Heaven's Ditch

by Jack Kelly

  Many of those to whom Joseph revealed the teaching were appalled and disgusted. “It was the first time in my life,” Brigham Young wrote, “that I had desired the grave.” Heber Kimball begged Smith “to remove the requirement.” Many expressed “shock, horror, disbelief, and general emotional confusion.” Some threatened to leave the Church.

  Joseph said he was teaching them “the Ancient order of things for the first time in these last days.” Secrecy was essential. “The Lord makes manifest to me many things,” he said, “which it is not wisdom for me to make public.”

  Historians and detractors have often compiled lists of Joseph Smith’s “wives.” The secrecy surrounding the practice makes any enumeration guesswork, but his dangerous liaisons certainly totaled more than two dozen. He took women in their thirties, like Lucinda Morgan, and even in their fifties. He preferred youth. Two of those he debauched were fourteen. He married the wives and daughters of his followers. He seduced young women whom he and Emma had taken into their home as servants, including the sisters Emily and Eliza Partridge. These girls, nineteen and twenty-two, were the daughters of Edward Partridge, the first Mormon bishop, who had died in 1840.

  No amount of prudishness could disguise the frankly sexual nature of Smith’s affairs. When Heber Kimball suggested that Eliza Snow was Smith’s wife in name only, she replied, “I thought you knew Joseph better than that.”

  The women to whom Smith proposed the unconventional relationship were astounded, mortified, confused, sometimes flattered. When Joseph approached seventeen-year-old Lucy Walker, she said, “My astonishment knew no bounds. This announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me.”

  Spirituality was a tool of seduction for Smith. “It is a command of God to you,” he told Walker. “If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you.” He gave her a deadline of the next day. Lucy said, “This aroused every drop of scotch in my veins.” But she thought about it, prayed about it, and submitted. “It was not a love matter,” she later wrote, “but simply the giving up of myself as a sacrifice.”

  When Joseph came for Heber Kimball’s daughter Helen, she thought that to accept a doctrine “so contrary to all of our former ideas” was “utterly repugnant.” But the charismatic prophet told her, “It will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of . . . all of your kindred.” Only fourteen, she consented. “I would never have been sealed to Joseph,” Helen later wrote, “had I known it was anything more than a ceremony.”

  Smith set his sights on Sidney Rigdon’s nineteen-year-old daughter Nancy. Warned of his intentions, she refused him. Smith wrote to her, “Happiness is the object and design of our existence. . . . That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another.” When her father confronted the prophet, Joseph claimed he had only been testing her virtue.

  Joseph’s behavior gave rise to an anguished melodrama in the Smith household. Emma knew and did not know. She suspected, heard rumors, tried not to believe it was true. She spied on her husband, confronted him, erupted in anger. Some of her closest friends became his lovers and successfully hid the arrangement from her.

  Emma was president of an important organization known as the Female Relief Society, which was charged with organizing aid for the many destitute converts to Mormonism who were continually arriving at Nauvoo. Members were also intended to watch over the community’s morals. Hoping to tamp down rumors, Joseph attended a meeting of the group and told them to “hold your tongues about things of no moment.” He was afraid that loose talk could “draw the indignation of a gentile world upon us.”

  Emma was not cowed. “All who walk disorderly must reform,” she said. “I want none in this society who have violated the laws of virtue.”

  Friends described Emma as “a woman of commanding presence.” She was intelligent, a brilliant conversationalist, high-spirited, witty. But Joseph’s persuasion and her fear of his increasingly public philandering finally wore down her resistance. Perhaps easy access to the girls in their home would placate him. Whatever her motivation, she consented to his having the Partridge sisters. They became Joseph’s wives in May 1843, and Emily “roomed” with him that night. Emma was ignorant of the fact that he had “married” the sisters several months earlier. Nor could she shake her qualms. Emily Partridge reported that after the marriage ceremony, Emma was “more bitter in her feelings than ever before,” and berated her husband late into the night.

