The Mormon Question Enters National Politics, 1850-1856

utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 25, 1957, Nos. 1-4

THE MORMON QUESTION ENTERS NATIONAL POLITICS, 1850-1856

BY RICHARD D. POLL

IN the years immediately preceding the Civil War, the "Mormon Question" figured in American life in a dual capacity. On one hand, the peculiarities of the Latter-day Saints appealed to the reform spirit which was particularly strong at the time. On the other hand, the assumed desirability of prohibiting the "domestic institution" of plural marriage suggested to antislavery spokesmen the political argument which was embodied in the "twin relics of barbarism" plank of the Republican platform of 1856. If Congress did not have the power to curb the marital excesses of the Saints, how were they to be checked? And if Congress did have such power, might it not also be exercised to exclude the "peculiar institution" of the South from the territories? The interrelation of reformism and sectionalism in the national approach to Utah affairs is one of the intriguing features of the history of the ante-bellum decade.

Neither the moral nor the political aspect of the "Mormon Question" appears to have been noticed in the organization of Utah Territory. On the contrary, the desultory discussions of Utah during the debates on the Compromise of 1850 prompted Delegate John M. Bernhisel to write to Brigham Young: "The ignorance of the collected wisdom of the nation in regard to our region of country is most profound." The rejection of Deseret's bid for statehood was an aspect of the contest for sectional advantage, rather than a judgment upon any of the qualifications of the residents of the Great Basin except, perhaps, their insufficient numbers. Failure of the effort to attach the Wilmot Proviso to the organic act caused antislavery congressmen to lose interest in Utah, and the Mormons were indebted to Southerners and Northern advocates of "popular sover> eignty" for the government which they received.

What was true in 1850 remained true even after the discomfited withdrawal of three federal appointees from Utah and the public avowal of plural marriage in 1852 moved the Saints into the limelight. Prior to the Civil War, no major congressional decision regarding the governmental or legal status of the Mormons was made on a non-partisan basis. Though congressmen soon developed a unanimity of opinion concerning the social customs of the Saints which they lacked in 1850, when the time came to embody oratory in legislative action, votes were cast in terms of national political considerations.

It was the episode of the "runaway justices" which brought the "Mormon Question" into national prominence for the first time. Though the refugee officials did much to discredit themselves, their lurid accounts of polygamy, treason, and Church-inspired murder directed the nation's attention to Utah. The debates in the spring of 1852 on a bill to pay the officials for their services, were the first significant rehearsal of the peculiarities of the Mormons in the halls of Congress.

The bill passed and the country's attention turned to other things, but the Utah delegate wrote to Governor Young on July 8 that "it cannot be denied that we do not stand where we did prior to this explosion."'

In one particular respect, Bernhisel's verdict was notably true. Plural marriage, which had been practiced by a growing minority of the Church members since the early 1840's but had been consistently denied by Mormon publicists, was so thoroughly advertised by the irate officials that its concealment was no longer possible. Even before the doctrine was officially announced at a special conference in Salt Lake City on August 29, 1852, various LDS spokesmen undertook its open defense—a defense which, unfortunately for the tranquility of Utah, did not convert many Gentile opponents of the patriarchal order of marriage. On the contrary, the strenuous missionary program undertaken by the Church in this period only made it difficult for Americans to forget, even if they had been disposed to forget, a topic so fraught with human interest as Mormonism.

Nor would the Church leaders refrain from supplying grist for the mills of their distant critics. Despite Bernhisel's fervent appeals for moderation in speeches on temporal affairs, Utah orators were often carried away by their confidence in the overruling hand of Providence and made statements which, especially when quoted out of context, created a very unfavorable impression in the East. By all odds the most famous of these was Brigham Young's "I am and will be Governor, and no power can hinder it until the Lord Almighty says, 'Brigham, you need not be Governor any longer,'. . . ." Such expressions could hardly be overlooked at a time when the question of federal authority over the territories was threatening to split the Union.

On January 4, 1854, Senator Stephen A. Douglas reported the Kansas-Nebraska Bill from the Committee on Territories. Its hectic course through Congress need not be here described, but the prin- 1 ciple of "popular sovereignty" which it embodied suggested a line of argument which opponents of slavery extension used with enthusiasm during the next few years.

The Missouri Compromise principle of dividing newly-acquired lands into slave and free territories had not been followed when Utah and New Mexico were organized in 1850 with the proviso that when they were ready for statehood, they should be received into the Union "with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission." But neither was expected to obtain statehood soon, and other provisions of the great compromise were even more disagreeable to antislavery agitators than was the territorial concession.

