Polygamy, Part Deux

Clarification from the former post: Contrary to my previous argument, there is reliable evidence of intimacy in Joseph's marriage...Joseph F. Smith collected affidavits from Joseph's plural wives in 1892 as the RLDS church was suggesting that either polygamy never happened or that it was in a symbolic sense...Joseph's wives insisted that they were consummated marriages (while this is disconcerting, it shouldn't overly trouble us...marriage is marriage is marriage...what else do you expect?)

So the big question...Joseph obviously was not entirely upfront with Emma about his plural marriages...yet the "rumors of Joseph's [dishonesty] have been greatly exaggerated."

First, let's not fool ourselves...this idea of Joseph's wives falling under his charismatic swooning is a load of malarkey. It was not chick-flick material: "Yes, Brother JOseph...oh-how-I'm-swooning, Brother Joseph..." This business scared the living daylights out of them. Some found it reprehensible. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner told him to scram at first...she only agreed after an angel appeared to her. Cordelia Cox turned him down...cold. She was sealed to him posthumously. Emily Partridge also turned him down...and only did it with the coaxing of Heber C. Kimball. Benjamin Johnson, when hearing from Joseph that he wanted to marry his sister Almera, told him straight up that he would "kill him as surely as the Lord lives" if Joseph had anything but impure motives. Lucy Walker turned him down twice before she had a manifestation.

Why would Joseph tell anything less than forthright about his marital plans? Why would he publicly denounce polygamy even as he privately practiced it? The easy answer--the kind meant to generally close down discussion and the kind of pundits and politicians to prefer? Joseph was a libidinous megalomaniacal power-monger. Of course, this belief was held by some of Joseph's contemporaries...even close friends, even Emma at times (William Clayton recalled her telling Joseph that hif he wanted to "indulge himself," she would as well...fear not, fellow Saints...the tit-for-tat of marital disagreements of this proportions should not be taken seriously). Yet as Bushman notes so well, questions of hypocrisy send us off the trail of the historical Joseph. We must attempt to discern what made up the incongruity or give up hope for holding Joseph as a kind of moral figure...as a believing Latter Day Saint, I prefer the former.

To set the stage, we hearken back to that odd-named girl who kind of started it all : Fanny Alger. Why didn't Joseph tell Emma about her to begin with? The scholarship tells us (Daniel Bachman's thesis, primarily) that Joseph probably questioned what plural marriage was all about in 1831 (according to Joseph Noble, the man who married Joseph to his first plural wife in Nauvoo, the inquiries took place during the Joseph Smith Translation). The records from there, as stated before, are murky; we don't know for sure whether she married in 1833 or 1835. If Bushman is correct, Joseph first saw the angel commanding him to embrace it in 1834...a date that would fit with the 1835 chronology. In either case, Joseph recognized that the time to practice it had not yet arrived (as he told Lyman Johnson, a witness to the JST while Joseph lived in the John Johnson home). Depending on whose chronology we accept, we might ask the question of what caused Joseph to wait so long...perhaps up to 4 years. The Joseph of previous years was brimming over with energy to follow the revelations...he was a Joseph who would round up a hundred men to go fight a battle 1000 miles away, marching most of the way. It was not in Joseph's character, especially not in the libididnal Joseph portrayed by the critics, to put off a command of this nature.

Furthermore, the Joseph that emerges in the documents, save for the deception, is one who is utterly bound up in Emma. And one who seems only On one occasion, he even noted: "If you desire my love, do not speak evil of Emma." He signed his letters "Affectionately, Yours" and nursed over her in times of ill health. He told visitors about how adorable his children were and how he couldn't help but love their mother. And when he did propose, he did it in strange ways...presenting sealed envelopes and hesitantly so (as he did for Emily Partridge), approaching male relatives (as he did for my great-great aunt and for Almera Johnson). Joseph the libertine seemed to be utterly lacking in "game."

