of the Salt Lake valley. The faithful had followed his example. In 1852, probably there was not an Apostle whose death would not have widowed from six to twenty good women. The most casual visitor to Salt Lake knew of polygamy. Yet officially the doctrine and practice remained a secret; and multifariously married missionaries did not scruple to declare, with uplifted hands and tearful voices, that the charge of polygamy lays a base and cruel slander on the Lord's longsuffering Saints.

In 1852, however, Brigham determined on a change of policy. He saw that the pretence of secrecy had become too threadbare to be worth mending. On August 29, 1852 Orson Pratt ascended the pulpit at a conference, and formally poclaimed the gospel of plural marriage. Apparently, Brigham had consulted no one in deciding on the new course, for Pratt declared that the order to speak on this subject came to him as a surprise. The revelation given to Joseph the Seer at Nauvoo was read and expounded, the Mormon doctrine of marriage, with polygamy as its crowning feature, was uncovered to the world. It has had at least a due share of the world's attention ever since.

The new proclamation caused little surprise among the faithful, and aroused no resistance. It was merely a public announcement of a well-known fact. Persons who could be driven from the church by this doctrine were already gone. During the regime of real and pretended secrecy, polygamy had so permeated Mormon society that then, as now, there was no way in which that society, by its own strength, could rid itelf of the custom.

It must not be thought from this remark that the Mormon church-state of 1852 had any wish to be rid of polygamy. The church accepted the doctrine of plural marriage, not merely with submission, but with enthusiasm. The whole body of Mormon theology had been shaped to converge on this point with a force which only flat disbelief could resist. To recur once more to a point which cannot be overemphasized, Mormonism is ancestor worship. According to that gospel, each person owes reverence and obedience to his progenitors, and is entitled to exact the same from his descendants. Each man is a god unto the fruit of his loins; and the number of his offspring is the measure of his godship. Brigham once declared that the only God whom mankind need worship or consider, was their first father, Adam. This bold statement startled even the faithful, and has been allowed to sink into the background; but it remains the just and logical summing up of Mormon theology.

The effect of such a doctrine, actively believed, is to make every ambitious man a potential polygamist. The appeal to women is less direct, but quite as effective. Women, in the Mormon scheme, can be saved without marriage -- but it is a salvation scarcely worth having. To be exalted, to reach any worthy degree in the Grand Lodge which forms the Mormon ideal of heaven, a woman must be a wife and mother. She shines by the reflected light of her husband. If he has but one wife and a paltry half-dozen offspring, his radiance is dull, he is a hopeless plebeian in the next world, and his wife shares his humble estate. But if he be a polygamist, a man with many wives and swarming children, he becomes an aristocrat of the heavens, and his wives partake of his exaltation.

Nor is the religious appeal of polygamy confined to selfish grounds. It speaks with the voice of philanthropy. The Mormons believe that countless spirits are eagerly waiting to take upon themselves a tabernacle of flesh. They have risen in the chain of existence until they have come to the plane of physical life. They can go no farther in the celestial progression till they pass the portals of earthly birth and death. They are willing to accept illegitimacy, disease, or the stigma of an inferior race, rather than not to be born at all. Polygamy, according to the doctrine as preached to the Saints, is a sanctified method for the emergence of these imprisoned spirits into the life of this world. Viewed in the light of this faith, marriage with a polygamist seemed a religious duty to thousands of Mormon women; and from the days of Nauvoo till now, there has been an ever-sufficient supply of women ready to sacrifice themselves on the altar of plural marriage.

The doctrine did not confine itself to religious arguments. It has a whisper as well for the world and the flesh. Polygamy, like despotism, represents the unrestrained working of a single impulse or desire; just as monogamy and democracy are the result of a council of emotions and wills. In the Mormon kingdom, as in older polygamous lands, social stratification came to the aid of plural marriage. As a rule, the polygamous families were the wealthy and highly placed families; and the prestige of their social position was transferred to their habits of marriage. And finally, there was the singularity of the doctrine, and the price that even then had been paid for it. The Lord's chosen were already marked off from the Gentiles, not only in faith, but in works.

Plural marriage in the Mormon kingdom never reached the sordid plane of barter and sale which prevails in most polygamous parts of the Old World. Generally speaking, the polygamist woos his many wives in much the same manner that the more modest lover woos one. The Apostle has the advantage that comes from experience, and he is able to bring religious considerations to support his courting; but the essentials of the process are usually much the same. From the beginning, however, Mormon parents have had more to say about the marriage of their children -- especially about the marriage of their girls -- than parents in any other English-speaking community.

