Monday, October 5, 2020

Samuel W. Taylor on the Controversy about the Authorship of the 1890 Manifesto

 

 

The authorship of the Manifesto remains controversial. Frank Cannon says, “He [Wilford Woodruff] told me he had written himself, and it certainly appeared to me to be in his handwriting. Its authorship has since been variously attributed. Some of the present-day polygamists say that it was I who wrote it. Chas. W. Penrose and George Reynolds have claimed they edited it.”

 

At the Smoot investigation, George Reynolds testified before the Senate committee that he helped write the Manifesto. “President Woodruff wrote it in his own hand—and he was a very poor writer, worse, I believe, than Horace Greeley—and he gave it into the hands of three of the elders to prepare it for the press, . . . C.W. Penrose, John R. Winder, and myself . .  . We transcribed the notes and changed the language slightly to adapt it for publication.”

 

Thomas J. Rosser stated that, when a missionary to Wales in 1908, he asked the mission president, Charles W. Penrose, during a missionary conference, if the Manifesto was a revelation from God. “Brethren, I will answer that question, if you will keep it under your hats,” Penrose said, “I, Charles W. Penrose, wrote the Manifesto with the assistance of Frank J. Cannon and John White . . . Wilford Woodruff signed it to beat the devil at his own game.”

 

[Most]H[oly]P[rinciple] 4:67 stated that the Manifesto then “was submitted to a committee of non-Mormons, Judges Charles S. Zane, C.S. Varian, and O.W. Powers, none of whom were well known for their friendship for the Mormons . . .  A change of wording was insisted upon in the Manifesto, and the document was recopied by a clerk named Green. It would seem very unusual that the Lord would dictate a statement to His mouthpiece upon the earth that required a committee to render it intelligible.” (Samuel W. Taylor, Rocky Mountain Empire: The Latter-day Saints Today [New York: Macmillan Publishing Co, Inc., 1978], 35 n. 16, comments in square brackets added for clarification. It should be noted that the Manifesto is not presented as a revelation, rendering the criticisms at the end as a non sequitur)