It was decided that the People's Party should be disbanded. The Republican Party had opposed statehood for Utah. Because of this, the majority of Mormons in Utah leaned Democrat. However, church leaders did not want to see the entire body of the church turn Democrat leading to a continuation of the status-quo where there was one political party supported by the church and another party opposed to it. George Q. Cannon was sent by the First Presidency of the Church to instruct party leaders to make sure that Church members were split between the Republicans and Democrats. In some instances, local bishops stood in front of their congregations and instructed everyone seated on one side of the building to join one party and those families on the other side should join the other party. In 1895, Woodruff instituted a rule, informally known as the Mormon Political Manifesto, that general authorities of the church should not seek political office without prior permission of the First Presidency. In 1898, B. H. Roberts became the first church member to be elected to Congress. Due to Roberts being a polygamist, he was refused a seat in the Congress. In 1903, the Utah State Legislature elected Reed Smoot to the U.S. Senate. Smoot was an apostle in the LDS Church. His election was controversial due to fears over his allegiance to the church. A hearing was held to determine if Smoot should be allowed a seat in the Senate; the hearing lasted four years, called 100 witnesses and generated 3,500 pages of testimony. Ultimately, Smoot was permitted to take his seat in the Senate. Church president Joseph F. Smith was one of the people subpoenaed to testify in the Smoot hearings. In 1906, Smith was brought to trial on a charge of unlawful cohabitation with four women in addition to his lawful wife; he pleaded guilty and was fined $300, the maximum penalty then permitted under the law. Smith was a supporter of the Republican party. In 1904, the American Party was formed in Utah in an attempt to revive the anti-Mormon Liberal Party. The party lasted until 1911. During the administration of Heber J. Grant, an effort was made to remove from church literature, sermons, and ceremonies any suggestion that Latter-day Saints should seek vengeance on the citizens or government of the United States for past persecutions of the church and its members, and in particular for the assassinations of church founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. This policy became known as the Good Neighbor policy. Grant, a Democrat, was opposed to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) and caused a front-page editorial to be written to that effect in the church-owned "Deseret News".