Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Chapter 1


Preface
A FAIR Analysis of:
Criticism of Mormonism/Books
A work by author: George D. Smith
 Chapter 2

Claims made in Chapter 1

Page Claim Response Author's sources

1

 Louisa Beaman "was about to become the first plural wife of Joseph Smith."
  •  History unclear or in error
  • No source provided.

Ignoring Hancock autobiography (edit)

1n1

 Note: "There is some evidence that Smith might have engaged in the practice prior to this, but this is the first documented marriage."
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

Ignoring Hancock autobiography (edit)

1

 "Had romance blossomed between her and the charismatic...prophet"?
  • No source provided.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

1

 Joseph age 35, versus Louisa 26
  • No source provided.

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

2

 Nauvoo "a bustling Mississippi River town with several thousand inhabitants."
  • No source provided.

2

 "No one knew precisely when the final end would come, but they knew it was imminent."
  • The author leaves unmentioned that many Christians have always seen the end as imminent, and that Joseph's view was more restrained and pragmatic than most of the sects of the day. See: Richard Lloyd Anderson, "Joseph Smith and the Millenarian Time Table," Brigham Young University Studies 3 no. 3 (1961), 55–66. off-site
  • No source provided.

2

 "With an acquisitive eye on neighboring lands and the will to triumph over older settlers through political bloc voting, Joseph's behavior concerned some of the longtime Illinoisans who lived around the Saints."
  • No source provided.

Bloc voting (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 2
  • See also ch. 2: 68
  • See also ch. 4: 292–293

See NOTE on bloc voting


2

 "Now fear of [the Mormons'] city-wide militia, use of local petitions of habeas corpus to dismiss state warrants, and rumors of a 'plurality of wives' had put citizens on edge."
  • The author fails to tell us that
  1. the Mormons were equally (or more) afraid, having been driven by state militias from two states;
  2. their use of habeas corpus had contemporary case law and legal theory on their side;
  3. dislike for the Mormons was also a strong political motivation in their enemies.
  • No source provided.

Nauvoo city charter (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 2
  • See also ch. 2a: 139
  • See also ch. 3: 160, 161, and 163

2

 "Mormons had left their New York homes under uneasy circumstances."
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

3

 "So plural marriage was central to the broad sweep of LDS experience..."
  • Polygamy was unpracticed by anyone but Joseph Smith prior to Nauvoo. Polygamy had nothing to do with Mormons moving from New York. The need to flee Missouri likewise had little to do with plural marriage. Joseph's marriage to Fanny Alger was one factor among many causing problems in Ohio (though the financial problems and collapse of the Kirtland Safety Society were probably more significant).
  • Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Historical errors
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

3

 Plural marriage "was illegal on that afternoon in 1841 when the Mormon prophet married Louisa Beaman."
  • Revised Laws of Illinois, 1833; Revised States of the State of Illinois, 1845, secs 121, 122.

3-4

 Joseph "chose some thirty three men...who would join him in denying its practice."
  • No source provided.

Hiding polygamy (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 3-4 and 51
  • See also ch. 4: 247

4

 The inner circle of plural marriage "would lose one of its key members in 1842 when John C. Bennett quarreled with Smith and then left."
  • There is no evidence that Bennett was ever sanctioned to practice plural marriage. He was never part of the Quorum of the Anointed who received the full temple endowment.
  • John C. Bennett
  • No source provided.

John C. Bennett (edit)

5

 "Remarkably, Smith's role in introducing polygamy in Nauvoo has been largely excised from the official telling of LDS history."
  • No source provided.

Censorship of Church History (edit)

5

 that Danel Bachman and Ron Esplin's Encyclopedia of Mormonism entry on plural marriage briefly mention[s] the "rumors" of plural marriage in the 1830s and 1840s but only obliquely refer[s] to the teaching [of] new marriage and family arrangements
  • "Plural Marriage", Encyclopedia of Mormonism
  • Text: "Rumors of plural marriage among the members of the Church in the 1830's and 1840's led to persecution, and the public announcement of the practice after August 29, 1852, in Utah gave enemies a potent weapon to fan public hostility against the Church.

