No Man Knows My History (Arkosh History)

by Fawn M. Brodie

Hyrum Smith, who had several wives himself and did not have his brother’s difficulties with the first, urged Joseph repeatedly to write down the revelation on celestial marriage. “I will take it and read it to Emma,” he said one day in renewing the argument, “and I believe I can convince her of its truth, and you will hereafter have peace.” Joseph replied with a wry smile: “You do not know Emma as well as I do.” Before the afternoon was spent, however, he sat down and dictated to his secretary William Clayton the last and most epoch-making revelation of his life. All that he had been thinking and dreaming over the past years, everything that he had conceived about heaven and hell and sex, which he had never before dared commit to paper, he now dictated in a great rush. After a long justification of polygamy on Biblical grounds, he went to the heart of the matter in a special commandment to Emma to “receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph” and to “cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to * “A Girl’s Letters from Nauvoo,”Overland Monthly, December 1890, p. 623. t See William Law’s affidavitformerlyin the possessionofZenas H. Guriev, and published by Charles A. Shook inTrue Origin of Mormon Polygamy,pp. 126-7. See also W. Wyl’s interview with William Law published in Gregg:Prophet of Palmyra, p. 508. none else.” The penalty for her disobedience was savage: “But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; for I am the Lord ...