"They wish they could change history with a stroke of the pen," Van Wagoner says of polygamy, outlawed by the church 85 years ago. The only serious attempt to legitimize the practice of plural marriages in the United States began in the middle of the 19th century in the Territory of Utah. Many European settlers there belonged to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known as Mormons.

According to Van Wagoner, whose book, Mormon Polygamy: A History is now in its second printing, Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of Mormonism, "had got it directly from God," that polygamy was essential "to achieving [Mormon] standards." Van Wagoner's book, which is, he says, the only complete history of Mormon polygamy, was completed after more than five years of research which Van Wagoner, himself a Mormon, financed through his occupation as a clinical audiologist. Van Wagoner is deaf.

"Scholars are just not encouraged to write on the topic," according to Van Wagoner. And since most research on Mormonism is underwritten by the LDS church, the subject has been avoided. Van Wagoner says, however, he encountered "no problem" in writing the book. And while there has been no official response to it, he adds with a laugh that he still has "research privileges in the church archives." The curious thing about polygamy, Van Wagoner says, is that for all the anguish it caused, it was never practiced by more than 20 percent of the Mormon population. "It was not a very easy system to maintain. There were practical difficulties—financial problems, personality conflicts, wives and children not getting along. It was always a difficult system." Mormon leader Brigham Young had 56 wives, but the average number was three, and an "acceptable number" for men who wanted to get ahead in the church hierarchy was two, Van Wagoner says.

"Many men took a second wife just to satisfy the letter of the law," Van Wagoner believes, "because you could not rise in the church-controlled community if you were not a polygamist." In Van Wagoner's immediate family, polygamy stopped with his great-grandfathers, one of whom had five wives and the other four.

"Grandfather Ross said he brought up the idea [of polygamy] several times at the dinner table, but Grandmother Ross made such a fuss, he just dropped the subject." Van Wagoner, 43, grew up in the small suburban community of Lehi, Utah, 30 miles south of Salt Lake City, where he lives today. He and his wife, a teacher, have five daughters. Van Wagoner says he got interested in polygamy through the research he did for his first book, A Book of Mormons, published in 1982. In that book, Van Wagoner profiles 77 prominent Mormons, both the faithful and the apostates, men and women. "The subject of polygamy just kept coming up."

However lukewarm most Mormons may have felt about polygamy, it became a hot political issue almost immediately when in 1849, the State of Deseret, the original Mormon name for Utah, sought annexation to the Union. Most accounts of polygamy in the press of the rest of the nation were inaccurate, portrayed, according to Van Wagoner, as "Mormon harems dominated by lascivious males with hyperactive libidos."

But that sensational tableau so gripped the nation that Utahns were in almost continual conflict with the federal government. In 1879, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered an opinion on polygamy. In Reynolds vs. the United States, the court declared that laws ". . . cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, but they may with practices." Van Wagoner is convinced that much of the determined Mormon defense of polygamy came from people who, regardless of how they viewed the practice, thought less of being dictated to by the federal government. Utah was admitted as a state in 1896, following a public pronouncement by the church president "advising members against contracting new plural marriages," Van Wagoner says. "But church-sanctioned polygamy continued on a covert basis until 1904."

In that year Congress again put pressure on the Mormon church, and the LDS president authorized the excommunication of all who continued "to perpetrate the practice." Today polygamy, which is illegal, continues, as annual headlines in the press chronicling events such as the Swapp and Singer family troubles, attest. But other than these sensational cases involving violence—bombings, gunfights, etc.—there has not been an arrest in Utah for polygamy, Van Wagoner says, "since the 1960s."

"It's expensive to prosecute, expensive to prove," Van Wagoner says, recalling an attempt to made by the state in 1963. "By the time it came to court, the witnesses had disappeared and the case was dismissed. The state attorney general has said it is not a popular way to spend taxpayer money." Polygamy's male practitioners, whom Van Wagoner calls "good 19th-century Mormons," are known as fundamentalists. They cling to the belief that upon death they will move on to heaven where their numerous wives and children will constitute their kingdoms.