There were many instances in which the first wife said to the husband: "If your going into polygamy is essential to our exaltation, I consent, provided I may choose the other wife." This was rather a common occurrence, and usually the husband accepted the proposition. Wives then would propose to women for their husbands. While this was not the rule, it occurred frequently enough to be a large factor in the workings of polygamy. It was a common practice, too, for a man to marry two or even three sisters, on the ground that they would be less likely to quarrel than women from different families. Some doughty elders, like Dionysius of Syracuse, did not hesitate to be married to two wives at the same time. Besides being something of a test of self-confidence, this likewise was a measure of peace, because neither could claim precedence as the first wife.

The women involved in polygamy nearly always became its staunchest defenders. They had accepted it as a divine doctrine; and only by maintaining it as such could they justify their choice. In a few cases, doubt or despair caused women to break away from the relation, but only in those marriages where a child was yet lacking. When children came, the mother's honor in the eyes of her offspring depended on the truth and divinity of the doctrine of polygamy; and she had no choice but to uphold it as the first and most excellent law of God. For the same reason, the plural wife, though secretly hating the practice, was often driven into giving her daughter to be the polygamous mate of an elder or Apostle. That daughter had been born of a plural marriage. Either the system was holy or the birth was illegitimate. There were few women brave enough to meet the issue when presented in this form.

When the Manifesto of 1880 was issued, forbidding further practice of polygamy, it was the Mormon women who were most pained and most resentful. But here and there was one who saw deeper, beyond the temporary disrupting of home ties to the peace and confidence that lay ahead. One Apostle, whose first wife was of this calibre, asked her what she thought of it. Her answer was "Well, Edward, I've always thought that sometime God would get as tired of polygamy as I am!"

That woman was an exception, however. Even now, when plural marriage has been renewed under circumstances of secrecy and deceit that would ruin the most righteous institution, Mormon women resent the faintest challenge of polygamous faith or practice; and they would perjure themselves before courts and investigating committees to clear their husbands, even at the cost of bastardizing their children.

There are still other ways of managing a polygamous courtship. Men employed as teachers in coeducational schools found their position singularly helpful in collecting wives; and this is as true now as in the days of Brigham.. Men belonging to what may be called the burgher class went about the matter in a more economical manner but quite as effective fashion. They strove to pick out good-looking immigrant girls for servants. If the young woman were docile and industrious as well as pleasing in appearance, she soon graduated from the rank of housemaid or dairymaid to that of wife. Her duties might not be lightened, but her dignity and standing in the community were increased; and if she "bore my lord" a goodly company of sons, she might become his favorite spouse. Indeed, so openly was immigration used as a feeder for polygamy that Heber C. Kimball, in an address to departing missionaries August 28, 1852 -- the day before the public announcement of polygamy -- used these words:

"You are sent out as shepherds to gather sheep together; and remember that they are not your sheep; they belong to Him that sends you. Then do not make a choice of any of those sheep; do not make any selections before they are brought home and put in the fold. You understand that. Amen!"

The life of the average plural wife was not the desolate, woe-begone existence which zealots and romancers have pictured it. The standards of affection were necessarily lower than in monogamy; but among the wealthier classes, at least, standards of marital comfort and consideration were high. Each wife of one of the church dukes usually had her separate establishment, to which she owned legal as well as moral title. This, no doubt, was a concession due to the influence of a monogamous ancestry; it is quite different from the serfdom of women which prevails in most polygamous countries. Rivalry among the plural wives was usually generous. Each was anxious that her children should be at least equal in attainments and advantages to the children of any other spouse, but the family bond was strong. The children of one wife called each other wife of their father, "Aunt" or "Aunty." If the only son were called on a mission, one of his half-brothers would assume the absent one's duties. For many years, one of Brigham's wives acted as schoolmistress for all the children of the family.

In a polygamous society where child-bearing was a duty, it was inevitable that later wives should be younger than the first wife, and that the younger should supersede the elder. When a wife of one of the polygamous dukes passed her child-bearing days, she graduated into a sort of dowager duchess. She was her husband's friend, adviser, counsellor. Her influence over him might be greater than that of any younger charmer, but he lived in conjugal relations with those who still might bring him children, and the spouse of his own age was a wife in name, rather than in fact.