6

 Where there was resistance, the prophet inveighed against it revealing God's rule that 'no one can reject [polygamy] and enter into my glory' (D&C 132, 51, 52, 54).
  • The actual text reads: "I reveal unto you a new and an everlasting covenant; and if ye abide not that covenant, then are ye damned; for no one can reject this covenant and be permitted to enter into my glory." Plural marriage was at times a manifestation of the new and everlasting covenant, but even during the polygamous era leaders were clear that one did not necessarily have to practice polygamy to be saved.
  • Polygamy a requirement for exaltation
  • The only men who become gods are those that practice polygamy?

Necessary for salvation? (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: xiv
  • See also ch. 1: 6
  • See also ch. 2: 55
  • See also ch. 6: 356

6

 Joseph predicted second coming not before 40 years, and by 1890, and those of rising generation will not taste of death until Christ comes.
  • No source provided

Predicting 2nd Coming (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 6 and 9
  • See also ch. 8: 535

7

 "Smith was familiar with nineteenth century writer Thomas Dick..."
  • Thomas Dick, The Philosophy of a Future State, 2d. American ed. (Brookfield, Mass: n.p., 1830); quoted in LDS Messenger and Advocate 3 (Dec 1836): 423-25.

Environmental explanations (edit)

7

 Joseph "had already proven his own mettle among God's elect when he mastered the use of magic stones and 'translated' the Book of Mormon."
  • No source provided.

8

 Joseph's dispensationalism had many past antecedents
  • No source provided.

Environmental explanations (edit)

9

 "Joseph preached [apocalyptically] as regularly as any other apocalyptic preacher of his day…."
  • How does The author know this? How frequently did other preachers use apocalyptic imagery and themes? Was their percentage of such uses equal to or greater than Joseph's usage?
  • Richard Lloyd Anderson, "Joseph Smith and the Millenarian Time Table," Brigham Young University Studies 3 no. 3 (1961), 55–66. off-site (Discusses many contrasts between Joseph and the millenialist sects of his day, from both LDS and non-LDS historians of religion.)
  • Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Assumptions and presumptions
  • No source provided.

9

 "…understandably hesitant to specify a precise date for the end of the world, Smith knew that 'our redemption draweth near.'?"
  • Jesse, 306

Predicting 2nd Coming (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 6 and 9
  • See also ch. 8: 535

10

 On Joshua the Jewish minister [Robert Matthews]: "Smith found him credible enough to converse with from 11:00 a.m. until evening when Smith invited him to stay for dinner." "Without objection from Smith, Matthias asserted: 'The silence spoken of by John the Revelator…is between 1830 & 1851…."
  • Jesse, Papers of Joseph Smith, 2:68–73, 568–69.

11

 Robert Matthews (see above) "advocated what he called a 'community of property and of wives,' in a more 'spiritual generation.' Mormons avoided the idiom but not the practice." "…Mormon communal practices extended to property as well as to marriage."
  • Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 8.
11 "Across the Atlantic, the communal experiment advocated by Marx and Engels appeared in London only a few years later in 1848."
  • Communist Manifesto (1848; New York: Bantam, 1992).

12

 Polygamy was evidently on Smith's mind even before founding the Mormon Church, if that can be deduced from the marriage formula inscribed in the Book of Mormon.
  • No source provided

Early preoccupation with polygamy (edit)

12

 Book of Mormon was "…begun shortly after he eloped with Emma Hale in January 1827."
  • No source provided.

