The Founder of Mormonism/Appendix 4

The aim of this appendix is fourfold:—to show that Joseph Smith was, to some degree, implicated in polygamous practices; to trace the effects on his public career; to present his crass metaphysical theory of polygamy, finally to show that some of his illicit purposes were effected through hypnotic influence.

It has been claimed that the doctrine of 'spiritual wifery' was introduced by the older men and not by Smith. There were three chief scapegoats. In June, 1833, Dr. P. Hurlbut, before a conference of high-priests at Kirtland, 'was accused of unchristian conduct with the women.' In 1843 the 'spiritual wife system' was fathered upon Dr. Bennett, and affidavits were issued against his statement that Smith allowed adultery. Lastly in September, 1844, Rigdon was made to bear the brunt of odium. In his trial at Nauvoo, the following allegations were made:—that he talked of exposing the secrets and iniquity of the Saints; that he came here with a spirit as corrupt as hell and charged the Twelve ​with being adulterers; that he himself had been wallowing in filth and corruption for four or five. years past; that Brother Joseph shook him off at the conference a year ago; that Sister Emma had a good many feelings against Elder Rigdon; that Brigham Young finally said that enough was brought forward at the conference, but that Brother Hyrum plead so hard that it was kept back.

Now for the other side of the case, and the counter charges against the prophet. If the evidence against Rigdon is ex partê, the evidence against Smith is circumstantial. The prophet's testimony as to his opponent's actions was declared unprintable, yet, at the same time, Smith urged that there should be kept a record of 'spiritual' marriages. But to go back and trace the beginnings of the matter: in the early days of Mormonism there appear to have been certain underground practices which were first scorned but finally embraced. In January, 1833, Smith tells Brother Gilbert that 'low insinuations God hates, but He rejoices in an honest heart and knows better who is guilty than he does.' The next month the prophet said he received revelations 'to unfold the mysteries of the Kingdom' and also that 'my handmaid, Vienne Jaques, should receive money to bear her expenses, and go up into the land of Zion.' On the verge of the unprintable testimony of the Rigdon trial there is an incidental ​reference to this 'handmaid,' as 'that Frenchwoman.' In July, 1833, Smith wrote to the brethren in Zion to 'guard against evils which may arise from accounts given of women.' On December 10th, Gilbert again wrote a letter which the prophet declared contained 'low, dark and blind insinuations'; for this the brother was threatened with excommunication. As regards the first point there is no proof positive of Smith's early implication in polygamy, but the suspicion of participation in illicit private practices is strengthened by the vicissitudes of his later public career.

'The pages of General Smith's history,' says an editorial in the Times and Seasons, 'though his enemies never ceased to persecute him and hunt for offenses against him, are as unsullied as virgin snow.' But the passages already cited are from Smith's History; if they do not allow of loose construction, it is possible to turn to the words and writings of other Saints. The Mormons themselves have furnished an answer to what William Smith called 'the unaccountable problem' why Mormons are 'numbered with Indians, Hottentots, Arabs, Turks, Wolverines and horned cattle.' In October, 1843, an adherent of Brigham Young said, 'It is true that our city is open for all who wish to come, but we wish to have the privilege of enjoying our religion and "peculiarities" unmolested.' 'Those ​who tell lies about "mysteries" to injure the Saints,' it was added later, 'forget the Mormon creed "Mind your own business."' In April, 1844, Hyrum Smith proclaimed that 'Every Elder that goes from Nauvoo to preach the gospel, if he preach anything else, we will silence him through the public prints.' A month after this, Elder Dykes, preaching in Pittsburg, said, 'the audience had never heard a Saint before; they had many and awful conjectures about the truth.' At a church conference in Michigan, ten days later, 'the elders were strictly charged to keep within the limits of the first principles and let the mysteries alone.' One week afterwards, in Illinois, the first number of the Nauvoo Expositor was published. It contained affidavits from several women alleging illicit invitation from high church dignitaries. The official repudiation runs, 'Its columns teemed with vituperative abuse of Joseph and his friends. That it was the fixed purpose of its managers to continue that defamatory course, was evident from the matter contained in its columns and in their private admissions. They aimed to attack the characters of many respectable citizens of both sexes. The tone of the sheet was vulgar, scurrilous, and untruthful. The people felt themselves outraged.'

