George F. Edmunds on Mormonism, 1882

Senator George F. Edmunds' appeal to the nation for legislation and active enforcement of anti-polygamy legislation.

His bill, which passed the Senate on February 16, 1882, and the House on March 14,

Oddly, the author of "Political Aspects of Mormonism" is not named in the issue of Harper's New Monthly Magazine where it occurs (January 1882), but the Contents for the entire volume (December 1881–May 1882) lists the author as George F. Edmunds.

    POLITICAL ASPECTS OF MORMONISM.
    
Great Basin IN a singularly interesting depression of that basin or trough which lies between the Sierras of the Pacific and the great chain of the Rocky Mountains lies the much-discussed Territory of Utah. The largest proportion of its water-shed drains into Great Salt Lake, which itself has no outlet to the sea. The rain-fall of the Territory is very slight, and the cultivation of its lands depends almost exclusively upon irrigation from the streams fed by the melting snows of the eastern mountains. Its climate has great variations of temperature, though its average is not much different from that of Baltimore. It embraces about 80,000 square miles, and it is one-fifth larger than the whole of New England. Its irrigating rivers are not very numerous, and it is incapable of supporting a large population from the products of its own soil.    
Unsolved political problem: polygamy As the great seat and centre of Mormonism it has been celebrated for more than thirty years, and it still presents the unsolved problem in political government of the eradication of polygamous institutions consolidated into one community, consistently with republican theories of government and with Anglo-Saxon notions concerning the trial of persons accused of crime. It is quite unnecessary to discuss at this day the Mormon theories of polygamy as a part of a religious institution, and as being therefore entitled to immunity. Public opinion, acts of Congress, and decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States have put this question in the category of things finally decided. Assuming polygamy, then, to be a crime against the political institutions of our country, the serious question of how to get rid of it remains to be settled.    
Latter-day Saints sought refuge in isolation Measures of violence by neighboring communities acting under a sense of outrage at the practices of the Latter-day Saints have not been found adequate to the destruction of the institution, to say nothing of the evil character and consequences of that method of rectifying wrong. When assailed and broken up in one State, they migrated to another, and when their temples were destroyed there, they sought refuge a thousand miles westward in the then uninhabited heart of the continent, and established once more, and more firmly than ever, their institutions. Isolation, indeed, has appeared to be the most favorable condition for the development and increase of, Mormon institutions, and if such isolation and development were not to end in placing the Mormons in the centre of a great family of civilized States, it might be open to question how far measures of repression or destruction of any kind could be resorted to consistently with modern ideas of the rights of separate and independent communities. But such is not the case.    
Irrepressible conflict The Mormon Church, as a concentrated, coherent, and growing force, is now found, not in the almost inaccessible valley of Great Salt Lake, as it was thirty years ago, but in the centre of the greatest thoroughfare across the continent. The institutions of modern civilization, morality, and progress have travelled across the great plains, and enveloped the distant oasis where in 1847 the Mormons finally established themselves. The problem must now or in the near future be solved, and the irrepressible conflict between polygamous Mormonism and the social and political systems of the people of the rest of the United States must have a decisive issue.    
Mormons seek political independence ruled by hierarchy It is the object of the Mormons, as shown by repeated and persistent efforts, [286] to set up for themselves and maintain an exclusive political domination in the Territory of Utah, and to so frame and administer laws as to encourage rather than repress polygamy. Since their final settlement in the valley of Great Salt Lake, their policy has been consistent and steady, always looking to the establishment of a State controlled by a hierarchy, and resting in all its parts on the special ideas of Mormonism, and these people have plainly seen that once established as a State in the Union, their domestic concerns, including polygamy and every revolting practice which they might choose to set up, would be absolutely beyond the legal reach of the people of the other States.    
Organic act gave Mormons control Within two years after the first settlement a memorial was sent to Congress asking for a State government, and all the preliminary steps to its establishment were taken. On the 9th March, 1849, Brigham Young was elected Governor; Richards, Secretary of State; Whitney, Treasurer; Kimball, Chief Justice; Wells, Attorney-General, etc. Congress did not accede to the demand for a State government, but on the 9th September, 1850, passed an act organizing Utah Territory, and in October Brigham Young was appointed Governor. The organic act itself was all that the Mormons could have wished. It left everything to their own management, and in effect allowed them to authorize or even require polygamy if they chose. The administration of the affairs of the Territory was so conducted as to discourage Gentile immigration, and to cause nearly all development to be that of the Mormon Church.
  
