Scott Woodward:
As Joseph Smith quietly practiced plural marriage in Nauvoo in 1842 and ’43, all was not well. Three people in particular complicated things for Joseph. The first was John C. Bennett, a highly gifted convert whose meteoric rise to civic and church leadership in Nauvoo abruptly ended when he was exposed for his secret practice of “spiritual wifery,” which was nothing more or less than illicit serial adultery. Following his excommunication, Bennett’s defamatory opposition was fierce and directly impacted Joseph’s own private practice of plural marriage. And surprisingly, Joseph’s own brother and member of the first presidency, Hyrum Smith, was openly opposed to polygamy during this time and sought to use his influence to put down any hint of it in Nauvoo, all the while suspecting that his brother and others of the apostles may be living it. Yet amidst his opposition, in one key moment everything changed for Hyrum. And Joseph’s wife Emma Smith was the third and most important person in his life to complicate his practice of plural marriage. Although she sought for a time to embrace it, Emma struggled mightily with this practice on many levels to the point that it almost ended their marriage. On today’s episode of Church History Matters, we discuss each of these three individuals, John C. Bennett, Hyrum, and Emma Smith, and how each factored into the complexities and troubles of living plural marriage in Nauvoo. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today we dive into our third episode in this series dealing with plural marriage. Now let’s get into it. Hi, Casey.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Hi, Scott. Good to see you.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
This is part three in our series on discussing plural marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now, before we dive into this, just a recap of what we discussed in our last episode.

Scott Woodward:
Talked about a lot.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
We talked about a lot. We talked about the theology, that was episode one. Last time we talked about how plural marriage really didn’t come with an instruction manual, and Joseph Smith struggled through this. He struggled to accept it. Sources are fragmentary, but it appears his first marriage was to a woman named Fanny Alger in Ohio. The marriage creates strain between some of Joseph’s most important relationships, like Emma and Oliver Cowdery, becomes an issue that’s raised again in Oliver’s excommunication. There’s a lot we know and a lot we don’t know about that particular marriage. But when Joseph Smith gets to Nauvoo, which is several years after what happened with Fanny Alger, he begins again to practice plural marriage, starting with his 1841 marriage to Louisa Beaman. Correct so far?

Scott Woodward:
So far, so good. Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
OK. Another thing is that the marriages in Nauvoo that are carried out, again, sources here aren’t as great as we want them to be, but it appears that Joseph Smith practiced eternity-only sealings, which sometimes would be carried out with women who were married to other men, but these were eternity-only marriages. That these were non-intimate relationships. They were sealings creating connections, and one of the reasons Joseph Smith did this may have been because it was a way for him to fulfill the commandment to enter into plural marriage, but still allow him to remain connected to his wife, Emma. Is that fair enough to say?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, eternity-only marriage is, I think, why Joseph favored those was because they would provide a layer of emotional protection between him and Emma because there would be guaranteed no sexuality. I think that’s why Joseph liked those. He could, on the one hand, obey the commandment. But on the other hand, not have to engage in any sexual relationship so he could obey the revelation, but could also stay true emotionally to his wife, right? We know that was the biggest strain in their marriage, and we’ll talk about that soon.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And that’s totally understandable. But this eternity-only era of sealing does kind of come to an end in 1842, and he marries about 20 additional women who do not have husbands. And some of these women are plural wives in every sense of the word, correct?

Scott Woodward:
That’s right. Yeah. I think we talked about last time sexuality was documented to have occurred with at least nine of them, but there’s no children to have ever been documented with any of them. And we talked a little bit about why that might have been the case last time.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. A valid point raised by some people is that Joseph was just really busy during this time. He is constantly on the go, and no documented children from these relationships. And one last thing that we talked about last time that we need to recap is dynastic sealings.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That some of these sealings appear to be attempts to connect families together as a way of not just having the people in Nauvoo be friends or fellow saints, but literally families in the eternity connected through the sealing powers.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, this accounts really nicely for the eternity-only marriage to Helen Marr Kimball, who you remember was 14 years old, and it was at the instigation of her parents, Heber C. Kimball, an apostle, and Vilate Kimball, with the desire to be connected to the Smith family. So this was purely a horizontal sealing through marriage to connect the Smith and Kimball families. That’s a kind of sealing that is unfamiliar to us today, we don’t do that kind of thing.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
We’re not friends with our neighbors down the street and we say, “You know what? We should be connected eternally, and so let’s have a tribute marriage of of some kind,” right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then Brigham Young kind of riffs off of this or expands this. Instead of just doing it through marriage, he starts doing the practice that is often termed “adoption sealings,” where people from other families could be adopted into your family as your son or daughter. This was very popular to do with the apostles. People would be adopted as Brigham Young’s son, meaning to be sealed as his son.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
There’s one indication that Joseph and Emma may have wanted to adopt Jane Manning James, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Yeah. She says that in her autobiography, and one of my ancestors was sealed to Brigham Young as his son, too. So it seems like this was a thing that was going on.

Scott Woodward:
I hadn’t heard of Joseph Smith doing that at all. Are you familiar with anyone else ever being sealed as a son or a daughter to Joseph and Emma?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
I don’t know of any source outside of that one. And my wife and I went to see this movie called “Emma and Jane”, or “Jane and Emma,” I can’t remember.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And afterward we downloaded Jane Manning James’s autobiography, like the actual page it was written on.

