Excerpts -- As a Thief in the Night



	"As a Thief in the Night" The Mormon Quest for Millennial Deliverance

Contents
CHAPTER ONE. Introduction / 1	CHAPTER SEVEN. Mormons versus the United States: The Utah War and Civil War Periods / 149
CHAPTER TWO. American Millennialism / 13	CHAPTER EIGHT. Millennialism and the Anti-Polygamy Campaign / 179
CHAPTER THREE. Modern Revelation: Origins of a Separatist Theology / 33	CHAPTER NINE. The Decline of Millennialism / 213
CHAPTER FOUR. Early Mormon Millennialism / 65	CHAPTER TEN. Conclusion / 223
CHAPTER FIVE. The Gathering: Separatism Shapes a Society / 93	Bibliography / 231

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION

In 1952 Ira Brown lamented America's millennial past as being "among the most neglected ... themes in the history of American thought."1 Over the past forty years religious, social, and intellectual historians of the American experience have moved to rectify this omission and an explosion of new scholarship has developed a depth of millennial historiography.2 Commenting on this phenomenon, James Moorhead contends scholars now find millennialism everywhere and it has "proven to be one of the most fertile areas of investigation in American religious history."3 Leonard Sweet declares: "[T]he word millennialism has become almost synonymous in recent years with American religious history."4 This outpouring of new knowledge has coincided with an equal intensity of scholarship regarding Mormonism.5 Yet the combining of these two elements remains in its infancy, and Mormon millennial historian Grant Underwood has asserted the meaning and force of millennialism in Mormon thought "is just beginning to be plumbed."6

For many religious historians of this period, Mormon millennialism has been difficult to classify. Ernest Tuveson admitted that he had trouble categorizing Mormon eschatology. Although he contends they "maintain a millenarian doctrine" (premillennialists), he later argues "they certainly do not think that the course of history is one of increasing decline, which can only be ended by the personal intervention of the Lord."7 Gordon Wood concurs that Mormon belief regarding the Second Coming "cannot be easily fit into any single pattern of millennialism."8 John F. C. Harrison identifies Mormonism as a unique form of millenarianism emphasizing "Zion was to be built in the American West, and that in the near future."9

In placing Mormon eschatology within the greater context of nineteenth-century American millennialism, the historiography of Mormonism has focused primarily on the pre-1850 period or has stressed that millennialism was but part of the continuity of Mormon thought from the early days to the present.10 This study approaches Mormon millennialism from the point of view of its separatist tendencies, a perspective initiated with Joseph Smith's first religious experience and which continued to the end of the nineteenth century.11

Since the LDS church's organization in 1830, Mormons and other members of American society have experienced varying levels of contention. The backlash of Mormon-non-Mormon friction initially led the Latter-day Saints to move from New York, seeking refuge by "gathering" in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1831, then in Jackson County, Missouri. This trek was initiated by prophetic revelation and a belief that a righteous people should be gathered at the city of "Zion" to receive Jesus Christ at his coming. The Saints eventually fled both locales to settle in Far West, Missouri. Driven out of Missouri in 1838-39 by Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs's well-known Extermination Order, they crossed the Mississippi to found the city of Nauvoo, Illinois.12

Motivated by their experience in Ohio and Missouri, and their lack of political power in each location, the Mormons in Nauvoo established a virtual independent city-state.13 Within its charter Nauvoo was granted a municipal court with the power to issue writs of habeas corpus and the authority to create its own military establishment, the Nauvoo Legion. Mormon interpretation of Nauvoo's charter and the new-found Mormon sense of political power further alienated non-Mormons who viewed the Mormon stronghold as a bastion of lawlessness and the Nauvoo Legion as a potential armed aggressor.14 The murders of the prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844 precipitated the Mormons' expulsion from Illinois and United States territory, initiating their migration to the Great Basin.

The contentious relationship between the Mormon church and American society continued in the West. Although much of the conflict may be viewed as resentment by non-Mormons in Utah toward the church's theocratic control of Utah Territory, the main impetus for opposition was the practice of plural marriage or polygamy.15 All of this culminated in the anti-polygamy campaign. Resisting the federal government's outlawing of both polygamy and cohabitation, and considering polygamy a vital tenet of their faith, church leaders refused to succumb to the pressure to assimilate into mainstream America.

Mormons viewed the federal anti-polygamy campaign as a "last-days" persecution leading to the anticipated Millennium, and the Saints, under the leadership of church president John Taylor, sought to evade assimilation. In a final attempt to preserve the institution of polygamy, Taylor's separatist strategy included church leaders going "underground," authorizing establishment of a polygamist bastion in Mexico outside the United States, and initiating a potential polygamous retreat in Canada. But the national government's anti-polygamy campaign proved successful, ending with Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff's 1890 Manifesto admonishing church members to obey the law of the land.

Geogre Q. Cannon, Francis M. Lyman

First Presidency counselor George Q. Cannon (center) and other polygamists, including Apostle Francis M. Lyman (second from right), incarcerated in 1889 for their plural unions. (Courtesy Utah State Historical Society; used by permission; all rights reserved.)

The attempt to maintain the institution of polygamy in the face of U.S. government pressure followed earlier Mormon separatist actions and was based on the Mormon millennial world view. Over its first sixty-year history, much of the LDS-gentile conflict was influenced by expectation that the Second Coming was imminent, an event that would transform the earth and deliver the Mormons from their enemies. The short-term nature of their millennial anticipation, particularly during the Ohio-Missouri- Illinois period, kept an us-versus-them mentality in the forefront of their consciousness. But Mormonism was repeatedly forced to accept a delay of the promised "winding-up scene." In the 1830s Zion (in Missouri) went unredeemed, and the 1840s saw Joseph Smith murdered and the Saints expelled from Illinois. The 1850s-1860s witnessed the proposed State of Deseret become Utah Territory under U.S. government control rather than the desired Mormon theocracy. And then the "official" abandonment of polygamy in the 1890s "turned out to be a prologue to modern Mormonism" rather than the Saints' apocalyptic triumph.16

Despite its claim to Americanism, Mormonism was "consistently seen as un- and anti-American."17 Political solidarity, block voting, and economic communitarianism offended Jacksonian republicanism. Joseph Smith's desire to establish a political kingdom, including his candidacy for the U.S. presidency, demonstrated to outsiders that Mormons were not "Americans" in the true definition of the term.18 Polygamy, first made public in Utah, further offended non-Mormons and resulted in a new round of Mormon-American confrontation. Unwilling to live with and among "gentiles," Mormons were convinced that only in maintaining their separateness from pluralistic America could they prepare a people for the coming of the Lord. As such, conflict persisted between some aspect of American society and the Mormons for over fifty years.19

The nineteenth century ended with the Mormon church forced to conform with American values. In viewing this transformation, Klaus Hansen contends that Mormons initially were dissenters who by the twentieth century had become "active and approving participants in modern America."20 Anthropologist Mark Leone asserts Mormon church accommodation replicates social reality and change "creating and recreating Mormonism."21 Yet in examining this adaptation process much of the intensity of early Mormon millennialism has been neglected. Nathan Hatch contends the tendency to overlook this aspect of early Mormonism is due to modern elitist frameworks based on current value systems. "We are scandalized by the reality that most popular religion is vulgar religion," and certainly primitive Mormonism remained "radical, apocalyptic, absolutist, [and] extreme."22

Focusing on millennialism as the impetus for Mormon separatist behavior, this study examines the near unanimity of Mormon belief in the establishment of God's separate kingdom on earth, with his righteous servants awaiting deliverance from their enemies at Christ's return. This Mormon millennial world view, with its goal of separating the Saints from non-Mormon Babylon, continued until the church's capitulation near the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Mormon view of history, like that of ancient Hebrews, is teleological, linear, proceeding in a straight line toward a predetermined, divinely intended culmination (the coming of the Messiah).23 Yet an historical study of the Latter-day Saints entails unique challenges. In examining Mormonism within the context of nineteenth-century American religious experience, Jan Shipps argues Mormonism's differences with mainstream Christianity are so profound it must be classified as a new religious tradition like Islam or Christianity.24 Sydney Ahlstrom demonstrates his difficulty in categorizing Mormonism when declaring, "One cannot even be sure if the object of our consideration is a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these."25

