The Poland Act (18 Stat. 253) of 1874 was an act of the

US Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washin ...

that sought to facilitate prosecutions under the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act by eliminating the control members of

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...

(LDS Church) exerted over the justice system of

Utah Territory The Territory of Utah was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 4, 1896, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Utah, the 45th state ...

. Sponsored by

US Senator The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. Together they compose the national bicameral legislature of the United States. The composition and power ...

Luke P. Poland Luke Potter Poland (November 1, 1815 – July 2, 1887) was a United States senator and Representative from Vermont. Biography Poland was born in Westford son of Luther and Nancy Potter Poland. He attended the common schools and Jericho Academy ...

Vermont Vermont () is a U.S. state, state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York (state), New York to the west, and the Provin ...

, the Act redefined the

jurisdiction Jurisdiction (from Latin 'law' + 'declaration') is the legal term for the legal authority granted to a legal entity to enact justice. In federations like the United States, areas of jurisdiction apply to local, state, and federal levels. J ...

of Utah courts by giving the US district courts exclusive jurisdiction in Utah Territory over all civil and

criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...

cases. The Act also eliminated the territorial marshal and attorney and gave their duties to a

US Marshal Marshal is a term used in several official titles in various branches of society. As marshals became trusted members of the courts of Medieval Europe, the title grew in reputation. During the last few centuries, it has been used for elevated ...

and a US Attorney. The Act also altered petit and

grand jury A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a p ...

empaneling rules to keep polygamists off

juries A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict (a finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England duri ...

. By removing Latter-day Saints from positions of authority in the Utah justice system, the Act was intended to allow for successful prosecutions of

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into se ...

polygamists.

Background

In 1862,

US President The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States of America. The president directs the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States ...

Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln ( ; February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the nation throu ...

signed into law the anti-bigamy bill known as the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, but it was not rigorously enforced against Mormons in Utah Territory. The "legislation struck at both polygamy and Church power by prohibiting plural marriage in the territories, disincorporating the ..Church, and restricting the Church's ownership of property to fifty thousand dollars." The Mormons, believing that the law unconstitutionally deprived them of their

First Amendment First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and reco ...

right to practice their religion freely, chose to ignore the law. In the following years, several bills aimed at strengthening the anti-bigamy laws failed to pass the

. They included the Wade, Cragin, and Cullom Bills, which had their origin in the

and were initiated by men who were bitterly opposed to the Mormon curia. The Wade Bill, initiated in 1866, would have destroyed local government if it had passed. Three years later the Cragin Bill was proposed, but within a few days, it was substituted by the Cullom Bill, which was more radical than the Wade and the Cragin Bills. Members of the church worked for the defeat of the bill, including women of the church, who held mass meetings throughout the territory in January 1870 in opposition to the bill. Frank J. Cannon stated: "Brigham had no trouble in organizing at home a resistance to the Cullom bill, in which Gentiles, Godbeites, and orthodox Mormons stood side by side. The women of Utah made a special and particular protest. The fact that women in the state of Utah had the right to vote in 1870--one of only two places in the entire United States where women could vote at that time--gave the protests added weight and consideration. The influence of railroad and telegraph friends was also called upon to resist the bill. Whether more tangible means of persuasion were used cannot be affirmed though some of Brigham's allies and protectors of that day were no more above susceptibility to financial influence than Brigham was above using it. At any rate, the Cullom bill died of willful neglect, and the territory was free, for a time, from this direct and dangerous menace to its independence."

Immediate effects

Under the Poland Act, jury lists were to be drawn by the district court clerk (then a non-Mormon) and the

Probate Court A probate court (sometimes called a surrogate court) is a court that has competence in a jurisdiction to deal with matters of probate and the administration of estates. In some jurisdictions, such courts may be referred to as Orphans' Courts o ...

judge (a Mormon) to give equal representation of members and nonmembers of the church on juries. Immediately, the US attorney tried to bring leading church officials to trial but experienced problems. Many of the leaders of the church had married before the law was passed in 1862 and could not be tried '' ex post facto''. Furthermore, the wives could not be required to testify against their husbands, and the records of plural marriages were kept privately in the Endowment House. After US Attorney William Carey promised to stop his attempts to indict general authorities during a test case to be brought before the

US Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...

to determine the constitutionality of the anti-bigamy law, church leaders agreed to furnish a defendant. The First Presidency asked the 32-year-old George Reynolds, a secretary in the office of the President of the Church, who had recently married a second wife, to stand in for the church in the courts. Reynolds agreed to serve, provided the attorney numerous witnesses who could testify that he was married to two wives, and was indicted for bigamy by a grand jury on October 23, 1874. When Carey did not keep his promise and arrested George Q. Cannon, church leaders decided that they would no longer co-operate with him. In 1875, Reynolds was convicted and sentenced to two years of hard labor in prison and a fine of five hundred dollars. In 1876, the Utah Territorial Supreme Court upheld the sentence. His 1878 ''

Reynolds v. United States ''Reynolds v. United States'', 98 U.S. 145 (1878), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that held that religious duty was not a defense to a criminal indictment. ''Reynolds'' was the first Supreme Court opinion to address the First Amen ...

'' appeal reached the

, which in January 1879 ruled the anti-polygamy legislation to be constitutional and upheld Reynold's prison sentence (it struck down the fine and hard labor portions). Reynolds was released from prison in January 1881 and had served eighteen months of his original sentence.Bruce A. Van Orden, "George Reynolds: Secretary, Sacrificial Lamb, and Seventy," Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1986, pp. 53, 57–62, 71, 76–77, 80–86, 103, 108

References

Sources

* Stephen Eliot Smith, "The 'Mormon Question' Revisited: Anti-polygamy Laws and the Free Exercise Clause" (2005) (LL.M. thesis, Harvard Law School).

External links

Poland Act of 1874 Relating to the Courts of Utah
* * {{cite web , url=http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=70351 , title=Ulysses S. Grant: "Special Message," February 14, 1873 , author1=Peters, Gerhard , author2=Woolley, John T , work=The American Presidency Project , publisher=University of California - Santa Barbara 1874 in American law History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Utah Territory United States law and polygamy in Mormonism United States federal territory and statehood legislation 1874 in the United States 1874 in Christianity 19th-century Mormonism United States legislation about religion Christianity and law in the 19th century

Background

Immediate effects

See also

References

Sources

External links