ABSTRACT
In 1878, the simmering tension between the United States federal government and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church) reached its zenith with government efforts to stamp out the Mormon practice of plural marriage. This British line of attack on Mormon polygamy, positioned in relation to the larger American legal and political debate over the tension between morality and religious practice, transitioned into fiction under the care of a seemingly unlikely pair of Scottish authors. 'The Story of the Destroying Angel' is the first tale in More New Arabian Nights: The Dynamiter (1885), which is a compendium of stories within stories, the overall plotline of which recounts the failed attempts of an Irish terrorist group to blow up a statue of Shakespeare in London. The Supreme Court eventually tested the Morrill Act's constitutionality and the ability of the federal government to curb Mormon polygamy in Reynolds v. United States.
