With the recent same-sex ruling
by the Supreme Court, there are many people concerned about what else this may
mean for civil marriages. One of the outspoken concerns has to do with plural
marriage. After another controversial Supreme Court ruling, the Dred Scott v.
Sandford (1857) case, both Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln talked about its
implications in the newspapers and they also talked about issues with the Utah
territory. There was discussion that the people of Utah were in open rebellion
and action would have to been taken against them. However, Lincoln brought up
the obvious issue that Douglas apparently left out in his address, and that was
of polygamy.
The Kanzas News reprinted Lincoln’s speech
delivered to the Hall of Illinois House of Representatives on June 26, 1857,
where he addressed this issue of plural marriage: “…it is very plain the Judge
[Douglas] evades the only question the Republicans have ever pressed upon the
Democracy in regard to Utah. That question the Judge well knows to be this: ‘If
the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating
polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?’—There is nothing in
the United States Constitution or law against polygamy; and why is it not a
part of the Judge’s ‘sacred right of self-government’ for that people to have
it, or rather to keep it, if they choose?”[1]
According
to Lincoln, the same man that has been called the Great Emancipator, who freed
the slaves, said that there was nothing in the Constitution saying that
polygamy was illegal. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints practiced
polygamy until the United States government passed anti-polygamy laws,
suspended women’s suffrage that was granted in the territory of Utah February
12, 1870,[2]
disincorporated the LDS church, and threatened to confiscate LDS private
property.[3]
After the LDS Church officially denounced the practice of marriage between a
man and many women, the government granted them statehood. However, considering
the recent Supreme Court ruling and considering Lincoln’s understanding of the
Constitution, were the LDS wrong in their practice of polygamy in the nineteenth
century?
[1]
The Kanzas news, (Emporia, Kan.), 08 Aug. 1857. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress,
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85030219/1857-08-08/ed-1/seq-1/.
[2]
Ann D. Gordon, The Selected Papers of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony: Volume II, Against an
Aristocracy of Sex 1866 to 1873, (New Jersey: State University of New
Jersey, 2000), 303.
[3]
Eileen Hallet Stone, Hidden History of
Utah, (Charleston: The History Press, 2013), 125.
