An Experiment in Progessive Legislation: The Granting of Woman Suffrage in Utah in 1870

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 38, 1970, No. 1

An Experiment In Progressive Legislation: The Granting of Woman Suffrage In Utah In 1870

BY THOMAS G. ALEXANDER

IN 1869 AND 1870, as the nation agonized over the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment and universal manhood suffrage, the people of Utah considered a suffrage question which was so far ahead of its time that the nation did not adopt it until 1920. At that time these mountain westerners debated universal adult suffrage, female suffrage as it was then called, or woman suffrage as it is generally called today.

Utah was not the first state or territory to adopt this measure. New Jersey had allowed women to vote from 1790 to 1807 and various other states had in the meantime allowed the suffrage to women for various reasons, often because they happened to be property owners. Also, in the State of Deseret prior to the organization of Utah Territory, women voted in civil elections just as they had always voted on ecclesiastical matters in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormon church.

The first modern territory to adopt universal adult suffrage was Wyoming Territory whose governor, John A. Campbell, signed a law providing for woman suffrage on December 10, 1869. The reasons for Wyoming's action are discussed in an article in this issue by Dr. T. A. Larson, but the adoption of suffrage in Wyoming Territory where men outnumbered women by a ratio of six to one could not have had the impact it did in Utah where the numbers were approximately equal.

Nineteenth century Utah appeared to non-Mormons or Gentiles, as they were called in the Mormon territory, to be a retrograde and barbarian place only slightly more advanced than the Moslem lands of the Near East, with which it was often compared. The people of Utah, however, considered themselves to be socially enlightened, and by the standards which obtained in the United States when universal suffrage was adopted they appear so today.

Surrounded by a roaring frontier country which emphasized the acquisitive, individualistic, and violent, Mormons in 1869 and 1870 talked about cooperation, self-sacrifice, and a sense of community. In April 1869, Brigham Young announced a cooperative movement which, for the good of the people, would "shut off," many businessmen so the community could be benefited by central purchasing, manufacturing, and marketing.

In the same vein George Q. Cannon, editor of the Deseret News and a counselor to President Young, emphasized the need to consider the good of the community and not simply individual advantage in other matters. In an editorial he lamented the plight of the American workingman and the problems caused by the rapid centralization of weath,

in the hands of the very few in this country [which] is unparalleled, and the unprincipled use of the power thus acquired, as witnessed during the recent Wall Street gambling operations [which] cannot but cause wide spread distress.

[This shows that] here as elsewhere, when power and wealth are acquired and exercised by the few who are not guided by principle, they are not used pro bono publico, but are made to answer private interests and to subserve selfish ends.

Like the later Progressives, Cannon was convinced that man was basically good and that the evil he did grew from environmental influences.

Man's inclination to do evil, is, in most instances, the result of habits which grow out of defective and improper education and training. When men are rightly trained, they will be unable to perceive a single advantage which they can gain by doing wrong. If society were properly organized, there would be nothing that men could legitimately desire which they could not obtain by doing right, and, of course, under such circumstances, there would be no temptation to do wrong.

Unlike many in his own time, Cannon, an immigrant himself, opposed the movement for immigration restriction, even the restriction upon the immigration of orientals.

In another editorial, he lauded the efforts to bring women into the promotion of the cooperative and reform movements.

With women to aid in the great cause of reform, what wonderful changes can be effected! Without her aid how slow the progress! Give her responsibility, and she will prove that she is capable of great things; but deprive her of opportunities, make a doll of her, leave her nothing to occupy her mind but the reading of novels, gossip, the fashions and all the frivolity of this frivolous age, and her influence is lost, and instead of being a help meet to man, as originally intended, she becomes a drag and an encumbrance. Such women may answer in other places and among other people; but they would be out of place here.

Even polygamy, or plural marriage as Mormons preferred to call it, which was viewed as retrograde and uncivilized by Gentiles, was seen as a method of reforming society and eradicating social evils by contemporary Mormons. Church leaders saw this reform as a way of freeing women from slavery to the lusts of men and making them honored wives and mothers with homes of their own and social position. By entering polygamy women achieved a place in a society where the family formed the basic social unit. There is some evidence that Mormon women shared this view because so many of those who were active in the campaign for woman's rights were plural wives of prominent Utah citizens. Rather than simply tacitly accepting polygamy as their burden, these women used their social position to promote a better life for others in society.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the predominant sentiment of the community favored woman suffrage as soon as it was proposed. Representative George W. Julian of Indiana introduced a bill entitled: "A Bill to Discourage Polygamy in Utah" which simply granted women the right to vote. Professor J. K. H. Willcox of the Universal Franchise Association in argument before the House Committee on Territories said that if the experiment succeeded in Utah it could be extended elsewhere. By this means, he was certain, "polygamy would be destroyed." Delegate William H. Hooper said that he favored the bill and opined that the leading citizens of Utah would also. The bill never came to a vote.

