| 249 the camp of the Saints, and once in company with your Uncle Hyrum, Vincent Knight, and Elder Rigdon; and up to only a few days previous to his death, I was in close council, more or less, with your father; and never in all this familiar association with him, did I ever hear him hint or say that he had received a polygamous revelation. And, from these, and other facts that I might name, I pronounce that polygamous revelation a base and wicked forgery, the intent of which, like the oaths and covenants that apostates administer in their humbug endowments, was to better enable these usurpers and conspirators to sustain themselves in their apostasy, and illgotten power.
On January 6 the Supreme Court of the United States confirmed the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy law of Congress enacted in 1862, 1 and confirmed the sentence of the lower courts upon George Reynolds of Utah who had been convicted under this act.
The decision in the Reynolds case was as follows:
The question is, whether religious belief can be accepted as justification of an overt act, made criminal by the law of the land. The inquiry is not as to the power of Congress to prescribe criminal laws for the Territories, but as to the guilt of one who knowingly violates a law which has been properly enacted, he entertaining a religious belief that the law is wrong.
1 An act to punish and prevent the practice of Polygamy in the Territories of the United States and other places, and disapproving and annulling certain Acts of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah.
Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, That every person having a husband or wife living, who shall marry any other person, whether married or single, in a Territory of the United States, or other place over which the United States have exclusive jurisdiction, shall, except in the cases specified in the proviso to this section, be adjudged guilty of bigamy, and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars, and by imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years: Provided, nevertheless, That this section shall not extend to any person by reason of any former marriage whose husband or wife by such marriage shall have been absent for five successive years without being known to such person within that time to be living; nor to any person by reason of any former marriage which shall have been dissolved by the decree of a competent court; nor to any person by reason of any former marriage which shall have been annulled or pronounced void by the sentence or decree of a competent court on the ground of the nullity of the marriage contract.
Section 2. And be it further enacted, That the following ordinance of the provisional government of the state of Deseret, so called, namely: "An ordinance incorporating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," passed February 8th, in the year 1851, and adopted, re-enacted and made valid by the governor and legislative assembly of the territory of Utah by an act passed January 19, in the year 1855, entitled "An act in relation to the compilation and revision of the laws and resolutions in force in Utah Territory, their publication, and distribution," and all other acts and parts of acts heretofore passed by the said legislative assembly of the territory of Utah, which establish, support, maintain, shield, or countenance polygamy, be, and the same hereby are, disapproved and annulled: Provided, That this act shall be so limited and construed as not to affect or interfere with the right of property legally acquired under the ordinance heretofore mentioned, nor
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