Farther Observations at Great Salt Lake City.
[THE COURT-HOUSE.--P. K. DOTSON.]
One of my last visits was to the court-house on an interesting
occasion. The _Palais de Justice_ is near where the old fort once was,
in the western part of the settlement. It is an unfinished building of
adobe, based on red sandstone, with a flag-staff and a tinned roof,
which gives it a somewhat Muscovite appearance, and it cost $20,000.
The courts and Legislature sit in a neat room, with curtains and
chandeliers, and polished pine-wood furniture, all as yet unfaded.
The occasion which had gathered together the notabilities of the
place was this: Mr. Peter Dotson, the United States Marshal of the
Territory, living at Camp Floyd, and being on the opposition side,
had made himself--the Mormons say--an unscrupulous partisan. In July,
1859, he came from the cantonment armed with a writ issued by Mr.
Delana R. Eckels, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and accompanied
by two officers of the United States Army, to the Holy City for the
purpose of arresting a Mr. Mackenzie--now in the Penitentiary for
counterfeiting “quarter-masters’ drafts”--an engraver by profession,
and then working in the Deserét store of Mr. Brigham Young. Forgery
and false coining are associated in the Gentile mind with Mormonism,
and inveterately so; whether truly or not, I can not say: it is highly
probable that Mr. Bogus’s[215] habitat is not limited by latitude,
altitude, or longitude; at the same time, the Saints are too much _en
évidence_ to entertain him publicly. The marshal, probably not aware
that the Territory had passed no law enabling the myrmidons of justice
to seize suspicious implements and apparatus made _main forte_, levied,
despite due notice, upon what he found appertaining to Mr. Mackenzie,
a Bible, a Book of Mormon, and--here was the rub--the copper plates of
the Deserét Currency Association. This plunder was deposited for the
night with the governor, and was carried in a sack on the next day
to Camp Floyd. Then the anti-Mormons sang Io pæans; they had--to use
a Western phrase--“got the dead wood on Brigham;” letters traced back
to officials appeared in the Eastern and other papers, announcing to
the public that the Prophet was a detected forger. Presently, the true
character of the copper plates appearing, they were generously offered
back; but, as trespass had been committed, to say nothing of libel, and
as all concerned in the affair were obnoxious men, it was resolved to
try law. A civil suit was instituted, and a sum of $1600 was claimed
for damage done to the plates by scratching, and for loss of service,
which hindered business in the city. The unfortunate marshal, who was
probably a “cat’s-paw,” had “caught a Tartar;” he possessed a house and
furniture, a carriage and horses, all of which were attached, and the
case of “Brigham Young, sen., _vs._ P. K. Dotson,” ended in a verdict
for the plaintiff, viz., value of plates destroyed, $1668; damages,
$648 66. The anti-Mormons declared him a martyr; the Mormons, a vicious
fool; and sensible Gentiles asserted that he was rightly served for
showing evil animus. The case might have ended badly but for the
prudence of the governor. Had a descent been made for the purpose of
arrest upon the Prophet’s house, the consequences would certainly have
been serious to the last degree.
[215] Bogus, according to Mr. Bartlett, who quotes the “Boston
Courier” of June 12, 1857, is a Western corruption of Borghese,
“a very corrupt individual, who, twenty years ago or more, did a
tremendous business in the way of supplying the great West and
portions of the Southwest with counterfeit bills and drafts on
fictitious banks.” The word is now applied in the sense of sham,
forged, counterfeit, and so on; there are bogus laws and bogus
members; in fact, bogus enters every where.
The cause was tried in the Probate Court, which I have explained to be
a Territorial, not a federal court. The Honorable Elias Smith presided,
and the arguments for the prosecution and the defense were conducted by
the ablest Mormon and anti-Mormon lawyers. I attended the house, and
carefully watched the proceedings, to detect, if possible, intimidation
or misdirection; every thing was done with even-handed justice. The
physical aspect of the court was that which foreign travelers in the
Far West delight to describe and ridicule, wholly forgetting that they
have seen the same scene much nearer home. His honor sat with his chair
tilted back and his boots on the table, exactly as if he had been an
Anglo-Indian collector and magistrate, while by a certain contraction
and expansion of the dexter corner of his well-closed mouth I suspected
the existence of the quid. The position is queer, but not more so than
that of a judge at Westminster sleeping soundly, in the attitude of
Pisa’s leaning monster, upon the bench. By the justice’s side sat the
portly figure of Dr. Kay, opposite him the reporters, at other tables
the attorneys; the witnesses stood up between the tables, the jury were
on the left, and the public, including the governor, was distributed
like wall-flowers on benches around the room.
There is a certain monotony of life in Great Salt Lake City which does
not render the subject favorable for description. Moreover, a Moslem
gloom, the result of austere morals and manners, of the semi-seclusion
of the sex, and, in my case, of a reserve arising toward a stranger who
appeared in the train of federal officials, hangs over society. There
is none of that class which, according to the French author, _repose
des femmes du monde_. We rose early--in America the climate seems to
militate against slugabedism--and breakfasted at any hour between 6
and 9 A.M. Ensued “business,” which seemed to consist principally of
correcting one’s teeth, and walking about the town, with occasional
“liquoring up.” Dinner was at 1 P.M., announced, not by the normal
gong of the Eastern States, which lately so direfully offended a pair
of Anglo-Hibernian ears, but by a hand-bell which sounded the _pas
de charge_. Jostling into the long room of the ordinary, we took our
seats, and, seizing our forks, proceeded at once to action, after the
fashion of Puddingburn House, where
“They who came not the first call,
Got no meat till the next meal.”
Nothing but water was drunk at dinner, except when a gentleman
preferred to wash down roast pork with a tumbler of milk; wine in this
part of the world is of course dear and bad, and even should the Saints
make their own, it can scarcely be cheap on account of the price of
labor. Feeding ended with a glass of liquor, not at the bar, because
there was none, but in the privacy of one’s chamber, which takes from
drinking half its charm. Most well-to-do men found time for a siesta in
the early afternoon. There was supper, which in modern English parlance
would be called dinner, at 6 P.M., and the evening was easily spent
with a friend.
[HISTORIAN AND RECORDER’S OFFICE.]
One of my favorite places of visiting was the Historian and Recorder’s
Office, opposite Mr. Brigham Young’s block. It contained a small
collection of volumes, together with papers, official and private,
plans, designs, and other requisites, many of them written in the
Deserét alphabet, of which I subjoin a copy.[216] It is, as will
readily be seen, a stereographic modification of Pitman’s and other
systems. Types have been cast for it, and articles are printed in the
newspapers at times; as man, however, prefers two alphabets to one,
it will probably share the fate of the “Fonetik Nuz.” Sir A. Alison
somewhere delivers it as his opinion that the future historian of
America will be forced to Europe, where alone his material can be
found; so far from this being the case, the reverse is emphatically
true: every where in the States, even in the newest, the Historical
Society is an institution, and men pride themselves upon laboring for
it. At the office I used to meet Mr. George A. Smith, the armor-bearer
to the Prophet in the camp of Zion, who boasts of having sown the first
seed, built the first saw-mill, and ground the first flour in Southern
Utah, whence the nearest settlements, separated by terrible deserts,
were distant 200 miles. His companions were Messrs. W. Woodruff, Bishop
Bentley, who was preparing for a missionary visit to England, and
Wm. Thomas Bullock, an intelligent Mormon, who has had the honor to
be soundly abused in Mrs. Ferris’s 11th letter. The lady’s “wicked
Welshman”--I suppose she remembered the well-known line anent the sons
of the Cymri--
“Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a thief”--
is no Cambrian, but an aborigine of Leek, Staffordshire, England,
and was from 1838 to 1843 an excise officer in her majesty’s Inland
Revenue; he kindly supplied me with a plan of the city, and other
information, for which he has my grateful thanks.