As the time for the legislative session of 1870 neared, the press of Utah demonstrated considerable interest in the proposal. The Utah Magazine through its editor E. L. T. Harrison and his associate Edward W. Tullidge published several articles supporting the idea. Harrison said that suffrage ought to be granted to women because it was inevitable in the progression of things. Tullidge argued that:

The nation which does not assign to women a very high part to play not only in the home circle but also in all the vital concerns of humanity, is barbaric in its notions and estate. True civilization had not yet reached that nation.

A woman correspondant of the magazine took the position that women have the talent to occupy any professional position which men could hold and justified the right to vote by the Mormon doctrine of free agency. She was of the opinion that women's votes would not change things much because, just as in congregational voting, women would vote pretty much the same as men. She said, however, that they had the right to express themselves just the same. Harrison was sympathetic with the view.

Not until the legislature had already passed the act providing for woman suffrage did church authorities comment editorially on the provision, but their approval seems to have been unanimous. President Cannon wrote in the Deseret News that the right of suffrage ought to be granted to all who can exercise it intelligently. He took the view that neither men nor women could exercise their full rights while "the other labors under disability, however limited." He was convinced that women would do more to promote "legislation of such a character as would tend more to diminish prostitution and the various social evils which overwhelm society than anything hitherto devised under universal male suffrage."

Franklin D. Richards in his newly established Ogden Junction took a similar tack and emphasized Mormon unity on social and political questions. "Mormonism," he said, "seeks to provide for, educate and make useful to the State the whole feminine portion of the race." He was quick to point out, however, that women ought not be raised "above the level of man to be his governor, guide or lawgiver," or invested "with powers for which nature has not fitted her."

It is not at all surprising, given the sentiment in favor of the move, that the legislature considered the proposal early in 1870. On January 27, 1870, Representative Abram Hatch of Wasatch County moved that the Committee on Elections be instructed to inquire into the propriety of passing a bill granting the suffrage to women. That afternoon, under the chairmanship of Representative John C. Wright of Box Elder County, the Committee of the Whole took up Hatch's motion and asked the Committee on Elections to consider the matter further.

On February 2, Wright reported that the Committee on Elections recommended passage of the measure. The report pointed out that the Organic Act granted suffrage to every free white male inhabitant over twenty-one years of age and limited the right to hold office to citizens of the United States. The legislature appeared to have the right to extend the suffrage to any other group it wished. It recommended, also that the suffrage be extended to women who were wives or daughters of citizens, because, the report said, a federal act of April 14, 1802, had granted citizenship to widows and children of aliens who had received their first papers. "According to this," the committee reasoned, "we should naturally infer that if the widow and children of an alien who had not perfected his citizenship, became citizens, that the wife of a citizen became a citizen by being united in marriage to her husband." By exercising the franchise, the committee report continued, women would be placed "in a position to protect their own rights by an appeal to the ballot box which we think they are quite as competent to use as uneducated foreigners, the negro or Chinese." The committee also recommended that women be ineligible to hold high judicial, legislative, or executive offices, though they might be allowed to hold minor positions.

On the basis of this recommendation, Peter Maughan of Cache County, chairman of the House Committee on Elections reported back a bill on February 5, 1870. The Maughan bill passed all three readings on that day, was approved unanimously, and sent to the Council. It provided simply that any woman twenty-one or older, a resident of the territory for six months, who was born or naturalized in the United States or who was the wife, widow, or daughter of a citizen was entitled to vote in any election.

On February 9, the Council passed the bill with some amendments which the House refused to accept. A conference committee agreed to accept the House bill and on February 10, both the House and Council passed the amended version. Orson Pratt, speaker of the House, sent the bill to Territorial Secretary and Acting Governor S. A. Mann. Though Mann said he had "very grave and serious doubts of the wisdom and soundness of that political economy which makes the act a law of this Territory," he signed it on February 12, 1870, because both the House and Council had passed it unanimously. Governor J. Wilson Shafer, who was still in Washington at the time, told Delegate Hooper that he intended to wire Mann to veto the bill, but he failed to do so.

In true Utah fashion the Ghost Government of the Ghost State of Deseret considered the proposal. On February 21, 1870, the territorial legislature reconvened itself as the Senate and House of the State of Deseret, heard the message of Governor Brigham Young, and adopted the laws of the Territory of Utah for the State of Deseret. In addition the legislature passed and Young approved a joint resolution to submit an amendment to the constitution of the State of Deseret to the people which would allow the vote to all women over the age of twenty-one.

Though the women of Utah had had little to do with the actual passage of the bill, they were gratified at its enactment. At a meeting of the Female Relief Society in Salt Lake City on February 19, seven days after the passage of the act, Eliza R. Snow, a plural wife of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, proposed an expression of gratitude to Acting Governor Mann for signing the bill. The proposal was adopted and a committee made up of wives of some of the most prominent men in the territory drafted the resolution and presented it to the acting governor.

