Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft

by Frank J. Cannon; Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins

I replied that there could be no proper anxiety on that point. The majority of the Mormon people were ready for such a message. It might be very much stronger without arousing resistance. With the exception of the comparatively few men and women who were living in polygamy, the community would accept it gratefully. Rather, I made bold to say, my anxiety was as to whether the nation would believe that such an equivocally-worded document meant an absolute recession from the practice of plural marriage.

It was plain that his advisers had not pointed out this danger to him. He asked me how I thought the nation would take it.

I asked him, point blank, whether it meant an absolute recession from polygamy.

He answered that it did.

Then (I said) with such an interpretation of it, and a formal and public acceptance of it by the Church authorities, I did not doubt that we could convince the nation of its sufficiency. I reminded him—as I am now glad to remember—that the word of the Mormon people had passed current in the political and commercial circles of the country; that I had several times been the bearer of messages from them to prominent men; that we had been taken on faith and the faith had been always vindicated. Finally, in order that I might carry away no misapprehension, nor convey any, I asked him if it was the intention of the manifesto to inhibit any further plural marriage living.

He answered, quaintly: "Why, of course, Frank—because that's what they've been persecuting us for." There was not even a shrewdness in his voice when he added: "You know they didn't get our brethren in prison for polygamy, but for living with their plural wives."

Perhaps no other man in Utah could have said such a thing without sarcasm. The fact was that the United States authorities had been practically unable to prove a case of polygamy (which was a felony) because the marriage records were concealed by the Church; but they could prove plural marriage living (a mere misdemeanor) by repute and circumstance. It was part of President Woodruff's unworldliness that he did not see the satire of his words; and I was the more convinced of his good faith.

I was convinced also, by several of his remarks, that he had consulted with the Church's attorney, Mr. Franklin S. Richards; and while I trusted the President's unworldly faith, I trusted more the sagacity of his more worldly advisers. I began to see, with a sure hope, the beginning of the end of all our miseries.

Some days later I was summoned to attend a meeting of the Church authorities in the President's offices; and I knew that the test had come. The Church was governed by the Presidency, composed of President Woodruff and his two Councillor's, with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the Presidents of Seventies, and the presiding Bishopric, composed of three members. These quorums aggregate twenty-five men; and to their number may be added the Chief Patriarch of the Church, making a body of twenty-six general authorities—the Hierarchy. It was from these latter men, polygamists and (I feared) parochial in their ignorance of the nation and their trust in the protection of their followers—it was from them (and the other practicers of polygamy) that any opposition would come to the acceptance and publication of the manifesto.

They met—something less than a score of them, with two or three of their most trusted advisers—in one of the general offices of the Presidency, sitting in leather chairs along its walls, with a sort of central skylight illuminating subduedly the anxiety of their silent faces. President Woodruff and his two Councillor's entered to them; and this insignificant-looking apartment—of such tremendous community significance, because of the memories of its past—seemed to take on the gravity of another momentous crisis in the destiny of its people. The portraits in oils of the dead presidents, martyrs, and prophets of the Church, looked down on us from the facade of a little gallery, and caught my eyes almost hypnotically with the imperturbability of their gaze. No word from them! In the midst of the broken utterance of emotion—when the tears were wet on faces to whose manliness tears were the very sweat of martyrdom—I saw those immovable countenances as placid as the features of the dead.