"In January, 1903, the Utah Legislature chose Mormon Apostle Reed Smoot to be the State's new Senator. The result was a nation wide protest, mainly organized through Protestant churches, against his seating in the U.S. Senate. The main accusations were that Mormons continued to practice polygamy cladestinely, despite the 1890 Manifesto, and that the Mormon Church continued to dominate political and business affairs in Utah and the Intermountain West.
Smoot's election to the Senate was seen as part of a Mormon conspiracy to pollute the national councils with their theocratic influence. Eventually a massive petition was presented to the U.S. Senate, which began what became a multi-year investigation into Mormon and Utah affairs. In the end Smoot retained his seat, and the investigative committee produced four massive volumes of hearing transcripts, which are one of our richest sources on Mormonism at the turn of the century. The transcripts in their entirety are available below in PDF format. These files are text searchable using Adobe Acrobat. Enjoy!"
I was actually referencing Brigham H. Roberts, who was elected to Congress in 1898. The petition was in regard to him. Smoot was a monogamist & actually pressured the Mormons to crack down on the polygamists (because of the pressure he was getting in D.C.). Roberts was a polygamist who had been arrested for having two wives in 1886. Despite that, and despite the "Manifesto" of the Mormon church in 1890, Roberts took yet a third wife in 1894 and was overhwelmingly elected to Congress in 1898.
(So the next time somebody pulls out the 1890 "Manifesto" as some supposed "move" against polygamy, remind them of their 1898 polygamy endorsement via their Roberts vote...It was, though, the Smoot hearings that led Joseph F. Smith to issue "Manifesto II" on polygamy in 1904, which historians regard as more of a "true date" in which the LDS turned against polygamy.