|
|
|
Abraham Lincoln and the Mormons: Another Legacy of Limited Freedom
Gary Vitale
"Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed."
Edmund Burke
|
|
Slavery and Mormon polygamy were inflammatory national and statewide political issues when Abraham Lincoln was a practicing attorney and legislator in Springfield. While his views on slavery have been written about extensively, his opinion on polygamy is less well known, but both subjects are related to Lincoln's political philosophy of freedom as it related to state sovereignty and religious freedom. Mormon polygamy hit close to home as the Church of the Latter Day Saints took root in nearby Nauvoo. In 1856, the Republican Party's first national platform linked slavery and polygamy and promised to abolish these "twin relics of barbarism."1 Before he had penned the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act that specifically targeted Mormons in Utah territory. By examining his early experience and contact with Mormons, the references he made to them in letters and speeches, and what he and fellow Republicans did and said about them before, during, and after he was president, a clearer picture of Lincoln's political legacy on slavery and polygamy emerges. Both slavery and polygamy challenged state sovereignty and religious freedom. |
1
|
| |
|
|
Lincoln and the Mormons – Both in Illinois
|
|
|
By the time Lincoln arrived in Springfield in 1837, the Mormons had already been passing through the city on their way to Missouri from their first great settlement in Kirtland, Ohio. Their Prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr., had told them to establish a Zion at the edge of Indian Territory in what was known as Far West in Missouri. Smith had taught his followers that Native Americans were descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel who must be converted before a City of God could be established for the Second Coming of Christ. The massive influx of slaves and slave-owners into Missouri, however, led to clashes with the educated and zealous Latter Day Saints, many of whom were from England and New England. Many Mormons, including Smith, were imprisoned, and Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs issued an executive order commanding that the Mormons leave the state or be "exterminated." In 1838, they found refuge across the Mississippi River in and around Quincy, Illinois where some stayed while others followed Smith north to Nauvoo. Mormons could be found also in Mormontown near Pittsfield in Pike County and others in Adams, Sangamon, and Hancock Counties. |
2
|
Some Mormons came to Springfield where they lived, worked, and worshipped in the new state capital city. One of Lincoln's earliest political enemies was Judge James Adams; a prominent Democrat who had been approached by Smith in November of 1839 while on his way with three others to Washington, D.C. to ask the federal government for assistance in making claims against the State of Missouri for property damage. According to Joseph Smith, Judge Adams "... sought me out, took me home with him, and treated me like a father." The following year Adams had been baptized into the Church of the Latter Day Saints, and at one point headed the Springfield branch of the church.2 Smith may have also sought out John Todd Stuart, Lincoln's law partner at the time and the newly elected Whig Congressman who left for Washington on November 2. At the very least, the Prophet apparently had some flattering words for Stuart because Lincoln wrote to Stuart relating that:
[Joshua] Speed says he wrote you what Jo. Smith said about you as he passed here. We will procure the names of some of his people here and send them to you before long.3
In the first paragraph of the letter, Lincoln conveyed his excitement about Whig chances of winning future elections. Besides some Van Buren Democrats who he believed might switch parties, Lincoln also thought that Mormons were ready to vote for the Whigs, especially in light of the flattering words Joseph Smith had for Stuart and would pass on their names to him. Even the Democratic newspaper accused Stuart of pandering to the Mormons by promising to help them in Washington, to which Simeon Francis, editor of the Whig Sangamo Journal, responded:
The Mormons have been driven from Missouri and under such circumstances that they thought it their duty to make application to Congress for redress. They are constituents of Mr. Stuart who was bound, as their Representative to prefer their claims before Congress. Yet for doing this plain act of duty, the Register reads him a lecture. That paper says, 'Let Mr. Stuart beware that he does not dig a pit for himself to fall into.' Is Mr. Stuart to dig a pit for himself by doing a simple act of justice to a portion of his constituents?4
|
3
|
Both Illinois Democrats and Whigs had courted the Mormon vote ever since Mormons arrived from Missouri. Whigs Sidney Little and Stephen A. Douglas, who was Secretary of State at the time, helped push through the Nauvoo city charter, which included the establishment of the Nauvoo Legion—the church-controlled military force. As an Illinois Legislator, Abraham Lincoln had most probably voted for the Nauvoo Charter and the Legion even though the legislative vote was an oral vote and individual votes were not recorded. This is an indication of the near unanimous sympathy for what the Mormons had suffered in Missouri. John C. Bennett, the high Mormon official who had not only helped draft the Charter but had lobbied for its passage in Springfield, noted:
Many members in this house ... were warmly in our favor, and with only one or two dissenting voices ... and here I should not forget to mention that Lincoln, whose name we erased from the electoral ticket in November, (not, however, on account of any dislike to him as a man, but simply because his was the last name on the ticket, and we desired to show our friendship to the Democratic party by substituting the name of Ralston for some one of the Whigs,) had the magnanimity to vote for our act, and came forward, after the final vote, to the bar of the house, and cordially congratulated me on its passage.5
|
4
|
|
Despite the efforts of both parties in the legislature, it was the Democrat, Stephen A. Douglas, who the Mormons credited with the successful passage of Nauvoo's city charter. After the charter was granted, Douglas was given the Freedom of the City. Douglas visited Nauvoo and praised its improvements. He was even rumored to have convinced some in the Nauvoo precinct to strike Lincoln's name from the 1840 presidential electoral ticket. After Douglas had been appointed an Illinois Supreme Court Justice, the state of Missouri demanded that Joseph Smith be extradited to stand trial for treason against the state. Douglas convinced Smith to be tried in his court in Monmouth, Illinois, and the Missouri extradition request was denied—albeit because of a legal technicality—but Joseph Smith was free. In a letter to the Nauvoo newspaper, Times and Seasons, he praised Douglas as "... a Master Spirit, and his friends are our friends—we are willing to cast our banners in the air, and fight by his side in the cause of humanity, and equal rights – the cause of liberty and the law."6 |
5
|
|
Between James Adams and Stephen Douglas, the Democrats gained the most from the Mormons. When Missouri again sought the extradition of Smith in 1842, this time for complicity in the assassination attempt on ex-Governor Lilburn Boggs, Smith came to Springfield again for a trial that would determine whether he should be extradited. Judge Adams and another Mormon each put up two-thousand dollars as bail money. Smith the Prophet became a celebrity in the city as many Mormons as well as Douglas sought him out. Even several lady spectators turned out for the trial, which was very unusual for the time. One of the ladies was the newly married and two-month pregnant Mary Todd Lincoln. Smith obliged everyone by offering opinions on a variety of subjects ranging from cures for cholera to slavery.7 |
6
|
|
In March of 1842, the new federal bankruptcy laws took effect, and Lincoln paid his two dollars for a certificate to practice law in the U.S. Circuit Court. From March to December 1842, Lincoln and Stephen A. Logan handled about fifty bankruptcy cases. They were all presented to Nathaniel Pope, U.S. Circuit Court judge, whose courtroom was in Springfield's now completed capitol. As it turned out, because the Joseph Smith extradition case involved two states, Missouri and Illinois, it had been referred to Judge Pope's courtroom as well. If ever the Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith met the future president, it was probably December 31, New Year's Eve day, sometime after 11:30 am. It was then that Smith was in Judge Pope's courtroom waiting for his lawyer to present his petition, and, in words from Smith's own diary, he, "heard several decisions in Bankruptcy."8 Doubtless, some of those decisions were for cases for which Lincoln and Logan were responsible, and Lincoln is likely to have been in the courtroom noting Judge Pope's decisions. |
7
|
|