Scott Woodward:
Mm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And she says that directly, that Sister Emma approached her and asked if she wanted to be adopted to them. Jane said, no, I—

Scott Woodward:
I don’t know what that was.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. She said, “I didn’t know what she meant.” And then two weeks later Emma approaches her and offers again. And Jane at that time says no. But she also said, “I didn’t know my own mind, and I’m not sure what she was asking about.” It’s possible that’s a reference to an adoptive sealing.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But these practices don’t endure for very long. In fact, we mentioned in 1894, Wilford Woodruff basically stops the practice because you could see how dynastic sealings could start to create this elite that we don’t want to necessarily have.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, and I think if we just keep in mind that the general goal was to somehow use the sealing power, which we mentioned did not come with an instruction manual, but how can we use the sealing power to unite the human family together?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
Ultimately, that’s the main goal, right? That’s D&C 2. That’s the language that Elijah uses in the Kirtland Temple. “Turning the hearts of the children to the fathers.” We could seal the human family together.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Right.

Scott Woodward:
But the idea in Matthew 16 is “whatsoever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.” Like, there’s kind of some wiggle room with how you want to do this, right? So it’s not like those sealings were illegitimate. It’s just in 1894, the Lord then instructed Wilfred Woodruff to do it more systematically, the way that we do it today, by being sealed, not horizontally, but vertically back through our ancestors. And so that same principle is applying today. We just do it vertically, not horizontally as of that 1894 revelation, so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Kind of interesting, though, to see how they were kind of creatively using the sealing power to accomplish that end, right, as they understood it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It’s fun to see them taking it out for a test drive and through basically the process of trial and error, figuring out the best way to do these things. Like you said, it didn’t come signed, sealed, and delivered with an instruction manual. And so some of this early stuff is exploratory. They’re figuring out what they could do, and you put it really great in a conversation we had once. So the whole idea behind this was to ensure enduring relationships and unlock human potential. I think those were your two talking points.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. At the end of the day, that’s what the sealing power’s all about. We had the opportunity to go to Nauvoo together and to talk about development of the Nauvoo temple ordinances, and maybe we’ll do a podcast series on that at some point. But yeah, that’s the upshot. At the end of the day, the sealing power would enable relationships to endure beyond death and thereby to help maximize human potential to be coming like God, right? Kings and queens and priests and priestesses, Joseph would say.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So it begins in Nauvoo, and we’re seeing line upon line, precept on precept. By 1894 things look a lot more modern than then. Doesn’t mean they did it wrong, just means that the Lord’s kind of let it evolve in this way and then gave it a little nudge in 1894 to be where we’re at today, so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Very good. Moving on to our discussion today, we’re going to kind of move into Joseph’s inner circle here, right? Some people that are very close to Joseph, like Hyrum Smith and Emma Smith and a figure that, boy, you could spend a lot of time discussing, which is John C. Bennett—

Scott Woodward:
Ooh.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—and what exactly was going on with him.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So why don’t we just dive in. Tell us about John C. Bennett and his context and how he fits into the picture here.

Scott Woodward:
Sure. Yeah. So John C. Bennett—well, first of all, I’ll just say this, there’s an interesting pattern in Joseph Smith’s plural marriages. In the first eight months of 1842, Joseph marries 11 women, but then they abruptly stop in 1842, the last five months. There’s zero plural marriages. What appears to have happened is this fellow by the name of John C. Bennett. Bennett, he’s a very interesting man. When he first started reaching out to Joseph Smith, he corresponded with him, and in 1840 he asked if he could come to Nauvoo and join the Saints, and Joseph responded by saying, “Let all who will come and partake of the poverty of Nauvoo freely,” kind of tongue in cheek. So Bennett comes, he actually stays with Joseph in his mansion house for nearly nine months. Joseph just charged him $3 a week, and he came at a really crucial time when Joseph needed a lot of help. There was kind of a power vacuum in Nauvoo. The 12 were out on missions, most of them, and Sidney Rigdon was very sick, debilitatingly sick. He couldn’t really function in the first presidency. But this was a crucial time for city building in Nauvoo and to do some legal things to help Nauvoo have some protections. John C. Bennett, he’s like, “Let me help.” He’s very capable.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
He’s kind of a self-taught lawyer. He’s a doctor, a physician-type doctor, at least he says so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He’s a lot of things.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, he’s—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He’s a lot of things. I should mention by the way, here, too, Bennett is an incredibly gifted individual.

Scott Woodward:
Very, yeah. He is.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Like he, he goes to the Illinois legislature and secures the Nauvoo charter, which is, like, a dream for the saints.

Scott Woodward:
Totally.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
There’s a book on Bennett called The Saintly Scoundrel, which actually is a great description of him, where he’s incredibly gifted, and I think—maybe I’m wrong—but it appears that even though Bennett has a shady past, he genuinely and sincerely commits to the gospel, at least when he’s in Nauvoo at first, it’s just his nature kind of overtakes him, right?

