Utah and the Mormons/Chapter 15

As a matter of civil polity, it would seem, at this age of the world, as though the founders of communities and states might regard polygamy as a settled question. It existed among the Jews, with other questionable practices, by divine permission, on account of the hardness of their hearts. The fruits of polygamy among them were such as might readily be supposed by any one knowing any thing of the relation of cause and effect. Each individual case presents a picture of family dissensions, divisions, and misery. Sarah, after giving Hagar to Abraham (not by divine command, as Smith would have his dupes believe), turns her ​off, after the birth of Ishmael, in a fit of jealousy and rage.

"The increasing wealth of the Hebrews under the patriarchal government, which forwarded its temporal power, was, however, morally counteracted in its influence by polygamy, the fatal tendency of which was soon discovered in the domestic misery distracting the family and embittering the days of the fondest, as he was the most unfortunate of fathers. The jealousies of the sisters, Rachel and Leah, for supremacy in their husband's affections, and the contentions of the sons of Bilhah and of Zilpah, produced those dark divisions which finally ended in the expulsion of Joseph.

"The envious brothers, who hated Joseph for his virtues, who meditated his murder, sold him to slavery, &c., were such sons and brothers as Oriental despotism produces down to the present day—where woman is still the servant and man the master, and where polygamy is still the ruling institution of the land." (Woman and her Master, vol. i., p. 56.)

No nation of ancient or modern times, in which polygamy has existed as a part of its political or religious institutions, has exhibited a permanent degree of vigor or prosperity. It did not prevail, except in one or two extraordinary instances, among the Greeks, nor at all among the Romans until, for a period, during the corruptions of the Empire. The modern nations of Europe are free from this scourge. It belongs now to the indolent and opium-eating Turks and Asiatics, the miserable Africans, the North American savages, and the Latter-day Saints. It is the offspring of lust, and its legitimate results are soon manifest in the rapid degeneracy of races.

​The reader is ready to ask, To what extent does it prevail and how does it work with the Saints? Are the ordinary laws, and cause and effect, suspended, to accommodate the modern prophet and his disciples? Does it increase population, purify morals, improve the race, and produce happiness?

Polygamy is now fastened upon the Mormon community as tenaciously as the shirt of poor Nessus, which Hercules found far easier to put on than tear off. About one fourth of the adult male population are polygamists, varying in the number of their wives from two up to fifty. The priesthood, and especially that portion who hold all the power, and control nearly all the wealth of the community, have the largest harems. Larger numbers would undoubtedly enter into it but for the scarcity of women and the want of means to support them. The census of 1851 disclosed the fact that there were 698 more males than females in the Territory. Subsequent emigrations have not probably much changed this proportion. For each man to have two wives would require twice as many females as males. Of course it follows that, where the chief bashaws have from ten to fifty in their harems, large numbers can not have even one.

The effect upon population is decidedly deleterious. The prophet Joseph had over forty wives at Nauvoo, and the rest of the priesthood had various numbers, corresponding to their standing and inclinations; and nearly all the children of these polygamous marriages died at that place; indeed, it is alleged by Mormons that not one was taken to Utah. Brigham Young has thirty children, of whom eight are by his first and sec​ond lawful wives; the remaining twenty-two are by his spirituals. He has about fifty wives, some of whom were widows of Joseph Smith, and are probably past the time of having children; but, supposing him to have thirty who are capable of having issue—which is below the true number—the twenty-two children would be less than one child to a concubine. If each of these degraded females could have been the honored wife of one husband, the aggregate number of children, according to the usual average of four in a family, would be one hundred and twenty, showing a loss in population of ninety-eight.

The children are subject to a frightful degree of sickness and mortality. This is the combined result of the gross sensuality of the parents, and want of care toward their offspring. As a general rule, these saintly pretenders take as little care of their wives as of their children; and of both, less than a careful farmer in the States would of his cattle; and nowhere out of the "Five Points" in New York city can a more filthy, miserable, neglected-looking, and disorderly rabble of children be found than in the streets of Great Salt Lake City. The Governor, again, whose attention to his multifarious family we are bound to suppose greater than the average, affords a fair illustration. He was twice lawfully married, and has had eight legitimate children, who are all living. He has had a large number of children by his concubines—no one knows how many—it is only known that there are only twenty-two surviving. These females do not reside in the "Governor's house," so called, but in different establishments, from one up to a dozen in a place; and ​their children can only have the care of one parent. It would be too great a tax upon his time to renderthe same care and attention to the children of these separate families as is bestowed in a single family, where there is a union of affection and interests. In cases where the wives and children are all under one roof, the total disruption of all domestic ties and harmony produce the same result. It would, therefore, seem that the boasted increase of population from this polluted source bids fair, under the just disposings of Providence, to be a decided failure.

