135 years ago today - Jan 20, 1886

Joseph Smith III, son of Joseph Smith Jr. and president of the Reorganized Church writes to his cousin John Henry Smith, an LDS apostle, "As the son of Joseph Smith, I have a son's right, independent of any religious obligation, to see that the name of my sire is not burdened with shame, obloquy, or unjust censure." He relates that after seriously considering joining the Mormons as a young man in 1853, he was told "by the voice of revelation, not to have anything to do with polygamy, except to oppose it." "If father had more wives than one," he writes, "it does not affect the rule given to the Church. It proves nothing only that he was a transgressor against the rule, and the civil law. From my view polygamy could not and never did emanate by command from God. It had [an]other source. Hence, Joseph Smith was not justified in its practice; nor is the practice defensible from the consideration that he did so."