Excerpt: LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890 to 1904

LDS historian D. Michael Quinn

By D. Michael Quinn (1944-2021)

On 24 September 1890, President Wilford Woodruff issued his famous Manifesto which stated in part, ". . . and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have during the period [since June 1889] been solemnized in our temples or in any other place in the Territory," and concluded, "And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land." 

The Church  owned Deseret Evening News editorialized on 30 September: "Anyone who calls the language of President Woodruff's declaration 'indefinite' must be either exceedingly dense or determined to find fault. It is so definite that its meaning cannot be mistaken by any one who understands simple English." On 3 October it added, "Nothing could be more direct and unambiguous than the language of President Woodruff, nor could anything be more authoritative."

A few days after this last editorial, the Church authorities presented this "unambiguous" document for a sustaining vote of the general conference. Yet during the next thirteen and a half years, members of the First Presidency individually or as a unit published twenty four denials that any new plural marriages were being performed. 

The climax of that series of little manifestoes was the "Second Manifesto" on plural marriage sustained by a vote of a general conference. President Joseph F. Smith's statement of 6 April 1904, read in part:

 

Inasmuch as there are numerous reports in circulation that plural marriages have been entered into contrary to the official declaration of President Woodruff, of September 24, 1890, commonly called the Manifesto . . . I, Joseph F. Smith, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, hereby affirm and declare that no such marriages have been solemnized with the sanction, consent or knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

 

Several questions would quite naturally occur to the most casual reader of this cloud of public denials and clarifications of an "unambiguous" document. The complexity of the Manifesto of 1890 is indicated by the diversity of answers published since 1904.

 

What was the 1890 Manifesto? After the document's acceptance by the October general conference, the Salt Lake Herald (of which Apostle Heber J. Grant was publisher) editorialized that the anti Mormon Salt Lake Tribune "pretends the declaration is a revelation . . . although no one today has heard anyone except the lying sheet say it was a revelation."

The majority report of a U.S. Senate Committee declared in bold heading in 1906, "THE MANIFESTO IS A DECEPTION." The Manifesto was "a COVENANT WITH DEATH and an AGREEMENT WITH HELL," according to Lorin C. Woolley and his polygamist followers among the Latter day Saints from the 1930s onward. 

The Manifesto was "merely a tactical maneuver," according to historian Klaus J. Hansen, but to historians James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard it "was not simply a political document." And bringing the discussion full circle to the sectarian newspaper battles of 1890, Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith did not specifically identify the Manifesto as a revelation in 1922, but affirmed that "the word of the Lord came to him [Wilford Woodruff] in a revelation suspending the practice of plural marriage," Apostle John A. Widtsoe wrote in 1940 that the Manifesto "was the product of revelation."

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Who wrote the Manifesto? For most writers and commentators about the Manifesto, the answer to that question is so obvious that they find it unnecessary to go beyond identifying the document as Wilford Woodruff's Manifesto. However, when asked about the witness stand, a secretary in the First Presidency's office, George Reynolds, testified in 1904, "I assisted to write it," in collaboration with Charles W. Penrose and John R. Winder who "transcribed the notes and changed the language slightly to adapt it for publication." Moving far beyond that statement, John W. Woolley told his polygamist followers in the 1920s that "Judge Zane [a non Mormon] had as much to do with it [the Manifesto] as Wilford Woodruff except to sign it," and Lorin C. Woolley told Mormon Fundamentalist that Wilford Woodruff was not the author of the Manifesto but that it was actually written by Charles W. Penrose, Frank J. Cannon, and "John H. White, the butcher," revised by non Mormon federal officials, and that Woodruff merely signed it. Moreover, Woolley and his Fundamentalist followers have accused George Q. Cannon of pressuring Presidents Taylor and Woodruff to write a manifesto abandoning plural marriage, and at least one Fundamentalist called him "The Great Mormon Judas."

