Jealousy, in fact, is the Mormons' explanation of the Edmunds bill. The Gentiles, they say, are hankering after the good things of Utah, and hope by one cry after another to persecute the Mormons out of them. But it is far more curious that the jealousy of their own sex should be suggested by Mormon women as the cause of their participation in the clamour against polygamy. Yet so it is; the Gentile women are, they say, "jealous" of a community where every woman has a husband! It is a perplexing suggestion, and so thoroughly reverses all rational course of argument, that I wish it had never been seriously put forward. Imagine the ladies of the Eastern States who have made themselves conspicuous in this campaign, who have fought and bled to rescue their poor sisters from slavery, to free them from the grasp of Mormon Bluebeards—imagine, I say, these ladies being told by the sisters for whom they are fighting, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves for being envious of the women in polygamy! Instead of being thanked for helping to strike the fetters of plurality off their suffering sisters, they are met with the retort that they ought to try being wives and mothers themselves before they come worrying those who have tried it and are content! They are requested not to meddle with "what they don't understand," and are threatened with a counter-crusade against the polyandry of Washington, New York, and other cities! But even more staggering is the fact that Mormon women base their indignation against their persecuting saviours on woman's rights, the very ground upon which those saviours have based their crusade! The advocates of woman's rights are a very strong party in Utah; and their publications use the very same arguments that strong-minded women have made so terrible to newspaper editors in Europe, and members of Parliament. Thus the Woman's Exponent—with "The Rights of the Women of All Nations" for its motto—publishes continually signed letters in which plural wives affirm their contentment with their lot, and in one of its issues is a leading article, headed "True Charity," and signed Mary Ellen Kimball, in which the women of Mormondom are reminded that they ought to pray for poor benighted Mr. Edmunds and all who think like him! Then follows a letter from a Gentile, addressed to "the truthful pure-hearted, intelligent, Christian women" of Utah, and after this an article, "Hints on Marriage," signed "Lillie Freeze." But for a sentence or two it might be an article by a Gentile in a Gentile "lady's paper," for it speaks of "courtship" and "lovers," and has the quotation, "two souls with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one," and all the other orthodox pretty things about true love and married bliss. Yet the writer is speaking of polygamy! In the middle of this article written "for love's sweet sake," and as womanly and pure as ever words written by woman, comes this paragraph:—
"In proportion as the power of evil increases, a disregard for the sacred institution of marriage also increases among the youth, and contempt for the marriage obligation increases among the married until this most sacred relationship will be overwhelmed by disunion and strife, and only among the despised Latter-Day Saints will the true foundation of social happiness and prosperity be found upon the earth; but in order to realize this state we must be guided by principles more perfect than those which have wrought such dissolution. God has revealed a plan for establishing a new order of society which will elevate and benefit all mankind who embrace it. The nations that fight against it are working out their own destruction, for their house is built upon the sand, and one of the corner-stones in the doomed structure is already loosened through their disregard and dishonour of the institution of marriage."
Now what is to be done with women who not only declare they are happy in polygamy, but persist in trying to improve their monogamous sisters? How is the missionary going to begin, for instance, with Lillie Freeze?
If the Commission deals leniently with them, they will offer only a passive resistance to the law. But if there is any appearance of outrage, General Sherman may have some work to do, and it will be work more worthy of disciplined troops than mere Indian fighting. There would be abundance of that too, but the Mormons are themselves sufficient to test the calibre of any troops in the world. For they are orderly, solid in their adherence to the Church, and trained during their youth and early manhood to a rough, mountain-frontier life. They are in fact very superior "Boers," and Utah is a very superior Transvaal, strategically. Mormonism is not the wind-and-rain inflated pumpkin the world at a distance believes; it is good firm pumpkin to the very core. Nor are the Indians a picturesque fiction. They are an ugly reality, and under proper guidance a very formidable one. In the mean time there is no talk of war, and the Sword of Laban is lying quietly in its sheath. For one thing, the commission has given no "cause" for war; for another, the present hierarchy of the Church are men of peace.
Such, then, as I view it, is the position in Utah at the present time. Mormonism has taken up, in the phrase of diplomatic history, "an attitude of observation," and the future is "in the hands of the Lord God of Israel."
Footnotes:
[1]. By the way, it is curious that it should be charged against the Mormons that they have made Adam a polygamist. It is not a Mormon invention at all. For, as is well known, legends far older than Moses' writings declare that Eve married into plurality, and that Lilith was the "first wife" of our great progenitor.
CHAPTER VII.
SUA SI BONA NORINT.
A Special Correspondent's lot—Hypothecated wits—The Daughters of Zion—Their modest demeanour—Under the banner of Woman's Rights—The discoverer discovered—Turning the tables—"By Jove, sir, you shall have mustard with your beefsteak!"