Did Prophet Smith meet Lawyer Lincoln? Did they talk? Perhaps, but not likely, even though Lincoln, as attorney for Illinois Supreme Court Judge Thomas Browne, had received special permission to sit it the House of Representatives, where Hancock County Representative William Smith, the Prophet's younger brother, also sat. In fact, there were so many spectators and excitement about Joseph Smith and his trial that the Illinois House was once forced to adjourn suddenly, and later it had difficulty keeping order during Judge Browne's trial.9 It is also unlikely that Lincoln spoke with Smith at the New Year's Eve ball that evening honoring newly selected U.S. Senator Sidney Breese, a Democrat. Joseph Smith, however, was certainly the sensational guest at the ball.10 On New Year's Day, a Sunday, the Mormons had requested and had been given permission to hold a religious service in the House of Representatives' chambers. Although Smith did not preach, the service was apparently well attended, but not by the Lincolns. After his four-day trial, Smith was acquitted and was not turned over to Missouri. He and his entourage actually sang their way back to Nauvoo.11 In the months after the trial James Adams grew even closer to Smith, becoming a surrogate father to him after the death of Joseph Smith, Sr. He went into business with him in Nauvoo and married a Partridge girl who was one of the Prophet's many plural wives, and finally became a Mormon polygamist himself. A month after his second marriage, August 11, 1843, James Adams died of cholera.12 |
8
|
|
Although an open secret for many years, the Mormon doctrine of plurality of wives was not publically acknowledged until July 12, 1843. It obviously caused an uproar that led to the publication of an exposé on the scandalous practice in the Nauvoo Expositor. The publication so enraged Joseph Smith that he had its press destroyed. Its editors and publishers fled to Carthage, Illinois, Hancock County Seat, to swear out a warrant for Smith's arrest. Smith and his brother Hyrum were arrested and subsequently murdered by a mob on June 27, 1844. |
9
|
| |
|
|
Lincoln and Republicans versus Douglas, the Democrats, and Utah Mormons
|
|
|
Lincoln did not comment on the Mormons and polygamy until over a decade later when the issue of slavery entered the national state with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. This act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1821 that had prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territories. In an effort to win southern states support for national railroad construction that would be channeled through Illinois, Stephen Douglas argued that a territory should be able to determine by a vote whether slavery could exist within its borders. Since the Great Plains environment was not conducive to cotton growing, Douglas never expected slavery to take root there. However, southerners saw this as an opportunity to gain power in Congress by adding more slave states and thus protecting their right to slavery in general. Many pro-slavery supporters poured into the territory as did many Whig and Republican "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men" advocates. Violence ensued between the two groups. |
10
|
|
To complicate matters, the United States had also acquired territory all the way to California after the Mexican-American War of 1845–1848. By 1850, Mormons had been driven to Utah territory and were petitioning Congress to admit Utah as a state. Their petition, however, was fraught with problems. Utah was a theocracy that gave special status to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. It sanctioned polygamy, and many non-Mormon travelers through the territory mysteriously disappeared or died. Mormons blamed the Indians. Non-Mormon government officials who were sent to Utah brought back reports of threats and intimidation. "Holy polygamy," however, sparked the greatest national uproar. |
11
|
In 1856 the first national Republican Party convention held in Philadelphia proclaimed "the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy, and Slavery."13 That phrase, "twin relics of barbarism," resonated in the minds of abolitionists, anti-polygamists, and most Americans, linking together two abominations they wanted expunged from America. It was still being used more than thirty years later, long after slavery had been abolished but before the Mormon Church disavowed polygamy.14 This phrase, however, so angered the Mormons in Utah that they issued the following public statement:
The Democratic Convention in Cincinnati, which nominated James Buchanan for President, passed the following resolution:
Resolved: That Congress has no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that all such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitution.
This is the principle of the Democratic Party, which they have extended to Territories as well as States, and the doctrines of sovereignty apply to us in the desert as well as to the settlers in Kansas and Nebraska.
