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Plural marriage |
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Joseph Smith era:
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Post-Manifesto–present |
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Some critics like to emphasize that some LDS members did not receive civil divorces before remarrying—either monogamously or polygamously. The either state or imply that this shows the Saints' cavalier attitude toward the law.
Note: This wiki section was based partly on a review of G.D. Smith's Nauvoo Polygamy. As such, it focuses on that author's presentation of the data. To read the full review, follow the link. Gregory L. Smith, A review of Nauvoo Polygamy:...but we called it celestial marriage by George D. Smith. FARMS Review, Vol. 20, Issue 2. (Detailed book review)
“From the standpoint of the legal historian,” wrote one expert who is not a Latter-day Saint, “it is perhaps surprising that anyone prosecuted bigamy at all. Given the confusion over conflicting state laws on marriage, there were many ways to escape notice, if not conviction.”[1] To remarry without a formal divorce was not an unusual thing in pre-Civil War America.
The Saints were often poor and spent most of their time on the frontier, where the legal apparatus of the state was particularly feeble. Women who had joined the church and traveled to Zion without their husbands were particularly likely to be poor, and also unlikely to be worried about property rights.
Nor, not incidentally, were their husbands available for a formal divorce.
Does this mean that marriage in America was a free-for-all? Hardly, notes Nancy Cott:
It also should be remembered that because Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other Latter-day Saint leaders exercised exclusive jurisdiction over celestial or plural marriages, marriages conducted under their supervision had as much (or more) formal oversight as many traditional marriages in America during the first half of the nineteenth century.
Critics usually tell us nothing of all this—with the result that some credulous readers might be horrified by the “loose” marriage practices of the Saints.
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