Scott Woodward:
Totally. I think that’s accurate. Yeah. At the end of his experience, Joseph’s gonna call him, “One of the most abominable and depraved beings which could possibly exist.” But it wasn’t always so. In fact, D&C 124 holds out some blessings to John C. Bennett that if he would continue faithful—the Lord uses “if” four times, some conditional blessings for John C. Bennett, none of which he keeps, of course, and he becomes just this scoundrel, but I’m with you. I think he was sincere.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
His efforts to secure the Nauvoo charter were successful. They praised his name, they elected him mayor, for heaven sakes, in Nauvoo 1841. He’s the first mayor, and he did a good job, right? As far as we could tell politically, he did a great job.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Joseph even takes him into his good graces, as he calls him the assistant to the first presidency. He’s never in the first presidency, but as long as Sidney Rigdon was out because of his sickness, Joseph needed help. So he asked John C. Bennett to help him. Very capable, very talented. Joseph recognized it. Joseph needed it. John C. Bennett was willing. And so that’s how he kind of ingratiated himself into the good graces of Joseph Smith and the people of Nauvoo.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Just going back to my thought, one of the evidences that I think Bennett had a sincere conversion is that even after he’s excommunicated from the church and writes a really anti-Mormon book, he spends the rest of his life attached to some sort of movement again and again. Like, he goes to the Strangites and then he goes to this group and this group.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And maybe I’m just a hopeless optimist, but I’d like to think that he was trying to recapture maybe what he had in Nauvoo where he felt good spiritually and he was productive.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But it’s just, like, his nature kept overtaking him. So you were talking about what kind of brings him down, what causes the problems in Nauvoo. What’s going on with Bennett that leads to his downfall?

Scott Woodward:
Well, there starts to be some rumors that he actually had a wife, and he was posing as a single man, but people said, no, he’s got a wife. So Joseph Smith tasks George Miller to go and investigate, and so he goes back to Bennett’s hometown. I can’t remember where. Was it Philadelphia? I can’t remember. But sure enough, George Miller comes back and says, “Yeah, he did have a wife that left him.” John would move, and she would move with him. She would follow him faithfully, totally unaware of his adulterous encounters. Eventually, when she found out what was happening, she said that he had broken up seven marriages of other people because of his adulterous affairs with them, and when she finally found out about that, it appears that she left him. So there wasn’t an official divorce, so therefore he was technically married. But you could see his defense would be, “Well, she left me,” right? And John was pretty slippery that way.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So he did acknowledge to Joseph Smith. When Joseph confronted him about this, he said, “It is true that I do have a wife that left me. That’s true.” Joseph chastised him for that and probably because of George Miller’s comments about the adulterous nature of it. He’s chastised by Joseph, and then he swears that he will reform, he promises to be better. And Joseph’s kind of like you, Casey, he was just a hopeless optimist, just—like, he believed that people could change. He believed that you ought to give people 70 times seven chances.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Speaking of John C. Bennett, he actually uses that scripture and says that we ought to continue to work with people who have desires to change.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
But yeah, so Joseph is aware of some of this checkered past, but he continues to allow Bennett to operate while Joseph is hoping that he’ll reform, and Bennett swears up and down, he will. Let bygones be bygones. “That’s not me anymore. That’s not who I am.” Until it turns out that’s who he still was, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. Because there’s a practice that Bennett begins in Nauvoo that could sound a lot like plural marriage, but is not. We don’t have any evidence that he’s linked to plural marriage.