The moralists of Salt Lake exhibit some strange mental obliquities in defense of polygamy. The following, from a letter of W. W. Phelps to the New York Herald, dated May, 1852, is quite popular with the Saints:

"If you have not received a communication from Dr. J. M. Bernhisel, on the plurality of wives, being a dialogue between Judge Brochus and the King's Fool, call on him for it, and let the people have it, and I think your one-wife system will sing as small as our racing Gilpins, or 'dirty cotton court.' Of two evils, a Mormon chooses neither, but goes in for all good and more good; which, if, as Solomon said, a good wife is a good thing, then the more you have the more good you have; so that when the suffering female kind over the great globe are acquainted with the fact that 'the daughters of kings are among the Lord's honorable wives in heaven' (Psalm xlv.), 'and on the right hand the queen in gold of Ophir,' you will hear of more honorable women clinging to the holy priesthood than you ever thought of, or a narrow-contracted Christian cler​gy drove into corruption by night-closetings because their deeds are evil."

The Emperor Vitellius reasoned in the same way in regard to a good dinner, and usually tickled his throat with a feather, and threw up what he had eaten, in order to dine over again. This convenient rule would give a wife a score of husbands. Upon the same principle, a man should have as many heads as a hydra, as many arms as Briareus, and as many legs as a spider; and Nature was a niggard of her favors when she made him up.

The argument, however, most relied on in support of the system is, that it tends to good morals, by taking away the inducements to unlawful pleasures; that, inasmuch as a man has as many wives as he pleases, he has no temptation to wander in forbidden paths. They even go so far as to claim that it is the only system of domestic polity by which purity can be preserved. In following out this idea, they are industrious in gathering up and publishing in the Deseret News the numerous cases of seduction, adultery, and elopement occurring in the States, which find their way into the public prints, and are fond of contrasting the purity of morals in Utah in this respect with these irregularities, and with the tolerated houses of ill fame in the great cities of the Old and New World. This is decidedly a fair specimen of Mormon logic; and reminds one of an inhabitant of the ancient seas, of which we have only the fossil remains, called sometimes the Ink-bag, which had the art to conceal itself by ejecting a black fluid.

Upon this basis, it is very easy to purify the morals ​of a people by civil enactments. The legislator wise enough to legalize bigamy, burglary, forgery, perjury, theft, and murder, would do away with the necessity of penitentiaries and criminal codes. The people who had the rare privilege of doing these things according to law, would be better off than the ancient Spartans. They were allowed to steal, provided the theft was committed in a sly, artful manner; but under the Mormon improvement, the burglar could pick locks and break doors in broad daylight. How true it is, that a perversion of moral principle brings a cloud upon the reasoning faculties! When the will is immersed in evil propensities, the understanding is ready to justify the abominations to which they lead. The Saints, while chuckling over the secret and stealthy sins of Eastern life, are willfully blind to the enormities enacted in their midst.

Their system of plurality has obliterated nearly all sense of decency, and would seem to be fast leading to an intercourse open and promiscuous as the cattle in the fields. A man living in common with a dozen dirty Arabs, whether he calls them wives or concubines, can not have a very nice sense of propriety. It is difficult to give a true account of the effects which have resulted from this cause, and, at the same time, preserve decency of language. It is related of one of the English Georges, that, when he became old and sapless, a plump maiden was selected for his seasons of repose, and made to act the part of a warming-pan to his majesty. The Saints are progressive. Three in one bed sleep warmer than two, when wood is scarce and a kingdom is to be built up. Last year (1852) ​they seriously discussed the subject of introducing a new order into the Church, by which the wives of absent missionaries might be sealed to Saints left at home, under the plea that the important business of peopling the celestial kingdoms ought not to be interrupted. Practically, this would make no great difference, as the proxies now readily make their way into these half-deserted tenements. There are a number of cases in which a man has taken a widow and her daughter for wives at the same time. One has a widow and her two daughters. There are also instances of the niece being sealed to the uncle, and they excite no more attention than any ordinary case. How far the plague-spot is to spread in this direction remains to be seen. Brigham Young stated in the pulpit, in 1852, that the time might come when, for the sake of keeping the lineage of the priesthood unbroken, marriages would be confined to the same families; as, for instance, the son of one mother would marry the daughter of another by the same father. This fact was spoken of by so many persons as to preclude all reasonable doubt of its truth. Why should not the blood of the priesthood, like that of the Incas, be kept pure?

