Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft Part 5

With this a.s.surance to aid me, I began the work of reaching the committees--warm work in a Was.h.i.+ngton summer, but hopeful in the new prospect of a lasting success. The bill for disfranchis.e.m.e.nt had been reported out by the committees and was on the calendar for pa.s.sage. It was necessary to have the question reopened before the committees for argument. In soliciting the opportunity of a re-hearing, from the Chairman of the Senate Committee, Senator Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut, I made my argument in a private conversation with him in his rooms in the Arlington Hotel. When I had done, he chewed his cigar a moment, looked at me quizzically, and asked: "Do you know Abbot R.

Heywood, of Ogden?"--and, as he asked it, he drew a letter from his pocket.

I replied that I knew Mr. Heywood well.

"I have a letter here from him, on this same subject," he said. "Tell me. What kind of man is he? And to what extent do you think I ought to depend on his views?"

I was never more tempted in my life to tell a lie. I knew Mr. Heywood to be a man of truth and high ideals; but he had been Chairman of the Anti-Church party in Weber County, and he had been one of the Gentile leaders for several years. I knew the intensity of his feelings against the rule of the Church in politics and the Mormon att.i.tude of defiance to the law. I was sure that he would be strong in his demand for the pa.s.sage of the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt act.

I hesitated a moment. Senator Platt was watching me. Then, with a resolve that our cause must stand or fall by the truth, I said: "Mr.

Heywood is a man of integrity. I think he would write exactly what he believed to be true. But you know, Senator, intense feeling in politics sometimes sways a man's judgment. In view of Mr. Heywood's long controversy, I hope that if he has taken a view adverse to mine, his antagonism may be mitigated in your mind by your own knowledge of human feelings."

Senator Platt held out the letter to me. "You've won your motion for a re-hearing," he said. "I think we may be able to get the truth out of you. We have not always had it in this Utah question. Read that."

I read it. It was Mr. Heywood's solemn protest, as an American citizen--on behalf of himself and the other members of the perfunctory Republican Committee of his County--against the wholesale disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the Mormons, on the ground that it would only delay a progressive American settlement of the territory!

Then I went to the other members of the Senate committee privately, and told them that the Mormon Church was about to make a concession concerning its doctrine of polygamy. I told them so in confidence, pointing out the necessity of secrecy, since to make public the news of such a recession, in advance, would be to prevent the Church from authorizing it. Not one of the Senators betrayed the trust. I was less confidential with the members of the House Committee, because I realized that nothing could be done against us unless the bill pa.s.sed the Senate.

But I gave the news of the Church's reconsideration of its att.i.tude to Colonel G. W. R. Dorsey, the member from Nebraska, and he used his influence to get me a rehearing from the House Committee. Finally I appeared once before each committee, and argued our case at length. The bills did not become law. Aided by Mr. Blaine's powerful friends.h.i.+p, we were saved "for the time."

It remained to make our safety permanent, and I took train for Utah, on my father's counsel, to see President Woodruff. I had given my word that "something was to be done." I went to plead that it should be done--and done speedily.

Chapter IV. The Manifesto

I found him in the office of the Presidency--in the little one-story house that I have described in my early interview with Joseph F Smith--and he received me with the gracious affectionateness of a fatherly old man. He asked me, almost at once: "What are they going to do to us in Was.h.i.+ngton?"

"President Woodruff," I replied, "we've been spared--temporarily. The axe will not fall for a few moments. It depends on ourselves, now, whether it shall fall or not."

"Come into the other room," he said, under his voice, in an eager confidentiality, like a child with a secret. And pattering along ahead of me, quick on his feet, he signed to me to follow him--with little nods and beckonings--into the retiring room where I had talked with Smith.

There he sat down, on the edge of his chair, his elbows supported on the broad arms, leaning forward, partly bowed with his age, and partly with an intentness of curiosity that glittered innocently in his guileless eyes. A dear old character! Sweet in his sentiments, sweet in his language, sweet in the expression of his face.

I told him, in detail, of the events in Was.h.i.+ngton, and of the men who had helped us in them--particularly of Mr. Blaine, who was apparently a new character in his experience, and of Senator Orville H. Platt, in whom he discovered an almost neighborly interest when I told him that the Senator came from Connecticut, his native state. I warned him that the pa.s.sage of the measure of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt had been no more than r.e.t.a.r.ded. I pointed out the fatal consequences for the community if the bill should ever become law--the fatal consequences for the leaders of the Church if the non-polygamous Mormons, deprived of their votes, were ever left unable to control the administration of local government. I repeated the promise that my father had authorized me to carry to the Senators and Congressmen who still had the Cullom-Struble bill in hand; and I emphasized the fact that because of this promise the bill had been held back--with the certainty that it would never become law if we met the nation half way.

I was watching him to see if he sensed the point I wished him to get.

