The Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 39, 1971, No. 4

A Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History

BY HENRY J. WOLFINGER

ONE OF THE QUALITIES which attracts readers and scholars alike to the study of late nineteenth century Utah history is the drama of the protracted and bitter controversy between the territory and the federal government over the practice of polygamy. Although the polygamy question placed a severe strain on Utah's relations with the government throughout the territorial era, it was not until the 1880s that the simmering issue erupted into conflict as the federal government launched a full-scale campaign to suppress polygamy. The United States Supreme Court opened the way for such a campaign in 1879 when it declared the federal anti-polygamy law of 1862 constitutional. In 1882 Congress laid the legal ground-work for a successful prosecution of polygamists by establishing the offense of "unlawful cohabitation" through the Edmunds Act. Two years later federal officials in Utah moved to eradicate polygamy through a relentless enforcement of this statute. Literally hundreds of polygamists were arrested, convicted, and imprisoned in the following years. The campaign was broadened in 1887 with the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act, under which the government moved against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself and escheated nearly a million dollars worth of its property. Finally, in 1890, the church found its members threatened with imminent disfranchisement when the Cullom-Struble bill gained a favorable report in both houses of Congress.

Under such pressures as these, the church capitulated to the government by surrendering the practice of plural marriage. The turning point, according to the standard accounts, came with the issuance of the Woodruff Manifesto in 1890. Through the Manifesto the president of the church stated publicly, for the first time, that he was submitting to the laws of the land and advising the members of the church to do likewise. Not only did this announcement signal an end to Mormon resistance to the anti-polygamy laws, but it opened the way for a final settlement of the polygamy issue. The terms of this settlement were written into the Utah Constitution of 1895, under which the territory gained admission to the Union: polygamy was prohibited, but those who had married polygamously were not required to sever relationships then existing.

The standard accounts of this period have interpreted the Woodruff Manifesto as the dramatic highlight of the struggle over polygamy. Historians, almost to a man, have regarded it as the turning point by which the church relinquished the practice of plural marriage. However well this "turning point" thesis has served the purpose of dramatizing Utah history, it has tended to obscure the possibilities of reexamining the significance of the Manifesto. This paper seeks to offer a new approach to the Manifesto, one which argues that the church's surrender was a slow process of yielding up the practice of polygamy rather than a sudden moment of capitulation. As a result, the analysis does not focus on the events of 1890, but on the church's efforts to meet the pressures of the anti-polygamy campaign during the late 1880s. It will examine specifically the first of the steps which indicated that the church was yielding its position in the late 1880s: the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution for Utah during the early summer of 1887. By agreeing to adopt a constitution which prohibited and punished polygamy, the leaders of the church offered a concession to the federal government on the polygamy issue. Such a concession involved a major shift in the church's policy of coping with the federal anti-polygamy campaign. While the adoption of the constitution did not indicate that the church had surrendered to the government or that it was ready to abandon the practice of plural marriage, it did suggest that the attitude of church leaders had undergone a significant change. Recognizing the need for settling the polygamy issue with the government, they were now willing to make concessions to reach such a settlement. Such an attitude made the complete surrender of polygamy much more likely.

THE POLITICAL CLIMATE

The significance of the 1887 constitution can become clearer by examining the context in which it originated. This context was the political situation in Washington, D.C, in early January of 1887. It was at this time that the proposal for a constitutional convention was drafted by church representatives who were protecting Mormon interests at the national capital. These representatives, who might be described more accurately as political agents or lobbyists, included John T. Caine, the Utah delegate to Congress; railroad promoter John W. Young; the church attorney, Franklin S. Richards; and his Gentile legal associate, George Ticknor Curtis. Congress was close to passing another piece of special legislation for Utah at this time, and the political position of the Mormons was greatly endangered. This new measure was the Tucker bill, which the House Judiciary Committee had drafted as a substitute for the Edmunds bill, an earlier measure which had passed the Senate in 1886. From the Mormon standpoint, the Tucker measure was much harsher and more oppressive than the original Edmunds bill, or, for that matter, the compromise version of both bills which would later pass Congress and become law in March of 1887 as the Edmunds-Tucker Act.

