As Young’s anti-merchant exertions increased in pace and reached their peak in 1868–69, rumors of a possible division in the church circulated through the community. Apparently Young had heard these rumors, but he dismissed them as nothing unusual and certainly nothing to be feared. “Talk about apostatizing,” he told a crowd gathered to dedicate the Fifteenth Ward’s cooperative store, “why there are lots of people here who ought to have apostatized years ago!” It was his duty to preach the gospel and gather the righteous and not care who “comes or who goes.” Could a “pure minded man or woman” leave the church? he asked. Someone might as likely put one of the Saints’ meetinghouses in his “jacket pocket” and convey it to the eastern states.
Yet even as he made such comments, Young must have been looking over his shoulder at men like Godbe. Obedient to his New York instructions, Godbe had remained publicly supportive of Young’s policy. In December 1868, the merchant spoke on the “benefits of cooperation” before the School of the Prophets. In May 1869, during the Saints’ extravagant celebration to mark the completion of the transcontinental railroad, both Godbe and Harrison had raised toasts that seemed orthodox (Godbe: “The railroad; a mighty engine for the promulgation of the gospel of ‘Peace on earth and good will to man’”). Several days after this festivity, Godbe toured Ogden City with Young and other leading dignitaries. The national railroad had built its tracks passing north of Salt Lake City, and Young wanted to build a connecting spur south. As the symbolic first sod was cut, members of the president’s party spoke on such timely topics as the “Word of Wisdom,” the “Order of Enoch,” and “cooperation.” Godbe not only lent his person to the occasion, but he also spoke.
Yet for all of Godbe’s outward cooperation, in matters that counted most there was no support for Young’s plan: Godbe refused to invest money in ZCMI.
Other members of Godbe’s inner group were more helpful. For example, Shearman became not only a director of the Logan cooperative but a member of its three-man executive committee. Lawrence, who had a branch store in Utah County, had played a leading role in the Provo cooperative that had forced the Salt Lake City merchants to accept a similar plan in the capital city. Once the Salt Lake City organization was in place, Lawrence also invested in it and became one of its directors.
But Godbe still stood aloof. Young may have been thinking of him as he addressed the city’s bishops in May 1869. Several Main Street merchants were “really very good men,” he told them, but these men had continued trading in “their individual capacity” and were therefore acting in opposition to the cooperative movement. Young asked the bishops “to clear the street of all such,” apparently by expanding the boycott to include them as well as the Gentile merchants.
Although Godbe was willing to play a waiting game with Young on Main Street, Godbe had ambitious plans elsewhere. He needed a vehicle to voice his opposition, and therefore Harrison and Godbe decided to refurbish the Utah Magazine. Faced with declining public support even before the New York séances, the magazine clearly needed a face-lift. By the early spring of 1869, about the same time that ZCMI opened its several ward and downtown retail outlets, the transformation of the Utah Magazine was complete. “The originality of its matter, appearance, quality of paper and workmanship,” opined the unsuspecting Deseret Evening News, bears “not the least affinity between it and the preceding volumes.” Although the masthead listed “Messrs. Harrison and Godbe” as publishers, Godbe, as always, held the purse, perhaps aided in the coming months by the Walker brothers and by Lawrence. Godbe would later estimate that the two-year run of the periodical cost him $10,000.
Godbe later said that he had approached Young and received permission to start the printing venture anew. Young denied this. According to Young, he had advised an immediate sale. Yet with the magazine on the streets, Young graciously acknowledged receiving the first copy of the new series. “Wishing you every success in your enterprise,” he had responded.
Young would not have been so generous had he known the magazine’s purpose. Tullidge later said that the newly styled Utah Magazine “essayed a careful, well-planned revolution.” Godbe confirmed it. “We had a heavenly-appointed mission to help to free the Mormon people from their bondage,” he wrote in 1871, and the Utah Magazine was “the means employed to disseminate our new truths.” The idea was to give Utahns “rich, ripe corn of spiritual truth” rather than the “husks of a Mosaic theology upon which they had so long been fed” by a “practical” and “dictatorial” priesthood.
The revised magazine continued its attraction to spiritualism, usually in veiled and shadowed passages, but one of Harrison’s editorials virtually laid bare the New York spiritualist blueprint. “The Story of Creation” argued that civilization’s next advance required “the light, the order, the science, the philosophy, the accumulated wisdom—of the great spiritual and intellectual ones who have for over six thousand years been passing away and studying the divine science in higher realms.” At some point, Harrison promised that the veil separating humankind from these “immortals” would be opened and communication established. The resulting “interblending” of earthly and heavenly spheres, “so tender and so near,” would permit a new order. “Men shall say ‘Zion from above has come down’ and ‘the Tabernacle of God is with men.’”
Clearly the Utah Magazine was no longer a bland literary magazine—especially if readers carefully read and understood Harrison’s recondite phrases. As the reworked magazine gained momentum, its articles and editorials successively undermined Mormon millennialism, suggested the limited truth of all religions, including Mormonism, and repeatedly revealed a strain that rejected all standards of authority save the inner soul. One passage might have been taken as the intellectuals’ manifesto. It dared all persons “to think and think freely.” It was foolish to believe that someone might go intellectually too far: “It is only those who think but seldom who are in danger of not finding their way back,” assured Harrison. Nor should anyone fear that the truth might itself be endangered by the process. “Depend upon it,” Harrison concluded, “the truth can take care of itself. It can stand inspection, and rough handling, if necessary. If not, it is not that glorious thing we have taken it to be.” Harrison, of course, was inviting his readers to examine Mormonism anew.