  Around the same time, Joseph convinced Emma to accept his marriage to Sarah and Maria Lawrence. The sisters were teenage orphans who had inherited eight thousand dollars. The Smiths had taken them into their busy home and Joseph had arranged to be appointed their guardian. For much of the next year, the four young women lived in an awkward ménage with Smith and his wife.

  Emily Partridge said Emma often made things unpleasant for the girls, “but I have nothing in my heart towards her but pity.” It was the pity of a pretty young girl for a middle-aged woman. Emma regretted having agreed to the arrangement, but, as Emily knew, “it would have been the same with or without her consent.” At one point, Emma suggested to Joseph that if he continued to “indulge himself, she would too.”

  Hyrum suggested to his brother that a revelation from God might be in order. Hyrum would take it to Emma and Joseph would “hereafter have peace.” The revelation announced that if a man “have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery.” Speaking in the voice of God, Joseph added, “I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else.”

  Emma, more than anyone alive, knew the game Joseph was playing. When Hyrum returned, Joseph asked, “How did you succeed?”

  “I have never received a more severe talking to in my life,” his brother said. “Emma is very bitter and full of resentment and anger.”

  “I told you you did not know Emma as well as I did.” The revelation, issued in July 1843, remains a part of Mormon scripture.

  In August of that year, Emma threatened to divorce Joseph if he would not “relinquish all for her sake.” Once, when she found out about yet another “wife,” she berated him so much that “he had to use harsh measures to put a stop to her abuse but finally succeeded.”

  Yet the dynamics between Joseph and Emma were deep and complex. Mormon convert Benjamin Johnson spent time in the Smith home when younger and more brilliant “wives” were present, “yet Emma the wife of his youth—to me apeared the Queen of his heart.”

  During the early 1840s, the suspicion and hostility that had plagued the Mormons in Missouri began to crop up in Illinois, whose citizens had at first welcomed the Saints. A local editor said his newspaper was “bound to oppose the concentration of political power in a religious body, or in the hands of a few individuals.” He went on to ask “if there is not need of an Anti-Mormon Party in this country.”

  Illinois governor Thomas Ford was wary of Mormons. They were a powerful voting bloc whose numbers made them an effective pressure group. Any politician “too proud to court their influence” could see himself turned from office. “Let us vote as kissing goes,” Brigham Young joked, “by favors.”

  An anti-Mormon conference in Carthage, fifteen miles southeast of Nauvoo, accused the Saints of following a “pretended Prophet” with “Heaven-daring assumption.” Participants resolved to stop this “latter-day would be Mahomet,” by force if necessary.

  Joseph was not about to have his people driven from Illinois as they had been from Missouri. “Beware, oh earth!” he wrote, “how you fight against the Saints of God.” In 1841, he formed the Nauvoo Legion. Although it was an official state militia unit under the orders of the governor, the force was also Smith’s private army. The authorities allowed him to assume the exalted rank of lieutenant general. More than 2,500 Mormons signed up. Two years later, Smith prepared a message to President John Tyler. He wante
d permission to enlist 100,000 men to protect Texas and the Pacific Northwest.

  Increasingly, Smith, like many Americans, was looking westward. He sent scouts to explore New Mexico and Oregon, imagining a Mormon empire in the vast and largely empty territory. James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald and a Smith sympathizer, wrote that he “should not be surprised if Joe Smith were made Governor of a new religious territory in the west.”

  The Mormon leader declared himself in favor of theodemocracy, “where God and the people hold the power.” Harking back to the days before the Constitution erected a wall between church and state, he imagined seizing the reins of power and bringing on a new age in which faith and government would again be one. Why should God not rule on earth through his servant Joseph?

  In January 1844, he decided to run for president of the United States. He saw himself as a combination of priest and king, above the corruption of politics. The Twelve Apostles nominated him. With the Democrats dividing their support among President Tyler, former president Martin Van Buren, and dark horse candidate James Polk, success seemed possible. In any case, Smith’s campaign would allow him to air Mormon grievances nationwide. He would use the Church’s many missionaries to canvass for him. He could not have hit on any surer scheme to excite the fear or elicit the venom of his opponents.