A case has already occurred, which shows at least an entering wedge for the introduction of this improvement upon the system. One Watt came over from England with his half-sister, and on the way they concluded to enter into some of the sublime mysteries of Mormonism. When they arrived at Salt Lake City, they repaired to the "Governor's house" to be sealed. The lady was fairer than any at that time in Brig​ham's collection, and he told Watt it would not do; that the time had not yet arrived when persons so nearly related could be married; but that he would seal her to himself. This was done; but Brigham, for some reason, like Henry the Eighth with Catharine of Cleves, became, in a day or two, sick of the new sultana; sent for Watt; told him he had reconsidered the matter, and concluded, on the whole, that the original proposition might be safely acted upon. Brigham was thereupon duly divorced, and Watt married to his half-sister.

There has been some talk of going even beyond this, and allowing the father to seal his own daughter. to himself. And why not? The same principle of literal construction, combined with a fanatical belief of the speedy destruction of the Gentile world, would justify it. Did not the daughters of Lot become sealed to their father, under the belief that all mankind had been consumed in the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah? Nature, too, has already sanctioned it in the example of hens, cattle, and goats. Why should not the Saints act upon these exemplary precedents, inasmuch as it has become so very important that both worlds should be peopled with an improved breed? The truth is, their doctrine of the anterior existence of the spirits of men, so strenuously taught and extensively believed, has had a strong effect in obliterating the sentiment of female chastity. If the bodies of men are tabernacles for pre-existing spirits to enter into, it can matter but little by whom they are begotten. It becomes a matter of mechanical employment; and no matter how often the workmen are changed, so long as the article ​is properly manufactured. The chaste union of two minds in the conjugal relationship becomes thus a thing entirely unknown.

The high-priest dignitaries of the Church are exceedingly skillful in procuring young girls for wives. They inculcate the idea that elderly members, who have been tried and found faithful, are surer instruments of salvation than the young, who may apostatize; and as marriage to one who remains steadfast to the end is essential to escape from the fate of being mere angels, a great many young women are fooled into this bubbling and seething caldron of prostitution. Elder Wilford Woodruff, one of the twelve apostles, has a regular system of changing his harem. He takes in one or more young girls, and so manages, after he tires of them, that they are glad to ask for a divorce, after which he beats the bush for recruits. He took a fresh one, about fourteen years old, in March, 1853, and will probably get rid of her in the course of the ensuing summer. These maneuvers are practiced more or less by the whole gang; the girls discarded by one become sealed to others, and so travel the entire rounds; and when they accomplish the whole circuit, and are ready to start anew, they have a profoundly "realizing sense" of female modesty, to say nothing of some of its adjuncts.

These things are producing results in the very vitals of the Mormon community as frightful as the barking monsters in the bowels of Milton's portress to the infernal regions:

Young men, in a majority of cases, find it impossible to obtain even one wife, and run into excesses rivaling some of the choicest purlieus of Eastern cities. When the door of licensed indulgences are so widely thrown open to the elders, it is scarcely to be supposed that the young will look on with indifference; nor can it be surprising that the affair of Absalom and his father's concubines should be considered and acted upon by the youthful Saint as a fair precedent.

Various apostates have disclosed the fact that among the Temple mysteries of Mormonism is a degree into which the most favored ones are initiated, called the "Order of the Cloistered Saints," of which the following account is given:

"When an apostle, high-priest, elder, or scribe, conceives an affection for a female, and has ascertained her views on the subject, he communicates confidentially to the prophet his love affair, and requests him to inquire of the Lord whether or not it would be right and proper for him to take unto himself this woman for his spiritual wife. It is no obstacle whatever to this spiritual marriage if one or both of the parties should happen to have a husband or wife already united to them according to the laws of the land.

"The prophet puts this singular question to the Lord, and if he receives an answer in the affirmative, which is always the case when the parties are in favor with the president, the parties assemble in the lodge-room, accompanied by a duly authorized administrator, and place themselves kneeling before the al​tar. The administrator commences the ceremony by saying,

"'You separately and jointly, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, do solemnly covenant and agree that you will not disclose any matter relating to the sacred act now in progress of consummation, whereby any Gentile shall come to the knowledge of the secret purposes of this order, or whereby the Saints may suffer persecution, your lives being the forfeit.'

