Doing the Works of Abraham, Mormon Polygamy
Its Origin, Practice, and Demise
Edited by B. Carmon Hardy
Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier Series Volume 9
Winner, Best Documentary, Utah State Historical Association. Here for the first time are the basic documents supporting and challenging Mormon polygamy, with concise commentary and documentation by the editor.
Winner: Best Documentary Book Award from the Utah State Historical Society.
Celestial Marriage—the “doctrine of the plurality of wives”—polygamy. No issue in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (popularly known as the Mormon Church) has attracted more attention. From its contentious and secretive beginnings in the 1830s to its public proclamation in 1852, and through almost four decades of bitter conflict with the federal government to Church renunciation of the practice in 1890, this belief helped define a new religious identity and unify the Mormon people, just as it scandalized their neighbors and handed their enemies the most effective weapon they wielded in their battle against Mormon theocracy.
This newest addition to the Kingdom in the West Series provides the basic documents supporting and challenging Mormon polygamy, supported by the concise commentary and documentation of editor B. Carmon Hardy. Plural marriage is everywhere at hand in Mormon history. However, despite its omnipresence, including a broad and continuing stream of publications devoted to it, few attempts have been made to assemble a documentary history of the topic. Hardy has drawn on years of research and writing on the controversial and complex subject to make this narrative collection of documents illuminating and myth-shattering. The second “relic of barbarism,” as the Republican Party platform of 1856 characterized polygamy, was believed by the Saints to be God’s law, trumping the laws of a mere republic. The long struggle for what was, and for some fundamentalists remains, religious freedom still resonates in American religious law. Throughout the West, thousands of families continue the practice, even In the face of LDS Church opposition.
The book includes a bibliography and an index. It is bound in rich blue linen cloth, two-color foil stamped spine and front cover.
About the Author
Carmon Hardy is an Emeritus Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton, where he still teaches. He is the author of Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (1992), which was awarded the best book award by the Mormon Historical Association. In addition to his extensive published writings on Mormonism, he has also published in the fields of American Constitutional History and the History of Religion.
Review
"Readers will find . . . the raw materials of history interspersed with insightful comentary of a meticulous researcher." The Salt Lake Tribune, April 20, 2007.
"a thorough account . . . that could well be called 'Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Polygamy but Were Afraid to Ask.' . . . These 19th-century accounts are matched by Hardy's well-crafted prose." City Weekly (Salt Lake City).
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