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“We Will Admit You as a State”: William H. Hooper, Utah and the Secession Crisis
"We Will Admit You as a State": William H. Hooper, Utah and the Secession Crisis
BY CHAD M. ORTON
During the 1860-61 Secession Crisis that ushered in the American Civil War, William H. Hooper, Utah’s Congressional delegate to the Thirty-sixth Congress, made an attempt to obtain statehood for his constituents. Largely overlooked in the accounts of Utah’s long struggle to become a state, this attempt was a response to unfolding events and was undertaken at a time when national concerns seemed to present a unique opportunity for success. 1 While Hooper hoped that Union supporters would reward Mormon loyalty to the United States of America, in the end the predominant Mormon view regarding the United States Constitution would not allow him to consider the territory’s only real opportunity to become a state at this time–in the emerging Confederate States of America.
If things had originally gone as planned, the forty-seven-year-old Hooper, a non-polygamous slaveholder and Southern sympathizer, would not have been Utah's chief proponent for statehood during America’s great national crisis. Initially, Brigham Young nominated Horace S. Eldredge as a candidate to replace John M. Bernhisel as Utah’s Congressional delegate. At the time of his appointment, however, Eldredge was out of the territory, having previously been called to oversee Latter-day Saint interests in St. Louis, Missouri. As the August 1859 election approached and Eldredge had not returned to Utah, Young nominated Hooper as candidate instead, and he was overwhelmingly elected, receiving all but twenty-three of the nearly six thousand certified votes.2
William H. Hooper.
LDS CHURCH HISTORY LIBRARY
William Henry Hooper was born in Cambridge, Maryland, on Christmas Day 1813, the son of Henry and Mary Hooper and the grandson of William Hooper, a representative to the Second Continental Congress from North Carolina and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. When Utah’s future delegate was only three years old his father died, and the family subsequently struggled to make ends meet. At the age of fourteen William accepted full-time employment in a local store to help support his widowed mother and sisters. A natural merchant and financier, he had opened his own store by the time he was eighteen. In 1835 William sold his business and moved to the American frontier of Illinois, where he again engaged in mercantile pursuits. He later built and captained several steamboats on the Mississippi River until an 1849 dock fire at St. Louis destroyed twenty-three vessels, including the last steamer he owned, leaving him nearly penniless. Following this setback he signed on to become the Salt Lake City agent for the mercantile firm of Holladay & Warner.
Although initially viewing Utah as a temporary stop en route to California, things changed when he met and fell in love with Mary Ann Knowlton. They were married December 24, 1852, shortly after he was baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He subsequently opened his own mercantile establishment and became active in Utah politics, serving in the territorial legislature and as Secretary Pro Tem of the territory prior to his election to Congress.
Like many others in his native Maryland, Hooper came from a slaveholding family and he owned at least two slaves in Utah. In April 1859, a slave he owned died as a result of injuries suffered during an altercation with a fellow slave.3 Later that year, and shortly before he left for Washington to begin his service as delegate, Hooper purchased another slave.4
A man of ability and action known for his practical wisdom, Hooper proved to be a good choice as delegate. Shortly after he had reached the nation’s capital for the First Session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, the Baltimore Republican wrote that the Utah Democrat was “a man of superior intelligence, and energy, and activity, fine manners and address, and who in his frank and open intercourse will do much–whatever may be the faults of his people–to remove those prejudices which–whether rational or not–have hitherto prevailed against the Mormon people.”5 During his first session in Washington, Hooper diplomatically and vigorously pursued the interests of his constituents to a satisfactory outcome on several pending issues, including obtaining funds which had been promised the territory. However, regarding the most important issue to the territory’s residents–statehood–he was not successful.
Soon after the Mormon pioneers began settling the Great Basin, statehood became a primary concern. At this time in American history, residents of states were allowed to elect their own leaders while the President of the United States chose the governor and other leading officers for territories, frequently appointing individuals from outside the territory as a political reward. Desirous of electing their own officials, in 1848 Mormon leaders under the direction of Brigham Young created a constitution for a proposed State of Deseret and the following year petitioned Congress to make them a state. The hoped-for statehood, however, fell victim to the Compromise of 1850 which Congress passed in an effort to help slow the growing sectional divide in the nation over slavery. As part of the Compromise, Congress created Utah Territory and opened the territory to slavery under the principle of “popular sovereignty.”6 President Millard Fillmore appointed a mixture of local residents and political appointees to lead the territory, with Brigham Young as governor. Clashes between the Mormons and non-Mormon appointees from outside the territory subsequently followed in part because of the Mormon practice of polygamy, once again prompting Utah residents to make another attempt at statehood.
In 1856 the Utah Legislature drafted a second constitution and memorial for a State of Deseret that Delegate Bernhisel was to present to Congress.
