A few years ago an educated young journalist came to Salt Lake City from Europe with his young wife. Both became sincere believers in Mormonism. Then strong pressure was brought to bear by the priesthood upon the husband to force him into polygamy. The wife finding opposition in vain, at last gave her nominal consent. A second bride was brought into the house. In a short time the first wife became a mother, but the infant never cried aloud. It came voiceless into the world. But it wept in secret all the time. Sleeping or waking the tears flowed from its closed eyes, and in a few weeks it died. The mother said that it died of a broken heart. Every day of its life it shed the tears that its mother had repressed before its birth.
The experience of Caroline Owens, whose suit for bigamy against her polygamous husband, John D. Miles, appealed from the Supreme Court of Utah to the Supreme Court of the United States – a suit implicating Delegate Cannon, of the Congress of the United States, in its tale of wrong, presents another phase. Miss Owens was an English girl acquainted with Miles from her childhood. He had emigrated to Utah, but in England on a visit he urged her to return with him, promising her marriage when they reached Salt Lake City. She questioned him as to polygamy. He replied that a few old men were allowed more than one wife, but that young men like himself had but one, although he spoke of one Emily Spencer who had expressed affection for him but whom he had no intention of marrying. Upon reaching Salt Lake City, Miss Owens staid at the house of United States Delegate George Q. Cannon, where but one wife resided. When the day of the wedding arrived she went through the ceremonies of the Endowment House, lasting from ten o’clock in the morning until three in the afternoon, and had been wedded to John D. Miles. She says:
I can never tell the horrors of the next few hours. Before that day was over my love had turned to burning hatred. When we started to go home, Miles told me that he had invited Emily Spencer to our wedding reception. I said if she came to the house I should leave. He replied he was now master. I went to my room and dressed for the reception, which took place at Cannon’s other house, where he kept his three wives. When I went down there was a crowd there, among the rest a plain looking girl in a calico dress, to whom I was introduced. It was Emily Spencer. I did not speak to her. After a while they wanted to dance, and asked me to play. Emily Spencer sat on a piano stool. I told her to get up. Miles came forward and said, “Sit still, Emily Spencer, my wife.” I felt as though I had been shot. I said, “Your wife! then what am I?” He said, “You are both my wives.” All at once my shame flashed over me. Here I was dishonored, the polygamous wife of a Mormon. I ran out of the house, bent only on escape, I did not think where; I could not do it, though, for Miles and young Cannon, a son of the delegate, ran after me and dragged me back. We had been intending to stay in the house all night, but I stole away and returned to the other house, where I had been living the three weeks since my arrival from England. I noticed there was no key in the lock, but shot a little bolt and piled up chairs against the door. I cried myself to sleep. The next thing I knew I don’t know what time it was, Miles stood in the room and was locking the door on the inside. I screamed, because Mrs. Cannon and Miles’ step-mother had been living in the house with me. Miles said I need not take on, for brother Cannon had anticipated that I would make trouble and had had the house cleared of every one else. I found out that it was so. He told me that I might as well submit; there was no law here to control the saints; there was no power on earth that would save me.
