The Works Abraham

Doctrine & Covenants Section 132Official Declaration 1

Origins of Polygamy• The Book of Mormon forbade plural marriage unless the Lord commanded otherwise

(Jacob 2:28-30). • Joseph’s own revelations declared adultery an abomination and promised punishment

(D&C 49).• Joseph became aware of polygamy during the JST…likely.• “Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and

polygamy: we declare that we believe, that man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.” “Marriage,” 1835 Doctrine and Covenants, 561.

• Kirtland Polygamy: Fanny Alger• Then, between early 1841 and fall 1843, Joseph was sealed to between 28 and 34 women.

• Ten of them were already married at the time. (Polyandry)• As historian Richard Bushman noted, “Nothing confuses the picture of Joseph Smith’s

character more than these plural marriages.” He continues, “Surely he realized that plural marriage would inflict terrible damage, that he rant he risk of wrecking his marriage and alienating his followers...What drove him to a practice that put his life and his work in jeopardy, not to mention his relationship with Emma?”

• Joseph and Emma apparently came to an agreement on no more plural wives in Fall 1843.

• “Romance played only a slight part. In making proposals, Joseph would sometimes say God had given a woman to him, or they were meant for each other, but there was no romantic talk of adoring love. He did not court his prospective wives by first trying to win their affections. Often he asked a relative—a father or an uncle—to propose the marriage. Sometimes one of his current wives proposed for him. When he made the proposal himself, a friend like Brigham Young was present. The language was religious and doctrinal, stressing that a new law has been revealed.” -Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 440.

• Revelation governs and dictated plural marriage, not only generally but case by case. Indeed, even as the Lord exacts such extreme tests, He offers personal confirmation and an accompanying peace if not complete understanding. In each case Joseph promised the woman her own personal revelation to confirm what one of them, Zina Huntington, called “a greater sacrifise than to give my life.” She wrote, “I searched the scripture & buy humble prayer to my Heavenly Father I obtained a testimony for myself that God had required that order to be established in this church.” – Carol Cornwall Madsen, “‘All Things Move in Order in the City’: The Nauvoo Diary of Zina Diantha

Huntington Jacobs,” BYU Studies 19 no. 3 (1979): 291-92.• During Nauvoo, the practice remained secretive and discrete. There was no public

acknowledgement, and likely no intimate bond.• Polygamy became a test of loyalty. Only a dozen males enter the practice before the

martyrdom.

Practice of Polygamy

• Joseph’s dear friend Benjamin Johnson described how Joseph taught him. Joseph visited Benjamin in Macedonia, Illinois. “Come Br. Bennie,” Joseph said, “let us have a walk.” Benjamin wrote, “I took his arm and he led the way into . . . the woods . . . . and here, we sat down upon a log he began to tell me that the Lord had revealed to him that plural or patriarchal marriage was according to his law; and that the Lord had not only revealed it to him but had commanded him to obey it; that he was required to take other wives; that he wanted my Sister Almira for one of them, and wished me to talk to her upon the subject. If a thunderbolt had fallen at my feet I could hardly have been more shocked or amazed. He saw the struggle in my mind and went on to explain. But the shock was too great for me [to] comprehend anything, and in almost an agony of feeling I looked him square in the eye, and said, while my heart gushed up before him, ‘Brother Joseph, this is all new to me; it may be true,--you know, but I do not, to my education it is all wrong; but I am going, with the help of the Lord to do just what you say, with this promise to you—That if ever I know you do this to degrade my sister I will kill you, as the Lord lives.’ He looked at me, oh, so calmly, and said, ‘Br. Benjamin, you will never see that day, but you shall see the day you will know it is true.” Joseph’s prophesy was fulfilled as Benjamin acted. He engaged his sister in a private conversation. Trembling, hardly knowing what to say, “I opened my mouth and my heart opened to the light of the Lord, my tongue was loosened and I was filled with the Holy Ghost. I preached a sermon that forever converted me and her also.” – Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life’s Review: The Autobiography of Benjamin F. Johnson (Provo, Utah: Grandin, 1997), 83-

84.