Van Wagoner says he has a patient who has 10 wives and 60 children, "many of whose names he can't remember, and grandchildren who come so fast he can't keep track of them." Polygamists keep to themselves, Van Wagoner says. "It's a hard lifestyle," with poverty its concomitant.

"One patriarch delivered all his wives' babies because they could not go to a hospital. Dental care can be non-existent." In one thriving polygamous community, however, the family owns a drapery factory as well as a dairy farm and several family members are certified public accountants.

Once the Mormon church officially abandoned polygamy, Van Wagoner says, "It never looked back." Recently, Van Wagoner says, a known-polygamous family moved into his stake in Lehi. Church authorities admonished all stake members "to have nothing to do" with members of the polygamist family, "not to befriend them to let their children play together." Van Wagoner, who is not promoting polygamy, says nevertheless that he has come to the conclusion that, "polygamists have got to have a religious conviction, because the lifestyle doesn't have that many fringe benefits."

Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Linda King Newell
In his introduction to Mormon Polygamy: A History, Richard S. Van Wagoner correctly reminds us that even though "many Mormons are descendants of polygamists, most Church members are often no better informed on the critical aspects of their polygamist past than non-Mormons." Even though the various archives throughout Mormondom are rich with primary resources on this topic, "there has been no comprehensive study of polygamy from its earliest stirrings in the 1830s to its current practice among Mormon Fundamentalists [p. vi]." He intends his work to fill this void and, despite some problems of sources and interpretations, admirably succeeds.

Mormon Polygamy is the first book-length narrative history of this controversial aspect of Mormon belief and practice to come from within the Church membership. It thus replaces the earlier, edged works produced by crusading anti-Mormons or disaffected members. But Mormon Polygamy is by no mean an apologia. Instead, it is a hard-hitting factual narrative, and the author leaves no doubt that the practice, even at its best, was difficult. Van Wagoner's narrative focus on administrative history precludes any in-depth sociological or theological discussion of how polygamy came to be or what polygamous households were like (although chapter nine does give a fascinating overview of various views of living the principle, mostly by women). It reviews various outside sources that may have influenced Joseph Smith's ideas, looks at Mormon polygamy from its Kirtland roots to its abolition as a Church-sanctioned practice in this century, and finally follows it into today's illegal fundamentalist cults.

It documents well the conflicting personal view of many who practiced polygamy—their public support and their private hurt. Some readers will surely criticize what appears to be the author's sometimes indiscriminate use of early anti-Mormon sources. But his use of more "legitimate" diaries, journals, and letters tells a surprisingly similar story. Particularly well dome are the chapters covering the clash between the Church and the federal government as Church leaders lobbied for statehood. The book outlines the struggles of John Bernhisel and later Reed Smoot working in the nation's capitol to establish Mormon respectability in the eyes of their anti-polygamy fellow legislators. At home, however, public statements and promises to the government were privately disregarded as the practice continued, sanctioned by Church leaders many years after the 1890 Manifesto.

The chapters documenting the Church's ultimate turning away from polygamy, the initiation of excommunication to punish participants, and the rise of groups who relinquished Church membership to continue the practice are also absorbing.

While Mormon Polygamy's ability to cover more than 150 years of history in only 300 pages is a strength, such compression also has weaknesses. One is the author's use of an admittedly impressive range of sources without providing criteria for determining what is reliable and what may be malicious gossip. For example, a Mrs. Alexander's undated statement (p. 5) repeats second-hand information from Polly Beswick linking Joseph with Vienna Jacques in the mid-1830s but failing to mention that Polly was known as a gossip. Another example is the Martin Harris statement on the same page connecting Joseph Smith with a "servant girl." The author's citation is a secondary source with no page, no publisher, no date, and, I might add, no way for the reader to evaluate it. Even though the author tells us in the preface that he "tried to weigh carefully the bias of each source," he often does not pass his insights on to the reader.