Scott Woodward:
No.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
What Bennett was practicing was called informally “spiritual wifery.” We know Parley P․ Pratt calls this “another name for whoredom, wicked and [unlawful] connection.” “Every kind of confusion, corruption, [and] abomination,” and “was as foreign from the real principles of the church as the devil is from God.” So it’s kind of this dark reflection of plural marriage, but it does cause major, major problems for Joseph Smith, who’s implementing plural marriage during this time when Bennett is found out.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Yeah, the timing is so unfortunate. These two are happening in kind of dual tracks, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Joseph is quietly implementing plural marriage, and John C․ Bennett is quietly doing some spiritual wifery. In fact, Wilford Woodruff reported that on November 7th, 1841, Joseph gave a talk, which seems to have been the reason that Bennett started doing his little practice of spiritual wifery. He was, again, sworn that he would reform, that was not him anymore, that’s in his past. And then he heard Joseph say this, and he totally took it out of context and totally twisted it, but here’s the words, as Wilford Woodruff recorded it, “Brother Joseph then delivered unto us an edifying address, showing us what temperance and faith, virtue, charity and truth was. He also said that if we did not accuse one another, God would not accuse us. And if we had no accuser, then we should enter heaven. He would take us there as his back load. If we would not accuse him, he would not accuse us. And if we would throw a cloak of charity over his sins, he would over ours. For charity covered a multitude of sins.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Joseph’s teaching this beautiful principle of forgiving each other, right? And not holding people a hostage to their past. What does Bennett do with that? What he heard was, “as long as nobody accuses you of anything, it’s not a sin.” That seems to be the seed bed, because he and some of his buddies, like Chauncey Higbee, they’ll use that exact language. In fact, Chauncey Higbee, who learned it from Bennett, one of the women that Chauncey seduced later told what happened, and she said that what Chauncey told her was “any respectable female might indulge in sexual intercourse, and there was no sin in it, provided the person so indulging kept the same to herself, for there could be no sin where there was no accuser.” See what they did there? Just twisting the prophet’s words and teaching these women that respectable females can engage in this as long as nobody tells. It’s only in the telling that there’s accusation, and it’s only in accusation that there is sin, their logic went. So this doesn’t seem to have started based on Bennett’s knowledge of Joseph Smith’s plural marriage. It doesn’t seem like Joseph let John C․ Bennett in on any of the legitimate practices. But rather, John C․ Bennett had a tendency toward adultery, a pretty flagrant tendency, before he’d come to Nauvoo. He had sworn to reform, and then when he saw opportunities, he started to take it. And he’s such a slimy, slippery, little snake that he was able to teach women that this was an OK practice and help them feel good about it. He would also say, “Listen, if there is sin in this, it’ll be upon me and not upon you.” And in this way him and a few of his friends, like Chauncey Higbee, were able to seduce multiple women who later come and, ironically, accuse them of wrongdoing.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So that’s kind of where the beginnings, the origins of spiritual wifery, came. That’s his term. He never called it plural marriage. In fact, marriage wasn’t even part of it. There was no marriage contract. There wasn’t even a pretend, like, “Let’s just be married for tonight” kind of a thing. It was just, “as long as nobody tells, it’s not a sin.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
That was what he called spiritual wifery.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And Bennett is eventually found out, brought before the church, asked for forgiveness, receives it.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But eventually is excommunicated from the church. He’s even complicit in an attempt on Joseph Smith’s life.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
After that point, leaves Nauvoo and then basically claims he was a double agent the whole time.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
That he only ingratiated himself to the saints because he was trying to expose their wickedness. And yet, like I said, the rest of his life is kind of sad in some way because he keeps trying to find a way back into some form of the church and never quite succeeds. It’s just kind of a sad story.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. I just recently learned when I was researching this afresh that—have you heard that he actually tried to commit suicide?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. That’s in one of the Joseph Smith Papers volumes, that Bennett attempted suicide and the Saints found him and saved him.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And after that he becomes this vile enemy of the church while at the same time trying to come back, while at the same time criticizing. He’s just a sad guy.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. It was an attempt on his life, it seems like, because he felt so bad about it—about the first time he got found out.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so I think it’s an indication that he didn’t go in there willingly as a double agent. It seems that he was sincere, but his own nature and his, the ruts he had created from his past adulterous life just were too difficult to resist. He came back into it, and, uh.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
It gets the better of him.

Scott Woodward:
It does, yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. I want to move on from Bennett, who’s not a fun person to talk about, to talk about maybe an individual with the better reputation. That’s Hyrum Smith. Now, it’s surprising, maybe, to know that one of the early opponents of plural marriage is Hyrum Smith, that as we’re coming into Nauvoo, he doesn’t know very much about plural marriage because when we talk about Hyrum and plural marriage, we always talk about how he’s kind of the person who urges Joseph Smith to receive the revelation on plural marriage, which becomes Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
So how did Hyrum go from being a skeptic, maybe even an opponent of plural marriage, to being someone who’s saying to Joseph, “Hey, I want to help. I want to explain to Emma the spiritual reasons behind this practice.” What’s his conversion story?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I gotta say, without a doubt, that had to be one of the most challenging aspects of Joseph’s practice of plural marriage, that for the first two years in Nauvoo, neither his brother Hyrum, his closest friend on earth, and then his wife, neither of those two had accepted the practice.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And any hints of it that they had heard of, they instantly were condemnatory about. And then with John C. Bennett and the spiritual wifery stuff, once he got kind of run out of town, excommunicated, and he starts retaliating and writing these just awful statements and accusations about Joseph Smith and the leaders of the church and the harems there and the prostitution and everything that’s going on in Nauvoo, just basically attacking others with the sins that were his own.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And just saying that Joseph was doing it instead, things get pretty defensive in Nauvoo. People are defensive. Joseph’s defensive that he sends out elders to go and help defend and set the record straight. So there’s this kind of defensive posture happening in Nauvoo in 1842, and then into ’43 because of Bennett’s not going out quietly, going out swinging. He said that “Joseph Smith has awakened the wrong passenger by kicking me outta the church, and I’m going to make sure he gets it.” So any hint of plural marriage in Nauvoo—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Hyrum tried to squash it as just this, these remnants, these leftovers of spiritual wifery. Joseph hadn’t told him because I assume, and some historical records suggest, that even when it was hinted at, he would kind of vehemently condemn it. And so if Joseph saw something, like, that’s not someone he’s going to approach about this.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Whereas those who he found more open to the idea are the ones that he approached.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
So it gets interesting. On May 23rd, 1843, William Clayton, he recorded rumors that Hyrum and others were conspiring to ensnare the polygamists in Nauvoo. They had heard that people were engaged in this, and there was of course rumors that Joseph Smith was. Hyrum didn’t at first believe that, but over time he started to suspect.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Is this May 23rd, 1843 or ’42?

Scott Woodward:
’43.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
’43?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. The same month that Emma Smith is going to accept. plural marriage is the same month that Hyrum does, and so it’s this—that’s a good month, probably the best month in Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo life was May 1843.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm. So when Hyrum approaches Joseph Smith and asks for the revelation—

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
This is right after he’s kind of figured it out on his own. So he’s a new convert—

Scott Woodward:
New convert.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
—who’s basically saying, “This was hard for me. I figured it out. I think I can help Emma figure it out, too.”