• Joseph proposed a plural marriage to Lucy Walker in 1842 with the words, “I have a message for you. I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman.” She wrote, “my astonishment knew no bounds. This announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me. He asked me if I believed him to be a Prophet of God. ‘Most assuredly I do’ I replied. He fully explained to me the principle of plural . . . marriage. Said this principle was again to be restored for the benefit of the human family. That it would prove an everlasting blessing to my father’s house, and form a chain that could never be broken, worlds without end. ‘What have you to say?’ he said. ‘If you will pray sincerely for light and understanding in relation thereto, you shall receive a testimony of the correctness of this principles.’” Lucy wrote of her great struggle with the predicament. “I thought I prayed sincerely but was so unwilling to consider the matter favorably that I fear I did not pray in faith for light.” She went through excruciating bouts of what she called “darkness,” praying, like Christ, “Oh let this bitter cup pass. And thus I prayed in the agony of my soul.” When Joseph gave Lucy a date by which she had to make a decision, she responded, “although you are a Prophet of God, you could not induce me to take a step of so great importance unless I knew that God approved my course.” Joseph “walked across the room, returned and stood before me with the most beautiful expression of countenance and said ‘God Almighty bless you. You shall have a manifestation of the will of God concerning you; a testimony that you can never deny. I will tell you what it shall be. It shall be that peace and joy that you never knew.’” Lucy “prayed for these words to be fulfilled. It was near dawn after another sleepless night. While on my knees in fervent supplication, my room became filled with a holy influence. To me it was a comparison like the brilliant sunshine bursting through the darkest cloud. The words of the Prophet were indeed fulfilled. My soul was filled with a clam sweet peace that I never knew. Supreme happiness took possession of my whole being and I received a powerful and irresistible testimony.” – Lucy Walker Kimball, Autobiographical Sketch, Church History Library, Salt Lake City

• Helen Kimball wrote about the Abrahamic test her father Heber and especially mother Vilate endured well when Joseph commanded him to take a plural wife without disclosing it to Vilate. Heber became sick and overwhelmed with anxiety. “Finally . . . his misery became so unbearable that it was impossible to control his feelings. He became sick in body, but his mental wretchedness was to great to allow of his retiring at night, and instead of going to bed he would walk the floor; and the agony of his mind was so terrible that he would wring his hands and weep, beseeching the Lord with his whole soul to be merciful and reveal to his wife the cause of his great sorrow, for he himself could not break his vow of secrecy. His anguish and my mother’s were indescribable and when unable to endure it longer, she retired to her room, where with a broken and contrite heart, she poured out her grief to [God].” Helen described her mother’s revelation and its comforting, assuring power. “She returned to my father, saying, Heber, what you have kept from me the Lord has shown me. She related the scene to me and to many others, and told me she never saw so happy a man as father was, when she described the vision and told him she was satisfied and knew it was from God.” Even so it was not easy to participate in plural marriages. – Helen Mar Whitney, Woman’s Exponent 10 (October 15, 1881), 74

• Joseph’s wife Emma understandably vacillated between accepting and resenting the practice.

• Hyrum’s reluctance, then acceptance• William Clayton: “On the morning of the 12th of July,

1843, Joseph and Hyrum Smith came into the office in the upper story of the “brick store,” on the bank of the Mississippi river. They were talking on the subject of plural marriage. Hyrum said to Joseph, “’If you will write the revelation on Celestial marriage, I will take and read it to Emma, and I believe I can convince her of its truth, and you will hereafter have peace’…

D&C 132 Origin

• “Joseph smiled and remarked, ‘You do not know Emma as well as I do.’…Hyrum very urgently requested Joseph to write the revelation by means of the Urim and Thummim, but Joseph, in reply said he did not need to, for he knew the revelation perfectly from beginning to end.

• “Joseph and Hyrum then sat down, and Joseph commenced to dictate the revelation on Celestial Marriage, and I wrote it, sentence by sentence, as he dictated. After the whole was written, Joseph asked me to read it through, slowly and carefully, which I did and he pronounced it correct. He then remarked that there was much more he could write, on the same subject, but what was written was sufficient for the present…

D&C 132 Origin

• “Hyrum then took the Revelation to read to Emma. Joseph remained with me in the office until Hyrum returned. When he came back Joseph asked how he had succeeded. Hyrum replied that he had never received a more severe talking to in his life, that Emma was very bitter and full of resentment and anger.

• “Joseph quietly remarked, ‘I told you, you did not know Emma as well as I did.’ Joseph then put the Revelation in his pocket, and they both left the office.”-William Clayton, “Celestial marriage: How and When the Revelation was Given,” Deseret Evening News, 20 May 1886

D&C 132 Origin

• Joseph knew and followed Section 132 carefully. Two facts that disturb some students of Section 132 are that Joseph was sealed to some women who were already married, and that several of his plural marriages were performed without his wife Emma’s knowledge or consent. Section 132 gives precise instructions for both instances (verses 41-45 and 64-65). Joseph followed these as best he could. The revelation, for example, describes a specific situation in which a chaste man could be sealed to a woman already married to an adulterous man (verses 41-45). Historical sources do not reveal whether or not these criteria applied to the married women who were sealed to Joseph, but the point is that Section 132 is conscious of such cases. Another possibility is that Joseph wanted to seal himself to the women and their families to extend the sealing blessings of the temple as far and wide as possible.

