The following (with slight editing) is taken from Jacob Vidrine, “Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Fact or Fiction?” in One Eternal Round: A Magazine Dedicated to Mormon History and Theology, no. 18 (November 15, 2020):
Your father [Joseph Smith] reasoned
on these subjects in this wise. He said that the Lord denounced in the Bible
every species of crime. He proclaimed against adultery, fornication, and
divorce, but never against plurality of wives, and in all places where his
humble and faithful servants in obedience to the laws took a plurality of wives
he blessed them for it. He punished King David severely for his adultery with
the wife of Uriah; and while God by the mouth of His prophet was chastening him
he says “I gave thee thy master’s house and thy master’s wives unto thy bosom,
and gave thee the house of Israel & Judah and if that had been too little I
would moreover have given unto thee such and such thing” [2 Sam 12:8] (George
A. Smith letter to Joseph Smith III, October 9, 1869, CHL) (p. 11)
And as I do know the young Joseph’s
mother was acquainted with his father’s plural marriages, and for a period did
consent thereto, it is difficult to believe that Joseph himself, although young
was not cognizant of the fact . . . (Benjamin F. Johnson, letter to Frank
Feely, December 10, 1897, CHL) (pp. 32-33)
In a 1928 letter John R. Young
recalled Solon Foster telling him about a debate with Joseph III about polygamy,
and in this debate Solon said:
Joseph when your Mother turned Eliza
R. Snow out doors in her night clothes, and you stood there, crying, I took you
up stairs to bed with me, and you said “I wish Mother would not be so cruel to
Aunt Eliza.” You knew that Eliza R. Snow was your Father’s wife. (John R.
Young, letter to Willard Stolworthy, February 7, 1928, copied in John R. Young
scrapbook, CHL) (p. 33)
Joseph Smith III, while
maintaining strong public denials of plural marriage, in a few letters appears to
have privately implied (or at least entertained) a belief that this father had
actually lived plural marriage. In 1882 he wrote a letter to his uncle William
Smith warning him to be careful about what he wrote about the early church:
I have long been engaged in
removing from Father’s memory and from the Early Church, the stigma and blame
thrown upon them because of Polygamy; and have at last lived to see the cloud
rapidly lifting. And I would not consent to see future blame attached, by a
blunder now. Therefore Uncle, bear in mind our standing to day before the
world, as defenders of Mormonism free from Polygamy, and go ahead with your
personal recollections of Joseph & Hyrum. (Joseph Smith III, letter to
William Smith, March 11, 1882, COC Archives) (pp. 33-34)
Additionally, in a letter to E. C.
Brand, an RLDS missionary in Utah who he personally tasked with researching
possible plural wives of his father, Joseph Smith III said he was “getting used
to contemplating my respective step-mothers, and possible half-brothers &
sisters by the same.” While his letter is genuinely hostile to the list of
plural wives Brand had previously provided, he at least admitted Melissa Lott’s
testimony was credible:
I knew Melissa well, a bright good
girl. Am glad that she was only sealed for eternity, or adopted in to the
family, But she was plenty large and old enough to be any man’s companion in
cohabitation when I knew her; and about the only one of the entire outfit named
by you whom I would be inclined to believe if she should tell me herself that
father did cohabit with her. (Joseph Smith III to E. C. Brand, January 26,
1894, COC Archives) (p. 34)
. . . Joseph III’s comment about “only
sealed for eternity, or adopted in to the family” appears to be falling back to
his mother’s Nauvoo-period acceptance of polygamy in eternity, just not in
the present life, as recalled by Lucy Meserve Smith, plural wife of George A.
Smith: “Emma had told me that Joseph never taught any such things [i.e. of
plural wives having children[ [she said that] they were only sealed for
eternity[--] they were not to live with them and have children” (Lucy Meserve
Smith statement, CHL). (pp. 34-35, italics in original)
Speaking of "Joseph Smith III's apparent willingness to edit
out undesirable details in published conversations dealing with polygamy,"
Brian C. Hales noted that:
On October 20, 1885, he
interviewed Malissa Lott in her Lehi, Utah home. His recollection of the
interview was published later:
I asked, plainly, “Melissa will
you tell me just what was your relation to my father, if any?”
She arose, went to a shelf, and
returned with a Bible which she opened at the family record pages and showed me
a line written there in a scrawling handwriting:
“Married my daughter Melissa to
Prophet Joseph Smith — “ giving the date, which I seem to remember as late in
1843.
I looked closely at the
handwriting, and examined the book and other entries carefully. Then I asked:
“Who were present when this
marriage took place — if marriage it be called?”
“No one but your father and
myself”’
“Was my mother there?”
“No, sir.”
“Was there no witness there?”
“No, sir.”
“Where did it occur?”
“At the house on the farm,”
“And my mother knew nothing of it,
before or after?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you ever live with my father
as his wife, in the Mansion House in Nauvoo, as has been claimed?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you ever live with him as his
wife anywhere?” I persisted.
At this point she began to cry,
and said, “No, I never did: but you have no business asking me such questions.
