"At the present time," says Stenhouse ("Rocky Mountain Saints"), p. 185, "there are probably about a dozen sisters in Utah who proudly acknowledge themselves to be the `wives of Joseph, 'and how many others there may be who held that relationship no man knoweth.'" At the conference in Salt Lake City on August 28, 1852, at which the first public announcement of the revelation was made, Brigham Young said in the course of his remarks: "Though that doctrine has not been preached by the Elders, this people have believed in it for many years.* The original copy of this revelation was burned up. William Clayton was the man who wrote it from the mouth of the Prophet. In the meantime it was in Bishop Whitney's possession. He wished the privilege to copy it, which brother Joseph granted. Sister Emma burnt the original." The "revelation," he added, had been locked up for years in his desk, on which he had a patent lock.**
* As evidence that polygamy was not countenanced by Smith and his
associates in Nauvoo, there has been cited a notice in the Times and
Seasons of February, 1844, signed by Joseph and Hyrum Smith, cutting off
an elder named Brown for preaching "polygamy and other false and corrupt
doctrines," and a letter of Hyrum, dated March 15, 1844, threatening to
deprive of his license and membership any elder who preached "that a man
having a certain priesthood may have as many wives as he pleases." The
Deseret News of May 20, 1886, noticing these and other early denials,
justifies the falsehoods, saying that "Jesus enjoined his Disciples on
several occasions to keep to themselves principles that he made known
to them," that the "Book of Doctrine and Covenants" gave the same
instruction, and that the elders, as the "revelation" was not yet
promulgated, "were justified in denying those imputations, and at the
same time avoiding the avowal of such doctrines as were not yet intended
for this world." P. P. Pratt flatly denied, in England, in 1846, that
any such doctrine was known or practised by the Saints, and John Taylor
(afterward the head of the church), in a discussion in France in
July, 1850, declared that "these things are too outrageous to admit of
belief." The latter false statements would be covered by the excuse of
the Deseret News.
** Deseret News, extra, September 14, 1852. Young declared in a
sermon in Salt Lake City in July, 1855, that he was among the doubters
when the prophet revealed the new doctrine, saying: "It was the first
time in my life that I desired the grave, and I could hardly get over
it for a long time.... And I have had to examine myself from that day to
this, and watch my faith and carefully meditate, lest I should be
found desiring the grave more than I ought to." His examinations proved
eminently successful.
Further proof is not needed to show that this doctrine was the offspring of Joseph Smith, and that its original object was to grant him unrestricted indulgence of his passions.
Justice to Sidney Rigdon requires that his memory should be cleared of the charge, which has been made by more than one writer, that the spiritual wife doctrine was of his invention. There is the strongest evidence to show that it was Smith's knowledge that he could not win Rigdon over to polygamy which made the prophet so bitter against his old counsellor, and that it was Rigdon's opposition to the new doctrine that made Young so determined to drive him out of church after the prophet's death.
When Rigdon returned to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, to establish his own Mormon church there, he began in October, 1844, the publication of a revived Latter-Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate. Stating "the greater cause" of the opposition of the leaders of Nauvoo to him, in an editorial, he said:—
"Know then that the so-called Twelve Apostles at Nauvoo are now teaching the doctrine of what is called Spiritual Wives; that a man may have more wives than one; and they are not only teaching it, but practising it, and this doctrine is spreading alarmingly through that apostate branch of the church of Latter-Day Saints. Their greatest objection to us was our opposition to this doctrine, knowing, as they did, that we had got the fact in possession. It created alarm, great alarm; every effort was made while we were there to effect something that might screen them from the consequence of exposure....
"This doctrine of a man having more wives than one is the cause which has induced these men to put at defiance the ecclesiastical arrangements of the church, and, what is equally criminal, to do despite unto the moral excellence of the doctrine and covenants of the church, setting up an order of things of their own, in violation of all the rules and regulations known to the Saints."
In the same editorial Rigdon prints a statement by a gentleman who was at Nauvoo at the time, and for whose veracity he vouches, which said, "It was said to me by many that they had no objection to Elder Rigdon but his opposition to the spiritual wife system."
Benjamin Winchester, who was one of the earliest missionaries sent out from Kirtland, adds this testimony in a letter to Elder John Hardy of Boston, Massachusetts, whose trial in 1844 for opposing the spiritual wife doctrine occasioned wide comment: