Polygamy, Prophets, and Prevarication: Frequently and Rarely Asked Questions about the Initiation, Practice, and Cessation of Plural Marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

by Gregory L. Smith, M.D.

Table of Contents

Introduction
 
Polygamy is Non-Christian
 
Polygamy was Illegal
        Civil Disobedience in Context
        Doctrine and Covenants 134 and Civil Disobedience
        Court Decisions and Civil Disobedience
        False analogy with the "Gay Marriage" Debate
        Don't Die On Every Hill
 
Polygamy and Lying
        Lying About Polygamy During the Nauvoo Era
                 Didn't Joseph Deceive Church Members?
                 Secrecy, Polygamy, and Threats of Violence against the Saints
                 Lying and Biblical Prophets
                 Lying for the Lord?
        Lying About Polygamy in Utah, Prior to 1890
                 Conditions Preceding the Manifesto of 1890
                 How Critics Viewed Mormons Prior to the Manifesto of 1890
                 The Morrill Act
                 Post Civil War Measures: The Reynolds Case
                 The Edmunds Act
                 Assault on Due Process
                 Indefinite Punishment
                 Extension of Legal Problems beyond Utah
                 The Edmunds-Tucker Act
                 Legal Summary
        Lying About Polygamy after the 1890 Manifesto
                 Wilford Woodruff's Pre-Manifesto Administration
                 Writing the Manifesto
                 Principles of Church Government and the Manifesto
                 Wilford Woodruff's Post-Manifesto Administration
                 Lorenzo Snow's Administration
                 Joseph F. Smith's Administration
                 After the Second Manifesto
        Conclusions About Lying
 
Polygamy as Lasciviousness
 
Implementation Problems
        Nineteenth Century Variations on a Theme
        What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
        Polygamy and Depression
 
Hiding History
 
Final Thoughts-What was the Purpose of Plural Marriage?
        Obedience
        "Raise Up Seed"
        Sociological
        Abrahamic Test
 
Further Reading
 
Notes

Introduction

Perhaps no practice of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proved more volatile and divisive than plural marriage, or "polygamy." First revealed to Joseph Smith in the early 1830s, it was implemented in at least a few relationships by the mid-1830s and more widely during the Nauvoo period of the 1840s, though secrecy still surrounded its practice.¹ Publicly announced in 1852, it served as a focal point for legislators, social reformers, and anti-Mormon agitators throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Despite a vigorous campaign in the courts, the members of the Church were unsuccessful in having plural marriage tolerated--indeed, it was outlawed and such laws were upheld as constitutional. The Manifesto of 1890, together with the "Second Manifesto" of April 1904, put an end to polygamy in the Church. Though polygamy currently plays little role in most discussions of LDS theology and is forbidden to any member on pain of excommunication, it continues to be a live issue for some. As in the nineteenth century, "the Principle" continues to attract the fascination, amusement, distaste, or scorn of general society. It also serves as a target for enemies of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, and the Church he established.

Attacks upon Joseph Smith and the Church regarding polygamy have generally taken one or more of the following forms:

1. Irreligious. Popular among sectarian critics, this attack appeals to western sensibilities which favor monogamy, and argues that polygamy is inconsistent with biblical Christianity or (ironically) the Book of Mormon itself. Even some secular histories occasionally fall victim to this tendency.²
2. Illegal. This criticism asserts that the Church and its members participated in polygamy despite such relationships generally being illegal under state and/or federal law. It is argued that the Church thereby abandoned its commitment to "obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law."³
3. Lying. According to this criticism, Joseph Smith and his successors made repeated public statements in which they hid or openly denied the practice of polygamy, despite knowledge to the contrary. It is argued that this "dishonesty" is morally dubious and inconsistent with the principles which the Church claims to espouse.
4. Lascivious. This attack charges that Joseph Smith (and possibly his successors) pursued plural marriage for purely base motivations. Such a charge is usually accompanied by appeals to the above criticisms, to imply that Joseph and his successors' conduct was questionable on many grounds, and therefore is best explained by their sexual appetite rather than sincere religious conviction.
5. Implementation. This attack is often an adjunct to others; some of the supposed or real negative consequences of polygamy are enumerated with the argument that such consequences are evidence that the practice was not divinely commanded.
6. Hiding history. Closely related to criticism 3, this is normally an attack on the modern Church and its leadership, added as the coup de grâce by the "friendly and helpful" critic. Since the critic has provided information of which the reader was previously unaware, the claim is then made that the Church has been "hiding" the truth, or "lying" to its unsuspecting members. Thus the critic can resurrect the polygamous past to attack the Church in the present.

An understanding of polygamy has not always been helped by the tendency of some LDS authors to gloss over many of the very real difficulties associated with this period in Church history, though this tendency is not as exaggerated as some suppose.

It is my contention that the discovery and dissemination of historical materials at variance with the standard or "folk" understanding of polygamy common in the twentieth and twenty-first century Church is no threat to a faithful appreciation of polygamy as a divinely mandated practice during the formative years of the Church. Indeed, I do not think that it is the "additional information" that causes problems for faithful Latter-day Saints who are sincerely troubled by what the historical record tells us. Rather, it is the persistent--and often unmet--need for still more information and context, which some authors have been unable or unwilling to provide. The sole "danger" which historical information poses to members or sincere investigators occurs only if they stop their research too soon. Church critics are quite happy to lead their marks part of the way, only to abandon them when the story is just getting good.

This paper is a modest attempt to address these concerns within the context of the available historical sources.⁴ I do not proceed in strict historical order, but have rather chosen the six-pronged thematic approach outlined above (the themes consistently followed in criticisms of the Church), but I don't consider the first complaint of "irreligion," except in passing, since this concern has been addressed elsewhere.⁵

Initially I'll focus on seeing the Church and its members' actions in the context of civil disobedience from a historical, theological, and moral perspective. I'll then consider the perspective of Church members who understood themselves to be defendants in a war of religious--and perhaps physical--extermination waged by religious and legislative enemies. I'll review some of the legal and political history that contributed to this perception, and which helps explain the different choices made by Church leaders and members, especially in the period following the Manifesto of 1890.

I will then discuss the problems and flaws with the view that polygamy was motivated by inappropriate sexual motives on the part of Joseph Smith or those who came after him.

Attacks on the character of the early polygamists are often followed by related criticisms of the day-to-day practice of polygamy. I will therefore address these arguments, and focus on claims that Joseph Smith's stature as an "infallible" prophet led others to embrace polygamy against their better judgment, and that polygamy caused depression in Mormon women.

I'll conclude by demonstrating that there is ample evidence that the Church does little to "protect" its members from learning "the truth" about polygamy.

A few closing thoughts will then provide some perspective on the role that plural marriage played--both sociologically and spiritually--in the maturation of the Church. I have come to see polygamy as a vital, even indispensable, part of the Restoration, practiced at the behest of the Lord and ultimately discontinued through proper priesthood authorization.

Polygamy is Non-Christian

The criticism that polygamy is irreligious appeals to western sensibilities which favor monogamy, and argues that polygamy is inconsistent with biblical Christianity or (ironically) the Book of Mormon itself.

This is a weak attack at best, and replies--devotional, apologetic, and scholarly--have been made to the claim.⁶ There is extensive, unequivocal evidence that polygamous relationships were condoned under various circumstances by biblical prophets, despite how uncomfortable this might make a modern Christian. Elder Orson Pratt was widely viewed as the victor in a three-day debate on this very point with Reverend John P. Newman, Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, in 1870.⁷

Even were there no such precedents, LDS theology has no problem accepting and implementing novel commandments, since the Saints believe in continuing revelation. I will not belabor the matter here, since ample resources are available.

Polygamy was Illegal

Critics charge that the Church and its members participated in polygamy in violation of both state and federal laws. It is therefore argued that the Church abandoned its commitment to "obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law."⁸ Critics, however, make such arguments without a full understanding of the legal considerations of the day and without understanding how civil disobedience plays into the picture.

Civil Disobedience in Context

Polygamy was certainly declared illegal during the Utah-era anti-polygamy crusade, and arguably illegal under the Illinois anti-bigamy statutes. This is hardly new information, and Church members and their critics knew it.⁹ Modern members of the Church generally miss the significance of this fact, however: the practice of polygamy was a clear case of civil disobedience.

The decision to defy the [anti-polygamy laws] was a painful exception to an otherwise firm commitment to the rule of law and order. Significantly, however, in choosing to defy the law, the Latter-day Saints were actually following in an American tradition of civil disobedience. On various previous occasions, including the years before the Revolutionary War, Americans had found certain laws offensive to their fundamental values and had decided openly to violate them....Even though declared constitutional, the law was still repugnant to all [the Saints'] values, and they were willing to face harassment, exile, or imprisonment rather than bow to its demands.¹⁰

Modern writers are sometimes careless or overly broad in their terminology, leading some Church members to associate "civil disobedience" with general lawlessness and hooliganism, such as the 1965 Watts riots mentioned by BYU president Ernest Wilkinson.¹¹ This connotation clouds our appreciation, however, of a vital tool for leading a moral life under any government, and our understanding of the Church's decision in its historical context.

