Author: Meg Stout

[This post is part of a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

In July 1843, Joseph Smith received a revelation regarding plural marriage. Critics would focus on the ten virgins, criticism of Emma, and impunity for wrongs short of murder. But the revelation forecasts Joseph’s impending death:

Behold, I [Jesus Christ] have seen your sacrifices, [Joseph,] and will forgive all your sins; I have seen your sacrifices in obedience to that which I have told you. Go, therefore, and I make a way for your escape, as I accepted the offering of Abraham of his son Isaac.

 

Let no one, therefore, set on my servant Joseph; for I will justify him; for he shall do the sacrifice which I require at his hands for his transgressions, saith the Lord your God.^[1]

What was this escape Joseph was offered? And what was the sacrifice God required at Joseph’s hands?

Continue reading Conferring the Mantle

1. ^[1]D&C 132:50, 60, available online at http://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132?lang=eng, retrieved 17 June 2014.↩

[This post is part of a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

In June 1842 Dr. John C. Bennett left Nauvoo, thoroughly angry and vengeful. He had been fired as mayor, evicted from the Church, outed as a sexual predator, and thwarted at every turn by Joseph Smith and the newly-formed Relief Society.

Few realize that Bennett returned and met with Joseph. Even though neither man recorded the details of their meeting, the record suggests Bennett was willing to repent. Continue reading The Prodigal Returns

A few weeks ago I proposed that Eliza had modified her journal. I also proposed that it would be very hard to discern if her journal had been modified.

At the time I proposed that Eliza originally wrote the poem to Jonathan, accepting his offer to be her public husband. I suggested that the “& Elvira” was added, and that the three instances of “your” in the final stanza might have originally been “our.”

Looking at the manuscript, I can see that my original hypothesis about how the manuscript was modified does not stand. But the journal entry was clearly modified. The ink used on September 18th is the same as the ink used before December 12th, making a possible modification in November plausible.

Let me explain, and then we can see what you think. Continue reading Manuscript of Eliza’s Journal

[This post is part of a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

In the 1820s a little free black girl was taken into the Connecticut home of Joseph and Dorinda Fitch,^[1] to be a companion to their daughter, Caroline. This little black girl was Jane Manning, whose father had died.

In early 1841, when Caroline was fourteen,^[2] Jane joined the Presbyterian Church:

…yet I did not feel satisfied. It seemed to me there was something more that I was looking for. I had belonged to the [Presbyterian] Church about eighteen months when an Elder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑day Saints, [who] was traveling through our country, preached there. The pastor of the Presbyterian Church forbade me going to hear them as he had heard I had expressed a desire to hear them; nevertheless I went on a Sunday and was fully convinced that it was the true gospel he presented and I must embrace it. Continue reading Daughter of Promise

1. ^[1]Jane’s diary mentions Joseph Fitch, his wife and daughter. Additional details on the Fitch family in Wilton were located in the book Descendants of Reinold and Matthew Marvin of Hartford, Ct., by George Franklin Marvin and William Theophilus Rogers Marvin, available online at http://books.google.com/books?id=Gc81AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA430#v=onepage&q&f=false, retrieved 1 June 2014, and familysearch.org.↩
2. ^[2]In Jane’s autobiography, she says she, herself, was fourteen. However since Jane was born in 1822, the chronology doesn’t work, making it likely Jane was using the age of the girl for whom she served as companion. Jane’s autobiography is available online at http://www.blacklds.org/manning, retrieved 1 June 2014.↩

[This post is part of a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph. As originally posted, this article was written without benefit of my normal stack of books and liberal access to the internet. References will be added at a later time.]

In D&C 132, The Lord tells Emma:

And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me; and those who are not pure, and have said they were pure, shall be destroyed, saith the Lord God.^[1]

The Lord then goes on to say:

Let no one, therefore, set on my servant Joseph; for I will justify him; for he shall do the sacrifice which I require at his hands for his transgressions, saith the Lord your God…

And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him, and they are given unto him; therefore is he justified.

…for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified.^[2]

Who were these virgins, virtuous and pure? There are many women who appear to fit this description, women Emma is in some cases known to have given to Joseph.

Why specify the number ten? And why call out “those who are not pure, and have said they were pure?”

I suggest the number ten came from the parable of the ten virgins of the marriage parable in Matthew 25. As for the concern with those who might be lying about being pure, recall the illicit sex and known presence of venereal disease among the practitioners of the illicit sex of Bennett’s era. Thus the purity of the women Emma was commanded to accept as Joseph’s wives was not merely a matter of morality, but potentially a matter of life and death.