She was subjected to great brutality, again and again beaten and exhorted to bear her condition patiently as a sister to be exalted; because of her rebellious spirit she was hectored and threatened, stoned, jeered at and abused in many ways, all under pretense of religion, until after three weeks of such matrimonial life she escaped and among the “Gentiles” found rest and help. She speaks of polygamous wives as half-clad, poorly fed, toiling like serfs without hope under the chains of a religious despotism.532 Mormon polygamy possesses the peculiar feature of tracing the system of plural marriage to the gods; a father and mother god and goddess; a grandfather a grandmother god and goddess, and thus in constantly ascending scale; from these they claim the origin of their own polygamous system. Every Mormon man, however depraved, is taught that if he lives up to the plural marriage system, upon his death he will become a god, holding power and procreating children to all eternity. But should any Mormon, however pure his life, die unmarried, he has forever lost his opportunity of becoming a god, but remains simply an angel, a servant of the polygamous gods.533 The belief is inculcated in woman, that to her marriage is even more necessary than to man. Without marriage there is no resurrection for her, and thus believing polygamy a requisite for eternal salvation, thousands silently endure the woes of this condition. This latest christian sect, this final outgrowth of centuries of barbarous teaching, is the most determined effort against the integrity of womanhood since the days of the Jewish patriarchs. The duty of giving birth to numerous children in order to save waiting spirits and to swell the glory of the polygamous father in his after death godship, is as thoroughly taught as when in mediaeval days monk and priest preached woman’s duty to constantly add numbers to the church. The late Helen H. Jackson who had thoroughly investigated the Mormon question, writing of polygamy in the Century said:
The doctrine, to be completely studied, must be considered both from the man’s point of view and the woman’s, the two being, for reasons, not identical. But it is the woman’s view of it, her belief and position in regard to it, which are most misrepresented and misunderstood by the world. If the truth were known, there would be few persons in whose minds would be any sentiment except profound pity for the Mormon woman – pity, moreover, intensified by admiration. There has never been a class or sect of women since the world began who have endured for religion’s sake a tithe of what has been, and is, and forever must be, endured by the women of the Mormon church. It has become customary to hold them as disreputable women, light and loose, unfit to associate with the virtuous, undeserving of any esteem. Never was greater injustice committed.
The two doctrines which most help the Mormon woman to endure the suffering of living in plural marriage are the doctrines of pre-existence and of the eternal continuance of the patriarchal order. The mere revelation from Joseph Smith, to the effect that polygamy was to be permitted and was praiseworthy and desirable, would never, alone, have brought the Mormon women to hearty acceptance of the institution.
They are taught and most unquestioningly believe that the universe is full of spirits waiting, and waiting impatiently, to be born on this earth. These spirits have already passed through one stage of discipline and probation and are to enter upon a second one here. The Rev. Edward Beecher once published a book setting forth a similar doctrine. The Mormon doctrine goes farther than Dr. Beecher’s, inasmuch as it teaches that these spirits may select of their own free will where and how they will be born into their earthly probation; and that they are, one and all, anxious to be born in the Mormon church, as the one true Zion, where alone are to be found safety and salvation. They also believe that the time is limited during which these spirits can avail themselves of this privilege of being born into Zion. They look for the return of Jesus Christ to the earth before long and for the establishment then of the millennial dispensation, after which no more of the spirits can be reborn and reclaimed. Hence the obligation resting upon every faithful Mormon woman to bring into the world, in the course of her life, as many children as possible. Not only does she thus contribute to the building up and strengthening of the church but she rescues souls already existing and in danger of eternal death. It is easy to sneer at this doctrine as inconceivable rubbish; and, in truth, it must be admitted that it is hard to conceive of an educated mind receiving it; but it is no more absurd or unprovable than hundreds of kindred speculations and notions which have been devised, preached and passionately believed in times past. Neither has the absurdity or non-absurdity, falsity or truth of the belief, anything to do with our judgment of its believers.
In furtherance of its plan for temporal power, the astuteness of the Mormon theocracy is shown in this doctrine of pre-existent spirits534 continually waiting birth upon the earth. This together with its other theory of the superior power and godhood in a future life, of the father of numerous children, imposes the condition of continual motherhood upon Mormon wives.
But during the christian ages this theory of woman’s duty to constantly bear children in order to the upholding of the church has ever been taught. Even Philip Melancthon, the great associate of Luther in the Reformation, saying: “If a woman becomes weary of bearing children, that matters not. Let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it.” So little does the church yet understand the right of woman to an existence for herself alone that not five years have passed since a minister of the Methodist church in the state of New York publicly declared he saw no reason for woman’s creation but the bearing of children. In a lecture upon Mormonism in Boston, Prof. Conyear, of the Salt Lake City Collegiate Institute, speaking of the sufferings endured by Mormon women in order thus to secure personal salvation, said:
Hate the system as you hate Satan, but have mercy on the people who are there in such a bondage – a bondage worse than that in which the negro in the South was ever held.