The first of these measures, the Edmunds bill, had been named after its sponsor, Senator George F. Edmunds, the Yankee Republican from Vermont who had been chiefly responsible for the passage of the Edmunds Act in 1882. His new bill aimed to broaden the provisions of the earlier act in two major respects. First, it would facilitate prosecutions of polygamists by expanding the powers of the federal judicial officials as well as by altering legal procedures in polygamy cases. Second, and more important, the measure proposed to break the temporal power of the Mormon Church by disincorporating the church, escheating the bulk of its property, and regulating its business affairs through the appointment of government trustees. Senate Republicans, led by Edmunds and assisted by a few Democrats, had passed this bill in the early months of 1886.

Senate passage of the Edmunds bill did not please the leaders of the church, but it came as no surprise. The Senate had passed a similar measure during the previous Congress, but it had made no progress in the House of Representatives, controlled by the Democrats. Congressional Democrats repeatedly had given but lukewarm support to anti-polygamy legislation. Although the Mormons in Utah were aligned with neither of the national political parties, preferring to act politically through their own independent People's party, they were regarded generally as Democrats. This view was given substance by the support that the Mormons gave the Democratic organizations in both Idaho and Arizona territories. Moreover, Southern Democrats saw a dangerous parallel between the expansion of federal authority in Utah and the tribulations which the South had endured during the years of Reconstruction. Hence, church leaders and their agents in Washington anticipated a quiet death for the Edmunds bill when it was brought before the House and referred to the judiciary committee. J. Randolph Tucker, chairman of the judiciary committee, was a vigorous States' Rights Democrat from Virginia who had opposed the Edmunds Act in 1882. Initially he did not appear to favor the new Edmunds bill. He granted Mormon representatives more than a month of open hearings before his committee, seriously delaying House consideration of the bill and presenting the Mormons with a needed opportunity for publicizing their arguments that the bill was harsh, unnecessary, and unconstitutional. During these hearings Tucker publicly announced that he intended to delete several sections of the bill toward which he had serious objections.

But church leaders soon discovered that they had seriously misjudged the political situation. Their early optimism turned to gloom when they learned of the judiciary committee's report on the Edmunds bill. As promised, Tucker had modified the bill substantially, but the substitute which he offered in its place was far more dangerous than the original measure. This substitute, which became known as the Tucker bill, retained many features of the Edmunds bill, including the provisions for the escheatment of the church's property. Still more threatening were several new features which the committee had added to the bill.

One new section was designed to ease the talk of prosecuting polygamists by redefining the crime of polygamy. Up to this time few Mormons had been prosecuted on the specific charge of polygamy, due to the difficulty of securing evidence of the performance of plural marriages. Most accused polygamists had been convicted of "unlawful cohabitation," a lesser charge for which the prosecution had only to prove that the defendant had acknowledged or associated with more than one woman as his wife. The Tucker bill proposed to alter this situation radically by defining polygamy as a continuing crime. Under this definition, federal officials no longer would need to prove the fact of marriage, but merely that a relationship of marriage did exist between one man and more than one woman. This provision would have made it criminal for a Mormon to have remained a polygamist, and prison terms of one to five years awaited those convicted of polygamy under this section of the bill. Church attorney Franklin S. Richards pronounced these measures "the most dangerous and mischievous feature of the bill," explaining, "There would have been no escape for the brethren, because nothing short of judicial proceedings to dissolve polygamous marriages, to have them declared void, would have saved the parties from prosecution." The institution of polygamy was already beleaguered by the enforcement of the anti-polygamy laws. This provision of the Tucker bill threatened it with utter eradication.

Another section of the bill was equally as dangerous, It proposed to destroy the church's political influence by making almost every public office in the territory appointive rather than elective. The express purpose of this provision was to fill key positions with Gentiles by placing the power of appointment in the hands of the president and the territorial governor. Gentile control of county law enforcement agencies would have provided the government with yet another tool for the complete suppression of polygamy. The church attorney predicted that the enactment of this provision would inaugurate "a reign of terror throughout the Territory," and he explained his assertion with a graphic illustration:

Instead of a dozen policemen in this City we may expect a hundred, with innumerable "specials" — all paid out of the public funds to spy and capture persons who are seeking to avoid arrest. Numerous Deputy Sheriffs would draw pay from the County for like detective service, and eventually it would become impossible for any fugitive to live in the country.

This feature of the bill threatened to place the Mormons within the power of their most dangerous antagonists, the local Gentile minority.

