Defence of Polygamy

A letter from a Latter-day Saint wife in Great Salt Lake City to her sister in New Hampshire, who had objected to plural marriage. Reasoning from the Bible (Abraham, Jacob, David, Sarah and the promises to Abraham’s family) and from what she calls the laws of nature, the writer gives her reasons for embracing the doctrine, answers her sister’s question “Why not a plurality of husbands as well as a plurality of wives?”, describes her own household (a husband she loves and four children) and explains why she cannot renounce it as her kindred wish.

The scriptures she quotes are read in a voice of their own, and the question her sister asked in another; the rest is the writer’s own voice.

The title page reads “Defence of Polygamy, by a Lady in Utah, in a Letter to Her Sister in New Hampshire.” The letter is dated Great Salt Lake City, January 12, 1854, closes with the signature “Belinda Marden Pratt,” and ends with a line addressed to “Mrs. Lydia Kimball, Nashua, N. H.” Wikisource’s author page describes her as a “Latter-day Saint, plural wife of Parley P. Pratt.”

Text: Wikisource’s page-by-page transcription of the 1854 pamphlet; every page is marked proofread there. The title page is announced and the letter is read as printed, with its Bible references; one sentence that a page break had cut in two is rejoined, and the short title on the page is ours. The cover is the pamphlet’s own first page, from an Internet Archive scan.