The Lion and the Lady: Brigham Young and Emma Smith

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 48, 1980, No. 1

The Lion and the Lady: Brigham Young and Emma Smith

BY VALEEN TIPPETTS AVERYAND LINDA KING NEWELL

DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BRIGHAM YOUNG'S influential power grew until it was felt throughout the western areas of the United States. For the most part his followers revered him and his enemies kept a respectful distance, yet to his extreme annoyance he was never successful in extending that same influential power over Emma Smith. She neither revered him nor kept her adult sons a respectful distance from him, and her opposition plagued him from the time he became head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Brigham and Emma freely expressed their opinions of each other but never understood the other's position; they were victims of circumstance, personality, and differing doctrinal views. Their mutual inability to resolve their differences cemented the division of the Latter-day Saints.

On October 6, 1866, Brigham Young, "the Lion of the Lord," president of the Mormon church, ex-governor of Utah Territory, colonizer of a vast area of the West and spiritual leader to 100,000 Mormons, was in the midst of one of his usually pointed tabernacle sermons. As he approached the end of his remarks, Brigham remembered an unsettling incident. Alexander Hale Smith, a son of Joseph Smith, Jr., the founder of Mormonism, had recently visited Salt Lake City. He came, however, not as the son of a beloved old friend who wanted to renew acquaintances, but as a missionary for a rival church whose president was the eldest of Joseph Smith's sons, Joseph Smith III. Attempting to explain the origins of so peculiar a situation, Brigham said,

I will now speak upon a subject which I think I ought to notice for the benefit of a few who are inclined to be giddy-headed. . . . You are already apprized of the fact that a son of Joseph Smith the prophet was here in our city. . . . The sympathies of the Latterday Saints are with the family of the martyred prophet. I never saw a day in the world that I would not almost worship that woman, Emma Smith, if she would be a saint instead of being a devil. . . . [We] would have been exceeding glad if the prophet's family had come with us when we left Nauvoo. . . . We would have made cradles for them . . . and would have fed them on milk and honey. Emma is naturally a very smart woman; she is subtle and ingenious . . . she has made her children inherit lies. To my certain knowledge Emma Smith is one of the damnest liars I know of on this earth; yet there is no good thing I would refuse to do for her, if she would only be a righteous woman.

By implication Brigham Young laid the troublesome activities of the sons of Joseph at the feet of their mother.

Emma Hale Smith had refused to go west with the main body of Mormons and remained aloof from the western settlement. Instead, she raised her children in Nauvoo, Illinois, far removed in distance and philosophy from the Mormon church and kingdom established in the valleys of the Utah mountains. Spokesmen for the loosely knit group of Saints remaining in the general Illinois area contacted Emma's son, Joseph III, in 1856 and asked him to assume the leadership of their organization — later known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. After four years of deliberation, he became prophet and president of the RLDS church at their Amboy, Illinois, conference on April 6, 1860. Emma Smith was received unanimously as a member of the group on the same day.

Two months before Brigham Young's conference address in 1866 Emma wrote to her son,

Joseph Dear . . . Now you must not let those L.D.S.'s trouble you too much. If they are determined to do evil, they will do it, and such as are anxiously willing to make you trouble are not worth laboring very hard to save from the dogs.

Three years after Brigham's conference address, Alexander returned to Utah on a second mission. With him as his companion was his youngest brother, David. Apprehensive about their experiences in Utah, Emma wrote again to her son Joseph.

I tried before they left here to give them an idea of what they might expect of Brigham and all of his ites, but I suppose the impression was hardly sufficient to guard their feelings from such unexpected falsehoods and impious profanity as Brigham is capable of. ... I do not like to have my children's feelings abused, but I do like that Brigham shows to all, both Saint and sinner that there is not the least particle of friendship existing between him and myself.

Historians have assumed considerable enmity must have existed between Brigham and Emma during the twelve years that spanned their meeting in Kirtland, Ohio, on November 8, 1832, to the death of Joseph in 1844. There is no supportive evidence of such antagonism until a year or so before that death.

Brigham Young had arrived in Kirtlancl that November day in 1832 in search of a prophet. That he found one chopping wood may have surprised him, but once confident that Joseph Smith spoke for the Lord, Brigham arranged his affairs to join the Mormons. He was thirty-one years old, an accomplished painter, carpenter, and glazier. He came as a seeker, anxious to know more, willing to assist, eminently able, and awed to be in the association of his prophet.