This inevitably led to heartburnings and jealousy. Even in families of the highest type, presided over by men of uncommon kindliness, justice, and dignity, the inevitable tendency of the younger wife to crowd out the elder caused a world of trouble. Brigham's skill in the management of his household was proverbial; yet on one occasion he publicly served notice that his wives and those of the Apostles had until a given date to stop their quarrelling and end their jealousies; and that, failing submission to duty on their part, he would divorce them all. With men of coarser type, these evils were multiplied.

Polygamy showed at its worst in families of ignorant, ambitious imitators of the church aristocracy; men who lacked the financial ability to support a polygamous household, and the moral character to fit them for marriage of any sort. Under such a husband, a polygamous home was hell. Coarseness of speech and act, brutality, tyranny, and privation formed the life of more than one family; while the loutish lord and master encouraged jealousy among his female chattels as a means of insuring his own supremacy. Yet even in homes like this, the paternal despotism of the church was a partial check on cruelty. Tyranny seldom took the form of physical violence, and wife-murder was practically unknown.

In polygamy, as everywhere, personal character made its way. Strange as it may seem to those who think of all polygamous husbands as ogres and all polygamous wives as patient Griseldas, there was more than one compound household in the Mormon kingdom whose real ruler was a woman. It was uncommon, to be sure; but it was not unknown. An amusing incident illustrating this point may be cited here. One of the prominent women of the church, whose husband had been dead for several years, said to some of her visiting relatives:

"I'll not stay here much longer. John has been over on the other side quite a while, now, with a dozen of his wives that went before him -- and I think it's about time I went over, too, and took charge of things!"

She went not long after; and if affairs on the "other side" may be judged from occurrences on this, she "took charge," gently but completely.

The conscientious polygamous husband soon found that the celestial system imposed duties as well as conferred rights. Polygamy gratified the common masculine desire to be head of a clan, and ministered to that yet more universal feeling which Swedenborg calls the "lust of varieties." But this last was sharply circumscribed. The average polygamist of the old days, at least was a continent man. Each wife was supposed to be free from the conjugal embrace during pregnancy, and in some cases during the nursing period as well. His multiplication of wives gave the polygamist no license outside of the marriage relation. One man well up in the councils of the church was sent as a missionary to England. He spent several years there in successful proselyting before returning to Utah. Twenty years afterward, a woman convert came from England who, in a burst of confessional zeal at receiving her endowments, told that this former missionary had seduced her. The man was deprived of all his dignities, was visited with the severest humiliation, was excommunicated, and only readmitted in time to die in the bosom of the church.

This is an extreme case; and very likely the authorities had some other reason than outraged virtue which impelled them to inflict so drastic a punishment for so old an offence. But it may be said at once that adultery was regarded as a serious offence in the early days of the Mormon kingdom -- indeed, it is so regarded there now. Probably there was and is more of it than would be found in a monogamous society under similar control and discipline and in a similar state of industrial development. There was far less than is found in the alleged monogamic society of many large cities. Except during the outburst of fanaticism known as the "reformation," Mormon husbands seldom seemed to apprehend unfaithfulness on the part of their wives, and in the enormous majority of cases, their confidence was justified. During the first murder trial in Utah, Apostle George A. Smith, counsel for the defence, announced as an "unwritten law" of Mormon society that the man who seduced his neighbour's wife must die, and her nearest relative must kill him. That savage code has not often been invoked by those whose Apostle laid it down.

Brigham doubtless was the most married man of his little empire; but no one at this day can say with certainty how many wives Brigham had. Probably he could not have told himself. There were women sealed to him for time and eternity, with whom he sustained marital relations. These numbered about twenty-five. There were other women sealed to him for eternity, some of whom he had never seen. Still others were sealed to him for time, and to some departed great one of history for a celestial spouse. All were in some sense his wives; and according to the interpretation that was uppermost in his mind for the moment, he might answer with no intent to deceive that he had twenty wives, or a hundred.

Brigham insisted on three qualifications in his favored lieutenants: obedience, energy, and plurality of wives. With two or three exceptions, Brigham never raised a man to favor who was not a polygamist. The reason for this preference, especially in the later days of his rule, is not far to seek. Once a man was entrapped in polygamy, he had to be loyal to the Mormon kingdom, for there alone could he find countenance and protection from the vengeance of the Gentiles. This is one of the policies of Brigham which has endured unchanged to the present day. The haphazard zealot speaks of polygamy as an institution which enslaves women. The student of Mormonism knows polygamy today chiefly as a device for the enslavement of men.