The most eloquent and impressive advocate of civil disobedience was probably Mohandas 'Mahatma' Gandhi (1869-1948). Gandhi drew on Henry David Thoreau's 1849 work, Resistance to Civil Government (sometimes titled Civil Disobedience) in which Thoreau articulated the moral basis for civil disobedience:

Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?--in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.¹²

Simply put, the state is not sovereign in matters of conscience. Every person owes a duty to his highest beliefs and aspirations, which duty trumps anything the state might insist upon. To argue or believe otherwise is to accept the fascist fallacy--that the state is ultimately sovereign and of greater importance than the individual, and that rights do not exist in any "inalienable" sense, but are merely conferred (and can be taken away) by the state.¹³

Fundamental to the ethos of civil disobedience is a readiness to accept the state's penalty if one is convicted. One cannot choose to violate the law and also demand escape from the eventual penalty; one is rather choosing to follow one's convictions despite the potential punishment. Said Gandhi:

This religious struggle does not involve hurting even a hair of anyone. We shall teach the Government a lesson by suffering hardships ourselves...We shall violate the...law to such an extent that we shall be prepared to suffer whatever the penalty we may have to face-be it imprisonment, flogging or any other.¹⁴

Gandhi made a clear distinction between civil disobedience, which he insisted must remain strictly non-violent to retain its moral force, and criminal disobedience,¹⁵ which involved violence, and with which he wished nothing to do. The Saints would likely have agreed with him when he said:

Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen. He dare not give it up without ceasing to be a man. Civil disobedience is never followed by anarchy. Criminal disobedience can lead to it. Every state puts down criminal disobedience by force. It perishes if it does not.¹⁶

The historical record is clear that the First Presidency considered the matter in just this light:

Our enemies during the past half year have not slackened their activity in the work of persecution. If there has been any difference, it has been pursued with greater vindictiveness and more flagrant disregard of law and justice than at any time previous. Those who have been compelled to endure the penalties inflicted upon them have submitted, in nearly every instance, with a cheerful equanimity and fortitude that must have won the admiration of heaven and of all just men. That which has been accomplished furnishes but little cause for gratification to those who have been engaged in the inhuman task of persecuting a people for the practice of their religion. There have been but few persons in all who have been tried and convicted who have felt sufficiently terrified at the prospect of punishment to express a willingness to accept the rulings of the court instead of the law of God, as the guide for their consciences.¹⁷

Thus, the members and leaders were well aware that their actions violated civil law. Those who violate the law may be "compelled to endure the penalties," but better this than to "accept the rulings of the court instead of the law of God as the guide for their consciences."

At this point, the critic or concerned member might object that the Church claims to discourage disobedience to the civil law. This is certainly the case, and with good scriptural reasons:

19 For verily I say unto you, my law shall be kept on this land.

20 Let no man think he is ruler; but let God rule him that judgeth, according to the counsel of his own will, or, in other words, him that counseleth or sitteth upon the judgment seat.

21 Let no man break the laws of the land, for he that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land.¹⁸

This is not, as some have presumed, a blanket agreement to support any law of any type. Rather, it is a general principle to be observed, to which only God may command an exception. Members of the Church did not understand "the laws of the land" to mean any and all statutes that might be passed by government. Rather, they understood the "laws of the land" to mean constitutional principles, as President John Taylor explained:

It is said in the Doctrine and Covenants, that he that keepeth the laws of God, hath no need to break the laws of the land [58:21]. It is further explained in section 98, what is meant in relation to this... That is taking this nation as an example, all laws that are proper and correct, and all obligations entered into which are not violative of the constitution should be kept inviolate. But if they are violative of the constitution, then the compact between the rulers and the ruled is broken and the obligation ceases to be binding.¹⁹

Make no mistake--God's law "shall be kept," by His followers, though this usually does not require using extra-legal tactics, as Elder Boyd K. Packer observed:

Because the laws of man, by and large, do not raise moral issues, we are taught to honor, sustain, and obey the law (see A of F 1:12), and that "he that keepeth the laws of God hath no need to break the laws of the land" (D&C 58:21)... Suppose a law decreed that all children would be taken from their parents and raised by the state. Such a law would be wicked but probably could be enforced. Such things have been done before.²⁰

It is difficult to imagine that Elder Packer or the Church would countenance obedience to a law putting all children in the care of the state, despite the twelfth Article of Faith! Doctrine and Covenants 98 spells out the specifics in greater detail, as President Taylor indicated:

4 And now, verily I say unto you concerning the laws of the land, it is my will that my people should observe to do all things whatsoever I command them.

The first principle for the Church is to do what God commands them to do--that is the highest moral duty. The state may not demand that citizens place its demands higher than their own conscience.

5 And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me.

6 Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land...

Thus, the constitutional law of the United States is endorsed by God, since central to such law is the protection of religious conscience and practice. God grants the sustaining of law; the law does not "grant" the right of obeying God, since this right is inalienable and the common possession of all mankind.

7 And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil...

Law which violates the higher moral duty of obeying God is evil, and not sanctioned by God. This has a deeply theological rationale, as a later section illustrates:

77 According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles;

78 That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.²¹

The goal of divinely sanctioned civil law is to allow the free exercise of conscience, so that men and women may be judged by their unfettered exercise of their moral agency--and thus the state may not arrogate to itself the place of that moral sense.

Gandhi emphasized that generally, strict obedience was necessary for the potential civil disobedient, saying that he is

nothing if not instinctively law-abiding, and it is his law-abiding nature which exacts from him implicit obedience to the highest law, that is the voice of conscience which overrides all other laws.²²

President John Taylor made it clear that a defense of this principle was a positive moral duty for the Saints:

Besides the preaching of the Gospel, we have another mission, namely, the perpetuation of the free agency of man and the maintenance of liberty, freedom, and the rights of man. There are certain principles that belong to humanity outside of the Constitution, outside of the laws, outside of all the enactments and plans of man, among which is the right to live; God gave us the right and not man; no government gave it to us, and no government has a right to take it away from us.²³

After quoting Doctrine and Covenants 58:21-22 and 98:4-6, Elder James E. Talmage explained:

A question has many times been asked of the Church and of its individual members, to this effect: In the case of a conflict between the requirements made by the revealed word of God, and those imposed by the secular law, which of these authorities would the members of the Church be bound to obey? In answer, the words of Christ may be applied--it is the duty of the people to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's...Pending the overruling by Providence in favor of religious liberty, it is the duty of the saints to submit themselves to the laws of their country.²⁴

Thus, God may clearly endorse, in issues of religious liberty, disobedience to a secular authority. As a general principle, however, submission to that authority is commanded when religious practice is not at issue. One does not seek occasion to violate the law, but one cannot abandon principle. "What do you do?" asked President Taylor. "Observe the laws as much as you can. Bear with these indignities as much as you can."²⁵ President Woodruff put the matter to the Saints in just these terms: "Now, which shall we obey, God or Congress? For it is God and Congress for it." With a loud voice the assembly answered: "We will obey God."²⁶

Doctrine and Covenants 134 and Civil Disobedience

The Church's canonized statement on its relationship to civil government, found in Doctrine and Covenants 134, is also completely compatible with civil disobedience under some circumstances.

1 We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them, for the good and safety of society.

Thus, the first principle is that God will hold us accountable in our behavior toward civil authority. Members of the Church are not exempt from civil law, and must answer both to the civil law and to God for their conduct. In the same spirit, those who make laws and enforce them will likewise be judged by God.

2 We believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life.

Secondly, the civil government must not just defend freedom of conscience, but the free exercise of conscience must be inviolate. In the Reynolds decision on polygamy, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that all religious belief was protected by the first amendment, but that no religious practice was protected. Thus, one could believe anything one wanted, but one couldn't do anything about it with constitutional safety. (The Reynolds decision is discussed in the next section of this paper.)

4 We believe that religion is instituted of God; and that men are amenable to him, and to him only, for the exercise of it, unless their religious opinions prompt them to infringe upon the rights and liberties of others; but we do not believe that human law has a right to interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion; that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul.

Religious belief and practice are to be left strictly alone; only those whose beliefs infringe upon the rights and practice of others should be charged under civil law.

5 We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments; and that sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected, and should be punished accordingly; and that all governments have a right to enact such laws as in their own judgments are best calculated to secure the public interest; at the same time, however, holding sacred the freedom of conscience.

As long as citizens have such civil protection for their exercise of conscience, they are to honor the law. Of great significance is the proviso that believers must be "protected in their inherent and inalienable rights"--if such laws are mere window dressing, or are applied in an inconsistent fashion to a given people, then governments are not entitled to support in those areas, because this is the precise purpose for which government is instituted.

This anticipates the Nuremburg Principle--no one can be morally required to abrogate their commitment to duty or truth simply because the civil law declares otherwise, nor can one appeal to civil law as justification for violating a moral code.

7 We believe that rulers, states, and governments have a right, and are bound to enact laws for the protection of all citizens in the free exercise of their religious belief; but we do not believe that they have a right in justice to deprive citizens of this privilege, or proscribe them in their opinions, so long as a regard and reverence are shown to the laws and such religious opinions do not justify sedition nor conspiracy.

This is a repetition of the idea--government exists, theologically, in large measure to protect the free exercise of religious belief. Government has no right to restrict such practice, unless those practices threaten the government or the rights of others.

A key point is that "regard and reverence" be "shown to the laws"--religious societies should respect the laws. But, respect for the law has no moral force to compel a change in behavior or belief that violates one's religious convictions (unless such convictions threaten the rights of others).