• It is clear from the historical record that “Joseph did not marry women to form a warm, human companionship, but to create a network of related wives, children, and kinsmen that would endure into the eternities. The revelation on marriage promised Joseph an ‘hundred fold in this world, of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and children, and crowns of eternal lives in the eternal worlds.’ Like Abraham of old, Joseph yearned for familial plentitude. He did not lust for women so much as he lusted for kin.”

-Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 440.• Revelation from Joseph Smith to Newel K. Whitney, 27 July 1842: "Verily, thus saith the Lord unto my

servant N[ewel]. K. Whitney, the thing that my servant Joseph Smith has made known unto you and your Family [his plural marriage to Sarah Ann Whitney] and which you have agreed upon is right in mine eyes and shall be rewarded upon your heads with honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house both old & young because of the lineage of my Preast Hood saith the Lord it shall be upon you and upon your children after you from generation to generation, by virtue of the Holy promise which I now make unto you saith the Lord.“

• Consanguineous sealings

Explaining Polygamy

Polygamy in Utah

• 1852 Public announcement of plural marriage, becomes prominent part of the Mormon identity

• Saints petitioned U.S. for statehood• Granted territorial status as part of Compromise of 1850• “You are better off without any government from the hands of

Congress than with a territorial government. The political intrigues of government officers will be against you. You can govern yourselves better than they can govern you. . . . a strong political party [will arise in your midst] and against your interests.”– Thomas Kane

Polygamy in Utah

• 1856 Republican platform promised to end polygamy in U.S. Territories

• “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise of religion” (1st Amendment)

• 1862 Morrill Act “to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the territories of the United States”

• Fines• Forbade Church from owning more than $50,000 in

assets

Polygamy in Utah

• Saints generally disregarded, became further entrenched in the practice

• 1870s increasingly powerful anti-Mormon party in Utah and radical Republican opposition

• George Reynolds convicted• 1878 Reynolds v. United States upheld Morrill

Act; distinction

Anti-Polygamy Laws• Tougher laws followed

– No trial by jury for polygamists– Removed the courts from local control– Test oath that kept many Saints from voting– Disenfranchised all women in Utah– Lower standard of evidence required for conviction– LDS including leaders hunted and jailed– Idaho law prohibited Saints there from voting– Supreme Court unanimously upheld it in Davis v. Beason

(1890)– Utah anti-Mormons sought a similar law there

• American culture in the second half of the nineteenth century was officially and almost thoroughly anti-polygamy. The Saints tried every Constitutional method to obtain their Constitutional rights. They tried civil disobedience. Testifying before a Congressional committee in 1992, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, himself an eminent jurist, declared, “I know of no other major religious group in America that has endured anything comparable to the officially sanctioned persecution that was imposed upon members of my church by federal, state, and local government officials. . . . Most of these denials of religious freedom received the express approval of the United States Supreme Court. It was a dark chapter in the history of religious freedom in this country.” – Reported in “Elder Oaks Testifies Before U.S. Congressional Subcommittee,” Ensign (July 1992), 78-80.

• President Wilford Woodruff noted in his May 18, 1890 journal entry, “the Supreme Court of the United States decided today against the Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints.” By August President Woodruff feared that the Church would lose control of its temples, including the nearly completed Salt Lake Temple. It became clear to President Woodruff that the Church must choose between continuing plural marriage or temple ordinances.

On September 24, 1890, President Woodruff met with his counselors and as many of the apostles who were available. He solemnly told them “he had sought the will of the Lord, and it had been revealed to him that the Church must relinquish the practice of plural marriage.” A long discussion followed resulting in a consensus to sustain the revelation.

• The Church leaders subsequently released to the press the statement that is now Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants, replying to recent accusations that plural marriages were still being performed. It explains the Church’s decision to not perform new plural marriages or to publicly advocate the doctrine. President Woodruff explained that he had even had the Endowment House demolished, since it was a building on Temple Square where temple ordinances were performed while the Salt Lake Temple was under construction. He declared his intention to submit to the laws, however unconstitutional, and to urge Latter-day Saints to do likewise.

• President Woodruff wrote in his journal entry the next day, “I have arived at a point in the History of my life as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints whare I am under the necessity of acting for the Temporal Salvation of the Church. The United State Governmet has taken a Stand & passed Laws to destroy the Latter day Saints upon the Subjet of poligamy or Patriarchal order of Marriage. And after Praying to the Lord & feeling inspired by his spirit I have issued the . . . Proclamation which is sustained by My councillors and the 12 Apostles.”

• About two weeks later at the Church’s October 1890 General Conference, President Lorenzo Snow presented the Manifesto, as he called it, to the Saints for a sustaining vote.