But these doctrines accepted as truth by devout Mormon women are not more degrading to them, not more injurious to civilization, than is the belief of orthodox christian women in regard to the frailty and primal sin of her sex and the curse of her Creator upon her in consequence. To this belief she has been trained from her childhood as her mother before her and her feminine relatives for innumerable centuries, and without investigation she has accepted these doctrines of the church as true. Yet all these theories so degrading to woman are of purely human masculine origin, their object, power for man, and the subordination of woman to him in every relation of life. The eternal continuance of the patriarchal order, a doctrine of the Mormons, is paralleled among orthodox christians by the teaching of an eternal continuance of the male priestly order, woman forever excluded. The Mormon woman no more fully places herself in position of servant to her husband, whom at the Endowment House marriage ceremony she promises to “obey,” than has the orthodox christian woman through the ages, when she has promised obedience to her husband at the marriage altar. Nor is the general religious training of the two very different. The Mormon woman is taught that her salvation depends upon polygamous marriage and her subjection to her husband in all things; the orthodox christian woman is taught that her salvation depends upon her belief that woman brought sin into the world, in punishment whereof God placed her in subjection to man; and during the ages her promise of obedience to man has been held as an integral part of the marriage ceremony. Nor did a change begin to take place until after the inauguration of the woman suffrage reform. Not until woman herself rebelled against such annihilation of her own conscience and responsibility, did a few sects in some instances omit this promise from their forms of marriage, although it still remains a portion of the Greek, Catholic and Anglican ceremony as well as of other Protestant sects. The shock of finding educated women of New England birth, members of the Mormon church as polygamous wives, is lessened upon a careful analysis of the Mormon doctrine in comparison with those of orthodox Christianity regarding women: all alike rest upon the same foundation; all teach that sin entered the world through woman; all alike darken the understanding through such false teaching. The women of the Mormon church received their training under orthodox Christianity, which laid the foundation of their self contempt.535 With the professed revelation of the Book of Mormon, a class of priests arose who no less positively and authoritatively asserted its doctrines to be of God than the priesthood of other divisions of christianity assert the Bible to be of God; and alike each declare themselves and their followers to be his chosen people. “By authority of the priesthood of God,” has carried weight in all ages, and no greater weight among the Mormons of the present day than among Christians of all ages. Under the christian theory regarding the origin and duties of woman it is not surprising that polygamy should ever have found defenders in the christian world, nor is it at all singular that Mormonism as “the latest founded christian sect” should teach polygamy as a divinely organized institution, drawing its arguments from the Bible. Bishop Lunt of that church, defending polygamy as of divine origin, said:
God revealed to Joseph Smith the polygamous system. It is quite true that his widow declared that no such revelation was ever made, but that was because she had lost the spirit. God commanded the human race to multiply and replenish the earth. Abraham had two wives, and the Almighty honored the second one by a direct communication. Jacob had Leah and Zilpah. David had a plurality of wives, and was a man after God’s own heart. God gave him Saul’s two wives, and only condemned his adulteries. Moses, Gideon and Joshua had each a plurality of wives. Solomon had wives and concubines by hundreds, though we do not believe in the concubine system. We leave that to the Gentiles. Virtue and chastity wither beneath the monogamic institution, which was borrowed from the pagan nations by the early Christians. It was prophesied that in the latter days seven women would lay hold of one man and demand to bear his name, that they might not be held in dishonor. The Protestants and Catholics assail us with very poor grace when it is remembered that the first pillars of the religion they claim to profess were men like the saints of Utah – polygamists. The fact cannot be denied. Polygamy is virtually encouraged and taught by example by the Old Testament. It may appear shocking and blasphemous to Gentiles for us to say so, but we hold that Jesus Christ himself was a polygamist. He was surrounded by women constantly, as the Scriptures attest, and those women were his polygamous wives. The vast disparity between the sexes in all settled communities is another argument in favor of polygamy, to say nothing of the disinclination among young male Gentiles to marrying. The monogamic system condemns millions of women to celibacy. A large proportion of them stray from the path of right, and these unfortunates induce millions of men to forego marriage. As I have said, virtue and chastity wither under the monogamic system.