The Democratic party is the instrument, in God's hand, by which is to be effected our recognition as a sovereign State, with the democratic institution of slavery and polygamy, as established by the patriarchs and renewed to the saints of latter days, through God's chosen leaders and prophets.15
|
12
|
|
To the Mormons, Stephen Douglas's "popular sovereignty" justified polygamy, just as Republicans saw his "squatter sovereignty" as a way to expand slavery. Douglas, however, long a friend of the Mormons, seemed to turn against them. In June 1857 when he returned to Springfield, Douglas was asked to give a speech on Kansas, Utah, and the Dred Scott decision. He briefly mentioned the Kansas matter and lambasted the Mormons. A month before his speech, President James Buchanan had reluctantly sent an armed force to Utah in order to install a non-Mormon governor. Douglas, who was chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, had agreed to the show of force that became known as "Buchanan's Blunder." In his Springfield speech, Douglas called for an investigation into the charges against the Mormons and if they proved to be true, "the inhabitants of Utah, as a community, are outlaws and alien enemies" and Congress should "... apply the knife and cut out this loathsome ulcer!" These words were met with great applause in Springfield.16 |
13
|
Two weeks after Douglas gave his speech, leading Republicans asked Lincoln to give a reply to it. It was in Lincoln's answer to Douglas that we can discover his attitude towards polygamy and why he and other Republicans linked it to slavery. Most of Lincoln's speech discussed the recent Supreme Court ruling of Dred Scott that established the principle that a slave could not sue for his freedom in a slave or Free State thus making slavery theoretically legal in all states. Lincoln also denounced the "squatter sovereignty" policy of the Democrats, and then exposed the contradictions in Douglas's political thinking on states' rights and polygamy by saying:
[I]t is very plain the Judge evades the question the Republicans have ever pressed ... in regard to Utah. That question the Judge well knows to be this: 'If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the [Democrats] admit them into the Union?' There is nothing in the United States Constitution or law against polygamy; and why is it not a part of the Judge's "sacred right of self-government" for that people to have it, or rather keep it, if they choose? These questions, so far as I know, the Judge never answers.17
|
14
|
|
Lincoln knew that neither Douglas nor any Democrat would agree that Mormons had a right to practice polygamy just because they would vote for it in a state convention. Yet these same Democrats were content that allow the majority of people in a territory to vote for slavery and apply to the Union for statehood. This inconsistency confirmed what Lincoln and the Republicans said about "squatter sovereignty," that it was "... a mere deceitful pretense for the benefit of slavery."18 However, even the Democrats would not use it as the Mormons might have hoped for the benefit of polygamy. |
15
|
| |
|
|
President Lincoln Signs Anti-Bigamy Act and Emancipation Proclamation
|
|
On July 2, 1862, Lincoln signed into law the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act. It passed without much debate in Congress, probably because it was thoroughly debated when Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont first introduced it during the Buchanan administration. In a long speech to the House of Representatives, Morrill outlined Mormon abuses of power beginning with the arrogance of Brigham Young and ending with what he obviously considered the most egregious crime – polygamy. Morrill exposed the illogic of Buchanan's argument that the First Amendment protected religious freedom and, therefore, Utah could pass laws protecting polygamy by arguing that:
Under the guise of religion, this people has established, and seek to maintain and perpetuate, a Mohammedan barbarism revolting to the civilized world.... As well might religion be invoked to protect cannibalism or infanticide. Yet we are told, because our Constitution declares that' Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof' that we must tamely submit to any burlesque, outrage, or indecency that artful men may seek to hide, under the name of religion! However, it is impossible to twist the Constitution into the service of polygamy by any fair construction.... Could a man, charged with burglary or rape, find privilege and excuse before any of our courts on a plea that it was an act in accordance with the religion of the prophet Mercury or the prophet Priapus, and that our Constitution permits the free exercise of religion?19
|
16
|
|
The Anti-Bigamy Bill was tabled, probably because Democrats saw it as another example of Congress usurping legislation passed by the territories and states. If Congress could prohibit polygamy, it could prohibit slavery. Were polygamy and slavery equivalents? Justin Morrill thought so. Some Democrats, however, such as Kentucky Representative William Simms argued there were no parallels between the two. In 1860, he argued that the Constitution affirmed slavery as a personal right and as a property right that was established by God and upheld by religion.20 |