 

Were new plural marriages actually performed after the 1890 Manifesto? In 1907, the First Presidency announced, "When all the circumstances are weighed, the wonder is, not that there have been sporadic cases of plural marriage, but that such cases have been so few." In 1922, Church Historian Joseph Fielding Smith wrote that "some plural marriages had been entered into contrary to the announcement of President Woodruff, and also a statement made by President Lorenzo Snow." Assistant Church Historian B. H. Roberts wrote in the Church's centennial history that "the injunction of said Manifesto had not been strictly adhered to even by some high officials of the Church of Latter day Saints and people misled by them."

 

Who performed and entered into these new plural marriages from 1890 to 1904? "A few over zealous individuals" according to the First Presidency statement of 1907; "a few misguided members of the Church," according to the First Presidency statement of 1933; "devoted but misled members of the Church," according to Apostle John A. Widtsoe in 1951; "some high officials of the Church" according to B. H. Roberts's centennial history which later identified them as Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley who were dropped from the Quorum of the Twelve in 1906 because they were out of harmony with the First Presidency concerning the Manifesto; "a few Church authorities," according to historians Allen and Leonard in 1976; some "diehards" according to historians Arrington and Bitton in 1979; "some who held the sealing power. The most prominent among those was John W. Taylor of the Twelve," according to the Secretary to the First Presidency in 1984.

 

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How many new plural marriages were performed between 1890 and 1904? The anti Mormon Salt Lake Tribune estimated in 1910 that there were "about two thousand," which echoed by the schismatic Mormon Fundamentalists forty years later. On the other hand, until recently, the official and semiofficial publications of the Church simply rephrased the First Presidency 1907 statement that there were "few" new plural marriage from 1890 to 1904, Historians Arrington and Bitton increased that estimate in 1983 by lawyer historian Kenneth L. Cannon II of an annual statistical chart of 150 polygamous marriages from 1890 to 1904 apparently caused a dramatic shift in the official presentation of numbers. In 1984, "a comparatively large number of polygamous marriages had been performed after the Manifesto."

 

And finally, to what extent were new plural marriages performed from 1890 to 1904 with Church authority? Aside from denials of the First Presidency already cited, the Deseret Evening News editorialized in 1911, "There is absolutely no truth in the allegation that plural marriages have been entered into with [the] sanction of the Church since the manifesto." Apostle John A. Widtsoe wrote in 1936, "Since that day [6 October 1890] no plural marriage has been performed with the sanction or

authority of the Church," BYU historian Gustive O. Larson wrote in 1958 that "While Presidents Woodruff, Snow, and Smith maintained monogamous integrity of the Church, plural marriages were being performed secretly by two members of the Apostles' Quorum," Counselor Stephen L Richards wrote in 1961, "Since that time [1890], entering into plural marriage has been construed to be an offense against the laws of the Church," Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley wrote in 1969, "Since that time [September 1890] the Church has neither practiced nor sanctioned such marriage," Apostle Mark E.

Petersen wrote in 1974 that "the Manifesto put an end to all legal plural marriages," historians Allen and Leonard wrote in 1976 that the performance of new plural marriages outside of Utah from 1890 to 1904 "was without official sanction from the First Presidency," and historians Arrington and Bitton reaffirmed in 1979 that these plural marriages were "without the sanction of church authority." 

Significantly, the schismatic Mormon polygamists accept at face value all of these statements, and use them in connection with evidence of the performance of new plural marriages after 1890 as an argument justifying the continued performance of polygamy to the present:

 

By this action of President John Taylor [in 1886], which it must be assumed was taken in accordance with instructions from the Lord, additional machinery for the continuance of the Celestial order of marriage was set up....It had been entered into by members of the Priesthood wholly apart and independent of the Church... It was under this authority conferred under the hands of John Taylor that Anthony W. Ivins exercised the sealing powers in Mexico, after the Church adopted the Manifesto. It was by this authority that John Henry Smith, John W. Taylor, Abraham Owen Woodruff and others joined people in the Patriarchal order of marriage after the issuance of the Manifesto; and it was by the same authority that Abraham H. Cannon, a member of the quorum of the Twelve, entered into Plural marriage, after the Manifesto. The Church neither approved nor disapproved these several actions.

 

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