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DOI: 10.7330/9780874219173.c00 Introduction Brigham Young, famously acknowledged as the most married man of the nineteenth century, stated that he was not enthused about entering into polygamy when the principle was first introduced to him in 1841 by Joseph Smith Jr. Young later remembered: Some of my brethren know what my feelings were at the time Joseph revealed the doctrine; I was not desirous of shrinking f[rom] any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time and when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin . . . and I have had to examine myself from that day to this, and watch my faith, and carefully mediate lest I should be found desiring the grave more than I ought to.1 Most people who recalled Smith approaching them about plural marriage between 1841 and 1844 shared Brigham’s initial reaction to polygamy. Young remembered one council “where Joseph undertook to teach the brethren and sisters.” William Law, Smith’s counselor in the First Presidency of the church, declared, “If an angel from heaven was to reveal to me that a man should have more than one wife, and if it were in my power I would kill him.” As Young noted, “That was pretty hard, but Joseph had to submit for it. The brethren were not prepared to receive the doctrine.”2 Women, predictably, were even more reluctant to embrace polygamy than men. Rachel Emma Woolley Simmons was a young child in Nauvoo when polygamy was first broached to her parents, Edwin and Mary Woolley. She recalled that afterward, “we saw very little of Mother . . . There would be days together that she would not leave her room. Often I have gone there and found her crying as though her heart would break.” Mary’s crying did no good, however , because Edwin soon married two other women. Before Mary died in 1859, 1 Brigham Young, July 14, 1855, in Brigham Young et al., Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London: LDS Booksellers Depot, 1855–1866), 3:266. 2 Brigham Young, “A Few Words of Doctrine,” October 8, 1861, Brigham Young Papers, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter LDS Archives). Revelation, Resistance, and Mormon Polygamy 2 he had acquired six wives.3 Vilate Kimball expressed similar alarm in an 1843 letter to her husband Heber after her friend Mary Ann Pratt had “ben to me for council.” Vilate wrote that Smith had taught Parley Pratt, Mary Ann’s husband, “some principles and told him his privilege, and even appointed [a wife] for him, I dare not tell you who it is, you would be astonished.” She then went on to relate, “Sister Pratt has ben rageing against these things, she told me her self that the devel had been in her until within a few days past, she said the Lord had shown her it was all right.”4 Mary Ann Frost Pratt nevertheless divorced Parley several years, and several wives, later.5 Lawrence Foster has observed that “in almost all recorded cases, initial presentation of the belief in plural marriage to either men or women produced shock, horror, disbelief, or general emotional confusion.” Faithful Mormons experienced intense “inner turmoil,” and gossip and rumor rocked Nauvoo.6 There is some evidence that Joseph Smith attempted on more than one occasion to test the waters in order to introduce polygamy publicly, but the community uproar within the church quickly generated a retraction.7 In light of the intense opposition against it and the great tumult it caused in people’s lives, how did polygamy become the favored form of marriage among Mormons for most of the remainder of the nineteenth century? The obvious answer is that the Mormon people believed polygamy was right—that it was ordained of God. They eventually did follow this principle, but, given their initial adverse reaction , how did Mormons come to accept polygamy as divinely sanctioned? What might have been the motivations for Joseph Smith to introduce polygamy, and what was the process by which people were persuaded to shift their understanding of marriage not only to accommodate polygamy, but to regard it, at least officially, as the ideal form of marriage? There are...

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