DE VERKLIGA FÖRFATTARNA TILL MANIFESTET

"I, Charles W. Penrose, wrote the Manifesto, with the assistance of Frank J. Cannon and John White. It's no revelation from God, for I wrote it. Wilford Woodruff signed it to beat the Devil at his own game."
25 May 1908, Bristol England Mission Conference, as related by Thomas J. Rosser to Robert C. Newson, in a letter written 4 August 1956.
Brother Penrose told me once in the city of Mexico, that he had written the Manifesto, and it was gotten up so that it did not mean anything and President [Joseph F.] Smith had told me the same."
Matthias F. Cowley, Minutes of the Quorum of the Twelve, 10 May 1911.
Ada L. Shepherd made a statement before William J. Barette, Notary Public, Salt Lake County, 7 December 1912, which stated she had heard Charles W. Penrose say it was he who wrote the Manifesto.
A World-Wide Survey of Present Day Mormonism..., 3 July 1913.
President Woodruff did not write the Manifesto. It was written by Charles W. Penrose, with the assistance of Frank J. Cannon and John White. After being prepared, it was submitted to a committee of non-Mormon Federal officials, among them Judges Charles S. Zane, C.S. Varian, O.W. Powers, and others. A change in the alleged facts set forth was insisted upon by these parties, the document recopied by a Mr. Green, a non-Mormon Federal clerk, when it was returned to President Woodruff and received his signature.
Joseph W. Musser, Truth 1:2:8, July 1935. [Son of Assistant Church Historian, A. Milton Musser]
The Editorial for the Deseret News in which the Manifesto first appeared admitted that the Manifesto had been condensed, and only "poorly" expressed "the sentiments of the writer." Charles W. Penrose was the editor of that newspaper.
Deseret News, 25th September 1890.
The Apostle John Henry [Smith], replying to Professor Wolfe's inquiry as to how these polygamous marriages could be reconciled with the Woodruff Manifesto, said: "Why, brother Wolfe, do you not understand that the Manifesto was only a trick devised to beat the Devil at his own game?"
Salt Lake Tribune, January 16th, 1906.
The reason the Manifesto was given and the principle laid aside was that many of those who entered into that principle were not keeping the commandments, and that not over two percent of the Latter-day Saints ever entered into that principle, and the Lord permitted the U.S. Government to pass the Edmund's Tucker Law, a law restricting its practice.
Joseph F. Smith, John Mills Whitaker Journal, April 1893 (at a Session of the Salt Lake Temple Dedication)