In the fall of the year 1869, a few earnest, thinking men, members of the Mormon Church, and living in Salt Lake City, inaugurated what was regarded at the time as a grand schism. Those who had watched with anxiety the progress of Mormonism, hailed the “New Movement” as the harbinger of the work of disintegration so long anticipated by the thoughtful-minded Saints, and believed that the opposition to Theocracy, then begun, would continue until the extraordinary assumptions of the Mormon priesthood were exploded, and Mormonism itself should lose its political _status_ and find its place only among the singular sects of the day. It was freely predicted that Woman, in her turn, would accept her part in the work of reformation, take up the marriage question among the Saints, and make an end of Polygamy. Little did I imagine, at that period, that any such mission as that which I have since realized as mine, was in the Providence of Time awaiting me, or that I should ever have the boldness, either with tongue or pen, to plead the cause of the Women of Utah. But, impelled by those unseen influences which shape our destinies, I took my stand with the “heretics;” and, as it happened, my own was the first woman’s name enrolled in their cause. The circumstances which wrought a change in my own life produced a corresponding revolution in the life of my husband. In withdrawing from the Mormon Church, we laid ourselves, our associations, and the labours of over twenty years, upon the altar, and took up the burden of life anew. We had sacrificed everything in obedience to the “counsel” of Brigham Young; and my husband, to give a new direction to his mind, and also to form some plan for our future life, thought it advisable that he should visit New York. He did so; and shortly after employed himself in writing a history of the “Rocky Mountain Saints,” which has since been published. In course of time, the burden of providing for a large family, and the anxiety and care of conducting successfully a business among a people who make it a religious duty to sternly set their faces against those who dissent from their faith, exhausted my physical and mental strength. Considering, therefore, that change might be beneficial to me, and my own personal affairs urgently calling me to New York City, I followed my husband thither. On my way East I met a highly-valued friend of my family, who, in the course of our journey together over the Pacific Railroad, enthusiastically urged me to tell the story of my past life, and to give to the world what I knew about Polygamy. I had been repeatedly advised to do so by friends at home, but up to that time no plan had been arranged for carrying out the suggestion.