[Carl Badger, secretary to Reed Smoot]
I must confess that the situation is beyond me. The Senator [i.e., Reed Smoot] has just said that he intends to tell the brethren when he gets home that if they want to continue this 'polygamy business' they must leave the United States. I asked if he meant unlawful cohabitation, and he said no. Well, I am dumbfounded that there should be the least suggestion of the possibility of the Church attempting to establish polygamy; that it should be thought of for a moment. The Senator also says that if [John W.] Taylor and [Matthias F.] Cowley are brought back and placed in the quorum of the apostles nothing will save us from the wrath of the American people. I cannot entertain the thought that such a thing is possible. To think of it as being possible is to make the Church out a hypocritical fraud; but here is the Senator talking about the calamity as though it were a possibility.
[Source: Carl A. Badger, Letter to Rose Badger, as quoted in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1835-1951, Electronic Edition, 2015]
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