| 85 effort to make "celestial marriage" a church tenet, but it has been claimed that women "taken to wife" under the institution were "married," and that they were "Wives," not "concubines."
These two answers of Brigham, made when he is pressed to action in a court of law, where the legality of such so-called marriages and the true status of women, so-called wives, could be fully presented and defended, were he brave enough to dare the issue, and the claims made were correct, fully warrant the statement, it seems to us, that he feels himself guilty and that he is willing to betray Ann Eliza, the other women he has hitherto called wives, and all others holding similar relation as wives to other men than himself; by which betrayal he also inculpates all who have stood by him in the defense of the tenet and its practice. Not only is this the result, as it seems to us, but these answers show most fully what is the real condition of those upon whom the consequences fall most heavily, the women of Utah who have been deceived into polygamous marriages; for if in his case, it is true, as he alleges, that he has but one legal wife, and she the one to whom he was married January 10, 1834, in Kirtland, Ohio, what are those to be called to whom he has been "united in celestial marriage" since that time, including Mrs. Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young; in fact, what does Mr. Young himself will call them by this answer of his? Certainly not wives.
This answer of President Young destroys the poetry, of the "institution," and compels its devotees to sit down and contemplate that "institution" face to face with its stubborn facts and hard, unpalatable truths; which we hope they will now do, aided and urged thereto by this unfriendly act of one who should have been their friend, but one who, by this act, shows the mortifying fact that he cares more for himself in danger of being mulcted in dollars and cents, than for those whose friends he should have been for principle.
There is good grows out of this to one individual directly, that one is Mrs. Mary Ann Angell Young. We congratulate her upon having won from her husband at last, the acknowledgment that she was his only wife, his "one legal wife. It was due her many years ago.
There is good to grow out of this to the latter-day work. It is a tardy but welcomed acknowledgment from a chief practical exponent of polygamy, that the law given to the church in 1831, that "man should have but one wife," is of full force, and that the position assumed by those espousing that law against polygamists is a correct one. We are thankful for this acknowledgment, forced as it has been, though we are and must be ashamed of the moral cowardice which prompts it.-The Saints' Herald, vol. 21, pp. 721-723.
On December 1, 1874, the following challenge was issued, and published with comments in the January following:
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, December 1, 1874.
Messrs. Orson Pratt and Daniel H. Wells: Sirs: In pursuance of our mission to Utah to preach the gospel of Christ, and to reclaim the Latter
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