Although the Tucker bill was an extreme measure, church agents realized that they stood almost no chance of defeating it once it reached the floor of the House of Representatives. They therefore pursued a strategy of delay, mobilizing influence with the Democratic party to block consideration of the bill. Utah Delegate John T. Caine informed the First Presidency, "Our efforts have been directed ... to prevent the Bill from coming up, for we fully realize that, if it ever gets to the floor, it will in all probability go through with a boom." This strategy proved successful during the remaining summer months of 1886, but soon after Congress reconvened the following December, advocates of the bill persuaded the House Rules Committee to set aside a special legislative day for the consideration of measures from the judiciary committee. This move assured Tucker of the opportunity of placing his anti-polygamy bill before the full membership of the House. The passage of the measure was thus almost assured.

At this point church agents reassessed the political situation. They recognized the need for changing Mormon strategy on the polygamy question. Not only had uncompromising hostility toward the enforcement of the anti-polygamy laws proved unavailing, but it had served to arouse pressure for more radical measures to eradicate the institution. Measures such as the Tucker bill indicated that Congress was willing to broaden the scope of its attacks on polygamy to the point of dispossessing the church of its property and eliminating Mormons from control of Utah political affairs. Formal arguments and political maneuvering had proved equally ineffective in defending polygamy from further government attack. The church attorney described public opinion toward the Mormons as "determined, bitter, and unrelenting." His associate in Washington, George Ticknor Curtis, similarly informed the First Presidency:

I am perfectly convinced that public opinion has become so crystallized on what is called "the Mormon question," that it is idle to expect to modify or change it. I have never known anything in the course of my life that presented such a phenomenon. In the ante-bellum period, when the whole country was so much excited about slavery, there were great and powerful States interested in defending it, which could combine for that purpose; and throughout the North there were at least large masses of people who, before actual war had begun, cordially and heartily stood by the South. But you are a mere handful of people; 150,000 against 50 or 60 millions, and those millions have made up their minds that polygamy shall be exterminated per fas ut nefas.

Under these conditions, in the midst of a political situation that could only be described as desperate, church agents decided that a concession to public opinion offered the only hope of blocking passage of the Tucker bill. Time was at a premium, and without the usual consultation with the First Presidency they drafted a resolution to be offered as an amendment to the Tucker bill. The resolution proposed to postpone by six months the date on which the bill would become effective after its approval by the president. During this six month interim the territory was authorized to hold a constitutional convention. Should this convention adopt a constitution prohibiting polygamy, and this in turn be ratified by the voters of the territory, the Tucker bill would not become operative until Congress had received the constitution and decided whether Utah should be admitted as a state. This resolution was meant to suggest that the Mormons might respond to public sentiment and place polygamy under a ban, provided they could escape, at least temporarily, from the perils of the Tucker bill. Church agents presented their resolution to an influential House Democrat, William L. Scott of Pennsylvania, who was friendly to the Mormons and opposed to the Tucker bill. He agreed to offer the resolution as an amendment to the bill, and from this point the resolution became known as the Scott amendment.

In terms of preventing House passage of the Tucker bill, the Scott amendment was a concession which offered too little, too late. Well aware of longstanding Mormon opposition to the operation of the anti-polygamy laws, congressmen suspected that the amendment was a bald attempt to buy time for the church, rather than a meaningful offer to eliminate polygamy. Representative Scott's effort to attach the amendment to the Tucker bill failed, and the House passed the measure by an overwhelming voice vote. The bill was then referred to a conference committee, for Senator Edmunds, displeased with the modifications which had been made in his original measure, had prodded the Senate into refusing to accept the Tucker substitute.

While the conference committee undertook to hammer out the differences between the two bills, one of the church agents, John W. Young, approached President Grover Cleveland with the Scott amendment. Young presented the amendment to the president as a proposal for the settlement of the polygamy question. The amendment, he explained, would allow the Mormons to place polygamy under a permanent ban.

The institution never could be eliminated effectively without Mormon cooperation, he argued, and the government could elicit this cooperation by extending an olive branch in the form of the Scott amendment. On the other hand, Young warned, the enactment of the Tucker bill without the Scott amendment would simply embitter the Mormons. The failure of the House to incorporate the amendment in the bill had demonstrated already, as far as the Mormons were concerned, that the sponsors of the bill were more interested in the destruction of Mormon political liberties than in the eradication of polygamy. Conciliation, rather than further oppression, Young concluded, provided the best approach for reaching a settlement of the polygamy question.

