Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T09:41:09.711Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Re-placing Memory: Latter-day Saint Use of Historical Monuments and Narrative in the Early Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2018

Kathleen Flake
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the winter of 1905, leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (L.D.S. or the “Mormons”) departed Utah on two, seemingly disparate, missions to the east coast. One contingent went to defend their church at Senate hearings in Washington, D.C.; the other, to Vermont to dedicate a monument to church founder Joseph Smith. These forays into national politics and religious memory re-fashioned Latter-day Saint identity, as well as public perception of Mormonism, for the remainder of the twentieth Century They also illuminate one of the quotidian mysteries of religion: how it adapts to the demands of time yet maintains its sense of mediating the eternal. It is axiomatic that religious communities are not exempt from the human condition; they must adapt to their temporal circumstances or die. What is not as often recognized is that churches bring a particular burden to this task because they offer their believers the hope of transcending time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religion and American Culture , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , Winter 2003 , pp. 69 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

This essay has benefited greatly from the comments of Richard Bushman, Jan Shipps, and Jed Woodworth. I also thank those members of the North American Religion Section of the America Academy of Religion and the BYU Smith Institute for the Study of Latter-day Saint History who, in 1999 and 2002 respectively heard and offered suggestions on significant portions of this essay. Of course, I remain solely responsible for its content.

1. The term “Mormon” is heavily freighted with both historical and theological baggage. “Mormon” originated in the nineteenth century as a pejorative reference for members of the L.D.S. church, to whom the Book of Mormon is scripture. In a biblically based culture, the term communicated succinctly the extreme otherness of the new religion. During the period discussed here, “Mormon” retained its highly negative connotation. Understandably, the church objected to its use as a denominator and preferred that its people be referred to as “Latter-day Saints,” which expressed the believer's sense of continuity with primitive Christianity. In the present text, I will use the terms as nearly as possible in conformity with the meaning given them by the antagonists and protagonists of the Smoot hearing. Finally it mustbe noted that capitalization here of the first article in the church's name reflects its legal name. To avoid confusion, this style is employed only when the entire name of the church is used. For further details, see Style Guide—The Name of the Church at http://www.lds.org/ (July 5,2002).

2. The nearest analogy to a Latter-day Saint apostle is probably found in the office of Catholic cardinal, though the comparison can fail to express the extent of the apostle's plenary authority over L.D.S. church affairs at all levels of administration. Technically, “apostle” is a priesthood office and lifetime appointment given members of the church's leading hierarchy of fifteen men: three of whom comprise the “First Presidency” and the remainder, the “Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.” Upon the death of the church's president, his successor is chosen from among the apostolic quorum, another source of concern to the protestors.

3. The secondary literature on each of these topics is voluminous. The most complete guide to it is available in Allen, James B., Walker, Ronald W., and Whittaker, David J., eds., Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1997: An Indexed Bibliography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000)Google Scholar. For aid in finding primary materials, see Whittaker, David J., ed., Mormon Americana: A Guide to Sources and Collections in the United States (Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, 1995)Google Scholar. A particularly helpful source for primary documents related to the church's history of conflict with the American government is Fales, Susan L. and Flake, Chad J., comp., Mormons and Mormonism in U.S. Government Documents: A Bibliography (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989)Google Scholar. Both primary and secondary materials are available on CD-ROM from several sources, the most scholarly of which is New Mormon Studies CD-ROM: A Comprehensive Resource Library (Salt Lake City: Smith Research Associates, 1998). The L.D.S. church's canon, as well as other documentation of its beliefs and practices, are available at the church's official Web site, http://www.lds.org.

4. See, generally, Gordon, Sarah Barringer, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Lyman, Leo, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Firmage, Edwin and Mangrum, Richard, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

5. For a comprehensive account of the changes to Mormonism during this period, see Alexander, Thomas G., Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

6. Of course, public curiosity periodically requires the church to dispose of the subject of comment on their present relationship to plural marriage such as in the September 8, 1998, CNN interview of current church president Gordon B. Hinckley. “When our people came West, they permitted it on a restricted scale,” he explained, but “that's 118 years ago. It's behind us.” A transcript of the interview is available at http://www.lds.org/en/4_News_Update/19980908_CNN_Transcript.html (September 29, 1998) or see CNN Transcript 98090800V22.