[216] See next page.
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+
| THE DESERÉT ALPHABET. |
+---------------------+-------++------------------------------------+
| =VOCAL SOUNDS.= | 𐐘 Ga ||The sounds of the letters 𐐆, 𐐇, 𐐈, |
+---------+-----------+ ||𐐉, 𐐊, 𐐋 are heard in the words fit, |
|=Long.= | =Double.= | 𐐙 F ||net, fat, cot, nut, foot. |
| | | || |
| 𐐀 E | 𐐌 I | 𐐚 V ||𐐕, 𐐘, 𐐛, 𐐜, 𐐟 are heard in the words|
| | | ||_chee_-se, _ga_-te, s-_eth_, _the_, |
| 𐐁 A | 𐐍 Ow | 𐐛 Eth ||fl-_esh_. |
| | | || |
| 𐐂 Ah | 𐐎 Woo | 𐐜 The ||𐐡 is like _ir_ in st-_ir_; _are_ is |
| | | ||made by the combination of 𐐈 𐐡; 𐐥 is|
| 𐐃 Aw | 𐐏 Ye | 𐐝 S ||heard in l-_eng_-th. |
| | | || |
| 𐐄 O |=Aspirate.=| 𐐞 Z ||=Learn this Alphabet and appreciate |
| | 𐐐 H | || its advantages.= |
| 𐐅 Oo +===========+ 𐐟 Esh || |
| |=Articulate| || |
| | Sounds.= | 𐐠 Zhe || |
|=Short.= | 𐐑 P | || |
|𐐆} | | 𐐡 Ur || |
| }(This | 𐐒 B | || |
|𐐇}column | | 𐐢 L || |
| } of | 𐐓 T | || |
|𐐈}letters| | 𐐣 M || |
| }are the| 𐐔 D | || |
|𐐉} short | | 𐐤 N || |
| }sounds | 𐐕 Che | || |
|𐐊}of the | | 𐐥 Eng || |
| }above).| 𐐖 G | || |
|𐐋} | | || |
| | 𐐗 K | || |
+---------+-----------+-------++------------------------------------+
[FEDERAL OFFICIALS.]
At the office, the undying hatred of all things Gentile-federal had
reached its climax; every slight offered to the faith by anti-Mormons
is there laid up in lavender, every grievance is carefully recorded.
There I heard how, at a general conference of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in September, 1851, Perry E. Brocchus, a
judge of the Supreme Court, having the design of becoming Territorial
delegate to Congress, ascended the rostrum and foully abused their most
cherished institution, polygamy.[217] He was answered with sternness
by Mr. Brigham Young, and really, under the circumstances, the Saints
behaved very well in not proceeding to _voies de faits_. Mr. Brocchus,
seeing personal danger, left the city in company with Chief Justice
L. C. Brandenburg and Mr. Secretary Harris, whom the Mormons very
naturally accused of carrying away $24,000, the sum appropriated by
Congress for the salary and the mileage of the local Legislature,
thus putting a clog upon the wheels of government. I also heard how
Judge Drummond, in 1856, began the troubles by falsely reporting to
the federal authority that the Mormons were in a state of revolt;
that they had burned the public library, and were, in fact, defying
the Union--how, bigotry doing its work, the officials at Washington
believed the tale without investigation, and sent an army which was
ready to renew the scenes of St. Bartholomew and Nauvoo. The federal
troops were rather pitied than hated; had they been militia they
would have been wiped out; but “wretched Dutchmen, and poor devils
of Irishmen,” acting under orders, were simply despised. Their
_fainéantise_ was contrasted most unfavorably with the fiery Mormon
youth that was spoiling for a fight; that could ride, like part of
the horse, down places where no trooper dared venture; that picked
up a dollar at full gallop, drove off the invaders’ cattle, burned
wagons, grass, and provisions, offered to lasso the guns, and, when
they had taken a prisoner, drank with him and let him go--how Governor
Cumming, after his entry, at once certified the untruthfulness of
the scandal spread by Judge Drummond, especially that touching the
library and archives, and reported that no federal officer had ever
been killed or even assaulted by the Saints--how the effects of these
misrepresentations have been and still are serious. In 1857, for
instance, the mail was cut off, and a large commercial community was
left without postal communication for a whole year: the ostensible
reason was the troubled state of the Territory; the real cause was the
desire of the Post-office Department to keep the advance of the troops
dark. The Mormons complain that they have ever been made a subject
of political capital. President Van Buren openly confessed to them,
“Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I
took your part I should lose the vote of Missouri.” Every grievance
against them, they say, is listened to and readily believed: as an
example, a Mr. John Robinson, of Liverpool, had lately represented to
her Britannic majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs that his mother
and sister were detained in Utah Territory against their will; the
usual steps were taken; the British minister applied to the United
States Secretary of State, who referred the affair to the governor of
the Territory; after which process the tale turned out a mere _canard_.
This sister had been married to Mr. Ferguson, adjutant general of the
Nauvoo Legion; the mother had left the City of the Saints for Illinois,
and had just written to her son-in-law for means by which she could
return to a place whence she was to be rescued by British interference.
To a false prejudice against themselves the Mormons attribute the
neglect with which their project of colonizing Vancouver’s Island
was treated by the British government, and the active opposition to
be expected should they ever attempt to settle in the Valley of the
Saskatchewan. And they think it poor policy on the part of England to
“bluff off” 100,000 moral, industrious, and obedient subjects, who
would be a bulwark against aggression on the part of the States, and
tend materially to prepare the thousand miles of valley between the
Mississippi and the Pacific for the coming railway.
[217] On the 5th of April, 1860, the Chamber of Representatives at
Washington passed a projected law to repress polygamy by a majority
of 149 to 60. Fortunately, the Committee of the Senate had no time
to report upon it, and the slave discussion assumed dimensions which
buried Mormonism in complete oblivion.
[CHILDREN OF THE SAINTS.]
At the office I also obtained details concerning education in Great
Salt Lake City. Before commencing the subject it will be necessary
to notice certain statements relating to the ingenuous youth of Utah
Territory. It is generally asserted that juvenile mortality here ranks
second only to Louisiana, and the fault is, of course, charged upon
polygamy. A French author talks of the _mortalité effrayante_ among
the newly-born, while owning, anomalously, that the survivors _sont
braves et robustes_. I “doubt the fact.” Mr. Ferris, moreover, declares
that there is “nowhere out of the Five Points of New York City a more
filthy, miserable, and disorderly rabble of children than can be found
in the streets of Great Salt Lake City.” As far as my experience goes,
it is the reverse. I was surprised by their numbers, cleanliness, and
health, their hardihood and general good looks. They are bold and
spirited. The Mormon father, like the Indian brave, will not allow
the barbarous use of the stick; but this is perhaps a general feeling
throughout the States, where the English traveler first observes the
docility of the horses and the indocility of the children. But, as
regards rudeness, let a man “with whiskers under his snout,” _i. e._,
mustaches, ride through a village in Essex or Warwickshire, and he
will suffer more contumely at the hands of the infant population in
half an hour than in half a year in the United States or in Utah. M.