Additionally, Mormon belief in modern revelation amplifies the problem, particularly in determining the tenacity and permanence of theological tenets. Ascertaining what is revelation or scripture complicates the process. One must unravel and decipher both ancient and modern scripture, oracles from the church hierarchy, private revelation (including personal inspiration and patriarchal blessings), non-canonized scripture, temporary (and sometimes changing) scripture, and other revelatory forms of the Mormon religious creed.26

Historians faced with the task of dealing with studies focusing on religion must also confront methodological ramifications. Recent discussion of the objectivity question has left many believing that any quest for objectivity is futile. Eugen Weber has declared that "all that the historian may hope to do is to record a passing point of view as honestly and as thoughtfully as he knows how."27 While accepting the notion that absolute objectivity is impossible, a position may be argued that somewhere between the great divide of absolute objectivity and inevitable subjectivity falls the realm of appropriate scholarly pursuit. What an historian must attempt to do when confronting religious history is to perform the task, to the fullest degree possible, of understanding and explaining the forces which give rise to the thoughts and actions of the players within the historic drama.28 And although religious history is a process that must appeal to factors that are subject to public inspection and scrutiny, this does not precluded "the possibility that the projected meanings may have an ultimate status independent of man."29

Yet in examining evidence and motivation how must religious experience be evaluated? Philip Barlow asks: "Should scripture and religion be viewed from the perspective of culture, or should culture be viewed through the lens of scripture and religious faith?"30 If God exists, and, acting through men and women, influences historical circumstances and outcomes, mere mortals still must interpret such divine intervention through the lens of human experience. Whether or not one believes, or whether or not revelations and spiritual manifestations are authentic, their interpretations still must be analyzed and examined in terms of cultural and environmental forces.31 Kenelm Burridge describes the dilemma: "If we are confronted with evidence of a divine revelation, we cannot declare it irrelevant or irrational or fantasy or wishful thinking. We must take it seriously and try to account for what actually occurs. Even if our own private assumptions do not admit of such a thing as divine revelation, we must admit that for others it does exist."32

Historians of the Mormon experience have acknowledged and attempted to breach the objectivity divide in a variety of ways.33 The methodology used in this study approaches the search for historical understanding of sacred causes and consequences by relating "events as participants experienced them."34 Insofar as religious experiences and revelations were authentic to those who acted on those beliefs, they will be treated as such in the discussion that follows, since a good-faith attempt to relay to the modern observer the motivation and perceived reality of these historical actors is always a worthwhile endeavor.

Weighing these sometimes conflicting elements, this study aspires to evaluate critically the importance early Mormon millennial enthusiasm played in nineteenth-century Mormon history. Hopefully, the result will share William McNeill's vision of what historians can achieve when they "bend their minds as critically and carefully as they can to the task of making their account of public affairs credible as well as intelligible to an audience that shares enough of their particular outlook and assumptions to accept what they say."35

Approaching Mormon history within a framework of millennial aspirations, the present analysis argues that for their first sixty-year history the Latter-day Saints were apocalyptic premillennialists—but with a difference. From this difference emerged a new religious group embracing modern scripture and revering modern prophets who received divine communication, a people commissioned to build a literal kingdom of God on the American continent to prepare for the imminent return of the promised Messiah. Their millennial passage, ambiguous, evolving, always waiting, anticipating, and eventually capitulating to the dominant American society, is the essence of this study.

Notes

1. Ira V. Brown, "Watchers for the Second Coming: The Millenarian Tradition in America," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39 (Dec. 1952): 441.
2. See David E. Smith, "Millenarian Scholarship in America," American Quarterly 17 (Fall 1965): 535-49; Hillel Schwartz, "The End of the Beginning: Millenarian Studies, 1967-1975," Religious Studies Review 2 (July 1976): 1-15; Leonard I. Sweet, "Millennialism in America: Recent Studies," Theological Studies 40 (Sept. 1979): 510-31; Dietrich G. Buss, "Meeting of Heaven and Earth: A Survey and Analysis of the Literature on Millennialism in America, 1965-1985," Fides et Historia 20 (Jan. 1988): 5-28.
3. James H. Moorhead, "Searching for the Millennium in America," Princeton Seminary Bulletin 8 (1987): 17.
4. Leonard I. Sweet, "The Evangelical Tradition in America," in The Evangelical Tradition in America, ed. Leonard I. Sweet (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1984), 23.
5. A starting point is the 62-page bibliography in James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), 639-700.
6. Grant Underwood, "Seminal Versus Sesquicentennial Saints: A Look at Mormon Millennialism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 14 (Spring 1981): 41.
7. Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 34n11, 175-76.
8. Gordon S. Wood, "Evangelical America and Early Mormonism," New York History 61 (Oct. 1980): 385.
9. J[ohn] F. C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism 1780-1850 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 176-92, 181.
10. Works emphasizing the importance of early Mormon millennialism include Marvin S. Hill, "The Role of Christian Primitivism in the Origin and Development of the Mormon Kingdom, 1830-1844," Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1968; Hill, Quest For Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989); Hill, "Quest for Refuge: An Hypothesis as to the Social Origins and Nature of the Mormon Political Kingdom," Journal of Mormon History 2 (1975): 3-20; Hill, "The Shaping of the Mormon Mind in New England and New York," Brigham Young University Studies 9 (Spring 1969): 351-72; and Gordon D. Pollock, In Search of Security: The Mormons and the Kingdom of God on Earth, 1830-1844 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989). Grant Underwood's studies, centering primarily on early Mormon millennialism, are found in his "Early Mormon Millennialism: Another Look," M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1981; Underwood, "Seminal Versus Sesquicentennial Saints"; Underwood, "Millenarianism and the Early Mormon Mind," Journal of Mormon History 9 (1982): 41-51; Underwood, "Early Mormon Millennialism: Another Look," Church History (June 1985): 215-29; Underwood, "Re-Visioning Mormon History," Pacific Historical Review 55 (Aug. 1986): 403-26; Underwood, "Apocalyptic Adversaries: Mormonism Meets Millerism," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 7 (1987): 53-61; Underwood, "The Religious Milieu of English Mormonism," in Mormons in Early Victorian Britain, eds. Richard L. Jensen and Malcolm R. Thorp (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), 31-48; Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 1993. A noted exception is Louis G. Reinwand's study of Mormon millennialism in Utah in the nineteenth century and, to a lesser extent, emphasized millennialism as one of many important doctrines to the early Saints. See Reinwand, "An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism During the Nineteenth Century with Emphasis on Millennial Developments in Utah," M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1971. Klaus J. Hansen ties Mormon millennialism to the Mormon Council of Fifty and sees the decline of millennialism as synonymous with the decline of the idea of the political kingdom of God. See Hansen, Quest For Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970), 1-23; see also Hansen, "The Metamorphosis of the Kingdom of God: Toward A Reinterpretation of Mormon History," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1 (Autumn 1966): 63-83; Hansen, "Mormonism and American Culture: Some Tentative Hypotheses," in The Restoration Movement: Essays in Mormon History, rev. ed., eds. F. Mark McKiernan, Alma R. Blair, and Paul M. Edwards (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1992), 1-25; and Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
11. Thomas G. Alexander concedes that up until 1890 premillennialism and the imminence of the prophesied apocalypse played a central role in Mormon thought. Nevertheless he contends that emphasis must be placed, particularly during Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff's administration, on shifting the church's organizational focus from millennialism to temples and salvation of the dead as the means of preparing for Christ's return to establish his kingdom on earth. See Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Changing Nature of Mormon Religious Experience," Church History 45 (Mar. 1976): 69; see also Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 1-15; Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991); Alexander, "`To Maintain Harmony': Adjusting to External and Internal Stress, 1890-1930," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 (Winter 1982): 44-58; and Alexander, "The Odyssey of a Latter-day Prophet: Wilford Woodruff and the Manifesto of 1890," Journal of Mormon History 17 (1991): 169-206.
12. Richard Lloyd Anderson, "Atchison's Letters and the Causes of Mormon Expulsion from Missouri," Brigham Young University Studies 26 (Summer 1986): 3-47; Stephen C. LeSueur, The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987); Leland H. Gentry, "A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri from 1836-1839," Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1965.
13. Robert Flanders, Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965), 104; James L. Kimball, Jr., "The Nauvoo Charter: A Reinterpretation," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 64 (Spring 1971): 66-78; James L. Kimball, Jr., "A Wall to Defend Zion: The Nauvoo Charter," Brigham Young University Studies 15 (Summer 1975): 499- 526.
14. Kenneth H. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 162.
15. Works advocating political domination factors for Mormon- non-Mormon conflict include Gustive O. Larson, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1971), viii; and Hansen, Quest For Empire, 171. Works whose position supports the primacy of polygamy as the catalyst for conflict include Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 2; B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 58-59; and Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth, xiii.
16. Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 148. See also Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 70.
17. Martin E. Marty, foreword to Klaus J. Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), xiii.
18. Winn, Exiles in a Land of Liberty, 203-207.
19. Larry M. Logue, A Sermon in the Desert: Belief and Behavior in Early St. George, Utah (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 1.
20. Hansen, Mormonism and the American Experience, xvi. See also Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible: The Place of the Latter-day Saints in American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), viii.
21. Mark P. Leone, Roots of Modern Mormonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), 192-93.
22. Nathan O. Hatch, "Mormon and Methodist: Popular Religion in the Crucible of the Free Market," Journal of Mormon History 20 (Spring 1994): 39, 38.
23. Allan J. Lichtman and Valeri French, Historians and the Living Past (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1978), 86- 87; Roger D. Launius, "Mormon Memory, Mormon Myth, and Mormon History," Journal of Mormon History 21 (Spring 1995): 12.
24. Jan Shipps, Mormonism, 85. See also Bloom, The American Religion, 81-83, 87-89, 96.
25. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 508.
26. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, x.
27. Eugen Weber, A Modern History of Europe (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1971), 1125 (emphasis mine). For a discussion of the abandonment of objectivity, see Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 522-629.
28. John G. Gager, "Early Mormonism and Early Christianity: Some Parallels and Their Consequences for the Study of New Religions," Journal of Mormon History 9 (1982): 55.
29. Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1967), 181.
30. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible, xviii.
31. Ibid., xvii-xviii. See also Mircea Eliade, "The Sacred in the Secular World," Cultural Hermeneutics 1 (1973): 101-13.
32. Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), 117-18.
33. Marvin S. Hill, "Positivism or Subjectivism? Some Reflections on a Mormon Historical Dilemma," Journal of Mormon History 20 (Spring 1994): 21.
34. See Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 3. Bushman's approach to Mormon history, which attempts to reconstruct the past from Joseph Smith and his followers' perspective and world view, is criticized by Nathan Hatch as "one-dimensional scholarship." See Hatch, "Mormon and Methodist," 36-37.
35. William H. McNeill, Mythhistory and Other Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19.