7. Shipps, Jan, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 116 Google Scholar.

8. See, for example, Lyford, C. P., The Mormon Problem: An Appeal to the People (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1886)Google Scholar, and Lum, Dyer Daniel, Utah and Its People: Facts and Statistics Bearing on the “Mormon Problem” by a Gentile (New York: R. O. Ferrier, 1882)Google Scholar.

9. On the Taylor-Cowley incident, see Jorgensen, Victor W. and Hardy, B. Carmon, “The Taylor-Cowley Affair and the Watershed of Mormon History,” Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (Winter 1980): 4–36 Google Scholar.

10. Smith, Joseph F., Sermon, Seventy-Fourth Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1904), 70 Google Scholar. (Hereinafter cited as Conference Reports.)

11. Shipps, Mormonism, 148. The evolution of the L.D.S. theology of revelation is analyzed in William R. Persons, “An Analysis of Changes in the Interpretation and Utilization of Revelation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1830-1918” (Ph. D. diss., Iliff School of Theology, Denver, 1964).

12. A number of dates could be chosen to mark the beginning and end of L.D.S. polygamous practices. Because the emphasis here is not on Joseph Smith's own conviction but on the larger church's adherence to polygamy, I have chosen a more limited period. These dates represent the years between Joseph Smith's extension of the practice to others within the church and Joseph F. Smith's first disciplining of members for the practice, discussed below. The broadest definition of the L.D.S. practice of plural marriage would circumscribe events occurring between 1833 and 1911. Joseph Smith himself appears to have practiced polygamy as early as 1833. See Compton, Todd, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997)Google Scholar. Church discipline was not applied to the church at large until 1911, when the first excommunications occurred. For comprehensive treatment of L.D.S. marital customs, using data on individuals who practiced plural marriage and the effects of the antipolygamy campaign on those customs, see Daynes, Kathryn M., More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001)Google Scholar and Embry, Jessie L., Mormon Polygamist Families: Life in the Principle, Publications in Mormon Studies, vol. 1 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the public misrepresentation of plural marriage, see Hardy, B. Carmon, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 363-80Google Scholar.

13. The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981), Section 131, verses 11-12; Section 132, verses 4,6. Those who did not agree formed their own churches emphasizing other principles. Most notably, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (R.L.D.S.) ordered themselves on the contrary principle that Smith had never practiced polygamy and that his sons, who had stayed in Illinois with their widowed and antipolygamous mother, had sole authority to lead the church their father had founded. For the history of the R.L.D.S. (now Community of Christ), see Davis, Inez Smith, The Story of the Church (Independence, Mo.: Herald House, 1977)Google Scholar. For a description of the many groups organized out of Smith's Nauvoo church after his death in 1844, see Shields, Steven L., Divergent Paths to the Restoration: A History ofthe Latter Day Saint Movement (Bountiful, Utah: Restoration Research, 1975)Google Scholar.

14. Pratt, Orson, “Celestial Marriage,” in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, England: F. D. Richards, 1855-86), 1:53–66 Google Scholar. This sermon was delivered in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on August 29, 1852. Technically, Joseph Smith's revelation regarding plural marriage was not his last. As indicated, Joseph Smith practiced the principle as early as 1833 but did not reduce it to writing until 1843. Hence, the 1852 sermon inaugurating churchwide practice of plural marriage in the Utah Territory is not correct when it states that the doctrine had been received by Joseph Smith in the last year of his life. This sermon is correct, however, to the extent that church members did not learn of this principle, if at all, until the last months of Joseph Smith's life. Thus, the Latter-day Saints experienced plural marriage as Joseph Smith's last revelation. Since it is their experience and the meaning ascribed to it that matters for the purposes of this essay, I, too, will refer to plural marriage as Joseph Smith's “last” vision.

