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Women of Mormonism
Chapter 14 - Open Letter to the Mormon Women

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

Anti-Polygamists Animated Only by Love of Humanity.-A Revelation Cannot Release from Allegiance to Law.-Fruits of Polygamy.-Geo. Q. Cannon's Four Wives.-Ann Eliza Young's Suit.-Letter from Ann Eliza Young.-Woman in Utah and Other Sections.

LETTER NUMBER ONE.

BELIEVING that there are many Mormon women who conscientiously accept polygamy , as a part of their religion, and who submit to all it imposes because they think that God requires such submission, or, perhaps, as one of their number has said, because they fear it may be true that God requires it, we feel that it is due to them, as well as to ourselves, to make a statement of our position in the Anti-Polygamy Movement.

In the first place, we desire you to understand fully and distinctly that we have been impelled to the work we have undertaken only by a common love of humanity, and we feel we should be criminally culpable, did we not exert our utmost influence to impede a system which can only result in all accumulation of evil and misfortune, and which has already brought .sorrow and shame into so many [164] households in this Territory. We are confident that this and succeeding generations will be benefited by our efforts, and we believe that many Mormon women, in their secret hearts, wish us complete and glorious success.

We are not, as has been frequently asserted by some of your leaders, " banded together to destroy the most sacred ties between man and woman; to make children bastards, and trample upon the holiest affections of the human heart." We should indeed regret that any sorrow should come to you through our action, for we are all sisters by virtue of our common womanhood, and we know that of all sorrows, that is the greatest which opens our eyes to the fact that we have been cherishing idols of clay, and have raised false gods and have fallen down to worship them. No sorrow that we are able to avert shall come to the Mormon women. We do not wish, as your leaders claim, to misrepresent our own sex in regard to the holy relations of wife and mother, and our only desire is to accomplish good for the poor, persecuted women of Utah, as you call yourselves.

We concede to all the right to the free exercise of their religion. Our country is a land of civil and religious liberty; but while our nation is one of freedom, it is by common consent governed by law. Now, if you are what is always claimed for you, loyal American citizens, devoted to the maintenance of law, you must admit that no assumed revelation can exempt any one from obedience to that [166] law; for, if one has a right to obey a revelation which he pretends to have had, another may do the same, and thus any crime may be justified. If some of us should come to you and say we had received a revelation from Heaven commanding us to murder you or your dear children, would you submit quietly? Would you not claim the protection of the law ?

The revelation on polygamy is as directly opposed to our law as a revelation to practice wholesale murder would be. Neither was it an institution of the primitive Mormon church; and if, as you assume, truth cannot change,-God is the same yesterday, today, and forever,-will you enlighten us how His mind has changed in this one particular case?

But the best way to judge of the good or evil of any system, is by its effects. Can any of you honestly and truthfully ,say that one single good has resulted from the practice of polygamy? On the contrary, can any of you deny that its consequences have been a long train of evils, some of which we cannot even hint at and preserve our self-respect? Can you deny that it has planted sorrows which have blasted ten thousand lives, and whose influences will be felt upon generations yet unborn?

Do not thousands of you feel, though you dare not say so, that there never was such a mockery of God, such a blasphemy, as to call this accursed institution of polygamy a religious principle? If you would only reflect seriously for a few moments [167] and let the scales fall from your eyes, you could not help seeing that the system was founded by the most transparent fraud of the century, and its supports are superstition, ignorance, falsehood, and lust.

It has been well said that the civilization of any people can be measured by the respect and tenderness bestowed upon woman. Tried by this standard, what degree of civilization has been attained by the Mormon people? We appeal to any Mormon woman who knows the practical working of polygamy to answer this question. In the polygamous households of your neighbors and friends, is woman honored? Is she treated with tenderness or respect? Is her life made happy by her husband's care, and by his consideration for her feelings and her wishes? On the contrary, are you not told that you have no right to expect your husband to love you, and that it is enough honor for you to be allowed to bear children to a Saint? Is this fulfilling God's purpose toward woman on earth, to be obliged to smother the holiest instincts of womanhood, and to degenerate into mere child-bearers, as you know you have degenerated? And do the men of your faith, these Saints, treat the mothers of their children as wives, respecting them as such, and demanding the same respect from others?

When George Q. Cannon made his public answer to G. R. Maxwell, who contested his seat in Congress, he said, " I deny that I am living with four wives." What did this mean? George Q. Cannon was certainly living at that time with four women, all of [168] whom had borne him children, and he lives with them to this day. If they are not his wives, what are they? Will any of you undertake to explain this to us?

Only a few days ago, the brother of George Q. Cannon was a witness in the case of Cannon vs. Campbell, the Utah contestant for Delegate to Congress. This brother declared upon oath that he did not know George Q. Cannon was living in polygamy, and that he knew the name of no woman who claimed to be a wife of George Q. Cannon, except one, and that one was Elizabeth Hoagland, his first wife. You know that there is scarcely a Mormon child in Salt Lake City who does not know the four women who are called George Q. Cannon's wives, also their children.

When Ann Eliza Young commenced her suit for divorce, Brigham Young's answer to her plea, as made in court, was in substance, that she was not his wife, because he had been lawfully married to Mary Ann Angell many years before, and his wife, the said Mary Ann Angell, was still living and undivorced. Can you not see plainly the position in which this answer places all but the first wife?

