At times in US history, and despite First Amendment guarentees, infringement of the "free exercise of religion" has been found to be constitutional by the Court. What happened on this day in 1890 was the Mormon response to a line of cases and Congressional acts which otherwise would have surely led to the destruction of the major religion founded on US soil.
Sept. 24, 1890: The Mormon Church officially renounces polygamy
116 years ago on this day in 1890, faced with the eminent destruction of their church and way of life, Mormon leaders reluctantly issue the "Mormon Manifesto" in which they command all Latter-day Saints to uphold the anti-polygamy laws of the nation.
About 1,300 LDS men who had practiced plural marriage were jailed by federal officers pursuant to the Edmunds Act (1882), and many women were found "in contempt of court" and jailed for refusing to testify against their husbands. In the Utah penitentiary in 1885 are (from left to right) Francis A. Brown, Freddy Self, Moroni Brown, Amos Milton Musser, George H. Kellogg, Parley P. Pratt, Jr., Rudger Clawson, and Job Pingree.
The Mormon leaders had been given little choice: If they did not abandon polygamy they faced federal confiscation of their sacred temples and the revocation of basic civil rights for all Mormons.
The Manifesto was written in response to the anti-polygamy policies of the Federal Government, and most especially the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887. This law disincorporated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and allowed the federal government to freeze all of the church's assets.
The US Supreme Court upheld property seizure in The Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States, 136 U.S. 1 (1890).
By September, federal officials were preparing to seize the church's temples and the US Congress had debated whether to extend the Edmunds Act so that no Mormon man could vote, not just the polygamists.
The Supreme Court had already ruled a law constitutional which banned all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from voting in Idaho Territory in Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333 (1890).
LDS President Wilford Woodruff reported that on the night of September 23 he received revelation that the church should cease the practice of plural marriage. Woodruff announced the Manifesto to his peeps on this day and acted quickly to publish it in the Deseret News.
President Wilford Woodruff.
It's worth noting that President Woodruff had at least six wives himself and added another AFTER making his Manifesto. He also fathered over thirty-five children.To Whom it may concern:
Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages are still being solemnized and that forty or more such marriages have been contracted in Utah since last June or during the past year, also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuance of the practice of polygamy--
I, therefore, as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice, and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have during that period been solemnized in our Temples or in any other place in the Territory.
One case has been reported, in which the parties allege that the marriage was performed in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake City, in the Spring of 1889, but I have not been able to learn who performed the ceremony; whatever was done in this matter was without my knowledge. In consequence of this alleged occurrence the Endowment House was, by my instructions, taken down without delay.
Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intentions to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.
There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy; and when any Elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.
Wilford Woodruff
President of the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints.
On October 6, 1890, during the 60th Semi-Annual General Conference of the church, the Manifesto was formally ratified by church membership.
Within six years of the announcement, Utah became a state and anti-Mormon federal persecution subsided. However, Congress still refused to seat later polygamist representatives-elect.
Rumors of post-Manifesto marriages surfaced, causing then church president Joseph F. Smith to issue a "Second Manifesto" in 1904. This Manifesto threatened excommunication for Latter-day Saints who continued to enter into plural marriages.
President Joseph F. Smith
President Joseph F. Smith and family photographed in 1901 three years before issuing the "Second Manifesto" condemning polygamy by Church members. He and his wives had forty-eight children. His wives were Levira Annett Clark (m. 1859; no children; died 1888); Juliana Lambson, on his right (m. 1866; 13 children, including Joseph Fielding Smith top row center); Sarah Ellen Richards, on his left (m. 1868; 11 children); Edna Lambson, second on his right (m. 1871; 10 children); Alice Ann Kimball, second on his left (m. 1883; 7 children); and Mary Taylor Schwartz, third on his right (m. 1884; 7 children).
Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias F. Cowley each resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles due to disagreement with the church's position on plural marriage. Technically, plural marriage continues to be grounds for excommunication from the church.
Followers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been practicing the doctrine of "plural marriage" since the 1840s. The best available evidence suggests that the church founder, Joseph Smith, first began taking additional wives in 1841, and historians estimate he eventually married more than 50 women.
Joseph Smith, the new religion's founder.
For a time, the practice was shrouded in secrecy, though rumors of widespread polygamy had inspired much of the early hatred and violence directed against the Mormons in Illinois. After establishing their new theocratic state centered in Salt Lake City, the church elders publicly confirmed that plural marriage was a central Mormon belief in 1852.
The doctrine was distinctly one-sided: Mormon women could not take multiple husbands. Nor could just any Mormon man participate. Only those who demonstrated unusually high levels of spiritual and economic worthiness were permitted to practice plural marriage, and the Church also required that the first wife give her consent.
As a result of these barriers, relatively few Mormon men had multiple wives. Best estimates suggest that men with two or more wives made up only 5 to 15 percent of the population of most Mormon communities -- but it seems all the leaders of the church were among this minority.
Originally Posted by olevetonahill