Occasionally Van Wagoner oversteps the bounds of his evidence to make a point. From Anthon H. Lund's journal entry for 10 January 1900, for example, he takes a statement attributed to Apostle John Henry Smith--"President Young once proposed that we marry but one wife" (p. 249, 7) and concludes, on that evidence, that during 1876 Brigham Young "apparently first began advising Church leaders to marry only one wife" (p. 113). I sometimes found the book's organization distracting and confusing. The chapters dealing with John C. Bennett are particularly hard to follow, partly because they detour from the chronological format by backtracking. Van Wagoner did try to avoid this problem, for he states in the preface: "To prevent digression from the basic chronological sequence I saved the academic discussion of controversial sources for the endnotes section" (p. I). In many places in those chapters, as well as others, the flow and clarity of the narrative would have been enhanced, and confusion or misrepresentation avoided, had the author integrated into the text much of the material relegated to the endnotes.

A few readers, no doubt, will be bothered by some of the conclusions, both stated and implied, in Mormon Polygamy. For example, the first two chapters argue that although Joseph Smith's introduction to polygamy came as early as 1831 when he and Oliver Cowdery were working on what is now called the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible, plural marriage actually began in Nauvoo when Joseph Bates Noble performed a ceremony for his sister-in-law Louisa Beaman and Joseph Smith on 5 April 1841. The book implies that earlier documented relationships Joseph had with women such as Fanny Alger in Kirtland were extra-marital rather than polygamous. While the Beaman marriage may be the first plural marriage for which there is a witness and a reliable record, it does not necessarily follow that other pre-Nauvoo associations were not also plural marriages, whether Joseph performed the ceremony himself or whether they were done by a third party lost to the historical record.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the history of Mormon polygamy is the deception that accompanied it from its beginnings to its present fundamentalist form. There is no easy or convincing way to explain this away, and Van Wagoner doesn't try. Instead he carefully documents the deception form Nauvoo to the present, leading us to question: Where is the hand of God in a practice that spawned so much deception, dishonesty, and pain? The author does no attempt to answer that either.

Those who don't want to confront the issues raised by such a history of plural marriage may insist that such examinations of historical fact are irrelevant—or even dangerous—to religious faith. But polygamy is part of our history, an honored and legitimate part, despite its distortions and excesses. Flannery O'Conner, Catholic novelist, speaks most directly to those people who would make acceptance of the distortions and deception that came with polygamy into a test of faith: "The [writer] with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural. . . . When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures" (as quoted in Books in Religion 14, no. 5 [6 May/June 1986] p. 6).

Lehi Free Press
Take a hint from a key word "comprehensive" when describing Richard S. Van Wagoner's latest literary effort, Mormon Polygamy: A History. The 307-pages of the book include 29 pages of bibliography which indicates the intense research effort by Van Wagoner.

Mormon Polygamy was published by Signature Books, publishers of Van Wagoner's A Book of Mormons co-authored by Steven Walker. This is not a book for idle, passive reading. Each page's offerings are so detailed, so comprehensive, that it takes total concentration to absorb the wealth of well-documented information. From the inception of the practice of polygamy in Joseph Smith's time, to the disastrous effects of the "Manifesto," Van Wagoner has opened a door of understanding to a previously little-understood practice. Van Wagoner, from Lehi, is a clinical audiologist with B.S. and M.S. degrees from Brigham Young University. He is married to Mary Carter and has five daughters.

Besides being co-author of A Book of Mormons, he has authored several important historical articles appearing in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Utah Historical Quarterly, Sunstone, Utah Holiday and Brigham Young University Studies, including "Joseph Smith: The Gift of Seeing" and "Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo."

The latter article placed first in Dialogue's 1984 historical writing contest. A student of early Lehi history, Van Wagoner has joined a group of historians who are dedicated to writing and preserving the histories of early-day Lehi personalities and government leaders.

Idaho Statesman, Steve Cooper
Author Richard Van Wagoner believes it's time to shed light on a family secret. His recently published Mormon Polygamy: A History does just that.

