Throughout this period of frenzied coupling, Joseph adamantly denied that he endorsed plural marriage, let alone engaged in the practice himself. “When the facts are proven, truth and innocence will prevail at last,” he asserted in a speech given to the citizens of Nauvoo in May 1844. “What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can find only one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers.”

His denials had always gotten him off the hook before, but his repeated success at wiggling out of tight situations incubated a dangerous hubris, which in turn increased his sexual recklessness—and it all caught up to him shortly after he delivered the speech quoted above. In the spring of 1844 a scandal of Monica Lewinksy—like proportions exploded in Nauvoo, and this time, finally, the conflagration was too big and too hot to be extinguished by the prophet’s charm.