Before he was able to act, however, outside events again undermined the territory’s statehood attempt. At the same time that Utah leaders were drafting their constitution, the newly-formed Republican Party linked Mormon polygamy together with southern slavery in their 1856 platform and called upon Congress to overturn the principle of popular sovereignty and “prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism–polygamy and slavery.”7 This latest manifestation of growing sentiments against the Latter-day Saints caused Bernhisel to conclude that a statehood attempt during the Thirty-fourth Congress would be futile. He informed Young that the prevailing attitude was that Utah “was never to be admitted into the Union with her ‘peculiar institution’” of polygamy, which was widely viewed as “a holy horror.”8
While conflicts with territorial officials had inspired Mormon leaders to pursue statehood, these conflicts would further negate hopes for success during the Thirty-fifth Congress. In late spring 1857 President James Buchanan, acting upon reports of former territorial officials that the Mormons were in open rebellion against the government, ordered twentyfive hundred troops to Utah to serve as a posse comitatus for newly appointed governor Alfred Cumming. Young, having received no official word as to why troops had been sent, placed the Territory under martial law and mobilized the local militia during the so-called “Utah War.” After the army became bogged down near Fort Bridger in present-day Wyoming in the fall of 1857, peace commissioners negotiated a settlement.9 The Utah War added fuel to the oft-repeated claim that the Mormons maintained an adversarial relationship with the rest of the United States.
In spite of growing sentiments against polygamy and the cloud of suspicion that hung over the territory, Young still wanted Utah’s petition for statehood presented to Congress.10 Because Bernhisel had not done so, the responsibility fell to Hooper as Utah’s new delegate.
Brigham Young in 1855.
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
The First Session of the Thirty-sixth Congress had convened less than a month when Young wrote Hooper in early January 1860 reminding him “at the earliest favorable opportunity, to present our memorial, Constitution and other documents pertaining to our being admitted as a State.” 11 Later that month, Hooper was able to persuade Senator James W. Grimes, an Iowa Republican, to submit the statehood memorial drafted by the Utah legislature in 1856. Hooper was also able to discuss the issue before the Senate Committee on Territories. 12 Nevertheless, the mood of Congress towards Utah and the Mormons during the winter of 1859-60 did not present a “favorable opportunity” for success. Feelings in Washington against the Mormons were still running high and before the session was over, Hooper would write Young that there was not “a shadow of a chance” that Utah would be granted statehood.13
At the same time he was fruitlessly pursuing statehood, Hooper warned those back home: “Look out for squalls towards Utah from Congress.”14 Hooper’s warning proved correct as Congress during the session considered several ways to address what was being called “the Mormon problem.”
Just as he had done in the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses, Vermont Republican Justin Morrill introduced a bill that would outlaw polygamy in the territories. Whereas the bill never made it out of committee in previous sessions, the House overwhelmingly passed the measure, although it was never brought before the Senate.15
As part of the debate on the Morrill Act, one member of the House proposed that Congress dissolve Utah Territory and create Nevada Territory out of the western portion and Jefferson Territory from the eastern section. 16 It was hoped that through this action the Mormons would be divided between the two new territories in such a way that the Latter-day Saints would become a permanent minority in each, thus allowing the majority of the territories’ residents, in keeping with the principles of popular sovereignty, to outlaw polygamy. The idea, however, never progressed beyond the talking stage.
During the closing days of the session a Republican-sponsored joint resolution was also introduced that called for commissioners to “negotiate with the Mormons for the purchase of their possessions” with the understanding that Mormons “shall remove within a reasonable time from without the limits and jurisdiction of the American Republic.” The passage of this resolution was urged because the government had a “duty to protect itself from internal as well as external foes.” 17 As with other measures directed towards Utah, nothing became of this resolution.
Following the end of the First Session, Hooper returned to his Utah home and a brief season among friends. After spending the summer of 1860 in Salt Lake City, he returned to Washington, D.C., in time for the opening of the Second Session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress in early December. To his surprise, upon reaching the nation’s capitol he found feelings regarding Utah and its inhabitants seemingly different than during the previous session. William Staines, a Mormon missionary en route to Europe accompanied Hooper on the opening day. When Hooper introduced Staines on the floor of the House, a “great many of the Members . . . chatted with him freely and socially regretted he had not a week to spare.”18 After a week in Washington, Hooper wrotethat “much courtesy is . . . extended to Utah's delegate this time.”19 So widespread was the goodwill that Hooper informed Young, “Utah’s delegate is much respected and politicians have generally come to the conclusion that the Mormons have been much lied about, and are not half as bad as they have been represented to be.”20
This goodwill, courtesy, and respect was shown by both Republicans and Democrats, northerners and southerners, supporters and opponents of the Mormons’ right to practice polygamy; indeed, there were few in Congress during the early days of the session who publicly had anything negative to say about either the Mormons or polygamy. The reason for this favorable treatment was the threatened dissolution of the Union brought about by the November 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as president.
