Reactions to Polygamy

Brigham Young (1852, Aug 29) – contemporary | 1st hand
“The principle spoken upon by Brother Pratt, this morning, we believe in. And I tell you– for I know it–it will sail over and ride triumphantly above all the prejudice and priestcraft of the day; it will be fostered and believed in by the more intelligent portions of the world, as one of the best doctrines ever proclaimed to any people.” (Brigham Young, August 29, 1852, Salt Lake City, Journal of Discourses 6:281, Reported by G. D. Watt; Supplement to Millennial Star, vol. 15, p. 31.)

Brigham Young (1862, Feb 9) – contemporary | 1st hand
“I can say with confidence, that there is no people on the face of this earth that pay more respect to females than do this people. I know of no community where females enjoy the privileges they do here.” (Brigham Young, February 9, 1862. Delivered at the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City. Reported by G. D. Watt. Journal of Discourses 9:195)

John Taylor (1854, Jun 27) – 11 year recollection | 1st hand
“I remember being with President Young and Kimball and I think one or two others with Brother Joseph soon after we had returned from England[.] He talked with us on these principles and laid them before us[.] It tried our minds and feelings[.] We saw it was something going to be heavy upon us[.] it was not that very nice pleasing thing some people thought about it[.] It is something that harried up our feelings[.] Did we believe it[?] Yes we did[.] I did[.] The whole rest of the brethren did but still we should have been glad to push it off a little further[.] We been glad if it did not come in our day but that somebody else had something to do with it instead of us.” (John Taylor, Papers of George D. Watt MS 4534, box 2, disk 2, 1854 images 151–52, Sermon not in Journal of Discourses or in CR 100 317, Transcribed by LaJean Purcell Carruth, 1 September 2009. Punctuation and capitalization added)

Brigham Young (1855, Jul 14) – 13 year recollection | 1st hand
“My brethren know what my feelings were at the time Joseph revealed the doctrine; I was not desirous of shrinking from any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin.” (Brigham Young, July 14, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 3:266)

Salt Lake Women, by Brigham Young (1856, Nov 2) – contemporary | 1st hand
“Now for my proposition; it is more particularly for my sisters, as it is frequently happening that women say they are unhappy. Men will say, ‘My wife, though a most excellent woman, has not seen a happy day since I took my second wife,‘ ‘No, not a happy day for a year,‘ says one; and another has not seen a happy day for five years. It is said that women are tied down and abused: that they are misused and have not the liberty they ought to have; that many of them are wading through a perfect flood of tears,… I wish my own women to understand that what I am going to say is for them as well as others, and I want those who are here to tell their sisters, yes, all the women of this community, and then write it back to the States, and do as you please with it. I am going to give you from this time to the 6th day of October next, for reflection, that you may determine whether you wish to stay with your husbands or not, and then I am going to set every woman at liberty and say to them, Now go your way, my women with the rest, go your way. And my wives have got to do one of two things; either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this world, and live their religion, or they may leave, for I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone, rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I will set all at liberty. ‘what, first wife too?’ yes, i will liberate you all…. I wish my women, and brother Kimball’s and brother Grant’s to leave, and every woman in this Territory, or else say in their hearts that they will embrace the Gospel -the whole of it….say to your wives, ‘Take all that I have and be set at liberty; but if you stay with me you shall comply with the law of God, and that too without any murmuring and whining. You must fulfil the law of God in every respect, and round up your shoulders to walk up to the mark without any grunting.‘ Now recollect that two weeks from to morrow I am going to set you at liberty. But the first wife will say, ‘It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial to me for him to have more women;’ then i say it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children. If my wife had borne me all the children that she ever would bare, the celestial law would teach me to take young women that would have children…. Sisters, i am not joking, I do not throw out my proposition to banter your feelings, to see whether you will leave your husbands, all or any of you. But I know that there is no cessation to the everlasting whining of many of the women in this territory; I am satisfied that this is the case. And if the women will turn from the commandments of God and continue to despise the order of heaven, I will pray that the curse of the Almighty may be close to their heals, and that it may be following them all the day long…. Prepare yourselves for two weeks from to morrow; and I will tell you now, that if you will tarry with your husbands, after I have set you free, you must bow down to it, and submit yourselves to the celestial law. You may go where you please, after two weeks from to-morrow; but, remember, that i will not hear any more of this whining.” (Brigham Young, November 2, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 4:55-57; Deseret News, Vol. 6, pp. 235-236)

