“If I had forty wives in the United States, they did not know it, and could not substantiate it, neither did I ask any lawyer, judge, or magistrate for them. I live above the law, and so do this people.” - Prophet Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 1, p. 361
Utah was not part of the United States...
Brigham Young cared less about what anyone thought of his behavior...
Mormons, Utahns, “Americans” Europeans...
He was above the law...
He WAS the law...
He was “god”
In the 1850s he packed Utah with foreigners...
That he could control easier than “Americans” from the “United States”...
Most of the “Americans” were his cutthroat cohorts...
“There are about 15,000 inhabitants at Salt Lake City. They consist of a very few Americans, and the large majority English and Scotch; very many Welsh, and numerous Danes.
I think certainly not one third of the whole would embrace all the Americans in the city, and not one fourth of the whole in the entire Territory.
These are principally from the western borders of the States. They have all the power in their hands, fill all the offices, ecclesiastical and civil, and receive all the emoluments. THEY ARE ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION POLYGAMISTS, and are singularly full of prejudice, intolerance, and boasted fidelity to Mormonism.”
(John Hyde, Mormonism: its leaders and designs, 1857 P 33)
Here’s an interesting bit...
Did Smith have illegitimate children ???
This “70” seemed to think so...
“I will instance polygamy. This was practiced by Smith in 1838, and the Mormon Apostles KNEW IT. Yet, when the Church was charged with its adoption, Parley P. Pratt, in Manbchester, England, before the general conference of the European churches, and in the Millennial Star of 1846, thus publicly denounced it:
“Such a doctrine is not held, known, or practiced as a principle of the Latter-day Saints. It is but another name for whoredom; and is as foreign friom the real principles of the Church, as the devil is from God; or as sectarianism is from Christianity” (Millennial Star, vol. vi., p. 22).
And yet this man knew that Smith and others had children living WHO WERE THE OFFSPRING OF THIS VERY PRACTICE! “
(John Hyde, Mormonism: its leaders and designs, 1857 P 14)