Emma and Joseph Eloped (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: xiv
  • See also ch. 1: 12

12

 Joseph "completed a ritualized five-year search for the gold plates…"
  • No source provided

12

 "Each year at the autumnal equinox, which according to rodsmen and seers was a favourable time to approach the spirits guarding buried treasures, Smith had gone to the hill where he sought after the plates.
  • No source provided

12n29

 "As noted by Quinn, that day in September 1823 was ruled by Jupiter, Smith's ruling planet…"

13

 Oliver Cowdery said Joseph wanted to "commune with some kind of messenger."
  • Oliver Cowdery to W.W. Phelps, LDS Messenger and Advocate 1 [No. 5] (Feb 1835): 79.
  • The quote is incorrect in Quinn, Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, 125, 134, which the author appears to be quoting without checking Quinn's primary source for accuracy.

13

 Oliver Cowdery said Joseph "had heard of the power of enchantment, and a thousand like stories, which held the hidden treasures of the earth."
  • Oliver Cowdery to W.W. Phelps, LDS Messenger and Advocate 1 (Feb 1835): 79.
  • CITATION is in ERROR. He is quoting from Quinn, Early Mormonism, 125, 134 & Vogel, Indian Origins, 14–15.
  • Actual quote is found in: Oliver Cowdery to W.W. Phelps, LDS Messenger and Advocate 2/1 (October 1835): 197.

13-14

 "Smith elaborated this idea to 'raise up seed' [in Jacob 2:30] with the signal might [sic] be given again and polygamy would be re-introduced….
  • No source provided

Early preoccupation with polygamy (edit)

14

 [In 1831 Joseph] "sanctioned the first breach in marriage mores. It occurred in Smith's charge to missionaries to the Indians when he told single and married men alike that they should marry native women. Polygamy may have been on his mind…."
  • No source provided.

14

 …W.W. Phelps reported on the prophet's instructions in all their antebellum racism. Through intermarriage, Smith said, the Indians would become white, delightsome, and just" and fulfill the Book of Mormon prophecy that 'the scales of darkness shall begin to fall from their eyes; and many generations shall not pass away among them, save they shall be a white [pure] and delightsome people."
  • W.W. Phelps to Brigham Young, Aug. 12, 1861, LDS Archives.

14n34

 The 1840 Book of Mormon substituted the word 'pure' for 'white,' although the wording reverted back to "white" again in the English 1841 and later foreign editions, then became 'pure' again in 1981.
  • No source provided.

14n34

 Even so, other passages in the Book of Mormon still refer to 'white' as 'delightsome' and a 'skin of blackness' as a 'curse' (2 Ne. 5; Jacob 3:5, 8-10; Alma 3-6-9; 3 Ne. 2:14-15; Morm. 5:15).
  • The author ignores that many (if not most/all) of these scriptures have a symbolic role, as illustrated in Joseph's change discussed above (though the author apparently tries to undercut that impression). Richard L. Bushman, LDS author of a recent biography of Joseph Smith, writes:
...[T]he fact that [the Lamanites] are Israel, the chosen of God, adds a level of complexity to the Book of Mormon that simple racism does not explain. Incongruously, the book champions the Indians' place in world history, assigning them to a more glorious future than modern American whites.... Lamanite degradation is not ingrained in their natures, ineluctably bonded to their dark skins. Their wickedness is wholly cultural and frequently reversed. During one period, "they began to be a very industrious people; yea, and they were friendly with the Nephites; therefore, they did open a correspondence with them, and the curse of God did no more follow them." (Alma 23꞉18) In the end, the Lamanites triumph. The white Nephites perish, and the dark Lamanites remain. [4]
  • N/A

14n34

 Skin color was important in other LDS scriptures as well, and blacks of African ancestry were denied full participation in the church until 1978.
  • N/A

14n34

 "Interestingly, the rhetoric underlying the theology may have resulted from 1830s Mormons trying to convince their neighbors in the slave state of Missouri that they were not abolitionists."
  • Campbell, "'White' or 'Pure': Five Vignettes," Dialogue 29 (Winter 1996) 119-120
  • Lester E. Bush Jr. and Armand L. Mauss, Neither White nor Black (SLC, Signature Books, 1994).