As Hooper observed, “All sides and parties agree that a dissolution is inevitable, the great question is now to what extent the Secession of States will extend, and what will be the consequences.”21 Indeed, the only constants in the near daily secession reports during December 1860 were that the six states of the deep South–Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana–would leave the Union. With so much seemingly still at stake, nothing was being left to chance. Union and Confederate supporters used their time in Washington trying to influence the remaining slave states, as well as territories open to slavery, toward an outcome that would be to their benefit: secessionists lobbying to create the largest possible Confederacy and Union supporters working to limit possible secession, thus ensuring the ultimate supremacy of the United States of America.
Hooper soon discovered that perceptions of Mormon disloyalty and differences with the national government concerning political appointments, coupled with the Republican’s “twin relics” platform that linked the Mormons’ interests with those of the Confederacy, had placed Utah Territory in the middle of the secession question. While far removed from the emerging Southern nation in both location and culture, the Mormons were being closely identified with the Southern cause. Early in the session Hooper noted: “Utah’s geographical position is much spoken of, and what will be Utah's course. The secessionists say of course Utah will go for secession. The Union party says that geographical position with the great political future that is in store for her will induce her to go for the Union.”22
Initially Hooper chose to defuse talk about Utah secession, hoping to alleviate fears and change the popular image of the Mormons. He initially responded to inquiries regarding what course the Mormons would take by stating that they had a “strong attachment to the Constitution,” which they “loved and respected” and considered “the work of God,” and that they had “Union sentiments.”23 Hooper also acknowledged that while the Mormons had difficulties with the national government, he “consider[ed] we can redress our grievances better in the Union than out of it.”24 This course, Hooper reported to Young, was highly commended by Unionists and prompted one politician to proclaim that “it afforded him pleasure to find Utah for the Union as secession in the center of the country would be serious.”25
In addition to publicly proclaiming the Mormon position, Hooper believed that it was important to present some tangible evidence of Mormon loyalty. Consequently, he determined to present the 1856 constitution and memorial asking for the admission of Utah as the State of Deseret. “From this,” he wrote, “they can fully understand where we stand, when others are trying to get out, we are trying to get in. Am I right? Eh!”26 To ensure that Republicans fully appreciated the significance of this statehood request, Hooper determined to wait until after the first secession occurred before presenting Utah’s petition. In the meantime, he informed Young, he was expressing “our love, and our wish to adhere to the Constitution and the Union, and as evidence we now ask to be made one of the family.”27
As Hooper informed fellow Congressmen of his intentions, he began to believe that the political situation had made statehood an attainable end. In statements that reflected more rhetoric than reality, several Republicans told Hooper that they “would gladly ‘swap’ the Gulf States for Utah.” 28 During his second week in Washington, Hooper noted that “at least upon Utah's admission there is a strong feeling to let her in, even by men who hooted at the idea a year ago. My impression is that the House will vote for her admission.”29 The feeling that Utah’s delegate received was that threequarters of the Republicans would vote for admission.30
In a letter subsequently published in the Deseret News, Utah’s residents were told of both the possibility of statehood and the reason that politicians were more receptive to Utah’s petition in December 1860 than in years past:
While Hooper was responding to unfolding events in the nation’s capital by pushing statehood, two thousand miles away Young was advocating just such a course. He also instructed Hooper to advocate for the right of territorial home rule if statehood was not attainable: “[We] trust . . . that you will use all the influence at your control that our officers may be elected by
the people, as they of right should be, or . . . that they be appointed from among our citizens.”32
Before Young's letter reached Hooper, additional events were unfolding in Washington that pointed towards the promise of Utah statehood or the right of the territory’s residents to choose their own officials. In an effort to ward off secession, a special Committee of Thirty-three Representatives—one from each state but South Carolina, which refused to participate—was appointed to seek a solution. Although little resulted from the committee's work, it did draft a bill as a conciliatory gesture to the slave states that would admit New Mexico as a slave state. Two Republicans, fearful that this effort was only addressing part of the problem, set forth measures aimed at keeping the territories in the Union. Representative John Sherman of Ohio, the younger brother of William Tecumseh Sherman, proposed a bill which would allow all territories to be admitted as states regardless of population, provided they had a republican form of government. 33 Representative William Kellogg of Illinois was not disposed to offer statehood, but was willing to allow the territories to be self-governing by giving them the power to elect their own officials rather than having them appointed.34
Abraham Lincoln.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
In light of the Mormon’s past difficulties, it is not surprising that Hooper would write of Kellogg’s measure, “This to us would be almost sovereignty.”35 What is surprising is that Hooper would boldly claim that if either measure passed, “The credit . . . is due to Utah.”36
Even should Sherman’s or Kellogg’s bills fail to become law, the future still looked bright. Hooper had heard from a number of sources that president-elect Lincoln intended to allow the territories to choose their own officials.37 The enthusiasm generated by these positive overtures caused Hooper to conclude, “Of better times coming . . . is but a little longer.”38
While the signs led Hooper to believe that statehood was attainable, he also learned that it would not necessarily be easy. As with previous attempts, opposition was being raised to Utah becoming a state. The opposition this time was from Southerners who wanted to prevent the Mormon-controlled territory from uniting with Union supporters.
