Recently on Wikipedia there was featured an article on hand-cart Mormons. (At one point in their early years in Utah, the church hit on the brilliant idea of encouraging immigrants by supplying hand-carts. Horses and oxen were expensive, you see--poorer folks who couldn't afford a horse team or oxen couldn't immigrate to Utah. Mormon immigration to Utah had subsided. It is an amazing story, well worth reading about for inspiration about sheer guts, faith, and dogged determination.)
From 1856 to 1860 some 3,000 members of the Church of Latter-day Saints made the trip from Iowa, where the rail line ended, to Salt Lake City using handcarts. These were mostly converts from the British Isles and parts of Europe who lacked the financial means to pay for teams. The Willie and Martin handcart companies departed late and were caught in early snows, resulting in many deaths along the trail and prompting a major rescue effort from Salt Lake.
Most companies, however, made the trip without undue problems. Those using handcarts comprised only about 10% of all Mormon immigrants. But the sacrifices of leaving homes and nations to gather with the Church in Utah, and making the trek across the plains with the barest of personal belongings and provisions cements the handcart pioneers as symbols of faith and determination.
After 1860, the Church began sending wagons east from Salt Lake in the spring returning with immigrants over the summer. As the transcontinental railroad pushed west, the distance traveled by wagon grew shorter and shorter. The driving of the Golden Spike completing the transcontinental railroad at Promontory, Utah in 1869 marks the official end of the "Pioneer Era" of the Mormon Church and Utah. Those who came after that time, came via railroad.
According to the Wikipedia article, the US fedgov forced itself on the Mormons in Utah. Outrage about polygamy, if I recall. Brigham Young was politely invited (forced) to resign leadership of the church by the US Army, and the Mormons were invited to live under the rule of a US territorial governor (and I assume, territorial legislature, if the history of Nevada supplies any example.)
Now, this is a little different. Utah was "federal territory", unlike Hawaii.
So, its not exactly like Hawaii.
But, c'mon. Why force a federal territorial governor (and the resignation the church leader) on the Mormons?
A small correction and some history some may find interesting.
Brigham Young was not forced to resign from his position as President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka "Mormon Church" or "LDS Church"). He was forced out as territorial governor as part of ending the so-called "Utah War" (or "Mormon War"). He remained the President and Prophet of the LDS Church until his death in 1877. He was succeeded in that position by John Taylor.
When the Mormons were forced out of Nauvoo, Illinois in 1846, after having been forced out of Missouri, Ohio, and New York State previously, Church leadership resolved to emigrate to a location where nobody would bother the Mormons again. The semi-arid basin of the Great Salt Lake was chosen because it was both beyond the territorial borders of the United States and because nobody else wanted it. But by the time the first wagons arrived in the Salt Lake valley on 24 July, 1847, the territory was effectively under the control of the United States. (Despite feeling betrayed by the US Government, some 500 Mormons actually joined the US Army as the
"Mormon Battalion" to assist with the Mexican-American. I believe the Battalion still holds the record for the longest march: some 2000 miles.) The war ended a few months after the first Mormon Pioneers arrived in Salt Lake and the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo officially moved the land from Mexican to United States territory.
The Mormons lived a communitarian lifestyle (known as the United Order) that enabled them to combine labors to create the necessary water-works to effect irrigation and have successful agriculture. For all intents and purposes, the local government was theocratic with Brigham Young sitting at the head. In addition to laying out the well planned city of Salt Lake City, and getting irrigation going, church leaders also sent many groups of settlers into the surrounding and far flung regions to establish various industries necessary for the proposed "State of Deseret" to be self-sufficient.
(Deseret is a word that appears in one of the Mormon books of Scripture, the "Book of Mormon". It means "honeybee". The honeybee is revered for their industry, thrift, and working together for the benefit of the entire community.)
Granite and other quarries were established in the mountains around Salt Lake. Lumber operations were set up ~300 miles to the South near the present border with Arizona. Iron, silver, and other mining operations were established. Ranching and farming were established throughout the region. A mostly unsuccessful attempt to raise silk worms and cotton for textiles lead to the establishment of St. George, Utah. In addition to the desire for industry and places for large numbers of converts to live and work, Brigham Young had another motivation. From Salt Lake City, Mormon settlements stretched north to Canada, south into Mexico, and west and south-west to the Pacific ocean. Along the old, pre-Interstate routes, these settlements are spaced 20 to 40 miles apart. A wagon can make 20 miles a day under good conditions. Having been driven from their homes multiple times in the past, often in dead of winter, with no where to go, Brigham Young was convinced that if the members of the Mormon Church ever needed to flee again, they would have some waypoints along their escape route.