There are no illegitimate children in Utah; there are no libertines; there are no brothels, excepting where the presence of Gentiles creates the demand for them. Even then our people do what they can to root out such places. There is a positive advantage in having more than one wife. It is impossible to find a Gentile home, where comforts and plenty prevail, in which there is only one woman. No one woman can manage a household. She must have assistance. Hence we claim that when a man marries a second wife, he actually benefits the first one, and contributes to her ease, and relieves her of a large burden of care. The duties of the household are divided between the two women, and everything moves on harmoniously and peacefully. The whole thing is a matter of education. A girl reared under the monogamic system may look with abhorrence on ours; our young women do not do so. They expect, when they marry a man, that he will some day take another wife, and they consider it quite natural that he should do so. In wealthy Gentile communities the concubine system largely takes the place of the polygamous system. Any man of intelligence, observation and travel, knows that such is the case. The fact is ignored by general consent, and little is said about it and nothing is written about it. It is not regarded as a proper subject of conversation or of publication. How much better to give lonely women a home while they are uncontaminated, and honor them with your name, and perpetually provide for them, and before the world recognize your own offspring! The polygamous system is the only natural one, and the time rapidly approaches when it will be the most conspicuous and beneficent of American institutions. It will be the grand characteristic feature of American society. Our women are contented with it – more, they are the most ardent defenders of it to be found in Utah. If the question were put to a vote tomorrow, nine-tenths of the women of Utah would vote to perpetuate polygamy.
In line with other Christian sects Mormons claim that polygamy is countenanced by the New Testament as well as by the Old. They interpret Paul’s teaching in regard to bishops, while commanding them to marry one wife, as also not prohibiting them from marrying more than one; their interpretation of this passage but slightly varying from that of Rev. Mr. Madan. Rev. C. P. Lyford, of the Methodist church, long a resident of Utah, does not fail to see the degradation of the people as in proportion to the despotism of the hierarchy. He says:
It took the Methodist church forty years to get a membership of 38,000. Mormonism in forty-four years counted 250,000. It seems incredible, nevertheless it is a fact. In this brief space of time it has also been able to nullify our laws, oppose our institutions, openly perpetrate crimes, be represented in Congress, boast of the helplessness of the nation to prevent these things, and give the church supremacy over the state and the people. Bills introduced in Congress adequate to their overthrow have been year after year allowed to fall to the ground without action upon them.
Our public men can only pronounce against the crime of polygamy; the press can see only polygamy in Utah; the public mind is impressed with only the heinousness of polygamy. Back of polygamy is the tree that produces it and many kindred evils more dear to the Mormon rulers. They do not care for all the sentiment or law against this one fruit of the tree, if the tree itself is left to stand. The tree – the prolific cause of so many and so great evils in Utah, the greatest curse of the territory, the strength of Mormonism, and its impregnable wall of defense against Christianity and civilization, is that arbitrary, despotic, and absolute hierarchy known as the Mormon Priesthood.
Mr. Lyford has partial insight into the truth when he says “back of polygamy is the tree that produces it and many kindred evils;” but in defining that tree as the hierarchy – the priesthood – he has not reached the entire truth. He does not touch the ground which supports the tree. Polygamy is but one development of the doctrine of woman’s created inferiority, the constant tendency of which is to make her a mere slave under every form of religion extant, and of which the complex marriage of the Christian sect of Perfectionists at Oneida Community was but another logical result.