Although Grover Cleveland had called for an end to polygamy in his inaugural address of 1885, he had never been hostile to the Mormons. In meetings with Mormon delegations he expressed his hope that the Mormons "could become like us" and promised a fair enforcement of the laws. Moreover, he had made special efforts to mediate and settle the polygamy question. In the early autumn of 1885 he had dispatched a personal emissary to Utah for consultations with the First Presidency. But this mission had ended in failure when the leaders of the church reported that they were unable to offer any concessions on the polygamy question. Now, in response to the presentation of the Scott amendment, President Cleveland stated that the measure might provide a means for resolving the issue. But he gave no indication of what action he would take toward the pending anti-polygamy bill. Nonetheless, this conference encouraged church agents to nurse hopes that he would use his influence and urge the conference committee to accept the Scott amendment, and, if necessary, veto any measure which did not contain it.

Church agents at the national capital had drafted and promoted the Scott amendment with several related purposes in mind. Their most immediate aim was the defeat of the Tucker bill, thus relieving polygamy from the threat of extinction and preserving the church from the dangers of possible political and economic devastation. But they also hoped, in the long run, that the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution would dampen national sentiment on the polygamy question, thus affording the Mormons an opportunity for securing statehood. Statehood, the ultimate goal, would bring the anti-polygamy campaign to an abrupt end by eliminating federal jurisdiction over the issue. However, neither of these goals could be fully pursued until the president of the church had accepted the Scott amendment and approved the proposition that the Mormons should adopt an anti-polygamy constitution. And despite political conditions in Washington, church agents realized that such approval would not be given automatically. John Taylor, the president of the church, had enunciated a policy of rigid adherence to the principle of plural marriage throughout the anti-polygamy campaign. While the church's political agents were intent on improving Mormon relations with the government, President John Taylor was intent on maintaining the religious principles of the Latter-day Saints. The church president and his representatives in Washington viewed the political situation with different sets of priorities. This led to a serious conflict of opinion over the desirability of accepting the Scott amendment as a course of action.

DEBATE WITHIN THE CHURCH

This proposition that the Mormons themselves should move to abolish polygamy had been discussed in church circles in the past, but it had never gained the support of President Taylor. The church president had made it a matter of strict policy that Mormons could not declare unlawful a principle that God had placed before them as a commandment. In an address delivered less than a month before the 1884 legislature began its deliberations, he ruled out the possibility that the territorial assembly as a matter of political expediency might "do away with polygamy." He reminded his audience that the Lord and not the federal government would determine the fate of the Latter-day Saints, and he counseled those who were suggesting that the legislature should intervene against polygamy, "No yielding up of principles that God has revealed." Even the proposition of adopting an anti-polygamy constitution in return for a grant of statehood had been considered by the church president. In the spring and summer of 1879, soon after the United States Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy law of 1862, several leading congressional Democrats had carefully examined the possibility of admitting Utah as a state. They hoped to gain her electoral votes for the party in the presidential election of 1880. The project developed to the point where the Speaker of the House, who was favorable to Utah's admission, suggested that a committee of prominent congressional Democrats should visit the territory.

One of the objects of the committee's visit would be the arrangement of an anti-polygamy constitution with leaders of the church. Under such a constitution the Democrats could admit the territory on the claim that the polygamy question had been settled. But the project was scuttled when the Utah delegate, Apostle George Q. Cannon, informed party leaders that there was no possibility of gaining Mormon consent for a constitutional prohibition of polygamy.

Hence, it was not surprising that President Taylor initially regarded the Scott amendment as a deviation from church policy and a concession of religious principle. Upon learning of the proposal to adopt an antipolygamy constitution, he ordered his representatives in Washington to "go slow." Although his agents had informed him that the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution would not require the church to surrender plural marriage, President Taylor still feared that this move would prove compromising. Speaking for the membership of the church, he said, "It will not do for us, after enduring what we have for the sake of our religion and its principles, to put ourselves in a position where our words and actions may be construed into a surrender of that for which we have ever contended." In other words, the church president would not permit the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution for fear that it might give the appearance that the Mormons intended to' surrender plural marriage.