Heber C. Kimball (1857 Jan 11) – contemporary | 1st hand
“Read the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and every other good book, and keep busy at some good thing or other, and stop your quarrelling. There is a great deal of quarrelling in the houses, and contending for power and authority; and the second wife is against the first wife, perhaps, in some instances. But that is done away in my family, and there is none of it in brother Brigham’s, nor in brother Wells’, nor in any family where they have common sense.” (Heber C. Kimball, January 11, 1857, Journal of Discourses 4:178)

Brigham Young (1861, Apr 7) – contemporary | 1st hand
“Sisters, do you wish to make yourselves happy? Then what is your duty? It is for you to bear children… Do you look forward to that? Or are you tormenting yourselves by thinking that your husbands do not love you? I would not care whether they loved a particle or not; but I would cry out, like one of old, in the joy of my heart, ‘I have got a man from the Lord! Hallelujah! I am a mother…” (Brigham Young, April 7, 1861. Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City, Reported by G. D. Watt. Journal of Discourses 9:37)

Brigham Young (1862, Feb 9) – 2 year recollection | 1st hand
“A few years ago one of my wives, when talking about wives leaving their husbands said, ‘I wish my husband’s wives would leave him, every soul of them except myself.‘ That is the way they all feel, more or less, at times, both old and young.” (Brigham Young, February 9, 1862. Delivered at the Tabernacle, Great Salt Lake City. Reported by G. D. Watt. Journal of Discourses 9:195)

Zina Diantha Huntington Young (1869, Nov 17) – contemporary | 1st hand
“It is the duty of a first wife to regard her husband not with a selfish devotion… she must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy… we believe in the good old custom by which marriages should be arranged by the parents of the young people” (Zina Diantha Huntington Young, New York World, November 17, 1869, as cited in The Lion of the Lord, pp. 229-30)

John Taylor (1876) – 33 year recollection | 1st hand
“[At] the time when men were commanded to take more wives. It made us all pull pretty long faces sometimes. It was not so easy as one might think. When it was revealed to us it looked like the last end of Mormonism. For a man to ask another woman to marry him required more self-confidence than we had.” (John Taylor, Women’s Exponent 5, March 1, 1877: 148)

One woman, by Ann Eliza Young (1876) – 32+ year recollection | 2nd hand
“One woman said to me not very long since, while giving me some of her experiences in polygamy: ‘The greatest trial I ever endured in my life was living with my husband and deceiving him, by receiving Joseph’s attentions whenever he chose to care to me.‘… some of these women have since said they did not know who was the Father of her children; this is not to be wondered at, for after Joseph’s declaration annulling all Gentile marriages, the greatest promiscuity was practiced; and, indeed, all sense of morality seemed to have been lost by a portion at least of the church.” (Ann Eliza Young, wife of Brigham Young, Wife No. 9, 1876, pp. 70-71)

Eliza Partridge (1877) – 33+ year recollection | 1st hand
“He [Joseph Smith] taught to us the plan of Celestial marriage and asked us to enter into that order with him. This was truly a great trial for me, but I had the most implicit confidence in him as a Prophet of the Lord.” (Eliza Maria Partridge Lyman, Life and Journal of Eliza Maria Partridge Lyman (n.p., n.d. [ca. 1877?]), typescript NS 9546, holograph MS 1527, LDS Church History Library. Not paginated but covers pages 7–8 in the holograph.)

