Mark Twain got the credit, but Artemus Ward got closer to the polygamists

One hundred and fifty-plus years ago, the Mormons, those peculiar polygamists in the mountains, were foil for toilers in wit and satire. Mark Twain’s portrayal of Brigham Young, polygamists, the Book of Mormon and Mormon wives is archived forever in the classic novel, “Roughing It.” Twain deserves his fame. In a non-digital world, he was more popular than Jon Stewart, Bill Maher or Dennis Miller combined. And Mormons were ready comic foil. In the winter 1974 BYU Studies, then-BYU professor Richard H. Cracroft wrote, “Mormonism and its ‘peculiar institutions,’ … were excellent targets for reform and expose, as well as all types of humor.”

As mentioned, Twain gets the credit today for being the “Mormon expert” of the late-middle 19th century, but truth is, there was another humorist of Twain’s era who knew the Mormons far better than Twain. As Cracroft points out in his article, “Distorting Polygamy for Fun and Profit: Artemus Ward and Mark Twain Among the Mormons,” the almost forgotten lecturer/writer humorist, Ward, owed his life to a polygamist Mormon doctor and the nursing of plural Relief Society wives after he contracted a form of typhoid fever while visiting Salt Lake City in 1864.

Ward, an acclaimed lecturer who preferred talking to writing, effusively thanked the Saints after recovering. In a letter to Twain, Ward wrote “the saints have been wonderfully kind to me. I could not have been better or more tenderly nursed at home. God bless them all.”

That gratitude, though, didn’t stop Ward as describing Mormonism as “Petticoatism and plunder” a few months later during a tour of lectures on Mormonism. The temptation to ridicule, demonize and find humor in a culture that most Americans loathed was too great for ward, who like any comedian, needed fresh material.

Ward, whose real name was Charles Farrer Browne, was a frail man who eventually succumbed to tuberculosis in 1867 at the young age of 33. His early death, followed by Twain’s, or Samuel Clemens’, long life, is likely the reason he is unknown today.

In the BYU Studies article, Cracroft points out that Twain’s well-known anecdotes about life with the Mormons were written a decade or so after he had visited Salt Lake City. In fact, Cracroft relates that before he wrote chapters about Mormon life, Twain asked his brother for anecdotes of that time, “for I remember next to nothing about the matter,” Twain said to his brother, Orion.

Now, writing is s skill, and there’s no shortage of great writers who put others’ memories on page, Boswell and Rick Bragg come to mind … but Twain’s very witty accounts of The Book of Mormon and the generosity of Mormon men marrying many homely Mormon women owe a lot to Twain’s careful reading of Ward’s accounts among the Utahns. I am not excusing Twain of plagiarism, although perhaps more than a little journalistic license was practiced.

“Roughing It” remains a great book, but more of us should read the book that inspired Twain’s chapters, “Artemus Ward (his) travels among the Mormons.” Published in 1865, it’s available to read for free at Google Books. Don’t expect the early Mormons to be treated with any respect; the religion was still too strange at the end of the Civil War, but it still remains a fascinating read.

--- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

Polygamy opponents were swept aside in Nauvoo turmoil after Joseph Smith’s death

The months in Nauvoo following the murder of the LDS Church founder Joseph Smith were not surprisingly, filled with turmoil and political intrigue. The publication of “The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes” by Signature Books provides detailed accounts of the Nauvoo Stake’s high council meetings. It’s very interesting reading. The High Council was also a political body used to cast out prominent church members who did not support Brigham Young’s claim of leadership, or the church’s still-secret embrace of polygamy.

The purge of those who did not support Young in the months following Smith’s murder is an important part of LDS Church history. The Machiavellian tactics, while ruthless and arbitrary, ultimately underscored why the Mormons survived the Nauvoo disaster and thrived. They needed a “dictator,” — Young — not afraid to seize control and exercise it.

The Sept. 7, 1844 high council case of Leonard Soby, who publicly opposed polygamy in 1843 and helped publish The Nauvoo Expositor a year later, is a typical example of 1844 post-Martyrdom. Despite his past dissident status, which included an association with the anti-Smiths Nauvoo Expositor newspaper, Soby retained an uneasy status among the Nauvoo LDS religious hierarchy.