Remy, despite a “_vif désir_” to judge favorably of the Saints, could
not help owning that the children are mostly _grossiers_, _menteurs_,
_libertins avant l’âge_; that they use _un langage honteux, comme
si les mystères de la polygamie leur avaient été révélés dès l’âge
de raison_. Apparently since 1855 _cette corruption précoce_ has
disappeared. I found less premature depravity than in the children of
European cities generally. Mr. J. Hyde also brings against the juvenile
Saints severe charges, too general, however, not to be applicable to
other lands. “Cheating the confiding is called smart trading;” the
same has been said of New England. “Mischievous cruelty, evidences of
spirit;” the attribute of Plato’s boys and of the Western frontiers
generally. “Pompous bravado, manly talk;” not unusual in New York,
London, and Paris. “Reckless riding, fearless courage;” so apparently
thinks the author of “Guy Livingstone.” “And if they outtalk their
fathers, outwit their companions, whip their schoolteacher, outcurse a
Gentile, they are thought to be promising greatness, and are praised
accordingly. Every visitor to Salt Lake will recognize the portrait,
for every visitor proclaims them to be the most whisky-loving,
tobacco-chewing, saucy, and precocious children he ever saw.” This is
the glance of the anti-Mormon eye pure and simple. Tobacco and whisky
are too dear for childhood at the City of the Saints; moreover, twenty
years ago, before Tom Brown taught boys not to be ashamed of being
called good, a youth at many an English public school would have been
“cock of the walk” if gifted with the rare merits described above. I
remarked that the juveniles had all the promptness of reply and the
peremptoriness of information which characterizes the Scotch and the
people of the Eastern States. A half-educated man can not afford to own
ignorance. He must answer categorically every question, however beyond
his reach; and the result is fatal to the diaries of those travelers
who can not diagnostize the disease.
[MORMON EDUCATION.]
Mormon education is of course peculiar. The climate predisposes to
indolence. While the emigrants from the Old Country are the most
energetic and hard-working of men, their children, like the race of
backwoodsmen in mass, are averse to any but pleasurable physical
exertion. The object of the young colony is to rear a swarm of
healthy working bees. The social hive has as yet no room for drones,
book-worms, and gentlemen. The work is proportioned to their powers and
inclinations. At fifteen a boy can use a whip, an axe, or a hoe--he
does not like the plow--to perfection. He sits a bare-backed horse
like a Centaur, handles his bowie-knife skillfully, never misses a
mark with his revolver, and can probably dispose of half a bottle of
whisky. It is not an education which I would commend to the generous
youth of Paris and London, but it is admirably fitted to the exigencies
of the situation. With regard to book-work, there is no difficulty to
obtain in Great Salt Lake City that “mediocrity of knowledge between
learning and ignorance” which distinguished the grammar-schools of the
Western Islands in the days of Samuel Johnson. Amid such a concourse
of European converts, any language, from Hebrew to Portuguese, can be
learned. Mathematics and the exact sciences have their votaries. There
are graduates of Harvard, Dartmouth, and other colleges. I saw one
gentleman who had kept a school in Portsmouth, and another, who had had
a large academy in Shropshire, taught in the school of the 14th ward.
Music, dancing, drawing, and other artlets, which go by the name of
accomplishments, have many votaries. Indefatigable travelers there are
in abundance. Almost every Mormon is a missionary, and every missionary
is a voyager. Captain Gibson, a well-known name for “personal
initiative” in the Eastern Main, where he was seized by the Dutch of
Java, lately became a convert to Mormonism, married his daughter to
Mr. Brigham Young, and in sundry lectures delivered in the Tabernacle,
advised the establishment of a stake of Zion in the “Islands of the
Seas,” which signified, I suppose, his intention that the Netherlands
should “smell H--ll.” Law is commonly studied, and the practice, as I
have shown, is much simplified by the absence of justice. A solicitor
from London is also established here. Theology is the growth of the
soil. Medicine is represented by two graduates--one of Maryland; the
other, who prefers politics to practice, of New York. I am at pains
to discover what gave rise to the Gentile reports that the Mormons,
having a veritable horror of medicine, leave curing to the priests, and
dare not arrogate the art of healing. Masterships and apprenticeships
are carefully regulated by Territorial law. Every one learns to read
and write; probably the only destitutes are the old European pariahs,
and the gleanings from the five or six millions of English illiterati.
The Mormons have discovered, or, rather, have been taught, by their
necessities as a working population in a state barely twelve years old,
that the time of school drudgery may profitably be abridged. A boy,
they say, will learn all that his memory can carry during three hours
of book-work, and the rest had far better be spent in air, exercise,
and handicraft. To their eminently practical views I would offer one
suggestion, the advisability of making military drill and extension
movements, with and without weapons, a part of scholarhood. For
“setting up” the figure, forming the gait, and exercising the muscles,
it is the best of gymnastic systems, and the early habit of acting in
concert with others is a long stride in the path of soldiership.
While it is the fashion with some to deride the attempts of this
painstaking and industrious community of hard-handed men to improve
their minds, other anti-Mormons have taken the popular ground of
representing the Saints as averse to intellectual activity, despisers
of science, respecters only of manual labor, and “_singulièrement
épris de la force brutale_.” It is as ungenerous as to ridicule the
proceedings of an English Mechanics’ Institute, or the compositions of
an “Ed. Mechanics’ Magazine.” The names of their literary institutions
are, it is true, somewhat pretentious and grandiloquent; but in these
lands there is every where a leaning toward the grandiose. Humility
does not pay. Modesty _laudatur et alget_.
As early as December, 1854, an act was approved enabling the Chancellor
and Board of Regents of the University of the State of Deserét to
appoint a superintendent of common schools for the Territory of Utah,
and duly qualified trustees were elected to assess and collect for
educational purposes a tax upon all taxable property. In the same
year a pathetic memorial was dispatched to Congress, requesting
that honorable body to appropriate the sum of $5000 to advance the
interests of the University established by law in the City of Great
Salt Lake. I know not whether it was granted. As yet there is no
educational tax leviable throughout the Territory. Each district makes
its own regulations. A city rate supports a school in each ward. The
buildings are of plain adobe, thirty feet by twenty. They also serve as
meeting-places on Sabbath evenings. There are tutoresses in three or
four of the school-houses, who teach all the year round, whereas male
education is usually limited by necessity to the three winter months.
A certain difficulty exists in finding instructors. As in Australia,
the pedagogue is cheaper than a porter, and “turning schoolmaster” is a
proverbial phrase about equivalent to coming upon the parish.
The principal educational institutions in Great Salt Lake City have
been the following:
1. The Deserét Universal Scientific.
2. The “Polysophical Society,” a name given by Judge Phelps.
3. The Seventies’ Variety Club.
4. The Council of Health, a medico-physiologio-clinical and matronly
establishment, like the Dorcas Societies of the Eastern States.
5. The Deserét Theological Institution, whose President was Mr. Brigham
Young.
6. The Deserét Library and Musical Society.
7. The Phrenological and Horticultural Society.
8. The Deserét Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, which has
already been alluded to. It has many branch societies, whose members
pay an annual subscription of $1.
9. The Academy founded in April, 1860, with an appropriation by the
local Legislature of Church money to the extent of $2500. Science
and art are to be taught gratis to all who will pledge themselves to
learn thoroughly and to benefit the Territory by their exertions. The
superintendent is Mr. Orson Pratt; and his son, Mr. O. Pratt, junior,
together with Mr. Cobb, a Gentile, acts as teacher. At present those
educated are males; in course of time a girl class will be established
for accomplishments and practical education.
The Historian’s Office was ever to me a place of pleasant resort;
I take my leave of it with many expressions of gratitude for the
instructive hours passed there.
It will, I suppose, be necessary to supply a popular view of
the “peculiar institution,” at once the bane and blessing of
Mormonism--plurality. I approach the subject with a feeling of despair,
so conflicting are opinions concerning it, and so difficult is it to
naturalize in Europe the customs of Asia, Africa, and America, or to
reconcile the habits of the 19th century A.D. with those of 1900 B.C. A
return to the patriarchal ages, we have seen, has its disadvantages.