By September 1869 the comments became even bolder. In “Our Workmen’s Wages,” the magazine challenged Young’s policy of forcing a wage reduction so that Utah’s products could compete with eastern goods now being carried on the national railroad. “Women and Their ‘Vanities’” argued that Zion’s emphasis on simplicity of dress could never counter women’s supposed inborn desire for fashion and finery. In turn, “Steadying the Ark” denied by its ironic title one of the church leaders’ favorite preaching images about rendering obedience: Mormons were repeatedly told to avoid the Old Testament example of Uzzah, who, without authority, reached out to steady the sacred ark of the covenant and was struck down by the Lord. “Think freely” and “think forever,” the editorial told its readers, for God Almighty never “intended the priesthood to do our thinking.”
By early October 1869, events were hastening to a climax. The Utah Magazine proprietors probably wished for more time, but Young had brought the controversy to a head by including Harrison and Shearman in a group of men called to short-term missions. If Harrison chose to accept the mission call, the public controversy would likely be postponed for at least six months—and that apparently was too much of a delay. Taking stock of the situation, and buttressed by the support of Vice President Schuyler Colfax and Grant’s administration, Godbe and Harrison decided to push ahead. The article titled “The True Development of the Territory” directly challenged Young’s vision of Zion by urging the mineral development of the territory and by seeking the economic integration of Utah into the national economy. It had been “resolved to force a controversy with the president and the Twelve,” Tullidge later wrote.
With the exception of Joseph Salisbury, who had openly opposed the church’s wage policy, no New Movement dissenter had been excommunicated. But the publication of the most recent editorial began an inevitable chain of events: Young’s angry denunciation of the Utah Magazine’s proprietors before the School of the Prophets, the visit of the block teachers and accompanying Apostles to their homes, and the confrontation before the School on 23 October, when the resolute Harrison directly challenged Young and his policy before the startled elders. That episode led Young to announce a church trial for Godbe and Harrison for Monday, two days later.
Since the founding of Mormonism, the religion had had its share of church trials and dissenters. While Joseph Smith was leader, he had repeatedly been forced to deal with those opposing him, and the issue was often his theocratic, temporal-secular vision. Indeed, he was killed during such a dispute in 1844. Since the Saints had arrived in Utah, there had been new dissents. The noisy, bothersome followers of Gladden Bishop had attempted to preach their gospel during the early 1850s, but they had been sent scurrying from the territory. Joseph Morris’s revolt several years later had not been any more successful; when Morris raised a millennial standard in Weber County and refused to surrender several individuals who were being held against their will, a civil posse had suppressed them.
The Godbe trial, however, would be different from its predecessors. It was the Mormon version of the celebrated trials of religious conscience held throughout history. Similar to the trials of Galileo in Rome, Luther at Worms, or Anne Hutchinson before the Massachusetts elders, the Godbe-Harrison trial pitted intellectual dissenters against a clerical establishment. The people were asked difficult questions. What are the proper ways of knowing truth—personal revelation or church authority? Are there limits to dissent in a Kingdom of God? And what makes a man or woman an apostate? Added to these questions was the immediate issue: Were Godbe and Harrison faithful church members guilty only of expressing a nonconformist viewpoint? Or were they heretics?
The trial did a better job of raising questions than answering them. Participants thought and spoke on their feet; no formal arguments were made. Moreover, the minutes were not a complete stenographic report. Yet the Salt Lake Stake clerk managed a remarkable feat—a forty-one page, fair-minded summary of the nearly all-day proceeding. This document in turn was supplemented by several accounts made by the Godbeite dissenters. Together, these documents tell of a remarkable proceeding that transcends its own time.
The Godbeite trial went forward in an atmosphere of excitement. Sensing the situation, Young wanted no hint of secrecy. When the trial convened on Monday, 25 October, at 10:00 a.m. in the Council Chamber of the City Hall (a venue that showed how easily the spiritual mixed with the civil in pioneer Utah), the city’s bishops, bishops’ counselors, and block teachers crowded the interior, along with a half-dozen friends of Godbe and Harrison, who were given passes. Young went further. He apparently offered Godbe the choice of his own jury. Did “Brother William” want to be tried by a congregation of the Saints (perhaps even by women and children!), or, more seriously, by high priests, Seventies, or Apostles and the First Presidency? Young’s options were meant to signal his openness and confidence. If a trial had to be held, he would try to shape public opinion.
Godbe refused to choose his tribunal, claiming that whatever the composition of his jury, it would decide against him. This statement brought Young’s retort: Yes, everyone “except those who wish to promote wickedness in the land.” Church authorities finally decided to place the charge before the twelve-man Salt Lake Stake High Council, the normal tribunal in such cases, but with the unusual feature of openness: instead of the accustomed confidentiality, the leading men of the city would be allowed to witness the event. Stake president George B. Wallace conducted the trial, aided by his counselor John T. Caine. George Q. Cannon prosecuted. Leading General Authorities Orson Pratt, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, and even Young testified for the prosecution. For their defense, Harrison and Godbe had themselves.
