Posted by:
MyTempleNameIsJoan
(
)
Date: December 04, 2014 03:26PM
No, not swinging persay. JS or Emma didn't use the word swinging in this context with the Laws. Non-mormons used the words swinging - mormons didn't. This explains why the term wasn't familiar to mormons. example: My nevermo ggrandmother, born in the late 1800's, she used the word swinging to describe the mormons.
When Emma asked for William Law, Law used the word 'substitute'.
That's why William didn't connect with the idea of swinging or polygamy with Emma. I doubt the Laws were even familiar with the word polyandry. Whether William switched the word substitute to protect his wife's reputation or whether Emma used the word Substitute is unclear, but the results are the same. Law didn't go for it.
When Joe asked for Jane Law that was a different story.
That's when, according to the 3rd letter, Jane denounced Joe and smeared him. Joe was upset and smeared her back and cut them off.
40 years afterward Dr Law writes 3 letters in response to a man named Dr Wyl who was researching and writing articles mentioning the Laws. Law spent yrs distancing himself and I suspect that clearing his wife's reputation was the only reason he came out of hiding and wrote the letters decades later.
The 1st letter Dr Law claims that there was no proposition by the Smiths. He seems pretty adamant about it.
He approaches the topic as an error, "Your informants, however, may, now and then, have drawn a little on their imagination, may have reached false conclusions in some instances judged from circumstances and not from facts; doing injustice, perhaps, to the innocent. Where testimony conflicts it is sometimes very difficult to form conclusions. Mormon history is rather a mixed up affair. I would call your attention to one or two little mistakes concerning myself. "
His next paragraph covers his wife while he tries to take the main hit.
Law writes, " On page 108 you speak of "swapping wives," and state that you have it from one who knows. Now let me say to you that I never heard of it till I read it in your book. Your informant must have been deceived or willfully lied to you. Joseph Smith never proposed anything of the kind to me or to my wife; both he and Emma knew our sentiments in relation to spiritual wives and polygamy; knew that we were immoveably [sic] opposed to polygamy in any and every form; that we were so subsequent events proved. The story may have grown out of the fact that Joseph offered to furnish his wife, Emma, with a substitute for him, by way of compensation for his neglect of her, on condition that she would forever stop her opposition to polygamy and permit him to enjoy his young wives in peace and keep some of them in her house and to be well treated."
He knew about polygamy in any and every form, but not about the polyandry format? nope, not according to his diary or 3rd letter that pushed him toward the Nauvoo Expositor.
That's why I think he was confused about the word swinging and was desperate to cover for his wife's reputation after Dr. Wyl's article was published.
By the 3rd letter his memory comes back and he describes the events without getting very detailed, but detailed enough to know it's all coming back to him.
By the 3rd letter it was clear to me that Law omitted a lot of details to protect his wife who had died 4 yrs earlier.
He says that his wife's reputation, and his brothers reputation, meant everything to him and he'd defend them with his life. Law writes, "You would not wonder then that the reputation and memory of such a wife and such a brother, should be as dear to me as life itself."
When you get to the 3rd letter you can tell that Smith proposed to Jane Law and the Laws were crazed. It's quite different from the 1st letter when Law tries to claim that him or his wife were never involved. Law writes, "We have lived down a great measure the disgrace following our unfortunate association with the Mormons. We committed a great error, but no crime. This is my consolation, that we only erred in judgment."
Also, the 1st letter shows that the Laws didn't know about the real mormon underbelly at first. This also explains how non-mormons or other mormons like Law might give favorable reviews of mormons. It was very secret.
When the secrecy was up the Nauvoo Expositor was too.
The Journal of discourses wrote a story that smeared both the Law's names as adulterers.
How could they be adulterers when they exposed it in the Expositor? Law gets a lot of respect from me in his attempt to protect his wife by saying, no my wife was not a swinger, etc, etc, etc.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/2014 03:33PM by MyTempleNameIsJoan.