"Then comes a mock ceremony of marriage, after which—the parties leave the cloister, with, generally, a firm belief, at least on the part of the female, in the sacredness and validity of the ceremonial, and consider themselves as united in spiritual marriage, the duties and privileges of which are in no particular different from those of any other marriage covenant."

The reader will naturally ask if this can be true. A residence of less than six months will be very apt to remove any doubts he may entertain on the subject. If the husband of a female Saint happens to be Gentile, it is a great point with the Mormons to have her sealed in this way without his knowledge. Her prostitution is easily effected, inasmuch as she is made to believe that it is necessary to her salvation, all Gentile marriages being void.

The system is fast proving itself a terrible whip of scorpions, from the lash of which there is no escape but in the ultimate disorganization of the Mormon community. Mankind were created a pair, male and female, and, in harmony with such an origin, political science discloses the fact that males and females are born into the world in nearly equal numbers. States ​are made up of families, and can not be strongly compacted where the family is not a unit; on the contrary, they are the most united, enterprising, and efficient for the common good where it is harmonious. Polygamy introduces an element of disorder into families, and saps the foundations of social order according to the extent to which it prevails. On general principles, we may as well believe a building will remain uninjured by tearing away its basement walls, or the human body retain its healthy condition after a subtile poison has disorganized its tissues, as that society will flourish, with hatred rankling in the bosom of the-families of which it is composed. It may be supposed that religious fanaticism will do much to change and control the ordinary current of human emotions. This has had its influence in the Mormon community, but it is generally limited and temporary in its character; and now that persecution, or that which was regarded as such, has ceased, fanaticism has lost much of the nourishment upon which it subsisted. The fact is, the Mormon mind has greatly cooled of its primitive fervor; its thermometer has fallen below its first fever heat; and the ordinary causes which regulate human conduct have been quietly resuming their operations. Many who at first practiced or justified polygamy, because it was one of the points which invited Gentile persecution, are beginning to realize that it is a nest of adders, of which the sting can no longer remain unfelt.

In Utah, the effect of the plurality system is most severely felt by the first or real wife. In Turkey, and other kindred nations, where polygamy has long exist​ed, it has become a fixed sentiment in the minds of men and women through the lapse of ages. Woman is there too much degraded to be the companion of man, and her wishes on the subject are of no more account than of so many slaves. In the Mormon community, however, the case is different: it was introduced to gratify the lust of Smith and his principal followers, and has been forced upon the society, in total disregard of the wishes and happiness of the first wife, as well as in opposition to the common sentiment of the age. That it should have been tolerated at all is only to be accounted for by the deep fanaticism and lamentably lax morality existing at all periods among the Saints.

A wife, in Utah, can not live out half her days. In families where polygamy has not been introduced, she suffers an agony of apprehension on the subject which can scarcely be conceived, much more described. There is a sad, complaining, suffering look, obvious to the most ordinary observer, which tells the story, if there were no other evidence on the subject. In most cases, it is producing premature old age, and some have already sunk into an early grave under an intolerable weight of affliction. The man, from the moment he makes up his mind to bring one or more concubines into the family, becomes always neglectful, and in most cases abusive to his wife. In every instance where it has been introduced, it has totally destroyed all union of affection and interest previously existing. The wife has no further motive to labor and economize for the family, because she finds one or more intruders who have the right to share in the benefits of her ex​ertions; and the concubine, for a similar reason, feels no interest and makes no effort. The wife hates them for interfering with her comforts, and estranging the affections of her husband; they, on the other hand, hate the wife and cach other, and the children of each other. The husband hates the wife on whose affections he has trampled, and over whom he has tyrannized, and hates each concubine, of whom he tires when a fresh one is introduced; and the children hate each other as cordially as a band of half-starved young wolves. It is hate, and strife, and wretchedness through the whole family circle. Hecate herself, in her deepest malignity, could not have devised a more effectual scheme to destroy the happiness of mankind. The husband, under the double influence of domestic discord and gross indulgence, loses his energy, becomes discouraged, sinks into the bloated, vulgar debauchee, and affords a capital illustration of the truth, that

In many families where there are as yet no concubines, the wife is anxious to remove from this valley of Sodom, as well on her own account as to save her young daughters from becoming the inmates of a priestly harem; and, as she has it in her power to obtain a divorce at any time, it may seem strange that she should remain the inmate of such a domestic hell. But a divorce would be of no practical benefit to her. She would be compelled to separate from her children; and, as she is powerless to perform an overland journey of over a thousand miles, to bring herself within the protection of a civilized government, she must, of course, ​remain, and seek a precarious livelihood, under the discouraging pressure of Church vengeance.