In the meanwhile the Times and Seasons saw fit to publish an 'extract from a letter from ​the vicinity of Nauvoo,' which says, 'The excitement on both sides of the river against the Mormons is increasing very fast. The conduct of Joseph Smith and the other leaders, is such that no community of white men can tolerate.' On June 18th, General Smith, Mayor of Nauvoo, declared the city under martial law, and ordered the city marshal to see that 'no persons pass in or out of the city without due orders.' Nine days after this, the prophet was shot down by state militia in Carthage jail, having first emptied two barrels of his sixshooter into the crowd of his assailants. To touch on the political issues of this 'martyrdom' is to summarize the evidence for the second count: that it was not merely territorial aspirations, tampering with slaves and other alleged charges that checked Smith's public career, but also the neglect to suppress the more or less subterranean practice of polygamy.

In the third place, to turn to the theory of the thing, and to seek to determine Smith's share in the metaphysics of Mormonism,—if one may so term their crude materialism. The early documents should first be looked at. Orson Pratt as commentator of the Book of Mormon deduces an inherent doctrine of polygamy from the large size of the Nephite families. This is practically inconsistent with the anti-polygamy passage, previously quoted, ​but not theoretically inconsistent with the later Mormon canonical writings. Revelation being continuous is retroactive. In this way the monogamous Book of Commandments is modified and superseded by the polygamous book of Doctrine and Covenants. In the former the seventh commandment is emphasized, but the successive editions of the latter gradually approach the full fledged Revelation on the Plurality of Wives.

As early as October, 1831, a revelation was addressed through the seer to William E. McLellin: 'Commit not adultery, a temptation with which thou hast been troubled.' By 1835, the trouble in the camp of Zion called out this public disavowal: 'Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again. It is not right to persuade a woman to be baptized contrary to the will of her husband, neither is it lawful to influence her to leave her husband.'^[1]

In 1839, Parley Pratt issued his Persecutions of the Latter-day Saints; in chapter ten of this pamphlet the author insisted that there was no polygamy among the Mormons. One year later Orson Pratt published his Treatise on the Regeneration and ​Eternal Duration of Matter. This contained, in germ, those teachings on the 'Preexistence of Man' and 'Celestial Marriage' which now form part of the Creed of the Utah Saints. In 1841, in answer to numerous questioners Joseph Smith issued his Articles of Faith,^[2] the last of which runs: ​'We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous.'

Thus far polygamy was esoteric; it was not till after Smith's death that the doctrine was publicly avowed in such brochures as Orson Spencer's Patriarchal Order, or Plurality of Wives. In the meantime the prophet had written for the elect his notorious Revelation on the Eternity of the Marriage Covenant, including Plurality of Wives.^[3] His son Joseph Smith 3d, founder of the 'Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,' has attempted to disprove the authenticity of this revelation of July 12th, 1843.^[4] It is true that the 1845 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants does not contain this revelation, while the last volume of the Times and Seasons of 1846, contains the prophet's History only through August 11th, 1834. The external evidence ​may be negative, but the internal is not. The publication was posthumous, but the sentiments were anything but post-mortem. The passages commanding Emma Smith to be virtuous, while her husband may do as he pleases, are borne out by the extracts already quoted and especially by Mrs. Kimball's testimony, as given below.

