Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Nauvoo Polygamy/Chapter 3

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Chapter 3

Page Claim Response Author's sources
159 "several days after Orson Pratt, Sidney Rigdon, and Ebenezer Robinson declined to affirm Smith's good character…."
  • The three were Pratt, Rigdon, and George W. Robinson, not Ebenezer. (See Manuscript History, 29 August 1842; History of the Church 5:139; Faulring, American Prophet's Record, 254).
  • History of the Church 5:125, 139.
160 Governor Carlin described that Nauvoo statute on writs as an "extraordinary assumption of power….most absurd and ridiculous…[a] gross usurpation of power that cannot be tolerated."
  • History of the Church 5:153-55.
161 "The Nauvoo charter, which was the basis for this presumption of independence from state jurisdiction…."
  • Chapter 2 of the present work. No argument or justification for this claim is provided in the previous chapter.
  • Smith again gives no hint that the Mormons were being anything but "presumptuous," when in fact the legal arguments of the day were likely in their favour.
  • Nauvoo_city_charter
  • Nauvoo_city_charter/Usurpation of power
162 It is interesting that [The Peace Maker, a non-member's defence of polygamy] appeared during the hiatus in the erstwhile marriage frenzy of 1842 and while Smith's apostles were traveling the countryside to counter Bennett's words and deny polygamy."
  • G.D. Smith does not discuss the many differences between The Peace Maker and LDS doctrine.
  • G.D. Smith and his source also ignore the arguments which had been raised against Joseph's participation or approval.
  • Polygamy Book/The Peace Maker
  • Lawrence Foster, "A Little-Known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842," Dialogue 9 (Winter 1974): 21–34.
163 "…the entire Mormon community would be expelled from Illinois, primarily because of the dominant sense they betrayed public trust."
  • G.D. Smith here over-simplifies an extremely complex issue, with no references or argument.
  • No source provided. He merely asserts and moves on.
185 Joseph's "summer 1842 call for an intimate visit from Sarah Ann Whitney…substantiate[s] the intimate relationships he was involved in during those two years."
  • Again, Sarah Ann. 185
185 "However, the History of the Church predictably gives no notice of these weddings."
  • HoC again 185
190 "The pretended marriage [of Joseph Kingsbury to the polygamously-married Sarah Ann Whitney] could have been a precaution against possible pregnancy."
  • Speculation.
  • Despite Smith's repetition of his "tryst" fable, there is no evidence of a sexual relationship with Sarah Ann.
  • No source provided.
193 Lucy Walker "told Joseph she required a revelation before she would submit [to plural marriage]. He promised that if she prayed, she would receive her own personal manifestation from God, which she reported she received 'near dawn after—a sleepless night"—when a "heavenly influence" and feeling of "supreme happiness…took possession" of her."
  • Smith provides the bare minimum of the story; Lucy's account is more impressive and powerful than these few fragments suggest:
  • Littlefield, Reminiscences, 48; Smith, Intimate Chronicle, 100, 557.
196 Financial and marital issues, especially concerning the Lawrence sisters, would inflame public opinion prior to Smith's arrest. G.D. Smith does not tell us that Madsen's work demonstrates that Joseph properly discharged all his financial duties as guardians of the Lawrence estate.
  • GLSFARMS Paper Gordon Madsen, ‘The Lawrence Estate Revisited: Joseph Smith and Illinois Law regarding Guardianships,’ Nauvoo Symposium, Sept. 21, 1989, Brigham Young University
198 There was a "conflict of interests between building a church community and [Joseph's] continuing affection for young women."
  • No source provided.
198 "Joseph was pursuing Helen" Mar Kimball.
  • No source provided.
201 Helen's biographer concludes that she 'expected her marriage to Joseph Smith' to be a ceremony 'for eternity only,' not an actual marriage involving physical relations.
  • There is no evidence for physical relations in Sarah's marriage to Joseph.
  • The source, Compton, does not agree with G.D. Smith's reading: “there is absolutely no evidence that there was any sexuality in the marriage, and I suggest that, following later practice in Utah, there may have been no sexuality. All the evidence points to this marriage as a primarily dynastic marriage.”
  • SEE GLSFARMS article
201 "How surprised she was to discover 'that it included [marriage for] time also": a physical union at age fourteen with a thirty-seven year-old man."
  • G.D. Smith again distorts the above source.
  • The surprise was not in finding that she needed to have "a physical union," but that she was regarded as married, and so could not date others her age while Joseph was alive.
201 "As she put her ambivalent feelings into verse in her "Reminiscences," Helen had "thought through this life my time will be my own," but "the step I am now taking's for eternity alone." She saw her "youthful friends grow shy and cold" as "poisonous darts from sland'rous tongues were hurled." She was "bar'd out from social scenes by this destiny," and faced "sad'nd mem'ries of sweet departed joys"
  • This poem in fact demonstrates G.D. Smith's distortion. Her concern was indeed that she was "bar'd out from social scenes"—she could not date while married. This does not mean, however, that there were sexual relations, and G.D. Smith's source agrees.
  • In addition to hiding Compton's conclusion, Smith does not tell us that his Kimball source likewise concluded that the marriage with Helen was “unconsummated.”
  • Polygamy/Helen Mar Kimball
  • Stanley B. Kimball, Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer (Ubana: University of Illinois Press, 1981): 109-110.
205 "That [Rhoda Richards] was her husband Brigham's cousin was apparently secondary to the grander scheme of interlocking the hierarchy in marriage."
  • Here G.D. Smith again relies on presentism to provide a hostile interpretive lens. It was not unusual for first cousins to marry; notable first-cousin marriages include scientists Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein; composers Edvard Grieg and Sergei Rachmaninoff; the founding prime minister of Canada, John A. Macdonald; and authors Edgar Allen Poe and H. G. Wells. Nineteen of the present-day states permit unrestricted marriage between first cousins, and most countries have no restrictions at all on marriage between cousins. In its exploitation of the presentist fallacy, G. D. Smith’s remark is utterly irrelevant in its historical context.
  • No source provided.
214 "Even though Smith and Clayton spent three hours preparing the eloquent language" of D&C 132….
  • Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Loaded and prejudicial language
  • Presumes or implies that Joseph Smith and William Clayton were the author(s).
  • Clayton would testify: "Joseph commenced to dictate the revelation on celestial marriage, and I wrote it, sentence by sentence, as he dictated. After the whole was written, Joseph asked me to read it through, slowly and carefully, which I did, and he pronounced it correct."
  • No source provided.
217 "Smith found it useful to reference the conditional restriction on marriage found in the Book of Mormon."