Eliza R. Snow (1877) – 33+ year recollection | 1st hand
“In Nauvoo I first understood that the practice of plurality of wives was to be introduced to the church. The subject was very repugnant to my feelings.” (Eliza R. Snow, Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom (New York City: 1877, 295)

Mercy Rachel Fielding Thompson (1880) – 36 year recollection | 1st hand
“This subject when first communicated to me tried me to the very core all my former traditions and every natural feeling of my heart rose in opposition to this principle.” (Mercy Rachel Fielding Thompson, Autobiographical sketch, 1880, MS 4580, CHL, p.5)

Mary Isabella Hales Horne (1884) – 40 year recollection | 1st hand
“The brethren and sisters were so averse to polygamy that it could hardly be mentioned.” (Mary Isabella Hales Horne, “Migration and Settlement of the Latter Day Saints, Salt Lake City, 1884,” in “Utah and the Mormons Collection,” Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley, page 17; microfilm copy in MS 8305)

Lucy Walker (1887) – 43+ year recollection | 1st hand
“My astonishment knew no bounds. This announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me… Every feeling of my soul revolted against it.” (Lucy Walker, quoted in Andrew Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” Historical Record 6, July 1887 p.229–30)

Eliza R. Snow (1887) – 44+ year recollection | 1st hand
When first plural marriage was suggested to me… I would not listen to the matter. The idea was repugnant, abhorrent. I was like any other young woman who had beaux and suitors for her hand. I wanted to share a husband with no woman. But I was told it was God’s command, and I went to God and asked God to enlighten me, and he did. I saw and felt that plural marriage was not only right, but that it was the only true manner of living up to the gospels, and I quenched my womanly emotions and entered the order” (Eliza R. Snow, “Two Prophets’ Widows A Visit to the Relicts of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young,” J. J. J., in St. Louis Globe–Democrat (St. Louis, MO) 85 (Thursday, August 18, 1887): 6 col E.)

Brigham Young, told by Stanley P. Hirshon – contemporary | 2nd hand
“‘Tell the Gentiles,‘ he once observed, ‘I do not know half of them [his wives] when I see them.‘ Later, asked the usual question [of how many wives he had] by a Gentile governor of Utah, Young answered: ‘I don’t know myself! I never refuse to marry any respectable woman who asks me, and it is often the case that I separate from the woman at the marriage alter, never to meet her again to know her. My children I keep track of, however. I have fifty-seven now living, and have lost three.‘” (The Lion of the Lord, by Stanley P. Hirshon, pp. 188-189)

James Hunter, told by Kimball Young – late recollection | 3rd hand
“When James Hunter took his second wife, the first who had accompanied the couple to the Endowment House for the ceremony could not sleep and walked the floor all night as she thought of her husband lying in the arms of his bride… A person brought up in a polygamist household… told this story: ‘There is one real tragedy in polygamy that I can remember. One evening a man brought home a second wife. It was winter and the first wife was very upset. That night she climbed onto the roof and froze to death.‘” (Kimball Young, “Isn’t One Wife Enough?” pp. 147-148)

Benjamin F. Johnson – late recollection | 1st hand
“If a thunderbolt had fallen at my feet I could hardly have been more shocked or amazed.” (Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life’s Review, Mesa, Arizona: 21st Century Printing, 1992, reprint, 94-95)

Heber C. Kimball, told by Orson F. Whitney (1888) – 44+ year recollection | 2nd hand
“Before he [Joseph Smith] would trust even Heber with the full secret, however, he put him to a test which few men would have been able to bear. It was no less than a requirement for him to surrender his wife, his beloved Vilate, and give her to Joseph in marriage! The astounding revelation well-nigh paralyzed him. He could hardly believe he had heard aright. Yet Joseph was solemnly in earnest. His next impulse was to spurn the proposition, and perhaps at that terrible moment a vague suspicion of the Prophet’s motive and the divinity of the revelation, shot like a poisoned arrow through his soul.” (Orson F. Whitney, “Life of Heber C. Kimball,” pg. 323)

