Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy

The Introduction and Implementation of the Principle, 1830–1853

Merina Smith

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780874219173
• eBook ISBN: 9780874219180
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

 In Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy historian Merina Smith explores the introduction of polygamy in Nauvoo, a development that unfolded amid scandal and resistance. Smith considers the ideological, historical, and even psychological elements of the process and captures the emotional and cultural detail of this exciting and volatile period in Mormon history. She illuminates the mystery of early adherents' acceptance of such a radical form of marriage in light of their dedication to the accepted monogamous marriage patterns of their day.

When Joseph Smith began to reveal and teach the doctrine of plural marriage in 1841, even stalwart members like Brigham Young were shocked and confused. In this thoughtful study, Smith argues that the secret introduction of plural marriage among the leadership coincided with an evolving public theology that provided a contextualizing religious narrative that persuaded believers to accept the principle.

This fresh interpretation draws from diaries, letters, newspapers, and other primary sources and is especially effective in its use of family narratives. It will be of great interest not only to scholars and the general public interested in Mormon history but in American history, religion, gender and sexuality, and the history of marriage and families.

1

Mormon Millenarian Expectations

The Restoration of All Things and the Resacralization of Marriage, 1830–1841

ON OCTOBER 10, 1883, OLIVE AMANDA SMITH FULLMER wrote a letter to her namesake, Olive Amanda Fullmer Bulkley, informing her that “we have this day consigned to Mother Earth the mortal remains of your father.” In a curiously impersonal letter that, with one exception, used only pronouns for her husband after the initial “your father,” Olive described to her daughter how her husband, John Solomon Fullmer, suffered during his last hours on earth. She was called next door when the first and favored wife, Mary Ann (or Mamie), perceived that their mutual husband was in distress. Olive reported that John, though suffering extremely, continued to exhort his wives and offspring through much of the day. “He had his senses and could talk and did till the last breath; gave directions, counseled, in fact preached the gospel to the last, but then went as quick as you could blow a candle.” She described the funeral, mentioning the speakers’ words of praise and their reassurances to the family that he had received all possible blessings, and that in the due time of the Lord he would, in the words of John Taylor, the third president of the LDS church, “pass by the gods” and receive his exaltation.¹

Olive ended the report by telling her daughter: “Poor old Mamie like to went crazy, but I felt not to mourn; but she is so lonely. John lives in with her.”² It is a sentence that conveys a world of meaning about Olive, John, and Mamie and their polygamous marriage. When Olive finally used her husband’s name, it was in connection with his first wife. Olive had apparently forgotten momentarily that John was dead—not surprisingly, since he did not live at her house—because she used the present tense in saying “John lives in with her.” That Olive would inform her daughter of this indicates that the living arrangements had not caused the kind of resentment that would lead a mother to complain to her daughter, but instead were accepted as a matter of course. If Olive had ever felt a sense of deep attachment to her husband of thirty-six years—and, given the existence of their ten children, it seems likely that she had—it was muted by the time he died, since she “felt not to mourn.” The letter contains an odd sense of familiarity, combined with resignation, distance, and emotional detachment, as though Olive were simply reporting the death of a neighbor and the deep grief of his wife of many years.

Olive’s detachment is better understood in light of a letter she received from John nine years earlier, in 1874, the first line of which captures Olive’s lesser wifely status and John’s attitude toward her: “I sent each of the other women a good long and affectionate letter … and feel that I should send you one also.” In other words, duty had compelled him to correspond with her. He went on to remind Olive that, in keeping with their Mormon religious beliefs about the necessity of marriage and the eternal nature of the marital connection, they could not be “redeemed and exalted … in a separate condition, … an incontrovertible fact which it is well for us both to understand and realize.” In light of this, John recommended that they should “cultivate for each other that friendship and affection” appropriate to Saints and their spouses, though their “interests, temporarily, appear to be distinct.” He admitted that he had been aggrieved in the past, but now he wanted to “extend to you the hand of fellowship, and my affectionate regards as a husband.” He remembered “with much satisfaction the few happy years of our early married life” and hoped that they could soon enjoy the “relations and endearments of life as in times past.” But should they fail in this by their own misconduct, “Wo! Unto the culpable party, with the displeasure of our Father in Heaven, which God forbid should be our lot.” Intriguingly, John counseled, “Perhaps it will be wisdom in you to retain this as a private and confidential letter, not that there is anything improper about it; but it may save some feelings which had better sleep in oblivion without a resurrection for all time to come.”³ Perhaps he was worried about the consequences should his three wives compare their letters.

Olive must have complied with John’s desires to some degree, since she lived next door to him and Mary Ann at the time of his death, but the reserved relationship demonstrated by John’s letter apparently remained cool, judging by Olive’s reaction to his death. Their two letters nevertheless indicate a connection that was, in both their minds, related to nothing less than their joint personal redemption and exaltation. By marrying John polygamously in 1846, Olive had, in Mormon thinking, opened the door to salvation for her husband, his first wife Mamie, and all of their collective offspring.

One has to wonder why Olive would want to be tied to John in the eternities when she did not seem to mourn his death on earth. The desire is more easily understood when it is seen not just as a connection to John, but to her children, to the other wives and their children, and indeed to all the righteous of the Mormon community. John’s admonition, beginning with “Wo!,” was a stern reminder that she could lose her salvation by her own individual misconduct, but if she gained salvation, exaltation in the eternal worlds that followed would be a group undertaking, a family narrative.⁴ Without salvation, however, she would be like the medieval thane who was locked out of the mead hall, doomed to wander the eternities alone.

