PAROWAN — On a cold December evening in 1886, deputy marshals Bill Thompson and Bill Orton rode from Beaver to Parowan under cover of darkness. They took a room in a hotel run by a lapsed Mormon who was happy to help them recapture a local man.
Edward Dalton had been arrested for “unlawful cohabitation,” but eluded his captors as he fled to Arizona. History states that Thompson and Orton heard through the grapevine that Dalton had returned to Southern Utah and the men were determined to take him into custody.
The next morning, Dalton, unaware of danger, was driving cattle past the hotel in Parowan when the deputies spotted him. They ran into the street shouting at him to stop. Before Dalton could make his escape, Thompson shot him out of the saddle, killing him.
A coroner’s jury concluded that the marshal should be charged with murder, but an unsympathetic judge charged him with a misdemeanor, from which he was acquitted.
The killing sent shock waves throughout Utah, as it was seen as confirmation of the worst fears of how justice would be administered in the pursuit of polygamists under the dreaded Edmunds Act.
Many Southern Utahns knew Dalton personally and his death struck close to home. Their fears proved justified as bounties were soon offered for the arrest of polygamists — the larger the quarry, the bigger the bounty. Utah had been pursuing statehood for 38 years by now but Congress was determined to withhold it until polygamy ended.
Since Brigham Young’s death in 1877, Congress had steadily ratcheted up the pressure with imprisonment the latest step. The Edmunds Act also made it illegal for polygamists to vote, hold public office, or serve on juries in federal territories.
To ensure the law’s enforcement, President Chester Arthur appointed a five-member “Utah Commission.” One of its first acts was to put an end to the LDS People’s Party and the non-LDS Liberal Party and replace them with the Republican and Democratic parties.
This mattered little to the estimated 14,000 polygamists who were denied the vote when they refused to sign a loyalty oath swearing that they were not “a violator of the laws of the United States prohibiting bigamy or polygamy.”
The Utah Commission not only frustrated polygamists’ voting rights and put them at risk of imprisonment, it also allowed confiscation of Church property valued at $50,000 or more.
Although the law was passed in 1882, federal officials were initially slow to bring indictments until a test case was tried. They found it in 1885 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Rudger Clawson, after which territorial officials aggressively prosecuted Mormon leaders in what were known as “polygamy raids.”
Church leaders were the primary targets with convictions jumping from 55 that year to over 200 in 1887, the year the more drastic Edmunds-Tucker Act was passed. The most intensive period of the raids was 1885 to 1890, with total convictions through 1894 totaling over a thousand.
While Edward Dalton’s fate was unique in its severity, those convicted of polygamy faced a $300 fine and six months in the territorial prison. Church leaders were targeted because their imprisonment disrupted the church functions while making examples of them to those outside of the faith.
Dozens of men throughout Southern Utah faced the very real threat of imprisonment, which they tried to avoid by hiding in safe houses or remote locations in a dangerous game of cat and mouse. They also had to hide their plural wives, who could be arrested and forced to appear in court as evidence against their husbands.
The William Atkin home south of St. George and the Dee Wooley ranch near Alton became favorite hiding places for a number of local leaders and general authorities, including Wilford Woodruff and George Q. Cannon.
With a bounty on their heads and deputies searching for them, the men were constantly on the move. Polygamists throughout southern Utah quickly learned to watch for the deputies’ black-topped buggies. When lookouts on hilltops spotted a black-top coming they signaled back to people in town so polygamist men and their wives could run for cover.
For several years, deputies James McGeary and John Armstrong scoured the towns, farms, and ranches of Kane, Iron, and Washington counties, hoping to put their quarry behind bars. And they often succeeded.
Thomas Chamberlain, from Orderville, was arrested when the boys assigned to a hilltop perch to warn of the deputy’s approach were playing when they should have been watching. From a distance Chamberlain mistook McGeary for a visiting apostle, realizing his mistake too late he went to greet him.
They shook hands and McGeary served an arrest warrant. Chamberlain was tried in a Beaver court and spent six months in prison with several other men from southern Utah captured by McGeary and Armstrong. They memorialized their stay in a photograph taken beside George Q. Cannon of the LDS First Presidency, who was by then also in prison.
Despite the Utah Commission’s work, plural marriages continued unabated. When it became clear that Utah would abandon neither polygamy nor theocracy to gain statehood, Congress took the gloves off with the passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887. It kept the same penalties as the earlier law but added even harsher provisions that promised destruction of the LDS Church as a legal entity.
Among its draconian provisions, the law disincorporated the LDS Church and the Perpetual Emigration Fund and used the money taken from them to fund a public school system to replace the Church-sponsored system; repealed the right for women to vote in Utah and replaced locally appointed judges with federally appointed judges.
The laws also annulled territorial laws which allowed illegitimate children to inherit; authorized seizure of all Church property, including temples; and removed spousal privilege which had protected plural wives from having to testify against their husbands.
Compounding the LDS church’s troubles was the death that year of its president, John Taylor, while hiding in Kaysville. This put the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve and its president, Wilford Woodruff in charge. But most of them were also hiding, trying to avoid arrest.
It was a desperate time for the LDS Church. The one remaining hope the Church had was a legal appeal to reverse the Edmunds-Taylor Act. But that slim hope evaporated in February 1890 when the U.S Supreme Court considered the appeal and upheld the law.
