The Manifesto: Polygamy, Statehood, and What the Church Gave Up
Near Salt Lake City, Utah
By eighteen eighty-seven, the United States Congress had passed three major anti-polygamy laws, dissolved the corporate charter of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, seized its property, and disenfranchised Utah women who had held the vote since eighteen seventy. Church leaders and practicing polygamists were underground, imprisoned, or living in exile in Mexico and Canada. The territory of Utah had applied for statehood six times since eighteen forty-nine. Every application had been rejected, primarily over polygamy.
On September twenty-fifth, eighteen ninety, church president Wilford Woodruff published the document that changed the terms of the conflict. The Manifesto, as it became known, advised church members to stop entering into marriages forbidden by the law of the land. It was accepted by church membership on October sixth, eighteen ninety. Utah was granted statehood on January fourth, eighteen ninety-six, with a clause in its constitution explicitly banning polygamy.
The Manifesto did not immediately end all plural marriages. Some church apostles quietly sanctioned new polygamous unions in Mexico and Canada in the years immediately following, under the argument that the prohibition applied only within the United States. A second, more binding declaration came in nineteen oh four. Anyone entering or performing a plural marriage after that date would be subject to excommunication.
The FLDS church and related fundamentalist groups that continue polygamous practice today do so on the grounds that the Manifesto was not a revelation from God but a political capitulation, and that the original commandments of the faith require plural marriage. FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was convicted in two thousand eleven on two counts of child sexual assault and sentenced to life in prison plus twenty years.
What the Manifesto achieved, precisely, remains contested. It bought statehood. What it cost, and whether the cost was paid, is a longer question.