In addition to these religious considerations, President Taylor felt that the Scott amendment was politically unwise. Public sentiment demanded the eradication of polygamy, and he did not believe that it would be content with the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution. Skeptical congressmen in examining such a constitution would discover that it did not provide for a Mormon renunciation of plural marriage and would reject it. Even President Cleveland's conciliatory response to the Scott amendment did not indicate that he would agree to the admission to Utah on the basis of an anti-polygamy constitution. Under these circumstances, the church president felt that no good would result from the adoption of such a constitution:

We should have the mortification of proposing a concession that would be spurned and thrown back at us with contempt. We should, thereby, not only lose our self-respect, but our people would be weakened, and the world would say that we had offered to barter away principle for the sake of expediency.

In short, John Taylor thought that Mormon acceptance of the Scott amendment would simply undermine the church's position on plural marriage without significantly improving its long-term political prospects.

Although President Taylor would not permit his agents to present the amendment to the administration as a concession on the polygamy question, he did leave an opening for further discussion of the subject within church circles. He offered to reconsider his decision rejecting the amendment if Congress passed a measure, such as an enabling act, indicating that the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution would fully satisfy the requirements for Utah's admission as a state. In other words, the church president would not permit the Mormons to concede an antipolygamy constitution to the government, but he might accept such a constitution from the government as a condition for admission as a state. From his standpoint, what the Mormons could not voluntarily concede to the government they might still accept as a requirement for statehood.

In the following weeks, through letters as well as the dispatch of representatives to Utah for personal consultations with the First Presidency, church agents tried to meet these objections to the Scott amendment. In response to President Taylor's fears that the amendment would compromise the church position on plural marriage, Charles W. Penrose, editor of the Deseret News, and Franklin S. Richards, the church attorney, submitted a lengthy letter arguing that the adoption of an antipolygamy constitution would be a purely political matter in which Mormons would be acting in their capacity of citizens. The decisions reached by a constitutional convention would have no effect on the position of the church, they contended, and the church could remain neutral when they were made. Church leaders themselves would not have to take a stand for or against the constitution, since, as polygamists, they were disfranchised and barred from participation in politics. Throughout the process of adopting and ratifying the constitution the church had only to inform its members that their acceptance of the constitution would not endanger their church standing.

Penrose and Richards also insisted that the monogamous Mormons who endorsed the anti-polygamy constitution would not be yielding any principle of their religious faith. Rather, they would be bowing to an inevitable political development. Polygamy was banned already in the territory, and it would continue to be banned when Utah became a state, for the nation demanded this. In addition, Penrose and Richards emphasized that under statehood the anti-polygamy clauses of the constitution would afford a measure of protection for plural marriage, since the Mormons, rather than the federal officials, would be implementing and enforcing the prohibition of polygamy. It was possible, they suggested, that statehood would permit the Mormons so to define the civil law of marriage as to exclude celestial marriages from its provisions. Under such a statute more than one celestial marriage would not expose a Mormon to charges of polygamy, for his marriages would not be legally recognized. At the very minimum, should the state legislature construe the crime of polygamy to encompass celestial marriages, the enforcement of the prohibition of polygamy would lie with the Mormons. As Penrose and Richards explained, should the Mormons choose to obey the law of God and violate the anti-polygamy provisions of the constitution, "We [will] have our friends to adjudge us guilty and mete out the penalties which will have a minimum as well as a maximum limit, while now it is maximum and no minimum in practice." With this understanding of the operation of the prospective constitution, a Mormon could endorse its antipolygamy features in the firm belief that he was sustaining and protecting the principle of plural marriage.

While this discussion continued, the Scott amendment was being quietly promoted in Washington despite President Taylor's injunction that his representatives should "go slow" on the measure. Continuing his negotiations with high administration officials, John W. Young had moved to counter the church president's fears that the amendment would not satisfy public opinion by attempting to secure Grover Cleveland's endorsement of the proposal as a means of completely settling the polygamy dispute. But time for such negotiations was running out insofar as the defeat of hostile legislation was concerned. On February 15, 1887, after a full month of deliberations, the conference committee produced the Edmunds-Tucker bill, a compromise version of the two bills. Although church agents had not succeeded in persuading the committee to include the Scott amendment among its provision, they had used the proposal to obtain the deletion of certain key features of the Tucker bill. Of particular importance was the elimination of those sections which provided for redefining the crime of polygamy and for replacing Mormon elective officeholders with Gentile appointees. The Edmunds-Tucker bill was still a dangerous measure, but not nearly so threatening as the Tucker bill had been. The church attorney was later to comment, "The most diabolical provisions were struck out of the bill, and, although it is still very oppressive, the Saints can live under it and to some degree observe the laws of God."