* * * * *

CHAPTER EIGHT
MILLENNIALISM AND THE
ANTI-POLYGAMY CAMPAIGN

At a special conference in August 1852 the Mormon church formally announced its practice of plural marriage. The general reaction from Americans was indignation and repugnancy. That same year Harriet Beecher Stowe also published Uncle Tom's Cabin. The timing emotionally linked the tyranny of slavery to polygamy, a tie that continued throughout the 1850s. Depicting Mormon polygamists as slave holders, abolitionists and reformers carried the image of slave masters over to polygamist husbands.1 In 1855 and 1856 alone, four anti-Mormon novels were published all using the theme of strong women fighting against cowardly, depraved men.2

As part of the pre-Civil War debate, Mormon polygamy became entangled with slavery and the associated questions of territorial and states' rights that linked Mormons and the South in a common cause.3 With a direct attack in the 1856 Republican platform, national attention was drawn to ridding the nation of the "twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy, and Slavery."4 As such, polygamy became a pawn in the much larger game of sectional politics as individuals and states determined their allegiance on the controversial issue of what authority Congress could exercise and maintain over U.S. territories. 5 Southerners knew "if we can render polygamy criminal, it may be claimed that we can also render criminal that other `twin relic of barbarism,' slavery."6

During the twenty years from 1871 to 1891, every U.S. president from Ulysses S. Grant to Benjamin Harrison specifically focused on Utah in Congressional addresses,7 identifing polygamy as "a remnant of barbarism, repugnant to civilization" and declaring "the Mormon Church ... offends the moral sense of manhood by sanctioning polygamy."8 In his 1884 annual message, Chester A. Arthur recommended that "Congress assume absolute political control of the Territory of Utah."9 Noting that "the Mormons have given their allegiance to a theocracy," the New York Times portrayed church leaders and followers both as scheming, disloyal citizens.10

In Utah persecution was a major theme of general conference addresses from 1860 to 1890.11 Oppression was part of the Plan of Salvation, a refiner's fire to purify the people of God.12 Oppression also meant the Millennium was near and the Saints were then living in the final stage of history prior to the earth's destruction. That American citizens had turned a deaf ear to their pleas confirmed that the end was in sight: the harsher the persecution, the nearer the Millennium.13

Mormon writing and preaching was filled with concern for "last things."14 "Calamities were thickening in the world," wrote Charles Walker, the earth's mortal age of six thousand years was nearly over.15 Many of those then alive were told they would be "quickened," in anticipation of the Parousia, that they would never taste death and would see the dead come forth from their graves and the lost tribes of Israel return from the north.16

Congress focused on polygamy in 1862 by passing the Morrill Act to outlaw bigamy.17 During the congressional debate of the 1860s, many congressmen maintained polygamy "went beyond what was tolerable in America."18 But problems inherent in enforcing the Morrill Act became readily apparent. Since marriage records were not required to be kept in Utah or many other U.S. territories until 1887, proof of multiple marriages demanded under the law was next to impossible to obtain.19

Subsiding somewhat during the immediate post-Civil War years, the attack on polygamy once renewed became a major engine for Mormon millennialism. Mormons believed the contest over polygamy represented a "holy war," and defense of the theological tenet re-energized LDS millennial hope.20 As early as 1860 even non-Mormons had become familiar with the Saints' assertion that Christ would return prior to the turn of the century.21

In their redemptive hope, the Saints revisited earlier millennial prophecies, specifically Joseph Smith's identification of 1891 as the year Christ would return to redeem his people.22 In 1875 Andrew J. Allen reported that elders were preaching that the Savior would come to earth "soon not more than sixteen years according to the revelations Joseph Smith had received."23 In his 1875 diary Oliver Huntington also recalled Smith's prophecy that "God had revealed to him that the coming of Christ would be within 56 years, which being added to 1835 shows that before 1891 and the 14th of Feb. the Savior of the world would make his appearance again upon the earth and the winding up scene take place."24

This revival of Mormon millennialism coincided with an official endorsement of Joseph Smith's prophetic timetable. In 1876 the church published a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants which divided the revelations into numbered verses and added twenty-six new sections. This included the Joseph Smith millennial prophecy, thus canonizing it as scripture.25 Sold in October 1876 as the first edition published in the United States since the 1846 Nauvoo edition, these revised scriptures offered renewed hope that the Lord would soon appear to aid the Saints in their struggle with the gentiles. Testifying to Smith's prophetic calling, senior church official John Taylor left no doubt that the Saints interpreted literally prophecies uttered from the lips of modern-day prophets: "all that he [God] has said ... through ancient prophets and through Joseph Smith are true, and as sure as God lives they will take place. I will prophecy that they will take place as sure as God lives, and they are approaching very rapidly upon us."26 Reaffirming their faith in modern revelation, George Q. Cannon told the Saints that step by step all of Joseph Smith's prophecies were coming to fruition "just as sure as [if] God [had] spoken it."27

Throughout the late 1870s millennialism remained a theme.28 While attending a conference in Kanab, Utah, L. John Nuttall recorded that Bishop Sixtus E. Johnson retold the account of the Joseph Smith prophecy. Johnson emphasized that if Smith would have lived to be eighty-five, he would have seen the Savior. Johnson "urged the Saints to prepare for the judgements of the Almighty upon the wicked Nations."29 Tying imminence of the Millennium to the Saints' return to Missouri and the eventual redemption of Zion, Apostle Lorenzo Snow predicted in 1878 that

the time is speedily coming—we do not want to talk very much though about going to Jackson County, Missouri. ... We are not going tomorrow, nor next day, this week or next week; but we are going, and there are many hundreds and hundreds within the sound of my voice that will live to go back to Jackson County and build a holy temple to the Lord our God.30

