etween bigamy and polygamy; that only good men are allowed to take
plural wives; that no saint takes more wives than he can support, and
that a muchly married "man of God" exercises the most rigid impartiality
in the bestowal of his affections upon his various women. Miss Field
upsets these beautiful theories by graphic pictures drawn from life, and
cited Brigham Young himself as "a bright and shining lie to the boast of
impartiality." Brigham Young's coup d'etat in granting woman suffrage in
1871 was illuminated, and emphasized by the assertions:--"A territory
that has abolished the right of dower, that proclaims polygamy to be
divine, that has no laws against bigamy and kindred crimes, that has no
just appreciation of woman, is unworthy of self-respecting humanity,
woman suffrage or no woman suffrage." Miss Field makes in these lectures
a telling exposition of the doctrine of blood atonement, passing on to
these Mormon missionaries and their methods, and the people who become
"fascinated with the idea of direct communication with heaven through
the medium of a prophet," and to whom the missionary brethren prudently
"leave the mysteries of polygamy to the imagination," while they
inculcate the importance of "gathering to Zion." She outlined the
educational status and the discouragement given by Brigham Young to all
educational progress. Of Mormon treason she says:--

"Five years after the United States had established the Territory of
Utah its people were in armed rebellion because the government dared to
send a Gentile governor and national troops to Utah."

Nor does she spare the United States in its responsibility for these
crimes. "The United States to-day," said Miss Field, "is responsible for
thirty years' growth of polygamy, with its attendant degradation of
woman and brutalization of man." As an illustration of this conclusion,
she told a most interesting story of which Governor Harding of Utah,
Brigham Young, Benjamin Halliday, Postmaster General Blair, Abraham
Lincoln and William H. Seward were the characters. The story is a
dramatic and significant bit of Mormon history, related for the first
time. It led up to an earnest and eloquent peroration of which the final
words were: "'I'll believe polygamy is wrong when Congress breaks it up;
not before!' exclaims a plural wife. Men and women of New England! You
who forge public opinion; you who sounded the death knell of slavery,
what are you going to do about it!