Paradise Reclaimed by Halldor Laxness

It is related that two hundred Gentile women got together at about this time and called a meeting in Salt Lake City, calling themselves The Union of Christian Women. The saints considered these women to be offspring of the Great Apostasy. The women, who in fact had never had any revelations themselves, now sent energetic demands to the Congress of the United States of America to take decisive action against the church which claimed to be God's proxy; and they called upon the Federal Government to brook no delay in disfranchising the polygamists and annulling the law and order which the saints had established among themselves. They further declared in this document that the doctrine that many women should share the same man was ungodly, as God had created for Adam only one Eve and not several. At this meeting, which was held in one of the churches of the Great Apostasy, many fanatical and tearful speeches were made by women with one husband apiece demanding liberation for women who had to share theirs. In a flood of eloquence they demanded that their husbands and other monogamists should put the polygamists behind lock and key. Some suggested making use of a peculiar Anglo-Saxon form of torture, called tarring and feathering, for those husbands who loved more than one woman, and also for their wives.

This is not the place for a full account of all the measures and devices to which the Government authorities resorted in order to constrain the Mormons in Utah. But to demonstrate that the gloves were now off in the battle with the saints it has to be told that, when Stone P. Stanford went to see Bishop Þjóðrekur the day after his return in order to seek more information about the important events that a higher Providence had imposed on both their lives, the bishop was not available. The Feds had arrived at the crack of dawn and arrested the bishop and driven him away in a large military wagon. The blossoming household which last night had gathered round a pot of good wholesome broth to celebrate reunion and soul-salving tidings, and where happiness was guest of honour, had been crushed by injustice in the name of justice and by ungodliness under the pretext of godliness.