Women of Mormonism
Chapter 23 - Views of a Statesman
THE WOMEN OF MORMONISM:
or
THE STORY OF POLYGAMY
As Told by the Victims Themselves.
Edited By
JENNIE ANDERSON FROISETH
Editor of the Anti-Polygamy Standard, Salt Lake City,
PUBLISHED BY
C.G.G. PAINE, DETROIT, MICH.
1886
Copyright, 1881 and 1882
By Jennie Anderson Froiseth
VIEWS OF A STATESMAN
BY HON. SCHUYLER COLFAX*
Mormon
Defiance.-Juries.-:Female Suffrage.-Right of Dower. - Abolish the Legislature.-Heed the
Gentiles.-The Golden Time.
NO one can shut his eyes now to the insolent defiance our Mormon Turks have
flung into the face of the nation. The worn-out subterfuge of years past, that the United
States Supreme Court had not affirmed the constitutionality of the Congressional
prohibition of polygamy, is cast aside, since their unanimous decision, as of no further
avail. And now the Mormons boldly force the
issue. Their many-wived President, John
Taylor, has on the eve of the reassembling of
Congress, added a wealthy widow to his harem. Their
many-wived Congressional Delegate, whose polygamous family has been supported for many
years out of the people’s taxes by his
This
chapter was published in the Chicago Advance Dec.
22, 1881, under the title “The Mormon Defiance
to the Nation. Suggestions As to How It Should be Met.” The present heading is
selected by the Publisher.
[358] salary from the National Treasury,
no longer uses words of evasion, nor suggests any policy of compromise or postponement.
But to the House of Representatives, over his own signature, he boldly avows his contempt
of the national law, both as to his polygamous family and as to his preaching against it
to his followers.
Thus Mormonism insultingly asks the
nation, " What will you do about it?"
If we are not the most pusillanimous of
peoples, if we are worthy the blood so freely shed, first to establish and finally to
maintain our Government, our law-makers will answer this bold Mormon challenge by replying
that "by the Eternal," who turned our weakness into strength, and gave to us the
nation whose protecting flag floats over these ingrates, the laws of the land shall be obeyed in Utah as in Dakota, by Mormons
as by Protestants and Catholics, Jews, and Gentiles. The Chief Magistrate of whom the
cruel bullet of the assassin so recently robbed us,-" inspired," as the murderer
claims, like the Mormons, by " a. divine revelation " ! - pointed the path of
duty to the American people in his Inaugural, in which he declared it " a reproach to
the Government that, in our most populous Territory, the authority of Congress is set at
naught," and demanded that Congress should prohibit within its jurisdiction, all
criminal practices, especially that class which destroys family relations, and endangers
social order. His successor, who has so won the confidence of the nation, spoke
trumpet-tongued in [359] his recent message to the nation, of the duty " to suppress
this iniquity, the existing statute for the punishment of this odious crime so revolting
to the moral and religious sense of Christendom, having been persistently and
contemptuously violated ever since its enactment." The press has responded to both of
these Presidential proclamations of national duty with no uncertain sound. The people are
aroused on the subject as never before in the past twenty years. The Senators and
Representatives of the Republic are at their official posts. The hour for action has come!
What
shall be done?
Whoever has studied the Mormon problem on
the ground in Utah, and through their sermons, speeches, and proclamations, must realize
that no halting, mincing, temporizing, tender-footed policy will be of the slightest
effect. Better nothing at all than that. A physician might as well treat a malignant,
growing cancer with rose-water.
If this polygamous defiance of the law,
which, through the mistaken and too-forbearing policy of the nation, has been growing and
strengthening for over a quarter of a century till it absolutely controls the home
legislation of " our most populous Territory and claims the balance of power in
others adjoining, is to be stopped at all, it must be by bold and fearless legislation in
the spirit of President Arthur's forcible declaration of " the duty of arraying
against the barbarous system ALL THE POWER which, under the Constitution and laws, can be
wielded for its [360] destruction " Golden
words, indeed! The nation must strike at this defiant monster-evil with all its might,
vigorously and emphatically, to show the offenders that it has resolved on its
extirpation; and so effectively, also, that what it destroys in a Territory shall never be
able to be revived in any future State, to become bastioned against attack thereafter by
State power and State rights.
To achieve this result, the following
suggestions are offered, although the writer is conscious that they may be much improved
and strengthened by our law-makers:-
1.
Juries
should be impaneled by the U. S. Marshall of Utah exactly as in other Territories and
States, from law-abiding citizens only. How few of the readers of this article know that
by a most unwise law, enacted under our unwise " conciliating" policy, the
Mormon officials select, in Utah, half the names from whom the U. S. jurors are to be
drawn! As well expect to put down gambling by allowing gamblers to select half the juries
who are to try them for their offenses!
2.
Without
any reference to the general question of Female Suffrage in communities where what
President Arthur justly calls this " barbarous system " does not prevail, the
Mormons of Utah should not be allowed to vote their submissive harems by the wholesale in
favor of polygamy, at either Congressional or Territorial elections. Nor should these
surplus wives be allowed to claim land as " the head of a family," to help
enrich their husbands,-a right denied to legal wives anywhere, - both cases holding out a
premium, in power and in possessions, to polygamy as against law-abiding citizens.