When I touched the matter of my father's promise, his face became softly reverent; and when I had done--looking at me without a trace of cunning in his benignity, with an expression, rather, of exalted innocence and faith,--he said: "Brother Frank, I have been making it a matter of prayer. I have wrestled mightily with the Lord. And I think I see some light."

In order that there might be no misunderstanding, I put into plainer words what I meant and what the prominent men in Was.h.i.+ngton had been led to look for: since, by a "revelation" of the Church we were ordered to give obedience to the government of the nation, and since we had exhausted all our legal defenses, it was hoped that the Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Church would find a way, under the guidance of G.o.d, to bring our people into conformity with the law.

As he accepted this calmly, I added: "To be very plain with you, President Woodruff, our friends expect, and the country will insist, that the Church shall yield the practice of plural marriage."

His eyelids quivered a little, but he showed no other sign of flinching.

I saw that the counsels of his advisers and the comfort that he had derived from his prayers had prepared him for an immolation that was more serious to him than any personal sacrifice that he could make. He said sadly: "I had hoped we wouldn't have to meet this trouble this way.

You know what it means to our people. I had hoped that the Lord might open the minds of the people of this nation to the truth, so that they might be converted to the everlasting covenant. Our prophets have suffered like those of old, and I thought that the persecutions of Zion were enough--that they would bring some other reward than this." If I had been the bearer of a new edict of proscription, I think he could not have been more profoundly oppressed by the sense of his responsibility.

"Did your father tell you," he asked, "that I had been seeking the mind of the Lord?"

I replied that he had.

He reflected silently. "I shall talk with you again about it," he said, at last. "I hope the Lord will make the way plain for his people."

I do not wish to idealize the polygamous relation--but in monogamy a man is not persecuted for his marriage, and sometimes he does not appreciate the tie. In polygamy, the men and women alike had been compelled to suffer on its account by the grim trials of the life itself and by the hatred of all civilization arrayed against it. They had grown to value their marriage system by what it had cost them. They had been driven by the contempt of the world to argue for its sanct.i.ty, to live up to their declarations, and to raise it in their esteem to what it professed to be, the celestial order that prevailed in the Heavens! I knew, as well as President Woodruff did, the wrench it would give their hearts to have to abandon, at last, what they had so long suffered for.

In the days of anxious waiting that followed, I saw Joseph F. Smith and sounded him for any hint of progress. He said: "I'm sure I don't know what can be done. Your father talked with President Woodruff and me before he went to Was.h.i.+ngton, but I'm sure I can't see how we can do anything." When my father returned home, I went to him many times--without however learning anything definite. I knew that the men in Was.h.i.+ngton would demand some tangible evidence of our good faith before Congress should reconvene; and I repeatedly urged the necessity of action.

At length he sent me word, in Ogden, that President Woodruff wished to confer with me, and he suggested that it would be permissible for me to speak my opinions freely. I hastened to Salt Lake City, to the offices of the Presidency. President Woodruff took me into a private room and read me his "manifesto."

It was the same that was issued on September 24, 1890, and ratified by a General Conference of the Mormon Church on October 6, following. It was the proclamation that freed the oppressed of Utah; for, by the subsequent "covenant"--and its acceptance by the Federal government--the nation did but confirm their freedom and accord them their const.i.tutional rights. Here, shaking in the hand of age, was a sheet of paper by which the future of a half million people was to be directed; and that simple old man was to speak through it, to them, with the awful authority of the voice of G.o.d.

He told me he had written it himself, and it certainly appeared to me to be in his handwriting. Its authors.h.i.+p has since been variously attributed. Some of the present-day polygamists say that it was I who wrote it. Chas. W. Penrose and George Reynolds have claimed that they edited it. I presume that as Mormons, "in good standing," believing in the inspiration of the Prophet, they appreciate the blasphemy of their claim!

I found it disappointingly mild. It denied that the Church had been solemnizing any plural marriages of late, and advised the faithful "to refrain from contracting any marriages forbidden by the law of the land." In spite of this mildness, President Woodruff asked me whether I thought the Mormons would support the revelation--whether they would accept it.

I replied that there could be no proper anxiety on that point. The majority of the Mormon people were ready for such a message. It might be very much stronger without arousing resistance. With the exception of the comparatively few men and women who were living in polygamy, the community would accept it gratefully. Rather, I made bold to say, my anxiety was as to whether the nation would believe that such an equivocally-worded doc.u.ment meant an absolute recession from the practice of plural marriage.

It was plain that his advisers had not pointed out this danger to him.

He asked me how I thought the nation would take it.

I asked him, point blank, whether it meant an absolute recession from polygamy.

He answered that it did.

