1852–1907
From the 1852 announcement to the 1904 Second Manifesto
20 sources, ordered by evidentiary weight — primary and contemporary first, then documentary editions, then the argument. 19 of them are held as full text in the Mormon Corpus; the other 1 are reached only as quotations inside works that are held, and are marked.
Doctrine and Covenants: section 132 and Official Declaration 1, with the appended excerpts from three addresses by Wilford Woodruff
The canonized text of the plural-marriage revelation, the exact wording of the Manifesto, Lorenzo Snow's sustaining motion of 6 October 1890, and Woodruff's later 'shown me by vision' explanations as the church itself prints them.
Journal of Discourses, vol. 1 — "Celestial Marriage," discourse by Orson Pratt, Great Salt Lake City, 29 August 1852
Orson Pratt
The wording and argument of the first public defense of plural marriage, including Pratt's opening that the subject was 'rather new ground' and his denial that the doctrine existed to gratify carnal lusts.
Journal of Discourses, vol. 11 — discourse by Brigham Young, 19 August 1866
Brigham Young
The most contested nineteenth-century statement tying plural marriage to exaltation, in the surrounding context that both camps argue over.
Edmunds–Tucker Act (24 Stat. 635, 1887) and Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States (136 U.S. 1, 1890)
United States Congress; U.S. Supreme Court
The statutory machinery of disincorporation, escheat of church property above $50,000, and the withdrawal of the vote from all Utah women.
Official Statement (the "Second Manifesto"), Joseph F. Smith, general conference, 6 April 1904
Joseph F. Smith
The exact prohibitory language, including the threat of excommunication, and its reference back to Woodruff's declaration.
Conference Reports of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1880–1970
The church's own conference-floor record, including the 1906 announcement of the Taylor and Cowley resignations and later restatements of the Manifesto's scope.
In the World: The Diaries of Reed Smoot
Reed Smoot, ed. Harvard S. Heath
How the hearings looked to the man on trial and to church leaders corresponding with him, including apostolic discussion of new polygamy cases as late as 1909.
Gospel Topics essay, "Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The institution's current statement on how widely plural marriage was lived, on divorce and remarriage, and on women's ages at marriage.
Gospel Topics essay, "The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage"
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The church's own acknowledgement that new plural marriages were performed after 1890, that Joseph F. Smith cohabited and fathered children after 1890, and that the Second Manifesto made the first one prohibitory.
Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, vols. 2–3
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The church's current narrative telling of the indignation meetings, the raids, Rudger Clawson's sentencing, the Smoot hearings and the Taylor–Cowley resignations.
"LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 9–105
D. Michael Quinn
The documented count and authorization pattern of post-Manifesto plural marriages, and the sequence of public denials issued alongside them.
"The Prosecutions Begin: Defining Cohabitation in 1885," Dialogue 21, no. 1 (Spring 1988)
Ken Driggs
That mass prosecutions followed the Edmunds Act and the 1885 Angus M. Cannon cohabitation ruling rather than Reynolds itself.
"In Their Own Behalf: The Politicization of Mormon Women and the 1870 Franchise," Dialogue 24, no. 4 (Winter 1991)
Lola Van Wagenen
That Latter-day Saint women were politically organized before enfranchisement, and the sequence linking the January 1870 mass meetings to the February 1870 suffrage act.
"The Odyssey of a Latter-day Prophet: Wilford Woodruff," Journal of Mormon History 17 (1991)
Thomas G. Alexander
Woodruff's shift from apocalyptic expectation to a decision framed around saving the temples, and the political ground on which the Manifesto rested.
"Twentieth-Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah," Dialogue 24, no. 4 (Winter 1991)
Ken Driggs
How the ambiguity of 1890–1904 produced the fundamentalist movement, and the text of the Utah constitutional ban on plural marriage.
"The Reed Smoot Hearings," Journal of Mormon History 33, no. 2 (2007)
Harvard S. Heath
The chronology, committee votes and political management of the four-year investigation, including the June 1906 committee report against Smoot.
FAIR, "Official Declaration Number 1" and "Plural marriage/Polygamy in the 19th Century"
FAIR
The strongest faithful reading, including the argument that the Manifesto's first-person singular wording was deliberate and that leaders were placed in a double bind.
"New Light on the Lorin Woolley Story and Early Fundamentalist Beginnings" and related essays, josephsmithspolygamy.org
Brian C. Hales
The text of the 27 September 1886 document, the 1912 versus 1929 versions of Woolley's account, and the faithful case against the ordination claim.
MormonThink, "Polygamy" and "Lying for the Lord"
MormonThink; Ken Clark
The critical case that the Manifesto functioned as a public instrument while the practice continued, assembled largely from Quinn, Hardy and the Smoot Case transcripts.
Mormonism—Shadow or Reality?
Jerald and Sandra Tanner
Reproductions of Woodruff's 1891 master-in-chancery testimony and of Smoot Case exchanges, useful as a finding aid and checkable against the originals.