3.
The
right of dower, which has been abolished by the Utah Legislature (so as to render a
polygamous wife slavishly dependent on the husband's favor for any share of his property
after his death, for herself or her children), should be re-enacted by national
legislation, and carefully guarded for the legal wife, who, in polygamy, is not the
favorite as a general rule. This would greatly discourage women from marrying a,
polygamist.
4.
The
District of Columbia had for years a Territorial Legislature. Congress, however, by the
consent of both parties, believed such a body could be dispensed with there, and it is now
governed by three Commissioners, under the supervision of the direct legislation of
Congress. Every member of the Utah Legislature whose per
diem and expenses are paid for out of the National Treasury, holds the national law in
utter contempt; and nearly, if not quite, all of them are practical polygamists. Why not
try there exactly the same experiment that is being tested now in the District of
Columbia; namely, abolish the Legislature, saving all its expense to the Treasury, and
have instead, a Board of governing Commissioners, under the supervision of the National
Congress. The Constitutional power is the same in both regions. The need for its exercise
is far greater West than East. Only in this way can the union of Church and State in the
Legislature be effectively abolished.
5.
[362]
Enact that as Utah is confessedly exceptional in its outspoken determination to defy the
national law, no citizens thereof shall enjoy the benefit of the Land, Patent, or
Naturalization laws, unless they declare under oath that they have not violated any law of
the land, and specifically the law that is so contemptuously trampled under foot in that
Territory; and this should also be subject to disproval by competent evidence. The
exceptional crime and the willful criminals should be banned by exceptional law.
6.
Heed
the Gentile appeal from Utah that at the open living in polygamy should be the crime
punished rather than the ceremony, which is guarded by secret and oath-bound ceremonies of
the Endowment House, which the leaders refuse to testify about in court.
7.
I
do not underrate the value of the suggestion that in the Territories a woman married to a
bigamist should be a legal witness against him on his trial. There is the same justice in
this as in allowing a woman, imposed on by a mock marriage, to testify. But this would be
more effective after, rather than before, the legislation suggested above.
But by itself this seventh proposition
would be of little avail. Beguiled, induced, almost forced by the public opinion there,
and by the increased happiness in a heaven promised by their creed, the women debased by
this relation, must needs justify and eulogize it thereafter, or else proclaim themselves
and -their children dishonored.
[363] Now is the golden hour of Opportunity and of
Power too. Congress, by fearless, direct legislation, can cleanse the Territory, while it
is a Territory, from this barbaric institution which degrades woman, defies your national
law, scouts at your national judiciary, mocks at your national authority, stains your
national escutcheon, and reviles all who lift their voices against it. No matter what may
be one's politics-Republican, Democrat, or Greenbacker-Northern or Southern by residence,
Eastern or Western-this is a question outside of party and, indeed, higher than party.
Strike at it with bold, vigorous legislation; with prohibition that will prohibit; and when the leaders realize that the
nation is in earnest, and has stirred itself in righteous wrath, the beginning of the end
will be here, and the institution will tumble into ruin and disgrace.
But if the insulting defiance of Mormondom
to the nation does not arouse Congress to the duty of vindicating its insulted laws, do
not ask the Gentiles there-a faithful few among the faithless found-to keep up the unequal
contest. They have, against all the ruling influences of public opinion and of numbers,
kept the flag flying there on which is inscribed that true motto of a Republic, "
Obedience to the Law." They have petitioned the American people for effective help in
the struggle. They have voted and argued, written and spoken, year after year, Congress
after Congress, but all in vain. Mormonism at last takes the aggressive. For decency's
sake, if nothing more, the Gentiles plead [364] that while dungeons open for bigamists
elsewhere, Congress shall not honor with one of its chairs the publicly avowed
representative bigamist of Utah. If this ulcer is not to be extirpated, what is to become
of the heart of our Republic in the next quarter of a century? Rapidly growing in numbers
by natural causes as well as by immigration from abroad, the Mormons will control the
other territories around them by their great resources of colonization; and Interior
America will be given up to the worst phase of Asiatic barbarism. May patriotism, and
firmness, and fearlessness, before it becomes too late, avert this direful consummation.
Next: APPENDIX : DECISION OF THE SUPREME
COURT OF THE UNITED STATES IN THE CASE OF GEORGE REYNOLDS OF UTAH, CONVICTED OF BIGAMY.
Back: CHAPTER XXII. SOME SUGGESTIVE LETTERS
BY HON. P.T. VAN ZILE, U.S. DISTRICT ATTORNEY FOR UTAH*
Difficulties in the way of Convicting Mormons.-How to Crush It.-Law of
Limitation.-Disfranchise the Polygamists.-Punish Adultery-"Don't Persecute
Us."-Mormon Buncombe.- Treason.-No Kid -Glove Proceedings.-The Young Men
Index: INTRODUCTION AND TABLE OF CONTENTS
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