15. Minute Book of the School of the Prophets, March [30], 1870, Scott G. Kenney Papers, Special Collections and Manuscripts, J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah, box 12, fd. 9.

16. Smith, Joseph F., “Law of Celestial Marriage,” in Journal of Discourses, 21:9–13 Google Scholar. This sermon was delivered at the funeral services of pioneer settler William Clayton, Salt Lake City, December 7, 1879.

17. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 131, verses 11-12.

18. U.S. Senate, 59th Cong., 1st sess., Committee on Privileges and Elections, Proceedings before the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate in the Matter of the Protests against the Right Hon. Reed Smoot, a senator from the State of Utah, to hold his seat (S. Rept. 486) (Washington, D.C.: Govt. Print. Off., 1904-1906), 4 vols. [Serial Set 2932-2935], 1:210. (Hereinafter cited as Proceedings.)

19. Apostles Heber J. Grant and George Teasdale had been sent to England and Mexico, respectively placing them beyond the reach of Senate subpoena. A third known advocate of polygamy in the apostolic quorum, Marriner W. Merrill, was too ill to travel and would die within two months. Of course, Taylor and Cowley were still in flight from Senate subpoenas and Smoot was preparing for trial in Washington, D.C.

20. There is no scholarly biography available on the life of Joseph F. Smith. The L.D.S. church has published the following book-length treatments: Gibbons, F. M., Joseph F. Smith: Patriarch and Preacher, Prophet of God (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1984)Google Scholar, and Smith, Joseph Fielding Jr., Life of Joseph F. Smith, Sixth President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1938; repr., 1999)Google Scholar. See also Kenny, Scott, “Joseph F. Smith,” in The Presidents of the Church, ed. Arrington, Leonard J. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1986), 178–209 Google Scholar.

21. Quoted in Nibley, Preston, Presidents of the Church (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1971), 147 Google Scholar.

22. Joseph F. Smith, “My Missions,” Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake City), December 21, 1901. Notwithstanding such preparations on both sides, the battle between the L.D.S. church and U.S. Army was a bloodless one. The conflict is chronicled in Furniss, Norman F., The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960; repr., Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977)Google Scholar.

23. Proceedings at the Dedication of the Joseph Smith Memorial Monument (Salt Lake City: privately published, 1906), 1-14. (Hereinafter cited as Dedication.)

24. Joseph F. Smith, Sermon, in Conference Reports, Seventy-Fifth Semi-Annual Conference, 96.

25. Murat Halstead, “Introduction,” in Beadle, J. H., Polygamy or, the Mysteries and Crimes ofMormonism, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: World Bible House, 1904), xvi Google Scholar.

26. Proceedings, 1:96. Joseph F. Smith's statement was intended to respond to the accusation that the Latter-day Saints’ belief in prophetic leadership subverted obedience to the laws of the Republic.

27. Dedication, 17.

28. Ibid., 54.

29. Ibid., 17.

30. Ibid., 29.

31. Ibid., 30-31.

32. For Halbwachs’ foundational studies, see Halbwachs, Maurice, Les Cadres Sociaux de la Memoire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1925)Google Scholar; and Halbwachs, Maurice, La Memoire Collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950)Google Scholar. More recent studies include: Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, Terence, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Lowenthal, David, The Fast Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Connerton, Paul, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the critical adaption of the theory of collective memory to the American context, see McConkey, James, ed., The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; Bodnar, John, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Kammen, Michael, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991)Google Scholar; and Linenthal, Edward T., Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

33. Thelan, David, “Memory and American History,” Journal of American History 75 (March 1989): 11–23 Google Scholar. Emphasis added.

