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Show VI gamous epoch, Grandfather had not intended to live the Principle. He was devoted to his childhood sweetheart, Charlotte, and the couple had been present at the October conference when the Manifesto was read and sustained by the Mormon congregation, releasing them from any obligation to live polygamously. But controversy always surrounded polygamy, from its inception in the Church. The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, Jr., introduced polygamy as 'the Law of Abraham' to only a handful of Church authorities in 1831. It was practiced secretly, but surrounded with rumor. Some said Joseph Smith invented his revelation about polygamy to temper a volatile affair with young Fannie Alger, and to save himself from his wife, Emma's fury. Others insisted the revelation was divine, like all the revelations forming the foundation of the young church; If the Principle was false, then all was false. Still, scandal raged; even Church members whispered that Emma threw one of Joseph's plural wives down the stairs upon discovering the young miss was pregnant, and that she turned the Alger sisters out into the cold when she caught them with Joseph. 'Gentiles' --as Mormons call outsiders -- needed little prompting to believe the worst. Already incensed by the Church's political power and troubled financial history, they dogged the Church from one settlement to another, looting and burning Mormon homes, and even murdering until the outrage culminated when a mob assassinated Joseph Smith in the jail at Carthage, |