15

 Ezra Booth…[claimed] the expressed goal of the mission as being to secure a "matrimonial alliance with the natives." However, the missionaries did not seem successful in this area. Booth is probably wrong; the accounts say Joseph didn't explain the plural marriage issue until 3 years later, so married men could hardly be out looking for Indian wives in 1831.
  • Deseret News (20 May 1886); Ezra Booth letter, Ohio Star, (8 Dec 1831).

15

 "One wonders when Emma Smith might have first suspected that her husband was contemplating plural marriage…As Emma regarded her handsome spouse, what in Joseph's youthful experiences may have suggested the unusual family arrangements that were to follow?"
  • No source provided.

15

 "We know Joseph often stayed overnight on visits with other families. Was Emma aware that later marriages would develop out of these family visits among their close friends? Could she have seen this coming—the injunction to enter into 'celestial marriage'?"
  • No source provided.

15-16

 "An examination of Smith's adolescence from his personal writings reveals some patterns and events that might be significant in understanding what precipitated his polygamous inclination."

Or, it might not. As it turns out, it isn't.

Early preoccupation with polygamy (edit)

16-20

 "The vices and follies of youth…."

Early preoccupation with polygamy (edit)

19-20

 William Stafford…remembered "Joseph…looking in his glass" and seeing "spirits…clothed in ancient dress" standing guard over treasures."

The author is here using the Hurlbut-Howe affidavits uncritically, without addressing their numerous problems.

20

 "Joseph cut 'a sheep's throat [and] led [it] around a circle while bleeding," his former acquaintances remembered, to appease the evil spirit."

The author is here using the Hurlbut-Howe affidavits uncritically, without addressing their numerous problems.

  • No source provided, but is from William Stafford affidavit in Howe.

20

 Joseph 'professed to tell people's fortunes' by gazing at a 'stone which he used to put in his hat,'…."

The author is here using the Hurlbut-Howe affidavits uncritically, without addressing their numerous problems.

  • No source provided, but is from Henry Harris affidavit in Howe.

21

 "In a March 1, 1842 letter to John Wentworth…he left out any reference to the sinful thoughts he had previously mentioned. He had come effectively to de-emphasize the feelings of sin and guilt he had once experienced."

The author again presumes that Joseph's works referred to "sinful thoughts," which he has tried to tie to chastity.

  • History of the Church 4:535–41
  • Jesse, Writings of Joseph Smith, 241–248.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

21

 "Despite his ambiguity on these points, there is every indication that he took an interest in polygamy at an early period, beyond what we read in his autobiographies or in the Book of Mormon."
  • No source provided.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

21

 "What was new about this [1838] account [of Moroni's visit] was that this time the 1823 angelic announcement was preceded by an 1820 'First Vision,' which included not just 'personages' or 'angels' but a visitation by the God of heaven—'The Father and The Son.'"
  • No sources provided.

22

 Lucy said, "in the course of our evening conversation[,] Joseph would give us some of the most ammusing [sic in Smith] recitals…[and] describe the ancient inhabitants of this [American] continent their dress their manner of traveling the animals which they rode."
  • Anderson, Lucy's Book, 329, 345.

22

 "There is nothing in Lucy's account about women, wives, or early struggles with chastity…."
  • No source provided.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

22

 "…that same year [1832], [Joseph] had famously become involved with a sixteen-year-old carpenter's daughter named Fanny Alger, who eventually moved into the Smith home in about 1835."
  • The date is not at all sure. The evidence dates it to either 1833 or 1835; others have not argued for 1832 specifically, and the author provides no evidence or argument for this early date.
  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

22

 "Emma never indicated that her husband had told her anything specifically about his experiences prior to their marriage or the details of his involvement with other women, although she did know about Fanny Alger."
  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

22

 "…it must have been a fascinating courtship, conducted as it was among unseen spirits and Joseph's unsettling conversations with angels."
  • No source provided.