An increase in Mormon millennial expectation appeared in 1879 in response to the Supreme Court decision in the George Reynolds polygamy case.31 Reynolds, a secretary to Brigham Young and a prominent polygamist, allowed himself to be used as a test case to challenge the government's anti-polygamy statutes. Initially convicted in 1875 of bigamy under the Morrill Act, Reynolds's case was appealed to the Utah Supreme Court which, in 1876, upheld the lower court's decision. Eventually appealed to the nation's highest tribunal, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Reynolds's conviction as a legitimate means of prohibiting a practice which threatened the well-being of American social values.32 Labeling marriage a "sacred obligation," Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite identified polygamy as an evil "which strikes at the foundation of American society." Classified as social corruption, Mormon polygamous behavior fell outside the freedom of religion protection of the First Amendment.33

Admitting no illegality, the church hierarchy continued to defend plural marriage as constitutionally protected.34 The anti-polygamy campaign confirmed the opinion that state officials were indeed their "enemies."35 From the pulpit church leaders denounced the Reynolds decision as an invasion of their right to religious freedom, and prophesied that the wrath of God would fall upon the government officials responsible for the Saints' persecution.36 In March 1879 Apostle Orson Pratt rhetorically asked, "What about the American nation. That [Civil] war ... was nothing, compared to that which will eventually devastate that country. The time is not very far distant in the future, when the Lord God will lay his hand heavily upon that nation [America]."37 Apostle Moses Thatcher surmised there was now more freedom in Great Britain than in the United States.38

The Saints took the remarks of their leaders to heart. After the Supreme Court decision in the Reynolds case, Thomas W. Whitaker confessed in his journal that "The Lord has told us we must obey the law of polygamy and the United States Government say we shall not." Believing the world was fast preparing itself for destruction, he predicted the 1880s would be the "most destructive period of the world's history."39 Whitaker was not alone. Following the decision a Millennial Star editorial titled "The Coming of the Messiah" reiterated Joseph Smith's 1835 prophecy that "fifty-six years should wind up the scene," concluding "this would take us to the year 1891." The article also recounted Smith's second prophecy of seeing the face of the Son of Man should he live to be eighty-five, ascertaining that this "would be in 1890, or on the verge of 1891." Although cautiously reminding readers that Smith gave no specific date, the editorial emphasized that "it is evident that one of the most stupendous occurences, relating to the history of this planet, is approaching," and that is "the coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world."40

Many church leaders and members were convinced that the end of the world was near.41 In May 1879 Charles Walker recorded that Joseph Smith's contemporary, one O. M. Allen, professed he heard "the prophet Joseph say that those who lived until the year 1881 would see the judgments go forth on the wicked that would make their soul sicken to see and hear of them."42 That same month Apostle Charles W. Penrose warned the Saints that "the times in which we live ... are just preceding the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory."43 In June 1879 Apostle Wilford Woodruff blatantly told the Saints in northern Arizona, "There will be no United States in the Year 1890."44

Providing additional encouragement of the Saints' millennial hope, in 1879-1880 the church published a new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants, edited by Apostle Orson Pratt and containing footnotes and references for the first time. Canonized at October 1880 general conference, it officially endorsed lay member millennial expectation.45 Pratt's footnotes for Section 130 highlighted Joseph Smith's 85-year millennial prophecy, adding in the commentary section confirmation of the fateful time frame "near the end of the year 1890." Pratt also cross-referenced the revelation to "See prophecy of Joseph, uttered 14 March 1835 ... `Even 56 years should wind up the scene.'"46 To many there was no doubt the Son of Man would make his appearance in 1890-91.47

In both public and private remarks church leaders and rank-and-file made clear that intensified persecutions during the 1880s fulfilled the prophesied turbulence prior to a coming apocalypse.48 Wilford Woodruff in particular believed in the imminence of the cataclysmic end of the world, and his millennial hope developed in conjunction with the increased threat to the Saints. Woodruff's journal records his thoughts during the 1880s, and year after year his conviction that the Millennium was imminent intensified.49

Woodruff's ominous expectations were exemplified by his so-called "Wilderness Revelation" received in January 1880. Its theme was the impending apocalypse, the judgements of God upon the nation, and the Second Coming of Christ.50 In Woodruff's revelation, the Lord proclaimed:

The nation is ripened in iniquity ... and I will not stay my hand in judgement upon this nation or the nations of the earth. ... The blood of my servants Joseph and Hyrum ... cries from the ground for vengeance upon the nation which has shed their blood. But their blood shall speedily be avenged and shall cease to cry unto me, for the hour of God's judgement is fully come and shall be poured out without measure upon the wicked. ... prepare ye for the coming of the Son of man, which is nigh at the door. No man knoweth the day nor the hour; but the signs of both heaven and earth indicate His coming, as promised by the mouths of my disciples. The fig trees are leaving and the hour is nigh.51

Upon returning to Salt Lake City, Woodruff presented the revelation from the church hierarchy who accepted it as "the word of the Lord." Then, with the presiding authorities of the church gathered in a prayer circle, senior apostle John Taylor, kneeling at the altar and offering prayer for the group, legitimized the church's condemnation of the United States and the current generation. Woodruff's revelation from the Lord symbolized the leaders' solidarity.52

Not all general authorities struck an apocalyptic note in their sermons, but Woodruff continued to warn church members of the approaching "hour." At an 1881 conference in Manti he promised "that thousands of the children of the latter day saints would not die but would live to see the Saviour come."53 The same year at St. George, Utah, Woodruff told the Saints "the coming of the Son of Man was nigh, even at the doors, and that there were thousands living in [the] mountains at [that] time that would see the son of God come and many would not taste death."54 These pronouncements confirmed members' ongoing gospel discussions, many publicly quoting Joseph Smith "that 56 years should wind up the scene and the Savior should come to his people. It being then Feb. 14th, 1835."55

In 1882 an amendment to the Morrill Act, sponsored by Vermont Republican senator George F. Edmunds and later termed the Edmunds Act, provided the practical means of prosecuting polygamists who had eluded arrest under earlier legislation. The federal government's power stemmed from the creation of the new offense of cohabitation where no proof of marriage was required, and where any contact between a suspected man and a potential polygamous wife was seen as sufficient evidence for a conviction.56

The precarious position of the church hierarchy was brought to the forefront by the conviction of Salt Lake City church leader Angus M. Cannon. Cannon was convicted in a far-reaching decision that placed a minimal burden on the prosecution. In the case cohabitation was now defined as providing temporal support, such as food and shelter, for more than one woman on a regular basis.57 In specifying what constituted cohabitation, the courts interpreted the Edmunds Act to criminalize the appearance of polygamous marriage. The impetus for conviction under cohabitation as stated by the court was "not only to punish bigamy and polygamy when direct proof of the existence of those relations can be made, but to prevent a man from flaunting in the face of the world the ostentation and opportunities of a bigamous household."58

Most church leaders were polygamists, with the controversial practice stretching far down into the ranks of local leadership where most stake presidents, bishops, and counselors also lived this "celestial law." Now forced into hiding by the Edmunds Act during the period known as "the Raid," the lives of leaders and members alike underwent tremendous disruption. Men abandoned their farms and businesses, and plural wives with children went into hiding or moved continually on the "Underground" to avoid testifying against husbands and fathers.59

The Saints viewed the new legislation as a direct assault not only on polygamy but on Mormonism, designed to "destroy our rights as citizens, to take away from us our liberties under the Constitution and laws, and to obtain the political control of our country."60 Henry Eyring of St. George fumed that the Edmunds Bill placed them "in a state of bondage[,] ... and completely ruled by our enemies."61 With tenacity of faith, the Saints interpreted the anti-polygamy crusade as the determining factor separating the righteous from the wicked, representing a "sign of the times," a prelude to the final act of history. That things had now turned against them fit into their millennial scheme.62

As in earlier eras, with increased persecution came intensified belief in an imminent millennial salvation.63 Church members knew the Lord would intercede as soon as he had sufficiently tried the Saints.64 In 1882 First Presidency member George Q. Cannon warned, "At no period in the history of the children of God in this dispensation have events been of more importance than those which are now taking place in our midst and around us."65 "The Civil War that is past is not the only war that will take place in this land," declared Cannon, who described the Edmunds Bill and the policies of U.S. president Arthur as fulfilling Joseph Smith's prophecies. The drama of the last days were unfolding as God planned.66 Cannon compared the Saints and the United States to the Israelites and Pharaoh, not only cultivating a sense of severe persecution but also of expectant deliverance.67

