In the toils; or, Martyrs of the Latter days

Front matter

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Preface

"Of making many books there is no end." Solomon speaks in the present tense, implying that even in his day a great multitude which no man could number, burned with ambition to see their names— on papyrus let us say. If Solomon spake thus of his own era, what would he have said could his prophetic soul have projected itself into the nineteenth century 1 *

Surely, to-day, whoever inflicts an additional volume upon a long-suffering public, ought to be able to set up an unassailable plea in justification thereof.

The present writer feels the full force of this obligation, and desires briefly to explain the raison d" etre of the book now offered to the reader.

When you and I were studying geography, a large section of the map of the United States, including the greater portion of the territory lying between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Slope, was covered with little dots and conveniently labeled, " Great American Desert."

It is not always easy to outgrow the traditions of our youth, and to multitudes whom neither business nor pleasure has taken across the continent, the Great Desert is yet a reality — but what a surprise awaits them when they do make that long-deferred journey.

The Desert is a land, rich in rivers and fountains, " a land that drinketh water of the rains of heaven," a land whose mountains are store-houses of gold and silver, whose ranges are covered with countless flocks and herds, and whose valleys teem with luxuriant vegetation. And here, in the very heart of the traditional waste of sand, upon the shores of the American Dead Sea, lies a valley filled to the brim with living verdure, and manifold blossoms, and rich with the promise of the coming harvest.

4 PREFACp.

The Zion built up in these valleys of the mountains, is like Zion of old, beautiful for situation, but alas! there is a crimson stain on every fair picture upon which the eye rests, and over the whole lovely landscape hangs the shadow of hideous crimes. The pioneers of Utah were the apostles of a religion bu41t upon a foundation of lust and blood, and the annals of the people they led, are black with the record of deeds that disgrace humanity, done in the name of God. * * =f *

Only a few weeks ago the telegraph flashed over the country the news of a most brutal murder — a little child killed by her father's hand. The deed was rendered doubly hideous by the sacreligious plea that it was done in obedience to a Divine command, and outraged justice at once demanded that the murderer should be held to answer with his life for his unnatural crime ; but here crimes almost without number, that in magnitude and atrocity surpass the murder of little Edith, have been committed in the name of religion, and no voice is raised to demand the punishment of the perpetrators. On the contrary, they are elected to offices of trust and authority, they make and administer our laws, and hurl defiance at the government, whose subjects they are supposed to be.

The people, leaders and led alike, not only live in open and constant violation of decency and good morals, of the laws of God and man, but to show their contemptuous disregard of Christian marriage, and of the laws which hedge it round , they send as delegate to the Congress of the United States a man who keeps a harem of polygamous wives, and who boasts that he will compel our lawmakers to recognize his right to do so. They have tacitly made this acknowledgment by allowing him to sit among them for six ye^rs past, and now he waits in hope for the fruition of these years of effort ; the passage of an Act legalizing polygamy, or, failing in this, the admission "of Utah as a State, with full power to regulate her own internal affairs, which means, as we who live here know full well, power to remove all obstacles in the way of carrying out the principles of Blood Atonement and Celestial Marriage.

The book herewith presented to the public, claims to show some of the fruits of these principles, as exemplified in the past history

PREFACE. 5

of this people, but it deals only with the least repulsive and shocking facts in that history. Scores of incidents properly belonging to the story I have told, I have suppressed as unfit for publication. Multitudes of facts that have come under my own observation during my long residence among this people, I dare not commit to paper. I have listened with feelings of sickening horror to the recitals of those who have suffered most from the workings of this abominable system miscalled religion, but I cannot give their story to the world.

The characters of the story told in this book are real, the incidents are true, but I have told only a small part of tlie truth.

A complete history of the dwellers in these " valleys of the mountains " will never be written, nor will the crimes hidden under all their outward beauty ever be disclosed until the day when every hidden thing shall be brought to light and the bloody graves of Utah give up their dead.

The leaders of this people and their sympathizers in the East, are wont to say "Why are those whose homes have not been invaded by polygamy the first to cry out against it? What business is it of theirs ? "

I leave other writers to reply to this question for theinselves My own answer is: "It is my business because I am a woman, and polygamy degrades my sex below the level of humanity ; because I am a wife, and polygamy makes that sacred name a byword ; because I .am a mother, and polygamy makes maternity a curse, and puts the brand of shame on the innocent foreheads of little children. And I am not alone in the determination to make this cause my own. There is a band of noble Christian workers here who are pledged not to intermit their efforts " until," as Whittier wrote of the other twin-relic of barbarism, " this evil plant, which our Heavenly Father hath not planted, whose roots have wound themselves about altar and hearthstone, and whose branches, like those of the tree Al Accoub in Moslem fable, bear every accursed fruit, shall be torn up and destroyed forever,"

The Author.

Salt Lake June 14. 1879.

PUBLISHERS' NOTE.

It is due to the author to state that, owing to the distance of her home from the place of publication it has been Impossible for her to read the proofsheets of the boolc, and that, therefore, any typographical errors that may be found herein, are to be charged to the compositor or proof-reader and not to her.

The Publishers.

OK MARTYRS OF THE LATTER DAYS.