However, his support for Sidney Rigdon as church leader, and an altercation between Soby, Rigdon, Young and Orson Hyde on Sept. 3 over ordination authority for Rigdon, led to high council members “surprising” Soby with a motion that he be disfellowshipped. Soby protested vigorously, arguing that he was not a sinner, such as an adulterer or a moonshiner, but simply had honest differences with his high council colleagues.

It didn’t help. Soby may have been a bit naive, or disingenuous. By September 1844, among the Nauvoo High Council, any hesitancy to damn Rigdon as a false prophet trying to usurp authority was a one-way ticket out of the LDS Church. By the end of the night, Soby was effectively disfellowshipped. He followed Rigdon to his church in Pennsylvania, which eventually failed. Soby, 34 when drummed out of the LDS Church, died in 1891 in New Jersey. He remains a footnote in early LDS Church history.

For Young’s majority in the Mormon leadership, there was a far bigger fish to fry than Soby, or even Nauvoo Stake President William Marks, whose support for Rigdon and opposition to polygamy also ended his tenure later in 1844. On Sept. 8, 1844, in a public meeting, Rigdon would be kicked out of the church he had worked with Smith to build, with a litany of LDS Church apostles offering evidence against him.

As Brigham Young mentioned, Rigdon and Soby has been caught by Young and allies ordaining persons as “prophets” and “kings” etc. It was clear that Rigdon, who had already lost popular support in a contest with Young for church leadership, was attempting to take what members he could from Nauvoo with him to set up a rival church.

According to Young ally Orson Hyde, Rigdon, when asked that he surrender his license, threatened to publish “the history of this people since they came to Nauvoo of all their iniquity and midnight abominations.” Rigdon was referring to polygamy, and it was personal to him. His daughter, Nancy Rigdon, when 19, had resisted Joseph Smith’s efforts to make her a plural wife.

The stress of the Nauvoo polygamy battle caused Rigdon further deterioration of a long-taxed body and mind. By late 1844, he was a feeble adversary for Young and his allies. Young, who had long lost patience with Rigdon, chastised Rigdon with contempt. Other apostles provided anti-Rigdon rhetoric similar to what apostle John Taylor, future prophet, offered. He said “… he (Rigdon) is in possession of the same spirit which hurled the devil & those who we{r}e with him from heave(n) down to perdition(.)”

Only Marks offered support for Rigdon. To what must have been a very hostile audience, the Nauvoo Stake president pointed out that over the course of years, allegations against Sidney Rigdon had always been unfounded. Marks also argued in favor of a first presidency-directed church, rather than one — as Young and others argued for — directed by the Quorum of the 12 Apostles.

Marks added, “… I do not know of any other man this day that has the same power to receive revelations as Sidney Rigdon(,) as he has been ordained to be a prophet unto this people, & if he is cut off from the body this day I wish to the man if there is any that has the same power as he (Elder Rigdon).”

Young caustically responded that “Sidney had done as much (as was needed to show his unworthiness) when he arrived from Missouri(;) he had done as much as would sever any man from the priesthood …” Various Young allies also began to charge that the late Joseph Smith had had very little regard for Rigdon, and that his reputation within the church had been overstated. This is not an uncommmon tactic to use, in war, business or religion, when a longtime member of a group is being deposed by a new generation.

As mentioned, the removal of Rigdon and allies such as Soby and Marks were needed if the Mormons were to survive as a religion. Rigdon was an ill man by 1844, both physically and emotionally. He had suffered great physical hardships due to persecution in the 1830s and severe depression and anguish brought on by the introduction of polygamy and attempts by Smith to marry his daughter. Had Rigdon somehow defeated Young as Smith’s successor the LDS Church would have withered away. Rigdon’s efforts to build his own church was a miserable failure, and he spent his later years as an obscure, almost iconic curio who few paid attention to. His eccentricities included long, rambling denunciations mailed to Brigham Young that were ignored or perhaps considered with bemusement by the Utah leader.