8 We believe that the commission of crime should be punished according to the nature of the offense...all men should step forward and use their ability in bringing offenders against good laws to punishment.

Religious societies should help assure the punishment of those who break "good laws"--this requires, of course, the potential for "bad laws." In context, such laws clearly include laws which restrict or restrain religious practice, which religious societies may not be morally compelled to help enforce.

In summary, as a legal scholar noted:

Whenever the state illegitimately proscribes religious belief or protected conduct, Mormon theology speaks of moral, religious, and, in some instances, constitutional rights of its members to either civilly disobey or conscientiously refuse compliance with the laws of man. The declaration [in D&C 134]...is not merely a descriptive statement of political realities. The parallels in wording and implication with the Declaration of Independence are not purely coincidental.²⁷

Court Decisions and Civil Disobedience

The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the laws against the Mormons were constitutional. But, this does not imply that the Church was somehow "wrong" to resist these laws. In the first place, the Saints insisted that their civil disobedience was based upon divine revelation. Any moral citizen's first duty is to his highest convictions and moral sense; it is not to the state. In the second place, a court ruling does not make a decision morally correct, nor "constitutional" in the sense that the Saints understood the term, in which religious liberty always figured large.

Legal history is replete with examples in which an action once declared constitutional or legal was later reversed. For example, the Dred Scott opinion of 1857 found that a black man was a "being...of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race...and so far inferior [that he] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."²⁸

"Constitutional," for the Saints, is not a mere legal construct, in which something becomes moral and proper (or immoral or improper) simply because an organ of the state declares it so. Rather, it is shorthand for a law consistent with the commandments of God regarding moral agency. To argue otherwise is to accept the position that the state is ultimately more important than God or individual conscience.

This raises a key issue: if the Supreme Court decisions were not "constitutional" in the sense understood by the Saints, why did Wilford Woodruff issue the Manifesto which purported to abandon the practice of polygamy?

As already discussed, civil disobedience presupposes a number of principles. A key concept is that one may ethically disobey civil authority, but one must be prepared to accept the consequences of disobedience should they come.

The Mormons were generally aware of the laws which forbade them to practice polygamy or cohabitate; they were also aware of the legal penalties for disobedience. Their willingness to disobey also required a willingness to accept the consequences. This is an important principle--civil disobedience runs the risk of general lawlessness if other citizens see that the law may be disobeyed without risk of consequence.²⁹ The moral and political power of civil disobedience derives from the willingness of some to risk civil penalties, rather than violate their conscience. This may have the effect of mobilizing public opinion in their favor; it will ensure that the state cannot trump conscience.

The Saints were willing to suffer greatly for their faith--the civil penalties they endured under the anti-polygamy statutes were likely less onerous than the illegal rape, murder, and dispossession which they had already endured in Missouri and Illinois. But the Saints were unwilling to accept the loss of more of their faith over a part of it. Said the Manifesto of 1890:

Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.³⁰

The Manifesto nowhere concedes that the laws are constitutional in the sense understood by the Saints; it merely admits the uncontroversial fact that the courts had so declared them. President Woodruff simply expressed a willingness to discourage the practice of civil disobedience on this topic. He later explained his rationale:

The question is this: Which is the wisest course for the Latter-day Saints to pursue--to continue to attempt to practice plural marriage, with the laws of the nation against it and the opposition of sixty millions of people, and at the cost of the confiscation and loss of all the Temples, and the stopping of all the ordinances therein, both for the living and the dead, and the imprisonment of the First Presidency and Twelve and the heads of families in the Church, and the confiscation of personal property of the people (all of which of themselves would stop the practice); or, after doing and suffering what we have through our adherence to this principle to cease the practice and submit to the law, and through doing so leave the Prophets, Apostles and fathers at home, so that they can instruct the people and attend to the duties of the Church, and also leave the Temples in the hands of the Saints, so that they can attend to the ordinances of the Gospel, both for the living and the dead?³¹

The Saints continued to maintain that the practice of polygamy was divinely mandated and part of their religion. However, they were generally unwilling to continue their policy of overt, public civil disobedience and risk the harsher consequences that would ensue under the Edmunds-Tucker Act and related statutes. They were forced to abandon either their public practice of plural marriage, or accept the seizure of Church assets, the cessation of temple/sealing work, and the public practice of plural marriage. They chose the option which did the least violence to their beliefs--for most, this was to abandon attempts to live plural marriage publicly.

It has been argued that the Church should have only used legal means--as opposed to civil disobedience--to challenge the anti-polygamy laws. This claim ignores the Saints' belief that God had commanded them to institute the practice, and that they therefore did not need anyone else's blessing. Waiting would again have required them to put secular authority over their own conscience.

Secondly, some Saints seemed to believe that the government was willing to allow some benign non-enforcement of the law. Under this view, the government would pass the laws to satisfy those who were critical of polygamy, but would not enforce the laws vigorously. When President Abraham Lincoln signed the first anti-polygamy legislation in 1862, he reportedly told Thomas B.H. Stenhouse, an LDS messenger from Salt Lake City, "You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone, I will let him alone."³² This policy of non-interference gave the Saints everything they really wanted--the right to practice their religion--and so they were likely unwilling to attract unwanted attention by protesting a law that was not being enforced.³³

Thirdly, from a legal perspective, it is often impossible to challenge an unjust law until one is charged under it. Since the United States Congress was extremely unlikely to entertain any appeals from the Mormons on the subject, legislative options were out. Joseph Smith's decision to run for President of the United States--often offered by critics as evidence of megalomania--was actually a sound approach to this problem, and one of the only remaining legal avenues for redress of various injustices. It gave the Saints a legal chance (though a small one) to influence the actions of the executive and legislative branches.

The courts were therefore the only venue in which the Church might prevail--but, they had to be charged with violating the law before legal proceedings could begin and appeals made to the Supreme Court. During the American Civil Rights movement, the NAACP made a calculated decision to violate the South's bus seating laws, knowing they could be charged under the segregationist statutes. Being thus charged would then allow blacks to seek redress in the courts.

Despite their decision to use civil disobedience, the Saints also used more traditional democratic processes such as petitions to government leaders and the use of Congressional lobbyists to argue their position.³⁴

Cautioned Gandhi:

Disobedience to be civil must be sincere, respectful, restrained, never defiant, must be based upon some well-understood principle, must not be capricious and, above all, must have no ill-will or hatred behind it.³⁵

Clearly, the Saints met all these criteria. Only sincere conviction could have moved these New Englanders to implement polygamy. The principle upon which they stood--religious liberty--was clearly dear to their hearts, for they had repeatedly suffered enormous privations on that ground. And, Church leaders repeatedly expressed their willingness to negotiate with the United States and support its constitutional forms.³⁶

False analogy with the "Gay Marriage" Debate

Some have found it ironic and even inconsistent for the present-day Church to oppose legalizing "gay marriage" given its endorsement of polygamy in the past. However, this objection confuses two very separate issues.

In the case of polygamy, the Church never asked that their marital arrangements be condoned or legally recognized by the state. Nor did they ask for others to endorse their religion or lifestyle. They did not ask for legal benefits to accrue to their spouses, who were not legally "wives" in a civil sense. They asked only to be left alone, to be permitted their exercise of the rights of citizenship, and to be free from unlawful persecution. And, indeed, there was a period of détente following Abraham Lincoln's pledge to leave Brigham Young and the Mormons alone if they would leave him alone.

The Church does not dispute the civic right of those who wish to privately engage in homosexual acts to do so, though it considers such behavior unwise and sinful. Nowhere in America are gays and lesbians systemically denied the right to vote, or the right to own property and enjoy it unmolested. Unlike the nineteenth-century Mormons, the twenty-first-century homosexual community is generally free to enjoy sexual relations privately with any other consenting adult without being disenfranchised, jailed, or stalked by government agents. (Antiquated laws which remain exceptions to this rule seem destined for the scrap heap, if enforced at all, given the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Texas' sodomy laws.³⁷ Not insignificantly, the Supreme Court's decision did not require a redefinition of marriage to redress the grievances of the homosexual plaintiffs.) Homosexuals wishing to establish committed, exclusive relationships have no obstacle whatever to doing so, any more than heterosexual couples who live together out of wedlock.

"Marriage rights," by contrast, are a request for societal endorsement and support of such relationships. Society might well legitimately choose to refuse to endorse gay marriage--or polygamous ones--and refrain from providing societal support to such relationships. This is an entirely different matter from forbidding others to exercise their personal and religious convictions and tastes privately, and harassing them with legislatures and courts. Practicing homosexuals already have the privileges which the Mormons sought in vain.

Polygamy opponents or gay marriage advocates sometimes argue that at least gay marriages are consensual, adult relationships, while polygamous practices often involved the coercion of women or marriage of the under-aged. This difference, they argue, means that polygamy ought to be banned. It should be appreciated, however, that problems such as coercion, betrayal of trust, or 'statutory rape' are not problems unique to polygamy, homosexuality, or any other form of intimate relationship. There are already legal options available for controlling these ills. When they occur in monogamous societies we do not ban monogamy, but punish the specific crime.

Don't Die On Every Hill

The choice to invoke civil disobedience is always a complex one. One might fairly ask why the institutional Church chose to resist U.S. laws so strenuously in the nineteenth century, while the twenty-first century Church does not openly disobey the law in some of the world's more oppressive nations. It is even implied that the "right" to practice polygamy is a relatively trivial one, not worthy of the sacrifices made for it.