That same day Joseph Smith took Brigham Young inside the Gilbert and Whitney store to a room on the second floor to meet his wife Emma. She rested in bed, a two-day-old son at her side. The first child of Emma and Joseph to live beyond infancy, the baby was named after his father and grandfather, and called "young Joseph" in his youth, and Joseph III as an adult. This day marked the first meeting of these most influential people in the history of the LDS churches.

Emma was three years younger than Brigham. Already married nearly six years to Joseph Smith, she lived singled out by an 1830 revelation her prophet-husband received that titled her the "elect lady" and commissioned her to compile the first Latter-day Saint hymnal. Less than two years later, Joseph charged William W. Phelps with correcting and printing the hymns Emma had selected.

Diligent in completing the church assignments given him, Brigham knew that Emma too had filled hers. He took with him a copy of Emma's Sacred Hymns on his 1839-41 mission to England. He included some of her hymns in a new hymnal printed for the English Saints and commented on his efforts when he wrote to his wife Mary Ann Angell in June 1840:

We are printing 3,000 copes of a hym book 5,000 copes of the Book of Mormon. . . I have now got through with the hym book. I have had perty much the whole of it to doe my self ... so it has made my labor so hard that it seems as though it would be imposable for me ever to regane my helth.

Thoughtful of Emma after knowing her for over eight years, he sent a copy of the hymnal to her and checked on its safe arrival when he wrote to Mary Ann again. Brigham instructed his wife to, "Tell Br Joseph Smith that I send as much love to him and Emma and famely . . . as I can get carid a cross the water."

Brigham Young named a daughter after Emma Smith. The first child born to him and Mary Ann was a son whom they named Joseph — perhaps not revealing whether the namesake was his brother or his prophet. Their twins were called Brigham and Mary Ann, but the daughter born ten days before Brigham departed for his English mission was named Roxy Emma Alice. He wrote plaintively of his sixteen-month-old daughter as he expressed his homesickness to Mary Ann in a letter of January 15, 1841, "My little daughter Emma she dos not know eny thing a bout me." After 1847, when the relationship between Emma and Brigham had disintegrated, Roxy Emma Alice became known only as Alice.

If Emma resented the men who took Joseph's time from her, there was little reason for her to extend those feelings to Brigham Young. Absent from Kirtland much of the time the Saints spent there, it was not Brigham who was knocking on Joseph's door with constant demands that Joseph meet the needs of the Mormon kingdom. In addition, Brigham was away nearly three of the five years from 1839 to 1844. There were others besides Brigham who might have earned her animosity. William Marks as president of the Nauvoo stake, president of the high council, and regent for the University of Nauvoo, required much of Joseph's time but remained Emma's friend.

Young stayed in Nauvoo from the summer of 1841 to July 1843 but John C. Bennett's meteoric rise to power as Bennett became mayor of Nauvoo, major general of the Nauvoo Legion, and de facto counselor in the church presidency, certainly eclipsed Brigham's presence the first of those years. According to her son, Emma distrusted Bennett from the first. When he was stripped of his power and forced from office, he launched a vituperative campaign against Joseph. Brigham's support in ridding the church of Bennett and his influence may have made Brigham an ally of Emma's rather than an antagonist.

If Emma had any reservations about Brigham's character, she did not express them in her pre-1844 correspondence. She neither commented about him negatively nor influenced her young children to dislike him. For example, young Joseph was well aware that his mother did not like or trust John C. Bennett, yet he did not acquire negative feelings about Brigham Young during that same period. By the time Joseph III wrote his memoirs, the temptation to discredit Young may have been very strong, but he remembered,

I saw but little of [Brigham] before Father's death, though I did know him. ... I often saw him upon the stand, in the streets, and in his home, and thought him a pleasant man to meet, neither liking nor disliking him particularly as I now recall, until a short time after my father's death.

Both Brigham and Emma had great affection for Joseph but naturally had differing views about some of his actions. Brigham commented about his own attitude toward Joseph: "Though I admitted in my feelings and knew all the time that Joseph was a human being and subject to err, still it was none of my business to look after his faults." He admitted to only one uncertainty about Joseph but the thought was quickly put down. "A feeling came over me that Joseph was not right in his financial management, though I presume the feeling did not last sixty seconds." Brigham Young surveyed Joseph Smith's dealings, all of them, with a detachment that was truly remarkable. He never distinguished Joseph's personal life and human mistakes from the divine dictation of the Lord.

It was not my prerogative to call him in question with any regard to any act of his life. He was God's servant, and not mine . . . and if He should suffer him to lead the people astray, it would be because they ought to be led astray . . . because they deserved it, or to accomplish some righteous purpose.

Emma recognized Joseph's prophetic calling, but the realities of marriage forced her to deal more directly with Joseph's faults. His inability to farm and translate at the same time caused an estrangement between the Smiths and Emma's parents. If there was a scandal because of Joseph, Emma felt the sting. If there was no money, Emma took in boarders. When Joseph was arrested, Emma bore the loneliness. She played the roles accorded her by tradition: wife, mother, hostess, nurse, companion, figurehead. She also assumed roles that were not part of Brigham Young's relationship with women: roles as partner, agent, spokesman. Inasmuch as Joseph assigned her these roles himself, she felt confident in assuming them.

Emma also felt free to address Joseph as a business partner. "The situation of your business is such as is very difficult for me to do anything of any consequence," she complained from Kirtland. "Partnership matters give everybody such an unaccountable right to every particle of property or money that they can lay their hands on." She requested further information from him about the state of his affairs and ended her letter with a little free legal advice in the form of a postscript, "If you should give anyone a power of attorney, you had better give it to brother Knight, as he is the only man that has not manifested a spirit of indifference to your temporal interest."

From Liberty Jail, Joseph made Emma his spokesman to the Mormon church in seeking redress for the property lost in Missouri when he wrote: "I want all the Church to make out a bill of damages and apply to the United States Court as soon as possible. . . . You emphasize my feelings concerning the order." In later years her son too recognized her business acumen. Joseph Smith III had been president of the Reorganized church for thirteen years when he wrote his sixty-nine-year-old mother, "So much was your mind like my own upon the matter that I at once wrote to Kirtland, offering the temple for sale. Should I be able to sell for the price offered, I will be able to get out of debt."

Emma sympathized with her son's concern for getting out of debt; financial difficulties plagued her for most of her years. During the Kirtland era, Emma sometimes had problems obtaining food for her family.

There is no prospect of my getting one dollar of current money or even get the grain you left for our bread, as I sent to the French place for that wheat and brother Strong says that he shall let us only have ten bushel, he has sold the hay and keeps the money ... it is impossible for me to do anything, as long as every body has so much better right to all that is called yours than I have.

Brigham knew of the monetary plight of Joseph's family and assisted them on several occasions.

On the morning of December 22, 1837, Brigham fled Kirtland. He went as far as Dublin, Indiana, where a number of Mormon families were spending the winter. Joseph and Emma and their three children joined them, "destitute of means," and Joseph asked Brigham's advice in the matter. "You rest yourself and be assured, brother Joseph, you shall have plenty of money to pursue your journey," Brigham replied. A Brother Tomlinson who lived in the area planned to sell a tavern stand he owned and had already approached Brigham for his opinion. "I told him if he would do right and obey counsel, he should have opportunity to sell soon, and the first offer he would get would be the best." Not long after this, Tomlinson sold his place for

$500 in money, a team, and $250 in store goods. I told him that was the hand of the Lord to deliver President Joseph Smith from his present necessity. . . . Brother Tomlinson . . . gave the Prophet three hundred dollars, which enabled his comfortably to proceed on his journey.

Brigham also came to the Smiths' financial aid in Nauvoo. The Council of the Twelve Apostles, under the direction of Brigham, made a request to the Mormon church in La Harp. They informed the members there that foodstuffs available in La Harp could not be obtained in Nauvoo and they could decide whether their prophet should spend his time earning a livelihood for his family or meeting the spiritual needs of the church. The apostles issued a second plea only five days later to the church members at Ramus:

Brethren, we are not unmindful of the favors our President has received from you in former days but a man will not cease to be hungry this year because he eat [sic] last year.