Will you tell us now who it is that " would destroy the most sacred ties between man and woman, make children bastards, and trample upon the holiest affections of the human heart" ? When George Q. Cannon denied that he had four wives, what status did he assign to those plural wives, and also to their children? When Brigham Young said Ann [169] Eliza was not his wife, did he not tacitly avow that neither of his other plural wives were married to him, and that in consequence their children were illegitimate?

If you would only lift your eyes and look through the mists of superstition which envelop you, you would see that the fetters which weigh you down were forged by man's brutality, and not laid upon you by a just and merciful God. Can you not see how you have been ensnared, and have you not been deluded long enough? Will you not listen to the voices of your own hearts, and break the chains which not only bind you, but which divorce from your hearts all the holier instincts of womanhood? Will you not, we most earnestly entreat, join hands with us, bravely and fearlessly, in the cause of purity, happiness, and justice to yourselves?

LETTER NUMBER TWO.

Ever since my escape from the dark prison-house of polygamous slavery into the light of freedom and Christianity, one thought has been in my mind. If I could only show to every woman the contrast between the lives of women in Utah and those in all other parts of this great land; if I could make the women of Utah understand what a glorious sense of freedom one feels, who, breaking away from the gloom, the slavery, the misery of an existence under the teachings of the Mormon priesthood, comes [170] into the society, the civilization, which is based upon Christianity, which protects the family and honors womanhood; if the women of Utah could only see and feel, even a little of the wonderful difference between the two cases, as I soon began to see and feel it after my deliverance,-then it .seems to me they would make every effort, run almost any risk. to break their chains and find true liberty.

When I first began to travel, and go into the houses of this country, I was filled with new sensations, to see the respect and courtesy shown by husbands to wives,-the affectionate solicitude for their comfort, the glad welcome given after separation, the pride which husbands seemed to feel in their wives. It was all so wonderful and new to me! How many, many times did tears spring to my eyes, at witnessing so often the tender partings of husbands and wives when only leaving each other for a few days, or the joyous greetings after a few days' separation.

And what touched me most of all was the anxious and unceasing care which frail or sick wives received from their husbands. Such things are of daily occurrence. People do not notice them, they are so much a matter of course. But such devotion is unknown to the women of Utah, except it be to the reigning favorite. And every Mormon woman knows how certain it is that this favoritism will be transient, hence she is ever pervaded with a feeling of insecurity.

Is it strange that thoughts unutterably sad were [171] aroused, that my mind went back to scenes of everyday occurrence where polygamy holds sway? Obedience to the tenets of Brigham Young and his fellow tyrants produces no such tender care of women as that I have spoken of. He used to whine in coarse, contemptuous mockery when women came to him with their hearts overladen with miseries growing out of polygamy, and send them away without one word of comfort. I am not speaking of his wives; they soon learned not to go to him for sympathy. But hundreds, yes, thousands, of women yet living in Utah can testify that Mormon teaching withers and destroys those sentiments which lead a true man to show respect and courtesy to his wife, to care for her though her health may fail and her beauty wane.

How my heart ached, and still aches, to think that the sister-women I had left behind were robbed of such blessings by the cunning falsehoods of coarse and evil men! How rich in love and happiness were the lives of women everywhere in the United States, except in the fair Territory of Utah! There they were barren of all that makes life dear to a true woman. Riches can be cheerfully dispensed with, privation and toil do not drive out happiness; but to have poverty of affection and sympathy-that despoils and ruins the life of woman.

And to have this evil result brought about under the pretense of religion and religious duty,-that is the saddest and most hopeless thing of all! That [172] there are coarse and unfeeling men outside of Utah is most true; men who neglect their wives, who wrong them, who are cruel and wicked. But though husbands be unfaithful here, the wife is not forced to have her rival brought into her home, and in her very presence see her husband lavish upon the usurper the tokens of his affections.

The wife here is not told from the pulpit, by her religious teachers, that it is her duty to submit to this outrage upon her wifely love. On the contrary, the husband tries to conceal his misconduct. Discovery is the one thing he dreads. And if it becomes known, the wife receives the sympathy of all good people. She is not made to believe it a religious duty to bear such cruelty, and that the rebellion of her womanly nature against it is proof of her sinful nature. She is not compelled to go to the altar and place the hand of another woman,-perhaps the one she hates the most of all women in the world,-in the hand of her husband, thus stifling her truest instincts.

On the contrary, if she desires it, the law is prompt to unloose her hand from the clasp of him who has shown himself unworthy. Here, when the wife and mother grows old, she is not set a.side as worthless, perhaps turned out of her home to give place to a younger and a fairer favorite. Here, every added wrinkle or silver hair awakens added devotion and more tender care. She is revered and loved for a life of devotion to her husband.

But in Utah, in polygamy, the harder and more [173] successfully she has worked to assist her husband to accumulate property, the more likely she is to have to yield her place to another. The old wife does not harmonize with the fine furniture and modern improvements of the new house; a younger and more lovely one must be taken to preside over the establishment.

It makes my soul burn with indignation when I dwell upon these outrages. Surely never was the sacred name of religion so desecrated as now, when it is used to render possible such crimes!

My heart goes out with pitying tenderness to the women of Utah, and I pray that light may shine into their minds, that they may see the foulness of the accursed doctrines they have been taught, and that moral courage and strength may be given them to break the wicked chains which bind them to wretchedness.

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