When woman interprets the Bible for herself, it will be in the interest of a higher morality, a purer home. Monogamy is woman’s doctrine, as polygamy is man’s. Bachofen, the Swiss jurist, says that the regulation of marriage by which, in primitive times, it became possible for a woman to belong only to one man, came about by a religious reformation, wherein the women in armed conflict, obtained a victory over men.
While the greatest number of converts to the Mormon church are from among the ignorant peasantry of foreign countries, still no less than in orthodox christianity do we find people of culture and education upholding its doctrines, an irrefragable proof that the power of religious despotism lies in two conditions; First, ignorance; Second, fear. To fear must ever be attributed the great victories of religious despotism. Fear of punishment after death from which obedience to priestly teaching is believed to free. Such slavery of the human mind has ever been the greatest obstacle to advancing civilization. Men and women of the Christian church not daring to use their own free thought upon such questions, are no less bound than the savage, who makes a hideous noise in order to frighten away the monster he thinks trying to swallow the sun during an eclipse.
The strength of the church has ever lain in its power of producing fear and impelling belief in its assertion that the priesthood alone can define the will of God, and that as His chosen servants they but voice His will in every word they utter. Unhesitating belief in this assertion has been required through the Christian ages as evidence of a true son or daughter of the church, while the cry of heresy, so frightful in its significance, so terrible in its punishment under the priesthood, has most effectively prevented investigation and quenched the fire of rebellious thought.
The Mormon priesthood look toward the establishment of a temporal kingdom in connection with their religion. They maintain that the civil power inherently belongs to the theocracy and should supersede all other forms of government. Like the priesthood of other sects they claim divine guidance in the promulgation of their laws as proceeding from above while those of the state emanate from man himself and consequently are not binding upon the conscience, the church as a body ever claiming to hold the keys of heaven and of hell; and the implicit belief given to such assertion by tens and hundreds of thousands, has ever been a most powerful method for subduing the reason. Its anathemas, its excommunications, its denial of church rites in marriage, in burial, its control of both temporal and spiritual power, have ever made its weapons of the most formidable character. Fear of what may be met in a future life over which the church assumes such knowledge and control, subjugation of the reason, the fostering of ignorance, the denial of education and the constant teaching that thought outside of the line formulated by the church is deepest sin, has held the christian world in bondage during its centuries. Inasmuch as it is impossible for the candid thinker not to perceive that all forms of christianity are based upon the statement that woman having brought sin into the world rendered the sacrifice of a Saviour necessary, the reason of such persistent effort upon the part of the church for woman’s entire subjugation becomes apparent. It is assumed by all theocracies that the church is a temporal kingdom, with supreme right to the control of all civil affairs. Every theocracy is therefore a political system seeking control of the civil government and however greatly suppressed in action, every theocracy proposes such control as its ulterior design. Early in 1890, an encyclical letter by the pope declared the supremacy of the church over the state, commanding resistance to the authority of the state in case of its conflicting with the pretensions of the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic church. The Mormon theocracy and the Catholic here show their affinity. Nor are Protestants without similar pretensions as is proven by the action of the “National Reform Association” of the United States; whose aim is the union of church and state through an amendment to the Federal constitution, its ultimate purpose being that of theocratic control over the civil government of this country. These various bodies are parts of the “Christian Party in Politics;” nor is this party of recent origin; as early as 1827-8 when composed almost entirely of Protestants, its designs upon the life of the republic were noted by the eloquent Scotch reformer, Frances Wright, during her travels, lectures and residence in this country. Mormonism and Catholicism do not more greatly threaten the civil and religious integrity of this republic than does the “National Reform Association,” the theocracy of the Protestant church equally with that of the Catholic church constantly striving to incite congressional action in favor of obligatory religious teaching and seeking control of the common schools. Yet the history of the world proves that wherever tried, ecclesiastical schools have lowered the