Scott Woodward:
Totally. Yeah. So that’s gonna be in July, so that’s just two months later. So yes, this is all fresh for Hyrum, that’s right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So catch this. There is rumors, William Clayton says, that Hyrum and others are conspiring to ensnare the polygamists. He said that he conversed with Heber C. Kimball concerning a plot. Heber C. Kimball at this time was living plural marriage, and William Clayton was fully aware of plural marriage.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
He said he was talking with Heber C. Kimball concerning a plot that’s being laid to entrap the brethren of the priesthood, meaning those in plural marriage. But before the trap was sprung, Hyrum approached Brigham Young, who he felt was aware of the truth of what was really going on. And they engage in a very interesting conversation that Brigham Young relates years later. Here’s what Brigham Young said the conversation was. Hyrum came to him and said, “I have a question for you, Brigham. In the first place, I say unto you that I do know that you and the 12 know some things that I do not know. I can understand this by the emotions and the talk and the doings of Joseph, and I know there’s something or other, which I do not understand, that is revealed to the 12. Is this so?” He asked Brigham, and Brigham replies. “I don’t know anything about what you know, but I know what I know.” A classic Brigham response. Then he said, “I have mistrusted for a long time that Joseph had received a revelation that a man should have more than one wife, and he has hinted as much to me,” Hyrum said, “but I would not bear it.” So Brigham continues, “Hyrum said to me, ‘I am convinced that there is something that has not been told me.’ So I said to him, ‘Brother Hyrum, I will tell you about this thing which you do not know if you will swear with an uplifted hand before God that you will never say another word against Joseph and his doings and the doctrines he is preaching to the people.’” Bold moment. “Hyrum replied, ‘I will do it with all my heart. Just tell me, Brigham.’ He stood upon his feet, and he said, ‘I want to know the truth and to be saved.’ And he made a covenant right there never again to bring forward one argument or use any influence against Joseph’s doings. Joseph had many wives sealed to him, so I told Hyrum the whole story. He listened, and he bowed to it, and he wept like a child, and he said, ‘God be praised.’”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Wow.

Scott Woodward:
Then Hyrum goes to Joseph, Brigham says, “and told him what he had learned, and he renewed his covenant with Joseph and they went heart and hand together while they lived, and they were together when they died and they’re together now defending Israel,” he said. So he then confesses that his opposition to plural marriage had been wrong. He went to some people that he had said strong things to, and he apologized. People who knew about it, even one who was one of Joseph’s wives, he had kind of pushed a little bit about this. He thought that she might be, and so he said, “What would you do if Joseph said to you that plural marriage was a true principle?” And he said, “Would you accept it?” This is Desdemona Fullmer. And she said, “Do you believe Joseph’s a prophet?” She asked Hyrum back, and he said, “Yes,” and she said, “I don’t feel like I could differentiate between his revelations. I think just, I would just accept it.” And Hyrum said, “If I heard that some woman was involved in plural marriage, I’d kick her 40 yards out of the house, then I’d follow her and kick her more.” And so she always avoided Hyrum after that. So then after Hyrum gets his own testimony, he specifically, with Joseph, goes and meets with Desdemona Fullmer, and he apologizes to her, and he said, “Where I have said anything against the doctrine of polygamy in public or in private, I must take it all back, for the Lord has shown unto me that I was wrong and that Joseph was right.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Wow. And this is kind of amazing, because according to William Clayton, when Hyrum goes in and asks Joseph Smith for the revelation, Hyrum says, “The doctrine is so plain that I can convince any person of its truth, plainness and simplicity.” But this is relatively soon after Hyrum has himself become convinced of the genuine nature of the revelation, correct?

Scott Woodward:
That’s right. Now it’s plain, but yeah, it wasn’t always so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. But he had his own struggles, too, which is kind of nice to know.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, I think that’s right, and I think that’s partially because of John C. Bennett, partially because of the accusations that have been made and his defensiveness and how abhorrent that idea would seem to pure-minded people, John C. Bennett’s practice, I’m talking about. But then to, like, hear hints that there might be some truth to some of the accusations in some way, it kind of, you could understand, would anger people, which would have been much less so had it not been for John C. Bennett. I guess that’s why I wanted to tell his story is because his stuff’s all kind of entangled in here in the psyche of many people in Nauvoo at this time.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He makes it more difficult for Joseph to introduce the revelation, no doubt.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Now let’s talk about Emma. This is maybe the most difficult knot to unravel in the whole matter.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because we don’t know a lot about what Emma knew and when she knew it specifically.