17
|
|
In order to resolve this issue in his own mind Lincoln, ever the independent researcher and thinker, sent to the Library of Congress for copies of the Constitution, a book on the writings of Thomas Jefferson, The Book of Mormon, and some books by non-Mormon eyewitnesses of Utah polygamy. Clearly, he wanted to understand something of the Mormon faith, the doctrine of polygamy, and to satisfy himself that the bill that he might sign was constitutional. Among the ideas he encountered was that polygamy was important to Mormons because they believed"... at the Millennium they may be resurrected to reign with [Jesus Christ] and the glory of the main will be in proportion to the size of his household of children, wives, and servants ..."21 |
18
|
|
Lincoln also would have learned from an ex-Mormon elder, John Hyde about lurid accounts of polygamy in actual practice. Many polygamists could not afford to support their families who often lived in squalor. Husbands were deliberately cold to their wives to prevent jealousies causing "marriage [to be] stripped of every sentiment that makes it holy, innocent, and pure. With them it is nothing more than the means of obtaining families." Men married mothers, daughters, and half-sisters. Herber C. Kimball, second only the Brigham Young in the church hierarchy was known to refer to his wives "... on Sabbath, in the Tabernacle, and before an audience of over two thousand persons, as 'my cows!'" Hyde also argued that Mormons were forced out of Missouri and then Illinois because of "their ... incessant truckling for political ascendancy," not because of religious persecution.22 |
19
|
Once Lincoln signed the bill into law, however, he was reluctant to enforce it. He needed Utah for the war effort and was careful not to alienate anyone in the territory. In fact, a little more than two months before Lincoln signed the Anti-Bigamy Act, he wrote Secretary of War Stanton to "carefully fulfill a request for authorizing Brigham Young to "raise, arm, & equip one hundred men for ninety days service to be used in protecting the property of the Telegraph & overland mail companies" against hostile Indians until "our own troops can reach the points where they so much needed."23 When asked by a Mormon journalist about enforcing the law against polygamy, Lincoln is said to have replied:
Occasionally [in clearing timber from a field] we would come to a log that had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so we ploughed around it. That's what I intend to do with the Mormons. Tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone, I will let him alone.24
|
20
|
|
While slavery ended with the Thirteenth Amendment, it took a full twenty-eight years after the passage of the Anti-Bigamy Act for the Mormon Church to officially disavow polygamy. Utah was not admitted to statehood until 1896, a full thirty-seven years after its first petitioning of Congress to do so. |
21
|
| |
|
|
The Lincoln Legacy of Limited Freedom
|
|
|
What can we gather of Lincoln's legacy by pairing the abolition of slavery with the abolition of polygamy? Lincoln and the Republicans as well as Democrats believed — or came to believe — that slavery and polygamy were both immoral. This conclusion was not based on what the Constitution or the Bible said, but because they were false to the spirit of America, which recognizes the dignity and worth of the individual. Lincoln believed that "all men" meant all, even women. America's greatness depends upon a belief in the uniqueness of the individual. Lincoln looked beyond the law, beyond the votes of the majority, beyond the Constitution itself, to the fundamental beliefs out of which America was born to denounce both slavery and polygamy. He argued the numbers had nothing to do with being American. That is why he attacked Douglas's popular sovereignty concept as "squatter sovereignty." It did not matter how many people in Kansas or Nebraska wanted slavery. For Americans, slavery is wrong. It did not matter that the majority of people living in Utah territory believed in polygamy. For Americans, polygamy is wrong. |
22
|
|
Lincoln's legacy is that he showed us that it is not how many of us believe that makes us Americans. It is what we believe. We are not free to own slaves no matter what the laws of a particular state, and that is a limit to states' rights. We are not free to practice polygamy even as a religious right and that is a limit to our freedom of religion. Ironically, it is not the extension of liberty that defines us. It is the limits of liberty. By calling upon our basic belief in individuality and the dignity of each person – whether a slave or a wife – Lincoln showed us something of what constitutes us as a people. |
23
|
|
Notes
1 The third resolution in its entirety: "Resolved: That the Constitution conferred upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy, and Slavery." Donald Bruce Johnson, ed., National Party Platforms: Volume I, 1840–1956 (University of Illinois Press), 27–8.