The simple answer is that the Saints considered the commandment to practice plural marriage divine and inviolable. However, as we have seen, civil disobedience presupposes that the protestor is willing, in principle, to accept the civil penalty if it should come. For example, if death is the penalty for a religious practice, one might decide that civil disobedience has too high a cost for too little gain. This is an important point, which is explored in detail in the next section, but explains why open civil disobedience was not pursued as a policy until the Saints were somewhat protected by geographical distance and isolation.

The decision to obey any law must rest with the conscience. If a key liberty is abridged, it makes little difference how many other freedoms exist. For example, the prophet Daniel was counselor to the king of Babylon, and probably had more personal freedom than the vast majority of humanity at the time.³⁸ Yet, a single law--being forbidden to pray to his God for one month--was sufficient violation of his conscience that he was not willing to say, "Oh well, I'm free in so many other ways. This infringement of my freedom is an acceptable price to pay."³⁹ I am not the first to see the parallels--President John Taylor noted that "Daniel had a political trap set for him, as we have had for us."⁴⁰

Mormon polygamy was a decidedly religious institution. The next section details the degree to which anti-polygamy statutes were in fact an attack on the Church as an institution, demonstrating that the issue was never primarily about polygamy per se, but about the state's effort to control the religious practice of a minority.

But, beyond the religious dimensions, most would dispute the claim that the right for two adults to have consensual sexual and/or family relations unmolested by the state is a "trivial" human rights issue. There is little that is more critical or private, as Lawrence v. Texas found: "intimate, adult consensual conduct...[is] part of the liberty protected by the substantive component of the Fourteenth Amendment's due process protections."⁴¹ Do we really want the state in the bedrooms of its citizens? If two women want to share the same man and call it a marriage, why should we prosecute them when the same man could pick up a different woman every night for a week, and no one at the attorney general's office would blink twice? Neither case can demand social support for or approval of their lifestyle (a point which "gay marriage" advocates rarely acknowledge, much less address), but why should one be harassed and jailed while the other is left strictly alone?

John Stuart Mill, in his classic work on civil liberty, even used the "Mormonites" as an example. Mill considered the Church to be "the product of palpable imposture,"⁴² and yet he pointed out that

Other countries are not asked to recognize such [polygamous] unions, or release any portion of their inhabitants from their own laws on the score of Mormonite opinions. But when the [Mormons] have conceded to the hostile sentiments of others, far more than could justly be demanded [by being driven out]; when they have left the countries to which their doctrines were unacceptable, and established themselves in a remote corner of the earth, which they have been the first to render habitable to human beings; it is difficult to see on what principles but those of tyranny they can be prevented from living there under what laws they please, provided they commit no aggression on other nations, and allow perfect freedom of departure to those who are dissatisfied with their ways... So long as the sufferers by the bad law do not invoke assistance from other communities, I cannot admit that persons entirely unconnected with them ought to step in and require that a condition of things with which all who are directly interested appear to be satisfied, should be put an end to because it is a scandal to persons some thousands of miles distant, who have no part or concern in it.⁴³

Polygamy and Lying

Critics charge that Joseph Smith and his successors made repeated public statements in which they hid or frankly denied the practice of polygamy, despite knowledge to the contrary. It is argued that this dishonesty is morally dubious and inconsistent with the Church's purported principles.

The concept of "civil disobedience" is essential to understanding those occasions in which Joseph Smith or other Church members were not forthright about the practice of polygamy.

Like obedience to civil law, honesty and integrity are foundational values to the Church of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the success which critics have in troubling members of the Church with tales of polygamy and its deceptive circumstances is, in a way, a compliment to the Church. If the Church as an institution typically taught its members to have a casual disregard for the truth, a discovery that Joseph Smith had deceived others about polygamy would not be troubling to most. But, because the Church (contrary to the suggestions of some critics) really does teach its members to aspire to live elevated lives of moral rectitude, the discovery that deception was involved with polygamy can come as something of a shock. Disillusionment can ensue if we follow the critics in assuming that because Joseph occasionally misled others in this specific context, he must therefore have lied about everything else, and been absolutely unworthy of trust.

But, as we have seen, the practice of polygamy must be viewed in its moral context as an act of religious devotion which the Saints were unwilling to forego simply because the state or society disapproved.

Lying About Polygamy During the Nauvoo Era

The "lying" about polygamy that occurred in the Nauvoo period is partly related to this same civil disobedience. A real-life example is helpful. Suppose a Church member is living in Holland in the 1940s. Established laws command the deportation of all Jews to a grisly fate. A Church member might (as many brave Dutch did) decide that such a law has no moral force--indeed, it would be immoral to obey it. The Church member might further decide that he is morally bound to hide a family of Jews in his attic. One day, an SS team arrives, knocks at the door, and demands to know if the Church member knows of the whereabouts of any Jews.

The member has several choices:

1. he can decide that "honesty" is the highest moral value, and reveal the location of his Jewish guests
2. he can refuse to answer the question, by remaining silent
3. he can declare that he is not willing to comply with the request, and will not answer the question
4. he can lie to the German SS, and may also have to lie to his friends and neighbors to keep them from revealing the secret

Which is the correct moral choice? It is difficult to see how honesty can trump the lives of the Jews--so, option (1) is out. The SS officer is unlikely to go meekly on his way should one remain silent or verbally refuse to answer, so choosing either (2) or (3) will simply result in the Jews being found and the Church member and his family suffering the consequences of their disobedience to civil law. It seems to me that the most moral option--fulfilling the member's duty to his Jewish guests, his conscience, and his family--requires that the member lie to the SS.

Remember, someone who opts for civil disobedience must accept the risk of punishment. The Dutch who were caught harboring Jews suffered greatly for their integrity--but, they apparently considered the risk of that suffering to be worth retaining that integrity. One cannot complain if one's deception of the civil authorities is found out and punished--that is the price of civil disobedience on moral grounds. But, one is not morally obligated to participate in the prosecution of oneself or others for breaking laws one considers immoral.

An analogy to modern Church practice may illustrate some of the difficulties. Let us presume that current members of the Church have made covenants in the temple--but, not only do they covenant not to disclose certain concepts, but they promise not to disclose even the existence of the temple endowment itself. What would a Church member do if confronted publicly by an apostate with questions about matters they have promised to keep secret? Silence or a decision to "plead the Fifth" will simply play into their enemies' hands by effectively confirming the story that the member will not deny. They cannot remain true to their covenants if they answer in the affirmative; to deny what the apostate is saying is to be deceptive.

It was in exactly this position that some Nauvoo-era members of the Church were placed. They had no ideal choices, and so did their best to follow God despite circumstances beyond their control.

Didn't Joseph Deceive Church Members?

Some are quick to point out that Joseph Smith didn't just lie to the government or to non-members, but also deceived members of the Church. This objection ignores, of course, the point that to make the announcement publicly to the Church is the same as telling everyone.

The accusation also omits some vital information. Joseph was not trying to simply act as he pleased and keep everyone else in the dark. He was anxious to teach the principle of plural marriage to any who would accept it; Church leaders such as Hyrum Smith and the Twelve were introduced to it. This is strange behavior for a deceiver, since each of these high Church leaders was in a position to denounce and ruin him. (Joseph had ample experience with such scenarios given the earlier departure of such key figures as the Three Witnesses, and many of the original Twelve Apostles during the Kirtland-era apostasy.) One source reports that over one hundred adults were taught the doctrine in Nauvoo before Joseph's murder.⁴⁴

Wouldn't it be better to simply keep quiet about polygamy if Joseph was just a libidinous leader? Joseph persisted, however, in trying to introduce others to "the Principle." He did make some efforts to teach plural marriage publicly--he seemed willing to accept the risk from non-members if the Church would support him. Heber C. Kimball wrote, in 1882:

On a certain Sabbath morning, previous to the return of the Apostles from Europe, in 1841, [Joseph] astonished his hearers by preaching on the restoration of all things, and said that as it was anciently with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so it would be again, etc.⁴⁵

A contemporary journal describes the reaction:

When the prophet "went to his dinner," [Joseph Lee] Robinson wrote, "as it might be expected several of the first women of the church collected at the Prophet's house with his wife [and] said thus to the prophet Joseph O mister Smith you have done it now it will never do it is all but Blassphemy you must take back what you have said to day is it is outrageous it would ruin us as a people." So in the afternoon session Smith again took the stand, according to Robinson, and said "Brethren and Sisters I take back what we said this morning and leave it as though there had been nothing said."⁴⁶

Robinson feels that this reaction was not unexpected; yet, Joseph tried anyway. Note that Joseph does not come back in the afternoon and deny the doctrine; he merely withdraws it from public consideration. Upon the return of the Twelve, he would begin teaching it to them. Heber also recounted the negative reaction of Emma and others:

He spoke so plainly that his wife, Emma, as well as others were quite excited over it. Seeing the effect his sermon had upon them, he consoled them in the afternoon by saying that the time of which he had spoken might be further off than he anticipated.⁴⁷

George A. Smith alluded to the same or a similar episode based upon records of those present:

The Prophet goes up on the stand, and, after preaching about everything else he could think of in the world, at last hints at the idea of the law of redemption, makes a bare hint at the law of sealing, and it produced such a tremendous excitement that, as soon as he had got his dinner half eaten, he had to go back to the stand, and unpreach all that he had preached, and left the people to guess at the matter. While he was thus preaching he turned to the men sitting in the stand, and who were the men who should have backed him up, for instance, to our good old President Marks, William and Wilson Law, and father Cowles, and a number of other individuals about Nauvoo, for this occurred when the Twelve were in the Eastern portions of the United States, and said, "If I were to reveal the things that God has revealed to me, if I were to reveal to this people the doctrines that I know are for their exaltation, these men would spill my blood."⁴⁸

Joseph considered the doctrine essential for the Church,⁴⁹ and it would seem that he offered the Church members at least one public opportunity to hear about plural marriage, but they refused it. So, Joseph continued to teach the doctrine, but in private. Are other more faithful members to be forbidden knowledge which some refused to receive?