As the federal government intensified its attack on God's people, the church's newspaper and mouthpiece, the Deseret News, editorialized on the certain fall of the United States. "Because of her acts she must pay the penalty," it was said. "Woe is unto her because of the blood of the Prophets and Saints which has been shed. Woe is unto her because of unjust legislation. Woe is unto her because of striving to enforce it."68 In his last public discourse before going underground, church president John Taylor chastised the nation, declaring, "You will see trouble, trouble, trouble enough in these United Sates. And as I have said before I say today, I tell you in the name of God, Woe! to them that fight against Zion, for God will fight against them."69 "Trouble and anxiety and sorrow and judgement will soon overtake this nation," revealed Taylor, the Lord was about to "take the matter into His own hands" and "vex" the United States.70

It was a scenario that made sense to the troubled Saints, and members concurred in their leaders' assessment of the church's situation. "Alas the approach of the Son of God is at hand," wrote Lorenzo Hatch of Woodruff, Arizona, who described the Edmunds Act as a precursor to the Millennium. Christ's return, he was certain, was imminent.71 Charles Walker's seventies quorum in St. George compared the Saints' afflictions in Missouri and Illinois to the current polygamy persecution, foreshadowing "the great things that would transpire before the winding up scene in 1891."72 Lay members published works demonstrating that the end of the world was at hand.73 Some Saints, compiling prophecies and predictions, especially Smith's statement that "56 years should wind up the scene," even arrived at an exact date for the event, 14 March 1891.74

Throughout the 1880s Mormon millennialism and polygamy cannot be separated. Church leaders continued their attempt to maintain the institution of polygamy by circumventing anti-polygamy laws while awaiting the promised Parousia. Proclaiming that the Saints will not give up "one jot nor tittle" to purchase favor from the United States, John Taylor declared: "I [will] defy the United States [and] obey the will of God."75 To accomplish their aim, in 1885 Taylor and other prominent Mormons, under pursuit as violators of the 1882 Edmunds Act, went "underground," avoiding the law by hiding out in a series of church members' homes, barns, and other sanctuaries.76 That same year the Mormon leadership obtained permission from the Mexican government to establish colonies across the border.77 In September 1886 Taylor commissioned Charles Ora Card to establish a place of refuge for polygamists in Canada as well.78

In the midst of defying the federal government's passing laws "which are clearly unconstitutional," church leaders continued their millennial oration.79 In 1884 and 1885 apostle Erastus Snow told the Saints to look for some important changes in the world in the next five to six years, predicting the persecution of the Saints would continue until the Lord had gathered the grain to himself.80 Wilford Woodruff affirmed that due to the anti-polygamy persecutions the destruction of the United States is "at the door of this generation."81 Woodruff believed the current tribulations were the last great trial of the Saints forcing them to take a stand one way or the other.82 Concluding that the government was "at War" with the Saints, he prophesied God would begin to fight the church's enemies, that the signs of the times pointed to the Second Coming.83 In 1886 Woodruff confided in his journal, "We are in the midst of a national persecution. The United States Government is making war upon the Latter Day Saints... But if the Saints Suffer for their Religion Our Persecutors will Suffer for their sins. Great things await this generation. Behold the signs of the time. Watch for the Coming of the Son of Man."84

As the decade progressed, apocalyptic rhetoric increased.85 In late 1886 Apostle Moses Thatcher told the Saints, "It is my belief that the time of our deliverance will be within five years, the time indicated being February 14, 1891. ... in consequence of the wickedness and corruption of the officers of the nation, the government will pass into the hands of the Saints, and that within five years."86 At the church's October 1888 general conference Apostle Franklin D. Richards proclaimed many children then alive would witness the redemption of Zion and the Second Coming.87 Church leaders may never have named a specific day, but they certainly identified the "generation."

As part of this intense millenarian frame of mind, talk of the return to Missouri revived a "reformation" spirit. Church leaders admonished the Saints to "wake up ... trim our lamps, and be prepared for the coming of the Son of Man."88 Not only had Jackson County, Missouri, been designated by revelation as a land of promise and the location for the New Jerusalem but the Saints had been told they would possess it and raise a temple there before their generation passed.89 After their move west, the Saints' hope of returning to reclaim their "inheritance" in Missouri was preached continually. It was expected, especially during dramatic happenings, that the "present" generation would march back across the plains to establish the center stake of Zion, and church leaders continued "profficing [sic] we will soon go to Jackson County in Missouri."90 Until his death in 1887, John Taylor believed he would die in Jackson County.91

This spiritually electric atmosphere with its millennial anticipation explains other events of the time, illustrated by a heightened interest toward converting the Lamanites. The New Jerusalem in Missouri, as it was seen in the 1830s, was to be located on "the borders by the Lamanites."92 While Mormon attempts to convert Native Americans had never enjoyed dramatic success, it too was looked upon as a necessary step before the Saints could return (3 Ne. 21:23-24).93 These remnants of Joseph, as American Indians were referred to, were expected to assume a primary role, after their conversion, in building the temple near Independence. It was the eleventh hour, the time of the Lamanites had arrived, and startling developments were expected.94 It was also said they would act as a shield and protector to the Saints, scourging the gentiles, and church leaders predicted that within five years (as of 1886) these "Lamanites [would] go forth as a battle ax, in fulfilment of prophecy."95 As the crusade against Mormon polygamy gained momentum, these expectations took on added meaning.96

In 1887 Congress increased political, legislative, and judicial pressure on the church through passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act which dissolved the Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a legal entity. The statute also disfranchised all Utah women, prohibited illegitimate children from inheriting from their fathers, and established the bureaucratic mechanism to escheat to the government all church assets in excess of $50,000 including the Salt Lake City temple block in full.97 The government's anti-polygamy assault on Mormonism's core institution was on the verge of inflicting its final blow.

Anthon H. Lund, John W. Taylor, Matthias F. Cowley

The First Presidency and Council of the Twelve at the end of the nineteenth century (September 1898). Back row, left to right: Anthon H. Lund (1844-1921), John W. Taylor (1858-1916), John Henry Smith (1848-1911), Heber J. Grant (1856-1945), Marriner W. Merrill (1832-1906). Middle row: Brigham Young, Jr. (1836-1903), First Counselor George Q. Cannon (1827-1901), President Lorenzo Snow (1814-1901), Second Counselor Joseph F. Smith (1838-1918), Franklin D. Richards (1821-99). Front row: Matthias F. Cowley (1858-1940), Abraham Owen Woodruff (1872-1904). (Courtesy Utah State Historical Society; used by permission; all rights reserved.)

Yet while appealing the constitutionality of the Edmunds-Tucker Act, in May 1888 at the dedication of the Manti temple Wilford Woodruff, then senior apostle, instructed other apostles that "we are not going to stop the practice of plural marriage until the coming of the Son of man."98 Considered by some as "the prophet of the twelve," Apostle John W. Taylor told members in southern Utah they would live to "see the Savior come."99 As late as November 1889 Woodruff confirmed that "the Lord will never give a revelation to abandon plural marriage," received a new revelation that "the judgements of God, which are to be poured out upon all nations ... are nigh at your doors," promised destruction of the church's opponents, and prophesied the Saints' deliverance from their enemies.100 Woodruff held fast to his belief, asserted over twenty years earlier, that the cities of Albany, Boston, and New York would be destroyed. He then predicted the nation would call upon a future church president to "take the Presidency of the United States to save the Constitution," and that these events would be fulfilled prior to "thirty years hence."101 In his position as church president, Woodruff continued to tell members that "many" living in 1889 would while "in the flesh" see Christ come in clouds of glory.102

As 1890 commenced, events began to whirl out of the church's control. In February gentiles wrestled political control out of Mormon hands in the Salt Lake City municipal elections.103 Later that same month the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Idaho Test Oath decision to disfranchise all Mormons, even non-polygamists.104 On 19 May 1890, in a five-to-four decision, the Supreme Court declared the provisions of the Edmunds-Tucker Act constitutional. The decision allowed for seizure of all church property in excess of $50,000 and redistribution of the funds to finance public non-Mormon schools, leaving open the possibility that the church's temples would be confiscated.105 Then in the summer of 1890 the Cullom-Struble bill, applying the same Idaho test-oath standards to all U.S. territories including Utah, began to move through Congress.106

The year 1890 also saw the culmination of the Native American Ghost Dance movement. This, coinciding with the calamities facing the church, prompted many members to associate the visions of the Messiah declared by Indians with Christ's millennial reign. The Ghost Dance predicted that the Messiah would return in 1890, and the agitation precipitated the infamous Indian massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in December 1890.107