• “I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing, and which is dated September 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.”

• Consent in that setting was reported as unanimous, though not all Saints were enthusiastic about it. Many resented the Government’s oppressive measures that led President Woodruff to seek the revelation. In a conference talk, President George Q. Cannon cited D&C 124:49, where the Lord explains that he will not require the Saints to keep a commandment any longer if they have diligently tried but their enemies “hinder them from performing that work.”

• After four decades of diligently striving to practice plural marriage, some Saints struggled to let it go

• Many were sealed into plural families• Speaking to the Saints in Brigham City a year after the

Manifesto, President Woodruff said that the Lord had revealed to him that many Saints were disappointed by the Manifesto

• He said that the Lord had told him to ask the Saints a question and to promise them an answer by the power of the Holy Ghost

• “The question is this. Which was the wisest course for the Latter Day Saints to persue, to Continue to attempt to practice plural Marriage with the Laws of the Nation against it and the opposition of 60,000,000 of People and al the Cost of Confiscation and loss of all the Temples and the stopping of all the ordinances therein both for the living & the Dead And the imprisinment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the leaders of heads of family in the Church And the Confiscation of the personal property of the People (All of which of themselve would stop the Practice)?. . .

• Or After doing and Suffering what we have through our adhearance to this principle to scease the Practice and submit to the law and through doing so have the Prophets Apostles and Fathers at home so they Can instruct the People and attend to the Duties of the Church, Also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints so they Can attend to the ordinaces of the Gospel both for the living & the Dead?”

• President Woodruff assured the Saints that he and the apostles were led by revelation, and that the Lord would not permit them to lead the Saints astray. He promised that the Lord would reveal that to them if they would seek a testimony.

• “I was lingering about on the outside talking with the passengers, found the Salt Lake papers containing Pres. Woodruff’s Manifesto. As soon as I entered the car, [Apostle John W. Taylor] called to me and showed me the papers containing the document, the headlines of which I read with astonishment. But no sooner had I read them, than like a flash of light all through my soul the Spirit said—“That is all right,” so it passed. Then I began to reflect upon the matter. I thought of all the Saints who had suffered to sustain that doctrine; I remembered my own exile, my own imprisonment; I thought of that of others. I remembered what sacrifices my wives had made for it; what others had made for it. We had preached it, sustained its divinity from the pulpit, in the press, from the lecture platform. Our community had endured every kind of reproach from the world for the sake of it—and was this to be the end? I had learned to expect that God would sustain both that principle and his Saints who carried it out, and to lay down like this was a kind of cowardly proceeding, so that the more I thought of it, the less I liked it. . . . .

• “This matter continued to be a trial to me through the year 1891, and plagued me much, but I said but little about it; and by and by I began to remember the flash of light that first came to me when I first heard of it, and at last my feelings became reconciled to it. Perhaps I had transgressed in pushing from me the first testimony I received in relation to it, and allowing my own prejudices, and my own shortsighted, human reason to stand against the inspiration of God an the testimony it bore the manifesto was alright. When this fact began to dawn on my mind, I repented of my wrong and courted most earnestly the spirit of God for a testimony and gradually it came. I did not understand the purposes for which the Manifesto was issued . . . but sure I am that it is all right; that God has a purpose in it I feel assured, and in due time it will be manifest.”

• President Woodruff worked with the Saints to help them become reconciled to the will of the Lord. Some excerpts of his teachings follow Official Declaration 2 in the Doctrine and Covenants. He emphasized two points. First, he testified that he had received revelation and would not have issued the Manifesto without the Lord’s instruction to do so. Second, he explained a rationale for the revelation. Ending plural marriage enabled the Saints to finish the Salt Lake Temple and maintain control of it for the performance of the ordinances of exaltation. “If you can understand that,” said President Wilford Woodruff at the 1893 dedication of the Salt Lake Temple, “that is a key to it.”

• As hoped, the Manifesto diffused persecution and enabled the Church to survive. Utah became a state in 1896 but the long-standing antagonisms and opposition did not end immediately or easily. Congress refused to seat Utah’s elected representatives who were polygamists, including B.H. Roberts. Congressional hearings followed, leading then Church President Joseph F. Smith to issue a "Second Manifesto," which he read in General Conference on April 6, 1904, which prohibited plural marriages and made Saints who presumed to enter or officiate in them subject to excommunication. The Church voted overwhelmingly to sustain President Smith’s declaration. Two apostles dissented and they were released from their callings. Fundamentalist groups reject the leadership of Wilford Woodruff and all the prophets who have succeeded him. President Woodruff’s promise remains effective however. Elder Roberts proved its power by choosing to submit to the Holy Spirit and gaining a testimony that the Lord had ended plural marriage. Anyone can do the same.