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Women of Mormonism
Chapter 9 - Evidence vs. Statements
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
Incident of the
Endowment House.-Statement of a Mormon Bishop.-Testimony of a Victim.-Result of a Second
Marriage-Testimony of the United States District Attorney for Utah
WE could present a large
number of similar " heart histories " of apostate women, bearing on the same
points which the foregoing stories have illustrated; but we think enough have been given
to prove that from the earliest days of polygamy, the majority of victims .sacrificed on
its unclean altars have been unwilling ones.
Every wife who retains one spark of womanly feeling, or one trace of
a true woman's nature, cannot help but curse the day when her home was desecrated by
polygamy; and among those from whom a verbal consent has been wrung, by means that would
disgrace savages, the same feeling exists.
There is a lady living at present in Salt Lake City, (and one of the
best and most lovable of women she is, too), who was induced by methods which we dare not
even mention, to make the last and most cruel sacrifice which this barbarous faith demands
of woman, that of placing the hand [112] of the new bride in that of her husband. On their
way to the Endowment House, .she said to him: " I am going to lie to you, lie to the President, and lie to God, for I must say I consent to this marriage when I had rather die a
thousand deaths than have it take place."
Of course, polygamy was not "forced" upon this wife, nor upon thousands
of others who have felt as she did; and yet the advocates of the doctrine will state
unblushingly that it is never enforced in any case, but is the voluntary choice of all who
are living in it.
In the year 1881 a certain Mormon bishop was interviewed in the East
by the reporter of a prominent metropolitan newspaper. In the course of his remarks he
made the following statements:-
"The polygamous system is the only natural one, and the time
rapidly approaches when it will be the most conspicuous and beneficent of American
institutions. It will be the grand characteristic feature of American society. Our women
are contented with it,-nay, more, they are the most ardent defenders of it to be found in
Utah. If the question were put to a vote to-morrow, nine-tenths of the women of Utah would
vote to perpetuate polygamy."
Mrs. A.G. Paddock
This man is the representative of a class whose tyranny has enslaved
thousands of victims who are living today in Utah Territory, and who envy the dead. In
hundreds of homes, the aged wife, deserted by just such a man as this, who once [113]
swore to love and cherish her until death should part them, sits solitary by the ashes of
her desolate hearth, while the husband of her youth, sealed to women with fresher and
fairer faces, gives scarcely a thought to her existence.
In hundreds of other homes, the feeble mother of half a dozen little
ones, toils from morning till night to earn bread for her family, while the father of her
children spends all that he has upon another wife who happens to be the favorite of the
hour. And it is more probable than not that this same husband will never lose an
opportunity of proclaiming, to the world that " polygamy is not an outgrowth of lust,
but is strictly a religious institution."
In contradistinction to the statements of this bishop, listen to
those of a woman who has lived and suffered in polygamy: If
the American people could only realize all that Mormonism and polygamy mean
to humanity! It renders man coarse, tyrannical, brutal, and heartless. It deals death to
all sentiments of true womanhood. It enslaves and ruins woman. It crucifies every
God-given feeling of her nature. She is taught that to love her husband as her heart
prompts her to do, and to feel the natural jealousy that comes from seeing her husband marry another woman, is
wicked, and springs from her innate depravity; that she must crush out and annihilate all
such feelings, and submit to whatever her husband and the Mormon church dictate. It brings
thousands of children into being with the brand of [114] illegitimacy upon them, whose
birthright is hatred and wickedness. They are brought forth in sorrow and in tears. They
are cradled in misery and iniquity. They grow up hating their fathers, as well as the
plural wives and children. And at last they come to feel that if their parents live in
that unlicensed manner, they, too have a right to follow their own evil inclinations. I
solemnly aver that Mormon polygamy brings no good to man, woman, or child; but on the
contrary it brings them darkness, destruction, and despair."
We recall the face of one woman,-a first wife, -and yet we need not
say we recall it, for it haunts us continually. It is only four months since her husband
was sealed to a new wife; but these months have done the work of two-score years. Her
face, which was fair and youthful less than a year ago, looks now like that of one
enduring the torments of a lost soul. The hollow eyes, the bloodless cheeks and the lips,
tell that she is dying by inches and dying, too, in the midst of tortures compared with
which the rack would be a bed of roses.
Can those who can never even imagine them selves in her place, ask
why she submits to such a fate ? Yet we ask you in return, how a wife in Utah Territory
can prevent her husband from marrying two, ten, or twenty women, if he chooses There have
been many instances where women aware of their husbands' intention to take another wife,
have gone to the United States Court t ask help to prevent the marriage, but they have
always been told that nothing could be done. And then, when the marriages have taken
place, there is absolutely no way of proving the felony, or punishing the law-breakers.
The District Attorney of Utah, in a recent letter to the press, said:
" Do you remember that the other twin relic, American slavery, which, thank God, is
no more, set up the same cry of 'Let us alone'? And oh, to the shame of this great nation
it must be written, for years and years we did let it alone, until the bitter wail of
5,000,000 .souls went up to God, and this nation was drenched in blood. Today, not
millions, but thousands of burdened souls, who have experienced the beastly practice,
polygamy,-souls whose light has nearly gone out in this world, and whose faith in mankind
is weak, if non extinct,-are praying for the hour when they may be disenthralled from a
slavery which has been a living death to them.
"If every Congressman could hear the experience of some of the
legal wives of Utah related by themselves, and hear the earnest prayers that are often
spoken aloud, but oftener prayed in secret, there would be no need of any lobby at the
Capitol to urge that laws be passed that would eventually stamp out this relic of
barbarism."
Next: CHAPTER X. STILL IN THE TOILS
Help of the Nation Needed.-Timidity of the Women Still in the Church.-Their
Despair.-An Infatuated Wife.-A Sad Story.-Wives without Legal Rights.-The Third Wife.
Back: CHAPTER VIII. A SLAVE TO THE FIRST
WIFE
Sorrows of Plural Wives.-An Elder's Importunities.-An Unwilling Consent.-Slavery.-A
Disappointed Lover.-Escape from Home.-Tracked.-Driven Back.-Shameful Neglect.-Leaving Home
a Second Time.-Lying Justified.-A Husband's Treachery.-Doubts and Apostasy.
Index: INTRODUCTION AND TABLE OF CONTENTS
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