The Edmunds-Tucker bill quickly passed both houses of Congress with ease and appeared on the desk of the president. John W. Young made yet another appearance at the White House to present further arguments for a veto of the measure. Again he urged the president to take a more conciliatory approach toward the Mormons by adopting the terms of the Scott amendment as a settlement of the polygamy question. This conversation proved much more substantive and satisfactory to Young than prior ones. In a telegram sent to the First Presidency immediately following the conclusion of the interview, he described Grover Cleveland as being "entirely satisfied with the wording of the Scott amendment, and [he] said [that] no good man could ask more." Therefore, concluded Young, the Scott amendment could now be regarded as a "private overture" from President Cleveland to the Mormon people. Young recognized that John Taylor had expressed doubts about Cleveland's willingness to accept the amendment as a concession sufficient for a complete settlement of the polygamy issue. Hence, he emphasized that Cleveland had given more than simple verbal approval to the amendmeent. The amendment now represented a formal offer on behalf of the administration, complete with the following commitment: "Scott amendment now offered by them [the] same as if it had passed Congress, and they [the administration] to back up this programme now and next Congress when Constitution is offered." Moreover, knowing that President Taylor would be equally as concerned about the continued practice of plural marriage, Young announced that "the question of the cessation of plural marriages has never been mentioned." He ended his telegraphic report by urging the First Presidency to accede to the opening offered by the administration's acceptance of the Scott amendment.

When this lengthy dispatch arrived in Salt Lake City, discussion of the Scott amendment was reopened. The following day, February 27, 1887, President Taylor reversed his previous instructions and decided to accept the proposal as an administration offer for a complete settlement of the polygamy question. He informed John W. Young, "If Scott amendment will satisfy President Cleveland, it will be acceptable to us. If it shall become law see no objections to people carrying out its provisions." At the same time, however, the church president emphasized in the most striking terms that Mormon acceptance of the amendment did not alter the church's position on plural marriage.

We desire it distinctly understood we accept terms of Scott amendment as a political necessity, and that in doing so we neither yield nor compromise an iota of our religious principles. If by consenting to its terms we should be understood as conceding anything religiously or giving up any doctrine or principle for which we have been contending we should recoil from it and emphatically reject it. If a constitution should be adopted according to its provisions it would, at worst, only be punishing ourselves for what our enemies are now punishing us.

Despite these qualifications, signifying a lingering distrust of the Scott amendment, John Taylor had committed the Mormons to the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution.

Despite the First Presidency's acceptance of the Scott amendment, Grover Cleveland did not reveal whether he intended to accept or reject the Edmunds-Tucker bill. It was known that his feelings towards the measure were mixed. Although the conference committee had eliminated several features of the Tucker bill which the president had regarded as objectionable, the Edmunds-Tucker bill still did not satisfy him. He particularly opposed those sections of the measure escheating the property of the church and granting the federal marshal exceptional powers for the attachment of witnesses. In addition, Cleveland surely must have recognized that the passage of the bill might jeopardize future negotiations with the church over the implementation of the terms of the Scott amendment. On the other hand, Democratic members of both the House and Senate had supported the bill overwhelmingly. A veto not only would risk a breach within the party over the polygamy issue, but it could expose the president to damaging Republican charges that he was "soft" on Mormonism. At the opening of his administration Cleveland had committed himself publicly to ending polygamy, and this stance made it extremely difficult for him to oppose a measure which was antipolygamic. In the words of John W. Young, Grover Cleveland was "a man whose makeup is such that it is difficult for him to crawfish gracefully on any subject." Trapped by these conflicting pressures, the president hedged his bets on both sides and allowed the Edmunds-Tucker bill to become law without his signature.

Although one might have expected that the enactment of the Edmunds-Tucker bill would have endangered the administration's negotiations with the church, this did not occur. Church representatives in Washington, anxious to see the terms of the Scott amendment carried into effect, excused President Cleveland's actions with the explanation that he had made no promises to veto the bill. Indeed, John W. Young interpreted the president's failure to sign the bill as a "favorable" act, given the pressures on him, for it publicly indicated that the measure was not entirely satisfactory to the president. Thus, the Mormons could anticipate that it would not be enforced zealously by the administration. In any event, Young advised, the president was still fully committed to implementing the Scott amendment.