Anyway, the Church was practicing "Plural Marriage" or to be precise, Polygyny (one man having more than one wife at the same time). The 1856 Republican Party platform called for the "eradication of the twin relics of barbarism: slavery and polygamy". Non-LDS living in Utah (often former LDS who had left the church and were very hostile to it, sometimes others who came to Utah after the Mormons had demonstrated it was habitable) did their best to stir up problems for the Church and its members including with rumors that the Mormons were not loyal citizens, or that the Mormons were denying due process in favor of secret executions. One fantastical story was of women being taken captive for forced polygamous marriages and held in the Salt Lake Temple where their only escape route was to jump from an upper story window into the Great Salt Lake and a swim to freedom. (Never mind that the Temple sits over 15 miles from the lake.)
In 1857, President Buchanan sent a military expedition to Utah to put down a supposed Mormon uprising. Fearing the approaching army was intent on genocide, the Mormons prepared for the worst. Innocent civilians were caught in the fear and warmongering and slaughtered at the Mountain Meadow Massacre.
Brigham Young was removed as territorial governor and replaced by a different presidential appointee. Of course, with the Utah territory being overwhelmingly Mormon, local elected officials were often at odds with the appointed, non-LDS governor. As a territory, Utah had granted women the vote in 1870. Had Utah been a State, it would have been the first State to grant women full suffrage. Congress revoked women's suffrage in 1887 under the Edmunds-Tucker Act as part of the effort to disenfranchise the Mormons and reduce the control exerted by the Mormon Church. A lot of Mormon men were disenfranchised by the earlier
Edmunds Anti-Polygamy act of 1882. The
1887 Edmunds-Tucker Act not only dis-enfranchised women (the vast majority of whom were LDS and presumed under the control of their husbands and/or church leaders), it also dis-incorporated the LDS Church and Perpetual Emigration Fund and earmarked all seized assets for public education. It required an anti-Polygamy oath to vote, serve in public office, or to serve as a juror. It required a civil marriage license, removed common-law marriage protections against testifying against a spouse and for children to inherit, removed local control of schools, and replaced local judges with federally appointed judges.
Back when the feds gave a little more credence to the proper separation of powers they realized that as a State, Utah would get to set its own marriage laws, as well as control its own schools. And so Statehood was denied until after the LDS Church ended the practice of polygamy (or more precisely, ended the contracting of new, polygamous marriages). As the "Crossroads of the West" Utah occupies a critical point on the transcontinental railroad and other trade routes. So it isn't like the USA was going to let the Mormons start their own country.
But as a territory, the feds exercised far more control than if the area was a State. So Utah applied for Statehood and was denied repeatedly. As a condition of Statehood, our State constitution contains a section that cannot be altered except with the consent of congress.
Article III of our State Constitution is known as the "Ordinance" section.
It requires perfect religious freedom, but the perpetual ban on plural marriages. It also requires the State to maintain a free public school system. Supporting this school system financially prevented the members of the LDS Church from also supporting a private Church-run school system. The section also disavows all claim to public lands within the State of Utah.
Arizona, which was part of the proposed "State of Deseret" and which has a large Mormon population has a similar section in their State constitution.
Article 20 of the Arizona State Constitution likewise requires perfect religious freedom but a ban on polygamy, taxpayer support of a free, secular school system, and, interestingly, requires that the schools be conducted in English. Why? Maybe to reduce the influence of Spanish in the region so close to Mexico. Maybe also to prevent the teaching of
the Deseret Alphabet which Brigham Young had previously commissioned.
For all this, the Mormons hold the US Constitution in high regard. In a couple of revelations in another book of LDS Scripture, "The Doctrine and Covenants" the Lord tells us that He established the Constitution by the hands of wise men
(DC 101:77-80), and that the members of the church should support constitutional laws
(DC 98:5-6). The Book of Mormon is replete with references to the American Continents being choice lands above all others, promised lands.
So it isn't that the feds forced themselves on Utah or the Mormons. The 19th century Mormons simply believed the government was over-stepping its constitutional authority in restricting the peaceful exercise of sincere religious beliefs.
Charles