In the last years of his life, Joseph repeatedly bemoaned the fact that all the members would not accept that which he wanted to teach. He warned, from Liberty Jail in 1839, "where is the man who is authorized to put his finger on the spot and say, thus far thou shalt go and no farther: there is no man. Therefore let us receive the whole, or none."⁵⁰ Wilford Woodruff quoted Joseph in 1841:

"Some say Joseph is a fallen Prophet because he does not bring forth more of the word of the Lord," he acknowledged in a December 1841 meeting with the Twelve. "Why does he not?" he then asked. "Are we able to receive it? No (says he) not one in this room."⁵¹

Joseph noted in 1843 that "many seal up the door of heaven by saying so far God may reveal and I will believe but no further."⁵²

These factors add a new moral wrinkle to the issue: what is a prophet to do if the majority of people are not yet ready to accept a teaching? Should he announce it publicly anyway, risking the wrath of violent opponents who will seek to prevent him from teaching anything at all? Should he teach nothing, and allow the less-faithful to decide that the more-faithful may not enjoy revelation from God? Or, should he opt for Joseph's approach--keep the doctrine private, and introduce it as people will accept it?

Critics who refuse to believe in modern prophets will find such a question pointless. But, if we give Joseph the benefit of the doubt before condemning him, this is an issue which we must confront.

As George A. Smith indicated, it is a problem with no neat, pat solution. Of the Kirtland Temple period, which he then applied by analogy to apostate William Law and polygamy, Smith said:

If the Lord had on that occasion revealed one single sentiment more, or went one step further to reveal more fully the law of redemption, I believe He would have upset the whole of us. The fact was, He dare not, on that very account, reveal to us a single principle further than He had done, for He had tried, over and over again, to do it... He was determined this time to be so careful, and advance the idea so slowly, to communicate them to the children of men with such great caution that, at all hazards, a few of them might be able to understand and obey.⁵³

Secrecy, Polygamy, and Threats of Violence against the Saints

One prominent source on Mormon polygamy indicates that secrecy was the only feasible tactic for establishing polygamy in the nineteenth-century American west. Richard Van Wagoner notes both the illegality of polygamous marriage and the social opposition to it:

Polygamy, a criminal act under the 1833 Illinois Anti-bigamy Laws, was so unacceptable to monogamous nineteenth-century American society that Joseph could introduce it only in absolute secrecy.⁵⁴

The civil disobedience perspective is again important, but the extreme taboo of polygamy to Joseph's contemporaries--understandable given the Victorian sensibilities of nineteenth-century America--points to another difficulty which we have not yet considered.

Emma Smith (no fan of polygamy) insisted that Joseph and Hyrum's murder was due to polygamy.⁵⁵ Even so, Emma's assertion must be taken with a grain of salt--her opposition to polygamy later led her to deny that her husband had ever practiced it at all, which makes it difficult for plural marriage to have been the cause of his murder, as she initially claimed.⁵⁶ Yet, there can be no doubt that Joseph knew that he risked his life--and lives of his followers--in preaching or practicing polygamy. Sarah M. Kimball recalled Joseph's attitude in 1842:

"He [Joseph] said in teaching this [polygamy] he realized that he jeopardized his life; but God had revealed it to him many years before as a privilege with a blessing, now God had revealed it again and instructed him to teach it with commandment as the Church could travel (progress) no farther without the introduction of this principle."⁵⁷

Louisa Beaman likewise reported that Joseph said, "In revealing this to you, I have placed my life in your hands, therefore do not in an evil hour betray me to my enemies."⁵⁸ Jane Richards recalled that Joseph's revelation on plural marriage "should [be]...without publicity at this time," since "mob spirit was already quite excited."⁵⁹

Polygamy certainly did not cause all the persecution which the Saints endured at Nauvoo. As Wilford Woodruff noted, they had suffered persecution before polygamy was an issue at all:

"Why," says the world, "you profess to believe in polygamy, and that is why you are persecuted." No, you are mistaken about that. The worst persecution this Church ever endured was before polygamy was revealed to the Church. We have had more prosperity since we carried out that law, and endeavored to fulfill it according to the command of God, than we ever had as a people before.⁶⁰

This was not mere wishful thinking on Wilford Woodruff's part. In 1877, J.H. Beadle, participant in the publication of much anti-Mormon material during the Utah period,⁶¹ wrote:

the Mormons had more trouble with the world before they adopted polygamy than since...Polygamy will do for a scapegoat, but the trouble is far more radical than that.⁶²

Despite this, polygamy did certainly help set off the powder-keg that was Nauvoo. When Hyrum Smith read the revelation on plural marriage to the Nauvoo stake presidency and high council, William Marks, Austin Cowles, and Leonard Sobey refused to support it.⁶³ William Law, his brother Wilson, and others used the Nauvoo Expositor issue of 7 June 1844 to detail Joseph's polygamous practices, and to charge him with various crimes, labeling him a "blood thirsty and murderous...demon...in human shape"⁶⁴ and "a sycophant, whose attempt for power find no parallel in history... one of the blackest and basest scoundrels that has appeared upon the stage of human existence since the days of Nero, and Caligula."⁶⁵

The Nauvoo city council's decision to suppress the Expositor, while legal for the day,⁶⁶ worsened a tense situation, and led directly to Joseph's surrender, incarceration, and murder.⁶⁷ Orson Hyde looked back on the Nauvoo days and indicated what the consequences of disclosure would have been:

In olden times they might have passed through the same circumstances as some of the Latter-day Saints had to in Illinois. What would it have done for us, if they had known that many of us had more than one wife when we lived in Illinois? They would have broken us up, doubtless, worse than they did.⁶⁸

It is thus important to realize that the public preaching of polygamy--or announcing it to the general Church membership, thereby informing the public by proxy--was simply not a feasible plan. There is a moral obligation to avoid death and suffering, and Joseph's decision to hide polygamy from the public likely avoided precipitating violence that would have claimed some of his followers and the non-members in Illinois.

Lying and Biblical Prophets

In any discussion of polygamy during the Nauvoo period--particularly as it relates to the secrecy and purported lies that surround its introduction--questions inevitably turn toward the biblical record. Critics often indicate that biblical prophets were never called upon to engage in lying or to make public statements at odds with private behavior.

LDS authors often cite the examples of Abraham⁶⁹ and Isaac,⁷⁰ both of whom deceived others about their marital status for their own protection, as biblical precedent for polygamy and its deceptions. There are, however, examples recorded in Exodus that are more on-point to the situation in Nauvoo.

The first is an example of civil disobedience sanctioned by God. It involves Pharaoh's murderous instructions to the Egyptian midwives:

16 And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

17 But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.

18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?

19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.⁷¹

The midwives are confronted with a command from the head of state which offends their personal/professional morality. They decline to participate, and actively deceive the Pharaoh--they even lie to him or his officers so that the deception may continue, as well as to (one assumes) spare themselves his punishment. The subsequent verses indicate God's approval of their action--honesty is not the primary moral value: obedience to the will of God is.

The second example comes from the prophetic call of Moses. The Lord speaks to Moses and says:

17 And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.⁷²

The Lord announces His intention to liberate the Israelites from slavery. But, in the very next breath, He tells Moses what to tell Pharaoh--what the "public story" should be, if you will:

18 And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.⁷³

The "public stance" of Moses and the Israelite leaders is to be that they only want to go three days' journey to sacrifice. So, here the Lord is advocating some degree of deception. This extends to even deceiving their Egyptian neighbors:

21 And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty:

22 But every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.⁷⁴

Because they are just going to make sacrifices, in the public version, the Israelites are to "borrow" valuable goods from the Egyptians. But, the true intent is clearly spelled out: they are to "spoil" (i.e. "loot") the Egyptians.⁷⁵

Pharaoh is, of course, nobody's fool. He seems to strongly suspect that there is more to the story than Moses is publicly admitting. He offers all sorts of compromise positions, seemingly designed to assure that the slaves will return after fulfilling their duties.⁷⁶

Things proceed to the point that Pharaoh threatens Moses' life despite the plagues and signs.⁷⁷ The people are finally freed, but once they have left Pharaoh and his councilors decide to resort to violence and slaughter:

5 And it was told the king of Egypt that the people fled: and the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people, and they said, Why have we done this, that we have let Israel go from serving us?

6 And he made ready his chariot, and took his people with him:

7 And he took six hundred chosen chariots, and all the chariots of Egypt, and captains over every one of them.

8 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went out with an high hand.⁷⁸

We are not told why the Lord instructed Moses to deal with the Egyptians in the way that he did. It is significant that Moses did not take such an approach on his own; only a direct command motivates his less-than-forthright behavior.