34. Nora, Pierre, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7–25 Google Scholar.

35. Dedication, 22.

36. Ibid., 26.

37. All relevant references that follow are to the canonized account published as “Joseph Smith—History: Extracts from the History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet,” in The Pearl ofGreat Price (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981), 47-59. For an analysis of other versions, see Jessee, Dean C., “The Early Accounts of Joseph Smith's First Vision,” BYU Studies 9 (Spring 1969): 275-96Google Scholar.

38. “Joseph Smith—History,” 1:19.

39. Anti-Mormon literature is prolific. A contemporary indictment of Mormonism that catalogues the traditional bases for complaint and their relative weight is Cannon, Frank and O'Higgins, Harvey J., linder the Prophet in Utah: The National Menace of Political Priestcraft (Boston: C. M. Clark, 1911)Google Scholar, earlier published as an eight-issue serial in Everybody's Magazine. An interpretation of the literature, taking for its title a phrase used in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1911, is Givens, Terryl L., The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

40. Thomas G. Alexander, “The Reconstruction of Mormon Doctrine: From Joseph Smith to Progressive Theology,” Sunstone 5, no. 4 (July/August 1980): 24-33; Allen, James B., “The Significance of Joseph Smith's ‘First Vision’ in Mormon Thought,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1, no. 3 (Autumn 1966): 29–45 Google Scholar; Allen, James B., “Emergence of a Fundamental: The Expanding Role of Joseph Smith's First Vision in Mormon Religious Thought,” Journal of Mormon History 7 (1980): 43–61 Google Scholar; Anderson, Richard Lloyd, “Circumstantial Confirmation of the First Vision through Reminiscences,” BYU Studies 9, no. 3 (Spring 1969): 373–404 Google Scholar; Paulsen, David L., “The Doctrine of Divine Embodi-ment: Restoration, Judeo-Christian, and Philosophical Perspectives,” BYU Studies 35, no. 3 (1995-96): 7–94 Google Scholar; and Vogel, Dan, “The Earliest Mormon Con-cept of God,” in Line Upon Line: Essays on Mormon Doctrine, ed. Bergera, Gary James (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 17–33 Google Scholar.

41. Allen, “Emergence of a Fundamental,” 53.

42. Backman, Milton V. Jr., “First Vision,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, ed. Ludlow, Daniel H., 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 2:515-16Google Scholar.

43. Smith, Lucy, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations (Liverpool, England: S. W. Richards, 1853), 146 Google Scholar.

44. See, for example, Joseph F. Smith's statement that “the greatest crime that Joseph Smith was guilty of was the crime of confessing … that he saw those Heavenly Beings.… That is the worst crime he committed, and the world has held it against him…. He suffered persecution all the days of his life on earth because he declared it was true.” Quoted in Two Sermons by President Joseph F. Smith, Sermon Tract, no. 1 (Chattanooga, Tenn.: Southern States Mission, 1906).

45. Joseph F. Smith, Sermon, in Conference Reports, Seventy-Ninth Annual Conference, 4.

46. Reynolds v. U.S., 98 US 145, at 166 (1879). (“Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.”)

47. McKay, David O., Gospel Ideals: Selections from the Discourses of David O. McKay, Ninth President ofThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Improvement Era, 1953), 85 Google Scholar.

48. At least eight accounts of the First Vision were produced during Joseph Smith's life. The one chosen by the L.D.S. church as the official version was dictated by Smith to a scribe in 1838 and published originally in a Latterday Saint newspaper in 1842. The texts of all eight accounts are found in Jessee, Dean C., ed., The Papers of Joseph Smith, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1989-92), 1:3–7 Google Scholar, 127-28, 267-75, 389-91, 405-9, 429-30, 444, 448-49, 461.

49. Ricoeur, Paul, From Text to Action, Essays in Hermeneutics, vol. 2, trans. Blamey, Kathleen and Thompson, John B. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 124 Google Scholar.

50. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 1, verse 30.

51. “Joseph Smith—History,” 1:1.

