Brigham Henry Roberts (March 13, 1857 – September 27, 1933) was a historian, politician, and leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). He edited the seven-volume History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and independently wrote the six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Roberts also wrote Studies of the Book of Mormon—published posthumously—which discussed the validity of the Book of Mormon as an ancient record. Roberts was denied a seat as a member of United States Congress because of his practice of polygamy.
Early life
Roberts was born in Warrington, Lancashire, England, the son of Benjamin Roberts, an alcoholic blacksmith and ship plater, and Ann Everington, a seamstress. In the year of his birth, both parents converted to the LDS Church. Benjamin Roberts then abandoned his family. Roberts later wrote, "My childhood was a nightmare; my boyhood a tragedy."Quoted in Truman G. Madsen, Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 1.
Assisted by the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, B. H. Roberts and a sister left England in April 1866. In Nebraska, they joined a wagon train and proceeded to walk—for much of the way barefoot—to Salt Lake City, where they were met by their mother, who had preceded them.John W. Welch, "Roberts, Brigham Henry," American National Biography Online, February 2000. In 1867, Roberts was baptized into the LDS Church by Seth Dustin, who two years later became his stepfather. Dustin eventually deserted his family, and "after several reappearances, he finally disappeared completely." Ann Dustin was granted a divorce in 1884. Upon coming to Utah Territory, Roberts settled in Bountiful, which he always from then on considered his home.
Roberts became a miner and participated in the gambling and drinking typical of that time and place. He was once disciplined by a Salt Lake bishop, who warned him that alcohol "would not only beat him to his knees but to his elbows and chin."Truman G. Madsen, Defender of the Faith: The B. H. Roberts Story (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1980), 70. But Roberts eventually learned to read, and, after a series of menial jobs, was apprenticed to a blacksmith while attending school. He then became a "voracious reader, devouring books of history, science, philosophy," especially the Book of Mormon and other Mormon religious texts. In 1878, Roberts married Sarah Louisa Smith, and, in the same year, he graduated first in his class from University of Deseret, the normal school precursor of the University of Utah.John W. Welch, "Roberts, Brigham Henry," American National Biography Online, February 2000; Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 257. He and Sarah eventually had seven children.
Church service
After graduation (and the birth of his first child) Roberts was ordained a seventy in his local church branch and taught school to support his family. The LDS Church sent him on a mission to Iowa and Nebraska, "but because the cold weather was hard on his health, he was transferred to Tennessee in December of 1880." There he rose to prominence as the president of the Tennessee Conference of the Southern States Mission.
On August 10, 1884, a mob in the small community of Cane Creek murdered two Mormon missionaries and two members of the Mormon congregation, with one member of the mob being killed.The Mormon Massacre This attack is known as the Cane Creek Massacre. At some personal risk, Roberts disguised himself as a tramp and recovered the bodies of the two missionaries for their families in Utah Territory.The New York Times, August 20, 1884.
During a brief return to Utah, Roberts took a second wife, Celia Dibble, by whom he had eight children. From 1889 to 1894, Celia was exiled in Manassa, Colorado, to protect her husband from prosecution for unlawful cohabitation.
In December 1886, while serving as associate editor of the Salt Lake Herald, Roberts was arrested on the charge of unlawful cohabitation. He posted bond to appear in court the next day and that night left on a mission to England.
In England, Roberts served as assistant editor of the LDS Church publication the Millennial Star and completed his first book, the much reprinted The Gospel: An Exposition of Its First Principles (1888).
Returning to Salt Lake City in 1888, as full-time editor of The Contributor, he was chosen as one of the seven presidents of the First Council of the Seventy, the third-highest governing body in the LDS Church. "Tiring of evading federal authorities," Roberts surrendered in April 1889 and pleaded guilty to the charge of unlawful cohabitation. He was imprisoned in the Utah Territorial Prison for five months. Following his release, he moved his families to Colorado and married a third wife, Dr. Margaret Curtis Shipp, after church president Wilford Woodruff issued the 1890 Manifesto that prohibited solemnization of new plural marriages. (Roberts's third wife was seven years his senior and had obtained a degree in obstetrics. Roberts seemed to prefer Margaret's company, "and this created some trouble" with his other families—although Roberts continued to have children by his other wives. Roberts and Margaret had no children.)John Sillito, ed., History's Apprentice: The Diaries of B. H. Roberts (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2004), introduction. Roberts was pardoned in 1894 by U.S. President Grover Cleveland. He resigned as an editor of the Salt Lake Herald in 1896, giving his reason that the position that the paper had taken on the recent "Manifesto" was apt to place him in a false light.Malmquist, O.N.: The First 100 Years, Park Record, 1896
Political and military career
During the transitional period following 1890, the LDS Church disbanded its People's Party and encouraged its membership to align with nationally organized Democrat and Republican parties instead.Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 247. Roberts became a fervent Democrat and was elected Davis County Delegate to the Utah State Constitutional Convention in 1894. Roberts proved a vocal member of the Convention, particularly in his opposition to women's suffrage.