Despite its legal trappings (the case had “plaintiffs” and “defendants” and was called “George Q. Cannon vs. William S. Godbe and E. L. T. Harrison”), the trial was not a formal, adversarial hearing in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon civil law. High council hearings were religious affairs, and, as such, were flexible, with few guidelines. Church canon permitted witnesses, allowed defendants to face their accusers, and had the unique rule of requiring an arbitrarily selected number of the councillors to speak on behalf of both the prosecution and defense—that “equity and justice” might be secured and “insult and injustice” avoided. Cases not deemed “difficult” required only two councillors, and more difficult ones used four or even six. “Cannon vs. Godbe and Harrison” would have four. After listening to the testimony, the president of the council—the stake president—would be expected to make the decision, with the entire council sustaining the result, usually a pro forma exercise.
The fifty-year-old Cannon led off, charging the two men with “harboring the spirit of apostasy.” Others were Cannon’s seniors in the apostolic quorum, but none was quicker in mind and tongue. As a preliminary step, Cannon listed the various offending titles published in the Utah Magazine which, he claimed, had worked to undermine the policies and influence of church authorities. Whether Godbe and Harrison were aware of it, he continued, they had given themselves over to a “spirit of apostasy.” To support his point, he called for the testimonies of the teachers and apostles who had visited the men a week earlier.
The reports of the teachers, George Goddard and John Maiben, and Apostles Orson Pratt and Wilford Woodruff confirmed popular sentiment: Harrison, not Godbe, seemed to take the lead in the dissent. They reported that Godbe had behaved courteously during their interrogation. He observed the health code, “the Word of Wisdom,” he said, and when asked about his willingness to serve a mission, he responded ambiguously. If called to go to a remote part of the territory, his compliance would depend on “circumstances” and the “position of life he happened to be in at the time.” The answer lacked ardor but was not heretical. Elder Pratt acknowledged that “up to the present time” he had esteemed Godbe as “one of the best men” in the Kingdom.
Harrison was another story. According to the block teachers, he seemed “very bitter” and “entirely opposed to the order of the Kingdom.” The delegation’s questions, and likely the delegation itself, strongly nettled him. When asked about the regularity of his prayers, he claimed to be insulted. He prayed, he told the teachers, even on behalf of President Young. But the practice of regularly scheduled prayers, in the morning and evening, he labeled “idolatry.” Harrison had equally strong words for the priesthood’s right to “dictate”—pioneer Utah’s often used code word for church authority. The priesthood, he told the visitors, was placed on the earth to “teach, not to compel or coerce.” Neither “God Almighty, nor Jesus Christ, nor any one else had power, right, or authority to force any man into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
During the conversation, the two men repeatedly showed disturbing spiritual independence. The men, said Maiben, believed it was their privilege to have “their own ideas and notions in relation to the doctrines, ordinances, and institutions.” They were responsible only to “the light of the spirit that was within them, not to the authorities of this Kingdom.”
The report of the reconnaissance seemed to confirm Cannon’s charges. Cannon concluded the opening phase of his prosecution by reading lengthy extracts from the Utah Magazine, which he called “sophistries mixed with truth.” They worked toward darkening the minds of the people and created opposition.
Having made the formal charges, Cannon yielded the floor to the dissenters. Godbe, the first to rise, was a compelling speaker, not so much because of the flow of his words, but because of his sincerity. He began by returning Cannon’s expressions of goodwill; he bore no unkind feeling for anyone present, he insisted. Similar to Young, Godbe wanted to appear kindly. And like Young, Godbe understood the most important verdict lay not with the Salt Lake Stake High Council but with the larger court of public opinion.
Having completed the pleasantries, Godbe turned to defending himself. He immediately signaled that there would be no retreat. The sentiments of the Utah Magazine reflected his views, he freely admitted, but this admission (he did not discuss his ideas in any detail) could not be taken as evidence of apostasy. For he had always believed in openness and discussion—from the moment of his conversion in Great Britain. “Hence I have not apostatized,” he claimed. “I stand . . . [on these same principles] today.”
It was a clever tactic. Instead of defending his views, which many in the chamber would have rejected as disloyal and apostate, Godbe tried to move the discussion onto the appealing high ground of principle. Could members openly disagree with church leaders and still be fellowshiped? he was asking. While acknowledging that any disagreement should be respectful to the “men whom we love,” he claimed that the Utah Magazine had always tried to have such a spirit. And if Cannon regarded its views as “sophistries,” he and Harrison thought otherwise. Besides, what was the magazine’s danger? If its ideas were without merit, they would simply fall to the ground. On the other hand, if true, the arguments would serve to combat error and help the Kingdom. Church leaders, Godbe seemed to say, had to dismiss the Utah Magazine as unimportant or they had to admit its truth and helpfulness.
Godbe also returned to some of the themes that he and Harrison had used when the teachers visited them—epistemological themes of how one could best know God. Once more he spoke of the “light of Deity” within him. He knew of “no higher test” for religious truth. Using this light and the best judgment available to them, men and women had to decide all issues for themselves and not rely on others to think for them. Again, Godbe had chosen his words carefully. He advocated the appealing guide of individual seeking as the ultimate source of religious truth, not church-authorized teaching or a combination of the two.
Godbe also attacked the coercive nature of Young’s anti-mercantile policy—how people were being watched in their trading habits and intimidated to ensure “correct” behavior. The prevailing climate in Utah, Godbe claimed, had driven many “good men” to “evasion and dissimulation.” While outwardly supporting church measures, they quieted “their consciences with mental reservations, [rather] than come out in opposition to their brethren, whom, notwithstanding their difference of opinion, they both love and respect.” Indeed, Godbe spoke of meeting a leading churchman on the way to the trial. The leader, sympathizing with the dissenter, admitted that he never dared tell the president “anything he did not want to know, meaning, anything that did not accord with the President’s views.”
In making his defense, Godbe repeatedly raised the question of personal accountability. “I do not claim that it is fit or necessary in my case that I should see the thing [proposed] from the beginning—that [I] should see the tall ladder that reaches into eternity, but it is necessary according to my understanding that I should know sufficient of a measure to feel that it was not wrong.” Even here Godbe was willing to yield some ground. He claimed to value the ideal of social unity, which would be lost, he recognized, if individual accountability were carried too far. Such unity, he said, was more important than “worldly wealth” and “more worthy than Gold.” But Godbe did not provide a workable pattern on how individualism and social cohesion, usually natural enemies, could be reconciled. Nor did he mention his failure to comply with the ZCMI movement, Young’s hope to maintain Zion’s unity.
During his testimony, Godbe occasionally hinted of the New York City revelation. At one point, he spoke of the new principles that had led him “onward & upward”—to use his own phrase. While he and Harrison had not rejected the priesthood of Mormonism, he affirmed “the existence of a power behind the veil from which influence & instructions do come and have always come by which the will may be guided in its onward path.” This was not apostasy, he insisted, as “God will in the early future make fully apparent.” These carefully chosen words once more revealed his attitude toward Mormonism: he had not rejected his old faith but had moved beyond it and redefined it. And looming in the future was Godbe’s belief that Mormonism would soon be reformed in his own philosophical image.
Of course the religious defector is usually the last to understand his condition. As with others in similar inquests throughout history, Godbe clung to the self-deception of his own orthodoxy. His whole being seemed to demand it—his youthful, wrenching conversion to Mormonism, his separation from friends and family in Great Britain, and his eighteen years in Utah (ironically, the trial was held on the anniversary of his first arrival in the territory). When he began his final statement as a fellowshiped Mormon, probably none of these thoughts were conscious in Godbe’s mind. For the sake of his equilibrium and the personal image he had so long cultivated and embodied, his words were less a calculation or pretense than a reflex.
“If I be severed from this church I do so against my solemn protest,” he began. In arriving at this point in his religious journey, Godbe assured the assembled elders that he had been faithful to “the great fountain” of spiritual light that the Mormons often spoke of: he had experienced personal revelation as he prayed night and day—even three times daily—and in all matters “gone forth with God my guard.” Finally, Godbe evoked the “kindness” and “love” of yesterday. Even as a nonmember, if the court should take from him his membership, Godbe pledged “to live that I shall have the spirit of kindness, blessing, liberality, and salvation.”
When Godbe took his seat, President Young must have had second thoughts about conducting a public hearing. Godbe had been convincing. Moreover, Harrison, always forceful, was yet to speak. During the past week, other dissenters had wavered, but not Harrison. Throughout, he had been determined—his words and acts brittle and defiant with intensity.
Similar to his friend Godbe, when addressing the court Harrison did not concern himself so much with Zion’s temporal policies; mining and the rapprochement with the East were mentioned only in passing. Instead, Harrison repeatedly returned to themes of personal freedom, conscience, and the right of dissent, but the issue that most concerned him was President Young’s use of priesthood authority, which he called the doctrine of “infallibility.”
Harrison argued that the LDS priesthood had been designed as a “grand institution” to teach and lead humankind, but never to coerce them. Thus he believed that every man or woman in the Church had the right to “honestly canvass” the teachings of church authorities without losing their membership. To Harrison, “canvassing” meant engaging in the kind of respectful public dialogue that the Utah Magazine had presented. Moreover, members should accept President Young’s teachings only if they believed them—not because of the leader’s authority.
Why was it right in Great Britain to question “sectarianism,” but not now to “think” about Mormonism, Harrison asked. The monitor of the inner light was then acceptable. Why not now? Harrison continued to attack institutional authority. The power of “God or Jesus” might be great in the distant heavens, but on earth people bow to them because their principles are higher. Following this idea, Harrison claimed that he was willing to accept the teachings of a child if they were superior—but never to bow to a man simply because he presided.
Of course these comments were aimed at President Young. Putting the best face on his view of the man, Harrison claimed to see as little “fallibility” in Young as any person—but “I see some.” How could the “man” and “God” within Young be untangled unless by personal judgment? That idea also applied to Zion. It would be a “curious Zion,” in Harrison’s view, if it were built on a foundation of forced belief. What if the proposed policy was incorrect? But even if a matter was apt, what were the implications of coercing obedience?
