Charles W. Penrose. USHS collections.
"To Get U[tah] in U[nion]": Diary of a Failed Mission E D I T E D B Y W I L L I A M C. S E I F R I T
was nearly fifty years l o n g . B e g i n n i n g with t h e 1849 c o n s t i t u t i o n a l c o n v e n t i o n memorializing Congress to accept the newly drafted Constitution of Deseret and to admit Deseret as a state, and continuing until the executive o r d e r was signed in J a n u a r y 1896, Utah statehood was a battle fought on almost uncountable fronts. T h e history of those official efforts is well chronicled. 1 Issues such as free state vs. slave state, female suffrage, national political control of newly created
U T A H ' S "OFFICIAL" MARCH T O STATEHOOD
Dr. Seifrit is an editor in Salt Lake City. H e gratefully acknowledges the assistance and encouragement of Gary T o p p i n g and the late J o h n James in the preparation of this diary. 'See, for example, Stewart L. Grow, "A Study of the Utah Commission, 1882-1896" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Utah, 1954); J o a n Ray Harrow, "Joseph L. Rawlins, Father of Utah Statehood," Utah Historical Quarterly (hereafter referred to as UHQ) 44 (1976): 59-75; Howard R. Lamar, "Statehood for Utah: A Different Path," UHQ 39 (1971): 307-27; Gustive O. Larson, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, California, 1971); Edward Leo Lyman, "Isaac T r u m b o and the Politics of Utah Statehood," UHQ 32 (1964): 9-31; B. H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1930), 6: 21-346; and Henry J. Wolfinger, "A Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History," UHQ 39 (1971): 328-49.