Olive and John were both firm believers in a Mormon theological narrative that explained the purpose of life, connected them to their family and the other Mormon faithful in this life and the world to come, and gave them a model by which they could live. It was a lifeline to which they could cling in the confusing world of nineteenth-century populist religion and social upheaval.⁵ They sought religious authority and they found what they were seeking in Joseph Smith and Mormonism.⁶ But how did their firm belief in Mormonism lead them to polygamy, a form of marriage they both appear to have found less than satisfying? Like other Mormons, they were surely horrified when they first learned about polygamy, because they had been steeped in monogamy from childhood.⁷ Somehow they came to believe that polygamy was right, but how did this happen?

The storied nature of Mormonism (i.e., its presentation as a story) was particularly compelling to early converts, who were seeking to make sense of Christian tradition and the amazing success of the American experiment.⁸ The narrative that Mormons found so convincing included the seeds of some innovative theological concepts concerning marriage and family.⁹ This developing doctrine (along with revelation and some practical problems that emerged with regard to marriage) led the church to resacralize and therefore control marriage patterns among its members and assert its authority, in contradiction to the civil authority of the state and the nation in which Mormons lived.¹⁰ By introducing polygamy secretly and, at the same time, openly introducing powerful ordinances that connected families and salvation, Joseph Smith was able to build an infrastructure that supported polygamy and paved the way for its acceptance after his death.¹¹ In essence, Mormons became converted to a millenarian, narrative-based religious understanding that was extraordinarily effective, because it encompassed the grand sweep of religious history while incorporating American experience into a family-centered theology of salvation.¹² Polygamy was a central part of that narrative.

The Nature and Scope of Mormon Belief

To understand why the Fullmers and other converts would accept polygamy, it is useful to look at the way Mormons believe. For the Fullmers, and for most people who became Mormons after the church was organized in 1830, accepting polygamy was part of a process that began with a wholehearted embrace of an exciting new religion, one that fit exceptionally well with the religious understanding of ordinary people in the wake of the American Revolution.¹³ Shortly after the Revolution, common people had begun to shape religion for themselves in strikingly egalitarian ways. The Fullmers, and many others like them, came to believe that amazing events and radical changes were possible and necessary in their time—the last days. In this social and religious milieu, Mormonism was particularly successful, because it offered, as Marvin Hill has demonstrated, a refuge from the confusion of American religious pluralism through a compelling millenarian synthesis of traditional Christian and distinctively American history and theology.¹⁴

The theology was particularly attractive to common people, because it was articulated through canonic stories and interrelated action and policy. Richard Bushman has said that “Mormonism is less a set of doctrines than a collection of stories.”¹⁵ It is not surprising that this should be true for a religion that arose in a period of rapid democratization, when fast-growing denominations like Methodists and Baptists self-consciously rejected codified theology and trained ministers in favor of more populist forms of worship that were accessible and commonsensical. Nathan Oman has argued that for Mormons, stories and scripture gave rise to practices and institutions that created a structure on which the church could build, one that helped Mormons attract, socialize, and retain members. In addition, these practices and institutions served as a substitute for codified theology.¹⁶

Mormons adopted many practices and institutions from scripture—baptism, priesthood, the Lord’s Supper and, eventually, polygamy—that were used to integrate Mormonism into its members’ everyday lives. These same concepts informed Mormons’ understandings of salvation and exaltation and allowed people to determine what they needed to do to be saved and exalted. Beyond this, Oman has argued that Mormon belief in the authority of their leaders has allowed them to see their history as “the accretion of many decisions in concrete historical situations made by wise and inspired leaders. The result is a set of practices and institutions that they regard as imbued with the divine, even when the practices and institutions cannot be shown to be deduced in any unproblematic manner from sacred texts, theological first principles, or dramatic moments of charismatic revelation.”¹⁷ In other words, besides being a collection of stories, Mormonism is also a social and physical framework, responding to the conditions arising from the march of history through the authority of leaders whom they trust to speak for God. Mormons’ beliefs about the trajectory of history and their place in the religious story could thus allow them to react to what actually happened—as opposed to what they thought would happen, and even prophesied would happen—without diminishing the faith of the members.

Authority is central to Mormonism. The Mormon narrative was woven around the idea of religious truth and authority from God. Leaders were “called of God”;¹⁸ practices and institutions were according to God’s commands. In light of the importance Mormons placed on authority and democracy, one might be inclined to ask, how did democratic beliefs and religious authority coexist? The answer is that priesthood—power from God—was given to ordinary members in what they regarded as divinely inspired ways. Hence authority and a form of democracy existed together in Mormonism from its earliest days.

Within this democratic and authoritarian structure, the process of sorting out how institutions and practices would interact with authority, narrative, and belief to connect Mormons to the church and to each other was extraordinarily complicated.¹⁹ The various practices and institutions had to coordinate with scripture and belief to form a coherent story, what I call the Mormon theological narrative. The importance of this story to Mormons cannot be overemphasized. People needed to understand why they ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• 1. Mormon Millenarian Expectations: The Restoration of All Things and the Resacralization of Marriage, 1830–1841
• 2. Nauvoo Secrets and the Rise of a Mormon Salvation Narrative, 1841–1842
• 3. Scandal and Resistance, 1842
• 4. Integration, 1843
• 5. A Perfect Storm, 1844
• 6. Polygamy and the Succession Crisis, 1844–1846
• 7. Living Openly in Polygamy: Customs and Mores Develop, 1846 and Beyond
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover