Under
the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, 2003, Excerpts
The whole of
Mormondom was wobbling in the brink. With the death of Taylor in 1887, an
eighty-two-year-old apostle Wilford Woodruff had been installed as the fourth
Mormon prophet. And he recognized, with great pain, that the Kingdom of God had
no choice by to surrender to Washington’s demands.
On October 6, 1890,
Woodruff’s momentous revelation was formalized in a brief document that became
known as “the Woodruff Manifesto,” or simply “the Manifesto,” but it did not end
polygamy – it merely drove it underground. For the next two decades members of
the Mormon First Presidency privately advised Saints that polygamy should be
continued, albeit discretely, and top leaders of the church secretly performed
numerous plural marriages.
These hard-core
polygamists argued that the Manifesto had not revoked Section 132 of The
Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smiths revelation about plural marriage, but that
it merely suspended the practice under extenuating circumstances. They pointed
out that D&C 132 was still an accepted part of Mormon scripture, as indeed,
it remains today. They remained dedicated to the doctrines of Joseph Smith – to
his doctrine of plural marriage, in particular.
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