225-226 G.D. Smith intends Joseph to be seen as arrogant. He quotes a letter from Joseph to James Arlington Bennet: “I combat the errors of ages; I meet the violence of mobs; I cope with illegal proceedings from executive authority; I cut the Gordian knot of powers, and I solve mathematical problems of universities, with truth . . . diamond truth; and God is my ‘right hand man.’” G. D. Smith then editorializes: “With such a self-image, it is not surprising that he also aspired to the highest office in the land: the presidency of the United States.” G.D. Smith fails to tell us that Joseph's remarks are a tongue-in-cheek reply to Bennet's previous letter.

  • GLSFARMS paper
  • Probably wiki this section….
226 G.D. Smith again quotes Joseph: "‘I am learned, and know more than all the world put together."
  • G.D. Smith does not quote enough of Joseph's remarks to complete his thought:
  • "If you tell them that God made the world out of something, they will call you a fool. The reason is that they are unlearned but I am learned and know more than all the world put together—the Holy Ghost does, anyhow. If the Holy Ghost in me comprehends more than all the world, I will associate myself with it."
  • G.D. Smith also avoids quoting the better versions of this talk, from the Times and Seasons, BYU Studies, or even Signature Books.
  • GLS FARMS paper
  • Maybe also wiki….
  • History of the Church 6:222–223.
227 "There is no reason to doubt that Smith's marriages involved sexual relations in most instances."
  • We have evidence of sexual relations for only nine wives.
  • GLSFARMS paper
  • No source provided.
227 "Mary Elizabeth Lightner spoke of 'three children' whom she said she 'knew he had.'"
  • Joseph Smith and polygamy/Children of polygamous marriages
  • The Life & Testimony of Mary Lightner (Salt Lake City: Kraut's Pioneer Press, n.d.); "Mary E. Lightner's Testimony, As Delivered at Brigham Young University)," [punctuation is like that in Smith] Apr. 14, 1905, 41-42, complied by N.B. Lundwall, LDS Archives, at Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. ref is long so at the left

228-229 "Until decisive DNA testing of possible Smith descendants—daughters as well as sons—from plural wives can be accomplished, ascertaining whether Smith fathered children with any of his plural wives remains hypothetical." This is true, but G. D. Smith fails to tell us that all those who have been definitively tested so far—Oliver Buell, Mosiah Hancock, Zebulon Jacobs, Moroni Pratt, and Orrison Smith—have been excluded. Would he have neglected, I wonder, to mention a positive DNA test?

  • No source provided.
230 "In 1841, Sarah Pratt firmly rebuffed Smith and remained monogamously committed to her missionary husband."
  • G.D. Smith here again follows Bennett completely uncritically. He tells us nothing about the multiple witnesses who testified to Sarah's adultery with Bennett.
  • John C. Bennett
  • Bennett, History of the Saints, 228-31; "Workings of Mormonism Related by Mrs. Orson Pratt," 1884, LDS Archives.
231 "Cordelia C. Morley Cox….had rejected [Joseph's] amorous proposal."
  • Cordelia Morley Cox, Autobiographical statement, Mar. 17, 1909, Perry Special Collections.
232 Eliza Winters “perhaps did not” resist Joseph’s advances “but apparently talked about it all the same.”
  • Eliza Winters wiki?
  • There is no evidence that Eliza ever said anything about it.
  • GLSFARMS
  • No source provided.
234 "According to LDS theology, the posthumous sealing meant that Heber would be Smith's son in the eternities, not the son of his biological father."
  • Needs work….
  • No source provided.
235 [In 1831 Joseph] "directed missionaries to marry native American women."
236 G.D. Smith hints that Emma would have to sneak up on Joseph to check up on him, as evidenced by “his warning to Sarah Ann to proceed carefully in order to make sure Emma would not find them in their hiding place.”
  • Joseph’s hiding place from the mob and instructions to the Whitneys have been transmogrified into a hiding place for Joseph and Sarah Ann.
  • No source provided.
236 G. D. Smith asks us to “assume . . . that LeRoi Snow’s account [about Emma and Eliza and the stairs] was accurate.”
  • [See also p. 130-134.] Yet again, Smith provides no hint that most researchers doubt this event.
  • He does nothing to deal with their objections here or elsewhere.
  • No source provided.
236 "Just as Joseph sought comfort from Sarah Ann the day Emma departed from his hideout…."
  • G.D. Smith's version of Sarah Ann is again trotted out.
  • No source provided.
237 Joseph's "insatiable addition of one woman after another to an invisible family…."
  • No source provided.
237 Joseph had a "prolonged dalliance with Fanny Alger."
  • No source provided.
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