John W. Young's reaction to the enactment of the Edmunds-Tucker bill revealed the importance that he, as well as other church agents, attached to the successful implementation of the amendment. Although the church representatives had devised the Scott amendment as a last-ditch means of defeating special legislation for Utah, the passage of such legislation did not cause them to consider abandoning the proposal. They remained convinced of the need to carry through on the measure. This suggests that, in the broader perspective, it had been the pressure of the anti-polygamy campaign rather than the Tucker bill alone that had produced the Scott amendment. That pressure still existed with the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker bill, and church agents believed that it would not abate until the Mormons began to manifest a determination to settle the problem of polygamy themselves. The Scott amendment, with its provisions for the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution, afforded the Mormons an opportunity to ban the institution which the nation found so obnoxious. Church agents were determined not to allow this opportunity to slip away.

With the First Presidency's acceptance of the Scott amendment, church agents had eliminated the major obstacle to the adoption of the 1887 constitution. In mid-June of 1887, after three months of further negotiations between the church and the Cleveland administration, the People's party of Utah Territory issued a call for the election of delegates to a constitutional convention. The convention itself met at the end of June and adopted an anti-polygamy constitution. Under the terms of the constitution, polygamy was prohibited and declared a misdemeanor. This prohibition was made self-executing by establishing criminal penalties for polygamy. A three-year statute of limitations was placed over the offense, and the governor was forbidden to extend pardon to convicted polygamists without the approval of the president of the United States. Finally, all these features of the constitution were made absolute and perpetual in the sense that they could only be modified with the consent of Congress and the president. The constitution was presented to the Utah electorate in August 1887 and ratified by an almost unanimous vote. The terms of the Scott amendment, accepted by John Taylor six months earlier, had now been fulfilled. A movement for statehood lay ahead.

THE MANIFESTO IN PERSPECTIVE

While the Scott amendment was under discussion in Mormon leadership circles, church agents frequently referred to it as a "political settlement" of the polygamy question. By this they meant that the amendment, with its provisions for the adoption of a constitution prohibiting polygamy, would not affect the principle or practice of plural marriage. This contention underlay much of the debate on the amendment -— in fact, it was one of the essential arguments which church agents utilized to gain John Taylor's acceptance of the proposal for an anti-polygamy constitution. The debate on the point was more than academic. From the historical standpoint, the validity of the contention that the terms of the Scott amendment were no more than a "political settlement" of the polygamy question has a direct bearing on the significance of the 1887 constitution. If, as church agents asserted, the constitution bore no religious implications, it becomes difficult to relate it to the Woodruff Manifesto, which was of the utmost religious significance for the principle of plural marriage. On the other hand, if the constitution did significantly affect the church position of plural marriage, its relationship to the Manifesto becomes easier to define. The conclusion of this paper, therefore, reopens this important question and seeks to determine whether the Scott amendment was a matter of politics or principle, whether, indeed, the adoption of an anti-polygamy constitution did alter the church's position on plural marriage.

On the one hand, it is obvious that the Scott amendment was designed and utilized as a means of protecting plural marriage from further attacks by the federal government. From the time of its drafting to the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker bill, the amendment served as a proposal to counter and offset pending legislative programs which threatened to broaden the scope of the anti-polygamy campaign. Its acceptance by the church president did not signify any abandonment of plural marriage. Moreover, should the Mormons have succeeded in gaining statehood through the 1887 constitution, church agents already had indicated that its anti-polygamy clauses might not affect Mormon marriages. Even if the state should have brought these marriages within the scope of the constitutional prohibition of polygamy, Mormon control of local law enforcement agencies would have guaranteed that polygamists would be prosecuted only with the greatest reluctance. From these standpoints, the Scott amendment appeared admirably suited to the purpose of defending the principle of plural marriage. The amendment was eminently a political document, drafted in a time of political stress as a "political settlement" of the polygamy question.