That portion of the unorganized Indian country which lay athwart the central emigrant routes to California and Oregon was a different matter. Its population was expanding, and should the much-discussed transcontinental railroad be built across it, the probability was that it would qualify for admission as one or two states in the near future. Southern statesmen were just as determined to extend the right of slaveholding to this area north of 36°30' as antislavery congressmen were to resist it. When members read, therefore, that it was proposed to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and that it was "the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States," the battle was joined.

The fact that Utah was one of the precedents for the Kansas- Nebraska Bill probably called attention to the communities in the Great Basin, and the very language of the measure invited the interjection of Mormonism into the discussion. Some of the men who were soon to become pillars in the Republican party were not loath to accept the invitation. William H. Seward, then a Whig Senator from New York, countered a Biblical justification for slavery by remarking that he, too, admired the simplicity of "patriarchal times. But they nevertheless exhibited some peculiar institutions ... namely, that of a latitude of construction of the marriage contract, which has been carried by one class of so-called patriarchs into Utah. Certainly no one would desire to extend that peculiar institution into Nebraska."

Massachusetts Free-Soil Senator Charles Sumner took a different approachs

... I presume no person could contend that a polygamous husband, resident in one of the States, would be entitled to enter the national Territory with his harem—his property if you please—and there claim immunity. Clearly, when he passes the bounds of that local jurisdiction which sanctions polygamy, the peculiar domestic relation would cease; and it is precisely the same with Slavery.

Not only would the principles of the pending law permit polygamy in the territories, but, as Senator Truman Smith pointed out, Utah could apply for statehood with a constitution sanctioning plural marriage, and Congress would have no alternative but to admit her. The Connecticut member described in vivid terms the predicament which would confront the gallant senator from Illinois when he had to welcome Brigham Young as a fellow-congressman and assist his forty wives to seats in the chamber. Douglas's association with the Saints during the Nauvoo period of the Church made him vulnerable to such gibes, but he made no public attempt to vindicate his doctrine of "popular sovereignty" from these charges until the famous Springfield speech of June 12, 1857.

While the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was still before Congress, the "Mormon Question" came to the attention of that body through another legislative proposal. For when President Franklin Pierce recommended the extension of the federal land system to New Mexico and Utah, "subject to such modifications as their peculiarities may require," the House Committee on Public Lands took him literally, and reported a bill creating the office of surveyorgeneral for Utah but subjecting land donations to this reservation: "That the benefits of this act shall not extend to any person who shall now, or at any time hereafter, be the husband of more than one wife." Delegate Bernhisel's motion to strike the proviso was warmly debated, Yankee denunciations of Mormon customs being countered by Southern insistence that the end did not justify the means. Queried Democrat Lawrence M. Keitt, of South Carolina: "If it be unconstitutional to legislate on the subject of polygamy itself, is it not unconstitutional, in donating the public lands, to impose a restriction which indirectly effects the same thing?" To which Hiram Walbridge, a New York Democrat, made a reply which was to be echoed by Mormon-reforming congressmen for decades: "I do not propose to say whether it is constitutional or not. I am viewing this as a great moral question... ."

Ultimately the bill was left undecided, and in the next session a new bill was substituted, which omitted the land donation provision and called only for the surveying of land and the setting aside of school sections. The "popular sovereignty" implications of the controversy being thus removed, the bill became law on February 16, 1855. A surveyor-general was therefore sent to Utah, but the benefits of the public land system were not extended to the people of that territory until 1869."

Antislavery members had been quick to see the incompatibility between the initial Democratically-sponsored land measure and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and used their support of the former as an argument against the principles of the latter. In calling attention to the dilemma of the majority party, Ohio's irrepressible Giddings also touched a subject extremely irritating to Southern members:

From the commencement of the discussion upon the Nebraska question to this day, scarcely a southern man has spoken who has not sneered at, condemned, and repudiated all attempts "to interfere with the domestic institutions of our Territories." They are now in favor of interfering with the domestic institution of marriage in Utah, among the Mormons. . . . How long are we to sit here, and see gentlemen assume one position to-day and another to-morrow? When will gentlemen upon this floor learn that the people of this great nation expect something like consistency of action on the part of their statesmen?. ... I would deal out to the Mormon the same measure of justice and freedom that I would give to the citizens of Nebraska, with their hundreds of concubines. I will permit the Mormon to enjoy his dozen wives, and I believe I could do it with a great deal better conscience than I could give the slaveholder the privilege of an unlimited number of concubines. . . . Mr. Chairman, if you will adopt a rule, I will follow it. I would deal out the same measure of justice to the Mormons that I would give to those of Nebraska. I would exclude slavery and polygamy from both, and from all territories.

