1852–1907
From the 1852 announcement to the 1904 Second Manifesto
33 events, 8 of them flagged as hinges. Filter below, or open the master timeline across every topic.
William Clayton records a revelation on the eternity of the marriage covenant, including plurality of wives. It is not published. George A. Smith later said it was known to perhaps one or two hundred persons.
At a special missionary conference in Salt Lake City, Orson Pratt delivered a prepared discourse defending plural marriage and the 1843 revelation was read publicly for the first time. Pratt argued from modern revelation, the constitution, the promises to Abraham and the claim that monogamy invited immorality.
Congress made bigamy in the territories punishable by five years and a $500 fine, annulled the Utah legislature's incorporation of the church, and barred it from holding property worth more than $50,000. Enforcement was almost nonexistent during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Sarah M. Kimball chaired a meeting where leading women drafted resolutions against the pending Cullom Bill and adopted a resolution calling for the right to vote. Eliza R. Snow arrived partway through and told them they should rise up in the dignity of their calling and speak for themselves.
Between three and five thousand women filled the old adobe tabernacle to protest the Cragin and Cullom bills. Sarah Kimball presided and no men were present except reporters. Similar meetings followed in dozens of settlements across the territory, and newspapers nationwide reprinted the speeches.
The all-male territorial legislature passed a woman suffrage bill unanimously and acting governor S. A. Mann signed it. About twenty-five women voted in a Salt Lake City municipal election two days later, making Utah women the first in the nation to cast ballots under an equal suffrage law.
Congress gave federal judges jurisdiction over antipolygamy prosecutions in Utah and the power to select jurors, stripping the Mormon-dominated probate courts of criminal jurisdiction. Church leaders then arranged a test case to challenge the Morrill Act.
A unanimous Supreme Court upheld George Reynolds's conviction and the constitutionality of the 1862 act. Chief Justice Waite wrote that laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.
Congress made cohabiting with more than one woman a misdemeanor, requiring no proof of a marriage ceremony. It disqualified polygamists from juries, office and the vote, and vacated Utah's election machinery in favour of five federally appointed commissioners who added a test oath of their own devising.
Clawson told the court he regretted that the laws of his country should come into conflict with the laws of God, but that when they did he would invariably choose the latter. The judge, who had intended leniency, sentenced him to four years and fines totalling $800.
Taylor told the Saints that no man had a right to control his conscience, then went into hiding. Church leaders instituted an organized underground; over the next years nearly every Utah settlement was raided by federal marshals, often at night.
The First Presidency established settlements in Chihuahua and Sonora as a refuge, beginning with Colonia Juarez, Colonia Dublan and Colonia Diaz. Mexican federal statutes since 1884 also prohibited marriage where one partner was already married, a fact church leaders knew from the outset.
About 150 words found after Taylor's death declare that everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated. Lorin C. Woolley, one of Taylor's bodyguards, later claimed that Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ appeared that night and that Taylor ordained five men to keep plural marriage alive whatever the church did.
The act dissolved the church corporation and the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, directed the attorney general to escheat church property above $50,000, abolished spousal privilege so wives could be compelled to testify, required an antipolygamy oath of voters, jurors and officeholders, and revoked the vote from every woman in Utah.
Taylor died in hiding, still pursued. Wilford Woodruff, as president of the Twelve, took charge of a church whose property was being escheated and whose leadership was largely in concealment or prison.
The Supreme Court sustained the dissolution of the church corporation and the forfeiture of its property to the United States, with an exception for buildings used exclusively for worship. The temples were now plainly at risk.
Woodruff wrote in his journal that he was under the necessity of acting for the temporal salvation of the church. He drafted the statement in the third person, intending signatures from the Presidency and Twelve; George Q. Cannon edited it down by roughly 150 words and it went out as a personal declaration over Woodruff's name alone.
Lorenzo Snow moved that the conference accept Woodruff's declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding, recognizing him as the only man on earth holding the keys of the sealing ordinances. The vote was unanimous. Zina D. H. Young wrote that day that the hearts of all were tried but looked to God and submitted.
Asked before the master in chancery whether existing plural relations should also cease, Woodruff answered that that had been the intention. Restoration of the escheated property depended on such assurances. George Q. Cannon testified the same month that he knew of no plural marriage entered into since the Manifesto.
He put a question to the Saints: whether it was wiser to continue attempting plural marriage against the laws of the nation and at the cost of the temples, or to submit. He said the Lord had shown him by vision and revelation exactly what would take place, and that he would have gone to prison himself had God not commanded otherwise.
Congress invited Utah to apply a seventh time. In April of the same year, at a meeting of the Presidency and Twelve in the Salt Lake Temple, Woodruff told George Q. Cannon that the day was near when there would be no difficulty in the way of good men securing noble wives; that year the Presidency authorized plural marriages in Canada, Mexico and two Utah temples.
The state constitution guaranteed religious toleration and provided that polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited. It also restored the vote to women, an issue that became the constitutional convention's most heated debate, with B. H. Roberts arguing against and Orson F. Whitney and Franklin S. Richards for.
Running as a Democrat against a Republican slate that included her husband Angus M. Cannon, she outpolled him and became the first woman state senator in the United States. Two women were elected to the state house and eleven more to county offices the same day.
After B. H. Roberts was barred from his seat in Congress over his three wives, Snow declared publicly that the church had positively abandoned plural marriage in this and every other state and that no officer had any authority to perform such a marriage. A small number continued to be performed.
The Utah legislature chose Smoot, an apostle since 1900 and a monogamist, by 46 votes to 16. The Salt Lake Ministerial Association and Protestant and reform groups petitioned that he not be seated, alleging that the church's leaders still connived at plural marriage.
The church president was the first witness, testifying on six separate days. He acknowledged cohabiting with five wives and fathering eleven children since 1890, and said he had taken his chances rather than abandon his children and their mothers. Asked about new plural marriages, he distinguished acts sanctioned by the church from acts of individuals.
Joseph F. Smith read a statement affirming that no plural marriages had been solemnized with the sanction, consent or knowledge of the church, and announcing that all such marriages were prohibited, with excommunication for any officer or member who solemnized or entered one. It was sustained unanimously.
Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley, who had continued to marry and to solemnize plural marriages, signed resignations to be used if needed. They were formally dropped from the Quorum of the Twelve at the afternoon session of general conference on 8 April 1906.
The Committee on Privileges and Elections had voted 7 to 5 in June 1906 that Smoot was not entitled to his seat. The full Senate rejected the resolution, 28 for expulsion and 42 against, short of the two-thirds required. Smoot served twenty-six more years.
Taylor was cut off for insubordination to the government and discipline of the church. Cowley's trial followed in May; he was deprived of all authority in the priesthood but not excommunicated, his fuller acknowledgements being cited as the reason for the difference.
Lorin C. Woolley published a detailed account of the 1886 night and called a priesthood council of six men. After a 1933 First Presidency statement rejecting the claim, the church began excommunicating those who continued to support plural marriage, and adherents began gathering at Short Creek on the Utah–Arizona line.
Arizona officers and National Guardsmen entered the town, jailed the men and bused women and children away; more than 160 children and their mothers remained in Arizona foster placements for nearly two years. Public revulsion at the operation contributed to a backlash, and nearly all those taken returned.
Doctrine and Covenants 132 is still canonized and anyone practising plural marriage is excommunicated. Under current handbook policy a living woman may be sealed to only one husband and needs a cancellation to be sealed to another, while a widower may be sealed to a second wife without cancelling the first.
