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Show Page 107 Orson's instructions were soon to be altered, however, for in the meantime at Nauvoo Joseph Smith had encountered problems much moce immediate than forcing retribution on the state of Missouri. Awareness of the practice of plural marriage was spreading both in and out of the Church, and one of Joseph's ablest counselors, William Law, had found the doctrine too difficult to accept. Joseph Smith continued his public denunciations of "spiritual wifery" as "exposed" by John C. Bennett, but Law was unable to distinguish between the principles of Joseph's revelation and wholesale communality of wives. There were others who objected, among them one Francis M. Higbee, whose "slanderous and abusive language" Orson 13 Pratt had complained of in city council meeting the previous January. The Higbees were notorious for a certain irreverence toward Smith and his calling, while Law had a serious conflict of faith over the Prophet's teachings. At any rate, they were all complained of before the Church and the municipal court for conspiracy against Joseph Smith during March of 1844. Regarding these men as "Judases in our midst," Joseph Smith felt himself increasingly vulnerable to the secret violence of persecutors who had failed to destroy him in the open. He organized an armed police force of forty members to keep careful watch on strangers and citizens alike. This, along with the growing strength and independence of the Nauvoo Legion, began to alarm neighboring towns; the stories of spiritual wifery and corruption in Nauvoo served only to agitate public opinion even more against the Latter-day Saints. Inevitably Joseph Smith began once again to look for a suitable place to move. He sent to Orson Pratt a new directive - he was to present to Congress a proposal to allow the Mormons to settle and "police the inter-mountain and Pacific coast west from |