During the infancy of the church in mid-1800s, men were encouraged to take multiple wives in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, it is history largely avoided in today's church, Van Wagoner says. "The modern church has tried to brush it under the carpet. They're embarrassed by it and don't like to discuss it. But we ought to discuss it. It's our history," the author said. The book has been well-received by church historians. "We firmly believe that [polygamy] was a revealed principle for a time. We only have a problem when some people today portray it as something entirely unwholesome," says Don LeFevre, Mormon director of press relations.

Van Wagoner, 40, is himself a church member and descendant of polygamists. "I'm not writing an apology, that's for sure," Van Wagoner said. "It's a subject I am curious about because of my family and because I am a Mormon. I think it's something a lot of other Mormons are curious about, too."

Church founder-prophet Joseph Smith Jr. was hounded by opponents who accused him of marrying again and again. Though he denied it in public, the prophet secretly married several women after God told him to embrace polygamy, Van Wagoner says. "Smith privately advocated plural marriage during the early 1840s and perhaps earlier, calling it 'the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on earth' and insisting that without obedience to it, no one could attain the 'fullness of exaltation' in the hereafter," Van Wagoner writes. It was Smith's successor, Brigham Young, who publicly announced the new doctrine in 1852. Church leaders taught that polygamy would produce the large, separate nation of righteousness God wanted.

Though multiple mates may strike outsiders as the height of hedonism, Van Wagoner says Mormon polygamists were, for the most part, puritanical in their attitudes. "Contrary to popular 19th century notions about polygamy, the Mormon harem, dominated by lascivious males with hyperactive libidos, did not exist. The image of unlimited lust was largely the creation of travelers to Salt Lake City more interested in titillating audiences back home than in accurately portraying plural marriages," Van Wagoner write.

During its practice from the 1850s to the 1880s, Van Wagoner estimates no more than 40 percent of Mormon marriages were plural. A 1956 study revealed 66 percent of polygamist men had only two wives; 21 percent had three; seven percent had four, and only 6 percent had five or more.

The staunchest opposition within the church came from women, chief among them Emma Smith, wife of the prophet. Many who practiced polygamy spoke privately about how difficult it made their lives, says Van Wagoner. It was particularly tough on the first wife. But there was a higher calling.

Early churchwoman Annie Clark Tanner said, "Women would never have accepted polygamy had it not been for their religion. The principle of celestial marriage was considered the capstone of the Mormon religion. Only by practicing it would the highest exaltation in the celestial kingdom of God be obtained." Not all wives went along, however. Van Wagoner quoted an early church wife: "I told him [her husband] that if he ever took another wife, when he brought her in the front door I would go out the back."

It was not opposition from wives that ended the practice, but pressure from the U.S. government. Anti-polygamy laws were passed. A landmark church-state U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1879 held the federal government had a right to ban the practice, though it was held as a religious belief. "The church recognized what they were up against. They couldn't fight the whole country. So the decision to give up polygamy can most simply be seen as a political move to gain statehood," says Van Wagoner.

Mesa Tribune, Lawn Griffiths
Neither the government nor society has the will to end polygamy, says Richard Van Wagoner, author of Mormon Polygamy: A History. He estimates that 30,000 Mormon "fundamentalists" practice polygamy throughout the West, some discreetly, some openly.

The government's last major operation in America to stamp out polygamy took place on the Arizona-Utah border in July 1953. Thirty-six polygamist husbands and 86 wives were arrested and 263 rounded up in the infamous "Operation Short Creek" raid, authorized by then-Arizona Gov. J. Howard Pyle of Tempe. The crackdown by 102 lawmen at a cost of $600,000 produced a public outcry of religious persecution. Eventually, the men and their families returned to what is today Colorado City with new resolve to practice plural marriage.