Now everything was at risk. The message was clear: “Embrace pluralism and renounce polygamy and theocracy or cease to exist.” Aspirations for statehood had long since fallen by the wayside. Now the LDS Church was staring down the barrel of legislation that promised to shut it down completely.
During the spring and summer of 1890, Wilford Woodruff and the leading councils of the Church wrestled with what to do. Following months of discussion and prayer with his fellow Church leaders, Wilford Woodruff concluded that in order for the Church to survive, a dramatic change had to be made. He recorded his thoughts in his journal in late September:
“I have arrived at a point in the history of my life as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints where I am under the necessity of acting for the temporal salvation of the Church. The United States government has taken a stand and passed laws to destroy the Latter-day Saints on the subject of polygamy, or patriarchal marriage, and after praying to the Lord and feeling inspired, I have issued the following proclamation which is sustained by my counselors and the twelve apostles.”
The proclamation became known as the Manifesto. In it, President Woodruff declared, “We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice,” adding:
“Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise … And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.”
The proclamation was published in the Church-owned “Deseret Weekly,” formally accepted by Church members in their October conference and is now part of the Church’s “Doctrine & Covenants.”
In his remarks, President Woodruff explained that the Manifesto “only refers to future marriages and does not affect past conditions. I did not, I could not, and would not promise that you would desert your wives and children.”
Although it would take another six years for Utah to be admitted to the union, the Manifesto closed the door on polygamy opened the door to statehood. Over the next two years, members were asked to contribute to a legal fund to regain possession of their seized properties, while those wishing to enter into new polygamist marriages moved to Canada or to the colonies in Mexico where polygamy was legal.
In the spring of 1895, the territorial legislature held a convention at which they drafted a constitution that Congress finally found acceptable. Ratification of the constitution in a statewide referendum that fall was the final hurdle before President Cleveland issued his proclamation of statehood for Utah on January 4, 1896.
Utah was at long last a state. It had taken nearly 50 years and the abandonment of polygamy and theocracy, but the goal was finally achieved. While there is little notice given to January 4 in Utah today, and while vestiges of the controversies that delayed statehood remain, the rodeos and parades each year on Pioneer Day, July 24, serve as an appropriate celebration of Utah’s place among the United States of America.
Editor’s note: Sources for this article include Andrew Love Neff’s “History of Utah: 1847 to 1869,” B.H. Roberts’s “Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” John H. Turner’s “Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet,” various articles in the Journal of Mormon History and Utah Historical Quarterly and memories published on FamilySearch.org.
Photo Gallery
Edward Dalton was gunned down on Parowan’s Main Street in 1886 as deputies tried to arrest him for the crime of polygamy, Parowan, Utah | Photo courtesy FamilySearch.org, St. George News President Chester A. Arthur appointed a five-member “Utah Commission'' to enforce the provisions of the anti-polygamy Edmunds Act | Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons, St. George News Plural marriage was mocked in the national press during the polygamy raids of the 1880s, shown here is The Elder’s Happy Home | Photo courtesy Library of Congress, St. George News To escape prosecution during the polygamy raids of the 1880s, some Latter-day Saints fled to northern Mexico and established colonies which are still used today by LDS fundamentalists | Photo courtesy Library of Congress, St. George News Bounties were offered for the arrest of LDS Church leaders during the polygamy raids, including $800 for the capture of President John Taylor and his counselor George Q. Cannon | Photo courtesy LDS Church History Library, St. George News Republican Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont was a critic of polygamy and author of the Edmunds Act of 1882 to bring it to an end | Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons, St. George News President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto of 1890, which called on Latter-day Saints to “refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.” The Manifesto helped pave the way for statehood six years later | Photo courtesy LDS Church History Library, St. George News Twelve-year-old Matilda “Tillie” Houtz, poses as Utah’s Statehood Queen with her shield stating “Union For Ever” in 1896 | Photo by George E. Anderson/Utah State Historical Society, St. George News Democratic Representative John R. Tucker of Virginia was also a critic of polygamy and co-author with Senator George F. Edmunds of the draconian anti-polygamy Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 | Photo courtesy Wikipedia Commons, St. George News George Q. Cannon of the LDS First Presidency seated in the back center, poses with polygamists from southern Utah in the Utah Territorial Penitentiary in 1889. The three in the front center are, left to right: Benjamin Perkins of Teasdale; William Butler of Orderville; Francis M. Lyman of the Quorum of the Twelve. The others are, left to right: Sylvester Jones of Enoch; Simon Topham of Paragonah; Joseph Barney of Kanosh; Lorenzo Watson of Parowan; Thomas Chamberlain of Orderville; George Q. Cannon; James Langford of Junction; Samuel Wooley of Grantsville; Samuel Bateman of West Jordan; Francis Webster of Cedar City; Cornelius McReavy of St. George; and John Covington of Torrey | Photo courtesy Washington County Historical Society, St. George News Plural marriage was mocked in the national press during the polygamy raids of the 1880s, shown here is The Elder’s Happy Home | Photo courtesy Library of Congress, St. George News The William and Rachel Atkin home south of St. George was one of the places LDS Church leaders sought refuge from deputies pursuing them during the polygamy raids of the 1880s | Photo courtesy Washington County Historical Society, St. George News
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