Authorized Plural Marriage 1835 to
1904
"Mormonism claims to be a restoration of God's work in all previous
dispensations. The Old Testament teaches that the patriarchs—those men
favored of God in ancient times—had more than one wife under divine
sanction. In the course of the development of the Church in the nineteenth
century, it was revealed to the leader of the Church that such a practice of
marriage again should be entered into." (Gordon B. Hinckley, What of the
Mormons?, p.10.)
Plural Marriage
(An excerpt from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism)
Plural marriage was the nineteenth-century LDS practice
of a man marrying more than one wife. Popularly known as polygamy, it was
actually polygyny. Although polygamy had been practiced for much of history
in many parts of the world, to do so in "enlightened" America in the
nineteenth century was viewed by most as incomprehensible and unacceptable,
making it the Church's most controversial and least understood practice.
Though the principle was lived for a relatively brief period, it had
profound impact on LDS self-definition, helping to establish the Latter-day
Saints as a "people apart." The practice also caused many nonmembers to
distance themselves from the Church and see Latter-day Saints more
negatively than would otherwise have been the case.
Rumors of plural marriage among the members of the
Church in the 1830s and 1840s led to persecution, and the public
announcement of the practice after August 29, 1852, in Utah gave enemies a
potent weapon to fan public hostility against the Church. Although
Latter-day Saints believed that their religiously-based practice of plural
marriage was protected by the U.S. Constitution, opponents used it to delay
Utah statehood until 1896. Ever harsher antipolygamy legislation stripped
Latter-day Saints of their rights as citizens, disincorporated the Church,
and permitted the seizure of Church property before the manifesto of 1890
announced the discontinuance of the practice.
Plural marriage challenged those within the Church,
too. Spiritual descendants of the Puritans and sexually conservative, early
participants in plural marriage first wrestled with the prospect and then
embraced the principle only after receiving personal spiritual confirmation
that they should do so.
In 1843, one year before his death, the Prophet Joseph
Smith dictated a lengthy revelation on the doctrine of marriage for eternity
(D&C 132; see Marriage: Eternal Marriage). This revelation also taught that
under certain conditions a man might be authorized to have more than one
wife. Though the revelation was first committed to writing on July 12, 1843,
considerable evidence suggests that the principle of plural marriage was
revealed to Joseph Smith more than a decade before in connection with his
study of the Bible (see Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible), probably in
early 1831. Passages indicating that revered Patriarchs and prophets of old
were polygamists raised questions that prompted the Prophet to inquire of
the Lord about marriage in general and about plurality of wives in
particular. He then learned that when the Lord commanded it, as he had with
the Patriarchs anciently, a man could have more than one living wife at a
time and not be condemned for adultery. He also understood that the Church
would one day be required to live the law (D&C 132:1-4, 28-40).
Evidence for the practice of plural marriage during the
1830s is scant. Only a few knew about the still unwritten revelation, and
perhaps the only known plural marriage was that between Joseph Smith and
Fanny Alger. Nonetheless there were rumors, harbingers of challenges to
come.
In April 1839, Joseph Smith emerged from six months'
imprisonment in Liberty Jail with a sense of urgency about completing his
mission. Far from involving license, however, plural marriage was a
carefully regulated and ordered system. Order, mutual agreements,
regulation, and covenants were central to the practice. As Elder Parley P.
Pratt wrote in 1845,
These holy and sacred ordinances have nothing to do
with whoredoms, unlawful connections, confusion or crime; but the very
reverse. They have laws, limits, and bounds of the strictest kind, and none
but the pure in heart, the strictly virtuous, or those who repent and become
such, are worthy to partake of them. And…[a] dreadful weight of condemnation
await those who pervert, or abuse them [The Prophet, May 24, 1845; cf. D&C
132:7].
The Book of Mormon makes clear that, though the Lord
will command men through his prophets to live the law of plural marriage at
special times for his purposes, monogamy is the general standard (Jacob
2:28-30); unauthorized polygamy was and is viewed as adultery. Another
safeguard was that authorized plural marriages could be performed only
through the sealing power controlled by the presiding authority of the
Church (D&C 132:19).
Once the Saints left Nauvoo, plural marriage was openly
practiced. In winter quarters, for example, discussion of the principle was
an "open secret" and plural families were acknowledged. As early as 1847,
visitors to Utah commented on the practice. Still, few new plural marriages
were authorized in Utah before the completion of the Endowment house in Salt
Lake City in 1855.
With the Saints firmly established in the Great Basin,
Brigham Young announced the practice publicly and published the revelation
on eternal marriage. Under his direction, on Sunday, August 29, 1852, Elder
Orson Pratt publicly discussed and defended the practice of plural marriage
in the Church. After examining the biblical precedents (Abraham, Jacob,
David, and others), Elder Pratt argued that the Church, as heir of the keys
required anciently for plural marriages to be sanctioned by God, was
required to perform such marriages as part of the restoration. He offered
reasons for the practice and discussed several possible benefits (see JD
1:53-66), a precedent followed later by others. But such discussions were
after the fact and not the justification. Latter-day Saints practiced plural
marriage because they believed God commanded them to do so.
Generally plural marriage involved only two wives and
seldom more than three; larger families like those of Brigham Young or Heber
C. Kimball were exceptions. Sometimes the wives simply shared homes, each
with her own bedroom, or lived in a "duplex" arrangement, each with a
mirror-image half of the house. In other cases, husbands established
separate homes for their wives, sometimes in separate towns. Although
circumstances and the mechanics of family life varied, in general the living
style was simply an adaptation of the nineteenth century American family.