"It was a serious mistake," said Van Wagoner, a fifth-generation Mormon whose ancestors include polygamists. "First, the cost to the state was astronomical because when they arrested all the men, then there was no livelihood, and the women and kids became wards of the state. It was tremendously expensive for the state to extend welfare cost to those families." Secondly, he said, the men were greeted as heroes when they returned home to Short Creek within two years after the raid. "Instead of stamping out polygamy, it was like dumping fertilizer on it." Colorado City—and polygamy—thrives today with more than 3,000 people and rambling homes with 30 or 40 rooms.

Thirty-six years after the crackdown, "the general public no longer views polygamists as criminals, but as religious fanatics. Because of that, they don't want to have taxpayers' money spent on prosecuting these people unless they do something violent," said Van Wagoner. His 225-page book probes the history of Mormon polygamy going back to Joseph Smith, the founder and first prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Today, he said, "the church will go to any extent possible to separate itself from any aspect of polygamy. . . . It's an embarrassing relic of the past. I think if the church could, with a stroke of the pen rewrite our history, they would write polygamy out."

In his research, Van Wagoner found "Smith became convinced of the theological necessity of polygamy" while translating the Scriptures for what was later called The Inspired Version of the Bible. Though Smith did not publicly advocate polygamy, ample LDS documents and accounts show he privately practiced it and encouraged other worthy Mormons to do so, Van Wagoner said. "If he was faced with the issue, he would always decry polygamy."

Rumors that some Mormons were practicing plural marriage fed the growing public criticism against and persecution of the growing church. In 1844, Smith was indicted in Carthage, Ill., of polygamy and perjury. He and his brother were killed a month later by a mob while they were jailed and facing trial.

The doctrine of plural marriage was first publicly announced in August 1852 by second LDS president and prophet Brigham Young "after the church was safely established in the Salt Lake Valley," Van Wagoner said. At the time, there was no federal laws prohibiting polygamy. But public debate grew. In remarks on the floor of Congress, an Illinois congressman called polygamy a "crying evil, sapping not only the physical constitution of the people practicing it, dwarfing their physical proportions and emasculating their energies but at the same time perverting the social virtues . . ." With some reluctance (having known Mormons in Illinois), President Abraham Lincoln signed the Morrill Anti-bigamy Act into law on 1 July 1862, to punish and prevent polygamy in U.S. territories. But Mormons considered it unconstitutional and refused to honor it. Over the next several decades, the federal government and courts took tougher steps to end plural marriages. In 1871, Young was arrested and charged with lascivious cohabitation, but the indictment was later dismissed because of legal proceedings.

Records show Young had 56 wives and 56 children. "His marriages were more of a practical purpose," said Van Wagoner, who carried out almost all his research through LDS libraries and archives. "A lot of the women who he was sealed to were old enough to be his mother, and, in most cases, there wasn't a connubial relationship there. It was more of a protectorship. For example, he married a couple of the mothers of his younger wives just so he could take them into his home and provide for their needs."

"Polygamy was always practiced just because the people believed it was required of them by God in order to achieve the highest degree of Mormon heaven," said Van Wagoner whose previous book was A Book of Mormons, biographical sketches of 77 prominent Mormons.

Plural marriage was rife with complications, including jealousy, despair, loneliness, older men "making fools of themselves" over young girls and many wives complaining they were not supported well. "As a general rule, polygamies had to be approved by church leaders," Van Wagoner said. "They had to be very high members of the church and they had to be financially able to support their families. So they tended to be the more successful people in the community."

Despite constant calls from the pulpit for men to take on additional wives, most men remained monogamous. A study in 1880 of 40 Mormon towns found almost 40 percent of St. George, Utah, households were polygamous; 30 percent in Bountiful, Utah; and 63 percent in the Mormon Mexican colonies.

Another study found that two of three polygamous men married only one additional wife just to meet the letter of the Mormon law. Of the remainder, 21.2 percent married three; 6.7 percent married four wives; and 5.8 percent married five or more women. The years 1856 and 1857, known as the Mormon Reformation, found Mormons most devoted to polygamy, with 65 percent more plural marriages recorded than during any other two-year period, Van Wagoner writes. A Mormon letter noted, "All are trying to get wives until there is hardly a girl 14 years old in Utah but what is married or just going to be." The bid from Utah statehood had been long held up by the polygamy stalemate. In 1890, LDS President Wilford Woodruff issued a manifesto that new plural marriages were approved and that members would be advised against it. U.S. President Benjamin Harrison proclaimed amnesty in 1893 to all polygamist couples whose relationships started before 1 November 1890. Statehood finally came in 1896.

