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In the years after members of the LDS Church began practicing polygamy, it drew intense scrutiny and criticism from the United States government. This criticism led to the Utah Mormon War, and eventually the abandonment of the practice pursuant to the 1890 Manifesto [1] issued by Wilford Woodruff.
In 1857–1858, President James Buchanan sent U.S. forces to the Utah Territory in what became known as the Utah Expedition. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), also known as Mormons or Latter-day Saints, fearful that the large U.S. military force had been sent to annihilate them and having faced persecution in other areas, [10] made preparations for defense.
Polygamy (called plural marriage by Latter-day Saints in the 19th century or the Principle by modern fundamentalist practitioners of polygamy) was practiced by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) for more than half of the 19th century, and practiced publicly from 1852 to 1890 by between 20 and 30 percent of Latter-day Saint families.
For several decades, polygamy was preached as God's law. Brigham Young, the church's second president, had 56 wives during his life; [26] [27] many other church leaders were also polygamists. This early practice of polygamy caused conflict between church members and the broader American society.
Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had ...
Polygamy was eventually outlawed in the 1880s following the passage of numerous pieces of anti-polygamy legislation including the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, the Edmunds Act of 1882, and the Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887 as well as the landmark Supreme Court case Reynolds v. United States. Legal efforts to eradicate polygamy have persisted ...
Polygamy is a crime and punishable by a fine, imprisonment, or both, according to the law of the individual state and the circumstances of the offense. [18] Polygamy was outlawed in federal territories by the Edmunds Act, and there are laws against the practice in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, [19] and Puerto Rico. [20]
The Manifesto states: To Whom It May Concern: Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages have been contracted in Utah since last June or during the past year, also that in public discourses the ...