Scott Woodward:
Right.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But the revelation itself, section 132, is an explanation given to Emma in order to help her understand the reasons why. In our first episode on this, we gave those reasons straight out of section 132. But Section 132 is as much a conversation between the Lord and Emma as it is between the Lord and Joseph Smith. So what do we know about Emma and how she’s dealing with this? We know that Fanny Alger was difficult and that that caused problems, but when we get to Nauvoo, what do we know about Emma, and what’s going on here?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. With Fanny Alger, there’s certainly got to still be scars there.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And as far as we can tell, Emma considered that illegitimate, his relationship with Fanny, and therefore adulterous. But we know that by this time she has fully forgiven him.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And she was one of the people on the front lines defending Joseph against John C. Bennett’s attacks. And so that tells you where she was at, knowing as she was standing up and testifying of her husband’s uprightness and goodness. So that’s comforting. So 1842, Emma is fully on Joseph’s side in terms of defending his virtue against the John C. Bennett attacks that he was somehow involved in spiritual wifery.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And Joseph could honestly say, “I am not,” right? That’s so different than, so not even close to plural marriage of committed, faithful covenant marriage versus these one-night stands, essentially, right? That’s what John C. Bennett’s spiritual wifery was.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
If you don’t tell, it’s not a sin, right? That is not even close to what Joseph was doing. So Joseph could rightfully say, “I’m not involved with spiritual wifery at all.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Emma fully believed him, defended him, things were good. But Joseph continues to—trying to persuade her of the—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Have conversations with her. Talk with her.

Scott Woodward:
Have conversations with her, yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And it appears, if the account of Ruth Vose Sayers is accurate, that even before May—this would’ve been, I think, in March of 1843—that Emma was present. Ruth Vose Sayers says “Emma was present for my marriage to Joseph.” Remember Ruth Vose Sayers, we talked about her last time, she had a husband who was not a believer, so she’s one of these eternity-only sealings, and the husband was the one even who was, like, encouraging. He’s like, “Yeah. You go get sealed to Joseph for eternity. I’ll have you for time, and Joseph can have you for eternity.” Ruth says that Emma was there, and that would’ve been March. So if her timing is right, it is possible that she knew about the eternity-only sealings, and that possibly—again, we’re kind of tiptoeing the best we can, understanding what the sources, yeah—

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The sources are fragmentary here, yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. But with the fragmentary sources that we do have, it could be suggested that Joseph had told her about this eternity-only approach. We don’t know how many she would’ve been aware of, but we know that from that Ruth Vose Sayers account at least, she says that Emma was there. So whatever we want to do with that, Now, two months later in May 1843, same month that Hyrum gets his testimony, is when Emma softens her heart and briefly accepts the practice, even chooses four wives for Joseph. And so she, at this point, is trying to honor her husband. She believes he’s a true prophet. This practice itself, though, is so abhorrent to her, but there is this time in 1843 of May and June where she fully tries to embrace it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And so she gives him four wives, two sets of sisters, Eliza and Emily Partridge and then Sarah and Maria Lawrence.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. One thing I want to point out is that the Partridge Sisters and the Lawrence sisters already live in the home, like they have this close relationship with Joseph and Emma. The Partridge sisters are, of course, the daughters of the late Edward Partridge, the first bishop of the church, one of Joseph’s dear friends who dies in 1840 when they get to Nauvoo after practically from exhaustion, because he’s given his all to trying to save and help the church. And so there’s already this close, almost familial relationship between these four women that Emma chooses for Joseph to be sealed to. They’re in the home, basically.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And so it’s natural that she would choose them, but also that Joseph would already have a deep, familial relationship with them to begin with.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Now, Joseph had actually already been married to Emily and Eliza and maybe the Lawrence sisters. But according to Emily’s account, she said that Joseph told her, when Emma chose the Partridge Sisters, Joseph said, “Let’s just go along with it. It won’t do us well to tell her that we were already married.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm.

Scott Woodward:
By the way, this—this causes no end to struggle for moderners, and it should, I think, right? When you hear of a husband who is marrying women behind her back, as it were, right? It smacks of scandal.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But as you look at the details, Joseph is in a, in a rock and a hard spot. In fact, here’s a way that Richard Bushman talks about it. He said “Joseph and Emma were in impossible positions. Joseph was caught between his revelation and his wife, and Emma between a practice she detested and belief in her husband.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm.

Scott Woodward:
And so she is trying. Emily Partridge, in her account of this, she actually writes several accounts of this. She says this. She said, “Emma was present. She gave her free and full consent. She had always, up to this time, been very kind to me and my sister Eliza, who was also married to the prophet Joseph Smith with Emma’s consent.” She even says that Emma took her hand and put it in Joseph’s hand as part of the ceremony.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Then Emily says, “But after this, she was ever our enemy, and she used every means in her power to injure us in the eyes of her husband and before strangers, and in consequence of her abuse we were obliged to leave the city to gratify her. But things were overruled otherwise, and we remained in Nauvoo.” So the very first night, when Joseph stays with the wives in the mansion house, Emily says they spent the night together, Joseph and Emily. Emma was in another room, in her bedroom, and Joseph spent the night in Emily’s bedroom. Emma just couldn’t do it, man. She couldn’t do it.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so after a few months, they’re gonna be out of the house, and she says they went to live with a family of Brother Coolidge. That’s where Eliza went. And she said, “I went to live with Sister Sylvia Lyons,” one of Joseph’s other plural wives. So tough stuff.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. And I want to point out, this informs some of our understanding of Section 132. We gave, “This was an Abrahamic test” as one of the theological reasons for plural marriage. But in context, the Abrahamic test is Emma’s Abrahamic test, right?

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He’s the person that she’s talking to.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
The second thing is that Emily, who’s our primary source for this episode, is still mad, decades later. She’s upset. She feels like Emma Smith was de-legitimizing her marriage and not admitting that it happened when she participated. And so there’s a ton of emotion wrapped up in this, and we have two great women that I admire, Emily Partridge and Emma Smith, that I don’t want to set up as adversaries.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
But it’s clear that this caused a fracture in their relationship that Emily is still trying to recover from decades later.