But to present briefly the Mormon theory whereby these practices are justified, and then to determine Smith's share in them. 'Celestial' marriage, according to the orthodox Saints, opens the way for all women who wish to marry to fill the measure of their creation. . . . It shows how the innumerable creations of God [i. e., this world and other planets] may be peopled with intelligences. . . . Woman without man and man without woman cannot be saved. The larger the progeny a man has, the greater will be the fulness of his eternal glory. . . . God was once a man, but He has so advanced in intelligence and power that He may now be called, comparatively speaking, perfect, infinite etc., but He has still the form and figure of a man. This anthopomorphism was thus presented by Orson Pratt in his Absurdities of Immaterialism as early as 1849:—'The resemblance between man and God has reference, as we have already observed, to the shape or figure; other qualities may or may not resemble each ​other. Man has legs, so has God, as is evident from His appearance to Abraham. Man walks with his legs, so does God sometimes, as is evident from His going with Abraham towards Sodom. God cannot only walk, but He can move up or down through the air without using His legs as in the process of walking. (See Gen. 17:22; also 11:5; also 35:13.—"A man wrestled with Jacob until the breaking of day;" after which, Jacob says—"I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."—Gen. 32:24–30. That this person had legs is evident from his wrestling with Jacob. His image and likeness was so much like man's, that Jacob at first supposed him to be a man.—(See 24th verse.) God, though in the figure of a man, has many powers that man has not got. He can go upwards through the air. He can waft Himself from world to world by His own self-moving powers. These are powers not possessed by man only through faith, as in the instances of Enoch and Elijah. Therefore, though in the figure or a man, He has powers far superior to man. . . . The Godhead may be further illustrated by a council, consisting of three men—all possessing equal wisdom, knowledge, and truth, together with equal qualifications in every other respect. Each person would be a separate distinct person or substance from the other two, and yet the three would ​form but one council. Each alone possesses, by supposition, the same wisdom and truth that the three united or the one council possesses.'^[5]

Two months before his death the prophet taught practically the same doctrines as Pratt. The following are extracts from his conference speech of April, 1844:—

If Smith may be said to have had any metaphysical theory of polygamy, it may be found in these distorted borrowings; but, at the least, these preach​ments had corresponding practices, as is shown by certain social bye-products of the system.

The materialism of the Latter-day Saints has been compared to fourth century Gnosticism,^[6] and attempts have actually been made to connect Mormon mysteries with Eleusinian mysteries.^[7] The connection is absurdly impossible, yet there appears to have been a dash of ethnic occultism in the practices of the Saints. To get at this, one is forced to notice the subterranean, to explore the cloaca maxima of Mormon literature,—the various 'exposures' of renegades and apostates. The descriptions of 'endowment' rites as reported by Hyde, Van Dusen and other 'Jack-Mormons' are in themselves untrustworthy; they nevertheless present this common feature—a resemblance to certain scenes which took place in France two generations before. The alleged doings in the Nauvoo temple are like the real doings around Mesmer's baquets magnétiques, practice which, in their hysteric excesses, called forth the secret report of the royal commissioners on the dangers of magnetism in respect to morality.^[8]

There is here indeed, an analogy as to abnormal psychoses, but in addition to the general inference ​there are more specific statements. The arch-apostate Maria Ward, author of Female Life Among the Mormons, asserts that she was mesmerized into marrying, some time after Parley Pratt had taught Mr. Ward the secrets of magnetism. Finally an anonymous pamphlet entitled Anna Little, the Mesmeric Seeress of Nauvoo, tells how this clairvoyant wonder had so completely mastered the science of animal magnetism that Joseph Smith knew the value of such an auxiliary and kept her in the sanctuary of the Communicant Sisters. All these statements are disallowed by the Saints and are, in truth, of secondary evidential value; they yet resemble one another in containing the everlasting charge brought against dabblers in the occult, from the Neoplatonists to the Spiritualists,—the charge that over-indulgence in abnormal psychic practices tends to looseness in moral standards.