Mormon Polygamy: A History was first published in 1985 by Signature Books of Salt Lake City. It was updated this year to include a look at violence by Mormon fundamentalists.

Saints Herald, Richard P. Howard
After all that has been written, both early and late, on Mormon polygamy, here is another offering—leading us inexorably to the saturation point on this subject. This volume, however, has several important things in its favor. First, there is an extensive array of explanatory notes at the end of the book, which together with the thirty-page bibliography and thorough index, makes this volume a much more useful tool for getting at the complexities of the subject and the sources underlying it.

Second, at a time when the history of Mormon polygamy is nearly as much an embarrassment to the Mormon church as it has always been an offense to the RLDS Church, Van Wagoner brings a refreshing detachment to his work of analysis and synthesis. Alongside his objectivity, the author—a descendant of polygamist ancestors—graces this work with a notable sensitivity to the feelings to be aroused by such a comprehensive treatment of the subject. For example, he brilliantly lays out the truth of the Woodruff Manifesto of 1890 and the Joseph Fielding Smith manifesto of 1904. He does so, however, without undue moral judgments against those of the Mormon hierarchy who persisted after 1890 to embrace the secret practice of polygamy while maintaining a quite different public posture. He also supplies an incisive analysis of Mormon fundamentalist schismatics who have often displayed fanatic and even violent behavior in order to continue the polygamous tradition.

For his discussion of the origin of Mormon polygamy in the 1830s and 1840s he rightfully stresses its secrecy. Evidences introduced in this connection make understandable the "double talk" (my phrase) engaged in by church leaders in denying publicly what they knew was going on secretly, particularly at Nauvoo from 1842 on.

This book will be welcomed by earnest students who want to get behind and beneath the easy generalizations of past polemics. Van Wagoner speaks to those who want to understand sympathetically the factors which led to the espousal of polygamy and persistently support its continued covert practice. He will have less to say to those who, for whatever reasons, treat the subject as a closed issue settled long ago by faith affirmations of those who had only one object in mind—to "protect" cherished images of prophetic perfection.

Skagit Today
Mormon Polygamy: A History by Richard S. Van Wagoner, may at first glance appear to be another in a series on the Mormons from Van Wagoner, who authored A Book of Mormons (a collection of biographical sketches of prominent Mormon personalities), but explaining polygamy is an ambitious undertaking.

Van Wagoner has done his homework, although even Mormons are not clear on this particular aspect of their faith. It needs to be explained why the Mormon embraced and later rejected this tenet, and why, in the 1980s splinter groups continue with the practice even though it is expressly banned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This 307-page volume recounts with precision and objectivity the reactions among Mormons and non-Mormons to plural marriage. The author offers neither condemnations nor apologies.

"We are proud to offer this compelling book on this widely misunderstood experience in plural marriage," says George D. Smith, president of Signature Books (founded in 1981 to publish scholarly works concerning Mormon history). "The more the general public learns about this fascinating religion, the more they will understand its unique role in the Westward expansion of our country."

With renewed interest in the Mormon church, and the fact that the Mormon religion is the fastest growing in the world, this best-known and controversial aspect of Mormon history and legend is brilliantly covered by Van Wagoner and his work will be a necessary volume in public and private libraries with an interest in the spectrum of the American way of worship.

The Fessenden Review, Lorenzo W. Milam
The biographical notes about the author tell us that Van Wagoner is "a clinical audiologist from Brigham Young University. He is married to Mary Carter and has five daughters..." We almost expected to read "and has five other wives, too, named Leslie, Jill, Phoebe Ann, Sue, and Zinnia..."