Bathsheba W. Smith (1892) – 50 year recollection | 1st hand
“We discussed it [polygamy]… that is, us young girls did, for I was a young girl then, and we talked a good deal about it, and some of us did not like it much.” (Bathsheba Smith, deposition, Temple Lot transcript, Respondent’s testimony, part 3, page 292, question 21)

Wilford Woodruff, by Abraham Cannon (1894, Apr 5) – 25+ year recollection | 3rd hand
“THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1894… I met with the Quorum and Presidency in the temple… President Woodruff then spoke… ‘In searching out my genealogy I found about four hundred of my femal[e] kindred who were never married. I asked Pres. Young what I should do with them. He said for me to have them sealed to me unless there were more than 999 of them. The doctrine startled me, but I had it done.” (Daily Journal of Abraham H. Cannon (Apostle), April 5, 1894, v. 18, pp. 66-67)

George A. Smith – late recollection | 2nd hand
“[George A. Smith] related to us what a trial it was to him to receive the revelation on plural marriage. It was first made known to him by the Prophet Joseph. He did not feel at first at though he could receive it as from the Lord. But again he knew that Joseph was a prophet of God, and he durst not reject it. Thus he reasoned with himself, until he obtained a testimony from the Lord for himself.” (Warren Foote, recollecting story from George A. Smith, Autobiography and Journal [1817–1903], MS 1123, Folder 1, LDS CHL, 1:83)

Salt Lake Women, by Joseph Lee Robinson – late recollection | 2nd hand
“Plural marriage… is calculated in its nature to severely try the women even to nearly tear their heart strings out of them” (Joseph Lee Robinson, Journal and Autobiography of Joseph Lee Robinson, p. 50, microfilm version available in LDS Genealogical Library)

Martha Brotherton (1842, Jul 13) – 10 months later | 1st hand
[Describing immediately after Brigham Young proposed to her in a locked room] “My feelings at that moment were indescribable. God only knows them. What, thought I, are these men, that I thought almost perfection itself, deceivers!” and is all my fancied happiness but a dream? ‘Twas even so; but my next thought was, which is the best way for me to act at this time? If I say no, they may do as they think proper; and to say yes, I never would. So I considered it best to ask for time to think and pray about it.” (Martha Brotherton, sworn affidavit, St. Louis County in presence of Du Bouffay Fremon, Justice of the Peace, July 13, 1842, published by John C, Bennett, History of the Saints, 236–240)

Jedediah M. Grant (1854, Feb 19) – contemporary | 1st hand
“Did the Prophet Joseph want every man’s wife he asked for? He did not… If such a man of God should come to me and say, ‘I want your gold and silver, or your wives,‘ I should say, ‘Here they are, I wish I had more to give you, take all I have got.‘” (Jedediah M. Grant, February 19, 1854 Salt Lake City, Journal of Discourses 2:14)

Jane Snyder Richards – 1st hand
“a strange thing and… was uncertain as to the result, but was satisfied that it was a sacred revelation and that religion required its acceptance.” (Jane Snyder Richards, “Autobiography,” CHL, MS 1215, 18)

Zina Diantha Huntington Young – undated | 1st hand
“When I heard that God had revealed the law of celestial marriag that we would have the privilige of associating in family relationship in the/ worlds to come I searched the scripture & buy humble prayer to my Heavenly Father I obtained a testimony for himself that God had required that order to be established in his church. I mad a greater sacrifise than to give my life for I never anticipated a gain to be look uppon as an honerable woman by those I dearly loved could I compremise conscience lay aside the sure testimony of the spiret of God for the Glory of this world[?]” (Zina Diantha Huntington Young, Undated, Biographical Sketch #1, in Zina Card Brown Family Collection, MS 4780, Box 2, Fd. 17, Reel 2)