Posted on 07/02/2011 6:05:43 PM PDT by Colofornian
(To see Cal Grondahl’s cartoon that goes with this post, click here) I spent some time re-reading the late Richard S. Van Wagoner’s excellent book, “Mormon Polygamy: A History.” The 19th century tales of harems and never-ending teenage-girl hunting were, of course, lies to excite Eastern U.S. readers. Polygamy was a contradictory doctrine, and extremely dysfunctional. Brigham Young once said that he wished it wasn’t a doctrine, but later also raged that those who disbelieved in polygamy — and even monogomous LDS men — were in danger of damnation. And polygamy led to divorce among LDS elite leaders in numbers that would shock today. According to Van Wagoner, more than 50 marriages of LDS leaders ended in divorce in the mid 19th century.
Indeed, two early wives of LDS apostle brothers, Orson and Parley Pratt, gave their husbands the heave-ho for their enthusiastic embrace of polygamy, and penchant for young, teenage brides. And not every faithful LDS elder with a feisty wife was brave enough to try polygamy. Van Wagoner recounts the tale of one husband who abandoned plans to take a plural wife after his wife informed him that she had received a revelation from God directing her to shoot any spare wife who darkened the family doorstep.
As Van Wagoner writes, though, there was a somber paradox to polygamy, particularly for faithful LDS women who reluctantly embraced the doctrine as a commandment of God yet suffered personal heartache and financial pain due to their husband’s extracurricular wives. Emmeline B. Wells, early Mormon women’s leader and feminist, wrote publicly that polygamy “gives women the highest opportunities for self-development, exercise of judgment, and arouses latent faculties, making them truly cultivated in the actual realities of life, more independent in thought and mind, noble and unselfish.” In her private journal, though, Wells despaired of how polygamy had robbed her of the love of her husband, Daniel H. Wells, member of the church’s first presidency.
Emmeline wrote, “O, if my husband could only love me even a little and not seem to be perfectly indifferent to any sensation of that kind. He cannot know the cravings of my nature; he is surrounded with love on every side, and I am cast out.”
“He is surrounded with love on every side, and I am cast out,” is an appropriate indictment of polygamy, and no doubt a reason that it has long been discarded by the LDS Church.
As Van Wagoner recalls, another LDS women leader, physician Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon, the first female state senator in the U.S., yearned in her personal letters for one husband who would be hers only to cherish. Despite these yearnings, she clung to her LDS faith in “the Principle.” Martha wrote her husband, Angus, that only her divine knowledge of the sacred principle of plural marriage made it bearable to endure. Nevertheless, Martha also wrote this scolding to Angus: “How do you think I feel when I meet you driving another plural wife about in a glittering carriage in broad day light? (I) am entirely out of money …”
For Emmeline Wells, there was a sort of happy ending that was denied many others. As Van Wagoner recounts, in his final years, her frail and aging husband, Daniel, seeking tender care and companionship, returned to Emmeline’s home and side, after mostly ignoring her for 40 years. In her eyes, that probably counted as a blessing due after decades of suffering.
Despite lurid tales and even the teenage bride races, sex was a distant reason for polygamy. It was the result of an odd doctrine, now mostly forgotten in the LDS Church, that taught that the more wives and children one accumulated on earth would increase one’s post-life eternal influence and kingdoms. Yet, one will rarely hear that explanation today.
From the column: Polygamy was a contradictory doctrine, and extremely dysfunctional. Brigham Young once said that he wished it wasn’t a doctrine, but later also raged that those who disbelieved in polygamy — and even monogomous LDS men — were in danger of damnation. And polygamy led to divorce among LDS elite leaders in numbers that would shock today. According to Van Wagoner, more than 50 marriages of LDS leaders ended in divorce in the mid 19th century. Indeed, two early wives of LDS apostle brothers, Orson and Parley Pratt, gave their husbands the heave-ho for their enthusiastic embrace of polygamy, and penchant for young, teenage brides.
Parley Pratt was Mitt Romney's ancestor.
From the column: Despite lurid tales and even the teenage bride races, sex was a distant reason for polygamy. It was the result of an odd doctrine, now mostly forgotten in the LDS Church, that taught that the more wives and children one accumulated on earth would increase one’s post-life eternal influence and kingdoms. Yet, one will rarely hear that explanation today.
In 1866, Brigham Young taught that "The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are thosewho enter into polygamy." (Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269, 8/19/1866).
Oops. If Brigham was a "prophet," only a few Lds general authorities (who have taken consecutive wives) will become potential gods, eh?
In 1870, the people of Utah sent a Memorial to Congress that labeled polygamy as a divine principle "underlying our every hope of eternal salvation and happiness in heaven." (see Richard Abanes, Inside Today's Mormonism, pp. 233-234, Harvest House, 2004)
Real Conservative women are reputed to be good shots with a wide variety of firearms of suitible caliber. No reason to think otherwise of Conservative LDS women.
I used to have a cartoon showing the toll Poligamy takes on a family.