Mormon Polygamy is an honorable and non-biased book, with great amounts of surprising information, including the fact that there is still a wing of the Mormon church—called Fundamentalists, 30,000 in number—who, to this day, without fanfare, practice polygamy.

Joseph Smith revealed his belief in multiple marriages in 1830 or so, and Phelps reported that he said:

"It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites (Indians), that their posterity may become white, delightsome, and just."

Smith drew his justification for such carryings-on from the Old Testament, most especially from the books of Genesis, Samuel, and Chronicles. The Book of Kings tells us that Solomon had seven hundred wives and more than three hundred concubines.

There was another factor that made Smith so interested in polygamy, outside of the prophecy, the Bible, and his own personal revelations. He had something wrong with his eye. It wandered; apparently, endlessly. For example, he was tarred and feathered in Ohio because (although he was married) he had made advances on a lady by the name of Nancy Marinda Wilson. In addition, he had taken in (and was taken by) several servant girls; and there was the case of two young female orphans. The two, Emily and Eliza Partridge, moved into the Smith home in 1840. Emily later wrote that Joseph told her

"the Lord had commanded him to enter into plural marriage, and had given me to him, and although I had got badly frightened, he knew I would yet have him, so he waited till the Lord told him..."

Van Wagoner reports: "Emily agreed to the prophet's proposal and was married there and then." For obvious reasons, his interest in them appalled his long-suffering wife Emma Hale Smith. He contrived to keep what they archly called "the sealing" from her, but without success.

During the course of his short life, Smith advanced on and proposed to an amazing number of ladies in and out of his stake, his town, and his house. There was, for example, Nancy Rigdon, in the Mormon community of Nauvoo, Illinois. A George Robinson, brother-in-law to Nancy, reported:

"...Smith took her into a room, locked the door, and then stated to her that he had had an affection for her for several years, and wished that she should be his; that the Lord was well pleased with this matter, for he had got a revelation on the subject, and God had given him all the blessings of Jacob, etc., etc., and that there was no sin in it whatsoever."

God, according to Smith, was behind his offer of love and marriage. Despite the presence of the Divine, Robinson reported that Nancy

"...repulsed him and was about to raise the neighbors if he did not unlock the door and let her out."

Smith was given to making many pronouncements on polygamy to his followers, stating that they came in the form of revelations from the Lord, then, upon hearing vigorous protest (often, led by Emma and his brother Hyrum) would, at once, retract his statements, say it was all a mistake. When the inevitable scandal erupted, he would say that he had propositioned the woman "because he wished to ascertain whether she was virtuous or not, and took that course to learn the facts..."

Let's face it. If one is willing to believe this book—and its documentation is impressive—Smith was a charismatic, artfully spoken, lusty old goat. He was also temperamental, willful, and violent. When he handed down the pronunciamento of polygamy, his wife Emma demurred, and Smith wrote: "If she will not abide this...she shall be destroyed..."

He was willing to indulge in any act to silence his critics. When a newspaper in Nauvoo called Smith a "fallen prophet" who "introduced false and damnable doctrines into the Church, such as plurality of Gods above the God of this universe, and his liability to fall with all his creations, the plurality of wives, for time and eternity..." Smith, who was Mayor of the unfortunate community, ordered the city marshall to

"...destroy the printing press from whence issues the Nauvoo Expositor and put the type of said printing establishment in the street, and burn all the Expositor and libelous handbills found in said establishment..."

Willful, angry, powerful, scheming, lusty—Smith lived violently and died violently. Governor Ford of Illinois demanded an explanation for the destruction of the newspaper, Smith was arrested, and on 27 June 1844—a mob, disguised in black-face—broke into Carthage Jail and shot Joseph and Hyrum Smith to death.