If apostasy meant disagreeing with President Young, Harrison admitted he had reached that point. He disagreed with Young on the forced reduction of workingmen’s wages. Harrison also objected to Young’s policies against the mining of precious ores. However, Harrison’s greatest difference, he stressed, involved “infallibility.”
Harrison’s closing statement was similar to Godbe’s, in content and in emotion. “Well now, brethren, my case will be very shortly laid before you,” he began. “If you cut me off I shall be very sorry for it. But I will not allow you to cut me off from your affections. You shall never see me out of this Territory. Never. Never. Never. Cut me off if your laws require it, but let me have some of your respect as an honest man.”
Whether by design or irresistible impulse, Harrison’s conclusion also contained a hint of the new revelation. In a strange detour from the rest of his remarks, Harrison insisted that President Young had been led by the spirit of Joseph Smith and by the spirits of other just men made perfect behind the veil: “I stand as witness today that those spirits witness to him whether he denies it or not.” Harrison’s passion on the question undoubtedly came from information supplied by Heber C. Kimball and Joseph Smith during the New York City séances.
Harrison’s final sentences were as familiar as any utterance made in a Mormon worship service. “I bear my testimony that Mormonism is true as a divine institution. I bear my testimony that Joseph Smith was called of God. I bear my testimony that polygamy is true & eternal. I bear my testimony that this is the gathering place appointed by God, & that Brigham Young is the legal successor of Joseph Smith.” On one point only, he insisted, did he substantially differ with current church authorities, and that was the question of “infallibility.”
Before taking his seat, Harrison placed in the record a formal, eight-paragraph “Protest,” which summarized the arguments of the two dissenters. Dated two days earlier, it had been prepared for presentation at the previous Saturday’s School of the Prophets meeting, but President Young’s maneuvers had prevented Godbe and Harrison from doing so. The document revealed that the comments of the two dissenters at their trial were not impromptu. Several days before coming into the church court, the two men had carefully crafted a position that framed their dissent on the highest conscientious grounds of personal freedom from church intrusion and compulsion.
After Harrison sat down, Godbe once more took the floor. Godbe was obviously concerned by Harrison’s allusions to spirits and the spirit world and wanted to clarify their position. With regard to the “charge of spiritualism,” he wanted the court to have his explicit declaration: “We do believe in revelation,” he said, “but such only as come through the channels of the Holy Priesthood and we do not believe in the teachings of spiritualism.”
According to trial minutes, no one had yet spoken of spiritualism, much less made a formal “charge.” Without a reason for his statement other than unconscious self-justification, the sensitive Godbe seems to have accused himself. At this moment of personal crisis, Godbe did not want to see himself as an apostate or to have others believe so. The ministrations of Kimball’s spirit, therefore, were by Godbe’s special definition Mormonism, not spiritualism, whatever their medium or message.
As seen in the testimony of Godbe and Harrison, the Godbeite complaint involved more than the excesses of Zion. Godbe and Harrison had repeatedly challenged the priesthood’s right to determine correct teaching—not just on mining policy or the claims of the theocratic Kingdom but on all basic church tenets. The church, they argued, should compel obedience only on matters of personal purity and the performance of the gospel’s ordinances and sacraments. On all other matters, individuals should be free to act independently, with their inner “light and intelligence” guiding them.
Cannon, attempting to regain the prosecution’s momentum, again revived the testimony of the block teachers and the inimical Utah Magazine’s passages. But most of his words were aimed at “St. Harrison” for his “cunning” and “sophistical speech,” which had been “so despitefully set forth.” Harrison was a natural skeptic, Cannon charged, whose power Godbe had been unable to resist. To Cannon and other Mormon leaders, it was inconceivable that Godbe could be a full partner in the dissent. Later, during a pause in the testimony, the conscientious Godbe set the matter straight: Harrison had not influenced him any more than he had influenced Harrison.
Picking up the earlier hints of the New York revelation, Cannon wondered if some of the rumors circulating through the city about the possible spiritualism of Godbe and Harrison might be true. Initially, Cannon had discounted these rumors, but when Harrison during his testimony had mysteriously invoked the name of “a very prominent but unidentified man”—undoubtedly Heber C. Kimball—and then strongly alluded to President Young’s receiving the spirits of dead men, Cannon was ready to reconsider. Harrison “testifies in such a solemn manner” that “I am led to believe that this rumor is correct,” said the prosecutor. Wasn’t this evidence of preaching a “new Gospel” an attempt to “inaugurate a new movement amongst us fed and prompted and sustained by some power we know nothing about?”
Much of Cannon’s rebuttal defended the priesthood’s right to control the teaching of the church. Harrison wanted to do as he “pleased in the church,” Cannon complained, but this was not the rule of God. Cannon believed that church leaders had the God-given right to withdraw fellowship from those who refused to agree to “work with them in building up the Zion of our God.” While Harrison and Godbe might make pretensions of loyalty and be honest as individuals, their acts challenged the progress of the Kingdom of God, and their standing in the church could not be tolerated. If unrepentant, the two men would certainly be led by the “devils” to hell.
