ABSTRACT
Historians have paid only slight attention to the relationship between law and public morality in nineteenth century America. This chapter examines whether the criminal law should be or can be used to enforce morality in marriage. During the 1860 Congressional debate on polygamy, a majority of the congressmen who spoke argued that polygamy was degrading to women, an adjunct to political despotism and that it encouraged promiscuity and broke up the family circle. Since polygamy leads to patriarchy, and patriarchy to despotism, monogamy is the very foundation of the democratic state, Waite believed. Chief Justice Waite’s primary purpose of completely abolishing by judicial decision the “barbarous practice of polygamy” as the other “twin relic” had been abolished by war, did not, of course, succeed immediately. Proving George Reynolds guilty of bigamy was surprisingly difficult for a case which began as a cooperative effort. Polygamy offended not only the moral but also the religious beliefs of Protestant and Catholic America.