Senior church leaders, including now church president Wilford Woodruff and second counselor in the First Presidency Joseph F. Smith, assigned religious significance to the timing of the Ghost Dance manifestations.108 Smith announced that the heavenly visitors reported by the Indians were "probably one or more of the Three Nephites" from the Book of Mormon whom Christ allowed to remain on the earth until his coming, "disciples who tarried, whose mission was to minister to the remnants of their own race. ... It is in perfect harmony with the order of heaven for ministering spirits or messengers from God or Christ to visit the Lamanites."109 Responding to the Indian messianic rumors in August 1890, Apostle Anthon H. Lund stated at the San Pete Stake conference, "We need not say—`our Lord delayeth his coming!' ... We can be sure it is in the near future, because the Lord told Joseph Smith ... that if he lived to be a certain age, he should see His face, which points to [18]91."110

Never faltering in their millennial hope, church leaders continued to assure one another their deliverance was in sight. On 29 May 1890 president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles Lorenzo Snow prophesied at a meeting of the Twelve: "[Y]ou brethren will live to behold the savior, you shall not die, death shall have no power over you. You have a great work to perform ... Be faithful and you shall never taste death."111 Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., recorded the impact of this prophecy: "His words penetrated to the marrow surely God is with us."112 In August 1890, during a meeting of the Twelve, Snow laid his hands on Abraham H. Cannon's head to give him an apostolic blessing and confirmed that he would "live to see the Savior, [and] the triumph of Zion."113 As late as September 1890, John Morgan, one of the Seven Presidents of the Seventy, reported a widespread belief that "missions would necesarily be short; that the end is very near and the Elders about to be called home."114

Then, for the "Temporal Salvation of the Church," on 24 September 1890 Woodruff issued the Manifesto publicly abandoning polygamy.115 Although the intent of the Manifesto was ambiguous, it seems clear the document was a temporary solution to solve an immediate crisis, deflecting pressure long enough for Utah to gain statehood or for Christ's return, whichever came first.116 Years later Franklin S. Richards, the church's general legal counsel, stated that "the imminent danger of these bill [Cullom-Struble] passing Congress was the immediate cause of the issuance of the Manifesto."117 One church publication boasted that the Manifesto had been given to "subvert the cunning of the devil" and buy time for the Saints, perhaps fulfilling Brigham Young's reported declaration that "we shall pull the wool over the eyes of the American people and make them swallow Mormonism, polygamy and all."118

Having been taught "no principle or Revelation that God ever gave to his people was to be laid on the shelf as a thing of the past," Mormons had believed for half a century that the "celestial law" of plural marriage was crucial to their cosmology.119 Despite official claims that the voting "was unanimous,"120 at least some voted against the Manifesto and perhaps a majority abstained. The church membership was unprepared and shocked by this change.121 When the Manifesto was presented for a sustaining vote in the October 1890 general conference, many supported it only reluctantly, some believing the reversal of the church's stand on polygamy a sure sign that the Millennium was nigh.122 Apostle Moses Thatcher gave private support for the Manifesto at the 30 September to 1 October 1890 meetings of the apostles based on his faith that the Millennium would occur within months.123 No doubt Thatcher and others held fast to Wilford Woodruff's declaration that "we won't quit practising Plural Marriage until Christ shall come."124

In an attempt to reassure the Saints and decrease apocalyptic concern, no fewer than seven church authorities spoke on the Second Coming during the same October 1890 general conference in which the Manifesto was adopted. Some advised the Saints not to expect Christ's advent in 1891.125 Gibson Condie recorded in his journal, "Some of the speakers referred to the year 1891, as a great many of the saints have an Idea that the Lord was to come and reign on earth."126 George Q. Cannon told members that there was "too much agitation" associated with the 1891 prophecy, "no man knoweth the day nor the hour."127

Nevertheless, in cryptic tones other church leaders continued to supply the Saints with millennial hope. During the same conference Apostle Franklin D. Richards merely referred with interest to the millennial prophecy, while Apostle Francis M. Lyman told the Saints to "pray twice a day" to "be prepared for what is to come in 1891."128 Apostle Moses Thatcher warned members to "prepare themselves for 1891" as "the day of calamity is approaching. It is at the doors."129 Perhaps most telling, after the Manifesto's presentation at general conference, Woodruff promised members:

I will say to the Latter-day Saints, as an Elder in Israel and as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are approaching some of the most tremendous judgements God ever poured out upon the world. You watch the signs of the times, the signs of the coming of the Son of Man. They are beginning to be made manifest both in heaven and earth. ... We are approaching these things. All that the Latter-day Saints have to do is to be quiet, careful and wise before the Lord, watch the signs of the times, and be true and faithful; and when you get through you will understand many things that you do not today.130

As the anti-Mormon Salt Lake Tribune reported, the leaders' references to "1891 as an Epoch in Church History," followed by George Q. Cannon's denunciation, merely underscored the intensity of the general membership's millennial expectation.131

As 1891 began, many Saints still anticipated the coming of the Lord. On 1 January 1891 President Wilford Woodruff recorded in his journal: "This is New Years day And the year that has been looked upon by many as one of the most important years of the world."132 Charles Walker reiterated the same sentiment: "Some say and have written that great things are to happen this year ... some even declare that Christ will come and the Millennial Reign inaugurated."133

But by then, politically, the Manifesto had already achieved its desired effect. Three weeks after its issuance, district attorney Charles S. Varian told the First Presidency that he favored reversing anti-polygamy legislation, and soon Congress tabled the Cullom-Struble bill.134 Church leaders privately expressed their belief that congressional anti-polygamy legislation had stalled due to Woodruff's Manifesto.135 In 1891 the tide began to turn as the U.S. Supreme Court decided to allow children born of polygamous marriages to inherit from their fathers' estates.136 Non-Mormon federal appointees Judge Charles S. Zane and Utah territorial governor Arthur L. Thomas endorsed a polygamist amnesty petition which was sent to President Benjamin Harrison in late 1891.137 With relief, church leaders began to feel that the government's hand, "extended to crush us," had been averted. As the year progressed, and the trials and tribulations of the previous year waned, millennial anticipations, and a hoped for divine intervention to save the church from its enemies, diminished. In mid-1892 church leaders asked the Saints to express prayers of gratitude for their deliverance "from the evil which environed [us] and which threatened [our] overthrow," amonishing members to remember how their fate had changed over the past two years.138 The church began to accept the role, although forced upon it, of assimilation into a gentile world.

To preserve the church as an institution, successive church presidents Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith increasingly followed a course of accommodation. The abandonment of plural marriage, economic individualism, and political diversity were increasingly accepted as part of the Mormon way. With the "official" passing of polygamy, and the political goal of statehood, millennialism and the immediacy of a kingdom-saving millennial event declined in importance. Historians have described this transitional period as "creative adjustment," "a new era of cooperation and understanding."139 During these years church leaders came out of hiding, and President Harrison granted amnesty to individuals subject to polygamy-cohabitation laws. Amnesty was further broadened by President Grover Cleveland and polygamists were no longer sent to prison. Between the years 1894 and 1896 church property was returned, thus removing the risk of losing their sacred temples, and finally statehood was granted. These events prepared the church for transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.140

Polygamy, more than any other issue, identified the Saints as a distinctive group apart from the American mainstream. Mormons had struggled against a hostile America and attempted to nullify its laws as best as they could, creating a separate society, all in preparation for Christ's coming kingdom. Since polygamy was illegal, it could only be legally practiced in a separate politically-independent kingdom. Thus the deferral of its public announcement until the Saints were in Utah. For Latter-day Saints, polygamy served as a rallying point, identifying them as a peculiar people, separate from cultural America, and tied them irrevocably to Mormonism. As Klaus Hansen and Carmon Hardy have pointed out, it was polygamy that "more than any other Mormon institution came to symbolize the new heaven and new earth."141

Yet, in the eyes of the nation, polygamy represented the most visible threat to American society. Spurred on by millennialism, a cycle ensued as the Saints trusted in the Almighty and became socially entrenched against the larger society, which in turn led to a sharper contrast. The Saints believed God allowed persecution to permit the gentiles to show their true colors prior to their annihilation. Anti-Mormon sentiment and persecution only reinforced an us-versus-them mentality. As God's family, the Saints' struggle against persecutions would be short-lived and soon end in their triumph over the world.142