Cannon understood the popularity of the Godbeite platform to the outside world, and perhaps within the church as well. A decision to expel them from the church would bring excitement and probably label President Young with being “illiberal” and “not advanced enough.” But freedoms within the Kingdom were limited. They did not include the right “to do wrong.” While Zion had tolerated the sometimes scurrilous Union Vedette, now the question was whether an opposition periodical could be allowed to exist within the fold—a magazine written by Mormons for Mormons. Faced by such a threat, Cannon was no defender of the absolute right of public expression: a “free press” and “free language” were “catchwords of the devil and those who are influenced by him.”
Cannon concluded by expressing his own spiritual witness. Those wishing to receive the new gospel as taught by “St. Harrison” could do so, said the apostle, once again emphasizing Harrison’s blame in the matter, but “as for me and my house we do not want it.” President Young’s leadership had brought prosperity and peace. And as for the vaunted spiritual light of the two defendants, Cannon matched it with his own: “I have the voice of the spirit as well as these men,” he claimed. “I profess to have revelations. I profess to know the truth and I can bear testimony more than they can or do to-day.” Cannon’s “light” testified that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were prophets—and that the latter had the right to “dictate” to the people, who were free agents to obey and reject his message. “I [Cannon] pray that God may be with us and enable us to understand the truth and maintain it always.”
Cannon had defended President Young and church interests, and Cannon had called into question the orthodoxy (and heterodoxy) of the defendants. If Harrison had exalted personal conscience, Cannon’s loyalty lay with church government and his own version of the “inner light.” Yet, the statements of Godbe and Harrison had been so appealing that a troubling sense of incompleteness remained. From the first, the trial was less about breaches of the ecclesiastical law, which seemed clear from the start, than about swaying the hearts and feelings of the Saints. That result was by no means sure.
Hoping for a more convincing outcome, other General Authorities followed Cannon. The first was President George A. Smith, one of President Young’s counselors. Smith was one of Zion’s most unusual individuals. He was a man of considerable girth. On his head he wore an uneasily resting wig, which during the heat of a Temple Square sermon he might remove. To this nonchalance, he added a hardy, self-deprecating wit that some outsiders saw as Falstaffian. But beneath his peculiarity lay an uncommon common sense and an absolute loyalty to the cause that his cousin Joseph Smith had founded. “Brother George A.” wore well. Those in and out of Mormonism who knew him best usually came to like if not admire him.
On this occasion, Smith had difficulty containing his anger. Citing past church apostasies and reflecting the strong emotions of many in the community, President Smith branded Godbe and Harrison as “wicked and blind.” No “blacker spirit” filled the souls of men. Their posture of innocence hid a guilt that echoed all the old apostasies: “Oh! I have such confidence in Brother Brigham! Such confidence in these brethren [leading the Church]! Such confidence, kindness and good feeling! I only want to cut their throats!” While the world sought Zion’s destruction and Zion itself was in great danger, Godbe and Harrison had broken ranks and opposed the church’s leaders. Why hadn’t the two come to them privately and worked to resolve their difficulty in the spirit of unity?
At first Smith had thought that Godbe and Harrison were honest, only spiritually blind. But he now believed that “a studied scheme” existed “to divide the church and break it up.” Their conceit was overwhelming: “‘All the rest of you are fools. The Priesthood that has built up and guided this church and gathered us and brought us here is blind and we [Godbe and Harrison] have the right to fight against the Priesthood. We have the right to publish as Elders of Israel against Zion. We have all these rights.’” With these views, Smith strongly disagreed. “I say our rights are few. We have the right to do right, and we have no right as Elders in Israel to do wrong.”
With that he sat down.
Smith was followed briefly by Elders Wilford Woodruff and Orson Pratt, who supported the statements of Cannon and Smith. Then, as usual in pioneer Utah, President Young had the last word. He was in no hurry. “There is so much to say upon this subject,” he began—and he proved his point by continuing for over an hour. Almost a third of the trial minutes record the president’s remarks.
Young’s manner seemed quiet and reserved; he seemed burdened by events. There was none of “George A.’s” ebullient talk. Even Harrison and Godbe later mentioned Young’s generally respectful course. As a matter of fact, Young scarcely mentioned either of the defendants. He was interested in ideas and principles.
Young seemed to go back and forth about the trial’s importance. “How little wisdom it takes to raise an excitement in the midst of wise men,” he said disparagingly at first. But subsequent statement after statement showed how seriously Young regarded the episode. In fact, so serious were the issues that Young insisted that they should be given the widest airing. Everyone should “hear for himself” so that “all would be able to judge.”
Godbe and Harrison had exalted “liberty.” Young would have none of it. “Truth” was more desirable than individual freedom, he answered. He pursued the idea tenaciously. “Where is our liberty? In truth. Where is our freedom? In truth, in the truth of God, in truth no matter where it is found. Where is our strength? In truth. Where is our power and our wisdom? In truth. It is truth that we want. It is truth that exalts us. It is truth that makes us free. It is truth that will bring us into the celestial kingdom, and nothing else.” These words became Young’s text. All that followed in his discourse were explanations and emendations of this central theme.