I had a great regard and respect for your father and your mother. I do not like
to talk about these things.” (Mary Audentia Smith Anderson, The Memoirs of
President Joseph Smith (1832‒1914), Independence, MO: Herald Publishing
House, 1979, 245. This is a reprint of The Saint’s Herald, April 28,
1936.)
Malissa Lott’s own record of their
interview allows researchers to compare the two:
Ques. 1 – Were you married to my
father?
Ans. – yes
Ques. 2 – When
Ans. – I handed him the family
Bible in which was recorded by my father at the time of my said marriage &
told him he would find it there.
Ques. 3 – Was you a wife In very
deed?
Ans. – yes
Ques. 4 – Why was there no
children say in your case?
Ans. – Through no falt of either of
us. Lack of proper conditions on my part probably or it might of been in the
wisdom of the Almighty that we should have none. The Prophet was Martyred 9
mos. After our marriage
Ques. 5 – Did you know of any
brother or sister of mine by my father?
Ans. – I did not know of any.
(This manuscript is in possession of Preston Richard Dehlin. See also Raymond
T. Bailey, “Emma Hale: Wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith.” MA thesis, Brigham
Young University, 1952, 100–102; available at http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5493&context=etd)
Malissa’s account differs from
Joseph Smith III’s on several important points. It might be said that it is
simply a matter of “he said she said,” both sides claiming the other is lying.
Yet, additional documents created long before this conversation support both
that Malissa was Joseph Smith’s plural wife and that the union was consummated.
[See Lott Family Bible, MS 3373, CHL; transcript available at
MormonPolygamyDocuments.org link JS0472. Malissa Lott, Affidavit, May 20, 1869,
Joseph F. Smith, Affidavit Books, 1:23, 4:23. CHL. Available at https://archive.org/details/AffidavitsOnCelestialMarriage.
George A. Smith, Letter to Joseph Smith III, October 9, 1869; available at
MormonPolygamyDocuments.org link JS0737.
Eliza R. Snow, “First list of
wives,” Document #1, in Andrew Jenson Papers, MS 17956, Box 49, fd. 16;
transcript available at MormonPolygamyDocuments.org link 50.010.] Malissa
reported saying she was a wife of the Prophet “in very deed,” unmistakable
language for sexual relations and consistent with things she had said on
multiple occasions prior to their visit.
Joseph reported exactly the
opposite, portraying Malissa as avoiding the question and beginning to cry. If
true, Malissa had done an abrupt reversal concerning this issue, only to again
affirm her consummated plural marriage to Joseph in the years afterward.
(Malissa Lott, Temple Lot Transcript [1892], Part 3, pp. 97, 105‒106, questions
87–9 3, 224‒60. Available at https://archive.org/details/TempleLotCaseTranscript)
Joseph Smith III also mentioned
additional conversational points with responses that Malissa apparently
omitted. On March 16, 1892, while under oath during the Temple Lot litigation,
she addressed several of these, describing how “Hyrum Smith performed the
ceremony” and how “There was quite a good many around my father’s house at the
time” of the sealing ordinance. (Malissa Lott, deposition, Temple Lot
transcript, respondent’s testimony (part 3), pp. 93, 95‒96. Available at https://archive.org/details/TempleLotCaseTranscript)
She also affirmed that Emma gave her consent and answered “Yes, sir” when
asked, “Did you ever room with Joseph Smith as his wife?” (Ibid.) These
statements again contradict the version published by Joseph Smith III.
In light of the discrepancies
between the two accounts of their interview, the possibility that young Joseph
edited his mother’s actual answers to the questions regarding polygamy cannot
be excluded. Eliza R. Snow seemed to hold such suspicions, writing in the Deseret
News:
If what purports to be her “last
testimony” was really her testimony, she died with a libel on her lips —
a libel against her husband — against his wives — against the truth, and a
libel against God, and in publishing that libel, her son has fastened a stigma
on the character of his mother, that can never be erased. … I would gladly have
been silent and let her memory rest in peace, had not her misguided son,
through a sinister policy, branded her name with gross wickedness — charging
her with the denial of a sacred principle which she had heretofore not only
acknowledged but had acted upon. (Quoted in “Joseph the Seers Plural
Marriages,” Deseret News, 28:604‒05, October 22, 1879. Available at
MormonPolygamyDocuments.org link JS0884) (Brian C. Hales, "Joseph Smith:
Monogamist or Polygamist?" in Interpreter:
A Journal of Mormon Scripture 25 [2017]: 137-40)
What Vidrine writes at the start of his study is rather apropos:
My problem with polygamy denial is
that it is founded on sandy historical foundations, and more often than not,
willfully ignoring historical data that doesn’t fit their view. There is a
plethora of evidence for Joseph Smith’s polygamy from diverse sources than
merely what comes from Brigham Young and his followers in Utah.
Additionally, there are a number of contemporary sources that are evidence that
Joseph Smith taught and practiced plural marriage, besides later testimonies
and affidavits by individuals who followed Brigham Young. (Jacob Vidrine,
“Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Fact or Fiction?,” 3,
emphasis in bold added)