The Mormons moved to Utah, and officially announced in 1852 an advocacy of polygamy—making their relations with the rest of the United States difficult at a time that they badly wanted statehood for Utah. What they wanted was a Mormon theocratic kingdom, but they contented themselves with petitioning for (and getting) territorial status. Brigham Young, the immediate follower to Smith, announced "I have many more wives than one...and am not ashamed to have it known." The Mormon marriage system was puritanical, but the publicity from the rest of the nation suggested that they were in the midst of "a harem, dominated by lascivious males with hyperactive libidos." As the author points out:

"Newspaper representatives and public figures visited the city [Salt Lake City] in droves seeking headlines for their eastern audiences. Mormon plural marriage, dedicated to propagating the species righteously and dispassionately, proved to be a rather drab lifestyle compared to the imaginative tales of polygamy, dripping with sensationalism, demanded by the scandalous hungry eastern media market."

Although all were instructed from the pulpit to engage in polygamy, even at its height in the late 1850s only twenty to forty percent of the males adhered to these exhortations. Members were convinced the United States Supreme Court would uphold this reality of Mormon life—but in 1879, Reynolds v. the United States declared that although the federal system could not interfere with "mere religious belief...[it] may with which makes them no more than a breeding farm for males. Indeed, the reality of multiple wives may have been a sacrament for the husband, but it was devilish for the women." George Tanner, a Utah educator and polygamous son, wrote,

"I doubt there was a woman in the church who was in any way connected with polygamy who was not heartsick...They would not admit it in public because of their loyalty to the church...the women try to be brave, but no woman is able to share a husband whom she loves with one or more other women."

And a Sadie Johnson reported "If anyone in this world thinks plural marriage is not a trial, they are wrong..." The author comments:

"Church members, recognizing that the eyes of the world were upon them, may have been inclined to put forth a sanitized "storybook polygamy" publically rather than portraying the real hardships involved in trying to live the practice..."

To some of us, the early history of religions is a delight, because it demonstrates fallibility in humans' attempt to work what they perceive as the command of the divine which, as always, may be viewed but dimly through the myriad of human prejudices and ego problems. Comic aspects will always be glossed over by later church historians. Those who study early Catholic history find that Church leaders believed in abortion, priestly marriage, and metempsychosis. Those who read the late Renaissance history of the church find that the acts of witch-burnings and the Inquisition were all a product of belief that Papal zeal was an honest reflection of the will of God. Abortion was not seen to be a sin in the Mother Church before 1869, leading the impious to ask if those who practiced it in those far-off times are now assigned to hell for wrongful acts or to heaven because they were not adequately apprised of the truth.

The Catholics are not the only sect to be cursed (or blessed) with a strange and contradictory history of teachings and practice. Those who read the early writings of Luther will find a man who was as violent and bad-tempered and as diabolical in vengeance as Joseph Smith. Those who investigate the early circumcision ceremonies in Judaism will find a very strange ritual indeed on the part of the rabbi. Those who seek the origins of the word "Quaker" will find tales of ritual madness in early church ceremonies. And those who are willing to read the early sayings of Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, and Pat Robertson will find some amazing statements about "negroes," the blindness of the poor, or the exact nature of the divine. Because religion grows out of humans, it seems that the practice and words of the early leaders reveal more than they (or their followers) would want to remember concerning Divine Beliefs on the subject of hates, virulence, and egoism, not to say anti-social acts.

Most of the Mormons who are part of the "Modern" church tend to be officious and puritan. It is no accident that Howard Hughes in his last days relied on several followers of Smith to do his dirty work, because he knew they were honest, wouldn't get soused on the job, and would follow his every command. Richard Nixon relied on members of the Washington stake for much the same reason.

It is fun to look back at the wildness of a sect's early history: to realize (no matter how much they may deny it) that the early leaders were panderers and reprobates and miscreants (no more nor less than the rest of us). No matter how Holier Than Thou they may profess to be, we will always remember that Joseph Smith was not and is not the oversanitized, silver-plated, divinely-inspired character that they try to palm off on us, but was, instead, a goat-footed, inspired, temperamental, wild-eyed, extremely talented and organization-minded philanderer who was, indeed, so much more human than the mannikin they keep trying to thrust on us from out of the black hole of history.