Because Northerners controlled the House and had expressed wide-spread support for Utah statehood, the numbers seemed sufficient to overcome Southern opposition. The outcome in the Senate, however, where Radical Southerners wielded a powerful influence, was less certain. However, as Hooper saw it, once states began to secede from the Union and Southern politicians began returning home, it would only be a matter of time until the Senate was controlled by a majority who would vote for Utah statehood. Once he had put forth Utah’s petition, he only had to wait until Northerners controlled both chambers and would make the Mormon territory a state rather than risk secession in the west.39
All of this led the Mormon delegate to conclude privately, “The peculiar turn which matters have taken politically has, I think, changed their views on polygamy very considerable ”40 But in a more subdued moment, Hooper wrote what turned out to be the most accurate summation of the situation when, after reporting the impending possibility of statehood, he simply noted, “I may be mistaken.”41
On December 31, 1860, eleven days after South Carolina seceded from the Union, Hooper took advantage of a call for business from the territories and presented Utah's memorial and constitution. Although he was able to get both documents published and submitted to the Committee on Territories for study and recommendation, objection was made to the memorial being read before the House.42 As expected, the objection came from a “Southern quarter” of the House.43
Having presented Utah’s statehood petition, Hoper did not sit idly by. While he realized that Southern opposition could be overcome through continued secession, he worried that Northerners otherwise willing to act might object to the 1856 date on the memorial and constitution. He concluded that the date might not necessarily present a problem if Utah's current legislature endorsed the 1856 constitution. On the same day he initiated Utah's statehood attempt, Hooper penned a letter to George A. Smith, a prominent member of the Utah Legislature, expressing his concern and recommending immediate action to endorse the 1856 constitution.44
Hooper was also not above political gamesmanship and playing upon prevailing fears to help push the cause of statehood. There were times when he noted that “to refuse us with the crisis now pending–when dissolution is inevitable–may drive us to the alternative of setting up for ourselves and carving out our own destiny.” 45 Young would subsequently write his delegate encouraging him to adopt a similar policy: “The Republicans, if wide awake, will, I think, be smart enough to understand the policy of laboring for our admission, and act accordingly. Should any Member have any dubiety on this point, you can remark to him that, in these hurrying times, Utah, after patiently waiting so long, may not feel disposed to again trouble Congress with a petition for admission.”46
Both Young and Hooper knew that this posturing was hollow and that Hooper could not emphatically press the issue when challenged. Young never seriously entertained the possibility of leaving the Union and even worried that "plausible pretexts against us would tend more than aught else to heal the present breach and unite them in a crusade to Utah, like the Irishman and his wife, who both pitched into the man who parted them when fighting."47
Even had Young intended to carry out this threat, the political landscape changed in January 1861. As the possibility of civil war loomed larger, the same secessions from the Union that pushed Hooper to petition for statehood now persuaded Northerners to reevaluate their attitudes regarding the Mormons. As Southern delegations began leaving Washington, D.C., for home and their anticipated Southern nation, they seemed to have taken Union support for Utah statehood with them. Republicans, initially anxious about secession, were now becoming more resolute with each new defection. Consequently, Sherman's measure granting statehood did not make it out of committee. One week after presenting the Mormons' petition for statehood, Hooper conceded that he had "but a little hope" of Utah being admitted that session.48
United States Capitol, under construction in 1860.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
By the end of January, support for Utah becoming one of the states in the Union was nearly non-existent. On January 30, 1861, the Committee on Territories informed Hooper that it would recommend against Utah becoming a state. The reason given was a lack of population. “I told them,” Hooper reported, “when they did not want to do anything, it was always easy to find an excuse.”49 The real reason was evident. The impending national crisis had not really changed feelings concerning the Mormons and polygamy.
In spite of this setback, Hooper had not given up on statehood as either a means of showing Utah loyalty or as the ultimate end result. During the first part of February he continued to stump for Utah statehood. Rather than playing upon the nation’s suspicion of the Mormons leaving the Union, he returned to emphasizing his territory's loyalty to the Union, representing “her as being strong ‘Union’ in feeling, without being ultra,” and declaring the Mormons’ willingness “to become one of, and to share the fate of the States in this their darkest hour.”50 But given the Mormon practice of polygamy, none of the approaches Hooper used were going to work. As long as Republicans were willing to risk war with those who clung to the twin relic of slavery, they were unlikely to readily embrace those who practiced the other twin relic.51 On February 15, 1861, Hooper wrote Young reporting that Utah would not be granted statehood.52
While the possibility of Utah becoming a state in the Union was fading, another statehood option presented itself. On at least two occasions during the secession crisis, Southern leaders, in an attempt to strengthen their position, invited Utah to become one of the Confederate states.
