REVIEW: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings

When Reed Smoot, an LDS apostle, was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican from Utah in 1903, he immediately fell into a quagmire. After all, when another Mormon, B.H. Roberts, had been chosen for Congress in 1899, the political uproar was so great that he was denied his seat.But there was an important difference: Roberts was a polygamist while Smoot was a monogamist, and the issue that surrounded each man was allegedly that of polygamy. Even though Utah Mormons today lean toward the Republican Party, the Republicans in Smoot's day were dead set against "the twin relics, slavery and polygamy."The result was a long and bruising hearing led by Senate Republicans to expose Smoot as a secret polygamist, and thus send him home on the coattails of Roberts. The Senate failed in its carefully orchestrated effort, and Reed Smoot not only survived politically, he was a very powerful senator for 30 years.For anyone attracted to Mormon history, the Smoot hearings represented a gold mine of testimony — 42 witnesses in 17 days — for and against his admission to the Senate. The documentation of the hearings has always seemed insurmountable with 3,432 pages recorded. Yet Michael Paulos, a young financial analyst who maintains a vigorous side interest in history, has produced a condensation that is slightly more than 700 pages.His book, "The Mormon Church on Trial: Transcripts of the Reed Smoot Hearings," is not only carefully edited but deftly annotated, making this historic political and religious episode accessible and fascinating to the general public. Even as a BYU student, Paulos had become enamored of the Smoot hearings, although he found it difficult to understand them either from written history or from college classes.So in 2001, he began his own research into the Smoot case, reading up on its background and collecting his own copy of the transcripts, working mostly evenings and Saturdays. "I'm a political junkie, and I love Mormon history," said Paulos during a phone interview from his home in San Antonio, "so the Smoot case seemed the perfect intersection of both. I was fascinated."He found that the testimonies of Reed Smoot, LDS President Joseph F. Smith and Apostle James E. Talmage propelled Mormonism into the public square much as Mitt Romney's presidential candidacy did for modern Mormonism. "Smoot is part one, Romney is part two," Paulos said. The parallels between Smoot and Romney are pure serendipity."Paulos found reading the transcripts of the hearings to be "tedious and painstaking" but his business acumen allowed him to use comfortably 25 spreadsheets to keep it all straight. "The biggest challenge," Paulos said, "was to get it from hard copy to electronic text. I had to be careful to catch all the mistakes. I didn't want my work to be merely an abridgement of the hearings. I wanted to provide 'behind-the-scenes information,' and it worked out very well."Family and friendship connections facilitated Paulos' acquisition of materials from both the Smoot and Badger families. Carl Badger was private secretary to Smoot during the hearings, and he kept a very helpful journal. Paulos was able to get primary documents directly from the Badger family.Paulos discovered that Smoot was "a savvy businessman even before he was a politician," but his "lack of religious knowledge was surprising and not what you'd expect of a general authority. On the stand, he testified he had been through the temple only once, and it didn't make much of an impact on him."That was important since several senators had heard that Mormons took secret oaths, perhaps against the government of the United States, inside the temple. Because Smoot had been an apostle only three years, President Smith and Talmage filled in the gaps of his LDS knowledge.Paulos said Smith was "the most influential witness" while Talmage was "the smartest, most intellectual witness. He talked about the minutia of doctrines."When Smith seemed to indicate that the process of revelation was rare to him personally, it surprised many people. Paulos believes that Smith "was a cagey witness and played the political game when he testified, using spin" as politicians do."A lot of the senators who voted in favor of Smoot said the hearings were ridiculous," Paulos said, "because 'we were examining the Mormon Church rather than Smoot."'Actually, Smoot's "wet-behind-the-ears" image might have helped him win his case, and there was no evidence that he had ever advocated or practiced polygamy. In Paulos' view, the politicians failed to find "their smoking gun."Paulos has provided a fine historical treatise on one of the most interesting episodes in both Mormon history and American political history. His book is invaluable for understanding Mormons as they emerged as a stable force in the 19th century.