standard of education. Today the schools under control of the Mormon church in no respect equal those of adjacent territories. Under the plea of religious freedom the greatest dangers arise. While the Mormons affirm in reference to polygamy that their church laws concern Mormons alone, no less do other theocracies inculcate doctrines contrary to civil law; the catholic church, its spirit today536 the same as during past ages, making civil marriage and the public school system its present objective points of opposition to the state;537 while the general body of protestant churches more openly than the catholic churches proclaim their intention not alone to control secular education, marriage and divorce, but to unite church and state through a change in the fundamental law of the United States. A somewhat wide-spread fear exists in regard to the encroachment of Catholicism upon civil liberty. The most potent danger lies elsewhere, the most potent because the least perceived; the most potent because arising from a body whom the masses of native Americans, through heredity and training, look upon as supporters and defenders of both civil and religious liberty – the priesthood of the orthodox Protestant churches. Mormonism does not so fully threaten civil and religious liberty; catholicism is not making greater encroachments upon them than are the great body of the protestant clergy, under the name and the work of the “National Reform Association.”
The people of the United States with careless security in the power of the principles of freedom upon which the government is based, fail to note the theocratic encroachment everywhere threatened.538 The very nature of sacerdotalism professing as it every where does, to hold authority of a supernatural character, unfailingly creates a claim of supremacy over civil government. President John Taylor, of the Mormon church, a few years since openly asserted these claims, saying: “We are independent of newspapers, independent of kings, independent of governments.” But it is not the Mormon priesthood alone that declares its independence of secular governments. This is the same spirit that seen through the ages of christianity has been so plainly shown by Catholicism since the temporal power in Italy has fallen into the hands of a secular monarch, and that is now so fully a part of Protestant effort. Under the overwhelming amount of biblical proof quoted in its favor by the most eminent legal and clerical minds of the christian church we must admit the doctrine of polygamy to be a component part of christianity. Although like the fagot and the stake, under the light of advancing civilization it has somewhat fallen into disrepute with the majority of men and women, yet its renewal as an underlying principle of a new christian sect need not be a subject of astonishment. The pulpit, the bar, and legislative halls are still under the control of man and these institutions still express the form of civilization that is due to his teachings. But as neither moral nor intellectual education is of value unless founded upon a material basis, the world now beginning to see that Wall Street, and the Bourse, with their fingers upon the business of the world, are fast becoming of greater importance in determining the future character of civilization than St. Peter’s, the Kremlin, or Westminster Abbey. Wendell Phillips once declared that the advance of civilization was not dependent upon either the pulpit or the press but upon commerce, and a careful study of the inventions and industries of the age, confirm this statement. Material needs, underlying all others, direct the tenor of modern civilization. But commerce of itself is not alone responsible. Within the past thirty years a new element has widely entered into the business of the world, and even the most careless observer can but in many ways note the changing customs and habits of business life, and that under this change, a new form of civilization is dawning upon the world. Woman once so carefully excluded is now everywhere seen. At the counter, behind the cashier’s desk, as buyer, as business manager, and in many instances as employer, conducting business for herself. Every kind of industry is opening to her, from that of government employee at Washington with the financial interests of the nation in her grasp, to that of electrical business, woman is everywhere found. The commerce of the world is rapidly changing hands and the next quarter of a century will find woman in its full control. But few persons foresee the ultimate result of this change. With a new class at the helm, commerce will give new ideas to the world. If christianity survive the shock of coming events, it will present a different aspect within the next fifty years and its teachings in regard to woman will be totally unlike those of past ages. As woman comes into new relations with the great institutions of the world, she will cease to believe herself inferior and subordinate to man. Polygamy and all kindred degradations of her sex will become things of the past, and taking her rightful place in church and state she will open a new civilization to the world.