There is a prevailing idea, especially in England, and even the
educated are laboring under it, that the Mormons are Communists or
Socialists of Plato’s, Cicero’s, Mr. Owen’s, and M. Cabet’s school;
that wives are in public, and that a woman can have as many husbands
as the husband can have wives--in fact, to speak colloquially, that
they “all pig together.” The contrary is notably the case. The man
who, like Messrs. Hamilton and Howard Egan, murders, in cold blood,
his wife’s lover, is invariably acquitted, the jury declaring that
civil damages mark the rottenness of other governments, and that “the
principle, the only one that beats and throbs through the heart of the
_entire inhabitants_ (!) of this Territory, is simply this: _The man
who seduces his neighbor’s wife must die, and her nearest relation
must kill him_.” Men, like Dr. Vaughan and Mr. Monroe, slain for the
mortal sin, perish for their salvation; the Prophet, were they to lay
their lives at his feet, would, because unable to hang or behead them,
counsel them to seek certain death in a righteous cause as an expiatory
sacrifice,[218] which may save their souls alive. Their two mortal sins
are: 1. Adultery; 2. Shedding innocent blood.
[218] The form of death has yet to be decided. They call this a
scriptural practice, viz., “to deliver such a one unto Satan for the
destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of
the Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor., v., 5).
This severity of punishing an offense which modern and civilized
society looks upon rather in the light of a sin than of a crime, is
clearly based upon the Mosaic code. It is also, _lex loci_, the “common
mountain law,” a “religious and social custom,” and a point of personal
honor. Another idea underlies it: the Mormons hold, like the Hebrews of
old, “children of shame” in extreme dishonor. They quote the command of
God, Deuteronomy (xxiii., 2), “a mamzer shall not enter into the Church
of the Lord till the tenth generation,” and ask when the order was
repealed. They would expel all impurity from the Camp of Zion, and they
adopt every method of preventing what they consider a tremendous evil,
viz., the violation of God’s temple in their own bodies.
The marriage ceremony is performed in the temple, or, that being
impossible, in Mr. Brigham Young’s office, properly speaking by the
Prophet, who can, however, depute any follower, as Mr. Heber C.
Kimball, a simple apostle, or even an elder, to act for him. When
mutual consent is given, the parties are pronounced man and wife in the
name of Jesus Christ, prayers follow, and there is a patriarchal feast
of joy in the evening.
[_THE_ WIFE.]
The first wife, as among polygamists generally, is _the_ wife, and
assumes the husband’s name and title. Her “plurality”-partners are
called sisters--such as Sister Anne or Sister Blanche--and are the
aunts of her children. The first wife is married for time, the others
are sealed for eternity. Hence, according to the Mormons, arose the
Gentile calumny concerning spiritual wifedom, which they distinctly
deny. Girls rarely remain single past sixteen--in England the average
marrying age is thirty--and they would be the pity of the community if
they were doomed to a waste of youth so unnatural.
[DIVORCE.]
Divorce is rarely obtained by the man who is ashamed to own that he can
not keep his house in order; some, such as the President, would grant
it only in case of adultery: wives, however, are allowed to claim it
for cruelty, desertion, or neglect. Of late years, Mormon women married
to Gentiles are cut off from the society of the Saints, and, without
uncharitableness, men suspect a sound previous reason. The widows of
the Prophet are married to his successor, as David took unto himself
the wives of Saul; being generally aged, they occupy the position of
matron rather than wife, and the same is the case when a man espouses a
mother and her daughter.
[THE VIRGIN’S END.]
It is needless to remark how important a part matrimony plays in the
history of an individual, and of that aggregate of individuals, a
people; or how various and conflicting has been Christian practice
concerning it, from the double marriage, civil and religious, the
former temporary, the latter permanent, of the Coptic or Abyssinian
Church, to the exaggerated purity of Mistress Anna Lee, the mother of
the Shakers, who exacted complete continence in a state established
according to the first commandment, _crescite et multiplicamini_.
The literalism with which the Mormons have interpreted Scripture
has led them directly to polygamy. The texts promising to Abraham
a progeny numerous as the stars above or the sands below, and that
“in his seed (a polygamist) all the families of the earth shall be
blessed,” induce them, his descendants, to seek a similar blessing.
The theory announcing that “the man is not without the woman, nor
the woman without the man,” is by them interpreted into an absolute
command that both sexes should marry, and that a woman can not enter
the heavenly kingdom without a husband to introduce her. A virgin’s
end is annihilation or absorption, _nox est perpetua una dormienda_;
and as baptism for the dead--an old rite, revived and founded upon
the writings of St. Paul quoted in the last chapter--has been made
a part of practice, vicarious marriage for the departed also enters
into the Mormon scheme. Like certain British Dissenters of the royal
burgh of Dundee, who in our day petitioned Parliament for permission
to bigamize, the Mormons, with Bossuet and others, see in the New
Testament no order against plurality,[219] and in the Old dispensation
they find the practice sanctioned in a family, ever the friends of God,
and out of which the Redeemer sprang. Finally, they find throughout the
nations of the earth three polygamists in theory to one monogame.
[219] Histoire des Variations, liv. iv. “L’Evangile n’a ni révoqué
ni défendu ce qui avait été permis dans la loi de Moïse à l’égard du
mariage: Jesus Christ n’a pas changé la police extérieure, mais il
a ajouté seulement la justice et la vie éternelle pour récompense.”
So, in 1539, the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, wishing to marry a second
wife while the first was alive, was permitted to “commit bigamy” by
the eminent reformers, M. Luther, Kuhorn (M. Bucer), Melancthon,
and others, with the sole condition of secrecy. In the present age,
the Right Rev. J. W. Colenso, D.D. and Bishop of Natal, “not only
tolerates polygamy in converts, but defends it on the ground of
religion and humanity.”
[POLYGAMY.]
The “chaste and plural marriage,” being once legalized, finds a
multitude of supporters. The anti-Mormons declare that it is at once
fornication and adultery--a sin which absorbs all others. The Mormons
point triumphantly to the austere morals of their community, their
superior freedom from maladive influences, and the absence of that
uncleanness and licentiousness which distinguish the cities of the
civilized world. They boast that, if it be an evil, they have at
least chosen the lesser evil; that they practice openly as a virtue
what others do secretly as a sin--how full is society of these
latent Mormons!--that their plurality has abolished the necessity of
concubinage, cryptogamy, contubernium, celibacy, _mariages du treizième
arrondissement_, with their terrible consequences, infanticide, and
so forth; that they have removed their ways from those “whose end is
bitter as wormwood, and sharp as a two-edged sword.” Like its sister
institution Slavery, the birth and growth of a similar age, Polygamy
acquires _vim_ by abuse and detraction: the more turpitude is heaped
upon it, the brighter and more glorious it appears to its votaries.
There are rules and regulations of Mormonism--I can not say whether
they date before or after the heavenly command to pluralize--which
disprove the popular statement that such marriages are made to gratify
licentiousness, and which render polygamy a positive necessity. All
sensuality in the married state is strictly forbidden beyond the
requisite for insuring progeny--the practice, in fact, of Adam and
Abraham. During the gestation and nursing of children, the strictest
continence on the part of the mother is required--rather for a hygienic
than for a religious reason. The same custom is practiced in part by
the Jews, and in whole by some of the noblest tribes of savages; the
splendid physical development of the Kaffir race in South Africa is
attributed by some authors to a rule of continence like that of the
Mormons, and to a lactation prolonged for two years. The anomaly of
such a practice in the midst of civilization is worthy of a place in De
Balzac’s great repertory of morbid anatomy: it is only to be equaled by
the exceptional nature of the Mormon’s position, his past fate and his
future prospects. Spartan-like, the Faith wants a race of warriors, and
it adopts the best means to obtain them.
Besides religious and physiological, there are social motives for the
plurality. As in the days of Abraham, the lands about New Jordan are
broad and the people few. Of the three forms that unite the sexes,
polygamy increases, while monogamy balances, and polyandry diminishes
progeny. The former, as Montesquieu acutely suggested, acts inversely
to the latter by causing a preponderance of female over male births:
“Un fait important à noter,” says M. Remy, “c’est qu’il y a en Utah
beaucoup plus de naissances de filles que de garçons, resultat opposé
à ce qu’on observe dans tous les pays où la monogamie est pratiquée,
et parfaitement conforme à ce qu’on a remarqué chez les polygames
Mussulmans.” M. Remy’s statement is as distinctly affirmed by Mr. Hyde,
the Mormon apostate. In the East, where the census is unknown, we can
judge of the relative proportions of the sexes only by the families
of the great and wealthy, who invariably practice polygamy, and we
find the number of daughters mostly superior to that of sons, except
where female infanticide deludes the public into judging otherwise.