Although the hierarchy attempted to present a united front, discrepancies between stated and implied understandings of the Manifesto and the doctrine of the Second Coming betray behind-the-scenes tension. Church leaders split between those publicly condemning plural marriage while privately practicing it and those insisting, "We will sacrifice no principle to save property or life itself." During the 1890s the quorum remained divided not only over polygamy and eschatology, but also over politics.143

Until the 1880s, Mormon society acted as it willed, defying the government's attempt to force it to conform with American values. The shock waves of the anti-polygamy raids led to the 1890 Manifesto, but also removed a cornerstone of Mormon culture. Polygamy, long considered a holy obligation, was no longer deemed necessary for salvation. Although some believed, as Charles Walker reported, that leaders had reneged on the revelation on plural marriage, with the ending of polygamy the Millennium became a future event rather than an imminent reality.144

Plural marriage had not only been a way of separating the Saints from the world, but a means of hastening the Parousia. Anti-polygamy persecution was the necessary accumulation of fury prior to the end of the world, and increased government persecution provided hope that the Millennium was indeed imminent.145 As Larry Logue has pointed out, the cessation of polygamy ended the Saints' ability to "provoke non-Mormons' rage with the church's blessing."146 The passing of polygamy compelled Mormons to abandon the best method of separating themselves from the world, eventually leading to the demise of a millennial world view as the overriding LDS cosmology.147 With the postponing of millennial deliverance, the "theocratic and separatist aspects" of Mormonism became a casualty of assimilation into the mainstream of American society.148

The American flag drapes seats in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in 1896 in celebration of Utah's statehood. The abandonment of polygamy, church control over political and economic institutions, and the immediacy of a millenial peace were all casualties of assimilation into the dominant American culture. As such, the Millennium became a fixture event rather than an imminent reality.
Salt Lake Tabernacle