Finally, we err if we suppose that all plural marriages were conducted w/o Emma's knowledge. Even Todd Compton, no friend of traditional LDS orthodoxy, claims that Emma knew of and approved of Eliza R. Snow (interesting...given that there was likely a physical altercation that led to leave the Mansion House). Emily and Elizabeth Partridge (even though they had married Joseph two months earlier without her knowledge), the Lawrence sisters...all of them were handpicked by Emma at one point or another. Melissa Lot believed that she was married with Emma's explicit approval. Finally, it would have been absurd to think that Joseph never addressed the Fanny issue with Emma...given that Fanny was turned out of house by Emma and the whispers that abounded as Johnson and Hancock inform us. At times, Emma was quite complicit in protecting the sanctity of Joseph's time with other wives (as my aunt Lucy attests).

So what of those occasions when Joseph did deceive? We know little of the specifics behind the Alger marriage--seemingly the most problematic one since we have no evidence that Joseph tried to teach Emma; we simply have a few late accounts claiming that they saw Joseph and Fanny being "sealed" (doctrinally impossible, by the way, as Joseph did not receive the sealing keys until the next year). And we also have little evidence of how Joseph handled the situation or what he told his wife except that he went to Michigan on a mission during the fall of 1835...a seemingly convenient time to let the domestic steam settle So did he explain the principle? It seems odd that Emma could ever buy Joseph's later talk of celestial marriage if he described the Alger incident as a mere fling.

Those who have seen marital troubles involving infidelity know that while love can be regained, trust is a fragile thing indeed. Joseph must have explained Alger in terms of plural marriage...otherwise, Emma would have seen the "marriages" later on as more Fannys dressed up in religious clothing. Indeed, Emma ended up turning out Eliza R. Snow, quite violently, later on as well...yet she still managed to accept plural marriage at certain levels even after that time. Therefore, while Emma's vitriolic opposition to plural marriage is understandable (when asked in early summer 1844--after Joseph had allowed her to burn what is now section 132--where the revelation came from, she responded tartly: "Straight from hell, madam"), we cannot say with reason that her ignorance was complete. When biographers talk about the intrigue involved in Emma starting a morality campaign in the Relief Society in early 1842, Emma almost certainly knew of the doctrine, even if she did not know of Joseph's marriages.

Furthermore, Joseph recognized that plural marriage was explosive...he had already caught whiffs of the outcomes of such rumors in 1832 when he was tarred and feathered in Hiram, OH. And with Joseph hardline (and again, understandable) obsession with loyalty in the Nauvoo era, he believed that Emma could not be trusted with these teachings given her vacillations. This was not just a matter of deceiving a wife; this was a matter of walking an awkward line between following the command of God without throwing his life to the wolves. He sincerely believed that teaching the doctrine would put his life in danger (we see this in many accounts...Louisa Beaman--whose father, incidentally, was a money-digger in Joseph's earlier years, tried to steal the plates from Joseph, and then converted, George Robinson, others). Given this belief, it becomes all the more remarkable that he continued to practice it...believing what he did about its explosiveness (one account by the Nauvoo Stake President, to be sure, claims he disavowed it entirely in the weeks leading up to the martyrdom). And the marriages were not, of course, performed without common (or physically taxing...all noted that in these years, Emma began to look more gaunt than she had in previous years) discussion about it. Joseph even offered to buy Emma a horse once if she would promise to never use the phrase "spiritual wife" around him again.

So why did Joseph deceive? When he did, it was likely not for lack of trying to teach otherwise. And probably because he believed his life was in danger. JOseph's previous flirtations with danger might lead one to think that he would keep these kinds of experiments to a minimum...consolidate his base. Instead, he threatens it by asking relatives of prominent members who practically threaten his life for even bringing up the issue (the friendly Benjamin Johnson did). We shouldn't see Joseph the egoist; we should a Joseph who really is scared stiff.

Alas, I have left much out. I have not addressed where John C. Bennett brought Sarah Pratt on board with him, accusing Joseph of seducing Pratt (though evidence suggests that Bennett was doing the seducing--it's odd that John was feeding Sarah most of the information about Joseph). Nor have I addressed Orson Pratt's return to the faith in spite of his wife's accusations (again, remarkable given that he was excommunicated for first listening to his wife).

I have not answered all the questions, but I hope I have answered some...please do share one way or the other. These are irksome issues that are seldom wrapped up neatly even with a faithful depiction, but I hope to have shed some light on the subject.

Stay tuned...