For Young, “Truth” involved order, discipline, and obedience. He could not imagine “every man” in the church determining his own policy and teaching. “What confusion, what discord, what discontent, what hatred would soon creep into the bosom of individuals one against the other. . . . We have made no bargain to gather up to Zion to raise confusion.” Young likened the church to a family. Each man or woman might receive God’s guidance according to his or her position in the Kingdom, but no more. Hierarchical revelation led to hierarchical authority. Could you imagine a child telling his mother that he did not have to make his bed? Harrison’s idea that British Mormonism had given him a lifelong lease to believe and act independently of church authority was “false.” “I am at the defiance of any man to say that there ever was any such contract made.”
Young understood that the Godbeite rejection of church authority was aimed at him, and he defended his stewardship: “I have never sought but one thing in this kingdom,” he said, “and that has been to get men and women to obey the Lord Jesus Christ in everything. I do not care what they say of me, if they will live so as to help build up his kingdom.”
Godbe had cited the Utah Produce Company and the Colorado warehouse scheme as examples of Young’s money-losing fallibility. In response, Young spoke of God’s hidden hand. Who knew about such things? God’s purposes were recondite and might be served through unexpected means. For example, if the produce company had failed in its immediate goals, perhaps the venture had taught the Saints not to throw away their means to gentile middlemen. Likewise, the experiment on the Colorado River had allowed the Saints to be the first to penetrate the region. Villages and cities—colonization—might likely follow. “By and by I expect brother Godbe if he comes [back] into the church will be coming to me and be thankful that he ever put means into that store house.” To ensure the result, he promised personally to repay investors’ losses.
This charge of money-losing fallibility obviously irritated Young. In response, he had a pointed question: Where did Godbe—his old protégé—get his money? According to Young, when Godbe first came into the territory he had been as poor as the rest of the Saints. Church policies—Brigham Young’s policies—had made Godbe wealthy.
At another point in the trial, Young tried to address the issue of “infallibility” directly. Similar to his predecessor Joseph Smith, who made a determined effort to separate his personal and prophetic person (“A prophet was a prophet only when he was acting as such”), Young did not try to conceal his imperfections. “I do not pretend to be infallible,” he said, “but the priesthood that I have on me is infallible.” So endowed, Young promised his followers that he would not (and could not) lead them astray on important, salvation-related doctrines. God would not let him. But the problem remained: When in Young’s ministry did the priesthood operate on him and when did it not? How could a church member know when Young’s acts had the sanction of heaven?
Having defended his stewardship, Young toiled at length to refute Harrison’s attacks on church authority and priesthood. Young, supposedly the empire-building pragmatist, pursued this goal with brief sarcasm: Godbe and Harrison knew no more about God “than my horse,” he said. Young also met this challenge with a long, theoretical discussion of the LDS concept of priesthood. According to Young, priesthood was more than just authority; priesthood “is in all things, through and around about all things, and it is the government, power, and enlightenment that God dispenses to His creatures here on the Earth and on all others.” When men and women placed themselves outside of priesthood’s expansive power, they jeopardized their salvation.
Young tried to explain his point—and in the process refute Harrison’s claims for individualism and personal choice within the Kingdom. True disciples, Young argued, gave up self-interest, which hitherto had been “the main spring in the world’s progress,” to help others. Therefore, “true Saints” suppressed “individuality” for the corporate good. For Young, this selflessness—and the godly obedience that accompanied it—was the only way the individual essence of men and women could be retained. To support his view, Young plunged into the heavy seas of Mormon doctrine: “The only thing that can sustain and uphold us in the Eternities that are to come and that will preserve our Identity is perfect submission to the will of God [and priesthood]. Those that go down to perdition, those that have had the privilege that our brethren [Godbe and Harrison] have & turn away and break off by degrees from these pure and Holy principles, will go back to their native element. . . . They will taste the second death and lose their identity. Now is this liberty or does it take away our liberty?” Young’s teaching was based on the peculiarly Mormon idea that “righteousness” enlarged the noncreated “spirit” of men and women—their “intelligence,” “truth,” or “light.” On the other hand, great sins, if not abandoned, could bring a loss of all contact with Deity and therefore the progressive loss of a person’s elemental spirit to the point of extinguishing identity. This last condition, as Young understood it, was the “second death” which scripture spoke of.
Christian philosophers and theologians might debate these tenets, but most probably would not question Young’s summarizing admonition: “Live so that the candle of the Lord is always lighted up within you,” he challenged his Mormon audience, “and you will be always light [or spirit]. Live so that this spirit or monitor or right may dictate [to] you all the time.”
Young often surprised his contemporaries. Just when people thought that they had taken his measure, he would do the unexpected. Now, before the high council court, instead of attacking Godbe and Harrison or defending his own prerogatives, Young had spoken abstractly and theologically. He had used complex Mormon teaching to suggest the limits to a “personal liberty” that ignored “priesthood,” which he defined both as ecclesiastical leadership and as a unifying, transcendental essence of God’s creations. Godbe and Harrison may not have been persuaded, but they had had the chance once more to see the unusual quality of their opponent.
At last concluding, Young set out the position of the church. Godbe and Harrison had the privilege of printing their Utah Magazine—but not as church members. They had a right to believe as they pleased, even dissenting from his leadership. But the Saints also had the option of refusing their magazine and traveling “the road the Lord wishes us.”