From around the late 1800s, it showed a woman with a broken heart setting rejected in a chair with her two children at her knee.
Through a door in the back you can see hubby, in another room, hugging up with his cute new “wife”.
Nah... Joe Smith made sure that any inconvenient things can be changed at a later date. Beautiful thing about that "later revelation" policy.
Yuck. How is this a happy ending? Why didn't he stick with his teenaged nurses? Maybe she fed him some arsenic.
Sad story, but we are headed in this direction with the wide acceptance of same sex marriage. Polygamy has a long history, and is legal in Ontario, Canada to suit the perversions of the Muslims. We'll see it in Michigan, first...
Why would the children of one wife not hate the children of another who alienated their father’s affection? I would despise such a father, and plot always to undermine the interlopers.
mo·nog·a·my /məˈnägəmē/ Noun 1. The practice or custom of having too many wives at one time.
What do you expect of Daniel Wells? He left his first wife in Nauvoo when the Mormons headed West. He took on six wives in Utah -- Emmeline being the seventh. Five years after marrying her, he made massacre history by being third in charge of the militia that engaged in an outright terrorist act vs. children, moms & dads. See: Mormon Shooters and Clubbers: General DANIEL HANMER WELLS
According to that site: DANIEL HANMER WELLS, a MORMON SHOOTER and CLUBBER, Commander-in-Chief of the territorial militia, the Nauvoo Legion, it is not known as to how much knowledge Wells had prior to the attack that took place at Mountain Meadows. However, as third in command in the military hierarchy, he, as well as his superiors, George A. Smith , and Brigham Young , are culpable under the military rules of accountability. Further, there is little question that he and superiors were involved in the cover-up that followed the brutal and cowardly slaughter. The LDS Church has knowingly sponsored, endorsed, and forever immortalized these butchers into history. Wells was born on October 27, 1814 in Trenton, New York to Daniel Wells and his wife Catherine Chapin. When he grew up he married Eliza Rebecca Robison on March 12, 1837 in Commerce (later Nauvoo), Illinois. The couple made their home in Nauvoo and Wells was a "Jack Mormon", a term applied to non-church members, who defended the church and its members. He was personal friends with Joseph Smith which helped him get elected to the Nauvoo City Council and later as a judge. After his friend, Joseph Smith, was killed in June, 1844 and the Mormons were expelled from the area, Wells decided to join the church. Made an official church member in 1846, Wells remained in Illinois until 1848, when he went to Utah and began working toward the organization of the State of Deseret. However, his wife, Eliza, who never participated in plural marriages, did not accompany him. In Utah, Daniel, on the other hand, would take six wives. In the year of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, Wells was ordained as an Apostle, was the second counselor to Brigham Young, and the commanding officer of the Nauvoo Legion, the territorial militia. Later he would preside over the church's European missions while living in Great Britain and when he returned to Utah Territory was elected mayor of Salt Lake City in 1866, a position he held until 1874. In 1872 Wells was arrested for being an accessory in the murder of Robert Yates, a murder that occurred in 1857 at the mouth of Echo Canyon. Though a man named Bill Hickman would eventually confess to killing Yates, Wells was the official commanding officer of the military operation which resulted in the death of Yates, thereby making him an accessory. However, a year later the charges were dismissed. In 1879 he was jailed for failing to disclose information regarding the various polygamist marriages he had performed. Jailed for a couple of months and accessed a $100 fine, he was released.
Ya gotta understand these polygamists were criminals; and many of them were mass murderers as well.
But, they probably were "nice" mass murderers.
Van Wagoner recounts the tale of one husband who abandoned plans to take a plural wife after his wife informed him that she had received a revelation from God directing her to shoot any spare wife who darkened the family doorstep.
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LOL
good for her
I didnt know that the 3wives were able to divorce their adulterous husbands
I know that the mormon males cheated wholesale and but I thought because of the threat of death that Joey Smith wrote in D&C 132 against Emma Hale if she tried to stop his midnight sexual trysts, and the ones right in her house in front of her, the later women were scared to say anythinbg
and then theres that day that Briggie Young got up and said if the wives didnt like the extramariatial sex, they could lump it and all leave..
So there were lots of divorces among the mormons for the adultery of the males...
Those mormon women had gumption and righteousness...
I wonder if the latest convert in these threads knows about this ???
NAH
:)
Probably a partial reason for upper class Muslim male rage and hatred today (for those from polygamous families).
Polygamy has a long history, and is legal in Ontario, Canada to suit the perversions of the Muslims.
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Why just the Moslems ???
Theres a lot of Mormons in Ontario who like that kind of perversion also
‘Ol Bring ‘em Young did become a believer in polygamy didn’t he. Here’s some other thoughts.