  “The whole of America is Zion,” Smith declared in April 1844. He had two months to live.

  O Blessed Year

  During the spring of 1843, a month of advertisements in local newspapers raised expectation in Rochester to the sky. On June 23, the much-ballyhooed Millerites came to town. The giant circus tent went up in the middle of the city. Hordes crowded under the sun-baked canvas to listen to Joshua Himes and Adventist luminaries explain the dire truth.

  As the end grew nearer, Adventist leaders concentrated their attention on the spiritually fertile Erie Canal corridor. Audiences ranging from five hundred to thousands streamed into the big tent every day for two weeks. Many accepted the Adventist reasoning, many more were half-convinced or just curious. Prayer meetings and Bible study gave the event the feel of a revival.

  Congregants were startled when a sudden rain storm and gust of wind blew one side of the enormous tent loose, threatening the crowd inside. Himes said the fact that all the participants escaped uninjured was a sign. When the Adventists returned to the city in November, Father Miller came along as the star attraction. Twice a day for an entire week, he preached to overflow crowds. Farmers and villagers packed the streets with carriages and wagons, eager for the spectacle.

  That year, 1843, the year, had begun with a spasm of excitement. On January 1, Miller declared: “This year—O blessed year!—the trump of jubilee will be blown.” He was sure that in a few short months a shout of victory would be heard from heaven and “time will be no more.”

  In February the brightest comet in seven hundred years stretched its luminous tail across the sky. During March, the Great Comet of 1843 blazed in full daylight. Himes said, “I could not but think of ‘the Sign of the Son of Man in heaven.’” Signs were everywhere.

  So widespread was talk of the end time that crass merchants incorporated it into advertising. An Adventist angel in one newspaper notice bore a banner reading, The Time Has Come! The time had indeed come, the ad said, to try Wistar’s Balsam of Wild Cherry, a consumption cure. Another headline read, The End of the World! It advertised a cigar to savor while you still had time.

  Individual Adventists, in their enthusiasm, continually proposed dates when they expected the final trumpet to sound. The anniversary of the day when Napoleon occupied Rome in 1798. The Jewish feast of Passover, the Christian Pentecost, the autumn equinox. “Expectation with many was on tip-toe,” an Adventist leader said.

  The sheer strangeness of Millerism made many in the community anxious and angry. Mobs gave believers the same treatment they doled out to abolitionists. They broke up Millerite meetings by jeering, clapping, and stamping their feet. They threatened violence.

  January 1, 1844, was initially a blow to the Advent movement. The year that Miller had first pointed to, the blessed year, had passed. He was not daunted. “Never has my faith been stronger than at this very moment,” Miller affirmed. Interest in the looming apocalypse accelerated. Only thirteen weeks remained until March 21. “I feel confident that the Savior will come, and in the true Jewish year.”

  But March 21 came and March 21 went. Three days later, Miller wrote to Himes, “I am still looking for the dear Saviour, the Son of God, from heaven.” Neither he nor Himes was discouraged. It was not safe to assume Christ’s return was anything but imminent.

  Yet the failure inevitably raised doubts. “We would not disguise the fact at all,” Himes admitted, “that we were mistaken in the precise time of the termination of the prophetic periods.”

  In May, Miller frankly wrote: “I confess my error.” He was shaken but not downhearted. How could anyone complain “if God should give a few days or even months more as probation time, for some to find salvation.”

  As was his habit, Miller turned back to his Bible. From Habakkuk and Matthew, he drew the idea that God had briefly delayed the end. Hebrews, chapter 10, advised, “For ye have need of patience.” The world had entered the tarrying time. Mankind was on probation. God was giving the skeptical a last chance even as he tested the resolution of the faithful. Glorious hope was still alive and all plans now were contingent on the proviso, “if time continues.”

  For the leaders of the movement, the path was clear. Himes wrote that they had to continue with “lecturing, Conferences, Tent and Camp-Meetings, and the distribution of publications.” He insisted on “more zeal, decision, and perseverance, than ever.” He planned to travel to England to spread the word, should time continue long enough to allow it.