The Republican platform of 1856 can be seen taking form. As long as "popular sovereignty" remained a tenet of the Democratic party, foes of the principle used the "Mormon Question" to muddy the waters of sectional controversy.

They did so in the congressional campaign of 1854, in which the newly-elected Kansas-Nebraska Act came under heavy fire from the newly-formed Republican party. The nickname "Polygamy Harris" was applied to the Democratic candidate from Springfield, Illinois, district, and his party journal was compelled to lash out vehemently against the "Utah Humbug." Iowa went Whig in support of a gubernatorial candidate who assailed polygamy quite as much as slavery extension, and in the campaign which launched his long congressional career, Schuyler Colfax of Indiana worked the "Mormon Question" into his attack. When the Democratic incumbent admitted that party principles would compel him to vote for the admission of Utah even with polygamy, the Whig-Republican editor announced that he would not, "and if the good people of this district expect any such vote of me, they should not send me to Congress."

Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that Pierce concluded to appoint a non-Mormon governor for Utah when the four year term of Brigham Young expired late in 1854. But Lieutenant Colonel E. J. Steptoe's refusal to accept the appointment left the religio-political situation in the Great Basin substantially unchanged, Young continuing to function as governor until his replacement during the Utah War. An interlude of relative peace followed Steptoe's departure from the territory, but the number of books and periodical articles about the Mormons which appeared in the mid-1850's insured that the topic would not be forgotten when a new season of political campaigning began.

The political repercussions of the popular interest in the "Mormon Question" were threefold in the Congress which met on the eve of the presidential year 1856.

In the first place, anti-polygamy bills and resolutions made their initial appearance in Congress. Not until the Democratic party was split and "popular sovereignty" was defunct did a Republican-controlled Congress enact the Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862.

Secondly, the increasingly frequent references to polygamy in the discussions of sectional issues indicated the growing awareness of the nuisance value of the "Mormon Question." Several antislavery members countered Alexander H. Stephen's Biblical defense of slavery by pointing to the domestic arrangements of "the Father of the Faithful." While one Southern representative ventured the quite logical argument that congressional authority to ban slavery in the territories might be used to foist upon them "Mormonism, Main-lawism, spiritualism, witchcraft," and "all the absurdities characterizing fanaticism," the more plausible case was that which used the necessity for banning polygamy as a justification for the claim of federal jurisdiction over slavery in the territories, as did Ohio's Benjamin Stanton, a Republican. Since statehood for Kansas was the most vexing issue before Congress, it was to be expected that the tie-up would be made in that connection. Declared Senator Seward:

Will you even then end the debate, by binding Kansas with chains, for the safety of slavery in Missouri? Even then you must give over Utah to slavery, to make it secure and permanent in Kansas; and you must give over Oregon and Washington to both polygamy and slavery, so as to guatanty [sic] equally the one and the other of those peculiar domestic institutions in Utah; and so you must go on, sacrificing, on the shrine of peace, Territory after Territory, until the prevailing nationality of freedom and virtue shall be lost, . .

Finally, the people of Utah chose this opportunity to make one of their numerous bids for statehood, apparently deceived concerning the national temper by the relative tranquility which prevailed in their own political affairs. A convention was held in Salt Lake City in March, 1856, and a constitution and memorial were transmitted to Washington by John Taylor and George A. Smith. It did not take them long to discover that the climate in the capital was not favorable to their project, but their presence became known and elicited considerable press comment, some of it linked to the presidential campaign.

A few Democratic papers expressed their willingness to admit Utah, polygamy and all. The New York Herald repeatedly contrasted distraught Kansas and orderly Utah, suggesting that the latter was as qualified for statehood as the former, and posing a "nice question—nicer than niggers—between Congress, and squatter sovereignty. Does Congress or does squatter sovereignty cover the question of polygamy?" Republican papers, of course, rang the changes on the sectional implications of the application of Deseret. "We can hardly express our surprise," editorialized the Ohio Columbian, "that the Democracy will make the admission of Utah with or without Slavery and Polygamy one of its issues when the proper season comes for broaching the subject. . . . What a tricolor for 1 freemen, for Americans, for religion, for progress, to contemplate— Democracy—Slavery—Polygamy!"