The first invitation grew out of a nationwide financial panic resulting from the secession crisis. Because members of Congress were unable to draw a salary, on December 24, 1860, Hooper wrote Orlando Davis, a member of the Mississippi legislature and a lawyer handling the settlement of an estate from which Hooper was to receive payment, to inquire about money owed him. Hooper closed his letter by informing the Mississippian: “Utah . . . will make an effort to come into the Union (if there is one left) under the Constitution made and submitted to her citizens in l856 to which until the present has been treated with disdain and a deaf ear has been given to her many supplications.”53
The importance of statehood to the Mormons was not lost upon Davis. On January 13, 1861, four days after the Mississippi Legislature passed the ordinance of secession which he had helped draft, Davis responded to Hooper's letter and addressed Utah's statehood desire:
Davis did not indicate by what authority he made this invitation and could offer statehood. Whether he spoke for his fellow secessionists in the four states which had left the Union at the time, or whether he reflected only his belief in the Southern cause, Hooper did not dismiss the offer out of hand, likely because of another statehood overture which added validity to Davis's invitation.
Near the end of the Civil War, Mormon Apostle John Taylor told of a different invitation presented to Hooper during the secession crisis. According to Taylor, Hooper “was approached by two members of Congress from the South who said that [the Mormons] had grievances to redress, and that then was the time to have them redressed, stating what great support it would give the Southern cause if Utah was to rise in rebellion against the government.” Taylor reported that Hooper replied that “[the Mormons] had difficulties with the government, but [they] calculated they would be righted in the government or [they] would endure them.”55
Taking such a position did not come easily for Hooper. In early January
1861 Hooper had written to an old boyhood friend, “You and myself occupy something alike in this trouble–both the natives of slave states, and to a certain extent sympathetic with them. . . . so far as the injuries the South have received from the North. But we can never side with her breaking up this our Fatherland, no Never–Never.”56
While Hooper would take a similar stand when he replied to Davis’s letter, he would not be so emphatic, largely because of the change in fortune regarding Utah statehood. When Hooper had written his childhood friend, statehood seemed feasible; when he responded to Davis, the possibility of becoming a state in the Union no longer existed.
Construction work on the US Capitol Dome in 1860.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
On February 19, 1861, two days after the Confederate States of America was established, Hooper responded to Davis’s invitation. While Hooper’s answer to Davis is a poignant plea against a course which he saw leading towards war, it also illustrates Hooper’s conflicting loyalties. Even as he condemned the secession movement and asked Southerners to consider coming back into the Union, the Mormon delegate left open the possibility that Utah might leave it at some future time. It was as if Hooper had found himself caught between his religion, which would not allow him to promise Mormon support, and his Southern sentiment, which would not allow him to close the door on the possibility:
Even though no realistic possibility of statehood remained in either the Union or the Confederacy, by the time Hooper responded to Davis he was once again making plans to re-submit Utah's constitution. This was not done out of any delusions about achieving statehood, but rather in hopes that he could use it to help preserve the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land.
Although Hooper had initially welcomed and courted the widespread spirit of compromise in hopes of gaining statehood for Utah, by late January 1861 he had come to see the paradox of trying to save the Union by means of compromises which ultimately undermined the Constitution and weakened the nation. To compromise with border states and territories, he concluded, was “tantamount to agreeing to let the seceding states alone,” an arrangement which would not guarantee the permanency of the nation.58 If the Constitution was supreme, Union supporters could not weaken its principles by giving in to secessionist threats.
By the middle of February 1861, the enabling act drafted by the Committee of Thirty-three admitting New Mexico as a state was ready for debate in the House. In anticipation that Northerners might seriously consider passing this compromise bill, Hooper prepared an amendment that would admit Utah as a state. In doing this, he hoped that the negative feelings regarding Mormons and polygamy would cast a shadow over the bill and thus override any desire to pass this conciliatory gesture. “I have no hope for success,” he wrote Young, “but I can get the sense of the House, and I think kill the New Mexico bill.”59 In addition to killing the bill, Hooper, ever the optimist, noted another benefit. “We will get the first vote upon the admission of Utah.”60 But even in this Hooper was denied. At the time the New Mexico enabling act was presented in the House on February 18, Hooper informed his colleagues that he would introduce his amendment at the appropriate time. When that time arrived on March 1, a motion was put forth almost immediately to table the New Mexico bill. Shortly thereafter Hooper got the floor, but strong objection was raised to his presenting his amendment. It was all academic, however, as a few minutes later the House voted to table the New Mexico enabling act.61
While all hope for statehood had vanished, the possibility of home rule continued to burn bright. Although William Kelley’s bill never made it out of committee, a new opportunity presented itself. As in the previous session, bills were introduced which would create Nevada Territory from the western portion of Utah and a territory from the eastern section to be called Colorado Territory. Unlike the measure brought forward in the previous session, however, these new territories were to be created in addition to Utah Territory rather than replacing it. While these bills would dramatically decrease the size of Utah Territory, they both initially contained provisions which would allow territorial residents the opportunityof choosing their own officials. If these bills passed, Hooper learned, a similar privilege would be extended to territories already in existence.62
Hooper shared Young’s view that the right of a territory to be selfgoverning had been unjustly usurped by the president and Congress and that constitutional law needed to be restored.63 Along these lines Young had previously informed Hooper that he was willing to see the size of Utah reduced in exchange for the right of self rule.64 However, when Colorado Territory was created on February 28, 1861, and Nevada Territory two days later, Congress had not modified the method by which leaders of territories were chosen.65
With this exclusion, Hooper’s last hope for home rule that year was extinguished in the legislative branch but the possibility of home rule through the executive branch remained. Following the March 4, 1861, inauguration of Lincoln, Hooper turned his attention to the new president. Because Utah’s governor Alfred Cumming, a native of Georgia, had indicated that he would return to his native state in the event it seceded, Hooper began lobbying for Young to replace Cumming as governor, a suggestion “hooted at by some, cursed at by others, commended by many.”66 On March 11, Hooper went to meet with the new chief executive regarding the appointment of territorial officials for Utah.