In 1895, Roberts was the losing Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, and Roberts believed LDS Church leaders, who were predominantly Republicans, "had unfairly influenced the election by publicly reprimanding him and fellow Democrat Moses Thatcher for running for office without express permission of the Church."
The LDS Church then issued the "Political Manifesto of 1895," which forbade church officers from running for public office without the approval of the Church. Both Roberts and Thatcher refused to agree to the Political Manifesto and were suspended from their ecclesiastical offices. Roberts, believing such a requirement was a basic infringement of his civil rights, capitulated just hours before the deadline of March 24, 1896. He signed the manifesto, wrote a letter of apology to the First Presidency, and was reinstated. Thatcher was more stubborn: he refused to sign, was expelled from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and barely evaded excommunication.Ostling, 1999/Harper San Francisco:Mormon America, The Power and the Promise, p. 83.
In 1898, Roberts was elected as a Democrat to the 56th Congress, but the House of Representatives refused to seat him because of his practice of polygamy. The prolonged battle that ensued to keep his seat, which was not successful, left Roberts bitter.. A special election was held to fill his seat, and William H. King, the congressman who had preceded him, won the election to succeed him. Roberts later testified during the Smoot Hearings when opponents of the LDS Church demanded that Republican Reed Smoot, a monogamist, be refused his senate seat because Smoot was a Mormon apostle.
The governor of Utah had appointed Roberts a chaplain in the Utah National Guard; in 1917, when the United States declared war on Germany, Roberts volunteered to serve as a U.S. Army chaplain. The age limit of forty was waived—Roberts was then sixty—and Roberts became chaplain to the 145th Field Artillery, which arrived in France in September 1918 but did not see action before the Armistice was signed in November.
Career as a writer Roberts wrote two biographies, a novel, eight historical narratives and compilations, and another dozen books about Mormon theology.Ronald W. Walker, David J. Whittaker, and James B. Allen, Mormon History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 34. In the late 1890s, he also helped establish the Improvement Era and became the de facto editor of this official periodical of the LDS Church.Walker, et al., 32. Roberts's six-volume History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Period I, History of Joseph Smith, the Prophet by Himself featured "critical notes, new documents, sidebar headings for most paragraphs, and extensive interpretive essays that introduced each volume. Unfortunately, Roberts continued the confusing structure of the original, where various documents were spliced together and inaccurately attributed to Joseph Smith."Walker, et al., Mormon History, 35. Roberts served as Assistant Church Historian from 1902 until his death in 1933.For a survey of Roberts's strengths and weaknesses as a historian, see Davis Bitton, "B. H. Roberts as Historian," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 3 (Winter 1968), 25–44.
Roberts wrote a novel Corianton (1889), published serially in The Contributor, and based on the story of Corianton, the son of Alma as told in the Book of Mormon.Madsen, Defender of the Faith, p. 296 Though melodramatic and overly didactic, the novel has also been regarded as providing deep and useful portrayals of some of the characters. It was later adapted, along with A Ship of Hagoth by Julia MacDonald, into a play by Orestes Utah Bean, and was the inspiration for the 1931 film Corianton: A Story of Unholy Love.
Roberts's most important work was a comprehensive treatment of Mormon history, which he began in 1909 as a series of monthly articles for a non-Mormon magazine. Roberts repeatedly (and for many years, unsuccessfully) asked church leaders to republish the articles as a multi-volume set. Finally, in 1930 the church agreed to publish it during its centennial celebration. The six-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Century I (3,459 pages) covered for the first time many late-19th- and early-20th-century developments. Further, although its viewpoint was "unabashedly Mormon", Roberts "disdained ... faith promoting myths" and "was a partisan, not an unquestioning apologist."Walker, et al., Mormon History, 36.
Roberts "frequently took a broader view" of the place of the LDS Church "in the heavenly scheme of things than did some of his colleagues. In 1902 he told the Saints that 'while the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is given a prominent part in this great drama of the last days, it is not the only force nor the only means that the Lord has employed to bring to pass those things of which His prophets in ancient times have testified.'" Roberts' theology included belief in "the modern liberal doctrine of man and the optimism of the nineteenth century, and it required a bold, rebellious and spacious mind to grasp its full implication."Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 257–58; Sterling M. McMurrin, "Introduction" in B. H. Roberts, Joseph Smith the Prophet-Teacher (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967).