2 Kent L. Walgren, "James Adams, Early Springfield Mormon and Freemason," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 75, no. 2 (Summer 1982), note 29. Ebenezer Robinson, editor of the Times and Seasons, Nauvoo's Mormon newspaper, wrote to Brigham Young on December 27, 1840 that "The gospel is spreading rapidly in almost all parts of the United States ... Judge Adams of Springfield, Ill., has been baptized. Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, 27 December 1840, in Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, as noted in Walgren, 127.
3 Letter to John T. Stuart from Springfield, Ill., 1 March 1840. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln.
4 Sangamo Journal, 2, no. 5, City of Nauvoo, Illinois, 1 January 1841.
5 Extract of a letter from "JOAB, General in Israel" (John C. Bennett) printed in Times and Seasons, Vol. 2, no. 5, City of Nauvoo, Illinois, 1 January 1841. When asked what slaveholders should do if they joined the Mormon Church, Smith said they should "... bring their slaves into a free country, set them free, Educate them and give them their equal rights." He feared slaves would become "quarrelsome" if they were "organized into an independent government." Smith Journals 1842–43, p. 12; Prophet's Record, 260.
6 Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 105–7.
7 History of the Church, vol. 5, 213, as noted in Walgren, 133.
8 Smith Journals 1842–43, 19; Prophet's Record, 263.
9 Smith Journals 1842–43, p. 26; Prophet's Record, 265; ISLA—Bulletin, No. 56.
10 31 December 1842 entry. Lincoln Log Website.
11 Smith Journals 1842–43, 27–32, 60; Prophet's Record, p. 265–7, 274–5. Most of the arguments in the case concerned what government body had jurisdiction over Smith's extradition. Smith's lawyer, U.S. District Attorney Josiah Butterfield, contended that the U.S. Circuit Court did have jurisdiction, and, interestingly, cited as proof the case of a fugitive slave who was arrested in New York after escaping from Louisiana. The Federal Court in New York concluded that the state courts had no jurisdiction in the case. Butterfield then asked, rhetorically, "[Does] Joseph Smith [have] the Rights of a negro?" The Dred Scott decision would come fourteen years later.
12 After the trial, Smith convinced Judge Pope that Adams should have first chance to copy the court's decision ahead of Simeon Francis, editor of the Sangamo Journal, who "... had published much against us ..." so that Nauvoo's newspaper, The Wasp, edited by William Smith, Joseph's brother, could publish first. Smith Journals 1842–43, 104; Prophet's Record, p. 286. Smith once referred to Adams as "a most intimate friend" and a letter from Adams to Smith has the salutation, "My Son." From History of the Church, vol. 4, p. 189 and vol. 5, 206, as quoted in Walgren, 136.
13 Johnson, National Party Platforms, 27–8.
14 T.B.H. Stenhouse, "Tell It All": The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism (Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington and Co., 1875), publisher's preface.
15 As quoted in Morrill speech to Congress, 23 February 1857.
16 Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 568.
17 Speech in response to Douglas, 26 July 1857, Springfield, Illinois.
18 Ibid.
19 Justin Morrill speech, from Congressional Globe, 5 February 1857, 288–9.
20 Speech of William Simms to the House of Representatives as printed in Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, First Session, 5 April 1860, 200.
21 J. W. Gunnison, The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake: A History of Their Rie and Progress, Peculiar Doctrines, Present Condition, and Prospects, Derived from Personal Observation During Residence with Them (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & co., 1856), 68.
22 John Hyde, Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (New York: W. P. Fetridge & Co., 1857), 52–7, 307–8.
23 Lincoln's note to Stanton is written on a letter of request from Milton S. Latham, 26 April 1862.
24 Attributed to an interview with T.B.H. Stenhouse, who was editor of the Deseret Tribune in Salt Lake City. Stenhouse later joined a dissident Mormon group, the Godbeites, opposing polygamy, and his wife, Fanny, authored a tell-all book on polygamy in 1875 that featured an endorsing introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|