22

 "Joseph and Emma had been bound by treasure magic from their first meeting in 1825, because Joseph…[came] to help Josiah Stowell located buried treasure [and] boarded with Emma's father."
  • No source provided

22

 "It was in a mysterious atmosphere of imaginative lore and a mix of theology and magic that Joseph and Emma eloped."
  • No source provided.

23

 "The treasure seeker presented himself as someone who had special knowledge that was beyond the woman's ken."
  • No source provided.

25

 "What Joseph failed to explain in this [1838] version [of his history of money digging] was the apparent continuum from treasure seeking to finding gold plates or the similar modus operandi in placing a 'seer stone' in a hat…"
  • Van Wagoner and Walker, "Joseph Smith: 'The Gift of Seeing,' Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 15 (Summer 1982): 2:50 [sic];
  • George D. Smith, "Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon," Free Inquiry 4 (Winter 1983-84): 27n2.

25

 "It is also true that Joseph's career in money digging was much more extensive than he intimated in his 1838 narrative."
  • The point of Joseph's 1838 account was not to give extensive details on his youth or past, but to provide the key events of the restoration as he understood them.
  • Joseph_Smith_and_money_digging
  • No source provided.

25

 Bainbridge "glass-looking" appearance is called "a trial"
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

27

 Isaac Hale not being allowed to look at the plates was a "clumsy subterfuge."
  • No source provided.

28

 "Joseph's personal charisma was working its effect where he needed to rely on others for help. He elicited sympathy and created a sense of urgency; his enterprises bore a strange significance."
  • No source provided.

28

 "A talisman he is said to have worn while digging carried this inscription: 'Confirm O god thy strength in us so that neither the adversary nor any Evil thing may cause us to fail.'"

28

 "If his wife shared in his sense of triumph [for getting the plates], she was nevertheless forbidden to see the plates herself."
  • She explained this didn't trouble her. Emma insisted that she was not forbidden to see them, but that she was convinced that it was the work of God, and that this sufficed for her. The author also does not report Emma's witness about the tangible reality of the physical plates.
  • Emma Smith not forbidden to see plates
  • Van Wagoner & Walker, "Joseph Smith Gift," 50.

28

 "Married life was not easy. In fact, it was riddled with doubts, rumors, and deception from the start."
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

28

 "…Joseph was haunted by the suspicion, which followed him from place to place, that he crossed moral boundaries in his friendship with other women."
  • No source provided.
  •  History unclear or in error

28-29

 Joseph had an affair with Eliza Winters in 1828

This hostile report is belied by other primary documents.

  • No source provided

Eliza Winters (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 28-29 and 29
  • See also ch. 3: 232

29

 "When Emma's mother, Elizabeth Hale, was asked about this [the purported seduction of Eliza Winters] in an interview forty-six years later, she declined to comment. Whatever she might have known went with her to the grave in February 1842…."
  • The author does not tell us that the same author interviewed Eliza (see above), she likewise said nothing about Joseph's attempted seduction. This is even stranger when we know that Eliza sued Martin Harris for slander because he accused her of loose morals; she lost the suit. She had no reason, then, to favor the Mormons—yet she never complained of Joseph's attempted seduction.
  • The author even makes the absence of evidence from Mrs. Hale sound suspicious.
  • Eliza Winters
  • Vogel, Early Mormon Documents 4:296–97, 346–60; see also Frederick G. Mather, "The Early Mormons: Joe Smith Operates at Susquehanna," Binghamton Republican (29 July 188).

Eliza Winters (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 28-29 and 29
  • See also ch. 3: 232

29

 "In the revelation [D&C 132] Emma was promised annihilation if she failed to 'abide this commandment.'"

29

 "Curiously enough, the revelation [D&C 132] did not invoke the Book of Mormon's justification for taking more wives—the call to raise a righteous seed."
  • This calls into question, then, the author's theory that Joseph wrote the Book of Mormon and had been concocting the whole polygamy idea since his teen years. If the Book of Mormon is Joseph's initial rationale for polygamy, why not use its best argument?

