I Can Find Only One

Polygamy

Excerpt from ‘Address of the Prophet—His Testimony Against the Dissenters at Nauvoo’ (Sunday, May 26, 1844), shortly before his death:¹

Be meek and lowly, upright and pure; render good for evil. If you bring on yourselves your own destruction, I will complain. It is not right for a man to bare down his neck to the oppressor always. Be humble and patient in all circumstances of life; we shall then triumph more gloriously. What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers. I labored with these apostates myself until I was out of all manner of patience; and then I sent my brother Hyrum, whom they virtually kicked out of doors.

Footnote 24 – LDS Gospel Topic Essay, ‘Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo’:²

Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40. See Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 2:272–73.