From Persecuted to Persecutors, Part 3 Chapter 15 of Holy Priesthood Volume 6

From Persecuted to Persecutors, Part 3 Chapter 15 of Holy Priesthood Volume 6

Pages 278 to 301 

The battle was over and someone had conditionally surrendered. What were the conditions? Leonard Arrington, former LDS Church Historian, explained the terms:

As a part of the “deal” by which this was arranged, church officials are said to have given  congressional and administration leaders to understand that they would support a proposition to (1) prohibit forever the practice of polygamy in Utah; (2) that the church would dissolve its Peoples’ Party, [Kingdom organization] and divide itself into Republican and Democratic supporters; and that the church would (3) discontinue its alleged fight against Gentile business and relax its own economic efforts. [United Order]. The temporal kingdom, for all practical purposes, was dead–slain by the dragon of Edmunds-Tucker. (Great Basin Kingdom, p. 379)

Within ten years the Church had not only surrendered their basic political, social and economic doctrines, but they began to oppose them. The enemies of Mormonism had ceased to fight against the Saints, but the Church itself gradually took up where they left off–and plural marriage was the most obvious target.

The perpetuation of plural marriage has nearly always been a covert operation, accompanied by confusion and contradiction. Both before and after the Manifesto, members of the leading quorums were divided in their opinions: some promoting it and some opposing it–and others even tried to spy and expose it