Early preoccupation with polygamy (edit)

29

 "The same year he married Emma…Joseph also probably had met Louisa Beaman, then only twelve years old."
  • No source provided.

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

29

 [Joseph's] "relationships in Ohio with various families and their daughters—some quite youthful at the time—allowed him to invite the young women into his further confidence when they were older."
  • No source provided.

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

30

 "In most cases, the women were adolescents or in their twenties when he met the. About ten were pre-teens, others already thirty or above."
  • No source provided

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

30

 "Whitney's daughter Sarah Ann would become one of Joseph Smith's wives, although at the time [1831] she was only five years old."
  • No source provided

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

31

 Mary Elizabeth Rollings was "an excitable and impressionable young woman…at age thirteen…had interpreted words spoken in tongues…."
  • No source provided

Ages of wives (edit)

  • See also ch. Preface: ix
  • See also ch. 1: 1, 22, 29, 30, 31, 32, and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 53
  • See also ch. 2a: 142-143
  • See also ch. 3: 198
  • See also ch. 6: 408

31

 "It was eleven years after the Smiths roomed with the Whitneys that Joseph expressed a romantic interest in their daughter, as well."
  • No source provided

Whitney "love letter" (edit)

Womanizing & romance (edit)

31

 "Another future wife, Marinda Johnson, was fifteen when she met Smith in Ohio. She said when he looked into her eyes, she felt ashamed. At the time, the Smiths were living with Marinda's family…."
  • No source provided.

32

 "The seven-year-old daughter of Apostle Heber C. Kimball was still another future wife…When she married Smith a few years later in Nauvoo at the age of fourteen, it was with her father's encouragement."
  • No source provided

32–33

 This series of events raises a few questions. What was the nature of Smith's relationships with these young women form the time he first met them? How relevant is it that in many instances he had lived under the same roof as his future wife prior to marrying her?
  • Ah, now we see why it's brought up! But, the author explores none of these matters in detail—he just leaves it up to the readers' imagination. It does raise some questions, such as:
  1. wouldn't it be hard to hide anything inappropriate in the close quarters of 19th century home?
  2. doesn't this mean that these women and their families knew both the public and private Joseph very well—they were not merely 'seduced' by his public persona?
  • No source given.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

33

 Lucinda and George [Harris] lived across the street from the Smiths. At an unspecified time, but probably by 1842, Lucinda became one more of the prophet's plural wives.
  • Compton dates the marriage to 1838 (In Sacred Loneliness, 4). The author addresses none of the issues around the date's uncertainty.
  • No source given.

Lucinda Harris (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 33 and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 92

34

 [In Illinois Joseph] "was still hunted by law officials for old offenses."
  • No source provided.

35

 "During the 1837 recession, Smith's unchartered bank, called the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-banking Company, collapsed. Angry Ohioans could not be repaid for loans they had made to Mormon merchants and some church members lost their savings."
  • We are not told that loans were made because the Saints (including Joseph) were considered good credit risks. The economic collapse caught everyone by surprise.
  • Kirtland Safety Society
  • No source provided.

37

 "Missourians were alarmed by the influx of Mormons…and met to decide what to do about the intrusion. Sidney Rigdon warned that if they lifted their hand against the church, they would be 'exterminated.' In response to this incendiary speech, violence erupted on both sides, and Governor Lilburn Boggs soon declared in an echo of Rigdon's rhetoric that 'the Mormons…must be exterminated,' 'treated as enemies,' and 'driven from the State if necessary' to protect 'the public peace.'
  • Note that the author tells us nothing of the 1833 violent dispossession of the members in Jackson County, Missouri. The next paragraph says only that "Mormons found strife wherever they settled…this was true first in Jackson County….then to a succession of other counties."
  • History of the Church 3:42, 175.