For three hours Hooper waited unsuccessfully to meet with the president, “such was the crowd.”67 While Hooper would eventually meet with Lincoln on the subject, the rebellious Southern states and the establishment of the first Republican administration took precedence for the new president over Utah.
Justin Morrill.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Shortly after the firing on Fort Sumter, Young wrote Hooper stating that “if not too late” Utah’s delegate might again suggest that it would be in the government's best interest to appoint officials from within the territory, inasmuch as “territories as well as states are liable to become restive in these exciting times.”68 However, it was too late, except on terms the government had established, terms that Mormons would be unable to meet until Wilford Woodruff issued his famous manifesto nearly thirty years later publicly pronouncing the beginning of the end of the practice of polygamy.69
Although Young would write Hooper that “appoint as [the president] may, it would appear to be an ill chosen time to again endeavor to foist upon us broken down political hacks and the political hungry and poor from outside our borders,” that is exactly what happened.70 When Lincoln finally got around to replacing Cumming in the fall of 1861, he appointed John Dawson whose “political ‘qualifications’ for the job exceeded any other obvious personal qualifications,” and who would leave Utah under a cloud after serving less than a month as governor. 71 Lincoln would subsequently appoint two other governors and other presidents would continue to appoint territorial officials until statehood was finally obtained in 1896.
When Hooper left again for his mountain home following the end of the Second Session of the Thirty-Sixth Congress, concerns regarding Mormon loyalty to the Union had largely been allayed. 72 While the rhetoricaltie between polygamy and slavery still existed, an actual alliance had not been created—but only because Hooper and the Mormons would not seriously entertain the possibility of such a coalition. The Republicancontrolled Congress was still opposed to polygamy and in 1862 they overwhelmingly passed Justin Morrill’s anti-polygamy bill. Although Abraham Lincoln chose not to enforce the act during the Civil War, allowing the Mormons to ignore the law in exchange for not becoming directly involved in the conflict on the side of the Confederacy, it was the opening salvo in what would eventually be an extended anti-polygamy campaign.73
During the next thirty years, the other petitions the Utah legislature drafted regarding statehood would likewise fail to receive Congressional approval.74 Only when polygamy seemed to follow slavery along the path to extinction would statehood for Utah again seem as possible as it had for one small bright moment during America’s dark winter of 1860-61.
NOTES
Chad M. Orton is an archivist and history specialist with the Church History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He holds a master’s degree in history from Brigham Young University.
1 Overviews of Utah's statehood efforts can be found in Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986); Gustive O. Larson, The “Americanization” of Utah for Statehood (San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1970); and Howard R. Lamar, “Statehood for Utah: A Different Path,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Fall 1971): 307-27.
2 While the fact that Eldredge was out of the territory and it was not known if he would accept the position played a role in Hooper’s nomination, Young may have also had second thoughts about Eldredge. When Young first proposed Eldredge as delegate, James Ferguson “objected to him on the ground that he was deficient in education and suggested A. Carrington and said that he had conversed with a great many people in relation to Eldridge and found him generally opposed by them.” Historian’s Office Journal, July 1, 1859, LDS Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.
For more information on the 1859 election see Stanford O. Cazier, “The Life of William Henry Hooper, Merchant Statesman” (Master's thesis, University of Utah, 1956), 36-40.
3 Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout 2 vols., reprint edition (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1982), 2:695, 700, 702.