Young governor until 1857

1862 legislation to punish polygamy		 In March, 1856, another attempt was made to establish a State. A constitution was adopted, and a memorial sent to Congress asking for the creation of a State. Young continued Governor until July, 1857, when a Gentile Governor was sent out, and so strong was the opposition of the Mormons to this step that it was thought necessary to send a heavy military force to support the new Governor. He found, as all his successors have, that he possessed very small means for overcoming the exclusive policy of the Mormon leaders; and it was not until July 1, 1862, that Congress took any positive step for the punishment of polygamy, or for the rectification of various laws and ordinances of the Legislature of the Territory which had been passed in aid of the polygamous policy of the Church.  
Influx of gentiles led to support of woman suffrage In the same year the Mormons made another effort for the admission of Utah as a State. The Congressional prohibition of polygamy, the building of the Pacific Railroad, and the discovery of rich and extensive mines had by 1870, produced a large increase of the Gentile population of the Territory, and there came to be considerable danger that the Mormons would be outvoted, and the Territorial Legislature and the minor officers might be anti-Mormon. Accordingly the Mormon Legislature passed a woman suffrage bill, which, of course, added enormously to the voting force of the Mormons.    
Failure to erradicate polygamy Again in 1872 a fresh effort was made to establish a Mormon State, but without success. In the last ten years efforts have been made at nearly every session of Congress to provide such regulations for the administration of law in that Territory as to enable effective steps to be taken for the punishment of polygamy, and particularly with a view to the prevention or discouragement of further polygamous marriages. But very little success has attended such efforts. For one cause or another, acts that would have gone far toward the accomplishment of this end have been repeatedly defeated, and the difficulty in procuring convictions for polygamy under existing laws has been found almost insuperable.    
Juries thwart prosecution This difficulty lies mainly in two points of legal procedure. The first is in the nature of the constitution of juries. On the theory prevalent in the United States, a jury must be unanimous in order to convict. If, therefore, a single Mormon be a member of a jury in a given case, it is impossible to obtain a verdict, for he believes, or professes to believe, that polygamy is a divine institution, and that they who practice it are rendering obedience to God, and so he thinks, or professes to think, that prosecutions for that offense are the most wicked tyranny, and lie will not find a verdict of guilty under any circumstances. And it has been found, too, naturally enough, that the process of challenging for bias is generally ineffectual in such cases.    
Evidentiary problem But if in some rare instances it has been found possible to obtain an impartial jury in the only correct sense—that is, a jury who, as responsible members of the community, believe in the necessity of the execution of its laws, [287] and who are willing to find verdicts accordingly —upon fair proof—a second difficulty has at once presented itself in the inability of the prosecution to prove the fact of polygamous practice, although every Mormon privately and publicly out of court admits its existence and defends it. This difficulty of proof grows out of the rule of the law of procedure, which it has been insisted required record or other direct evidence of the two or more marriages. The Supreme Court has lately held, however, that proof of the admissions, etc., of the accused can be given in evidence, which may make convictions possible. These marriages, it seems, are made by the Mormons, latterly at least, in secret, and however august may be the ceremonial, and however numerous the witnesses, the event takes place with closed doors and under the most stringent obligations of secrecy, so that when a Mormon witness is called to prove the fact, he has no scruple usually in denying any knowledge of it.
    
1866 estimate 1/3 married males polygamists Under such circumstances the institution continues to flourish, and the proportion of polygamous marriages is probably now considerably greater than it was fifteen years since. The Mormon population of Utah in 1866 is estimated to have been about 60,000. In that population the proportion of "plural marriages" is believed, from certain testimony taken in that year by a committee of Congress, to have been not less than one-third of the whole number of married males.
    
