Re: Joseph Smith’s Indictment for Adultery and Fornication
Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:36 pm
robuchan wrote:Grindael, I'm interested in what you say here.It is interesting that Joseph Smith mentioned the word polygamy when he was informed of the indictments instead of adultery, which is what they were charging him with. This shows that he equated what he was doing with the practice of polygamy and that is how he described what he was being accused of.
This would give interesting insight, but I skimmed through the blog post and your post in response and missed that. What did you mean by this?
As soon as Joseph was informed that he was being indicted, he assumed it was about polygamy. Journal entry for Sat. May 25:
[They] informed me [there] were 2 indictments found against me. One for false swearing by R[obert] D. Foster and Joseph Jackson and one for polygamy or something else by the Laws, the particulars of which I shall learn more hereafter.
Smith was informed there were 2 indictments and he assumed the second was for polygamy, when it was actually for adultery.