“As a girl I had been proud that my father and mother had obeyed the highest principle in the Church... I was aware now that my mother’s early married life must have been humiliating and joyless on many occasions because of her position as a second wife.” - Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother, 1969, p. 133
“A woman in polygamy is compelled by her lone position to make a confidant of her children.” - Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother, 1969, p. 236
“She [the plural wife] must lay aside wholly all interest or thought in what her husband was doing while he was away from her... [and be] pleased to see him when he came in as she was pleased to see any friend.” - Vilate Kimball, in “Theatrical and Social Affairs in Utah,” by S.A. Cooks, pp. 5-6, Bancroft Library, see Isn’t One Wife Enough, p. 209
“It is a fact, so well known that the Twelve and their adherents have endeavored to carry on this spiritual wife business… and have gone to the most shameful and desperate lengths to keep it from the public. First, insulting innocent females, and when they resented the insult, these monsters in human shape would assail their characters by lying, and perjuries, with a multitude of desperate men to help them effect the ruin of those whom they had insulted, and all this to enable them to keep these corrupt practices from the view of the world.” - Apostle Sidney Rigdon, Messenger and Advocate, October 15, 1844
“I think no more of taking another wife than I do of buying a cow, and if you want to build up the kingdom you must take more wives.” - Apostle Heber C. Kimball, quoted in Jennie Anderson Froiseth, ed., The Women of Mormonism: or the Story of Polygamy As Told by the Victims Themselves, 1886; see Abanes, One Nation Under Gods, p. 295
“God will be very cruel if he does not give us poor women adequate compensation for the trials we have endured in polygamy.”
- Mary Ann Angell Young, quoted in Anti-Polygamy Standard, August 1882, p. 36
“O, if my husband could only love me even a little and not seem to be perfectly indifferent to any sensation of that kind.... O my poor aching heart when shall it rest its burden only on the Lord.” - Emmeline B. Wells, diary date of September 30, 1874, quoted in Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, p. 94
“It is the very refinement of cruelty, this polygamy, and it hurts are deeper and more poisonous than any other wounds can be. They never heal, but grow constantly more painful, until it makes life unendurable.” - Ann Eliza Young, letter to Mormon Women, “Letter Number Two,” in Froiseth, ed. The Women of Mormonism, pp. 169-170
Fundamental bad fruit of mormonism.
HBO also feature Bill Maher. The minds that control the programming there were scraped from the sewer.
Real Conservative women are reputed to be good shots with a wide variety of firearms of suitible caliber. No reason to think otherwise of Conservative LDS women.
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You would think so, but when I was LDS, and esp when I lived in Utah I was the only woman I knew who shot. I am assuming there were others, but I was always the only female on hunting trips. The women stayed home and canned and I never saw another woman at the range.
And, even know among my LDS friends, I know only one woman who has ever fired a gun and she she hasn’t done that in about 10 years now.
Never thought about that until you mentioned it.
” Van Wagoner recounts the tale of one husband who abandoned plans to take a plural wife after his wife informed him that she had received a revelation from God directing her to shoot any spare wife who darkened the family doorstep.”
Hmmm. How did he end up married to my wife . . . ?
Many men died. In fact, especially years past men tended to die prematurely more often and on average were outlived by their wives considerably.
Today and in more recent history this has been abused by some wacky sects and distorted in what it was really about by the rest of America.
What some make into a sexual agenda today, was nothing more than a way of dealing with women without men, children without fathers in a time before big government and social programs. Throughout history, even within Europe, there were times and places where similar behavior occurred for similar reason, but that too is forgotten.
But hey, if you like the “porno version” better because that makes you feel good and maybe even bash some political candidate you don't see as your number one choice, more power to ya. Truth is irrelevant, it's all about feelings and perceptions of reality, "your version of the truth." Isn't it time for a good Mormon undergarment joke? Now, a black or Jew joke would be wrong, but a Moron joke is always OK in open minded America.
Mark Twain once quipped that after seeing these lovely Mormon wives, that any man who married more than one deserved a high place in heaven. Better than being a spinster in those days.
IF you really want to know about the problems of polygamy, read the Old Testament. I worked in tribal Africa, and we saw many of the same problems among our people.
Hagar...Leah...Michal...yeah, lots of sad wives who didn’t have their husband’s love...
Of course, in the US, we have “serial polygamy” with easy divorce and, of course, “living together” where the woman has to do all the work of a wife while getting no financial guarantees for her or her children.
Agreed. (Except the ONLY one who ever referenced Hagar as a "wife" was Sarai/Sarah...Even after Hagar had slept with Abram/Abramham -- and we don't know how often that occurred -- they all still referenced her as a servant of Sarai...Abram did...the Angel of the Lord did...Hagar herself did...Moses did...and the apostle Paul did in Galatians 4)
Of course, in the US, we have “serial polygamy” with easy divorce and, of course, “living together” where the woman has to do all the work of a wife while getting no financial guarantees for her or her children.
Yes.
Mark Twain once quipped that after seeing these lovely Mormon wives, that any man who married more than one deserved a high place in heaven. Better than being a spinster in those days.
Most cases, tho, in Utah in the 19th century is that there weren't enough women to go around. Just sayin' for those who get the idea that most of these marriages were "spinster" related. (They weren't)
I have an original copy of this book, copywrite 1874
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