One can speculate, however--it is certainly reasonable to think that the Egyptians would have murderous intent toward their slaves who presumed to leave. They are willing to act on such inclinations, despite the plagues, when it becomes indisputable that Israel has left for good. If Moses had announced that Israel was leaving, what would the reaction of Pharaoh's court have been? Moses' failure to tell the whole story may well have saved Egyptian life, as well as Israelite. To be sure, God could have used another way. But, in this instance, deception was the specific tactic which He commanded.

Anti-Moses authors could doubtless exploit this situation to great rhetorical effect--they could mock Moses' "ethical lapse" here, and insist that he did it all for monetary gain. They could contrast his behavior here with the "thou shalt not covet," "thou shalt not bear false witness," and "thou shalt not steal" commands given later at Sinai, and point out that "borrowing" when you don't ever intend to come back looks a lot like "stealing."

But, all these attacks--like the attacks on Joseph--beg the question. They presume at the outset that Moses is not a prophet. The highest duty for a prophet--or anyone--is to obey the word of the Lord.

Lying for the Lord?

Critics have long charged the LDS with organizationally and systematically "lying for the Lord," equating such with a policy of using any means necessary to achieve some "good" goal. I do not believe that the biblical record advocates such a policy, but it does advocate obeying the Lord. One does not use ethically questionable tactics because one believes the "end justifies the means." Elder Dallin H. Oaks repudiated any such doctrine within the Church, specifically in the context of polygamy:

Some have suggested that it is morally permissible to lie to promote a good cause. For example, some Mormons have taught or implied that lying is okay if you are lying for the Lord... As far as concerns our own church and culture, the most common allegations of lying for the Lord swirl around the initiation, practice, and discontinuance of polygamy. The whole experience with polygamy was a fertile field for deception. It is not difficult for historians to quote LDS leaders and members in statements justifying, denying, or deploring deception in furtherance of this religious practice.⁷⁹

Elder Oaks then reaches the key point: there will be times when moral imperatives clash. Do you save your family and the Jews you are hiding, or do you tell the Nazis the truth? Do you break up polygamous families, abandon wives without support, or tell the whole truth? One cannot do both--that is not an option. Elder Oaks notes:

My heart breaks when I read of circumstances in which wives and children were presented with the terrible choice of lying about the whereabouts or existence of a husband or father on the one hand or telling the truth and seeing him go to jail on the other. These were not academic dilemmas. A father in jail took food off the table and fuel from the hearth. Those hard choices involved collisions between such fundamental emotions and needs as a commitment to the truth versus the need for loving companionship and relief from cold and hunger.

My heart also goes out to the Church leaders who were squeezed between their devotion to the truth and their devotion to their wives and children and to one another. To tell the truth could mean to betray a confidence or a cause or to send a brother to prison. There is no academic exercise in that choice!⁸⁰

The actions of wicked people may place the Saints in conditions in which they cannot fulfill all the ethical demands upon them. In such difficult circumstances, only revelation--to the Church collectively and to individuals--can hope to show us what God would have us do. Judging such cases is extremely difficult; it is also hypocritical for Church critics to point out such instances without providing the context which underlay their choices, and which made them so wrenching. As Elder Oaks continued:

I do not know what to think of all of this, except I am glad I was not faced with the pressures those good people faced. My heart goes out to them for their bravery and their sacrifices, of which I am a direct beneficiary. I will not judge them. That judgment belongs to the Lord, who knows all of the circumstances and the hearts of the actors, a level of comprehension and wisdom not approached by even the most knowledgeable historians.⁸¹

Each case must be judged on its merits. Did some Church members or leaders make wrong choices? Probably--they and we do not claim any inerrancy. In the main, however, I think it clear that Church members did not "lie" or "deceive" because it was convenient, or because it would advance "the cause." They lied because moral duties conflicted, and they chose the option which did the least harm to their ethical sense. Happily, they had personal revelation to guide them. Concludes Elder Oaks:

I ask myself, "If some of these Mormon leaders or members lied, therefore, what?" I reject a "therefore" which asserts or implies that this example shows that lying is morally permissible or that lying is a tradition or even a tolerated condition in the Mormon community or among the leaders of our church. That is not so.⁸²

Given the fact that some Church leaders did deceive others concerning polygamy, it is reasonable to wonder whether such leaders also lied about other matters. Fortunately, a key doctrine of the Church is that no one should have to take anyone else's word for something--"that man should not council his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh--but that every man might speak in the name of God the Lord, even the savior of the world."⁸³ This doesn't apply to polygamy alone; every discussion of testimony includes it. Joseph made numerous other claims that might make us skeptical: appearances of God and Jesus, angels, gold plates, and everything else. Said he:

Search the scriptures--search the revelations which we publish, and ask your Heavenly Father, in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, to manifest the truth unto you, and if you do it with an eye single to His glory nothing doubting, He will answer you by the power of His Holy Spirit. You will then know for yourselves and not for another. You will not then be dependent on man for the knowledge of God; nor will there be any room for speculation.⁸⁴

No Church member is obliged to blindly believe leaders, past or present, but we ought to at least consider their decisions with a hint of charity, and recognize the many factors that may have contributed to their choices, especially when we know so little about some of them.

Lying About Polygamy in Utah, Prior to 1890

Gandhi pointed out that a moral civil disobedience campaign required an atmosphere of relative safety:

It should be obvious that civil resistance cannot flourish in an atmosphere of violence. This does not mean that the resources of [resistance] have come to an end. Ways other than civil disobedience should be found out.⁸⁵

Illinois certainly fits this description--the threat of violence was always present, and eventually materialized. However, once the Church had relocated to Utah, the Saints could be more open about the practice of polygamy without as grave a threat to the innocent. Lorenzo Snow's journal, which detailed the exodus from Illinois, noted that

we felt greatly to rejoice in having accomplished this much towards freeing ourselves from the land of Gentile oppression, and we felt as tho' we could breath more freely and speak one with another upon those things where in God had made us free with less carefulness than we had hitherto done.⁸⁶

The first official announcement was made in 1852, yet Brigham Young told the territorial legislature in 1851 that "I have many [wives] and I am not ashamed to have it known."⁸⁷ Any fears which Joseph or others might have had about the Saints' safety if polygamy was announced would seem to have been well-founded. B.H. Roberts noted:

That at the first [the official announcement of plural marriage] gave the opponents of the work great advantage, may not be doubted; for from every foreign mission came reports of increased opposition resulting in many cases in mob violence.⁸⁸

Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Church was well-known for its polygamous practices. Despite increasing legal pressure, the members continued their practice of civil disobedience. The announcement of the Manifesto of 1890 introduced a new set of problems. As Elder Dallin H. Oaks noted:

It is clear from the record of history that Joseph Smith introduced the doctrine and practice of polygamy to a select few in the 1830s and 1840s, but it was not announced publicly by the church until the revelation was read aloud at a Church conference in Salt Lake City in 1852. It is also clear that during the federal prosecutions of the 1880s, numerous Church leaders and faithful members were pursued, arrested, prosecuted, and jailed for violations of various laws forbidding polygamy or cohabitation. Some wives were even sent to prison for refusing to testify against their husbands, my grandfather's oldest sister being one of them.

It is also clear that polygamy did not end suddenly with the 1890 Manifesto. Polygamous relationships sealed before that revelation was announced continued for a generation. The performance of polygamous marriages also continued for a time outside the United States, where the application of the Manifesto was uncertain for a season. It appears that polygamous marriages also continued for about a decade in some other areas among leaders and members who took license for the ambiguities and pressures created by this high-level collision between resented laws and reverenced doctrines.⁸⁹

We should also not view this period as one of all "good guys" (Mormons) on one side, and all "bad guys" (politicians, judges, and non-Mormons) on the other. As one author reminds us:

The federal antagonists were not all of one stripe and were not all animated by a general resentment against Mormonism as a religion...Some of the federal participants who enforced the anti-polygamy laws most strictly were honorable men, in high esteem in their home communities...but who held no secret agenda of wishing to put down or destroy Mormonism as a religion...Some were good men and some were very bad.⁹⁰

Nor, of course was untoward opposition unusual for the Church. Missouri governor Daniel Dunklin "wondered why, in an era full of imposters and fanatics, the Mormons alone were deprived of their rights."⁹¹ And, Scribner's Monthly referred to the "anomalous" treatment which the Mormons received: "Americans have but one native religion [Mormonism] and that one is the sole apparent exception to the American rule of universal toleration."⁹²

Conditions Preceding the Manifesto of 1890

The decades prior to the Manifesto saw increasingly stringent legal efforts made to punish the Saints for the practice of plural marriage. This violation of what they perceived to be their rights of worship only solidified the Mormons' idea that the U.S. government and many non-members were engaged in an all-out war against the Church. The Saints did not understand this in just a rhetorical sense, but considered themselves the victims of a war of aggression sometimes being waged with legislatures and court cases instead of bayonet and canon. At times, it was also a war of armies and weapons, as in the "Utah War" of 1852, or in the Missouri expulsion. But, from the Saints' perspective, the legislative efforts were simply a different weapon chosen by their enemies to achieve the same goal--the destruction of the Church.