Nonetheless, the Scott amendment was a two-edged sword which might also undermine plural marriage. Although the prohibition of polygamy in the 1887 constitution might have no practical application, as the Mormons chose to interpret it, it was still a symbolic concession signifying that the leadership of the church recognized the need for conciliating public opinion. Even more important, the immediate and long-term political benefits which the Mormons hoped to derive from the adoption of the constitution were contingent on the appearance which the constitution presented to the American public. The abatement of the anti-polygamy campaign, as well as the more distant goal of statehood, were directly dependent on convincing Congress and the nation that progress was being made towards the eradication of polygamy. Church leaders and church agents might assure one another privately that the prohibition of polygamy did not affect the principle of plural marriage, but they dared not utter these comments publicly, for such remarks would have thrown grave doubt on the claim that the Mormons were yielding to national sentiment on the polygamy question. In these circumstances it is not surprising that once the monogamous Mormons had ratified the antipolygamy provisions of the 1887 constitution, church leaders no longer advocated or defended polygamy publicly. The adoption of the constitution had pushed the church into a position of public silence so far as the principle of plural mariage was concerned. This was a practical rather than a symbolic concession. It meant that the church could never reopen its public defense of plural marriage without laying its monogamous members open to the charge of having misled the government in adopting the anti-polygamy constitution of 1887.

Most important, acceptance of the Scott amendment revealed a significant shift in the thinking of the church leadership. When the federal officials launched their campaign of prosecutions in 1884-85 and drove a large portion of the church leadership underground, many within the church anticipated that "the raid" would be a brief episode. In his last public address, John Taylor had compared the outbreak of prosecutions to a natural storm, one which would temporarily rage and then quietly subside. He advised the Latter-day Saints not to submit to the laws of the land, but to place their trust in the Lord for the interim. The church president expressed the metaphor in the following words:

I would do as I said some time ago. If you were out in a storm, pull up the collar of your coat and button yourself up, and keep the cold out until the storm blows past. This storm will blow past as others have done; and you will see the miserable sneaks who are active in these measures . . . will be glad to crawl in their holes by-and-by.

But the storm had not weakened in the next two years; if anything, it had intensified. By early 1887 church agents in Washington had lost all hope that the anti-polygamy campaign would "blow past" in the course of time. They concluded that concessions to public opinion were absolutely necessary to shield the church and its institutions from destruction, and they proceeded to draft the Scott amendment to meet the needs of the moment. Likewise, John Taylor's acceptance of the amendment, in his own words, "as a political necessity," implicitly acknowledged the argument that circumstances were forcing the church to give way to the government. Through the Scott amendment the church had taken the first step in the process of yielding up concessions to the government on the polygamy issue.

Even at this early date some church leaders realized that a series of small concessions could lead to a major surrender. When Apostle John

W. Taylor, a son of John Taylor, was asked his opinion of the Scott amendment in late February of 1887, he expressed opposition to the proposal. His statement displayed remarkable foresight:

It has taken quite a time to school the Latter-day Saints to what we believe to day, and I find that it is getting to be believed that Prest. Taylor will yet receive a revelation to cancel the revelation on Celestial marriage. And you let anything officially about this [the Scott amendment], and it will create quite a stir among the people.

George F. Gibbs, one of the secretaries to the First Presidency, voiced a similar sentiment at the same time. He regarded the policy of conciliating the government as "dangerous in the extreme," so long as the basic conflict over polygamy was unsettled and the church remained the inferior party in the dispute. His analysis of the situation laid bare a central issue, which he phrased as a question: "If it be a concession to concur in the Amendment, . . . our position, which, to us, is everything, at once becomes assailable; and if made assailable, who can compute the consequences?" Who, indeed, could compute the consequences of the slow retreat on the polygamy issue? Only time would tell, and the process of retreat would take three more years until complete surrender came about through the issuance of the Woodruff Manifesto.

SCENES IN CONGRESS OVER

UTAH

Jan. 29th. — By appealing to the House Captain [Utah Delegate William H.] Hooper succeeded in obtaining half an hour to deliver his speech in. As he finished [Montana Delegate William H.] Claggett jumped up and requested ten minutes for reply. Then succeeded a scene which I scarcely ever saw paralleled in Congress. The members gathered around him and listened to him with great interest. When his ten minutes were exhausted, cries of "go on, go on," were heard from all sides. Time was granted him to continue, not an objection being made. Oh it was pleasure to many to hear the "Mormons" denounced, to hear Brigham Young villified and Utah held up to public odium, and execration He had not finished his triade [sic] when his time was renewed; but on motion of Mr. [Samuel S.] Cox of New York, on the condition that the Delegate of Utah have five minutes to reply. With these extraordinary evidences of sympathy from his audience Clagget was greatly fired up. (Anonymous diary of a "leading Mormon" quoted in Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine, 3 [October 1883], 77)

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