Legal age of marriage and first cousins marrying is a better example.
Not really. Those are about the particulars of marriage not the definition or the cultural tradition behind the term.
Utah didn't really have a choice.
"In the decade of the 1880s, Utah became industrialized and the federal government attacked Mormon polygamy with a vengeance, jailing women as well as men in its relentless crusade to crush the practice. Electricity and telephones came to the territory, railroads continued to make Utah the hub of the West, and Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, the deathblow to Mormon plural marriage as a church doctrine."
historytogo.utah.gov
"1856, The new Republican party selected for it's national platform a call to abolish the "Twin Relics of Barbarism, Slavery and Polygamy". ("The Mormons and the Law: The Polygamy Cases", Orma Lindord, Utah Law Review, p. 312.)
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1862 July 8, Morrill Anti-Bigamy Law, signed by Abraham Lincoln.
* First basic federal legislation by the Congress of the United States that was designed "to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States".
* Bigamy punishable by a $500 fine and imprisonment not exceeding five years.
* All acts passed by the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah "pertaining to polygamy and spiritual marriage" were annulled.
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1874 Poland Law repealed certain Utah statues, transferred duties of Territorial Marshal and Attorney General to Federal offices. These were key positions that had buffered attempts to prosecute polygamists. (Smith, p. 456.)
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1879 January 6, in the first constitutional challenge to interpret the First Amendment to the Constitution, the United States Supreme Court upheld the decision of the territorial court and declared that every civil government had the right to determine whether monogamy or polygamy should be the law of social life under its jurisdiction.
* Thus the Morrill act of 1862 was declared valid, any additional plural marriages were clearly breaking the law of the land. (Larson, pp. 78-79.)
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1882 Edmunds act was an amendment to strengthen the Anti-Bigamy Law of 1862.
* It declared polygamy a felony, with penalty on conviction of not more than five years imprisonment and / or a $500 fine.
* Defined polygamous living, which it termed "unlawful cohabitation", as a misdemeanor punishable by six months imprisonment and/or a $300 fine.
* The law disfranchised polygamists and declared them ineligible for public office.
* Polygamists, whether in practice or merely in belief, were disqualified for jury service.
* All registration and elective offices in Utah Territory were declared vacant and a board of five members, known as the Utah Commission, was to be appointed by the president to assume temporarily all duties pertaining to elections.
* The board would issue certificates of election to those eligible for that office and those lawfully elected.
* The Edmunds Act gave to the Utah Commission power to deprive citizens of their civil rights without a trial, which is not found in any other such federal legislation of this country or in its jurisprudence, according to Larson in "The Americanization of Utah for Statehood". (Larson, pp. 95-96.)
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1882 Bigamy / Polygamy "Test Oath" for qualification to vote, only restricted immorality, if it was within the "marriage relations", thus applying only to Mormon polygamists and not disenfranchising a common paramour or "Gentile libertine" as Smith puts it. (Smith, p. 484.)
1882 August 23, Rudger Clawson, first polygamist to be submitted to a trial by jury under the Edmunds Law.
* Jury of twelve Gentiles. (According to the census of 1880 there were in Utah 120,283 Mormons, 14,136 Gentiles, and 6,988 apostates.)
* Lydia Spencer, Clawson's polygamous wife, refused to be sworn as a witness and was committed to the penitentiary.
* There was also an ex post facto application of the law to his marriage performed before 1862 (which was unconstitutional).
* The severity of the sentence was irregular. Rudger Clawson was sentenced to three years and six months in the penitentiary and was fined $500 on the first count, polygamy.
* And six months & $300 on the second count of unlawful cohabitation. (Larson, p. 109-110.)
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1887 March, Edmunds-Tucker Act passed as a supplement the Edmunds Law, which became law without the signature of President Cleveland. This new law included the following provisions:
* A wife or wives were forced to testify against their husbands.
* Witnesses did not have to be subpoenaed to appear in court.
* Definite laws and punishments regarding immoralities (in the eyes of the law) were set forth.
* All marriages performed were to be recorded with a probate court.
* Probate judges were to be appointed by the President of the United States.
* Woman suffrage was abolished (to restrict the Mormon elective franchise).
* A test oath was reintroduced into Utah's elective process: voting, serving on juries, or holding public office were conditional upon signing the oath pledging obedience to and support of all anti-polygamy laws.
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1890 April The United States Supreme Court sustained Edmunds-Tucker Bill, increasing the threat of total disfranchisement, wherein the Church would be dissolved and its property escheated. The Court held that "Congress may not only abrogate laws of the Territorial Legislature but it may itself legislate directly for the local government. Congress had a full and perfect right to repeal its [LDS] charter and abrogate its corporate existence." ( United States Reports, Vol. 136, pp. 1-68. The late corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints vs. United States, Nos. 1030, 1054.)
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1885 to 1890 was marked by intensive "polyg hunts" for "cohabs." The Mormon community in the West was terrorized by harsh enforcement of these laws. "Hunting cohabs" became a lucrative employment. Men and women were paid to ferret out offenders of the act. Some assumed the role of peddlers or of tramps and wandered among the Mormons digging up information. Children going to or returning from school were stopped and asked about the relations of their mother and father. At night prowlers peeked into Mormon homes to determine if men were violating the law. Sometimes men broke into Mormon homes without search warrants, and if men did not surrender, they were fired upon.
xmission.com
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1896 Utah joins the union |