Said John Taylor in 1857:

Why, they are in storm and trouble every way in the United States, and here is the most perfect peace and the best morality that can be found in the world by a thousand-fold: yes, it is a thousand-fold better than I have seen in any part of the earth where I have been. There is not a place that can compare with it; and nothing but the very Devil himself could inspire the hearts of the children of men to make war against such a people as this.⁹³

Thus, for the Mormons, there was a war on, and it was driven by evil influences. This understanding was not an isolated one, and it persisted throughout the decades prior to the Manifesto. Consider the following quotes, from the years shown:

1863: The light of the Spirit of God is withdrawn from [the political rulers of the world] and they cannot see their way. They are tremulous because of the present political complications; they know not God, but "their hearts fear because of those things that are coming on the earth." Without revelation they can only look upon things upon natural principles and dread the result. We know what will be the final ultimatum of the work in which we are engaged, and also what will be the fate of those who make war against it, and of the nations who reject the Gospel when it is sent to them.⁹⁴

1865: The Latter-day Work which we represent will bind the power of the devil which has held sway among the children of men for 180 generations. Then it is not strange that the devil should become mad and stir up the wicked to make war against it...⁹⁵

1873: [T]he devil...has inspired the hearts of a great many men, since the Gospel was restored to the earth, to make war against us.⁹⁶

1880: Thus sayeth the Lord unto my servant Wilford Woodruff, I have heard thy prayer, and will answer thy petition. I will make known unto thee my will Concerning the nations who encumber the land of promise, and also concerning Zion and her inhabitants...The devil is ruling over his kingdom and my spirit has no place in the hearts of the rulers of this nation, and the devil stirs them up to defy my power and to make war upon my saints.⁹⁷

1884: I want the world; I want the Christian world; I want the priests of the day who cry aloud for the blood of innocence to be shed to carry out their desires--I want these priests and all who are laboring to overthrow "Mormonism," to carefully inquire, whether those prophets were inspired of God. And if they were inspired of God, whether it is right for them to make war against the work of God in the earth?... the question is, whether this warfare against God and against His work is going to prevail?... These are eternal truths, as the God of heaven lives, and they will prevail whether men believe them or not, or whether the wicked war against them or not.⁹⁸

1886: The circumstances which surround us, though in many respects painful and trying, are not such as to discourage the faithful Saint. We have been taught to expect just such scenes as these through which we are passing, or, at least, just such opposition as we now have to contend with. ... Not only have the Prophets in our day spoken about the events which should take place in connection with the latter-day work and the opposition it would have to contend with, but the Prophets of old foretold with accuracy and minuteness that the people of God should be few and their dominions should be small, because of the wickedness of "the great whore" which should make war against them. But notwithstanding that the multitudes of the earth should fight against the Church of the Lamb of God, the power of God would descend upon the Saints and upon His covenant people; and they should be armed with righteousness and with the power of God and great glory... Therefore, in this contest which is forced upon us we do not wage a defense that is hopeless.⁹⁹

And, wrote Wilford Woodruff in his journal on New Year's Eve, 1889:

Thus Ends the year 1889 And the word of the Prophet Joseph Smith is beginning to be fulfilled that the whole Nation would turn against Zion and make war upon the Saints. The nation has never been filled so full of lies against the Saints as to Day, 1890 will be an important year with the Latter Day Saints & American nation.¹⁰⁰

Nor was this perspective restricted to the upper echelons of Church leadership. Warren Foote, a Utah polygamist, wrote in his diary:

This war was waged against the Latter Day Saints, because they believed in prophets and professed to have revelation from God. This was the statement of General Clark in his address to the Saints at Far West, after the surrender...[With the announcement of the Manifesto] I suppose they will conjure up something else in order to keep up their warfare.¹⁰¹

Clearly, the Saints saw themselves as the non-aggressors in a relentless war by their enemies, whom they were convinced were motivated primarily by religious bigotry. Further, it seemed clear to them that their enemies would use either armed force or the legislature to accomplish their purposes. And, the anti-polygamy battles of the second half of the nineteenth century were a continuation by different means of the same war which had been waged in Missouri and Illinois during the first half.

How Critics Viewed Mormons Prior to the Manifesto of 1890

Many of the politicians or judges with whom the Saints had to interact in the pre- and post-Manifesto periods had a history of anti-Mormon activism. As one book reviewer noted:

As I have moved frequently from the texts to the biographical registers in these volumes, I have...noticed how many of the enemies of Joseph Smith and the Church were, post-1844, governmental officials, lawyers, and judges.¹⁰²

John Stuart Mill's On Liberty gives ample witness to the intent of the anti-polygamy sentiment:

What here concerns us is, that...its prophet and founder was, for his teaching, put to death by a mob; that others of its adherents lost their lives by the same lawless violence; that they were forcibly expelled, in a body, from the country in which they first grew up; while, now that they have been chased into a solitary recess in the midst of a desert, many in this country openly declare that it would be right (only that it is not convenient) to send an expedition against them, and compel them by force to conform to the opinions of other people. The article of the Mormonite doctrine which is the chief provocative to the antipathy which thus breaks through the ordinary restraints of religious tolerance, is its sanction of polygamy; which, though permitted to Mahomedans, and Hindoos, and Chinese, seems to excite unquenchable animosity when practised by persons who speak English, and profess to be a kind of Christians.¹⁰³

It seems clear that the belief that the Congress was out to "get" the Mormons was not an entirely one-sided perception based on nothing but Mormon fanaticism. Mill clearly understood that the underlying intent was to compel religious conformity.

Some of the Mormons' enemies saw things in the same terms. In 1880, for example, Protestant minister Thomas DeWitt Talmage told the U.S. Congress:

Mormonism will never be destroyed until it is destroyed by the guns of the United States government...If the Mormons submit to the law--all right. If not, then send out troops...and let them make the Mormon Tabernacle their headquarters, and with cannons of the biggest bore, thunder into them the seventh commandment.¹⁰⁴

Reverend Talmage was not shy, either, about associating the Mormons with other crimes besides adultery. Upon the assassination of President Garfield, Talmage preached a sermon in Brooklyn and noted:

If the death of Garfield shall arouse the nation to more hatred of that institution of Mormonism...he will not have died in vain. [The murderer's identity was unclear, but for Talmage, the assassin]...had the ugliness of a Mormon, the licentiousness of a Mormon, the cruelty of a Mormon, the murderous spirit of a Mormon.¹⁰⁵

And, Reverend George Whitfield Phillips of Plymouth Church in Massachusetts opined that the nation must deal with polygamy as vigorously as it had dealt with slavery: "I do not think it strange when we recall the Divine method of dealing with great social wrongs, that this Mormon problem is laid at the doors of the American people."¹⁰⁶

It would seem the Saints were not just being paranoid--there really were religiously motivated leaders with political power willing to attack the Saints militarily or legislatively as required to destroy Mormonism.

A review of some of the Congressional debate regarding polygamy is useful; it becomes abundantly clear that the intent of the legislature went far beyond curbing the Saints' marriage practices.¹⁰⁷

The arrival of Johnson's army in 1858 did not help the Saints' opinion of the United States. Members of the Church clearly felt threatened by the use of military power against them, which they had already experienced in Missouri and Illinois. From their perspective, even geographically isolated as they were, their enemies seemed determined to pursue them.

Federal judges appointed between 1852-1856 were ill-chosen, since they do not appear to have been men of high moral character:

If it was true that the magistrates appointed by the United States were held in contempt, there was sufficient provocation. Two of them...deserted their posts, a third was probably an opium-eater, a fourth a drunkard, a fifth a gambler and a lecher.¹⁰⁸

Of the worst federal judge, William Wormer Drummond, Terryl Givens wrote:

[He] was a libertine with an exhibitionist flair. Bringing in tow a Washington prostitute, who shared his bench as well as his bed (he had abandoned his family in Illinois), Drummond flouted Mormon mores while endeavoring to establish federal judicial authority. After two years of contention [he and other judges] returned to Washington, furious and intent on revenge.¹⁰⁹

Given that many of their enemies tolerated or availed themselves of mistresses or prostitutes, the Mormons may perhaps be forgiven for feeling that they were being singled out on unfair grounds.¹¹⁰ That polygamy was used as the rationale struck some members as hypocritical, especially given that President Buchanan "fondles or has administered to six or more 'Cyprians' [prostitutes]"¹¹¹ as Brigham Young wrote to John Taylor, hoping that this would lead Buchanan to treat the Mormon polygamists with some leniency. It was not to be, since Buchanan considered the Mormons to be a "deluded people," whose "frenzied fanaticism" was evident in their doctrines which were "deplorable...and revolting to the moral and religious sentiments of all Christendom."¹¹²

Clearly, from the outset there were religious motivations behind the attacks on polygamy:

In 1854, one legislator implored Congress: "Let us, as Christians, follow and legislate the doctrines of Christ, not of Joe Smith; let us take the holy Gospel, not the Book of Mormon....Let us nip this evil in the bud, for the sake or morality, religion, and Christianity."¹¹³

It appears that in the minds of at least some of those in the East, the Mormons were beyond the pale--they did not worship Christ and were not Christian, did not follow "the holy Gospel," and were an offense to religion itself. Such individuals saw no problem with imposing their religious views through the power of the state.