In fact, I suspect that support for Rigdon from Marks, Soby and others (several were excommunicated the same day that Rigdon was cast out) had more to do with disgust for polygamy and the knowledge that Young intended to continue the practice.

There’s no way to know if Joseph Smith — had he lived — would have abandoned his polygamy experiment.

Under Young’s leadership, however, it was here to stay, and opposition to “the principle” would not be tolerated.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs

On the deadly LDS handcart treks

As an active Mormon, I am accustomed to the romantic tales I hear in church of the wonderful “faith-inspiring” teams of pioneers who traveled to the Salt Lake valley with all their possessions in a handcart, presumably whistling as they trudged along.

Every year many faithful Latter-day Saints take pilgrimages as “handcart” pioneers, trudging along trails. We sometimes see pictures in the media of the happy, 21st century re-creators of the pioneer treks. I imagine a few may recount their experiences in Sacrament meeting.  Here’s a link to a re-enactment

It’s a pleasant modern-day fantasy, but if someone wanted to accurately recreate a handcart trek, they would need to do it half-starved, with bloody feet and blistered hands, with few supplies and noisy handcarts prone to breaking. And if winter crept up, the re-creators would have to stop every so often to bury children and other pioneers killed by disease and the elements.

The hard fact is, the LDS handcart experiment was a disaster. Any money saved did not come close to to suffering endured by new Latter-day Saints who had to trek across a country carrying heavier loads than any rickshaw carrier was forced to endure. In fact, the fourth and fifth handcart groups, the Willie and Martin teams of 1856, were so badly mismanaged that at least a quarter (250-plus) of the handcart pioneers perished on the trail.

Historian Will Bagley recounts the LDS handcart fiasco in the Winter 2009 edition of the Journal of Mormon History. It is must reading for LDS history enthusiasts. The genesis for the handcart idea was money. The Perpetual Immigration Fund was badly in debt and early church leaders wanted to cut costs. Leaders rationalized that new Latter-day Saints would be glad to make a few sacrifices and carry their supplies across the plains to get to Zion.

The first three handcart groups made it through by early fall in 1856. Only about 30 pioneers of 600 died, an average number for the times. However, the handcarts made loud noises that caused discomfort and food supplies were woefully inadequate. Bagley recounts that the Mormon prophet Brigham Young was badly shaken by the emaciated, starved state of many of the handcart pioneers. A key problem that was never adequately handled by Mormon leaders was setting up food and other supplies posts along the trail.

The biggest, most deadly mistake made by Mormon leaders was to allow the Willie and Martin teams to leave for Salt Lake City in mid and late July of 1856. Neither group had a realistic chance of making it to the Salt Lake Valley before the cold and snow set in and the latter parts of the trip were horrifying for the LDS pioneers. As mentioned, about 25 percent died and Bagley opines that many others died after arriving in Salt Lake City. Despite October efforts by church leaders to send out relief wagons, the weakest in the parties continued to die at alarming rates.

Given the horror of the early handcarts, it’s ironic we celebrate them today. Despite cheerily false 1850s reports of the handcart treks in the church-owned Deseret News, LDS leaders did not hide the grim facts. Church leaders hurled accusations, claiming that some leaders should not have sent out the parties so late in the summer. Later, church leaders launched a counterattack from the pulpits against those who criticized them for the deadly handcart  fiascos.

Martin’s Cove was a place where many perished. Here is an account from Bagley’s piece: “We stayed in the ravine for five or six days on reduced rations,” Samuel Jones continued. “One night a windstorm blew down almost every tent. Many perished of cold and hunger at this place.”

Now that would be an experience that would likely bring some empathy and understanding to all the modern-day trekkers to Martin’s Cove.

There’s no doubt that transporting thousands of saints across the plains to Utah was an impressive accomplishment by Brigham Young and other church leaders. But the handcart scheme, which staggered on for five more treks before being stopped, was a big mistake. Far too many suffered for whatever savings were intended.

-- Doug Gibson

-- Originally published at StandardBlogs