38

 "…Smith and fellow prisoners escaped to join their people in Illinois, where they proceeded to found a theocratic society."
  • No source provided.

38n81

 "Todd Compton has assembled the most complete documentation regarding Joseph and Fanny's relationship. However, I hesitate to concur with Compton's interpretation of their relationship as a marriage."
  • Note that the author does not engage or do more than mention Compton's strongest evidence: the Hancock autobiography. (He says only "Compton…draws from a late reminiscence by Mosiah Hancock to suggest that Smith married Alger in early 1833."[41 n. 90] But, we are nowhere told that this witness claimed to have performed the marriage ceremony.
  • Initiation of the practice
  • Fanny Alger—affair or marriage?
  • Fanny Alger—William McLellin account
  • 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)

Fanny Alger (edit)

Ignoring Hancock autobiography (edit)

39

 "Joseph wrote in his journal on December 4, 1832, 'Oh, Lord, deliver thy servant out of temtations [sic] and fill his heart with wisdom and understanding.' If this was not in reference to Fanny Alger, it coincided with the report of two of Joseph's scribes, Warren Parrish and Oliver Cowdery, that Joseph had been 'found' in the hay with his housekeeper."
  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

39

 Parrish said Joseph and Fanny were discovered together "as a wife"…
  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

39

 Cowdery called it a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair."
  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

39–41

 William McLellin claims

Fanny Alger (edit)

Ignoring Hancock autobiography (edit)

40–41

 McLellin sometimes claims there was also a "Miss Hill."
  • Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 66.

41–42

 "It might be important to mention that the testimony here and elsewhere regarding "[having] Fanny Alger as a wife" employs a Victorian euphemism that should not be construed to imply that Fanny was actually married to Joseph."
  • Yet it is not clear why we should not so construe it. G. D. Smith does not tell us that Johnson (the same person who reported the term 'had…as a wife') then insisted in the same document that “without a doubt in my mind, Fanny Alger was, at Kirtland, the Prophet’s first plural wife.”
  • G. D. Smith provides no evidence or citation to enforce his reading over Johnson’s clear view of the relationship.
  • Fanny Alger—affair or marriage?
  • Fanny Alger—William McLellin account
  • 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)
  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

42

 "There is no evidence to corroborate the claim that Fanny was pregnant."
  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

42–43

 Five "primary accounts" of the Fanny relationship:
  1. ) Oliver Cowdery & Warren Parrish
  2. ) FG Williams via McLellin
  3. ) Emma Smith via McLellin
  4. ) Benjamin F. Johnson
  5. ) Fanny Brewer's affidavit
  • There is no Warren Parrish statement as suggested in #1; only Johnson's citation of him in 1905.

The author fails to mention:

6) Ann Eliza Webb x 2 (hostile, but thought was a marriage)
7) Chauncery Webb

These are "second hand," but so are Parrish, William, Emma, Johnson, and Fanny Brewer!

  • No source provided.

Fanny Alger (edit)

44

 "Rumors may have been circulating already as early as 1832 that Smith had been familiar with fifteen-year-old Marinda Johnson, a member of the family with which Smith lived in Ohio."
  • Compton and Van Wagoner both reject this version of events.
  • Marinda Nancy Johnson
  • 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)
  • No source provided.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

44

 "Lucinda Harris…[claimed] she was Joseph's 'mistress' four years before an 1842 conversation with Sarah Pratt…."
  • Such a claim is inconsistent with the mores of the time. The author does no source criticism on the problems with the Sarah Pratt statement from a virulently anti-Mormon work.
  • 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)
  • Wilhelm Wyl, Mormon Portraits Volume First: Joseph Smith the Prophet, His Family and Friends (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing and Publishing Co., 1886), 60.
  • D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Signature Books, 1994), 618.