In 1856 the new Republican Party conducted its first congressional campaign on a platform for the abolition of "those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery."¹¹⁴

Unable to alienate his Southern base by opposing slavery, [Democratic] President Buchanan began to see the political potential of the antipolygamy movement. In 1857, a Southern Democratic organizer wrote to the President: "I believe that we can supercede the Negro-Mania with the almost universal excitements of an Anti-Mormon crusade....[T]he pipings of Abolitionism will hardly be heard amidst the thunders of the storm we shall raise."¹¹⁵

Quite simply, Mormons were less popular than slaveholders, and therefore ready targets. This was especially true because politicians of the time did not see the First Amendment as applying to the Mormons. Only traditional Christian faiths were to be protected, as an 1860 House of Representatives report makes chillingly clear--even "Hindoos" and "Hottentots" did not deserve the name of "religions":

The moral sense of our own people, as well as of every refined and intelligent community upon the habitable earth, has been shocked by the open and defiant license which, under the name of religion and a latitudinous interpretation of our Constitution, has been given to this crime in one of our Territories. ... The citizens of Utah, "with a high hand and an outstretched arm," laugh to scorn the sacredness of the Bible and the majesty of our laws.... It would, perhaps, require no elaborate statement to demonstrate that the framers of the Constitution,...when they declared "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof," [sic] they did not mean to dignify with the name of religion a tribe of Latter Day Saints disgracing that hallowed name, and wickedly imposing upon the credulity of mankind....It is more than probable that by the term religion they meant only to convey the idea of a belief founded upon the precepts of the Bible; and holding it to be a common and established standard of faith, they did not design that any discrimination should be made in favor of one denomination of Christians over another, but surely they never intended that the wild vagaries of the Hindoo or the ridiculous mummeries of the Hottentot should be ennobled by so honored and sacred a name.¹¹⁶

The legislature refused to believe the Mormons' report about their religion and beliefs. Furthermore, they asserted that the Constitution was only intended to protect "Christians," which should give Muslims, Jews, and secular humanists pause even as the Mormons are ejected from Christendom.

Legislatures made ample use of 'yellow journalism' and absurd charges to demonize the Mormon enemy: Representative Thomas A.R. Nelson of Tennessee quoted a Nashville Daily News (25 March 1860) article which cited John Cradlebaugh, an associate justice of the Utah territorial supreme court:

Incest is common. Sometimes the same man has a daughter and her mother for wives at once...The first thing they [polygamous offspring] do, after learning vulgarity, is to wear a leather belt with a butcher-knife stuck in it; and the next, is to steal from the Gentiles...[then] are fit to steal, rob, and murder emigrants. The women and girls are coarse, masculine, and uneducated, and are mostly drafted from the lowest stages of society.¹¹⁷

Polygamy continued to serve as a convenient whipping boy for those whose true target was the Church itself, as one of them candidly admitted:

Some non-Mormon men...admitted that polygamy was not the most important issue. Fred T. Dubois, a longtime activist against polygamy and Utah statehood, later wrote that "those of us who understood the situation were not nearly so much opposed to polygamy as we were to the political domination of the church. We realized, however, that we could not make those who did not come actually in contact with it, understand what this political domination meant. We made use of polygamy, in consequence, as our great weapon of offense and to gain recruits to our standard."¹¹⁸

Ralph Waldo Emerson understood clearly the hypocrisy often at work in the anti-polygamy crusade:

Nothing is so hypocritical as the abuse in all the journals--& at the South, especially,--of Mormonism...These men who write the paragraphs in the "Herald" & "Observer," have just come from their brothel, or, in Carolina, from their Mulattoes [sic].¹¹⁹

The fever pitch against Mormons and polygamy fueled a series of legislative acts, and the acts served to fuel the fever. A review of the legal measures taken against the Saints is instructive.¹²⁰

The Morrill Act

Vermont Republican Justin S. Morrill outlined the rationale for the anti-polygamy assault in 1856:

So great is the necessity for some decisive legislation, if there are any who hesitate, I would say to them, as did Jefferson, at the time Louisiana was acquired, that they should "throw themselves on their country" "casting behind them metaphysical subtilties, and risking themselves like faithful servants."

There is no purpose to interfere with the most absolute freedom of religion, nor to intermeddle with the rights of conscience; but the sole design is to punish gross offenses, whether in secular or ecclesiastical garb; to prevent practices which outrage the moral sense of the civilized world, and to reach even those "who steal the livery of the court of Heaven to serve the Devil in."¹²¹

For Morrill, there is clearly a religious dimension, and he preemptively dismisses any attempt that might be made to discuss the "metaphysical subtilties" concerning the free exercise of religion that motivated the Mormons. Unfortunately for Morrill,

[t]he growing [modern] recognition that law is not autonomous from politics or morals and that legal reasoning is essentially the same as political reasoning or moral reasoning suggests also that legal choices necessarily implicate political and moral commitments. When [we] refuse to consider the substance behind the moral claims of the civilly disobedient, [we] are making an important political and moral choice--a choice that usually favours those in power.¹²²

Rather than consider such perspectives, this was to be a crusade:

[A congressional committee in 1860] placed this expansive interpretation upon the authority of the national government over the territories of the United States: "It is competent for Congress to declare any act criminal which is not sanctioned or authorized by the provisions of the Constitution."¹²³

Rather than having the people retain any rights not forbidden or circumscribed by the Constitution, this declaration is ominous in its claim that there are no acts which cannot be criminal if not "sanctioned or authorized by...the Constitution." And, the legislation was specifically tailored to apply only to the Mormons:

The Morrill Act also prohibited corporations of religion from holding real estate in the territories that exceeded $50,000 in value. That this provision was directed at the Church and no other body is evident from the legislative record. Just days before the bill was passed in the House, one member expressed in panic that section 3 would affect corporate bodies other than the Mormon Church, in that he "should not be at all surprised if it were ascertained that the Catholic Church in the city of Santa Fé [sic] owns real estate in the amount of more than fifty thousand dollars." However, once it was determined that for technical reasons the Act would not apply to the Catholic Church's property holdings, concern over the provision evaporated.¹²⁴

And, the legislators were not shy about admitting that their aim was not the elimination of polygamy or bigamy per se, but only to prevent the Mormons from practicing it:

This bill [the Morrill Act] proposes, ostensibly, to prescribe penalties for the punishment of the crime of polygamy, or bigamy, in the Territories of the United States. Its real purpose is to reach this offense in the Territory of Utah, where it is practiced, as an abomination in the sight of God and man...¹²⁵

The Congress refused to believe that any religious sentiments were involved at all:

It is not true that polygamy pretends to any religious sanction. It is not true that the Mormons practice it as a pious observance.¹²⁶

And, lest the reader presume that anti-polygamy measures were governed solely by moral outrage against the Saints' marital practices, Representative Emerson Etheridge of Tennessee announced the underlying intent of the legislation:

the moral sense of my constituents of all parties demands it [the passage of anti-polygamy legislation, and] posterity is interested in the extirpation of Mormonism in Utah.¹²⁷

The ultimate goal was clear, and baldly stated--to destroy the Church.

[E]ven in this first legislation [the 1862 Morrill Act], while the most flamboyant rhetoric was aimed at polygamy, Congress's target was as much the social power of the Mormon church as Mormon practices. Two of the Morrill Act's three sections were aimed not at polygamy, but at the church's corporate structure and economic power. This was not surprising, given Congress's distorted perception of the Mormons. The 1860 congressional debates, the only period of intensive examination, contained a rambling indictment of all sorts of purported Mormon practices and beliefs... Indeed, Congress devoted little attention to balancing the rights of the Mormons against the proposed legislation, instead using lurid press accounts to dehumanize the Mormons and portray the church as little more than a bandit gang.¹²⁸

An appreciation that the war against polygamy really was a war--which aimed to "extirpate Mormonism"--provides a crucial piece of the puzzle for understanding the Saints' and their leaders' actions before and after the Manifesto. As already discussed, truth-telling is a high moral duty, but it is not an absolute one. Warfare is commonly recognized as a condition under which honesty may not be a virtue, but may actually be immoral.

We would think very little of a soldier who, in conversation with the enemy, disclosed the location of ammunition dumps, troop movements, and strategic plans. We would honor, not shun, the man who lied under duress or torture when asked about his nation's war-related information.

The Saints considered themselves in a war--a war they had not started, did not want, and did not deserve. They considered themselves out-manned and out-gunned, both militarily and legislatively. Their only consolations were that they had the support of heaven, were fighting for civil rights which they considered the common heritage of all Americans, and were not the aggressors.

It is therefore not surprising that some did not consider making false statements to legal or governmental authorities to carry great moral stigma. They did not see themselves as represented within the system, or having a fair chance against the system. The system was, in Mormon eyes, utterly corrupt in the uses to which it was being put: to deny them religious rights more precious than anything. Government power was nothing but an instrument of war, which they were morally permitted--even bound--to resist.

A soldier might not relish killing, and might wish he did not have to do so. But, we do not make a soldier into a murderer because he kills in wartime, nor do we judge him harshly. If anything, we sympathize that cruel and immoral circumstances beyond his control placed him in a situation in which he was compelled to violate his ethics and kill.

Likewise, most members of the Church who hid the truth or actively promoted falsehood under war-time conditions should be sympathized with, not condemned.

Even some members of Congress realized where things might be headed, ultimately. Warned Representative Lawrence M. Keitt of South Carolina, "[I]f they are the religious zealots we are told they are, then your war is against opinion, and nothing but extermination will close it."¹²⁹

To Congress, apparently not shy about self-contradiction, the Saints were both religious ze