Emma was a spirited woman who did not sit back helplessly and let events take their course, and there were two aspects of her relationship with Joseph to which she never became resigned. The first was the relentless attempts by legal authorities to imprison her husband. There were endless warrants for his arrest and constant attempts to extradite him to Missouri as he tried to administer the affairs of church and state. This was a constant source of anxiety to her, and she resolved to do something about it. By 1842 she had personally visited the governor of Illinois on Joseph's behalf and following that visit she and the governor exchanged a series of letters. With Eliza R. Snow acting as scribe, Emma wrote:

To His Excellency Gov. Garlin ... I much regret your ill health, and still hope that you will avail yourself sufficient time to investigate our cause, and thoroughly acquaint yourself with the illegality of the Prosecution instituted against Mr. Smith ... we do believe that it is your duty to allow us in this place, the privileges and advantages guaranteed to us by the laws of this State and the United States.

Emma then outlined for him the provisions of the city charter and reminded the governor that those powers existed over his own signature. The overall tone of the Carlin letters indicates that Emma was not likely to drop the issue simply due to the state's inertia. She clearly intended to do something about the precarious legal situation in which Joseph lived.

The second unresolved aspect of Emma's relationship with Joseph centered around his attempts to establish polygamy. Here Joseph felt Emma's strong determination, formerly used in his behalf, now turned against him. It was Joseph's reaction to Emma's efforts to stop plural marriage that forced Brigham Young to choose sides. As long as Joseph approved of Emma's activities, Brigham also accepted them. Until Joseph complained about Emma, Brigham held his tongue and kept his feelings in check.

The first covert conflict between Brigham Young and Emma Smith probably came when Brigham's loyalty to Joseph led Brigham to accept polygamy both as a doctrine and a practice, while it was apparently Emma's loyalty to her traditional concept of Christian morality that led her to reject it. When Joseph resorted to subterfuge in order to take other wives, Emma vacillated, first agreeing to his marrying other women, then recanting her decision, and finally confronting him.

When Joseph recruited his brother to assist him in convincing Emma to change her mind, Hyrum came home cowed from an interview with her. That this incident was reported by William Clayton argues that other apostles, including Brigham Young, knew about the Smiths' domestic difficulties. It exasperated Emma to realize that other people knew more about her husband's matrimonial affairs than she did. Suspicions and speculations that knew no bounds added to her anxiety. The exasperation for Brigham was that, despite her obvious inside knowledge of plural marriage, Emma denied to her death its painful existence in her life.

The real irony of the whole polygamous affair came later for Emma. On December 23, 1847, she married a non-Mormon businessman named Lewis C. Bidamon. He had delivered new carriages to Joseph and Hyrum Smith before their deaths. The first correspondence between the "Major" and Emma was a request from him to lease the Mansion House. Emma's marriage to Bidamon was a problem for the Saints in 1847 and has remained so to this day, many preferring to believe that he married her for her money and she married him for convenience. Their letters attest that she loved him and their union lasted thirty-two years.

Their life together was not without its difficulies for Emma, however. In the fifteenth year of their marriage, Lewis Bidamon sired a son as the result of a liaison with a widow named Nancy Abercrombie who lived with her three children in the Nauvoo area. When this son, named Charles, was four years old Emma took him into her home to be raised. Charles Bidamon's own words establish that this alien child received love and affection. "I was raised in her home and knew what kind of a woman she was. ... [I] was as one of the family until her death. . . . She was a person of very even temper. I never heard her say an unkind word, or raise her voice in anger."

When Emma was on her deathbed in 1879 her son Joseph came to Nauvoo to be at her side. His daily journal entry for April 22 reads: "Found Alex here at Nauvoo and Julia in care of Mother. Mrs. Abercrombie doing the work of the house." There were women in Utah who could sympathize with both Emma's and Nancy Abercrombie's positions. Emma lived the practice, if not the principle, of polygamy.

The first open conflict between Brigham and Emma occurred when Young as president of the Council of the Twelve was successful in his bid for leadership of the church after Joseph was killed. Emma opposed him, and he was embarrassed and frustrated to have the prophet's widow in another camp. Her feelings on the succession to the presidency were recorded by James Monroe, a young schoolteacher who lived with the Smith family. His diary entry of April 24, 1845, reveals:

My time . . . has been occupied chiefly in conversing with Aunt Emma from whom I have obtained several new and interesting ideas concerning the organization and government of the church. . . . Now as the Twelve have no power with regard to the government of the Church in the Stakes of Zion, but the High Council have all power, so it follows that on removal of the first President, the office would devolve upon the President of the High Council in Zion. . . . Mr. Rigdon is not the proper successor of President Smith, being only his councelor, but Elder Marks should be the individual. . . . And according to the ordination pronounced upon him by Br Joseph he is the individual contemplated by him for his successor. The Twelve never received any such instructions or commands or ordinations as would authorize them to take that office. They were aware of these facts but acted differently.