With the court about to reach a verdict, Edward Tullidge, swept by Young’s performance and as always unpredictable, stood from the gallery and asked Godbe and Harrison to reconsider. “I was overwhelmed with emotion at witnessing their ecclesiastical execution,” Tullidge would later try to explain. As with Thomas Stenhouse before the School of the Prophets two days before, when Young had faced him down, Tullidge showed that those long and firm in the Mormon tradition found it easier to plan a religious revolution than go forward with its consequences.
Godbe and Harrison were a different matter. If they paused, no one noticed.
Stake President Wallace now had to make his decision. Wallace thought the matter “as clear as the sun at noon-day.” Lucifer “had as much right to retain his standing in the presence of God, after he had rebelled as these brethren had to be fellowshipped.” Instead of having the spirit of truth to guide them, Wallace believed, Godbe and Harrison now seemed to be the subjects of “evil spirits.” What had caused this change?
The question carried an implication, and Godbe knew it. Many Mormons believed that their most prominent dissenters had left Mormonism not so much because of principle but because misconduct had deadened them to the Spirit. Godbe, claiming his integrity had been impugned, demanded an explanation. Wallace quickly retreated: he knew of no blot against Godbe’s standing, he admitted. But Daniel H. Wells, Young’s counselor, believed the question remained open. “We have no proof that either of you have committed any sin,” Wells said, “but then you must have done something of the kind or you could not be in the dark as you are today.” President Young reportedly agreed. Rolling back in his chair, he said: “Yes, and it will come to light in due time.”
It was a passing moment in a long proceeding, and one recorded only by the Godbeites themselves, who may have embellished details. Hardly pausing, Wallace announced that Harrison and Godbe were cut off from the church and were “handed over to the buffetings of Satan.” After the decision was announced, the high councillors raised their right hands in unanimity. Then, in a departure from usual procedure, the assembled churchmen in the City Hall chamber were also asked to sustain Wallace’s decision.
Kelsey, Lawrence, John and Edward Tullidge, and two others—Joseph Silver and James Cobb (the brother of Charlotte, Godbe’s most recent plural wife)—were the only men to refuse their assent. Apparently Kelsey and Lawrence went further; they may have publicly defended Godbe and Harrison. That was enough for Young to move and carry the proposition that Kelsey be summarily dropped from the church. For the moment, no action was taken against the able and idealistic businessman Lawrence.
The spirit and equity of the hearing lay in the eye of the beholder. Harrison and Kelsey believed the rest of their lives that they had been dealt with arbitrarily. Stenhouse was probably closer to the truth: “The trial was as fairly conducted as these things ever are,” he believed. In fact, both sides had kept intemperate remarks to a minimum. Nor could there be much doubt about the verdict. Godbe and Harrison had defied President Young’s leadership; they had questioned the prevailing norms of Zion; and they had rejected church authority.
In addition, other issues were concealed beneath the surface. While Godbe and Harrison had repeatedly made what seemed to be faithful avowals, they had used the double or expanded entendre to conceal their real meaning. Their New York revelation had taught them that Joseph Smith was a prophet in the sense of being a talented, religiously inclined medium. It had also taught them that Young, under the prompting of the spirits, had led the Mormons west to await the higher truth, which would soon be revealed to him and others. Godbe and Harrison believed that this “higher truth” would remain as Mormonism, only a more intellectual and stirring version.
The Godbeite protest has traditionally been described as a revolt of faithful church members at odds with their church’s temporal policy. Temporal concerns were important to Godbe and Harrison’s dissent, and during the trial Young’s homogeneous and unified Zion was discussed. However, by the time of Godbe and Harrison’s arraignment, their protest reached far deeper. Participants at the trial discussed such issues as religious knowing, the limits of religious dissent, and the fallibility of religious teachers. Godbe, Harrison, Cannon, Smith, and Young were grappling with issues that will always challenge disciples, whether Mormons or members of another branch of institutional religion. These issues have hardly been resolved in the twenty-first century.
For those living at the time, the trial had its own meaning. As with the growing power of Utah’s merchant community or the coming of the railroad, the trial also marked something greater than itself. Previously, resistance to President Young tended to be mute or private; Zion’s matters were closely restrained. The trial, however, raised the popular issues of free speech and conscience, and these values, once raised, could not be easily suppressed. The churchmen at the City Hall chamber had loyally raised their hands to support their leaders and to discipline Godbe and Harrison, but thereafter Zion’s outward unity would never be quite the same. Combined with outward pressures weighing on Deseret, the court proceeding proved another wedge in Zion’s close-knit, controlled society.
For Godbeitism the trial was also pivotal. It took the New Movement from the shadows of hesitancy and secrecy and placed it in a position to fulfill the logic of its beginnings: it began public Godbeitism and all that followed in its name. Confronted by this option, the men and women of Utah, orthodox and schismatic, now had to decide what role they would play. Would they accept or reject the “reforms” of the New Movement? To what degree would they participate?
For some these questions were a matter of routine. Elder Woodruff left the City Hall chamber and its lengthy, all-morning hearing to prune his garden’s grapevines, probably unaware of the metaphor. And President Young on the next day left the city for one of his tours of the settlements. Undoubtedly he wished to convey the image of business-as-usual. But whatever his hopes and plans, there was uncertainty if not turmoil in Zion.
