Wife No. 19/Introductory Notes

I Dedicate this Book to you, as I consecrate my life to your cause.

As long as God gives me life I shall pray and plead for your deliverance from the worse than Egyptian bondage in which you are held.

Despised, maligned, and wronged; kept in gross ignorance of the great world, its pure creeds, its high aims, its generous motives, you have been made to believe that the noblest nation of the earth was truly represented by the horde of miscreants who drove you from State to State, in early years, murdering your sons and assassinating your leaders.

Hence, you shrink from those whom God will soon lead to your deliverance, from those to whom I daily present your claims to a hearing and liberation, and who listen with responsive and sympathetic hearts.

But He will not long permit you to be so wickedly deceived; nor will the People permit you to be so cruelly enslaved.

Hope and pray! Come out of the house of bondage! Kind hearts beat for you! Open hands will welcome you! Do not fear that while God lives you shall suffer uncared for in the wilderness! This Christian realm is not "Babylon," but The Promised Land!

Courage! The night of oppression is nearly ended, and the sun of liberty is rising in the heavens for you.

Since Mrs. Young's pleasant visit to us, I have thought much of the important mission to which she has devoted herself, and I wish to say, and I do it most cordially, that having been reared and educated in Mormonism, from her experience and the sufferings she has endured, she is fully competent to expose the whole system, and show to the public the true side of it, as no other person can or will. I need not assure her of my entire confidence in her sincerity and ability to carry out the work to which she has devoted. herself, and the talents God has given her. I believe she has been called to this mission, and by her experience and intense sympathy with the sufferings of her sex, has been wonderfully qualified, and prepared for the work.

The sympathy of our entire household is with her, and we earnestly pray that she may be enabled to overcome all opposition, and that God may give her abundant success, and that the blessing of many ready to perish may rest upon her.

Worcester, Mass., July, 1875.

I have read the advance sheets of Mrs. Ann-Eliza Young's book with painful interest, which has deepened into disgust and pity. Disgust at the hypocrisy, brutality, and diabolism of the Mormon leaders; pity for the wasted, joyless, sacrificial lives of the poor women who immolate themselves on the shrine of Mormonism, in the holy name of Religion.

Born and reared in the midst of these deluded people, removed from all counteracting influences, it was inevitable that Mrs. Young should accept their beliefs, and be drawn into their practices. And it must have required heroic resolution in her to break away from the Mormon Church, even when her vision was unsealed to its rottenness, knowing as she did that she would be compelled to flee from home, leaving a beloved mother and precious children in the hands of the enemy. I congratulate her on her complete emancipation, on her reunion with her beloved, whose obvious peril weighed so heavily on her filial and maternal heart, and on the possession of ability to give to the world an exposé of the Mormon horror, such as it has ​never before received. My sympathies are entirely with her in the work to which she has consecrated herself. With her awakened conscience, she could not do otherwise than seek the disintegration of the Utah community, whose foundations are laid in the degradation of woman. May she have the largest success compatible with human effort.

Melrose, Mass., Oct. 1875.

Should this book meet your eyes, I wish you most distinctly to understand that my quarrel is not with you. On the contrary, the warmest and tenderest feelings of my heart are strongly enlisted in your favor. As a rule, you have been uniformly kind to me. Some of you I have dearly loved. I have respected and honored you all. My love and respect have never failed, but have rather increased with separation. I think of you often with the sincerest sympathy for your helpless condition, bound to a false religion, and fettered by a despotic system; and I wish from the depths of my heart that I could bring you, body and soul, out from the cruel bondage, and help you to find the freedom, rest, and peace which have become so sweet to me since my eyes have been opened to the light of a true and comforting faith.

Since I have left Utah, I know that some of you have censured me severely, and have joined in personal denunciations. But I know that you are actuated by a mistaken zeal for the cause which you feel yourselves bound to sustain. You, no doubt, regard my course with horror. I look upon your lives with pity.

I have taken the liberty of describing your characters and situations. I was not prompted by the slightest animosity toward you, but because the public are interested in you, and curious concerning you, and I felt that I could give to the world a true story of your lives, and, at the same time, do you justice, and let you be seen as you are in my eyes, which are not dimmed by prejudice.

​I was driven to the course I am pursuing by sheer desperation, as some of you, with whom I have exchanged confidences, well know. The motives which have been attributed to me, and the charges that have been made against me, are as utterly false and foreign to my nature as darkness is to light. You, at least, should not misjudge me. You should know me better, and you do. Even your bitter prejudice, and your disapprobation of the step I have taken, cannot make you believe me other than I am. You know that apostasy from Mormonism does not necessarily degrade a person, and sink them at once to the lowest depths of infamy.

If, as is taught, — and as I suppose you believe, — I have lost the light of the gospel, and departed from "the faith once delivered to the saints," am I not rather deserving your compassion than your censure? Your own hearts and consciences must answer that.

The women of Utah should know that I shall vindicate their rights, and defend their characters, at all times and in all places. Their sorrow has been my sorrow; their cause is my cause still. My heart goes out to them all, but more especially to you. You have been my companions and my sisters in tribulation. Now our paths diverge. I go on the way that I have chosen alone, while you stay sorrowing together. I wish I had the power to influence you to throw off the fetters which bind you, and to walk triumphantly forth into the glories of a faith, whose foundation is in God the compassionate Father, whose principles are those of a tender mercy, whose ruling spirit is love. Alas! I cannot do it; but I pray that the good Father in His infinite mercy may open. your eyes to His glory, and lead you forth His children to do His blessed will.