There remains evidence of primary value that the Mormons, in some instances, exercised over their adherents undue influence of a quasi-hypnotic character. The legal side of the case may serve as a standpoint, for the courts early took cognizance of the matter. In 1844 a Tennessee lawyer declared that the Mormon methods were unlawful; in 1848, in Ohio, there was recorded a 'Law Case, exhibiting the most extraordinary developments peculiar to modern times, arising from an implicit obedience to ​the dictates of Mesmeric clairvoyance as related by a Mormon prophet.'^[9]

Turning to Joseph Smith and his apparent hypnotic influence over people, his early suggestive successes must be kept in mind before taking up the case of Mrs. Kimball. But the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon, and Newel Knight the demoniac, and those 'cured by faith' were not the only subjects. Like the present day Kentucky exhorter, who calls out the revivalistic 'jerks,' the prophet seems to have been the means of inducing a real collective hypnosis. 'His eloquence,' says Parley Pratt, 'was not polished and studied, not smoothed and softened by education. I have even known him to retain a congregation of willing and anxious listeners for many hours together while they were laughing one moment and weeping the next.'^[10]

But finally besides influencing crowds by his speech and his presence, Smith appears to have learned that mental suggestion may be efficacious not only at the instant, but some time after.^[11] How ​far the chief of the Saints utilized the principle of suggestibility, immediate or deferred, in the subjugation of neurotic women is indeterminable. The allegations of ruined and perjured apostates are as little to be believed as, for example, the statement of the interested Brigham Young that Emily and Eliza Patridge were 'sealed' to the prophet, Emma Smith being present and giving her 'full and free consent for them to be the wives of Joseph.'^[12] If such things were done, they were done on the sly. In September, 1843, a sister of a Mormon convert, who had noticed that Elder Adams had brought an extra wife from England, wrote home that she could not believe that Joseph would ever sanction the doctrine of patriarchal plurality.^[13] Yet four months before this, a practical sanction had been given. Littlefield asserts, on the best authority, that beside the two women already mentioned Maria and Sarah Laurence were declared to have been 'sealed' to the prophet.^[14] But of all the cases, that of Mrs. Lucy Walter Kimball is the most authentic, and bears internally as mark of genuineness—the moral struggle of the subject. In its criminal aspects,^[15] it is fit to rank with the case of ​Gabrielle Bompard or l'affaire Chambige.^[16] It is here offered as a matter of post-hypnotic suggestion, with deferred hallucination:—

'In 1845 I married President Heber C. Kimball. . . . May 1st, 1843, I consented to become the prophet's wife. In 1842 President Joseph Smith sought an interview with me, and said: "I have a message for you. I have been commanded of God to take another wife and you are the woman." My astonishment knew no bounds. . . . The prophet discerned my sorrow. He saw how unhappy I was . . . and said: "Although I cannot, under existing circumstances, acknowledge you as my wife, the time is near when we will go beyond the Rocky Mountains and then you will be acknowledged and honored as my wife. . . . I will give you until to-morrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you." This aroused every drop of Scotch in my veins. I felt at this moment that I was called to place myself upon the altar a living sacrifice—perhaps to brook the world in disgrace and ​incur the displeasure and contempt of my youthful companions. . . . This was too much, for as yet no shadow had crossed my path. . . . I said: "Although you are a prophet of God you could not induce me to take a step of so great importance, unless I knew that God approved my course. I would rather die. I have tried to pray, but received no comfort, no light." . . . He walked across the room, returned . . . and said: . . . "You shall have a manifestation of the will of God concerning you; a testimony that you can never deny. I will tell you what it shall be. It shall be that joy and peace that you never knew."

Oh, how earnestly I prayed for these words to be fulfilled. It was near dawn after another sleepless night when my room was lighted up by a heavenly influence. To me it was, in comparison, like the brilliant sun bursting through the darkest cloud. The words of the prophet were indeed fulfilled. My soul was filled with a calm, sweet peace that "I never knew." Supreme happiness took possession of me, and I received a powerful and irresistible testimony of the truth of plural marriage.'

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