52. In an earlier account, Joseph Smith had characterized the primary motivation for his prayer in classic revivalistand primitivistterms: “My mind become exceedingly distressed for I become convicted of my sins and by searching the scriptures I found that mand <mankind> did not come unto the Lord but that they had apostatised from the true and liveing faith and there was no society or denomination that built upon the gospel of Jesus Christ as recorded in the new testament and I felt to mourn for my own sins and for the sins of the world.” Jessee, Paters of Joseph Smith, 1:5-6. In this, his 1832 account, Smith's question is more personal: how was he to be saved if none of the churches acted consistently with the Bible? The answer was similarly personal yet includes a rejection of false religion and promises judgment: “Joseph <my son> thy sins are forgiven thee. go thy <way> walk in my statutes and keep my commandments behold I am the Lord of glory…. <behold> the world lieth in sin and at this time and none doeth good, no not one they have turned asside from the gospel and keep not <my> commandments they draw near to me with their lips while their hearts are far from me.” Jessee, , Papers of Joseph Smith, 1:6–7 Google Scholar. By 1838, Smith's object in writing and his circumstances had shifted to defending his church. Hence, his representation of the First Vision likewise changed to meet this institutional purpose. As discussed above, this later purpose was much more responsive to the conditions of the twentieth-century church as well.

53. “Joseph Smith—History,” 1:23-26.

54. Dedication, 10.

55. Anthon H. Lund, Sermon, in Conference Reports, Ninetieth Annual Conference, 19, 21.

56. Allen, James B., Embry, Jesse L., and Mehr, Kahlile B., Hearts Turned to the Fathers: A History of the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1894-1994 (Provo, Utah: BYU Studies, Brigham Young University, 1995), 59–90 Google Scholar.

57. “Joseph Smith—History,” 1:65.

58. Dedication, 67. Joseph Smith's identification of Anthon with the learned man in Isaiah 29 is discussed in Bushman, Richard L., Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 86–89 Google Scholar.

59. The search for true knowledge and the unhelpfulness of temporal means and unbelieving persons is an unremitting theme in L.D.S. sermons, including those of the early twentieth Century. See, for example, Frank Y. Taylor, Sermon, in Conference Reports, Seventy-Fifth Semi-Annual Conference, 30. See also Joseph F. Smith, Sermon, in Conference Reports, Seventy-Third Semi-Annual Conference, 2; and Hyrum M. Smith, Sermon, in Conference Reports, Eightieth Semi-Annual Conference, 68.

60. Doctrine and Covenants, Section 13. Emphasis added.

61. Ricoeur, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Buchanan, Emerson (Boston: Beacon, 1967), 262 Google Scholar.

62. Ibid., 6.

63. The entire history of the L.D.S. church can be written as a crisis of authority. See, for example, Hill, Marvin S., Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight front American Pluralism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989)Google Scholar. The particular crisis that came to a head during the Smoot hearing may have originated as early as the Saints’ disappointed expectations of a Second Coming after the Civil War and the increasing dominance of their kingdom by the federal government during the 1870s and 1880s. Certainly by the early twentieth Century, however, when the Smoot hearing precipitated the dismissal of Taylor and Cowley, the Saints needed reassurance that their church was truly capable of fulfilling its millennial mission or, for that matter, simply true.

64. Bushman, Beginnings of Mormonism, 188-89.

65. Shipps, Mormonism, 109-29; Flake, Kathleen, “'Not to Be Riten': The Nature and Effects of the Mormon Temple Rite as Oral Canon,” Journal of Ritual Studies 9 (Summer 1995): 1–21 Google Scholar.

66. Lund, Sermon, in Conference Reports, 19.

67. Widtsoe, John A., Evidences and Reconciliations, ed. Durham, G. Homer (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1960), 46 Google Scholar.

68. Dedication, 68.

69. A historical study of Joseph Smith's theology during this period is found in Esplin, Ronald K., “The Significance of Nauvoo for Latter-day Saints,” Journal of Mormon History 16 (1990): 71–86 Google Scholar, and Lyon, T. Edgar, “Doctrinal Development of the Church during the Nauvoo Sojourn, 1839-1846,” BYU Studies 15, no. 4 (Summer 1975): 435-46Google Scholar. See also Shipps, Mormonism, 67-86, for an analysis of the increasingly esoteric nature of Joseph Smith's teachings.