Lucinda Harris (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 33 and 44
  • See also ch. 2: 92

44 n. 100

 “Van Wagoner...and Compton...argue that the mobsters...reacted to financial shenanigans, not to indiscretions with their sister. In defense of this position, Van Wagoner and Compton point to the fact that Sidney Rigdon was also tarred and feathered that night”
  • G. D. Smith fails to mention the strongest arguments advanced by those who disagree with him. He provides no citation for the explanation that he adopts.
  • Marinda Nancy Johnson
  • 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)
  • Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 4 n. 4; Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 220–222.

Womanizing & romance (edit)

45

 "Gary James Bergera…[argued that] 'Smith introduced members…to the ordinances of…eternal marriage (1841)…."
  •  History unclear or in error
  • Bergera, "The Earliest Eternal Sealings for Civilly Married Couples Living and Dead," Dialogue 35 (Fall 2002): 41–42, 45.

44–45

 "Civil marriage" was "an outdated marriage contract which, church members came to understand, was an inefficacious as an improper baptism."
  • Not true, since one could be in good Church standing if one was civilly married, but not if one was committing adultery.
  • Beyond the grave, marriages were not binding. But this does not mean that they were "outdated," or that Church members did not continue to marry civilly.
  • Richard Lloyd Anderson and Scott H. Faulring, "The Prophet Joseph Smith and His Plural Wives (Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith)," FARMS Review of Books 10/2 (1998): 67–104. off-site
  • Bergera, "The Earliest Eternal Sealings for Civilly Married Couples Living and Dead," Dialogue 35 (Fall 2002): 41–42, 45. (I've not read this – GLS)

48

 "In Smith's narrative, an otherworldly being Smith called 'the Lord' defends polygamy…."

48-49

 "The revelation [D&C 132] contravenes the Book of Mormon passage where polygamy is said to be allowed under certain conditions but is likely an indication of wickedness…." "However, Smith's 1843 revelation changes all this. Section 132 establishes polygamy as a virtuous higher law that is forever 'true'—no longer a time-sensitive practice."

49

 "Another revelation, almost seeming to recall Smith's teenage concerns about sinful thoughts and behavior, reiterated this standard: 'Thou shalt not commit adultery….'"

Womanizing & romance (edit)

50

 "…in 1841, Joseph Smith and Luisa Beaman participated in the first formal ceremony to legitimize a plural coupling."
  • No source given.
  •  History unclear or in error

Ignoring Hancock autobiography (edit)

50

 "…Smith engaged in even more perilous anti-social behavior by indulging in sexual relations with the daughters and wives of close friends, albeit mostly in marital and religious contexts."
  • Sexual relations in a marital context is not an "anti-social" act. If all the data are taken into account (i.e., the Hancock autobiography) all were sanctioned in this way (see above).
  • There is scant evidence that Joseph had sexual relations with any polyandrous wife.
  • 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)
  • No source given.

Ignoring Hancock autobiography (edit)

51

 "…LDS leaders denied violating Illinois law…."
  • No source given.

Hiding polygamy (edit)

  • See also ch. 1: 3-4 and 51
  • See also ch. 4: 247

51

 [Today there is] "the continued abusive coercion of underage girls in polygamous communities. Although polygamy has been repeatedly condemned by the contemporary LDS Church, the Nauvoo beginnings of the practice remain in LDS scripture as Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants and in the church's temple sealings.
  • Newspaper articles on "fundamentalist" plural marriage

Endnotes

  1. [note]  Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf : distributed by Random House/University of Illinois Press, [1979] 1992), 69. ISBN 0252062361. off-site
  2. [note]  William J. Hamblin, "That Old Black Magic (Review of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View, revised and enlarged edition, by D. Michael Quinn)," FARMS Review of Books 12/2 (2000): 225–394. [{{{url}}} off-site]
  3. [note]  W.W. Phelps, Letter to Brigham Young, 1861, original in Church Archives, emphasis in original; cited by B. Carmon Hardy, Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier (Norman, Okla.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2007), 36–37.
  4. [note] Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 99.

Further reading

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