Scott Woodward:
No question. So in May, Emma gives her consent. She’s good for, like, one day, and after Emily spends the night with Joseph, just the emotional strain on Emma is just too much.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
But she doesn’t send them out of the house immediately. There’s some time for that kind of animosity to smolder until it gets too bad.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
But by July, she just is in rebellion, according to some accounts that she just couldn’t do it. And so by July, She is struggling. She could not sustain her positive feelings about plural marriage.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So on July 12th, in an attempt to encourage her acceptance of plural marriage, this is where Hyrum Smith, who had just accepted it himself in May now requests Joseph to write down a revelation, and he’ll try to help Emma come around on this. So Emma’s already accepted it and now is struggling really bad with it. And William Clayton’s first version of this that he wrote in his journal, July 12th, 1843. He talks about Joseph writing down the revelation, and then he says, “After it was wrote, presidents Joseph and Hyrum presented it and read it to Emma, who said she did not believe a word of it and appeared very rebellious.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
Wow. Years later, Clayton tells the story again and he says that Joseph was not there, but Hyrum took it and then came back, totally kind of just frustrated and flabbergasted with Emma’s response. So either Joseph was there or he wasn’t. We’re not sure. But the earliest account says Joseph went with Hyrum, and she wouldn’t believe a word of it, and she appeared very rebellious.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. I should note, too, Joseph Smith’s journal the day after says “Spent day in conversation with Sister Emma.” So whether Joseph went with Hyrum or didn’t go with Hyrum, his journal indicates that he spent the entire next day talking to Sister Emma about the principles in the revelation. He’s not sending somebody to fight his battles.

Scott Woodward:
Yes.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
He’s talking with her, and this is just a peek into what’s a huge issue in a marriage that these two faithful people are dealing with.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. Joseph F. Smith, years later, he would’ve been, what, like four or five years old during all this, so he wouldn’t actually have firsthand experience, but he’ll later say that soon after this revelation was given, Emma told Joseph that if he would not give up his plural wives, she would bring him up before the law, meaning either perhaps divorce him or accuse him of bigamy, which was against the law.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And so she became very bitter. And so that next day, after section 132 is written and Emma won’t believe a word of it, that’s when they come to an agreement. There’s this moment where in William Clayton’s journal, he talks about them coming to an agreement.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
It appears to be that the agreement was trying to prevent a divorce or accusation of bigamy against Joseph Smith. We’re not sure, but things are tense in their marriage. In fact, Joseph Robinson said, how’s he say it? I have his quote here. He said, “This came close to breaking up Joseph’s family. However, Joseph succeeded in saving Emma at that time. But the prophet felt dreadfully bad over this because she became very angry, and she was threatening to leave and to go back to her people in the state of New York,” Joseph Robinson says.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
So William Clayton records that they came to an agreement the next day.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
The first condition was that Joseph would have to obtain Emma’s permission before marrying any new plural wives. There were only two, by the way, that Joseph married after this: One was Fanny Young, an eternity-only marriage, Brigham Young’s sister, and another one was Melissa Lot, which Emma gave with her permission.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
But the last eight months of Joseph Smith’s life, he never entered into another plural marriage. So this starts to, I think, tell us that there was a pretty strong feeling with Emma that she hated the fact that Joseph could be doing this behind her back.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And then Section 132 had just said, this is in verses 64 and 65, that if the wife of the man who’s got the keys rejects this principle, then he doesn’t need to ask for her permission. In some readings of that, it’s possible that Joseph took that to mean after Emma’s reaction to Fanny Alger in Kirtland, Ohio, that he was no longer under obligation to tell Emma about this.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm.

Scott Woodward:
But it doesn’t seem that he’s doing this out of spite in any way. But he continued to watch and to see if she was ready to hear it. And so then he does this string of eternity-only marriages, and she may have been aware of that, according to Ruth Vose Sayers, and didn’t blow up. But when there’s a possibility of sexuality and then there was likely, right, that first night when he marries Emily Partridge.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
And then she just can’t do that, emotionally. Section 132:64-65 is saying if she rejects this principle, you don’t have to ask her permission. Well, she’s saying here, “No. Condition number one: You always have to ask my permission.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Now I want to say one more thing about this, if you’ll indulge me.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I know when I talk about this idea of not telling Emma with my students, they struggle with this one, and I think rightfully so.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I would encourage anyone who kind of struggles with this to look at verse 56 of section 132, and I think there’s actually a pretty powerful insight here. I’ll just read it here for our listeners. It says, “and again, verily I say, let my handmaid Emma forgive my servant Joseph his trespasses, and then she shall be forgiven her trespasses wherein she has trespassed against me, and I, the Lord thy God, will bless her and multiply her and make her heart to rejoice.” Boy, I’ve missed that for a lot of years. But when I was thinking about this principle, this idea of Joseph had married some women without Emma’s knowledge. I’m not sure that was completely OK, right? It seems here in section 132, the Lord might be saying here, “Emma, you’re not wrong. You’re justified in your feelings. Will you forgive Joseph Smith his trespasses? He’s got some.” I think we need to allow some space here for Joseph Smith to have made a mistake on that one.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm.