70. Dedication, 86.

71. Ibid., 42, 57-58.

72. Shipps, Mormonism, 145.

73. Shepherd, Gordon and Shepherd, Gary, A Kingdom Transformed: Themes in the Development of Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984), 229-59Google Scholar.

74. Hughes, Richard T., “Why Restorationists Don't Fit the Evangelical Mold; Why Churches of Christ Increasingly Do,” in Re-Forming the Center: American Protestants, 1900 to the Present, ed. Jacobsen, Douglas Jr., and Trollinger, William Vance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 194–213 Google Scholar.

75. The 1890 Manifeste was entitled “Official Declaration 1” and placed at the back of the Doctrine and Covenants. It reads as follows:

To Whom It May Concern: Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages are still being solemnized and that forty or more such marriages have been contracted in Utah since last lune or during the past year, also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuance of the practice of polygamy—

I, therefore, as President of the Church of lesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false…. Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbid-ding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitution-al by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.

There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy; and when any Elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbid-den by the law of the land.

WILFORD WOODRUFF,

President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

76. Deseret Evening News, December 18, 1908, 4. The other three referenced “Standard” or canonized works are the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the Pearl of Great Price, which contains the “Joseph Smith—History,” as well as other of Smith's revelations.

77. Charles W. Penrose (Liverpool) to Joseph F. Smith (Salt Lake City), March 31, 1908, Kenney Collection, box 11, fd. 15.

78. Clark, James R., ed., Messages of the First Presidency ofThe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1833-1964, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965-75), 1:224 Google Scholar.

79. Stanley S. Ivins, Diary, November 29, 1944, Kenney Collection, box 11, fd. 14B. In his 1904 appearance at the Smoot hearing, Joseph F. Smith had testified that “…there never has been a plural marriage by the consent or sanction or knowledge or approval of the church since the manifesto.” Proceedings 1:130.

80. All stake presidencies (the diocesan level of church administration) were notified by letter of October 5, 1910, from the presidency of the church that they were to excommunicate or disfellowship as appropriate all members in violation of the 1904 prohibition of plural marriage. See Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 4:216. Marriages between 1890 and 1904 were not actionable, unless a source of public embarrassment to the church. See, for example, Anthony W. Ivins, Diary, January 7, [1911], Anthony W. Ivins Collection, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City. The seminal articles evaluating the evidence of post-Manifesto polygamy are: Michael D. Quinn, “L.D.S. Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904,” Dialogue 18 (Spring 1995): 9-104; and Kenneth L. Cannon II, “After the Manifesto: Mormon Polygamy, 1890-1906,” Sunstone 8 (January-April 1983): 27-35.

81. L.D.S. excommunication of polygamists in their midst is based on a contest of authority, not plural marriage per se. In other words, Mormon fundamentalists, as they are often called to the discomfort of both groups, are in schism over the legitimacy of authority claimed by church leaders to suspend the practice of plural marriage. As with most internecine arguments, the literature on this subject is voluminous and excited. See, for example, Short, Dennis R., Questions on Plural Marriage with a Selected Bibliography and 1600 References (Salt Lake City: privately published, 1975)Google Scholar. A more accessible and scholarly discussion of the “Monogamous Triumph” in Utah is Hardy's Solemn Covenant, 336-62.

82. See Hardy, Solemn Covenant, 297-99, and Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 60.

83. Smith, Joseph F., “Celebration of the Twenty-Fourth of July by the Sunday Schools,” Juvenile Instructor 40 (March 1905): 178-79Google Scholar.

84. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 4.

85. Ibid., 103-4.

86. George A. Smith (Salt Lake City) to Reed Smoot (Washington, D.C.), February 27, 1904, Reed Smoot Collection, box 51, fd. 10, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.