In the Whirlpool : The Pre-Manifesto Letters of President Wilford Woodruff to the William Atkin Family, 1885-1890

Political and religious turmoil in the late 1800s plagued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its leaders. As Utah statehood loomed, Congress aggressively moved against Mormons who engaged in polygamy. More than a thousand men were jailed and others were forced into hiding. One of those who went into hiding in 1879 was Wilford Woodruff, who became church president in 1887. Woodruff sought sanctuary with the family of William and Rachel Atkin and others throughout the 1880s. This never-before-published collection of Woodruffs letters to the Atkins, edited by Reid L. Neilson, reveals the church leaders political and spiritual conflicts in the five years leading up to his 1890 Manifesto, which officially disallowed polygamy.