Then (I said) with such an interpretation of it, and a formal and public acceptance of it by the Church authorities, I did not doubt that we could convince the nation of its sufficiency. I reminded him--as I am now glad to remember--that the word of the Mormon people had pa.s.sed current in the political and commercial circles of the country; that I had several times been the bearer of messages from them to prominent men; that we had been taken on faith and the faith had been always vindicated. Finally, in order that I might carry away no misapprehension, nor convey any, I asked him if it was the intention of the manifesto to inhibit any further plural marriage living.

He answered, quaintly: "Why, of course, Frank--because that's what they've been persecuting us for." There was not even a shrewdness in his voice when he added: "You know they didn't get our brethren in prison for polygamy, but for living with their plural wives."

Perhaps no other man in Utah could have said such a thing without sarcasm. The fact was that the United States authorities had been practically unable to prove a case of polygamy (which was a felony) because the marriage records were concealed by the Church; but they could prove plural marriage living (a mere misdemeanor) by repute and circ.u.mstance. It was part of President Woodruff's unworldliness that he did not see the satire of his words; and I was the more convinced of his good faith.

I was convinced also, by several of his remarks, that he had consulted with the Church's attorney, Mr. Franklin S. Richards; and while I trusted the President's unworldly faith, I trusted more the sagacity of his more worldly advisers. I began to see, with a sure hope, the beginning of the end of all our miseries.

Some days later I was summoned to attend a meeting of the Church authorities in the President's offices; and I knew that the test had come. The Church was governed by the Presidency, composed of President Woodruff and his two Councillor's, with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the Presidents of Seventies, and the presiding Bishopric, composed of three members. These quorums aggregate twenty-five men; and to their number may be added the Chief Patriarch of the Church, making a body of twenty-six general authorities--the Hierarchy. It was from these latter men, polygamists and (I feared) parochial in their ignorance of the nation and their trust in the protection of their followers--it was from them (and the other practicers of polygamy) that any opposition would come to the acceptance and publication of the manifesto.

They met--something less than a score of them, with two or three of their most trusted advisers--in one of the general offices of the Presidency, sitting in leather chairs along its walls, with a sort of central skylight illuminating subduedly the anxiety of their silent faces. President Woodruff and his two Councillor's entered to them; and this insignificant-looking apartment--of such tremendous community significance, because of the memories of its past--seemed to take on the gravity of another momentous crisis in the destiny of its people. The portraits in oils of the dead presidents, martyrs, and prophets of the Church, looked down on us from the facade of a little gallery, and caught my eyes almost hypnotically with the imperturbability of their gaze. No word from them! In the midst of the broken utterance of emotion--when the tears were wet on faces to whose manliness tears were the very sweat of martyrdom--I saw those immovable countenances as placid as the features of the dead.

President Woodruff stood under them, so old and other-worldly, that he seemed already of their circle rather than ours; and he spoke in a voice of feeling for us, but with a simple and courageous finality that sounded the very note of fate. He had called the brethren together (he said) to submit a decision to their consideration, and he desired from them an expression of their willingness to accept and abide by it. He knew what a trial it would be to the "whole household of Israel." "We have sought," he said, "to live our religion--to harm no one--to perform our mission in this world for the salvation of the living and the dead.

We have obeyed the principle of celestial marriage because it came to us from G.o.d. We have suffered under the rage of the wicked; we were driven from our homes into the desert; our prophets have been slain, our holy ones persecuted--and it did seem to me that we were ent.i.tled to the const.i.tutional protection of the courts in the practice of our religion."

But the courts had decided "against us." The great men of the nation were determined to show us no mercy. Legislation was impending that would put us "in the power of the wicked." Brother George Q. Cannon, Brother John T. Caine, and the other brethren who had been in Was.h.i.+ngton, had found that the situation of the Church was critical.

Brother Franklin S. Richards had advised him that our last legal defense had fallen. "In broken and contrite spirit" he had sought the will of the Lord, and the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that it was necessary for the Church to relinquish the practice of that principle for which the brethren had been willing to lay down their lives.

A sort of ghastly stillness accepted what he said as a confirmation of the worst fears of the men who had evidently come there with some knowledge of what they were to hear. I glanced at the faces of those opposite me. A set and staring pallor held them motionless. I was conscious of a chill of heart that seemed communicated to me from them.

My brother Abraham was sitting beside me; I knew his deep affection for his family; I knew with what a clutch of misery this edict of separation was crus.h.i.+ng his hope; I felt myself growing as pale and tense as he.

The silence was broken by President Woodruff asking one of the brethren to read the manifesto. When it was concluded, he said: "The matter is now before you. I want you to speak as the Spirit moves you."

There was no reply, except a sort of general gasp of low-voiced interjections and a little buzz of whisperings that sounded like emotion taking its breath. He called on my father to speak. The First Councillor rose to make a statesmanlike review of the crisis; and I understood that with his usual diplomacy he was putting aside from him the authority of leaders.h.i.+p until he could see whether an opposition was to develop that should make it necessary for him to front it.