Polygamous marriages were similar to national norms in fertility and divorce
rates as well. Wives of one husband often developed strong bonds of sisterly
love; however, strong antipathies could also arise between wives.
Faced with a national antipolygamy campaign, LDS women
startled their eastern sisters, who equated polygamy with oppression of
women, by publicly demonstrating in favor of their right to live plural
marriage as a religious principle. Judging from the preaching, women were at
least as willing to enter plural marriage as men. Instead of public
admonitions urging women to enter plural marriage, one finds many urging
worthy men to "do their duty" and undertake to care for a plural wife and
additional children. Though some were reluctant to accept such
responsibility, many responded and sought another wife. It was not unheard
of for a wife to take the lead and insist that her husband take another
wife; yet, in other cases, a first marriage dissolved over the husband's
insistence on marrying again.
As with families generally, some plural families worked
better than others. Anecdotal evidence and the healthy children that emerged
from many plural households witness that some worked very well. But some
plural wives disliked the arrangement. The most common complaint of second
and third wives resulted from a husband displaying too little sensitivity to
the needs of plural families or not treating them equally. Not infrequently,
wives complained that husbands spent too little time with them. But where
husbands provided conscientiously even time and wives developed deep love
and respect for each other, children grew up as members of large,
well-adjusted extended families.
Plural marriage helped mold the Church's attitude
toward divorce in pioneer Utah. Though Brigham Young disliked divorce and
discouraged it, when women sought divorce he generally granted it. He felt
that a woman trapped in an unworkable relationship with no alternatives
deserved a chance to improve her life. But when a husband sought relief from
his familial responsibilities, President Young consistently counseled him to
do his duty and not seek divorce from any wife willing to put up with him.
Contrary to the caricatures of a hostile world press,
plural marriage did not result in offspring of diminished capacity. Normal
men and women came from plural households, and their descendants are
prominent throughout the Intermountain West. Some observers feel that the
added responsibility that fell early upon some children in such households
contributed to their exceptional record of achievement. Plural marriage also
aided many wives. The flexibility of plural households contributed to the
large number of accomplished LDS women who were pioneers in medicine,
politics and other public careers. In fact, plural marriage made it possible
for wives to have professional careers that would not otherwise have been
available to them.
The exact percentage of Latter-day Saints who
participated in the practice is not known, but studies suggest a maximum of
from 20 to 25 of LDS adults were members of polygamous households. At its
height, plural marriage probably involved only a third of the women reaching
marriageable age—though among Church leadership plural marriage was the norm
for a time. Public opposition to polygamy led to the first law against the
practice in 1862, and, by the 1880s, laws were increasingly punitive. The
Church contested the constitutionality of those laws, but the Supreme Court
sustained the legislation (see Reynolds v. United States), leading to a
harsh and effective federal antipolygamy campaign known by the Latter-day
Saints as "the Raid." Wives and husbands went on the "underground" and
hundreds were arrested and sentenced to jail terms in Utah and several
federal prisons. This campaign severely affected the families involved, and
the related attack on Church organization and properties greatly inhibited
its ability to function (see History of the Church: c. 1877-1898). Following
a vision showing him that continuing plural marriage endangered the temples
and the mission of the Church, not just statehood, President Wilford
Woodruff issued the Manifesto in October 1890, announcing an official end to
new plural marriages and facilitating an eventual peaceful resolution of the
conflict.
Earlier polygamous families continued to exist well
into the twentieth century, causing further political problems for the
Church, and new plural marriages did not entirely cease in 1890. After
having lived the principle at some sacrifice for half a century, many devout
Latter-day Saints found ending plural marriage a challenge almost as complex
as was its beginning in the 1840s. Some new plural marriages were contracted
in the 1890s in LDS settlements in Canada and northern Mexico, and a few
elsewhere. With national attention again focused on the practice in the
early 1900s during the House hearings on Representative-elect B. H. Roberts
and Senate hearings on Senator-elect Reed Smoot (see Smoot Hearings),
President Joseph F. Smith issued his "Second Manifesto" in 1904. Since that
time, it has been uniform Church policy to excommunicate any member either
practicing or openly advocating the practice of polygamy. Those who do so
today, principally members of fundamentalist groups, do so outside the
Church.
DANEL BACHMAN
RONALD K. ESPLIN
Bibliography
Bachman, Danel W. "A Study of the Mormon Practice of
Plural Marriage before the Death of Joseph Smith." M.A. thesis, Purdue
University, 1975.
Bashore, Melvin L. "Life Behind Bars: Mormon Cohabs of
the 1880s." Utah Historical Quarterly 47 (Winter 1979): 22-41.
Bennion, Lowell ("Ben"). "The Incidence of Mormon
Polygamy in 1880: "Dixie' versus Davis Stake." Journal of Mormon History 11
(1984): 27-42.
Bitton, Davis. "Mormon Polygamy: A Review Article."
Journal of Mormon History 4 (1977): 101-118.
Embry, Jessie L. Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in
the Principle. Salt Lake City, 1987.
Foster, Lawrence. Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers,
The Mormons, and the Oneida Community. Oxford, 1981.
James, Kimberly Jensen. ""Between Two Fires': Women on
the "Underground' of Mormon Polygamy." Journal of Mormon History 8 (1981):
49-61.
Van Wagoner, Richard S. Mormon Polygamy: A History.
Salt Lake City, 1986.
Whittaker, David J. "Early Mormon Polygamy Defenses."
Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 43-63.
