From the Archives: Wilford Woodruff Correcting Church History “Mistakes” (Huntington Journal)

By friend of the JI Joseph Stuart

Whilst transcribing portions of the Oliver Huntington journals for a paper to be presented at the Utah State Historical Society, I stumbled upon this gem in Oliver’s stake conference notes. The conference’s visiting authority was apostle and Church Historian Wilford Woodruff, who made considerable efforts to address certain rumors/falsehoods circulating about LDS Church History in his address.

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Enoch and Zion

MARK ASHURST-MCGEE is a historian and documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers Project, where he specializes in document analysis and documentary editing methodology. He holds a PhD in history from Arizona State University and has trained at the Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents. He is a coeditor of the first volume in the Journals series and of the first volume of the Histories series of the Joseph Smith Papers. He is an author of peer-reviewed articles on Joseph Smith and early Mormon history. The following selection is taken from his 2008 dissertation: “Zion Rising: Joseph Smith’s Early Social and Political Thought.” Other works growing out of his dissertation are published in the most recent issue of the Journal of Mormon History (“Zion in America: The Origins of Mormon Constitutionalism” [vol. 38, no. 3 – Summer 2012]: 90-101) and in the just recently released anthology War and Peace in Our Time: Mormon Perspectives (Kofford Books, 2012). Selections from his dissertation have also appeared here at the Juvenile Instructor, here and here. Ashurst-McGee is currently working on articles on political restorationism and Zion nationalism along the path of turning the dissertation into a monograph.

Joseph Smith’s Enoch expansion built on that for Enoch’s grandfather Enos, the grandson of Adam. Due to the “secret works of darkness” that had pervaded the land, Enos led “the residue of the people of God . . . out from the land which was called Shulon and dwelt in a land of promise, which he called after his own son whom he had named Cainan.”[1] Here was the original exodus of the righteous from among the wicked. Earlier, before Shulon’s corruption, Cain and the brethren of his secret combination had left Shulon for the land of Nod. Now Enos led God’s people from corrupt Shulon to the promised land of Cainan. As in the Book of Mormon, whether the righteous emigrate from a wicked nation or the wicked emigrate from a righteous nation, Smith’s scriptural narratives tend toward the territorial separation of the two. When the people of God left Shulon, they took with them the “book of remembrance” that had been kept by the prophets since the days of Adam.[2] Here was the archetypal civic text on which to found a new civilization. Enoch grew to manhood in the “land of righteousness” established by his grandfather Enos.[3]

Joseph Smith’s dramatic expansion of Genesis 5:24: “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him”–is by far the longest of his many revisions–adding over 4,000 words to the biblical account. The narrative of Enoch’s walk with God was apparently one of the “plain and precious parts” removed from the Bible.[4] Enoch’s history, as restored by Smith, began with a prophetic calling. The Lord commanded Enoch to leave Cainan and cry repentance to all men. Like Moses, Enoch complained of his slow speech. The Lord encouraged him: “Go forth and do as I have commanded thee, and no man shall pierce thee. Open thy mouth, and it shall be filled. . . . Behold, my Spirit is upon you. Wherefore, all thy words will I justify. And the mountains shall flee before you, and the rivers shall turn from their course.”[5] When Enoch began preaching and prophesying, people exclaimed “there is a strange thing in the land, a wild man hath come among us.” However, when Enoch testified against the evil in society, “all men were offended because of him.” Yet “no man laid his hands on him. For fear came on all them that heard him, for he walked with God.”[6] As with the Book of Mormon prophets protected from imprisonment and murder, the Lord protected Enoch. He received such divine power in preaching that no one dared to lay hands on him or pierce him.

When Enoch returned to land of Cainan, he became the leader of the people of God and infused the entire land with the same protective power by which he had preached abroad. Enoch thereby protected Cainan when enemy nations came to war against them:

And he spake the word of the Lord, and the earth trembled and the mountains fled, even according to his command, and the rivers of water were turned out of their course, and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness. And all nations feared greatly, so powerful was the word of Enoch and so great was the power of the language which God had given him. There also came up a land out of the depths of the sea. And so great was the fear of the enemies of the people of God that they fled and stood afar off and went upon the land which came up out of the depths of the sea. And the giants of the land also stood afar off.

Formerly threatening nations and races feared Enoch to the point that they abandoned their own homelands in order to distance themselves from Cainan. The Lord thus protected Cainan, increasing the territorial distance between the righteous and the wicked.[7] He furthermore “blessed the land” of Cainan and sent a curse of “wars and bloodsheds” among their enemies. Finally, the Lord “came and dwelt with his people.” Now, more than ever, “the fear of the Lord was upon all nations, so great was the glory of the Lord which was upon his people.” The Lord named his people “Zion” and assumed his rightful reign as “Messiah, the King of Zion.” Zion’s borders needed no defense. The fear of God’s glory kept enemy powers at bay and his curse occupied them with wars among themselves. As Enoch exclaimed: “Surely, Zion shall dwell in safety forever.”

While enjoying this peaceful safety from the threat of invading foreign powers, Zion also abounded in domestic peace and tranquility: “they were of one heart, and of one mind, and dwelt in righteousness, and there were no poor among them.” Economic equality fostered social harmony. The communitarian economy of the primitive church found its perfection and erased all class-based enmity. Zion existed as the peaceful refuge from the contention and violence of the world.[8]

In Zion, the Lord showed Enoch a vision of the future history of the world. “And he beheld, and lo, Zion in process of time was taken up into heaven. And the Lord said unto Enoch: “Behold mine abode forever.”[9] Here was the ultimate exodus of the righteous from among the wicked. Enoch’s city left the world of man behind to live with God in heaven. Decades later, Smith’s early disciple Orson Pratt stated that when the Lord exalted Zion, he took “the whole city, the people and their habitations.”[10] Brigham Young, another early disciple of Smith and later his successor, taught that Enoch and his people were taken up with “their houses, gardens, fields, cattle, and all their possessions”–even the city’s adjoining “land, rivers, and everything pertaining to it, were taken away.”[11] Pratt agreed that “all the region of country occupied by them was translated, or taken away from the earth.”[12] Young even characterized Zion’s territory as a “portion of the earth.”[13] In his journal, early Mormon apostle Wilford Woodruff recounted “the opinion of the Prophet Joseph” that “when the City of Enoch fled & was translated it was whare the gulf of Mexico now is. It left that gulf a body of water.”[14] If these later teachings and reminiscences embellished Smith’s Enoch narrative, they only fleshed out the earthy materiality of the event already present in Smith’s bible expansion. The Lord’s removal of Enoch’s city from the earth to “mine abode” embodied the theoretically extremities of territorial separation of the righteous from the wicked. The world of men was now ready to be destroyed in the flood.

Enoch’s Zion provided the model for the Zion Joseph Smith meant to build. While the history of the Nephites in the Book of Mormon conveyed the “fullness of the gospel,” it was, in the final analysis, “a Record of a fallen people.”[15] The book began with the sack of Jerusalem. It charted the rise but also the ruin of the Nephite and Jaredite nations. Like the history of ancient Israel or even the Roman republic, the Book of Mormon served as a cautionary tale. For any ancient civilization to serve as a perfect model to emulate, it would have had to have overcome any external enemy and internal weakness. It would still be in existence. Yet no such government could be found on the earth. The “translation” of Zion from the earth opened the possibility for another kind of usable past. Enoch’s Zion–a civilization that rose and never fell–offered an ideal model for Smith’s Zion.

Joseph Smith’s next major biblical expansion would center on the character of Melchizedek, the priest-king who had blessed Israel’s grandfather Abraham.[16] Melchizedek held the same priesthood as Enoch, and therefore had power “to put at defiance the armies of nations.” As the king of Salem, a predecessor of Jerusalem, Melchizedek apparently had the power to protect his people as Enoch had. He was also “the keeper of the storehouse of God; Him whom God had appointed to receive tithes for the poor. Wherefore Abram paid unto him tithes of all that he had, of all the riches which he possessed, which God had given him more than that which he had need.”[17] As with Enoch’s classless society of one heart and one mind, Melchizedek’s program for economic redistribution fostered domestic peace. Melchizedek was “called the King of heaven by his people, or, in other words, the King of peace”–equating heaven and peace.[18]

Smith’s expansion of Genesis 14 added that from the time of Enoch to that of Melchizedek, “men having this faith coming up unto this order of God, were translated and taken up into heaven”:

And now, Melchizedek was a priest of this order; therefore he obtained peace in Salem . . . . And his people wrought righteousness, and obtained heaven, and sought for the city of Enoch which God had before taken, separating it from the earth.[19]

Melchizedek’s Salem proved that Enoch’s Zion was not unique in world history. It was a model that could be followed.

In the New Testament, Jesus had taught the doctrine of rapture. He explained that the last days would be days of great wickedness as it was in the days of Noe.” In the glory of Christ’s second coming, the earth would be destroyed by a baptism of fire just as it had been destroyed by a baptism of water in the days of Noah. But, he explained, just before the great and dreadful day of his return, “there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.”[20] The Lord would remove the elect from the earth before purifying it with fire. Smith’s expansion of Genesis 14 recognized the possibility of individual rapture. Men having faith and priesthood like Enoch “were translated and taken up into heaven.” Yet the ideal rapture was a community, even a national, event. The trajectory of the communitarian programs in Enoch’s Zion and Melchizedek’s Salem ended in heaven with the Lord. Not only primitive Christian discipleship but salvation itself was a social affair. Smith’s theology veered away not only from the social and economic individualism of Jacksonian America but from the salvation theology of Protestantism. Smith turned away from the New Testament focus on individual and otherworldly salvation to the Old Testament notions of national salvation.

Although Melchizedek’s Salem showed that Enoch’s model could be followed, it also signaled the importance of geography. Salem, associated with the Old Jerusalem of the Old World, existed as a sister city to Enoch’s Zion, associated with the New Jerusalem in the New World. While the Jaredite and Nephite nations had faltered in the New World, Zion had not. While the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judea had met their end in the Old World, Salem had survived. These were societies that never came to ruin and therefore left no ruins behind. They no longer existed not because they had gone the way of all kingdoms but because the Lord had taken them up into heaven. While individuals could be taken up, the ultimate ideal of collective rapture therefore had occurred only in Enoch’s Zion and Melchizedek’s Salem, the primitive counterparts to end-times Jerusalem and New Jerusalem. Collective rapture did not immediately follow from community holiness, it required the right place. Smith’s narratives of Zion and Salem thus connected communitarian soteriology with sacred geography.

In his vision of the history of the world, Enoch saw not only the flood, but the life and atonement of Jesus Christ in the meridian of time and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon in the last days. The Lord explained that the Book of Mormon would serve to “gather out mine own elect from the four quarters of the earth unto a place which I shall prepare…an holy city…that my people may gird up their loins and be looking forth for the time of my coming. For there shall be my tabernacle, and it shall be called Zion, a New Jerusalem.” The Lord further explained, “Then shalt thou and all thy city meet them there.”[21] Enoch’s Zion would return to earth with the Lord and join the latter-day Zion. His city therefore was much more than a model for the latter-day Zion; their destinies intertwined. Enoch had seen the rise of Smith’s Zion in the last days. Smith now foresaw the return of Enoch’s Zion at the end of the world. The two Zions were actually two halves of the same history. Smith thus grounded his utopian vision of the future in a mythological narrative of the past. In Smith’s later expansion of the Noah story, the Lord revealed that the City of Enoch would some day “come down out of heaven, and possess the earth.”[22] With the Lord, the “King of Zion,” Enoch and Joseph would reclaim the world for God’s people. This was the ultimate territorial restoration. The meek would truly inherit the earth.

________

1 Moses 6:12-17, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 159.

2 Moses 6:46, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

3 Moses 6:41, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

4 1 Nephi 13:26, 32, 34.

5 Moses 6:32-39, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

6 Moses 6:37-39, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 161.

7 Moses 7:13-15, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 164-65.

8 Moses 7:15-20; 7:53, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 164-69.

9 Moses 7:18-20, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 165.

10 Orson Pratt, Sermon, 19 July 1874, in Journal of Discourses 17 (1875):147 (145-54).

11Brigham Young, Sermon, 20 April 1856 and 3 June 1860, in Journal of Discourses 3 (1856):320 (316-27); 8 (1861):279 (277-80).

12 Orson Pratt, Sermon, 19 July 1874, in Journal of Discourses 17 (1875):147 (145-54).

13 Brigham Young, Sermon, 20 April 1856, in Journal of Discourses, 3 (1856):320 (316-27).

14 Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal 6:482, 7:129.

15 Articles and Covenants of the Church of Christ, June 1830, in Marquardt, The Joseph Smith Revelations, 62-68.

16 Genesis 14:18-20.

17 Smith, expansion of Genesis 14, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 78-79.

18 Smith, expansion of Genesis 14, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 78; compare Alma 13:17-18.

19 Smith, expansion of Genesis 14, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 78.

20 Luke 17:26-36; compare Matthew 24:37-42.

21 Moses 7:61-64, in Jackson, ed., The Book of Moses and the Joseph Smith Translation Manuscripts, 168-69.

22 Smith, expansion of Genesis 9, in Joseph Smith’s “New Translation” of the Bible, 67; compare Smith’s expansion of Genesis 14 (78).

Guest post: Edward Blum, “On Mormon Racism: A Response to John Turner”

Edward Blum is associate professor of history at San Diego State University. He is the author of Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (2005), W. E. B. Du Bois, American Prophet (2007), and most recently, co-author (with Paul Harvey) of The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (2012), which will be available next month. He is the co-editor (with Paul Harvey) of The Columbia Guide to Religion in American History (2012), (with Jason R. Young) The Souls of W. E. B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections (2009), and (with W. Scott Poole) Vale of Tears: New Essays on Religion and Reconstruction (2005). Ed also blogs at Religion in American History and Teaching United States History.

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In this so-called “Mormon moment,” everything about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seems to be getting attention. With newfound notoriety, media outlets have paid increasing attention to scholars far and wide. Jon Stewart featured Joanna Brooks and her memoir The Book of Mormon Girl on The Daily Show, while The New Yorker reviewed an assortment of books about Mormonism (from wonderful scholars, including Matthew Bowman, Spencer Fluhman, and John Turner). Businessweek ran a controversial story (and image) on how “Mormons Make Money.” In many ways, it is good to be a writer on Mormonism in these latter-days.

Amid the laughs and the groans, the thorny issue of race has started to become prominent in some of the discussions. The Daily Beast and The Atlantic ran stories on links among Mormonism, race, politics, and imagery, while the New York Times this past weekend printed John Turner’s op-ed piece “Why Race is Still a Problem for Mormons.” As a scholar of race and religion in the United States (and not as a scholar distinctly of Mormonism), I wanted to reflect on Turner’s essay and perhaps provide some twists.

On one hand, Turner’s op-ed piece builds upon his forthcoming biography of Brigham Young, a work I have read, enjoyed, recommend, and reviewed for The Christian Century (not sure when it will be out). One of the fascinating elements of his book is how and when Turner places Young and early Mormonism in the context of other trends and norms of nineteenth-century American Protestantism and evangelicalism. If Jan Shipps was dedicated to showing how Mormonism was to American Protestantism as early Christianity was to ancient Judaism, Turner wants to show how nineteenth-century Mormons were and were not a part of the broader society. This is the basic element of his New York Times essay–that Mormons have a history of racism and racial segregation, but one that is quite similar to other white Christians. As he writes, “Mormons have no reason to feel unusually ashamed of their church’s past racial restrictions, except maybe for their duration. Their church, like most white American churches, was entangled in a deeply entrenched national sin.”

There are three points about this approach that trouble me. First, it flattens American religious history and the relationships between race and religion. Second, it sounds strange when put in comparison. And third, it neglects the crucial importance of theology (and theological particularity) within Mormonism. (I want to stop here and say that I recognize Turner’s essay was an op-ed and can only be so nuanced; I also want to reiterate that I am a fan of his work and am making these points to broaden discussions, not to attack his scholarship in any way).

First, when I say that Turner’s claim flattens out history, I mean that it does not take into account that race in American churches has been wildly complex, contested, and changed over time. To simply say that white churches have been racist or parts of America’s racism is to miss so much. Nineteenth-century churches and denominations split over the problems of slavery. Many white Christians joined crusades to improve the lives of African Americans, some of which were even willing to be counted as “Negro” so that other whites did not disturb them. (I detail lots of this in my first book, Reforging the White Republic). Some white churches and colleges had study groups that read W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folks, while some revivalists (like Dwight Moody) agonized over what was right with regards to segregation. Blanket statements about race and religion just cannot be made.

But even more, Turner’s comparison renders Mormon history flat. As we already know from Newell Bringhurst’s exquisite work, early Mormon attacks on slavery were not necessarily pro-black statements. And changing contexts altered meanings. When LDS writers attacked education for African Americans during Reconstruction, it was not simply because of white supremacy. It was also because they (Mormons) were being legislated against. LDS leaders were appalled that the federal government was supporting rights for former slaves while hindering rights for Mormons. Then throughout the twentieth century, new Mormon art dramatically whitened and masculinized Christ at the same time some of its leaders expressed frustration  with George Romney for supporting civil rights marches. Race, even among Mormons, has never been stagnate, because the structures and cultures keep changing.

Second, for a scholar to simply claim that Mormonism’s white supremacy was just part of the broad context of nineteenth and twentieth-century America sounds strange if we put it into comparison with, say, scholarship on patriarchal sentiments among African American leaders in the early twentieth century. Over the past ten years, African American historians have gone to great lengths to study and expose the misogynistic and patriarchal elements of African American leadership (in church and outside of it). Barbara Savage and Kevin Gaines, for instance, have shown the gendered elements of black culture, society, and church lives. To my knowledge, no scholar has tried to give W. E. B. Du Bois, or Booker T. Washington, or Benjamin Mays a pass for this because patriarchy was the norm.

In large part, scholars of African American history do not give these fellows a pass because they were the ones confronting oppression. They were the ones who knew what it meant to be singled out and hated for perceived differences. They were the ones to be innovative, to think outside of the box, to question that which seemed unquestionable. So, the logic goes, they could have stood against patriarchy if they wanted. Why shouldn’t the same approach hold to studying Mormonism?

Many scholars of Mormonism have focused on the terrible experiences early Mormons had, and for good reason. They were attacked; they were forcibly exiled; they were maligned politically. They were mocked culturally. The prophet was assassinated. So why, when it comes to race, did Brigham Young advocate execution for anyone who married an African American? And what does it mean for the flagship university of a faith tradition to bear the name of that individual? Why did early Mormons not look at African Americans and say “we welcome you, downtrodden like us?” It is not because early Mormons did not have the intellectual capacity or imagination to do so–it is because sacred disclosures (to them) said not to, and “not to” in old and new ways.

Since Mormonism taught so many new customs, mores, texts, and ideas (many of which are beautiful and full of the respect for abundant life), why was anti-black white supremacy so vital? (and, of course, their positions on people of African descent different dramatically from other people groups) Instead of avoiding the question, we should look into the particularities. One particularity brings sheds light on an important distinction of Mormon theology: its emphasis on corporeality and the anthropomorphized sacred. Unlike many nineteenth-century Protestants who wanted to avoid from the body (in spiritualism, for instance), Mormonism moved the body to center stage. God has a body. Jesus had and has a body. Early Mormon doctrine dissolved the supposed separation between body and soul that many Christians had tried to make. And when they linked physical bodies to spiritual essences, they participated in the long and tangled history that Paul Harvey and I detail in The Color of Christ, which is basically a book about how race and religion get woven together in America from 1500 to the present.

This is what makes race so important to talking about Mormon history and Mormonism. Not because anyone should label Mormons as “racists” or not; not because they segregated the priesthood. Race matters, in part, because Mormonism’s conceptions of the body collided historically with American obsessions with defining and categorizing bodies, with uniting them and separating them, and with representing holy celestial bodies among moral humanity. This is why the physicality of Jesus in John Scott’s “Jesus Christ Visits the Americas” matters (and it does not just replicate other art, and its’ place in LDS Bibles is important as well) To respect Mormons and Mormon history is not to avoid any of these issues or to shoo them away. Instead, we should dive deeply into them so that we can all understand the faith and the church in the broader sweeps of time and space.

Mormonism and Suffering

By Pete Wosnik

Last fall I took a class from Dr. Philip Barlow at USU called Religion, Evil, and Human Suffering. This was really big class, not in terms of the amount of students who took it, but rather in its subject matter as well as its breadth. Mormonism was only allotted a few precious class hours, but the class gave me an added appreciation for Mormon theological contributions to the larger world. Something I quickly learned in the course was that all religious traditions have grappled with the problems of pain, suffering, and evil; indeed, most religions are born in such conditions.

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From the Archives: Joseph Smith III Congratulates Wilford Woodruff on the Manifesto

Joseph Stuart is a BA student in American Studies at Brigham Young University, entering his last semester. He is planning on going to grad school in history or religious studies. He has worked on several fascinating projects, one of which examines the social history of the Woodruff Manifesto, from which the following document is taken. Let’s give a warm welcome to Joseph.

This summer I have had the good fortune to  work for the Charles Redd Center at BYU, attempting to  examine  responses to the 1890 Woodruff Manifesto.  By canvasing roughly 800 journals, diaries and autobiographies, I found a veritable cornucopia of results, from the bemused to the belligerent. One reaction that was of particular interest, though not directly related to the Manifesto, came from a note in the Abraham Cannon diaries.[i] It said simply:

“I attended my Quorum meeting…spent nearly two hours in interesting and instructive conversation on various points of doctrine. The subject was the Josephite [RLDS] Church, its authority and gifts, was discussed, in the course of which John Henry Smith read a letter to him form the head of that Church, Joseph Smith [III] dated Nov’r 7^th. The people and authorities here are congratulated therein for their abandonment of plural marriage, and the writer suggests that this matter could not have originated with the Lord or it would have remained unchanged.

This man is certainly not sincere or he would have accepted the truth long ago, as he has had abundant evidence given him that his father, the Prophet, had more than one wife.”

This tantalizing reference piqued my interest, and I resolved to find what JSIII had to say after the cessation of plural marriages. After nearly two months of archival work, I stumbled across the Wilford Woodruff Correspondence Register[ii] at the Church History Library, and found a letter that was very similar to the letter to John Henry Smith. It reads:

Office of

THE FIRST PRESIDENCY

Of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ

President Wilford Woodruff                                                                       Lamoni, Iowa Nov 8^th, 1890

Salt Lake City, Utah

Dear Sir: —

Permit me to congratulate you on the action of yourself and the late Conference of October 6^th; yourself, for presenting the manifesto and the advice in contained; the Conference for accepting and adopting the advice given.

For the advance of the Angel’s message and the final triumph of truth,

Yours respectfully,

Joseph Smith

There are several intriguing aspects of the letter.

1. “The advice.”
2. “the Angel’s message and the final triumph of truth.”

Like the Federal Government and many Latter-day Saints, JSIII does not appear to know whether or not the Manifesto was a press release, a formal disavowal of practice, or a renunciation of belief. The Federal Government went to the point of asking President Woodruff about whether cohabitation was still permitted during a federal inquiry in 1892 when the Church was seeking amnesty, a fair question considering how many plural marriages were still approved after the Manifesto was released, and the exodus of a significant minority of LDS polygamists to Mexico and Canada. This understanding of the Manifesto as “advice” may have led to the Second Manifesto, when Joseph F. Smith put some teeth into the Church’s anti-polygamy stance in 1904.

The second area of importance is the phrase “the angel’s message.” Rather than focusing on, for example, “my father’s teachings” or “priesthood revelation,” JSIII says “the angel’s message,” referring to Moroni’s multiple visitations. I suppose that this was typical of early Mormonism, a focus on Cumorah (the Book of Mormon) rather than the Grove (Priesthood succession and restoration), and the RLDS (now Community of Christ) would logically follow that thought.

The second part of the second statement, “the final triumph of truth” appears to be a subtle slight aimed at the Church’s new stance. Joseph F. Smith, JSIII’s cousin, had affidavits sworn by the wives of Joseph Smith saying that the Prophet had lived and taught polygamy. JFS ultimately sent these affidavits to RLDS headquarters (the “abundant evidence” cited by Cannon in his diary). The RLDS responded by attempting to persuade the “Utah Church” through mail and missionaries that polygamy was an invention of Brigham Young rather than revelation through Joseph Smith.

It is difficult for me to fathom the relationship between the RLDS and the LDS Churches at this time, when cousins led or would soon lead their respective branches of Mormonism (JSIII and Joseph F. Smith, who served in the First Presidency at the time). Being able to write the Utah Church in the wake of their renunciation of polygamy, after such a protracted public and personal battle over the origin of the practice, must have been especially satisfying to JSIII.

[i] Cannon, Abraham H. (Abraham Hoagland), 1859-1896. Candid Insights of a Mormon Apostle : The Diaries of Abraham H. Cannon, 1889-1895. Ed. Edward Leo Lyman 1942-. Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with the Smith-Pettit Foundation, 2010. December 2, 1890.

[ii] Wilford Woodruff General Correspondence File 1887-1898, LDS Church Archives.

Converting Kirtland: Spiritual Gifts and the Book of Mormon

By Pete Wosnik

This week I’ve been reading through primary sources of converts to Mormonism who lived in Kirtland- and the surrounding counties- in 1830. In my initial research, I have used boap.org and saintswithouthalos.com to examine narratives by Levi Hancock, Lyman Wight, and Josiah Jones. Saintswithouthalos.com also has the Ohio 1830 census uploaded which has proven to be very helpful. I’ve also consulted Staker’s Hearken O Ye People, Givens and Grow’s Parley P. Pratt: The Apostle Paul of Mormonism, and Van Wagoner’s Sidney Rigdon: Portrait of Religious Excess. These resources have laid a groundwork for my thesis; however, I plan to consult original documents and other sources in the archives at BYU, U of U, and the CHL.

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Teaching Mormonism in Germany as a Non-Mormon

[This is the first guest post from Saskia Tielens.]

Last spring, I taught a course called The Book of Mormon and American Culture at the TU Dortmund University in Dortmund, Germany.  It was an elective class and meant for undergraduate students.

The first thing my students asked me last spring was whether I was Mormon.

Actually, that’s not true. The first thing they asked me was something incomprehensible in German. Since I prefer my German the American way (slowly and loudly), I stared at them for a moment before letting them know that however much I appreciated being addressed as Frau Tielens (it has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?), Ms. Tielens would do for now.

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Campbellite Conversions and Early Mormonism

By Pete Wosnik

I have long been interested in the cultural influences that helped shape Mormonism. This fascination led me to ask questions about conversion: what accounts for Mormonism’s success, and why did early converts find it so appealing? Delving into the subject I quickly realized that there is a rich historiography full of brilliant scholars grappling with these questions. Whitney Cross and Mario DePillis were some of the earliest scholars to debate these topics. And while they used very limited data, they were in agreement that early Mormons were generally poor coming from the fringes of society. These author’s ideas were rooted in a socioeconomic theory that those unhappy with their current situation are more likely to join radical movements.

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Responses: Rich Answers Ricks on Utah Servitude/Slavery

Christopher Rich’s response to Nate Ricks’ review of “The True Policy for Utah: Servitude; Slavery; and ‘An Act in Relation to Service,'” Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 54-74.

I was very happy to learn of this forum for discussing LDS History, and jumped at Nate’s invitation to have lunch and discuss the history of servitude in Utah. I found his master’s thesis to be invaluable when I first began to research this area, and thoroughly enjoyed speaking with him about this nuanced and highly interesting topic.

At this point, I should make a confession. I love history. I love LDS history. For this reason I studied history as an undergraduate and have continued to do so ever since. But for better or for worse, I have been professionally trained as an attorney. And as an attorney, I have been taught a simple rule: when interpreting a law, one must first look to the statute. If a court is interpreting a law, the court will always look first to the plain meaning of the text. Thus, when interpreting a statute, what a legislature subjectively meant to say, or what private individuals later perceive the legislature to have meant, is far less important than the actual words that the legislature put to paper. When I originally became interested in Utah’s history of servitude, I read many interesting treatises by a variety of talented historians. Yet I was shocked to see that not one of these had really wrestled with the text of “An Act in Relation to Service.” Nevertheless, each of these historians had come to a legal conclusion: that the act created a system of chattel slavery in Utah.

With Nate, I agree that this was a highly complex law and the Saints created it for a variety of complex reasons. Some of these had to do with theology, some with the Jacksonian worldview with which most early LDS leaders had been raised, and some with the pressures of contemporary American politics. I must also admit that many of the statute’s most important sections are not as clearly written as one would hope. For this reason, I spent hours parsing each word and clause, then going back and reading the law as a whole. I then expanded to the marginal notes included with the published text, other contemporary statutes and court decisions, the statements of interested parties such as Brigham Young and Orson Hyde, and many excellent secondary sources of both law and history. When it was over, I determined that while the law certainly created a system of involuntary servitude and gradual emancipation for previously bonded African-Americans, it did not create a system of chattel slavery, nor did the Utah Legislature intend it to do so.

People are certainly free to disagree with my conclusions. Nevertheless, I believe that valid criticism of my position must be grounded in the text of the statute. Now, as I have stated, this text is at times unclear. Furthermore, no contemporary court ever interpreted the law, save for the incomplete probate court decision in the case of Dan which I mention in my article. Thus, I believe that it is legitimate to look to contemporary statements about the law (in addition to court decisions and statutes from other states and territories) in order to fully understand it and its impact. Nevertheless, one must be careful to not let subjective impressions of the law by private individuals override the text of the statute. That is to say, when interpreting “An Act in Relation to Service,” (and thereby determining if slavery was legal in Utah) one must start with an objective reading of the text and then move outward rather than the other way around. Certainly, variance between the text and people’s later interpretation of the statute can provide valuable insights into servitude in Utah. Indeed, I think that any such variance is an incredibly important topic of study if we are to understand the entire picture of African servitude in the Territory. Still, it must be remembered that what people perceived about the law and what the law actually said are in fact two different issues, and it is the text of the law which is paramount.

Nate has brought up many interesting points in his review of my article. I appreciate his suggestion that I look to the Territorial library to find possible sources for the law. I readily acknowledge that that the connection I have created between “An Act in Relation to Service” and other contemporary Northern laws is circumstantial rather than direct. While a review of books in the Territorial library would only create more circumstantial evidence, the more evidence the merrier.

Nate has also brought up a number of questions about how the law was perceived and implemented. These can be placed in three categories; 1. What legislators meant the law to accomplish, 2. How the law was actually put into practice, and 3. How individuals perceived the law afterwards. For instance, it is indisputable that many individuals in Utah continued to refer to African servants as slaves, including the servants themselves! I must confess that this fact has troubled me, although I did not have the space to fully address it in my article. However, I do not believe that it is impossible to harmonize these statements with the text and purpose of the law as I have interpreted it.

As I stated above, if one is trying to determine the legality of chattel slavery in Utah, the text of the law must take precedence. Of course, from a historian’s standpoint, the subjective intent of the legislators is also a vital question, and is to a certain extent entwined with an objective interpretation of the law considering its sometimes vague wording. For this reason I tried to explore both issues in conjunction in my article. Nevertheless, there is certainly more to learn although documents about the drafting of the law have so far proved elusive. I also highly encourage further research into each of the above categories in order to give a broader picture of African servitude in the Great Basin. At this point, rather than definitively answer the questions posed by Nate, I would like to list several considerations which I believe are important for anyone attempting to investigate these questions and harmonize them with the text of “An Act in Relation to Service.”

1. In the law, words have objective meaning while everyday language is often subjective. In my article, I have given the term “slave” a distinct legal definition as it was understood at the time: an individual who is owned as a piece of personal property or a chattel, and whose status is hereditary. This does not mean that everyday people used this term in such a precise manner. Indeed, the difference between a “slave” and an “involuntary servant,” although real, was highly nuanced, and was perhaps not readily apparent to the average person. For example, as I point out in the article, Brigham Young was confused about the legal status of African servants in New York, and some Mormons may have been similarly confused about the status of African servants in Utah. Further, “involuntary servitude” was certainly “slave-like” when compared to the freedom enjoyed by the average citizen. Indeed, any form of employment outside of “free labor” (such as indentured servitude) may appear “slave-like” even though it is not actually slavery as previously defined. Even today, people will often refer to a particularly onerous employment situation as slavery when they actually mean that it is “slave-like.” Thus, the Saints, many of whom detested slavery anyway, may have continued to refer to African servants as slaves in order to make a point. Or, they may have continued to use a short and familiar term in order to describe a similar though legally distinct status.
2. The expansion of African slavery in the Territories was THE main source of national conflict from the end of the Mexican War through the 1850s and resulted in the Civil War. Beginning with the Compromise of 1850, the Territories had enjoyed the ability to make decisions in regard to slavery for themselves thanks to the Popular Sovereignty ideology of Lewis Cass and Stephen Douglas. Yet this did not end the struggle and in some ways intensified it.

As I argue in my article, the Mormons were keenly aware of this ongoing rift between the North and South and understood that taking a firm position in regard to slavery either way could materially affect their drive for statehood. “An Act in Relation to Service” created a system that tried to bridge the gap. In it, African Americans slaves did not continue as legal chattels, but neither were they immediately freed. At the same time, people in Utah (particularly those in leadership positions) had an incentive to keep the status of bonded African-Americans somewhat obscure in order to play upon biases back East and gain support for statehood from both sides. Consequently, it is entirely possible that the language used to describe African servants in the aftermath of the law’s passage was part of a deliberate political calculation. However, in 1857, the situation became even more complex.

Early that year, the Supreme Court handed down the infamous Dread Scott decision. Among other things, the decision ostensibly forced all U.S. Territories to legally recognize the institution of slavery within their borders. Two years later, this was compounded by attempts by Congress to create a federal slave code. It is currently unknown how the Saints reacted to these seismic shifts in national policy. For instance, in New Mexico Territory, the legislature created an explicit slave code in 1859 despite the fact that there were fewer than 20 African slaves in the Territory. It seems likely that this was meant to avoid greater oversight from  Congress in the form of a national slave code. In contrast, the Utah Legislature made no changes to “An Act in Relation to Service.”

But that same year in a famous exchange, the newspaperman Horace Greeley asked Brigham Young if there were slaves in Utah, and Young replied that there were. Greeley then asked an interesting question. He asked Young if the laws of the Territory recognized the institution of slavery. This may have been in recognition of the fact that there were small numbers of African slaves in many places where slavery was illegal, such as Oregon Territory. To this, Young cryptically replied “Those laws are printed…you can read them for yourself. If slaves are brought here by their owners in the states, we do not favor their escape from the service of their owners.” But when asked if Utah would be a slave state or a free state, Young clearly stated that Utah would be a free state when admitted to the Union.1

I do not have time in this response to fully explore these statements. In fact, I am considering writing an article on the subject. Yet certainly this interview reveals the knife edge upon which Young and the Latter-day Saints walked in regard to slavery, particularly after Dred Scott and the evisceration of Popular Sovereignty. It is possible that this exchange reveals a fundamental change in Utah’s policy towards slavery in the wake of Dread Scott. But considering the skill with which Young dodged the question of slavery’s legality, it may not. Indeed, Young’s statement that the Mormons did not favor the escape of slaves could refer to a system of involuntary servitude as well as slavery, or may just have been a way of saying that Utah would comply with the Fugitive Slave Law. In either case, considering the enormous change in both local and national circumstances from 1852 until 1859, it should not be used to interpret “An Act in Relation to Service” as originally written. All uses of the word “slave” after 1852 to describe servitude in Utah should likewise be subjected to such contextual scrutiny.

3. People do not always follow the law the way that it has been written. Nevertheless, this does not change the content of the law nor its meaning. It simply means that people do not observe the law. It is therefore entirely possible that individuals continued to keep African slaves in a state of slavery once they reached Utah despite the requirements of the law. This would not be at all unusual and occurred in many other places throughout the United States.
4. Each legislator has his own reasons for supporting a piece of legislation, and even in Territorial Utah under the leadership of Brigham Young, there was such a thing as compromise.

Again, I appreciate this opportunity and forum for discussion.

Christopher Rich

________

1 Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey, from New York to San Francisco, in the Summer of 1859, 1860, pp. 211-12.

Responses: Ricks critique of Rich’s UHQ Article on Utah Servitude/Slavery

Nate Ricks’ response to Christopher Rich Jr.’s article “The True Policy for Utah: Servitude; Slavery; and ‘An Act in Relation to Service,'” Utah Historical Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 54-74.

When JI introduced the “Responses” series a few weeks ago, Amy T. suggested that someone review Chris’s fascinating article. David G. invited me to give it a go, since I examined the same topic in my master’s thesis in 2007. When I looked up Chris’s contact info, I was delighted to find that we currently live in the same city. We arranged a lunch date and had a great time discussing slavery in Utah while devouring Mexican food.

First, I want to point out that Chris’s article is another great example of the contributions made to Mormon history by scholars with primary training outside of the historical field. In his case, he studied law at the University of Virginia and is currently working as an army JAG. His article, on the 1852 Utah Territorial Legislature’s adoption of a law defining the legal status of black slaves in Utah society, adds invaluable contextual perspective to a fascinating time in territorial Utah’s development.

The subject of Mormons’ practice of slavery, while by no means unexplored, is often subsumed by investigations into the origins of Mormonism’s “racial policy”–focusing on the denial of priesthood authority and temple ordinances to later African American converts and their descendents. The lasting and influential studies of race and Mormonism, while seeking to contextualize Mormon racial attitudes within the larger trends and attitudes of Jacksonian America, largely ignored the development of state and territorial laws that illustrated shifting attitudes toward the institution of slavery–laws that, Rich convincingly argues, had bearing on how the Utah Mormons used in 1852 their recently-won “popular sovereignty,” or power for the territorial legislature to decide whether or not Utah would be open to slavery.

Following the Revolutionary War, New England and Middle State laws facilitated a transition from perpetual, hereditary black slavery to lifetime, non-hereditary “involuntary servitude,” as Chris labels it, with the end goal of phasing out bondage altogether in most Northern states. This led legislatures to pass gradual emancipation laws creating what Rich labels “a kind of hybrid status….not slavery, but neither was it a traditional form of indentured servitude or apprenticeship” (57-8).

As numerous historians have noted, Northerners sought to abolish slavery only partly because of a belief that it was religiously or morally wrong, or because of a commitment to the universality of Revolution-era freedom–widespread abolitionism was hardly popular until the turbulent 1850s. An additional major reason leaders supported limiting slavery was the desire to preserve or move toward a whites-only “free labor” system by excluding black slave labor. Further, by ending slavery, politicians could remove the (for them) a glaring inequity perpetuated by the Constitution’s notorious “Three-Fifths Compromise” that awarded states additional representation in Congress, additional electoral votes, and additional sway over nearly every other aspect of government. Offended by this “Slave Power” conspiracy during the democratic fervor of the Age of Jackson, Northerners sought to remove any trace of it from their respective states.

For Mormon Utah, I believe the motivations were no less complex, though its religious, political, social, and economic realities differed greatly from antebellum New England in many respects. I’ve already treated this topic pretty thoroughly in chapter 3 of my thesis, so would refer interested parties there. Chris’s answer to my emphasis on complexity is to hearken back to the Northern laws: “the true policy for Utah” in dealing with the reality that Southern LDS converts had brought their slaves to Utah, was to redefine their status as that of “involuntary servant,” as nearly every Northern state had already done (64-5). Chris goes on to compare the similarities between Utah’s “Act in Relation to Service” and other servitude laws (67ff). This is, I believe, Chris’s greatest contribution. As he mentions in his article, Newell G. Bringhurst refers in his book Saints, Slaves, and Blacks to Illinois policy, but that is the most any scholar had previously attempted (67n47).

As we discussed the problem of identifying influences, I suggested to Chris that John M. Bernhisel, Utah’s delegate to Congress, spent a good deal of effort in 1850-51 using the $5,000 appropriated by Congress for a Utah Territorial Library. Among the books purchased or donated were numerous legal volumes, many from Northern states. Catalogued in October of 1852, it is likely that the legislators responsible for drafting and revising the “Act in Relation to Service” consulted these volumes and perhaps even borrowed language from printed servitude laws. (See a full list of legal volumes in the Territorial Library, transcribed by Ardis Parshall at Keepapitchinin). This may shed additional light on why legislators chose to include the specific provisions in the Act.

Other questions might be asked: Should the “Act in Relation to Service” be construed as only applying to African Americans who were already under the status of “involuntary servant,” perhaps having acquired that legal condition while in Illinois, or could the law truly be seen as the first step toward emancipation for slaves held by Mormons? Did the entire legislature, the slaveholding minority in Utah, the slaves themselves, and the larger Mormon population all view this transition from slavery to “involuntary servitude” as a real, permanent change in legal status, and a step toward general emancipation in Utah? The scant evidence that survives suggests a complicated and imperfect application of the legal redefinition for which Chris argues. The fact that the “Act in Relation to Service” was only in effect for about ten years also complicates the issue, because both slavery and involuntary servitude were prohibited by Congress in 1862. In our lunch discussion, we agreed that the law was written in such a way that just about anyone could read in the law what they desired. I’ll treat briefly each of the four categories of people I mentioned.

1. Legislature: Unfortunately, no record has come to light containing proceedings of debates during the 1851-2 legislature. Insofar as I have been able to examine journals, diaries, and personal letters of the legislators (which, honestly, has not been very thorough), I have not found any mention of the “Act in Relation to Service.” For all intents and purposes, the legislature appears to be just as unified as Brigham Young proclaimed at the end of the legislative session. Still, the language of an original draft found in the Utah State Archives indicates that the legislators weren’t originally in sync over what they should accomplish. The earliest version of the bill I was able to locate was titled “An Act in Relation to African Slavery”–though whether it was titled thus intending to establish slavery or simply redefine it is unclear. Additionally, Section 3 of another draft (assumedly the second draft) reads thus:

SEC. 3. That any person bringing a servant or servants, and his, her, or their children from any part of the United State[s], or any other country, and shall place in the office of the Probate Court the certificate of any Court of record under seal, properly attested that he, she, or they are entitled lawfully to the service of such servant or servants, and his, her, or their children, the Probate Justice shall record the same, and the master or mistress, or his, her, or their heirs shall be entitled to the services of the said servant or servants and his, her, or their heirs, until the curse of servitude is taken from the descendents of Canaan, unless forfeited as hereinafter provided, if it shall appear that such servant or servants came into the Territory of their own free will and choice.

The bold text was removed from the final draft, which Chris cites as additional proof that the act was intended to create a form of servitude that was non-hereditary. I see it as additional evidence that the legislature was not originally thinking just of “involuntary servitude,” but was perhaps striving to define religious as well as legal relationships. Who provided the corrections to the final draft, and what motivations guided them, still remains to be identified. And as Chris points out in his article, Brigham Young spoke numerous times on the subject, indicating his own imprecise, if not undefined, feelings on slavery, servitude, and race (65-6).

2. Slaveholders: Here we also have very few documents to which we can refer for insight as to how they interpreted the law. Some evidence suggests that the master-slave relationship continued unaltered; while other evidence suggests a different kind of relationship. Chris includes in his article the story of a servant named Dan which supports his major arguments (72-3). An additional supporting example may be found in the case of Gobo Fango, a South African slave acquired from relatives by Edward Hunter in 1865 and then “immediately put…on the payroll.” (Another source records that the wages were paid not to Gobo Fango, but to his owner, Lewis Whitesides, either because of Fango’s youth or his slave status.) Although slavery had been prohibited in the territories by an 1862 act of Congress, Gobo Fango’s purchase and subsequent employment illustrate that, at least in Edward Hunter’s case, he interpreted the law roughly in line with Chris’s take.

Mormon slaveholders often did not refer to their slaves by the name of “slave”, often choosing the appellations “colored servants,” “negroes,” or something similar. Of course, as most Southern slave owners did the same, this offers little insight into the Mormon slave owners’ real attitudes.

3. Slaves: Getting inside the slaves’ heads proves the most challenging aspect of this investigation; as with the lowest classes of all ages, almost no documentary evidence survives from their perspective. (Kate Carter compiled a great pamphlet on black Utah pioneers in 1965; it’s a great starting point for interested parties). One interesting and telling account is found in the Broad Ax, a late 19th Century Salt Lake City periodical for African Americans. During the American Civil War, former slaves later recalled, “joyful expressions” lit up “the faces of all the slaves, when they ascertained that they had acquired their freedom through the fortunes of war.”

They viewed their former condition as one of slavery, not “involuntary servitude.”

4. Mormons: The general population of Utah described African Americans as both servants and slaves. Charles Nibley, writing in 1934, called it slavery: “It seems like harking a long way back to the days of slavery, but negro slavery was actually the law of the land and practiced to a small extent in 1860 and 1861 and 1862 in Cache Valley.” Nibley worked briefly with the Bankhead family and their two slaves, “big Nate” and “Old Sam.” He also recalled Brother Bankhead becoming furious at his slaves on one occasion, and “he tore around pretty lively and threatened to horsewhip them to death if they didn’t mend their ways.”

And an earlier source was reprinted in the Millennial Star in 1855 saying that slaves, not involuntary servants, of a relative number “by no means small” were being held in Utah.

At the very least, the evidence suggests that which Chris and I concluded and I mentioned earlier: anyone could read what they wanted in “An Act in Relation to Service.” I think that Chris did a great job arguing that the intent was to create a policy for Utah that was based in legal precedent. The Utah Mormons were part of an established legal culture, and did not create their laws in a vacuum. Chris has some interesting projects in the works, but I’ll let him explain those to interested parties. Take a look at Chris’s post, and please engage with us in this discussion!