  Miller was now more of a celebrity than ever. In June, thousands were turned away from his lectures in Boston. In July, Miller and other Adventist preachers headed down the Erie Canal toward points west, the scene of earlier successes. They drew enormous crowds to a two-week camp meeting in Scottsville, New York, a village south of Rochester.

  When they returned to the East in August, everyone was talking about a new date for the end of the world.

  As It Is

  In May 1836, Theodore Weld brought his abolitionist message to Troy, New York. The opposition was ferocious. A mob gathered outside the church where he planned to give an oration, prevented access, and intimidated the elders. The churchmen canceled Weld’s invitation to speak. Rioters surrounded his lodgings and continued their shouting long into the night.

  Weld moved to another church. A proslavery mob broke in and stampeded down the aisles. They tried to drag him from the pulpit, while his supporters resisted. “Stones, pieces of bricks, eggs, cents, sticks, etc. were thrown at me while speaking,” Weld later reported. Crowds harassed him in the street. City officials actively opposed him.

  Weld vowed that he would continue to press his case until the authorities enforced his right to free speech or he was killed. The fanatic in him took flame. Every abolitionist must decide whether he was willing to “die a martyr.”

  Even the fiery William Lloyd Garrison urged Weld to relent. The mayor of Troy finally told the abolitionist to leave the city or be forcefully removed. Weld had no choice. He left without a victory.

  Alarmed by Weld’s uncompromising stand, Charles Finney appealed to him to make abolition secondary to saving souls, “as we made temperance an appendage of the revival in Rochester.” An uncompromising push for abolition, Finney warned, could “roll a wave of blood over the land.”

  Finney admitted that race bias was “a silly and often a wicked prejudice.” But a man may, “from constitutional taste,” refuse to marry or allow his daughter to marry a black person. Opposition to “amalgamation,” he said, was merely a prejudice. It deprived no man of his rights. Forci
ng the races to mix would hurt the antislavery cause. Converting citizens to Christianity would end slavery without conflict.

  Weld and the Tappan brothers, Arthur and Lewis, treated black Americans as fellow human beings. Finney could not bring himself to take that step. Like many Americans, he was held back by ingrained attitudes. “Abolitionists are good men,” he wrote to Weld, “but there are but few of them wise men. Some of them are reckless.” He asked Weld if he did not fear the country was “going fast into a civil war?”

  Barely more than a decade earlier, Charles Finney had been labeled “the madman of Oneida.” Now the man who had condemned lukewarmness in religion was himself taking the moderate view.

  Finney’s warning about the potential consequence did not quench Weld’s fever. Regrouping from his defeat in Utica, the abolitionist set off to find reinforcements. He was determined to recruit abolitionist orators, men of “the most obstinate constancy,” who would carry on his lecture program. By November, he had selected fifty candidates and brought them to New York City for training. Weld poured everything into the effort.

  He spoke for hours, conveying to his followers the glorious, redemptive message of abolishing slavery. Sessions lasted long into the night. He taught his pupils the methods he had learned from Finney: how to argue like a lawyer, how to counter objections, how to speak in plain language. By the final day of the training, Weld “could not speak above a whisper.” He had ruined his voice, just as years earlier he had ruined his eyes in a frenzy of studying.

  No longer physically capable of fiery oratory, Weld published an influential book in 1837 titled The Bible Against Slavery. It was an attempt to convince his fellow evangelicals that Scripture left no room for the toleration of human bondage.

  Weld continued his alliance with others who were fighting the abomination. The sisters Angelina and Sarah Grimké had been raised in Charleston, South Carolina, and had seen slavery in action. In addition to abolition, the Grimké sisters fiercely advocated for the rights of women. Their speeches were controversial even within the abolitionist community—most Americans of the time had never heard a woman speak in public. Angelina thought that female ministers would be a good idea. “We abolitionist women,” she said, “are turning the world upside down.” She joined activists like Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in demanding women’s rights. Weld wrote to her, questioning her mixing of the woman issue with abolition. Her peremptory answer reflected his own uncompromising vehemence: “Abandon the law of expediency NOW!”