Somewhat more subtly, the New York Times made a similar point:

We shall be somewhat curious to see what ground Southern politicians will take upon this question when it comes before Congress. They have been fond of asserting, lately, that Congress was bound to admit new States, without regard to the character of their domestic institutions. If this be true concerning slavery, it must, also, be true concerning polygamy. Utah cannot be excluded upon any theory of power which would not, also, authorize the exclusion of any new Slave State.

Since the issue did not come up in Congress, advocates of "popular sovereignty" could remain non-committal on the dilemma for a time. They were reminded of its existence, however, by Seward, in a speech late in the political campaign, in which he added yet another element to the anti-Mormon argument. "Utah," he dedared to a Republican rally at Auburn, New York, "already organized as a Slave State, with her incestuous social system is lying concealed and waiting, ready to demand admission as soon as Kansas shall have been received. The adoption of both, or even one of these States, will bear heavily, perhaps conclusively, on the fortunes of the entire conflict between Freedom and Slavery."

The existence of slavery in Utah Territory is attested by the census reports of 1850 and I860. That it was a divinely sanctioned institution was declared by President Young in his celebrated interview with Horace Greeley in 1859. And that it was a legally recognized institution in the territory is established by the presence on the statute books of a slave code, enacted by the legislature in 1852, and by provisions in the draft constitutions of 1856, 1860 and 1862 which restrict certain political rights to "free white male" citizens. Seward exaggerated the likelihood of the slave power becoming established in arid and mountainous Utah, but there was a possibility that the common interests of the defenders of slavery and polygamy might cause them to stand together in the "states' rights" cause.

As the presidential contest of 1856 approached, it was thus apparent both within and without Congress that the "Mormon Question" had some value as a "red herring." Its interjection into the campaign was invited by the Democrats, whose Cincinnati platform,adopted June 2, stood foursquare on the principle of the Kansas- Nebraska Act, "NON-INTERFERENCE BY CONGRESS WITH SLAVERY IN STATE AND TERRITORY. . . ."

Two weeks after the Democrats had offered James Buchanan, John C. Breckinridge, and "popular sovereignty" to the electorate, the nascent Republican party met at Philadelphia to nominate John C. Fremont and William L. Dayton. The platform adopted June 17 was a brief, belligerent indictment of the Democratic record, especially ardent on the subject of Kansas, which at this time was torn by civil strife between proslavery and free state settlers. The reading of the plank on "squatter sovereignty" was greeted with tremendous applause:

Resolved: That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign powers over the Territories of the United States for their government; and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism— Polygamy, and Slavery.

The chairman of the platform-drafting committee, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, was well versed on every aspect of the slavery extension controversy, as were members of the group like Massachusetts's Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Francis P. Blair, Sr., of Maryland, and the gentleman whose keen sensibilities on the subject of polygamy have already been indicated—Joshua R. Giddings. Credit for the idea and phraseology of the "twin relics" slogan was claimed, however, by a relatively obscure member of the committee, John A. Wills, of California:

No special instruction was given to me on the subject of polygamy in the territories. But as polygamy was already odious in the public mind and a growing evil, and as both those social institutions rested precisely upon the same constitutional basis, in order to make war upon polygamy, and at the same time strengthen the case against slavery as much as possible, by associating the two together, I determined to couple them together in one and the same resolution.

Giddings, declared Wills a number of years after the event, opposed the resolution because it was unwise to use epithets and because polygamy was already virtually included in the term "slavery," but Blair, "who knew the value of political phrases, as instrumentalities of political warfare," defended the Californian's suggestion and secured its inclusion in the platform.

Further analysis of the campaign of 1856 must precede a definite conclusion, but it appears that "bleeding Kansas" and the brutal caning of Senator Charles Sumner by a Southern representative provided antislavery evangelists with such a plethora of dramatic evidence of the iniquity of "squatter sovereignty" and the "slavocracy" that they did not give major place to the relatively subtle "twin relics" argument. However, Beveridge says that strong attacks were made on Mormonism and polygamy in Illinois, and Thomas Hart Benton's bid for the anti-Mormon vote in his unsuccessful campaign for the governorship of Missouri. In a speech at St. Louis, June 21, he castigated the Democrats and President Pierce for their reluctance to interfere with Brigham Young's control of Utah, "so that this administration is actually responsible to the moral sense of the civilized world for the present continuance of polygamy in the Territory." Much the same sentiment was expressed by Governor Andrew H. Reeder as he stumped the country in behalf of Fremont and strife-ridden Kansas.