The rift over succession widened when Emma offered hospitality to William Smith — Joseph's only surviving brother — when the apostles, under Brigham's leadership, excommunicated him. William was an unstable character and sought to be installed as guardian of the Mormon church until young Joseph was old enough to assume his father's role. There is little evidence that Emma ever supported William in his bid for leadership, but he did stay in Emma's house and his presence was enough to raise a question in Brigham's mind about Emma's loyalty to the church.

Emma's home served as a central meeting place for the surviving members of the Smith family during this period. Because the threat of violence was great in Nauvoo, armed men periodically guarded several of the church leaders' homes, including Emma's. Reports by Joseph III and Samuel Smith's daughter, Mary, reveal that the Smiths regarded this action as hostile house arrest. Whether the family was unaware of the danger or whether the guard represented hostility on the part of Young is not clear. Communication had broken down enough between Brigham and Emma that explanations for the guard were not satisfactory.

Brigham's suspicions toward Emma were not eased when a man named Van Tuyl took up quarters in the Mansion House when Emma fled from Nauvoo during the anti-Mormon attack. She returned just in time to stop the man from stealing everything she owned, but it was discovered that he was a spy from the anti-Mormon forces and had used his position in the house to report not only on the Mormons but also on those Gentiles friendly to the Saints. Emma certainly did not knowingly harbor a spy, but the incident was not one to effect an increase of love and affection in the hearts of those already suspicious of her.

Brigham's and Emma's disagreement over the doctrine of polygamy and the succession to the Mormon church presidency, almost as a matter of course, opened the way to argument over Joseph's estate. During Joseph's lifetime, Emma had enjoyed a practical, quiet, businesslike approach to life, seasoned by theatrical military performances and other occasions for fancy dress. After Joseph's death, however, when Brigham Young assumed that Joseph's trappings went along with his office, Emma resented it and took offense.

In preparation for a parade of the Nauvoo Legion, Brigham sent a note to Emma requesting use of the prophet's uniform, sword, and his favorite horse, a sorrel named Jo Duncan. Twelve-year-old Joseph had recently nursed the animal back to health. The boy obediently fitted out the horse with the requested saddle, housings, holsters, and bridle. After the parade, Brigham's clerk rode the horse to exhaustion, which infuriated young Joseph, who resolved never to put a saddle on a horse for Brigham Young again.

Brigham accused Emma of taking a portrait and ring from Hyrum's widow, Mary Fielding, and a ring from Don Carlos's widow and never returning them. Brigham and the other apostles took most of Joseph's papers. Emma was furious over the absence of Joseph's long wool cloak. In reality both Brigham and Emma were caught in the classic struggle to determine the disposal of a loved one's properties. Emma, as widow, and Brigham, as successor, each asserted authority the other was unwilling to concede.

The struggle soon escalated into a major dispute between them over the disposal of Joseph's real property and the payment of his debts. Joseph had made little distinction in his efforts to provide for his family, on the one hand, and the Mormon converts who came to Nauvoo, on the other. A case in point is the Hotchkiss Purchase, five hundred acres of land bought by the First Presidency: Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, and Sidney Rigdon. It was clear that these men had purchased land for Mormon church members to live on, but they had pledged their personal credit to do so.

In addition to land purchases, Joseph had become involved in business ventures that ranged from stores to steamboats, and he included members of the Mormon church in all his various dealings. By 1841 Joseph was elected sole trustee-in-trust for the Mormon church, but Brigham Young became officially involved when Joseph asked him and the other apostles to assist in the management of lands and the settling of immigrants.

The Smiths' financial situation was not entirely dependent on Joseph. As far back as Kirtland, Emma took in boarders whenever the family finances were low. When she assessed Joseph's estate, whatever it consisted of and however it was titled, she viewed the assets not only as a widow who assumed she would inherit the fruit of her husband's work but also as properties which she as a businesswoman had helped buy with money she herself had earned. At Joseph's death the question facing Emma, with five children to raise, was how to preserve for herself and her family the inheritance that was rightfully theirs. The question facing Brigham, with thousands of destitute church members to look after, whose tithing and labor had helped build the city, was how to preserve for them what was rightfully theirs as a church.