Already, on February 14, 1870, two days after the passage of the bill, women had voted in a municipal election in Salt Lake City. Though it probably would have been difficult to prove, contemporaries say that the first woman voter was Miss Saraph Young, daughter of Brigham H. Young and grand niece of Brigham Young. Even though the women of Wyoming got the suffrage first, women in Utah voted before their neighbors to the east, owing to the timing of the municipal election.

After the suffrage was granted, the women of Utah did not simply rest with their newly won freedom. Mrs. Sarah M. Kimball, a leader in the Relief Society and later a nationally known woman's rights advocate, began a program of civic education for the women of the territory. She helped form clubs, organized classes in history and political science, and directed the work generally. Mrs. Kimball and others saw that the Relief Society was put to good use in the promotion of activities and classes. Relief Society meetings became classes in government, mock trials, and symposia on parliamentary law.

Women began to take an active part in public affairs. On one occasion, Brigham Young was asked if he wanted women in such offices as sheriff. He replied that if one of his wives, Harriet Cook Young, who had signed the memorial to Governor Mann and who happened to be six feet tall, "went out after a man she would get him every time." In keeping with Young's ideas, women began to participate in civic activities. Miss Georgia Snow, a niece of Judge Zerubbabel Snow, among others, was admitted to the bar. Women were placed on school boards in various districts, and as early as September 1874, two women served on a coroner's jury at Little Cottonwood.

The majority of the people in Utah appear to have been pleased with this experiment in democracy. Louise L. Green, editor of the Woman's Exponent, the organ of the Female Relief Society, expressed this feeling in June 1872 in an early number of the periodical when she said that she was proud that the women of Utah did not have to bear the burden of disfranchisement which the women of most of the United States did. Women ought to have the right "to say who shall disburse those taxes [which many of them pay], how that government shall be conducted, or who shall decide on a question of peace or war which may involve the lives of their sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands." In April 1883, Apostle Erastus Snow said that it was the Lord who

moved upon His servants and the Legislature of our Territory to be among the first to lead the van of human progress in the extension of the elective franchise to women as well as men, and to recognize the freedom and liberty which belongs to the fairer sex as well as the sterner; for the Gospel teaches that all things are to be done by common consent . . . .

Though comment outside Utah initially saw woman suffrage as an enlightened move, that view gradually disappeared. The principal reason for its dissipation appears to have been that women of Utah neither forced an end to polygamy, nor did they elect Gentiles to undermine the power of the Mormon church in Utah. Even the passage of the Edmunds Act did not change the situation, in spite of the disfranchisement of all polygamous men and women. Charges were thrown around about the illegal voting of alien women and under-aged girls, some of which were probably true — though the act did allow some women, who would normally have been considered aliens, to vote. As Congress considered the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1886 and 1887, this sentiment in Utah reached a peak, and a provision of the act disfranchised all women in Utah Territory.

Thus ended a seventeen-year experiment in political equality between the sexes. It had burst on the rock of national anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy sentiment because the enterprise had not had the effect which national leaders expected it to have. It had not brought an end to polygamy and church domination in Utah.

One question remains unanswered. Did the Mormon hierarchy promote woman suffrage in an attempt to strengthen its hold on Utah politics as some Gentiles believed? This seems hardly to have been the case. Never, throughout the history of Utah up to the time of granting the suffrage to women, was there any real possibility that Gentile men might outnumber Mormon men. Though the possibility existed that the coming of the railroad in 1869 might have changed this, there is little evidence that the church leaders expected it to happen.

It appears, rather, that the reasons given in public for granting woman suffrage in 1870 are the real ones because they are congruent with the progressive sentiment among the Mormons at the time. Cannon's editorials in the Deseret News, the church organ, are progressive and optimistic in tone. They speak of the perfectability of man, the need for equality in the community, and the high place of women in Mormon society. Though women did not hold ecclesiastical offices, they had always voted on matters brought before the congregation and Eliza R. Snow and her companions led the Relief Society and the "Young Ladies' Department of the Co-operative Retrenchment Association" which evolved into the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association. Women were encouraged by church leaders to participate in public affairs, and such leaders as Sarah M. Kimball had a high place in the public esteem.

It was only natural that church leaders and the majority of the people of Utah, given the community sentiment, should favor legal participation for women in public life. It is not at all surprising that when the people of Utah were again given the opportunity to express their feelings on woman suffrage in the 1895 Constitution, they favored it overwhelmingly. It is also not surprising, that principal opposition came from non- Mormons in the mining districts of Utah. 24 It seems probable, then, that in 1870, progressive sentiment was simply in advance of the rest of the nation and because of their experience and beliefs, the Mormons were willing to move in where others feared to tread.

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