"I move, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and the only man on earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the manifesto which has been read in our hearing, and which is dated 25th September 1890, and that, as a Church in general conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriage as authoritative and binding."

There was a moment's pause. Then, according to the Mormon custom, Snow continued:

"All who accept this document will signify it by raising the right hand."

The conference had been prepared and instructed. From all over the body of the tabernacle rose a legion of hands.

"Contrary minded, by the same sign," said Snow.

Not one vote was cast in the negative. Within the few following weeks conferences were called in all the stakes and wards of Mormondom, and at every conference the manifesto was accepted without a dissenting voice.

XI

POLYGAMY REVIVED

THE Federal Government accepted this manifesto as fatuously as it had accepted the Mormons' seeming acquiescence in the confiscation of their property. The Prophet of the Latter Day Saints had apparently said that polygamy was at an end, and the Government was as eager to accept his word as if the President and Congress were themselves Mormons and believed Woodruff's promises to be the everlasting covenants of God. Orders went out from Washington to the effect that, though the laws forbade men from contracting new polygamous unions and living in polygamy with wives formerly married, there must no bar be put in the way of those men who, already polygamists, desired properly to support their plural wives and the children that such wives had borne them.

Then someone began to examine the manifesto and to ask questions. Just what, exactly, did it mean? Its opening statement that polygamy had not recently been taught or practised was false and generally known so to be. Did this message of the Prophet merely prohibit new plural marriages, or did it put an end to old ones? Did it, indeed, really prohibit polygamy at all? Was it issued simply as an "official statement," which was what it was called, or as a revelation?

Was it the advice of the Prophet on a matter of expediency? Was it the advice of Deity on a matter of expediency, which might be followed or not as the individual elected, and not followed at all when there came a change in the temporary situation that made an end of polygamy expedient? Or was it the voice of the Most High for ever revoking what had once been set down as an everlasting law for the exaltation of the Saints and the salvation of the countless children of God?

It is difficult to see how the Mormons could accept the manifesto in this last sense without entirely denying their religion. It is more difficult to see how the Government could believe the Mormons when they said that they did so accept it. And yet the Mormons made the declaration, and the Government believed them.

Before a Master in Chancery, in October 1891, Prophet Woodruff, when the Church was applying for a restoration of its confiscated property, gave this testimony, and Lorenzo Snow, George Q. Cannon, Joseph F. Smith,1 and Anthon H. Lund, all members of the Board of Twelve Apostles, followed him on the witness-stand and corroborated him:

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Q. Did you intend by that general statement of intention (the manifesto) to make the application to existing conditions where the plural marriages already existed?

"A. Yes, sir.

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"Q. As to living in the state of plural marriage? "A. Yes, sir; that is, to the obeying of the law.” Before the examination was over, this company of witnesses had sworn that the manifesto "meant not only no more plural marriages, but no more cohabitation with plural wives taken previous to that date."

1 The present Prophet (1912).

Was this merely "lying only to the Gentiles' God"? It seemed not when, a few days later,1 the Prophet Woodruff said in the Mormon Tabernacle at Logan:

"I have had some revelations of late, and very important ones to me, and I will tell you what the Lord said to me. Let me bring to your minds what is termed the manifesto. . . I should have let all the temples go out of our hands, I should have gone to prison myself and let every other man go there, had not the God of Heaven commanded me to do what I did do, and when the hour came it was all clear to me. I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write. I laid it before my brethren, . . . the Twelve Apostles. These men agreed with me. . . . Why? Because they were moved upon by the Spirit of God . . . to do it."

That sounded convincing, but still a few doubters asked embarrassing questions. What, after all, had the Mormon God "moved upon" his Prophet and his Prophet's disciples to have them do? Merely publicly to "declare" a piece of "advice." 2 The Adam God is a man, and, even when he speaks in a Mormon tabernacle, diplomacy is not beneath him.

Nevertheless, the leaders of the Church were careful that, until independent statehood had been secured, the deception of the Government should be maintained. To the day of his death Woodruff took precaution to avoid "even the appearance of associating with his

1 1st November 1891.

2 "This declaration is regarded as being divine authority, since it was given by Wilford Woodruff, the head of the Church. And yet, since it gives a reason for refraining from polygamy other than the divine will, it is seen to be a suspension rather than a repeal, so to speak, of the law of celestial marriage as revealed through Joseph Smith." (Mormonism To-Day.)

plural wives."1 Lorenzo Snow, once in jail for refusing to obey the civil law by disobeying the law of God, went to his youngest wife, Minnie Henson, and lived only with her until his life's end, and a similar course was pursued by George Q. Cannon and other conspicuous Mormons.

So the Government was hoodwinked. The courts forgot their established precedent and began to naturalize alien-born Saints. Benjamin Harrison, as President of the United States, pardoned all the polygamists in prison "on the express condition" that the pardoned should "in future faithfully obey the laws. Within a few months the laws had restored the confiscated property to be held by the Prophet of Mormondom and his successors as "trustee in trust.'

Then the Saints asked for statehood. They would put into their state's constitution a clause forbidding polygamy and a clause forbidding the former clause's repeal. They would re-enact as a state all the antipolygamy laws that they had fought and suffered for as a territory. They promised to do whatever was demanded of them.

Judge Zane, who had headed the courts' advance upon polygamy, told Congress that polygamy was now a "dead issue." Judge Judd, who had been an antiMormon Jeffreys under Zane, added: "I do not believe to-day that we could any more, by the consent of the people of the territory of Utah, re-establish polygamy there than you could re-establish slavery in Georgia or Tennessee. So the Act that made Utah a state was passed; a convention, in which the majority were Mormons, and thirty of the seventy-seven Mormons were polygamists, met in 1895 and drafted a state

1 Hendrick.