Scott Woodward:
Certainly his motives, I believe, were pure in trying to protect Emma and then trying to figure out a time when she was most open to the practice.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
In the meantime, angels saying “Do it,” and so he’s doing it, but I don’t think there’s any shenanigans going on. I don’t think he’s trying to go behind his wife’s back here.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Mm-hmm.

Scott Woodward:
But did he make a mistake? Apparently, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
I think verse 56 is suggesting, at least in some way, Emma needs to forgive him. He made some mistakes on this, right?

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But just like anything, any mistake, we shouldn’t judge the validity of the Restoration based on the trespasses of Joseph Smith, and the Doctrine and Covenants multiple times say he committed trespasses, ever since Section 3 of the Doctrine and Covenants, now all the way to section 132, the Lord’s acknowledging, “He’s made some mistakes, Emma. Will you forgive him? You forgive him, and you’ll be forgiven.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And so that’s where I come down on this is just the Lord seems to have forgiven him, and he’s asking Emma to do the same.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
And by the way, if any of us harbor ill feelings toward Joseph Smith on this issue, hopefully we can find it in our hearts to forgive him, too.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. I want to say something, too. A couple years ago I was asked to speak to my ward Relief Society on the anniversary of Relief Society, and I want to talk about Emma, and I’ve noticed a pattern in our church in that we swung from Emma being, like, the worst because when the Saints were practicing plural marriage and Emma is countering that narrative, they are mad at her. People like Emily Partridge are mad at her, with good reason. But in the last couple years, we’ve swung the opposite direction to make Emma, like, an absolutely perfect person.

Scott Woodward:
Mm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And she is a role model to women in the church, but we need to accord her the same kind of humanity that we give to anybody. So between, “Hey, Emma’s the victim,” or “Emma’s the villain,” I think it’s clear that Emma is a flawed person who’s struggling with this stuff.

Scott Woodward:
Sure.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
And I sometimes have people come up and say, “Hey, what happened to Emma Smith? Like, what’s her ultimate fate going to be?” We don’t know. But I did find this source that—I put this into ScripturePlus with Section 132.

Scott Woodward:
Mm-hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
This is from Emma’s nurse Elizabeth Revelle, who was there when Emma was passing away. She said just a few days before Emma’s death, this happened: she said “Joseph came to her in vision and said, ‘Emma, come with me. It’s time for you to come with me.’ As Emma related it,” she said, “‘I put on my bonnet and my shawl and went with him. I did not think it was anything unusual. I went with him into a mansion, and he showed me through the different apartments of that beautiful mansion, and one room was the nursery. In that nursery was the babe and the cradle.’” She said, “‘I knew my babe, my Don Carlos, that was taken from me.’” This is their son that made it 18 months and then died in Nauvoo.

Scott Woodward:
Hmm.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
“She sprang forward, caught the child up in her arms, and wept with joy over the child. When Emma recovered herself sufficient, she turned to Joseph and said, ‘Joseph, where are the rest of my children?’ He said to her, ‘Emma, be patient, and you shall have all of your children.’ Then she saw standing by his side a personage of light, even the Lord Jesus Christ.” Now, that’s a secondhand source. I believe it, and I don’t think that’s the sort of vision that a person that is gonna be in trouble in the next life has. I think Emma was complex, but I think this story told that the end of her life shows that she ended in a good place with Joseph Smith, that she loved him, that he loved her, and that both of them wrestling with these just huge dilemmas wound up in a good place, maybe even continued the conversation into the next life about what the Lord was asking both of them at this point in time. So when my students ask me, you know, “What do you think about Emma?” I say, “Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and be as charitable as possible.”

Scott Woodward:
Yeah.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Because she is a great lady. No doubt in my mind. And believed that her husband was a prophet of God, that anybody would’ve struggled with this. This wasn’t just a test, this was an Abrahamic test.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. You don’t say, “Come on, Emma,” like, just, “This is easy. Just get with the program.” Like, it’s not easy.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
What she was being asked to do. Yeah, that’s the best motif, isn’t it? “Abraham, sacrifice your son. Sacrifice the only possible way all the promises I’ve made to you will come to pass. Give it up. Put it on the altar.”

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah. This is gut-wrenching for everybody involved, just like Abraham was.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. This is tough stuff, but I think we don’t need to be afraid of this history. I think the best thing to do is just to dive right in, like we’re trying to do, imperfectly, but just to look at it square in the eyes and look at the revelations. Joseph Smith never goes outside of his revelations in terms of any sexual impropriety. I think that’s always the fear with this. Section 132 is tough reading. It is tough reading.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
But in there there is admission that Joseph had made some errors that Emma needed to forgive. And then there’s some pretty stern language for Emma as well to be obedient to this. So I just have the highest admiration for both Joseph and Emma here, and I feel the least qualified to pass any judgment. I’m with you. Mercy and compassion is the way to read this history.

Casey Paul Griffiths:
Yeah.

Scott Woodward:
Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. Next week we continue this series by exploring even more about the difficulties and opposition Joseph Smith faced in his efforts to live plural marriage in Nauvoo. We will dig even deeper into his wife Emma’s opposition to this practice and also chronicle the difficulties brought on by a sinister group of Joseph’s inner circle, difficulties which eventually led to his martyrdom. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti and Scott Woodward, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.