Even with the church-sponsored Gospel Topics essays on the subject and various historic works, including those in the church-sponsored Joseph Smith Papers, far too many members still believe that polygamy is an unspeakable word or maintain that Smith never practiced it. ...
Brigham Young, among others, taught that those men who were to be elevated to the highest degree of heaven and become Gods were those who entered into polygamy. ...
... over 40% of [Manti, Utah's] population was in polygamous households [at its height]. ...
... the age of Joseph Smith’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, [w]as 14, not, as the Gospel Topics essay does, “sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.”
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It is also little appreciated how important was the place occupied by polygamy in the politics of America leading up to the Civil War.
The Republicans of 1856 called polygamy and slavery the "twin relics of barbarism":
Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism--Polygamy, and Slavery.
