Details
[MORMONS]. YOUNG, ANN ELIZA, Wife of Brigham Young. Autograph letter signed ("Mrs Ann Eliza Young") to the Chicago chairman of an "Anti-Mormon Meeting," "On train," 23 January 1882. 7 pages, 8vo, on lined, engraved stationery. [With:] A contemporary broadside advertising books on Mormonism, 1 page, folio, separated into six sections (repairable).
A WIFE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG DENOUNCES MORMONISM AS A "POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS MONSTROSITY"
Ann Eliza Young, a disenchanted former wife of Mormon leader Brigham Young, passionately supports anti-Mormon activism and denigrates the Church: "I have noticed with great satisfaction the movement to hold meetings throughout the country...for the purpose of arousing the government and the people of this country, to the magnitude and the threatening nature of that political, social and religious monstrosity - Polygamous Mormonism. During the eight years which have elapsed since I escaped from its baleful influences, I have a thousand times been filled with indignant wonder, that the American people could be so indifferent toward its evils and its crimes...Mormonism has maintained a defiant attitude, and has been constantly strengthening itself. It has passed from Utah into adjacent territories, and has already become in some of them, a dangerous political power. While it is right that you should denounce...the utterly un-republican principles of the Mormon hierarchy..., toward the women of Utah there should be only feelings of pity and sympathy...Do not think of them as stained and degraded, or even as coarse and ignorant. They are better than the system in which they live...Entangled in the meshes of polygamy, are thousands of intelligent, sensitive and devout women. Do not think that Polygamy is attractive to them...To these women in Utah, Polygamy is the one heavy cross which they sorrowfully believe the Lord commands them to take up and carry...I know that Polygamy is the one doctrine of Mormonism from which the women of Utah, shrink and secretly pray to be delivered. If they could feel that in this great nation, the best men and women appreciate their position, and give their honest sympathy, and are ready to receive and help them if they break their fetters, they would be encouraged to revolt against the Authority of the priesthood..."
A WIFE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG DENOUNCES MORMONISM AS A "POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS MONSTROSITY"
Ann Eliza Young, a disenchanted former wife of Mormon leader Brigham Young, passionately supports anti-Mormon activism and denigrates the Church: "I have noticed with great satisfaction the movement to hold meetings throughout the country...for the purpose of arousing the government and the people of this country, to the magnitude and the threatening nature of that political, social and religious monstrosity - Polygamous Mormonism. During the eight years which have elapsed since I escaped from its baleful influences, I have a thousand times been filled with indignant wonder, that the American people could be so indifferent toward its evils and its crimes...Mormonism has maintained a defiant attitude, and has been constantly strengthening itself. It has passed from Utah into adjacent territories, and has already become in some of them, a dangerous political power. While it is right that you should denounce...the utterly un-republican principles of the Mormon hierarchy..., toward the women of Utah there should be only feelings of pity and sympathy...Do not think of them as stained and degraded, or even as coarse and ignorant. They are better than the system in which they live...Entangled in the meshes of polygamy, are thousands of intelligent, sensitive and devout women. Do not think that Polygamy is attractive to them...To these women in Utah, Polygamy is the one heavy cross which they sorrowfully believe the Lord commands them to take up and carry...I know that Polygamy is the one doctrine of Mormonism from which the women of Utah, shrink and secretly pray to be delivered. If they could feel that in this great nation, the best men and women appreciate their position, and give their honest sympathy, and are ready to receive and help them if they break their fetters, they would be encouraged to revolt against the Authority of the priesthood..."