By September 29, 2012
As summer closes and fall is upon us, that means it is time for another round of issues from Mormon studies journals. The following are several articles that stood out to me from the latest issues of Dialogue, Journal of Mormon History, and John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. I hope we have some further engagement with some of these articles in the near future, including some more “Responses” articles.
By September 14, 2012
On October 2, 1841, Joseph Smith deposited in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, a first edition Doctrine and Covenants, a Bible, and other items deemed sufficiently important to preserve for future generations. Among these was a memorial to the U.S. Senate describing the Latter-day Saints’ persecutions in Missouri and a history of the persecutions published in the Times and Seasons. The addition of these two histories to a repository that included sacred writ demonstrated the degree to which the Latter-day Saints were committed to writing about their persecutions and preserving their writings for subsequent readers.
As sociologist Jeffrey K. Olick has noted, “collective memory” is not a single or monolithic “thing,” but a “wide variety of mnemonic products and practices,” which only “gain reality by being used, interpreted, and reproduced or changed.”[1] Early Mormon writings on persecution, then, are best understood as mnemonic products that were gradually “used, interpreted, and reproduced” as they shaped how Mormons and others remembered the past.
By September 9, 2012
The great project of turning the West into part of the United States, initiated in 1803 and begun in earnest in the 1840s, had made little progress in many places. Much remained flexible and contingent about life on its complex border into the second half of the nineteenth century. Residents of the West seemed quite ambivalent about nationality, easily claiming new citizenship when it served personal or business needs. During a time when no one knew which nation or empire would finally impose control, effective trade was the sole source of power. And it continued to be a world defined by personal connections. (30)
So argues Anne Hyde, Professor of History at Colorado College, in Empires, Nations, and Families, winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize earlier this year.
By September 6, 2012
The latest issue of Religion and American Culture arrived in the mail several weeks ago, and swamped with a thousand other things to read, I tossed it on my bedside table and promptly forgot about it. While cleaning in preparation for the arrival of visitors last weekend, I pulled the issue out from under a stack of library books and scattered, semi-coherent dissertation notes I scribbled down in the middle of the night while laying in bed and quickly glanced at the table of contents. I was pleasantly surprised to see an article on Mormonism, and even more pleased when I saw that Thomas Simpson was the author.
By August 29, 2012
Professor Jared Farmer and the State University of New York at Stonybrook very generously posted a free e-book last week?Mormons in the Media, 1832-2012. Though the title should be “Mormons in American Media,” the 342-page book and the hundreds of images therein need to be seen. They are beautiful and brilliant?some impressively horrific in their full technicolor glory. Farmer builds upon a foundation established by Gary Bunker and Davis Bitton in their 1983 The Mormon Graphic Image, 1833-1914: Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations and is able to radically enlarge it. The expansive scope of these pages can easily induce a little head spinning?the very best kind.
By August 24, 2012
Neilson, Reid L. Exhibiting Mormonism: The Latter-day Saints and the Chicago World’s Fair. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 207 pp. + index.
Today the Chicago?s World Fair of 1893, also known as the Columbian Exposition, is largely lost from America?s collective memory. Despite the once-dazzling spectacle of its extraordinary landscape and architecture, all that lingers for most people now?if anything?is George Ferris? great Wheel, the risky engineering triumph that became the icon of the Fair. In its time, however, the Fair was perceived as the greatest American happening since the Civil War. It drew about 27 million visitors at a time when the national population stood at only about 65 million. The event galvanized the country in myriad ways, and profoundly dignified the city of Chicago.
Scholars often depict the Fair as a catalyst in American history. It had significant effects, for instance on the development of technology and architecture. Historians of American religion characterize the Fair and its Parliament of World Religions as a moment of growing self-consciousness for American Christians, a first encounter with previously unknown world faiths. It was the beginning, historians say, of a growing sense of religious pluralism. Together with the new scientific forces coming to bear on religion, this new awareness transformed American religious sensibilities in the latter half of the 19th century.
Reid Neilson?s Exhibiting Mormonism: Latter-day Saints and the 1893 Chicago World?s Fair, published at the end of last year by Oxford, brings the argument of the Chicago Fair as pivotal moment home to Mormon history, plotting the Fair as a critical juncture in the story of Mormons? relationship with the rest of America. As Richard Bushman?s jacket blurb notes, Chicago was the Mormons? national ?coming out party,? and in this slender volume, Neilson shows how the Fair and other such events transformed Mormons? ways of introducing themselves to the rest of the nation.
By July 16, 2012
The last few years have been a coronation of sorts for Richard Bushman–and rightfully so. After a prolific and prestigious career, the American Historical Association devoted a session to his work, the Mormon History Association distinguished him with their Leonard Arrington Award, and a group of former students held a conference in his honor. (I wrote my reflections of the conference here.) The most recent issue of Journal of Mormon History includes many of the papers presented at that last conference, including several JIers. I just finished the entire issue last weekend, and concluded it was probably the strongest JMH issue in years, as nearly every article was at an exceptionally high level of academic standards.
(It should be noted, however, that the issue as a whole was strong in a few very, very narrow fields: Joseph Smith’s thought, Mormonism and political thought, and historical thought in general. See a pattern? Now this is primarily the result of the participants’ building off of Richard Bushman’s own work–a commemorative issue in honor of Jill Derr would probably look much different, for instance–so the lack of engagement with the 20th century, material culture, lived religion, or, gasp, women’s history can, at least partially, be overlooked. But since these themes tend to dominate Mormon history in general, I maintain the “partially” qualifier.)
By June 1, 2012
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.”
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.
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.
By May 31, 2012
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.
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).
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.
They viewed their former condition as one of slavery, not “involuntary servitude.”
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!
By May 29, 2012
Mormonism has a complicated relationship with Protestantism. It also has a complicated relationship with the United States of America. If Mitt Romney?s impending nomination as the Republican candidate for President has done nothing else, it has reinforced in my mind that complexity. It was with sincere appreciation, then, that I read Ben Park?s timely article in the latest issue of Dialogue. No, Ben?s essay does not address Mitt Romney. But it does examine Mormonism?s historical relationship with both the American nation and its Protestant establishment.
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