Emma was made administrator of Joseph's estate but was replaced by Joseph W. Coolidge after two months when she failed to post the bond required by the court. By 1848 Coolidge was replaced by a man named Ferris at the request of Almon Babbitt, one of the lawyers retained by Brigham Young. The settling of the estate then provided the setting for another classic struggle — the widow versus the executor.

Coincidental with her marriage to Lewis C. Bidamon, Emma decisively won the first major round. Almon Babbitt wrote from Nauvoo to Heber C. Kimball:

On my arrival home I found considerable excitement in Nauvoo from the fact that Emma Bidamon had made a Suit Claim deed of all the Lands in the City that she conveyed to the church. ... It operates as a perfect Estopel to the sale of any more City property until the matter is tested in the courts of Law.

It was a blow, and it left Brigham helpless and frustrated in his attempts to secure capital for the trek west. He felt for the rest of his life that Emma had usurped properties paid for by the labor and tithing of the members of the Mormon church.

When the exodus west began, everyone was forced to sell fine homes and beautiful farms for a pittance in order to outfit a wagon. It was easy for those crossing the river to look back at the expansive Mansion House, the Homestead, the red brick store, and the foundations of the Nauvoo House, which Emma was not abandoning, and make their private judgments about her generosity. Brigham anxiously looked at her holdings in terms of the cash equity the church so desperately needed.

Emma was in for an equally great disappointment. When Joseph was alive there had been a great deal of entertaining; Emma herself commented that he never liked to eat alone. There were military parades in spectacular uniforms, and only ten months before Joseph's death the Smith family had seen completion of their new home and hostelry. Where, then, was all the money? Emma was to learn that the legacy of debt she had inherited would plague her for a long time and that Nauvoo city lots were of little cash value. She was land rich and money poor, and the only explanation she could find for the situation was that somehow Brigham Young must have swindled her out of what should rightfully have been hers.

In reality, neither Brigham nor Emma fully understood where the riches had gone, for, in fact, there were no riches. Nauvoo had been built in a speculative economy, and when the Mormons left, the remaining inhabitants of the desolated city could not generate the thriving, bustling economy that had characterized the building up of Zion.

Five months before Joseph Smith's death, Jacob Scott in Nauvoo had written to his daughter in Canada,

Many hundreds come in to Nauvoo, from different parts of the union, and a great number from Europe, & the brick laying continued, plastering & chimney building, until a few days ago — Nauvoo is now a splendid spectacle to view from any point in sight, hundreds of elegant brick buildings, after the mode of different countries and the taste of the owners — and the Saints of other climes, in their respective costumes, is to me a novel & interesting sight. . . . We confidently expect before long to witness the arrival of Saints from every country in Europe. And the time is not far distant when the Arabians will arrive with their tents & their camels & dromedaries, 'And Etheopia will soon stretch out her hands to God.

Emma could not bring herself to leave the dream; Brigham confidently believed he could take it with him. They both erred in assuming that Nauvoo could finance it.

Brigham Young was right — Emma was smart and ingenious — but he underestimated her. She was smart enough to know that he did not always appreciate those qualities in her. He did not understand the relationship Emma had with Joseph. An independent woman, she would have scorned the offer of a "cradle" to carry her across the plains. The Relief Society she had presided over had been dissolved, leaving her without a base of influence. If she went west she probably could have gone as a plural wife of one of the Twelve. She did not choose that future. "I have no friend but God," she said, "and no place to go but home."

With the passage of time both Brigham and Emma may have seen that their struggle was not entirely of their own making, but their opposition to each other polarized the uncomfortable emotions that many of the early Mormons felt as they embraced an unorthodox religion. The "moderate Mormons" who remained in Illinois shed such encumbering practices as temple activities and plural marriage, and they blamed Brigham Young for whatever embarrassment they felt about being Latter Day Saints. Among Brigham Young's followers a gradual sentiment developed that there was something sinister about Emma Smith. It became an undercurrent of anticipation: what would be learned about Emma could the depths of hell be probed for an interview? Whether or not Emma raised her sons on falsehoods, or Brigham ineptly handled his beloved friend's wife, the most unfortunate result of their conflict was the institutionalized rancor that developed between two churches that claimed the same founder.

Brigham Young and Emma Smith centered their lives around the charismatic Joseph. Brigham loved him and did his bidding; Emma loved him and challenged him. Both died calling his name.

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