Notes

1. Jessie L. Embry, "The Polygamy Image," This People, Fall 1990, 25.
2. Leonard J. Arrington and Jon Haupt, "Intolerable Zion: The Image of Mormonism in Nineteenth Century American Literature," Western Humanities Review 22 (Summer 1968): 244-45; Leonard J. Arrington, "Mormonism: Views from Without and Within," Brigham Young University Studies 14 (Winter 1974): 144; Neal Lambert, "Saints, Sinners and Scribes: A Look at the Mormons in Fiction," Utah Historical Quarterly 36 (Winter 1968): 63; Jan Shipps, "From Satyr to Saint: American Attitudes Toward the Mormons, 1860-1960," paper presented at the 1973 annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, TS, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, 18, photocopy in my possession.
3. Gustive O. Larson, "Utah and the Civil War," Utah Historical Quarterly 33 (Winter 1965): 63.
4. Platform of the Republican Party, adopted at Philadelphia, 17 June 1856. See Donald Bruce Johnson, ed., National Party Platforms, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978), 1:27.
5. Orma Linford, "The Mormons and the Law: The Polygamy Cases," Utah Law Review 9 (Winter 1964): 312.
6. Congressional Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., 1860, p. 1410. For a detailed study of the background and legislative juxtapositioning over the slavery and polygamy issues, see Richard D. Poll, "The Twin Relic: A Study of Mormon Polygamy and the Campaign by the Government of the United States for Its Abolition, 1852-1890," M.A. thesis, Texas Christian University, 1939, 60-116.
7. James D. Richardson, comp., Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 20 vols. (New York: Bureau of National Literature, 1917), Grant—1871: 9:4105; Hayes—1879: 10:4512, —1880: 10:4557; Garfield—1881: 10:4601; Arthur— 10:1881: 10:4644, —1883: 10:4771, —1884: 10:4837; Cleveland—1885: 10:4946; Harrison—1890: 12:5553.
8. Ulysses S. Grant and James A. Garfield, in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 9:4105, 10:4601.
9. Chester A. Arthur, in Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 10:4837.
10. "A Threat From Mormondom," New York Times, 22 June 1875.
11. A. Karl Larson and Katharine Miles Larson, eds., Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, 2 vols. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1980), 1:318, 15 Sept. 1870; Larry M. Logue, A Sermon in the Desert: Belief and Behavior in Early St. George, Utah (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 33; Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd, A Kingdom Transformed: Themes in the Development of Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984), 76.
12. Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 1:306, 20 Feb. 1870; Ballard S. Dunn, The Twin Monsters ... (New York: James Pott and Co., n.d.), 6; "Report of the Utah Commission," 1887, in Report of the Secretary of the Interior ..., 5 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1887), 2:1339.
13. Logue, A Sermon in the Desert, 33-34. See also poems by Charles Walker in Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 2:589, 2 Oct. 1882; 2:774-75, 24 July 1894; Franklin S. Richards to John Taylor, 9 Feb. 1887, photocopy, Franklin S. Richards Correspondence, 1886-90, Utah State Historical Society.
14. Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 1:388, 15 June 1874; 2:624, 25 Dec. 1883; Robert Glass Cleland and Juanita Brooks, eds., A Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries of John D. Lee, 1848-1876, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), 2:291-92, 29 Aug. 1873; Scott G. Kenney, Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 1833-1898, 9 vols. (Midvale, UT: Signature Books, 1983-85), 7:94, 10 Nov. 1872; "Record of Andrew Jackson Allen," TS, Utah State Historical Society, 97-98, 21 Sept. 1873; "Prophetic Warnings," Deseret News 17 (11 Aug. 1884): 2; "An Epoch of Commotion," ibid., 17 (24 Apr. 1884): 2; F. D. Richards, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, Eng.: F.D. Richards, 1855-86), 24:283, 6 Oct. 1883.
15. Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 1:367, 20 Apr. 1873. See also Orson Pratt, Journal of Discourses, 15:263, 29 Dec. 1872; Wilford Woodruff, ibid., 17:247, 9 Oct. 1874; Wilford Woodruff, ibid., 23:331, 10 Dec. 1882; Wilford Woodruff, ibid., 24:53, 27 Jan. 1883; Wilford Woodruff, ibid., 25:10, 6 Jan. 1884; George Teasdale, ibid., 26:54, 11 Jan. 1885; Orson F. Whitney, ibid., 26:200, 19 Apr. 1885.
16. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 17:37, 18 Apr. 1874; Wilford Woodruff, ibid., 18:37, 27 June 1875; Anthony Woodward Ivins Diaries, Utah State Historical Society, 1:17-19, 4 Oct. 1871; "Excerpts from a Journal or Sketch of the Life of Joel Hills Johnson," bound printed copy (N.p.: n.p., n.d.) 28-30, Utah State Historical Society; Thomas William Whitaker Journal, 1849-86, photocopy of holograph, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 6 Jan. 1879.
17. Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 131.
18. James L. Clayton, "The Supreme Court, Polygamy, and Enforcement of Morals in Nineteenth Century America: An Analysis of Reynolds v. United States," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 12 (Winter 1979): 48.
19. Firmage and Mangrum, Zion in the Courts, 149-51.
20. John Henry Smith to Joseph Smith III, 21 Apr. 1886, Library- Archives, Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Independence, Missouri; Cleland and Brooks, Diaries of John D. Lee, 2:235, 18 Apr. 1873; Orson Pratt, "Celestial Marriage," The Seer 1 (May 1853): 75; John Thompson, Mormonism—Increase of the Army ... (Washington, D.C.: Buell and Blanchard, 1858), 5.
21. Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints, ed. Fawn M. Brodie (1861; reprint, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), 403; J. H. Beadle, Life in Utah, or the Mysteries and Crimes of Mormonism (Toronto: A.H. Hovey, 1872), in Louis G. Reinwand, "An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism During the Nineteenth Century with Emphasis on Millennial Developments in Utah," M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1971, 98.
22. Henry Ballard Diary, TS, Special Collections, Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 76, 15 Jan. 1876. See Gordon Shepherd and Gary Shepherd, A Kingdom Transformed: Themes in the Development of Mormonism (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1984), 195-96, which shows that general conference addresses with eschatological themes peaked near the end of the years 1869-89.
23. "Record of Andrew Jackson Allen," TS, Utah State Historical Society, 105, 21 Mar. 1875. See also C. Jacobson Diary, 1876, TS, in Reinwand, "An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism," 145, where the same fifteen-year time frame is promoted.
24. Oliver B. Huntington Diary, TS, Special Collections, Lee Library, 2:129.
25. Historian Office Journal, 7 July 1874-14 Nov. 1875, p. 70, in Robert J. Woodford, "The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants," Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1974, 75-76. Editor Orson Pratt included section 130 in the 1876 edition of the Doctrine and Covenants under the direction of Brigham Young. See Woodford, "The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants," 1710. This section was first published on 9 July 1856 in the Deseret News, and has been in every LDS edition of the Doctrine and Covenants since 1876, but is not canonized in RLDS scripture. See Lyndon W. Cook, The Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith: A Historical and Biographical Commentary of the Doctrine and Covenants (1981; reprint, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), 131; Richard P. Howard, Restoration Scriptures: A Study of Their Textual Development (Independence, MO: Herald Publishing House, 1969), 229.
26. John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, 21:56; 21 Sept. 1878.
27. "Religious Service," Deseret News 15 (26 June 1882): 1; "Remarks By President George Q. Cannon," ibid., 17 (26 July 1884).
28. Kenney, Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 7:258, 31 Dec. 1875; Wilford Woodruff, Journal of Discourses, 19:360-61, 30 June 1878; Wilford Woodruff, ibid., 19:135, 13 Oct. 1877.
29. Leonard John Nuttall Diary, TS, Special Collections, Lee Library, 7 Dec. 1878. Nuttall records Johnson as stating that Smith would have been eighty years old when he would see the Savior.
30. Millennial Star 40 (10 Apr. 1878): 64, in Richard S. Van Wagoner, Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 153.
31. Reinwand, "An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism," 151. See Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879); Firmage and Mangrum, Zion in the Courts, 151-59; Linford, "The Mormons and the Law: The Polygamy Cases," 331-41.
32. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879); Linford, "The Mormons and the Law: The Polygamy Cases," 341.
33. Firmage and Mangrum, Zion in the Courts, 156; B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 59-60; Clayton, "The Supreme Court, Polygamy, and Enforcement of Morals in Nineteenth Century America," 55.
34. Nels Anderson, Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah (1942; reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 291.
35. Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund, 1991), 82; John Taylor, 13 Oct. 1882, in James R. Clark, ed., Messages of the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1833-1964, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965-75), 2:348-49.
36. The most scholarly contemporary reaction to the Reynolds decision was George Q. Cannon, A Review of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Case of George Reynolds v. the United States (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Printing and Publishing Establishment, 1879). A sampling of church leaders who declared the Reynolds verdict unconstitutional may be found in Lorenzo Snow, Journal of Discourses, 20:188, 7 Apr. 1879; Franklin D. Richards, ibid., 23:111, 8 Apr. 1882; John Taylor, ibid., 26:38-39, 14 Dec. 1884; George Q. Cannon, ibid., 26:145, 18 Jan. 1885; "The Reynolds Test Polygamy Case—An Unconstitutional and Oppressive Decision," Millennial Star 41 (13 Jan. 1879): 24; Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 2:513-14, 9-10 Dec. 1880.
37. Pratt, Journal of Discourses, 20:151, 9 Mar. 1879. See also L. John Nuttall Diary, 7 Jan. 1879.
38. John Morgan Journals, 1875-92, 10 vols., LDS church archives, Salt Lake City, Utah, 8:158, 7 Oct. 1888.
39. Thomas William Whitaker Journal, Jan. 1879. See also L. John Nuttall Diary, 35, 7 Jan. 1879; Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 1:474-75, 6 Feb. 1879; George Q. Cannon, Journal of Discourses, 23:279, 8 Oct. 1882; Franklin D. Richards, ibid., 20:314-15, 6 Oct. 1879.
40. "The Coming of the Messiah," Millennial Star 41 (7 Apr. 1879): 216-18.
41. Reinwand, "An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism," 140-41.
42. Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 1:486, 31 May 1879. Allen's 1881 date may stem from Demick Huntington's recollection that, in surrendering to Illinois officials in 1844, Smith had said, "If they shed my blood it shall shorten this work 10 years. That taken from 1891 would reduce the time to 1881 which is the true time within which the Saviour should come [and] much must be crowded into 6 years." In Oliver B. Huntingon, Diary, TS, Special Collections, Lee Library, 2:129.
43. Charles W. Penrose, Journal of Discourses, 20:216, 25 May 1879.
44. Minutes of Eastern Arizona Stake Conferences, 1879-82, 28 June 1879, p. 87, in Charles S. Peterson, Take Up Your Mission: Mormon Colonizing Along the Little Colorado River, 1870-1900 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1973), 228.
45. The 1879 edition, with footnote references, was first printed and offered for sale in England in October 1879, and printed for the first time in Utah in 1880. See Woodford, "The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants," 91. For canonization of the new edition of the Doctrine and Covenants at general conference in October 1880, see Deseret News, 11 Oct. 1880, 2.
46. Woodford, "The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants," 1718. Pratt's extensive footnotes were deleted entirely by a 1921 revising committee. See ibid., 1717. See also Shepherd and Shepherd, A Kingdom Transformed, 195-96.
47. Reinwand, "An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism," 143-45, although Reinwand hedges somewhat, claiming that only occasional remarks regarding the Second Coming in 1890 or 1891 "filter[ed] down" from church leaders.
48. In the 1880s the Deseret News, edited by Charles W. Penrose, had a periodic column dealing with national and international news. A sampling of the headlines in this column illustrates Penrose's millennialism. Captions commonly used to head these columns were: "Depravity and Disasters," "Death and Disaster," and "The Catalogue of Crime." They can be found in Deseret News, 16 June 1884, 1; 20 Feb. 1884, 1; 8 Mar. 1884, 6; 11 Jan. 1884, 1; 21 Oct. 1884, 1; "War and Rumors of War," 9 Feb. 1885, 1; "War Spirit Spreading," 1 Apr. 1885, 2.
49. Kenney, Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 8:292-94, 31 Dec. 1884; 8:310, 20 Mar. 1885; 8:336-37, 3 Oct. 1885; 8:343, 12 Nov. 1885; 8:349-50, 20 Dec. 1885; 8:351, 31 Dec. 1885; 8:415, 31 Dec. 1886; 8:474, 31 Dec. 1887; 9:74, 31 Dec. 1889. A recent one-volume condensation of the Woodruff journals reflected the dominance of them in its title: Susan Staker, ed., Waiting for World's End: The Diaries of Wilford Woodruff (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1993). In contrast, Thomas G. Alexander contends that although Woodruff felt the year 1890 was important, there was no clear indication that Woodruff "actively anticipated" 1890 to usher in the Millennium. Such an interpretation seems to misrepresent Woodruff's own distinctively apocalyptic sentiments. Woodruff's year-end entries were particularly millennial as he both summarized the previous year's events and articulated his predictions (albeit in general terms) for the coming year. See Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Changing Nature of Mormon Religious Experience," Church History 45 (Mar. 1976): 66.
50. Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Changing Nature of Mormon Religious Experience," 64-66. For the context surrounding the "Wilderness Revelation," see Kenney, Wilford Woodruff's Journal, 7:546-47, 26-28, Jan. 1880. The actual revelation was received on 26 Jan. 1880, see ibid.
51. Woodruff's "Wilderness Revelation" can be found in full in Staker, Waiting for World's End, 340-46; and Fred C. Collier, ed., Unpublished Revelations of the Prophets and Presidents of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: Collier's Publishing Co., 1979-93), 1:123-29.
52. For a description of the presentation of the revelation to the Twelve Apostles, and John Taylor's prayer at the altar, see Thomas G. Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 237-39. In the nineteenth century Mormon prayer circles were used as a vehicle for members to covenant to live specific gospel principles to a greater degree. In the church's highest quorums, the First Presidency and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, administrative and doctrinal matters were discussed and decisions affecting the entire church made while leaders, dressed in temple clothes, met in prayer circles. See D. Michael Quinn, "Latter-day Saint Prayer Circles," Brigham Young University Studies 19 (Fall 1978): 103.
53. Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 2:563-64, 14 Aug. 1881.
54. Ibid., 2:544, 20 Mar. 1881. See also John Taylor, Journal of Discourses, 21:253, 21 Mar. 1880.
55. Larson and Larson, Diary of Charles Walker, 2:522, 21 Jan. 1881.
56. Firmage and Mangrum, Zion in the Courts, 161.
57. James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), 392.
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