Congressmen did not by any means ignore the "twin relics" in the campaign speeches which they delivered to the record in the summer months of 1856. Pointing out that prior to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the federal government had enjoyed sufficient authority "to repress such anomalies of condition as that gross and barbarian one in Utah," Republican Representative John U. Pettit, of Indiana, denounced the "novel and pernicious principle" which "admits the patriarchal institution of Slavery into Utah, and makes it the political twin of that other patriarchal institution, Governor Young's multiplicity of wives. It brings together there, for the first time in Christian lands, the Turkish slave bazaar, and the Turkish harem, and bids them live in love together under the sanction of our laws. . . ."

What John Taylor, then editor of the Mormon in New York City, denounced as "An Artful Dodge" was the distribution at a pre-election rally in Philadelphia of the following handbill—a forgery:

TO THE LATTER DAY SAINTS

THE ELDERS AND RULERS OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS

To the Saints in the United States of America.

Dear Brethren, Faithful Followers of the Lord, and Recipients of His Grace:

We call upon you to stand firm to the principles of our religion in the coming contest for President of the country. Our duty is plain. There are two principal parties in the country, one is for us and the other against us.

The Democratic Convention in Cincinnati, which nominated James Buchanan for President, passed the following resolution:

"Resolved, That Congress has no power under the Constitution to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several States, and that all such States are the sole and proper judges of everything appertaining to their own affairs not prohibited by the Constitution."

This is a principle of the Democratic Party, which they have extended to Territories, as well as States, and the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty applies to us in Deseret, as well as to the settlers in Kansas and Nebraska.

The Democratic Party is the instrument in God's hand, by which is to be effected our recognition as a sovereign State, with the domestic institutions of slavery and polygamy, as established by the patriarchs and prophets of old, under divine authority, and renewed in the saints of Latterdays, through God's chosen rulers and prophets.

In the Republican Convention assembled at Philadelphia, which nominated John C. Fremont for President, it was

"Resolved, That the Constitution confers upon Congress sovereign power over the Territories of the United States for their government, and that in the exercise of this power, it is both the right and imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories, those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery."

This is a blow aimed directly at our rights as citizens of one of the territories, at our sacred institutions and our holy religion. Saints of the Latter-days, to whom God reveals his will through his chosen prophets, stand steadfast in your faith; for the time is at hand which was foretold by the prophets of old, and recorded in the Ancient Scriptures: "And in that day shall seven women lay hold of one man, and they will say, 'let us eat of our own bread and wear our own apparel; only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.'"

Given by order of the President and Rulers, at Great Salt Lake on the Fourteenth Day of August, 1856.

The extent to which the voters were influenced by this effort to exploit the "twin relics" idea is, of course, impossible to ascertain. The New York Herald, however, was sufficiently impressed to reproduce the proclamation in a Sunday edition, and two prominent Republicans—Representative Justin S. Morrill of Vermont and Senator Lyman Trumbull of Illinois—quoted it as authentic during the succeeding months.

If the Republican speakers made only occasional use of their anti-Mormon argument, the float and banner makers of this age of political parades and pageantry found the "domestic institutions" of Utah far too intriguing to be neglected. Almost every great partisan rally was preceded by an hours-long procession, and it seems probable that Tullidge exaggerated only a little when he wrote that "in every campaign where John C. Fremont was the standard bearer of the party, there could be read: 'The abolishment of slavery and polygamy; the twin relics of barbarisml'""

"Brigham Young, with six wives most fashionably dressed, hoop skirts and all, each with a little Brigham in her arms, occupied one wagon drawn by oxen," in a Fremont parade at Indianapolis, witnessed by an estimated sixty thousand people. "Brigham," according to the correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, "was making himself as useful and interesting as possible among his white, black and piebald better-halves. He also held a banner inscribed 'Hurrah for the Kansas-Nebraska bill—it introduces Polygamy and Slavery.' " Similar performances were staged elsewhere, with sufficiently tell- 1 ing effect to force Democratic disclaimers of partiality toward the Saints; according to Stenhouse, who was working on the staff of the Mormon at the time, "the Mormons had no friends anywhere."

Even with the help of the "Mormon Question," Fremont lost the three-cornered election. There can be no doubt, however, that the "twin relics" propaganda helped to persuade Buchanan that his administration must act immediately to clear the Democratic party of the charge that its political doctrines were contributing to Mormon delinquency. The result was the ill-starred Utah Expedition of 1857-58.

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