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Just as Joseph Smith attempted to restore biblical plural marriage, Dr. John C. Bennett arrived in Nauvoo. Chapters 7 through 13 discuss the evolution of the illicit intercourse heresy and the way the heresy informed Joseph’s actions.
Chapter 7, A Doctor and His Beloved, discusses John Bennett’s arrival in Nauvoo and his courtship with a young woman, and Joseph’s action in forbidding Bennett to become a bigamist.
Chapter 8, The Angel of the Lord, discusses Joseph’s covenants with three women, reportedly in response to a command delivered by an angel.
Chapter 9, Fall of the Doctor, details Bennett’s actions after the end of his courtship, as he first engaged in an affair with a married woman and then pressured an indigent widow to provide him sex.
Chapter 10, A Multitude of Sins, examines how Bennett’s personal corruption spread throughout Nauvoo society to Bennett’s colleagues in military, civic, and ecclesiastical matters.
Chapter 11, They Could Have Told Many Things, discusses the two additional women Joseph would covenant with prior to March 1842, both of whom would later indicate they knew secrets about Nauvoo and Hyrum Smith of which later Church leaders were ignorant.
Chapter 12, Hunt in the City Beautiful, describes the methods Joseph and Emma used to ferret out the truth regarding the illicit intercourse occurring in Nauvoo.
Chapter 13, Arraigning the Band of Brothers, describes the manner in which those believed to have been involved in illicit intercourse were held to account, though only John C. Bennett would be publicly exposed in 1842.
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