Mormon History

Mormon Women's Protest Against the Edmund-Tucker Act - 1886


Two thousand Mormon women gathered at the Salt Lake Theatre on Saturday, March 6, 1886, to protest the “indignities and insults heaped upon them as wives and daughters of Mormons” in Utah district courts [1]. Under the direction of Mary Isabella Horne, elected president of the protest meeting, 33 women presented personal statements reacting to the legal and political ramifications of the pending Edmunds-Tucker Bill then before Congress, which included the loss of voting privileges and self-government. These women, motivated by restricted religious rights, were prompted to political action.

Following the March 1886 mass meeting, the women compiled the proceedings into a 91-page pamphlet, “Mormon” Women’s Protest: An Appeal for Freedom, Justice and Equal Rights, to distribute in Washington and elsewhere. Originally printed in the local newspaper and then published in pamphlet form, the text includes the news notices prior to the event, transcripts of speeches, resolutions, and poems composed for the occasion, and undelivered speeches and letters written for the event. Women involved included female doctors, teachers, authors and poets, women’s rights advocates, religious and community leaders, and mothers.

Political and social leaders outside Utah were concerned with the Mormon religious practice of polygamy. Plural marriage was adopted in the LDS Church from 1852 to 1890 in an effort to restore biblical practice and encourage family support. Studies suggest that twenty to twenty-five percent of LDS adults were members of polygamous households during this era [2]. Federal injunctions followed within a decade of the public announcement of plural marriage as an official tenet of Mormon faith in 1852. In 1856 the Republican platform shouldered responsibility for ending "those twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery" [3]. Republican politicians sited Utah as an example of what happened when territorial citizens governed themselves. The 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act aimed to prosecute polygamists but proved to be impossible to enforce.

Various legislative actions occurred over the next two decades as Congress restricted political and legal rights based on LDS religious practice, suggesting that Utah Territory be prevented from becoming a state until plural marriage was abandoned. The Cragin Bill in 1868 and the Cullom Bill of 1869-70 were passed to remedy the deficiencies of the Morrill Act. Republicans worked to revoke the voting rights of anyone who believed in plural marriage. Women were compelled to testify against their husbands, and all involved were convicted of "concubinage," fined, and sentenced to prison. The 1882 Edmunds Act removed polygamists from jury and public office, and Congress established a Utah commission modeled after post-Civil War reconstruction government to run territorial affairs.

Mormon women responded en masse. While the Latter-day Saints respected the Constitution, promising to honor civic leaders and obey the law of the land, they felt that these congressional acts violated freedom of religion. The 1886 protest meeting ironically prompted patriotism, where Mrs. H.C. Brown stated:

We are here, not as Latter-day Saints, but as American citizens—members of that great commonwealth which our noble grandsires fought and bled to establish—legal heirs to those rights and privileges bequeathed to that heaven-inspired document—the Constitution of the United States. Yes, legal heirs, yet illegally, unconstitutionally deprived of that dearest, most cherished of all.

The public political action of Latter-day Saint women had its roots in the inception of their religious female association, the Relief Society, in 1842. Members delivered petitions to Illinois governor Thomas Carlin in defense of Joseph Smith and his illegal imprisonment. Thirty years later in Utah women reacted to antipolygamy legislation with similar activity. They wrote letters, sent memorials, and urged people to testify before Congress. To show their solidarity and commitment to their beliefs, three thousand women gathered at a "Great Indignation Meeting" in Salt Lake City in January 1870. Throughout the month, the structure of that meeting was repeated in over fifty Utah settlements in their various Relief Society organizations, where countless LDS women publicly defended their right to practice their religion. This public effort led to the pursuit of the vote for women, particularly in conjunction with a popular belief outside the territory that women would then vote to remove polygamy [4]. By February of 1870 acting territorial governor S.A. Mann granted Utah women suffrage, second only to Wyoming. This movement precipitated an 1871 visit of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Utah and created bridges with national women’s organizations.

Meanwhile Utah women of other faiths opposing plural marriage prepared counter memorials to Congress and the President under the auspices of the Utah-based Anti-Polygamy Society, founded in 1878. In 1886 Angie Newman, with the Methodist Episcopal Home Missionary Society and congressional support, built a Salt Lake City home for disenchanted plural wives and their children. They believed their benevolent efforts would arouse sympathy and rescue victimized women. However, the number of applicants seldom reached twenty in any given year, and by 1893 the refuge closed [5].

The eventual passage of the Edmunds-Tucker Act nullified already operative civil rights and duties, including woman suffrage. More than 12,000 Mormons in Utah were disfranchised. In 1890 Church president Wilford Woodruff officially abolished new plural marriages, and Utah was admitted as a state in 1896, when once again Utah women gained the vote.

Some historians suggest that the principle of plural marriage had unexpected benefits in politicizing Mormon women. Due to shared domestic responsibilities and the combined efforts of "sister wives," women built and managed cooperative stores and a local silk industry, maintained a grain storage program, established welfare and home industry, edited a major women’s newspaper, attended medical school and developed a women’s hospital with community nurse and midwife training, led women’s suffrage efforts, and participated in public education and higher education. Liberal divorce laws in Utah gave women legal rights; property laws allowed women to own land and maintain their own households [6]. Latter-day Saint women found common cause and gained political experience in pursuing their religious freedoms.

Jennifer Reeder, Archival Assistant
____________________________________

[1] "Mormon" Women's Protest, preface.
[2] Kenneth W. Godfrey, "Plural Marriage," in Encyclopedia of Latter-day Saint History, 928.
[3] 1856 Republican National Convention
[4] New York Times, 8 February 1870
[5] Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue, 87-90.
[6] 1872 Married Persons’ Act (see Sarah Gordon, The Mormon Question, 175-178).

 Complete Text of Pamphlet

Reid presents bill aimed at polygamy
Senate hearing on measure is today

(Note: Senator Harry Reid would have made a good 19th century anti-Mormon)

By STEVE TETREAULT
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Las Vegas Review-Journal

Jul. 24, 2008

ON THE WEB:
Senate Judiciary Committee hearing at 7 a.m. today:
http://judiciary. senate.gov/

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Harry Reid on Wednesday introduced a bill in Congress to crack down on polygamous groups, charging that crime is organized and "rampant" within the communities.

Reid's first stop today to promote the bill will be at a hearing that he largely organized with the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The measure calls for formation of a federal task force to combat "the unique set of crimes committed by polygamist organizations."

It also would make available $2 million in federal grants for local authorities to investigate and prosecute crimes linked to polygamy. Another $12 million over five years would be offered to organizations that provide protection and services to family members seeking to escape plural marriages.

Former members of polygamous groups have charged domestic and sexual abuse is common through forced marriages and unions involving underage girls, along with other crimes such as welfare fraud, tax evasion, extortion and kidnapping.

Reid, the Senate majority leader from Nevada, has equated activities of polygamist groups with organized crime and has been pressing for federal racketeering investigations of their activities.

The Senate hearing is expected to focus on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect whose adherents believe plural marriage is ordained by God. The mainstream Mormon church renounced polygamy in 1904.

FLDS membership is based in communities on the border of Utah and Arizona, while members also live in Nevada and other Western states. Its membership is estimated to be between 6,000 and 10,000.

State and local authorities have pursued criminal allegations against FLDS leaders and members, while Reid has argued a stronger federal hand is necessary.

FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was convicted in Utah last year of two counts of being an accomplice to rape, for his role in arranging a 2002 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old first cousin.

Jeffs faces similar charges in Arizona and this week was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on sexual assault charges.

"We are taking aim at the blatant and systemic crime that is rampant within these polygamist groups," Reid said in a statement accompanying his bill.

Reid, one of 16 Mormons serving in Congress, did not consult with the church in forming his bill, according to his spokesman Jon Summers.

The Mormon church has not taken a position on the bill, spokeswoman Kim Farah said. In an e-mail, she said "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has repeatedly expressed concern about the illegal practice of polygamy and persistent reports of the possible emotional and physical abuse of women and children."

Today's hearing is entitled "Crimes Associated with Polygamy: The Need for a Coordinated State and Federal Response."

Chief federal prosecutors from Nevada and Utah are scheduled to testify along with attorneys general from Arizona and Texas. Also listed to testify are former FLDS member Carolyn Jessup, and Stephen Singular, who has written about the FLDS and Jeffs.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported that FLDS spokesman Rod Parker, a Salt Lake City attorney, sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a letter protesting that no members of the group were invited to testify.

"History is replete with examples of misinformation becoming the foundation of persecution and hysteria, leading in turn to real harm to real people," Parker wrote, according to the newspaper.

Parker could not be reached by telephone message or e-mail on Wednesday.

Asked why there were no FLDS witnesses invited, Summers said the committee did not need to hear from them.

"This is not a trial," Summers said. "This is a hearing about ways to increase enforcement against crimes committed by these groups. Are they going to come in and say this is the best way to bust us?"

 

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