Mormon History
Emma Smith versus Brigham Young - 1872
The Salt Lake Daily Tribune – September 6, 1872
EMMA SMITH AND POLYGAMY.
_______
As for the doctrine that is
promulgated by the sons of Joseph, it is nothing more than any other false
religion. We would be very glad to have the privilege of saying that the
children of Joseph Smith, Junior, the prophet of God, were form in the faith of
the gospel, and following in the footsteps of their father. But what are they
doing? Trying to blot out every vestige of the work their father preformed on
the earth. Their mission is to endeavor to obliterate every particle of his
doctrine, his faith and doings. These boys are not following Joseph Smith, but
Emma Bideman. Every person who hearkens to what they say, hearkens unto the will
and wishes of Emma Bideman. The boys, themselves, have no will, no mind, no
judgment independent of their mother. I do not want to talk about them. I am
sorry for them, and I have my own faith in regard to them. I think the Lord will
find them by-and-bye -- not Joseph, I have told the people times enough, that
they never may depend on Joseph Smith who is now living, but David, who was born
after the death of his father, I still look for the day to come when the Lord
will touch his eyes. But I do not look for it while his mother lives. The Lord
would do it now if David were willing; but he is not, he places his mother first
and foremost, and would take her counsel sooner than he would the counsel of the
Almighty, consequently he can do nothing, he knows nothing, he has no faith, and
we have to let the matter rest in the hands of God for the present. -- Brigham
Young, Aug. 24th, 1872.
It has been from the first, that is, since the Mormons left Nauvoo, the very
vicious and unmanly habit of Brigham Young, George A. Smith, and others to
revile the name of Mrs. Emma Smith Bideman in a most infamous manner. Heber C.
Kimball, the eccentric man, who, with all his faults, had sterling stuff in him,
has sometimes taken "sister Emmy's" part, as he did in Nauvoo against Brigham,
when the latter threatened he would break her up, humble her to his feet and
leave her in utter destruction
The chief causes of the vindictive enmity of Brigham Young against the lawful
wife of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, are the injuries which he has done her
character, before which even this iron-willed cardinal priest has had to bend.
She tried to lead her husband away from the counsel of "that bad man," as she
called Brigham Young, and with all her might opposed polygamy. And there can be
very little doubt that had Joseph Smith followed the moral promptings of his
wife instead of his own passions, the ambitious men who were around him, and the
women whom Emma Smith would call her husband's concubines, the Mormon prophet
would have been alive to day and at the head of a loyal and unoffending people
in the Rocky Mountains.
It was polygamy that broke the tie of loyalty between the Mormon prophet and his
wife even as it crushed out the fealty he owed to his country. Both in turn
madly prophesied against by him, live on, though chastened by trial, in triumph,
for both were on the right side, leaving the prophet himself to perish miserably
on the side of wrong.
For years one could often hear the story told in Salt Lake City, both by men and
women, how "Emmy Smith" rebelled against Joseph, opposed polygamy and burned the
revelation. This was all said then in reproach, but there are many now who are
turning it to her praise. When she burned that revelation, that foul imposture
which has corrupted a religious people and made victims of evey woman who has
been entrapped into the system. Every woman in the Mormon Church should have
done the same and there would have been no polygamy, but in that case the Mormon
"sisters" would have been treated as man's equal, instead of the pattern, [an]
Elder of Israel being able to say, "I think no more of taking a wife than I do
of buying a cow." these 'authorities' have taken too many wives and thus
demoralized both sexes.
We would like to see Emma and her sons, with their followers, come up to "Zion"
and let their monogamic church and the polygamic church of Brigham Young
contend. We think that if the thousands of Josephites were to flock into Utah
under such leadership, this priest-ridden polygamic system would be shaken to
its foundations, and the mineral development of this country would justify their
coming now. Altogether outside of the Mormon Church there are hundreds of our
best citizens who would delight to honor the woman who for thirty years has so
nobly fought for the honor of marriage and the integrity of her sex under such
trying and peculiar circumstances,
Note: For Brigham Young's
entire speech, delivered at Farmington, Utah, on Aug. 24, 1872, see
Journal of Discourses XV:135.