Any number of cases illustrative of the degrading licentiousness of the system, and of the brutality and wretchedness which it produces, might be mentioned. In a conversation with one of the missionaries (and, withal, a man of more than ordinary shrewdness), I asked him what the effect of the system was upon the domestic relations. "Why," said he, "you must be aware that human nature among the first wives is opposed to it. When a man's wife gets a little old, and he takes a fancy to a young one, why, you know, the old one will feel jealous that she is to give way to the other; but it is the order of the Church, and she must submit to it." This was accompanied with a sly leer, such as would have done credit to a satyr.

A man, by the name of Eldridge, was living with much apparent happiness with his wife at Nauvoo, at the time of the great break up there. Emma Smith, the prophet's widow, had seen enough of Mormonism, and, having secured some property out of the general wreck, resolved to remain in the States. When the Saints were on the point of removing, Emma Smith advised Mrs. Eldridge not to follow her husband to the valley of Great Salt Lake; told her he would certainly go into the plurality order, and then she would be treated with neglect; that was the case with them all. Mrs. E. replied that her husband had promised her that he would never go into it; that they were attached to each other; and that she had the utmost confidence in him. They went on together to Salt Lake, and, in 1851, the predictions of Mrs. Smith were verified. ​Brigham Young, for some reason or other, desired to involve Eldridge in the meshes of spiritual wife-ism, and repeatedly importuned him on the subject. Eldridge told him he was living very happily with his wife, and that to bring another into the family would almost kill her. Young replied that, if his wife was opposed to the order of the Church, "the quicker she was damned the better." He also stated, among other things, that he was about to go off on an exploring tour in the Territory with a party (naming some of them); that he and the rest intended each to take along a new wife; that he (Eldridge) had better do so too, and they would have "a nice time of it." Eldridge finally yielded, and so worked upon his wife as to compel her to give her consent to his being sealed to a miserable drab selected for this occasion. From this period he became a perfect brute in the treatment of his wife; turned her from the best room in the house to make room for his concubine; and she, thoroughly crushed and despairing, realizes that her once peaceful and happy home has been changed into a domestic hell. This is a fair history of the fate of the first wife.

Instances of brutal insensibility on the part of the men are common, and excite but little attention. A man connected with the stage, having a number of wives, came home one evening (January, 1853) from rehearsing his part, and found one of them dead. This trifling circumstance, however, did not in the least interfere with his engagement at the theatre; he performed his part that evening; buried his deceased wife the next day; and kept on at the theatre as though nothing extraordinary had happened.

​It may excite surprise that so many females can be found who, are willing to be made the ready instruments of debauchery; but they are generally young, exceedingly ignorant, and are made to believe that their salvation depends upon it, and it is regarded as no disgrace in the community in which they live. This community is so completely isolated as to form a world by itself, and its habits and morals are borrowed from the cock-pit and third tier of more civilized regions. The greatest opposition comes from the first wives: there are a few instances in which they advocate it; but these are divorcés from the States, and are somewhat familiar with having "things in common."

Many of the older sealed ones are women who have been seduced to leave their husbands and families in the States. These, of course, become thorough-paced strumpets, and, when too old for use, are noted devotees. A fair type of this class is a Mrs. Cobb, whose race would embellish the pages of Peregrine Pickle. This woman was living in Boston with her husband and family when Brigham Young visited that city as a missionary. He was at that time a good-looking man, and Madam Cobb made up her mind that to aid Brigham in building up a celestial kingdom was far preferable to the humdrum of her domestic duties. She accordingly raced off, taking one of her children (a young girl), was divorced from her husband, and afterward duly sealed to Brigham. She was the reigning sultana for a time, and queened it with a high hand; but he finally tired of her, and she is now a full-blown devotee; talks solemnly of being sealed to Joseph Smith and other dead prophets; and tries hard, by the extrav​agance of her nonsense, to make herself a mother in Israel. Her daughter, in the mean time, has grown up handsome in face, and accomplished in the peculiar graces which belong to female Mormondom. The mother and daughter deal frequently in crimination and recrimination with each other, calling things by their right names in choice Billingsgate; and the parent is in a fair way of draining to the bottom that cup of bitterness which she has prepared for her own lips.