4 Records, 1852-59, Salt Lake City Recorders’ Office, MS A5290 typescript, Utah State Historical Society.
5 As printed in the Deseret News, February 18, 1860. A contemporary Mormon historian wrote of Hooper: “The great advantage which Hooper possessed, and which enabled him to master the situation, was in [his] thorough appreciation of the views and shapings of both sides. Therefore, while the delegate was prepared to stand by his people, in defense of all their constitutional rights, and to ward off any new difficulty, he was equally ready to ‘see eye to eye’ with members of Congress.” Edward W. Tullidge, Life of Brigham Young; or, Utah and Her Founders (New York: s.n., 1876), 384.
6 For an overview of slavery in Utah see Dennis L. Lythgoe, “Negro Slavery in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Winter 1971): 40-54. See also, Christopher B. Rich, Jr., “The True Policy for Utah: Servitude, Slavery, and “An Act in Relation to Service,” Utah Historical Quarterly 80 (Winter 2012): 54-74.
In addition to slavery, polygamy was also legal in Utah Territory under the provisions of “popular sovereignty.” For discussions regarding the Mormon practice of plural marriage see Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986) and B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 1992).
7 Donald Bruce Johnson, comp., National Party Platforms, 2 vols. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 1:27.
8 John M. Bernhisel to Brigham Young, March 17, 1857. All correspondence between Brigham Young and William H. Hooper and between Young and John M. Bernhisel is part of the Utah Delegate Files, Brigham Young Office Files, LDS Church History Library. Unless otherwise noted, other letters to and from Hooper are from the William H. Hooper Letterpress Copybooks, 1859-63, LDS Church History Library.
9 Studies of the Utah Expedition include Norman F. Furniss, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960; and William P. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part I: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier, vol. 10 (Norman: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008).
10 After nearly two years of inaction on Utah’s statehood petition, a frustrated Young wrote to Bernhisel in 1858 imploring him to “do as we request you, if you have to leave Washington within half an hour afterwards.”Young to Bernhisel, May 6, 1858.
11 Brigham Young to William H. Hooper, January 5, 1860.
12 This statehood effort is briefly discussed in Richard D. Poll, "The Mormon Question, 1850-1865: A Study in Politics and Public Opinion" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1958), 231-32.
13 Hooper to Young, March 20, 1860.
14 Hooper to George A Smith, March 27, 1860, George A. Smith Papers, LDS Church History Library.
15 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 1st Session (1860): 1150-1151, 1409-1412, 1492-1501, 15121523, 1540-1544, 1557-1559; Appendix, 181-202; Richard D. Poll, "The Twin Relic: A Study of Mormon Polygamy and the Campaign by the Government of the United States for Its Abolition, 1852-1890" (Master's thesis, Texas Christian University, 1939), 97, 100-111.
16 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 1st Session (1860), 1411-1412.
17 Ibid., 1858.
18 Hooper to Young, December 4, 1860.
19 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.
20 Hooper to Young, December 11, 1860.
21 Hooper to Charles C. Rich, December 29, 1860.
22 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.
23 Hooper to Young, December 4, 1860; Hooper to James H. Martineau, January 8, 1861.
Although Mormon rhetoric during this time was often antagonistic towards the actions of government leaders who they felt were undermining the Constitution, theologically the Mormons could not abandon a nation that they viewed as having been established by God nor a Constitution that Mormon scripture declared was written “by the hands of wise men” whom God had “raised up unto this very purpose.” The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, rev. ed., (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1982), 101:80.
24 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.
25 Hooper to Young, December 4, 1860.
26 Ibid. (Emphasis in original.)
27 Ibid., December 11, 1860.
28 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.
29 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.
30 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.
31 “Interesting from the East,” Deseret News, December 26, 1860.
32 Young to Hooper, November 15, 1860.
33 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 77-78.
34 Hooper to Young, December 18, 1860.
35 Hooper to W. H. Dame, December 16, 1860.
36 Hooper to Young, December 18, 1860.
37 Ibid., November 23, 1860.
38 Hooper to W. H. Dame, December 16, 1860.
39 Hooper to E. Smith and J. Ferguson, December 10, 1860.
40 Hooper to Young, December 11, 1860. (Emphasis in original.)
41 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, December 16, 1860.
42 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 219.
43 Hooper to Young, January 4, 1861.
44 William H. Hooper to George A. Smith, December 31, 1860. Brigham Young, also anticipated concerns regarding the date on the constitution and wrote his delegate four days before Hooper submitted Utah’s petition recommending that he “alter the dates” on it. Young to Hooper, December 27, 1860. A week later he again wrote Hooper explaining his thinking: “In relation to the papers in your hands touching the admission of Utah, I do not consider that their date effects the matter, for the date holds equally good as though made by the present assembly; and from that you are privileged to make the date to please yourself. . . . The Assembly may see proper to memorialize Congress upon the subject, not that it can materially aid your operations, if at all; and there is not much prospect of its reaching you in time.” Young to Hooper, January 3, 1861. (Emphasis in original.)