If Joseph was ever intimate with any of his plural wives, I suggest we look to this group of ladies, those virtuous and pure. Continue reading Those Virtuous and Pure

1. ^[1]D&C 132:52↩
2. ^[2]From D&C 132:60-62↩

[This post is part of a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

Despite all that had happened through the end of June 1843, Joseph had never written down the revelation regarding plural marriage. Nor had Joseph spoken publicly about the doctrine involving possible plural marriage.

That was about to change.

Emma had demanded something of Joseph in June 1843. In response, Joseph had packed up Emma and the children and traveled some 200 miles northwest to the home of Emma’s sister, Elizabeth Hale Wasson. The pressures of Church leadership and the women Joseph had covenanted with were left behind in Nauvoo.

We’ll never know how long Joseph intended to remain with the Wassons. Sheriff Reynolds of Jackson County, Missouri, and Constable Wilson, of Carthage, Illinois, came to arrest Joseph, pistol-whipping him and tearing him away from Emma in a scene reminiscent of the horror at Far West, when Joseph was dragged to prison and his family was thrust from him by the sword.

By the beginning of July, Joseph was back in Nauvoo, protected by the strong city charter Dr. Bennett had crafted. Emma’s relief was short-lived. She was once back in Nauvoo, with all the stresses and individuals that had caused her grief the month before. She had made a demand of Joseph, which God had commanded Joseph to grant her. She planned to campaign until her promised relief was granted. Continue reading Revealing the Revelation

[This post is part of a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

Emma Hale had been Joseph’s wife since he was a young, poor man. Since the beginning of their courtship in the late 1820s, Emma was aware of the opposition that faced Joseph, including attempts to physically harm Joseph. Joseph had repeatedly been attacked, beaten, imprisoned, held at gunpoint, betrayed into enemy hands, and returned to her variously bleeding, bruised, tarred, and emaciated.

Eventually she would receive Joseph’s lifeless body, riddled with bullets.

Along with Hyrum, Emma likely believed that Joseph’s teachings and actions related to plural marriage would cause his death, as seen from her vehement reaction to his sermon regarding how the Church might handle converts from countries where polygamy was practiced.^[1] Yet her silence regarding Joseph’s plural marriages leading up to May 1843 does not mean she was ignorant of Joseph’s activities regarding plural marriage. Continue reading Emma’s Ultimatum

1. ^[1]Accounts regarding a fall 1841 sermon mentioning polygamy are recorded by Joseph Lee Robinson, George A. Smith, Horace Cummings, and Helen Mar Kimball [Smith Whitney] document Joseph’s sermon and retraction. Robinson and Kimball mention Emma’s reaction, see Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, Volume I, Chapter 9.↩

[This post is part of a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

We who enjoy the benefits of the modern Church forget how much Joseph Smith still had left to do at the dawn of 1843. In Joseph’s quest to restore the marriage system described in the Old Testament (and hinted at in the Book of Mormon) he had secured the support of his apostles and several close associates (male and female).

Joseph had also largely gotten rid of the “sort which creep into houses, and lead captive… women laden with sins…”^[1] and provided for the women taken in sin.

However Joseph still had to convince the thousands of Mormon converts of this marriage doctrine, in the face of all the scurrilous rumors they’d heard or inferred.

From January 1843 to the end of May 1843, Joseph began to extend his teachings to those individuals who had been wounded by the rumors about “spiritual wifery.” One of these was Joseph’s older brother, Hyrum Smith. Of the women who had been wounded, the best documented case involves Emily Partridge. Continue reading Healing Wounded Hearts

1. ^[1]2 Timothy 3:6.↩

[This post is an intermission related to a series on Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. To read from the beginning or link to previously published posts, go to A Faithful Joseph.]

I’ve had so much fun reading and commenting on Alex Beam’s recent book that I didn’t have time to produce the full article about the next step in Joseph’s efforts to establish plural marriage among the Mormons.

So let’s take a pause for questions. What burning questions regarding Joseph and polygamy have plagued you? Which questions do you still have that I haven’t yet answered?

Feel free to read the excerpt regarding polygamy from American Crucifixion posted on Salon. Which parts do you find most troublesome, and why? Given that American Crucifixion will be making the rounds, it’s sure to be a topic of discussion. I figure it would be good/fun/useful to discuss this here, in a friendly, knowledgeable forum.

In the mean time I’ll keep working on the next posts in the series….