In lands where polyandry is the rule, for instance, in the Junsar and
Bawur pergunnahs of the Dhun, there is a striking discrepancy in the
proportions of the sexes among young children as well as adults: thus,
in a village where 400 boys are found, there will be 120 girls; and,
on the other hand, in the Gurhwal Hills, where polygamy is prevalent,
there is a surplus of female children. The experienced East Indian
official who has published this statement[220] is “inclined to give
more weight to nature’s adaptability to national habit than to the
possibility of infanticide,” for which there are no reasons. If these
be facts, Nature then has made provision for polygamy and polyandry:
our plastic mother has prepared her children to practice them all. Even
in Scotland modern statists have observed that the proportion of boys
born to girls is greater in the rural districts; and, attributing the
phenomenon to the physical weakening of the parents, have considered it
a rule so established as to “afford a valuable hint to those who desire
male progeny.” The anti-Mormons are fond of quoting Paley: “It is not
the question whether one man will have more children by five wives, but
whether these five women would not have had more children if they had
each a husband.” The Mormons reply that--setting aside the altered rule
of production--their colony, unlike all others, numbers more female
than male immigrants; consequently that, without polygamy, part of the
social field would remain untilled.[221]
[220] Hunting in the Himalaya, by R. H. W. Dunlop, C.B., B.C.S.,
F.R.G.S., London, Richard Bentley, 1860.
[221] I am sure of the correctness of this assertion, which is thus
denied in general terms by M. Reclus, of the Revue des Deux-Mondes.
“A la fin de 1858, on comptaît sur le Territoire 3617 maris
polygames, dont 1117 ayant cinque femmes ou d’avantage: mais un grand
nombre de Mormons n’avaient encore pu trouver d’épouses; il est
probable même que le chiffre des hommes depasse celui des femmes,
comme dans tous les pays peuplés d’emigrans. L’équilibre entre les
sexes n’est pas encore établi.”
To the unprejudiced traveler it appears that polygamy is the rule where
population is required, and where the great social evil has not had
time to develop itself. In Paris or London the institution would, like
slavery, die a natural death; in Arabia and in the wilds of the Rocky
Mountains it maintains a strong hold upon the affections of mankind.
Monogamy is best fitted for the large, wealthy, and flourishing
communities in which man is rarely the happier because his quiver is
full of children, and where the Hetæra becomes the succedaneum of
the “plurality-wife.” Polyandry has been practiced principally by
priestly and barbarous tribes,[222] who fear most for the increase of
their numbers, which would end by driving them to honest industry.
It reappears in a remarkable manner in the highest state of social
civilization, where excessive expenditure is an obstacle to freehold
property, and the practice is probably on the increase.
[222] The Mahabharata thus relates the origin of the practice in
India. The five princely Pandava brothers, when contending for a
prize offered by the King of Drona to the most successful archer,
agreed to divide it if any of them should prove the winner. Arjun,
the eldest, was declared victor, and received in gift Draupadi, the
king’s daughter, who thus became the joint-stock property of the
whole fraternity. They lived _en famille_ for some years at the foot
of Bairath, the remains of which, or rather a Ghoorka structure on
the same site, are still visible on a hill near the N.W. corner of
the Dhun. (Hunting in the Himalaya, chap. vii.)
The other motive for polygamy in Utah is economy. Servants are rare and
costly; it is cheaper and more comfortable to marry them. Many converts
are attracted by the prospect of becoming wives, especially from places
where, like Clifton, there are sixty-four females to thirty-six males.
The old maid is, as she ought to be, an unknown entity. Life in the
wilds of Western America is a course of severe toil: a single woman can
not perform the manifold duties of housekeeping, cooking, scrubbing,
washing, darning, child-bearing, and nursing a family. A division
of labor is necessary, and she finds it by acquiring a sisterhood.
Throughout the States, whenever a woman is seen at manual or outdoor
work, one is certain that she is Irish, German, or Scandinavian. The
delicacy and fragility of the Anglo-American female nature is at once
the cause and the effect of this exemption from toil.
[MORMON WOMEN.--POLYGAMY.]
The moral influence diffused over social relations by the presence
of polygyny will be intelligible only to those who have studied the
workings of the system in lands where seclusion is practiced in its
modified form, as among the Syrian Christians. In America society
splits into two parts--man and woman--even more readily than in
England; each sex is freer and happier in the company of its congeners.
At Great Salt Lake City there is a gloom like that which the late
Professor H. H. Wilson described as being cast by the invading Moslem
over the innocent gayety of the primitive Hindoo. The choice egotism
of the heart called Love--that is to say, the propensity elevated
by sentiment, and not undirected by reason, subsides into a calm
and unimpassioned domestic attachment: romance and reverence are
transferred, with the true Mormon concentration, from love and liberty
to religion and the Church. The consent of the first wife to a rival
is seldom refused, and a _ménage à trois_, in the Mormon sense of the
phrase, is fatal to the development of that tender tie which must be
confined to two. In its stead there is household comfort, affection,
circumspect friendship, and domestic discipline. Womanhood is not
petted and spoiled as in the Eastern States; the inevitable cyclical
revolution, indeed, has rather placed her below par, where, however,
I believe her to be happier than when set upon an uncomfortable and
unnatural eminence.
It will be asked, What view does the softer sex take of polygyny?
A few, mostly from the Old Country, lament that Mr. Joseph Smith
ever asked of the Creator that question which was answered in the
affirmative. A very few, like the Curia Electa, Emma, the first wife
of Mr. Joseph Smith--who said of her, by-the-by, that she could not
be contented in heaven without rule--apostatize, and become Mrs.
Bridemann. The many are, as might be expected of the easily-moulded
weaker vessel, which proves its inferior position by the delicate
flattery of imitation, more in favor of polygyny than the stronger.
For the attachment of the women of the Saints to the doctrine of
plurality there are many reasons. The Mormon prophets have expended
all their arts upon this end, well knowing that without the hearty
co-operation of mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, no
institution can live long. They have bribed them with promises of
Paradise--they have subjugated them with threats of annihilation.
With them, once a Mormon always a Mormon. I have said that a modified
reaction respecting the community of Saints has set in throughout
the States; people no longer wonder that their missionaries do not
show horns and cloven feet, and the federal officer, the itinerant
politician, the platform orator, and the place-seeking demagogue, can
no longer make political capital by bullying, oppressing, and abusing
them. The tide has turned, and will turn yet more. But the individual
still suffers: the apostate Mormon is looked upon by other people as a
scamp or a knave, and the woman worse than a prostitute. Again, all the
fervor of a new faith burns in their bosoms with a heat which we can
little appreciate, and the revelation of Mr. Joseph Smith is considered
on this point as superior to the Christian as the latter is in others
to the Mosaic Dispensation. Polygamy is a positive command from heaven:
if the flesh is mortified by it, _tant mieux_--“no cross, no crown;”
“blessed are they that mourn.” I have heard these words from the lips
of a well-educated Mormon woman, who, in the presence of a Gentile
sister, urged her husband to take unto himself a second wife. The
Mormon household has been described by its enemies as a hell of envy,
hatred, and malice--a den of murder and suicide. The same has been
said of the Moslem harem. Both, I believe, suffer from the assertions
of prejudice or ignorance. The temper of the New is so far superior to
that of the Old Country, that, incredible as the statement may appear,
rival wives do dwell together in amity, and do quote the proverb “the
more the merrier.” Moreover, they look with horror at the position of
the “slavey” of a pauper mechanic at being required to “nigger it”
upon love and starvation, and at the necessity of a numerous family.
They know that nine tenths of the miseries of the poor in large cities
arise from early and imprudent marriages, and they would rather be the
fiftieth “sealing” of Dives than the toilsome single wife of Lazarus.
The French saying concerning motherhood--“_le premier embellit, le
second détruit, le troisième gâte tout_,” is true in the Western world.
The first child is welcomed, the second is tolerated, the third is
the cause of tears and reproaches, and the fourth, if not prevented
by gold pills or some similar monstrosity, causes temper, spleen, and
melancholy, with disgust and hatred of the cause. What the Napoleonic
abolition of the law of primogeniture, combined with centralization of
the peasant class in towns and cities, has effected on this side of
the Channel, the terrors of maternity, aggravated by a highly nervous
temperament, small cerebellum, constitutional frigidity, and extreme
delicacy of fibre, have brought to pass in the older parts of the Union.
Another curious effect of fervent belief may be noticed in the married
state. When a man has four or five wives, with reasonable families by
each, he is fixed for life: his interests, if not his affections, bind
him irrevocably to his new faith. But the bachelor, as well as the
monogamic youth, is prone to backsliding. Apostasy is apparently so
common that many of the new Saints form a mere floating population. He
is proved by a mission before being permitted to marry, and even then
women, dreading a possible renegade, with the terrible consequences
of a heavenless future to themselves, are shy of saying yes. Thus it
happens that male celibacy is mixed up in a curious way with polygamy,
and that also in a faith whose interpreter advises youth not to remain
single after sixteen, nor girls after fourteen. The celibacy also is
absolute; any infraction of it would be dangerous to life. Either,
then, the first propensity of the phrenologist is poorly developed
in these lands--this has been positively stated of the ruder sex in
California--or its action is to be regulated by habit to a greater
degree than is usually believed.
[MRS. PRATT’S OPINION.]
I am conscious that my narrative savors of incredibility; the fault is
in the subject, not in the narrator. _Exoneravi animan meam._ The best
proof that my opinions are correct will be the following quotation. It
is a letter addressed to a sister in New Hampshire by a Mrs. Belinda
M. Pratt, the wife of the celebrated apostle. M. Remy has apparently
dramatized it (vol. ii., chap. ii.) by casting it into dialogue form,
and placing it in the mouth of _une femme distinguée_. Most readers,
feminine and monogamic, will remark that the lady shows little heart
or natural affection; the severe calm of her judgment and reasoning
faculties, and the soundness of her physiology, can not be doubted.
“Great Salt Lake City, Jan. 12, 1854.
“DEAR SISTER,--Your letter of October 2 was received on yesterday.
My joy on its reception was more than I can express. I had waited
so long for your answer to our last, that I had almost concluded my
friends were offended, and would write to me no more. Judge, then,
of my joy when I read the sentiments of friendship and of sisterly
affection expressed in your letter.
“We are all well here, and are prosperous and happy in our family
circle. My children, four in number, are healthy and cheerful, and
fast expanding their physical and intellectual faculties. Health,
peace, and prosperity have attended us all the day long.
“It seems, my dear sister, that we are no nearer together in our
religious views than formerly. Why is this? Are we not all bound to
leave this world, with all we possess therein, and reap the reward
of our doings _here_ in a never-ending hereafter? If so, do we not
desire to be undeceived, and to _know and to do the truth_? Do we not
all wish in our very hearts to be sincere with ourselves, and to be
honest and frank with each other?
“If so, you will bear with me patiently while I give a few of my
reasons for embracing and holding sacred that particular point in the
doctrine of the Church of the Saints to which you, my dear sister,
together with a large majority of Christendom, so decidedly object. I
mean, a ‘_plurality of wives_.’
“I have a Bible which I have been taught from my infancy to hold
sacred. In this Bible I read of a holy man named Abraham, who is
represented as the friend of God, a faithful man in all things, a
man who kept the commandments of God, and who is called in the New
Testament ‘the father of the faithful.’ See James, ii., 23; Rom.,
iv., 16; Gal., iii., 8, 9, 16, 29.
“I find this man had a plurality of wives, some of which were called
concubines. See Book of Genesis; and for his concubines, see xxv., 6.
“I also find his grandson Jacob possessed of four wives, twelve
sons, and a daughter. These wives are spoken very highly of by the
sacred writers as honorable and virtuous women. ‘_These_,’ say the
Scriptures, ‘_did build the house of Israel_.’
“Jacob himself was also a man of God, and the Lord blessed him and
his house, and commanded him to be fruitful and multiply. See Gen.,
xxx. to xxxv., and particularly xxxv., 10,11.
“I find also that the twelve sons of Jacob by these four wives
became princes, heads of tribes, patriarchs, whose names are had in
everlasting remembrance to all generations.
“Now God talked with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob frequently, and his
angels also visited and talked with them, and blessed them and their
wives and children. He also reproved the sins of some of the sons
of Jacob for hating and selling their brother, and for adultery.
But in all his communications with them he never condemned their
family organization, but, on the contrary, always approved of it,
and blessed them in this respect. He even told Abraham that he would
make him the father of many nations, and that in him and his seed all
the nations and kindreds of the earth should be blessed. See Gen.,
xviii., 17-19; also xii., 1-3. In later years I find the plurality of
wives perpetuated, sanctioned, and provided for in the law of Moses.
“David the Psalmist not only had a plurality of wives, but the Lord
himself spoke by the mouth of Nathan the prophet, and told David that
_he_ (the Lord) had given his master’s wives into his bosom; but
because he had committed adultery with the wife of Uriah, and had
caused his murder, _he_ would take _his_ wives and give them to a
neighbor of his, etc. See 2 Sam., xii., 7-11.
“Here, then, we have the Word of the Lord not only sanctioning
polygamy, but actually giving to King David the wives of his master
(Saul), and afterward taking the wives of David from him, and giving
them to another man. Here we have a sample of severe reproof and
punishment for adultery and murder, while polygamy is authorized and
approved by the Word of God.
“But to come to the New Testament. I find Jesus Christ speaks very
highly of Abraham and his family. He says, ‘_Many shall come from
the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south,
and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of
God_.’ Luke, xiii., 28, 29.
“Again he said, ‘_If ye were Abraham’s seed ye would do the works of
Abraham_.’
“Paul the apostle wrote to the saints of his day, and informed them
as follows: ‘As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have
put on Christ; and if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed,
and heirs according to the promise.’
“He also sets forth Abraham and Sarah as patterns of faith and good
works, and as the father and mother of faithful Christians, who
should, by faith and good works, aspire to be counted the sons of
Abraham and daughters of Sarah.
“Now let us look at some of the works of Sarah, for which she is so
highly commended by the apostles, and by them held up as a pattern
for Christian ladies to imitate. ‘_Now Sarah, Abram’s wife, bare
him no children; and she had a handmaid, an Egyptian, whose name
was Hagar. And Sarah said unto Abram, Behold now, the Lord hath
restrained me from bearing: I pray thee, go in unto my maid: it may
be that I may obtain children of her. And Abram hearkened unto the
voice of Sarah. And Sarah, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the
Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and
gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife._’ See Gen., xvi., 1-3.
“According to Jesus Christ and the apostles, then, the only way to be
saved is to be adopted into the great family of polygamists by the
Gospel, and then strictly follow their examples.
“Again, John the Revelator describes the Holy City of the heavenly
Jerusalem, with the names of the twelve sons of Jacob inscribed on
the gates. Rev., xxi., 12.
“To sum up the whole, then, I find that polygamists were the friends
of God; that the family and lineage of a polygamist were selected
in which all nations should be blessed; that a polygamist is named
in the New Testament as the father of the faithful Christians of
after ages, and cited as a pattern for all generations; that the
wife of a polygamist, who encouraged her husband in the practice of
the same, and even urged him into it, and officiated in giving him
another wife, is named as an honorable and virtuous woman, a pattern
for Christian ladies, and the very mother of all holy women in the
Christian Church, whose aspiration it should be to be called her
daughters; that Jesus Christ has declared that the great fathers of
the polygamic family stand at the head in the kingdom of good; in
short, that all the saved of after generations should be saved by
becoming members of a polygamic family; that all those who do not
become members of it are strangers and aliens to the covenant of
promise, the commonwealth of Israel, and not heirs according to the
promise made to Abraham; that all people from the east, west, north,
or south, who enter into the kingdom, enter into the society of
polygamists, and under their patriarchal rule and government; indeed,
no one can even approach the gates of heaven without beholding the
names of twelve polygamists (the sons of four different women by one
man) engraven in everlasting glory upon the pearly gates.
“My dear sister, with the Scriptures before me, I could never find it
in my heart to reject the heavenly vision which has restored to man
the fullness of the Gospel, or the Latter-Day prophets and apostles,
merely because in this restoration is included the ancient law of
family organization and government preparatory to the restoration of
all Israel.
“But, leaving all Scripture, history, or precedent out of the
question, let us come to Nature’s law. What, then, appears to be the
great object of the marriage relations? I answer, the multiplying of
our species, the rearing and training of children.
“To accomplish this object, natural law would dictate that a husband
should remain apart from his wife at certain seasons, which, in the
very constitution of the female, are untimely; or, in other words,
indulgence should be not merely for pleasure or wanton desires, but
mainly for the purpose of procreation.
“The mortality of nature would teach a mother that, during Nature’s
process in the formation and growth of embryo man, her heart should
be pure, her thoughts and affections chaste, her mind calm, her
passions without excitement, while her body should be invigorated
with every exercise conducive to health and vigor, but by no means
subjected to any thing calculated to disturb, irritate, weary, or
exhaust any of its functions.
“And while a kind husband should nourish, sustain, and comfort the
wife of his bosom by every kindness and attention consistent with her
situation and with his most tender affection, still he should refrain
from all those untimely associations which are forbidden in the great
constitutional laws of female nature, which laws we see carried out
in almost the entire animal economy, human animals excepted.
“Polygamy, then, as practiced under the patriarchal law of God, tends
directly to the chastity of women, and to sound health and morals in
the constitutions of their offspring.
“You can read in the law of God, in your Bible, the times and
circumstances under which a woman should remain apart from her
husband, during which times she is considered unclean; and should her
husband come to her bed under such circumstances, he would commit a
gross sin both against the laws of nature and the wise provisions
of God’s law, as revealed in his word; in short, he would commit an
abomination; he would sin both against his own body, against the body
of his wife, and against the laws of procreation, in which the health
and morals of his offspring are directly concerned.
“The polygamic law of God opens to all vigorous, healthy, and
virtuous females a door by which they may become honorable wives
of virtuous men, and mothers of faithful, virtuous, healthy, and
vigorous children.
“And here let me ask you, my dear sister, what female in all New
Hampshire would marry a drunkard, a man of hereditary disease, a
debauchee, an idler, or a spendthrift; or what woman would become a
prostitute, or, on the other hand, live and die single, or without
forming those inexpressibly dear relationships of wife and mother,
if the Abrahamic covenant, or patriarchal laws of God, were extended
over your State, and held sacred and honorable by all?
“Dear sister, in your thoughtlessness you inquire, ‘Why not a
plurality of husbands as well as a plurality of wives?’ To which I
reply, 1st. God has never commanded or sanctioned a plurality of
husbands; 2d. ‘_Man is the head of the woman_,’ and no woman can
serve two lords; 3d. Such an order of things would work death and
not life, or, in plain language, it would multiply disease instead
of children. In fact, the experiment of a plurality of husbands,
or rather of one woman for many men, is in active operation, and
has been for centuries, in all the principal towns and cities of
‘_Christendom!_’ It is the genius of ‘_Christian institutions_,’
falsely so called. It is the result of ‘_Mystery Babylon, the great
whore of all the earth_.’ Or, in other words, it is the result of
making void the holy ordinances of God in relation to matrimony,
and introducing the laws of Rome, in which the clergy and nuns
are forbidden to marry, and other members only permitted to have
one wife. This law leaves females exposed to a life of single
‘_blessedness_,’ without husband, child, or friend to provide for
or comfort them; or to a life of poverty and loneliness, exposed to
temptation, to perverted affections, to unlawful means to gratify
them, or to the necessity of selling themselves for lucre. While the
man who has abundance of means is tempted to spend it on a mistress
in secret, and in a lawless way, the law of God would have given her
to him as an honorable wife. These circumstances give rise to murder,
infanticide, suicide, disease, remorse, despair, wretchedness,
poverty, untimely death, with all the attendant train of jealousies,
heartrending miseries, want of confidence in families, contaminating
disease, etc.; and, finally, to the horrible license system, in which
governments called Christian license their fair daughters, I will
not say to play the beast, but to a degradation far beneath them;
for every species of the animal creation, except man, refrain from
such abominable excesses, and observe in a great measure the laws of
nature in procreation.
“I again repeat that Nature has constituted the female differently
from the male, and for a different purpose. The strength of the
female constitution is designed to flow in a stream of _life_, to
nourish and sustain the embryo, to bring it forth, and to nurse it
on her bosom. When Nature is not in operation within her in these
particulars and for these heavenly ends, it has wisely provided
relief at regular periods, in order that her system may be kept pure
and healthy, without exhausting the fountain of life on the one hand,
or drying up its river of life on the other, till mature age and an
approaching change of worlds render it necessary for her to cease
to be fruitful, and give her to rest a while, and enjoy a tranquil
life in the midst of that family circle, endeared to her by so many
ties, and which may be supposed, at this period of her life, to be
approaching the vigor of manhood, and therefore able to comfort and
sustain her.
“Not so with man. He has no such drawback upon his strength. It is
his to move in a wider sphere. If God shall count him worthy of a
hundred fold in this life of wives and children, and houses, and
lands, and kindreds, he may even aspire to patriarchal sovereignty,
to empire; to be the prince or head of a tribe or tribes; and,
like Abraham of old, be able to send forth, for the defense of his
country, hundreds and thousands of his own warriors, born in his own
house.
“A noble man of God, who is full of the Spirit of the Most High,
and is counted worthy to converse with Jehovah or with the Son of
God, and to associate with angels and the spirits of just men made
perfect--one who will teach his children, and bring them up in the
light of unadulterated and eternal truth--is more worthy of a hundred
wives and children than the ignorant slave of passion, or of vice and
folly, is to have one wife and one child. Indeed, the God of Abraham
is so much better pleased with one than with the other, that he would
even take away the one talent, which is habitually abused, neglected,
or put to an improper use, and give it to him who has ten talents.
“In the patriarchal order of family government the wife is bound
to the law of her husband. She honors, ‘_calls him lord_,’ even as
Sarah obeyed and honored Abraham. She lives for him, and to increase
his glory, his greatness, his kingdom, or family. Her affections are
centred in her God, her husband, and her children.
“The children are also under his government worlds without end.
‘_While life, or thought, or being lasts, or immortality endures_,’
they are bound to obey him as their father and king.
“He also has a head to whom he is responsible. He must keep the
commandments of God and observe his laws. He must not take a wife
unless she is given to him by the law and authority of God. He must
not commit adultery, nor take liberties with any woman except his
own, who are secured to him by the holy ordinances of matrimony.
“Hence a nation organized under the law of the Gospel, or, in
other words, the law of Abraham and the patriarchs, would have no
institutions tending to licentiousness; no adulteries, fornications,
etc., would be tolerated. No houses or institutions would exist
for traffic in shame, or in the life-blood of our fair daughters.
Wealthy men would have no inducement to keep a mistress in secret,
or unlawfully. Females would have no grounds for temptation in any
such lawless life. Neither money nor pleasure could tempt them, nor
poverty drive them to any such excess, because the door would be
open for every virtuous female to form the honorable and endearing
relationships of wife and mother in some virtuous family, where
love, and peace, and plenty would crown her days, and truth and the
practice of virtue qualify her to be transplanted with her family
circle in that eternal soil where they might multiply their children
without pain, or sorrow, or death, and go on increasing in numbers,
in wealth, in greatness, in glory, might, majesty, power, and
dominion, in worlds without end.
“Oh my dear sister, could the dark veil of tradition be rent from
your mind--could you gaze for a moment on the resurrection of the
just--could you behold Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their wives
and children, clad in the bloom, freshness, and beauty of immortal
_flesh and bones_--clothed in robes of fine white linen, bedecked
with precious stones and gold, and surrounded with an offspring
of immortals as countless as the stars of the firmament or as the
grains of sand upon the sea-shore, over which they reign as kings and
queens forever and ever, you would then know something of the weight
of those words of the sacred writer which are recorded in relation
to the four wives of Jacob, the mothers of the twelve patriarchs,
namely, ‘_These did build the house of Israel_.’
“Oh that my dear kindred could but realize that they have need
to repent of the sins, ignorance, and traditions of those
perverted systems which are misnamed ‘_Christianity_,’ and be
baptized--_buried_ in the water, in the likeness of the death and
burial of Jesus Christ, and rise to newness of life in the likeness
of his resurrection; receive his Spirit by the laying on of the
hands of an apostle, according to promise, and forsake the world and
the pride thereof. Thus they would be adopted into the family of
Abraham, become his sons and daughters, see and enjoy for themselves
the visions of the Spirit of eternal truth, which bear witness of
the family order of heaven, and the beauties and glories of eternal
kindred ties, for my pen can never describe them.
“Dear, _dear_ kindred: remember, according to the New Testament,
and the testimony of an ancient apostle, if you are ever saved in
the kingdom of God, it must be by being adopted into the family of
polygamists--the family of the great patriarch Abraham; for in his
seed, or family, and not out of it, ‘_shall all the nations and
kindreds of the earth be blessed_.’
“You say you believe polygamy is ‘_licentious_;’ that it is
‘_abominable_,’ ‘_beastly_,’ etc.; ‘the practice only of the most
barbarous nations, or of the Dark Ages, or of some great or good men
who were left to commit gross sins.’ Yet you say you are anxious for
me to be converted to your faith; and that we may see each other in
this life, and be associated in one great family in that life which
has no end.
“Now, in order to comply with your wishes, I must renounce the Old
and New Testaments; must count Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their
families, as licentious, wicked, beastly, abominable characters;
Moses, Nathan, David, and the prophets, no better. I must look upon
the God of Israel as partaker in all these abominations, by holding
them in fellowship; and even as a minister of such iniquity, by
giving King Saul’s wives into King David’s bosom, and afterward by
taking David’s wives from him, and giving them to his neighbor. I
must consider Jesus Christ, and Paul, and John, as either living in a
dark age, as full of the darkness and ignorance of barbarous climes,
or else willfully abominable and wicked in fellowshiping polygamists,
and representing them as fathers of the faithful and rulers in
heaven. I must doom them all to hell, with adulterers, fornicators,
etc., or else, at least, assign to them some nook or corner in
heaven, as ignorant persons, who, knowing but little, were beaten
with few stripes; while, by analogy, I must learn to consider the
Roman popes, clergy, and nuns, who do not marry at all, as foremost
in the ranks of glory, and those Catholics and Protestants who have
but one wife as next in order of salvation, glory, immortality, and
eternal life.
“Now, dear friends, much as I long to see you, and dear as you are
to me, I can never come to these terms. I feel as though the Gospel
had introduced me into the right family, into the right lineage, and
into good company. And, besides all these considerations, should
I ever become so beclouded with unbelief of the Scriptures and
heavenly institutions as to agree with my kindred in New Hampshire in
_theory_, still my practical circumstances are different, and would,
I fear, continue to separate us by a wide and almost impassable gulf.
“For instance, I have (as you see, in all good conscience, founded
on the Word of God) formed family and kindred ties which are
inexpressibly dear to me, and which I can never bring my feelings to
consent to dissolve. I have a good and virtuous husband whom I love.
We have four little children which are mutually and inexpressibly
dear to us. And, besides this, my husband has seven other living
wives, and one who has departed to a better world. He has in all
upward of twenty-five children. All these mothers and children are
endeared to me by kindred ties, by mutual affection, by acquaintance
and association; and the mothers in particular, by mutual and
long-continued exercises of toil, patience, long-suffering, and
sisterly kindness. We all have our imperfections in this life; but
I know that these are good and worthy women, and that my husband
is a good and worthy man; one who keeps the commandments of Jesus
Christ, and presides in his family like an Abraham. He seeks to
provide for them with all diligence; he loves them all, and seeks to
comfort them and make them happy. He teaches them the commandments
of Jesus Christ, and gathers them about him in the family circle to
call upon his God, both morning and evening. He and his family have
the confidence, esteem, good-will, and fellowship of this entire
Territory, and of a wide circle of acquaintances in Europe and
America. He is a practical teacher of morals and religion, a promoter
of general education, and at present occupies an honorable seat in
the Legislative Council of this Territory.
“Now, as to visiting my kindred in New Hampshire, I would be pleased
to do so were it the will of God. But, first, the laws of that State
must be so modified by enlightened legislation, and the customs and
consciences of its inhabitants, and of my kindred, so altered, that
my husband can accompany me with all his wives and children, and be
as much respected and honored in his family organization and in his
holy calling as he is at home, or in the same manner as the patriarch
Jacob would have been respected had he, with his wives and children,
paid a visit to his kindred. As my husband is yet in his youth, as
well as myself, I fondly hope we shall live to see that day; for
already the star of Jacob is in the ascendency; the house of Israel
is about to be restored; while ‘_Mystery Babylon_,’ with all her
institutions, awaits her own overthrow. Till this is the case in New
Hampshire, my kindred will be under the necessity of coming here
to see us, or, on the other hand, we will be mutually compelled to
forego the pleasure of each other’s company.
“You mention in your letter that Paul the apostle recommended that
bishops be the husband of one wife. Why this was the case I do not
know, unless it was, as he says, that while he was among Romans he
did as Romans did. Rome at that time governed the world, as it were;
and, although gross idolaters, they held to the one-wife system.
Under these circumstances, no doubt, the apostle Paul, seeing a great
many polygamists in the Church, recommended that they had better
choose for this particular temporal office men of small families, who
would not be in disrepute with the government. This is precisely our
course in those countries where Roman institutions still bear sway.
Our elders there have but one wife, in order to conform to the laws
of men.
“You inquire why Elder W., when at your house, denied that the Church
of this age held to the doctrine of plurality. I answer that he might
have been ignorant of the fact, as our belief on this point was not
published till 1852. And had he known it, he had no right to reveal
the same until the full time had arrived. God kindly withheld this
doctrine for a time, because of the ignorance and prejudice of the
nations of mystic Babylon, that peradventure he might save some of
them.
“Now, dear sister, I must close. I wish all my kindred and old
acquaintances to see this letter, or a copy thereof, and that they
will consider it as if written to themselves. I love them dearly, and
greatly desire and pray for their salvation, and that we may all meet
with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God.
“Dear sister, do not let your prejudices and traditions keep you from
believing the Bible, nor the pride, shame, or love of the world keep
you from your seat in the kingdom of heaven, among the royal family
of polygamists. Write often and freely.
“With sentiments of the deepest affection and kindred feeling, I
remain, dear sister, your affectionate sister,
“BELINDA MARDEN PRATT.”