45 Hooper to Young, December 11, 1860.
46 Young to Hooper, January 3, 1861.
47 Ibid., April 11, 1861.
48 Hooper to James H. Martineau, January 8, 1861.
49 Hooper to Young, January 30, 1861.
50 Hooper to George Q. Cannon, February 1, 1861. (Emphasis in original.)
51 What Mormon historian Orson F. Whitney wrote of a later statehood attempt seemingly would also apply to the events of 1861: "Had the Mormons been willing to abandon polygamy . . . thus meeting the Republican Party halfway, it is not improbable that Utah, in view of her loyal attitude, might have been admitted into the Union." Orson F. Whitney, History of Utah, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: George Q. Cannon and Sons, 1892-1904), 2:59.
52 Hooper to Young, February 15, 1861.
53 Hooper to Orlando Davis, December 24, 1860.
54 Orlando Davis to Hooper, January 13, 1861.
55 “Remarks, by Elder John Taylor,” Deseret News, March 29, 1865. Taylor, who succeeded Brigham Young as Mormon church president, notes that he had only learned about this invitation the day prior to giving his March 5, 1865, discourse.
Additional information about Hooper’s meeting with these Southern leaders is not known. While it is likely that Hooper, who kept a “daily journal and endeavor[ed] to note down every item which I think would be useful as a matter of History,” wrote about what transpired in his journal, that record is currently not extant. Hooper to George A. Smith, December 31, 1860.
56 Hooper to “Vick,” January 7, 1861.
57 Hooper to Orlando Davis, February 19, 1861.
58 Hooper to Young, January 30, 1861.
59 Ibid., February 15, 1861.
60 Ibid., February 28, 1861.
61 Congressional Globe, 36th Congress, 2nd Session (1861), 999, 1327.
62 Hooper to Young, January 30, 1861.
63 In early January 1861, Young wrote Hooper “that right [of self-rule] is inherent in the people in Territories, as well as in the States, so far as the Constitution or Constitutional laws are concerned; and they have been deprived of that right through the arbitrary exercise of an usage by England to the Colonies.” Young to Hooper, January 3, 1861.
64 Young had instructed Hooper prior to the First Session, “In no event suffer boundaries to interfere with our admission, unless they undertake to run said boundary line through Great Salt Lake City.” Young to Hooper, September 16, 1859.
65 Upon learning of the creation of Colorado and Nevada territories, Young wrote Hooper: “We are advised that Colorado Territory is organized, with 109 for its west boundary, which suits us well, and we are in hopes that Nevada is also organized with 115 or 116, we do not much care which, for its east boundary, for that organization would rid our ears of much clamor in our western borders.” Young to Hooper, March 21, 1861.
66 Hooper to Young, March 12, 1861.
67 Ibid.
68 Young to Hooper, April 25, 1861.
69 For overviews of the Manifesto see Henry J. Wolfinger, “A Reexamination of the Woodruff Manifesto in the Light of Utah Constitutional History,” Utah Historical Quarterly 39 (Fall 1971): 328-49; Jan Shipps, “The Principle Revoked: A Closer Look at the Demise of Plural Marriage,” Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 65-77; and Thomas G. Alexander, Things in Heaven and Earth: The Life and Times of Wilford Woodruff, a Mormon Prophet (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991): 261-73.
70 Young to Hooper, April 18, 1861.
71 Mark E. Neely, “President Lincoln, Polygamy, and the Civil War: The Case of Dawson and Deseret,”Lincoln Lore 1644 (February 1975): 2. For an overview of Utah-related events during the Civil War see E. B. Long, The Saints and the Union: Utah Territory during the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981).
72 When the telegraph was completed to Utah in October 1861, the first message Brigham Young sent noted that “Utah has not seceded but is firm for the Constitution.” Partly because of Hooper’s steadfastness to this position during the secession crisis, Young’s message failed to receive widespread notice. For a look at how Young’s message was reported see Gaylon L. Caldwell, “‘Utah Has Not Seceded’: A Footnote to Local History,” Utah Historical Quarterly 23 (April 1958): 171-75.
73 President Lincoln related to T. B. H. Stenhouse that when he was a boy and was clearing the land on his farm he came to a log that was "too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move," so he plowed around it, and that was the position he planned to take regarding the Mormons and their practice of polygamy: "I will let them alone, if they will let alone.”
Preston Nibley, Brigham Young: The Man and His Work (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1937), 369; Young to George Q. Cannon, June 25, 1863, Letterpress copybooks, Brigham Young Office Files, Church History Library.
74 Details of the anti-polygamy campaign can be found in Poll, “The Twin Relic,” 93-296; Richard D. Poll, “The Legislative Anti-Polygamy Campaign,” BYU Studies 26 (Fall 1986): 109-121; Ray Jay Davis, “The Polygamous Prelude,” The American Journal of Legal History 6 (1962): 1-27; Edwin Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum, Zion in the Courts: A Legal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 129-209; and Howard R. Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Territorial History (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1970), 352-411.