Now a test of faith

More polygamists than anti-Mormons		 From the evidence taken by this committee, and from the whole course of events in that Territory since the passage of the act of 1862 denouncing polygamy as a crime, there is strong reason to believe that the institution has been more and more promoted by the Mormon leaders, and has become almost a cardinal test of Mormon faith. The present population of Utah purports, by the census returns of 1880, to be 143,963, more than 73,000 of which are under eighteen years of age. The official statistics do not show the number of polygamous marriages, or the number of persons practicing polygamy, or the number of children of such marriages, but carefully collected unofficial information furnishes good reason to believe that the number of polygamists and their children in the Territory greatly exceeds the whole anti-Mormon population. The reader will, it is thought, soon be able to correct this estimate by data of substantial precision.    
Mormons claim free exercise of religion Down to the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Reynolds, in the winter of 1878–9, the Mormons professed to vindicate their opposition to the law against polygamy and their refusal to obey it on the ground of its unconstitutionality, as prohibiting the free exercise of religious faith.    
Some propose ending practice if existing marriages left alone That case having finally exploded this pretension, it might have been expected that the institution of polygamous marriages would be abandoned, but such does not appear to have been the case. Delegations of Mormons visited Washington for the purpose of appealing to Congress for such legislation as might annul or mitigate the effect of the law as declared by that decision, and some committees of Congress were disposed, for the protection of innocent women and children, to take such measures as would legitimize the children of such marriages born within a year after the promulgation of this decision, and to ameliorate the condition of the unfortunate females who had been the victims of these practices, but accompanied by provisions adequate, so far as legislation could go, for the absolute suppression or punishment of future polygamous marriages.    
Church refused to back down But these measures were not at all satisfactory to the Mormon interest, which seemed to demand not only "indemnity for the past," but "security for the future"; and, for reasons not easy to explain, Congress failed to make any provision upon the subject.    
Practice may be increasing There is no reason to suppose that the final settlement of the rightful power of Congress to provide for punishing polygamy, notwithstanding it may be exercised under a claim of religious duty, has had any effect to deter Mormons from a continuation or even increase of the practice.
    
Careful legislation and active enforcement might end polygamy Notwithstanding the difficulties attending prosecutions for this crime growing out of the laws regarding the formation of juries, technical rules of evidence, and the falsehood of witnesses, there is fair reason to suppose that if Congress should choose to enact suitable legislation to meet the case, and the Executive department should endeavor to enforce such legislation with the same vigor that it exercises in punishing illicit distilling, the practice of polygamy might in a very few years be entirely broken up.    
Can be done if the nation is committed But judging from a dozen years of effort and [288] failure to pass laws in this direction, the hope of immediate legislation can not be considered as very well grounded. Even with the law as it now stands, a sincere and persistent Executive policy, and with judicial courts in the Territory that will hold it to be the same duty to administer the law against polygamy as against other crimes, it is probable that a decided check to the growth of the institution could be established. If the people of the United States are really in earnest in desiring to prevent the establishment of a powerful polygamous State in the heart of the continent, whose chief institution is so in opposition to the social institutions and moral ideas of all the other States, and which (Utah once becoming a State with it) can never be lawfully broken up by the national power, it will be easy to accomplish the extinction of polygamy by lawful and by just means.
   
End Mormon immigration, curb land distributions to church, annex parts to other states The encouragement of non-Mormon immigration, and the discouragement of the appropriation-which has been extensively practiced-of large tracts of the most valuable lands to or for the benefit of the Mormon Church, would have a valuable effect in the right direction. Another effectual disposition of the subject might be made in the annexation of different parts of the Territory to the contiguous States and Territories, by which the concentrated strength of the voting power of the hierarchy would be broken, and political Mormonism would find itself in a minority in the making and administration of local laws.    
Polygamy will flourish with laws, enforcement If no measures of legislation are to be resorted to, and if the administration of existing laws continues to be feeble, lax, and intermittent, Mormonism in Utah, with its cardinal doctrine polygamy, may no doubt count on a pretty long career.    
Time to act

Negative effect of disregard for law		 Is it not quite time that in one direction or the other a definite and living policy be adopted and put in practice? If the polygamy of Mormonism is to be considered as within the category of crimes that every well-ordered government is bound to prevent and punish, then the sooner the real strength of public opinion and the law is exerted, the better for all concerned. The intrinsic evils of crime are sufficiently great always, but the evils of crime against which laws denounce penalties that are never or but rarely enforced are infinitely greater, for there is brought into play the constant lesson of disregard for law which people everywhere are but too ready to learn.    
Alternative: let Mormon hierarchy have its way If, on the other hand, polygamous Mormonism is to be considered by public opinion, and by those intrusted with the making and execution of the laws, either as a local institution the regulation of which ought to belong to the community itself, or as a mere venial and sentimental offense that is only to be condemned because it is out of the fashion of the rest of civilized mankind, and so oughtn't to be punished by the persistent power of the law, and only discouraged through the sermons of clergyman, debates in Congress resulting in no legislation, and messages of the Executives followed by no vigor of administration, would it not be far better, on the whole, for the government of the United States to renounce its dominion of the subject, and remit its treatment to the Mormon hierarchy itself?    
Polygamy can be exterminated without injuring innocent. Either course is unquestionably open to practical accomplishment by the people and the government of the United States. If we really mean to exterminate polygamy in Utah, it can easily be done by lawful and just means, and without doing an injury even (but rather a good) to all morally innocent persons involved in the practice, and their children.    
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