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Show UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY provisions put Mormon women as well as Mormon men at risk—and theoretically any non-Mormon living in the territories who might be involved in an extended sexual relationship outside of marriage.36 Morrill would introduce one anti-LDS bill after another during the next twenty years. Morrill’s bill combined moral reform with shrewd politics, which continued with parade float and banner during the next months. According to nineteenth-century Utah historian, Edward Tullidge, “every campaign where John C. Frémont was the standard bearer of the party, there could be read: The abolishment of slavery and polygamy; the twin relics of barbarism!”37 Incidental evidence suggests that Tullidge was not exaggerating too much. An Indianapolis, Indiana, rally had “Brigham Young, with six wives most fashionably dressed, hoop skirts and all, each with a little Brigham in her arms,” occupying one parade wagon drawn by a yoke of pioneer oxen. “Brigham,” said the correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, “was making himself as useful and interesting as possible among his white, black and piebald better-halves. He also held a banner inscribed ‘Hurrah for the Kansas-Nebraska bill—it introduces Polygamy and Slavery.’”38 The parade attracted a reported crowd of sixty thousand people.39 A handbill, allegedly written by the Mormons, was distributed at a preelection rally in Philadelphia. Addressed to the “Faithful Followers of the Lord, and Recipients of His Grace,” it claimed to give advice. “We call upon you to stand firm to the principles of our religion in the coming contest for President of the country,” it said. “The Democratic Party is the instrument in God’s hand, by which is to be effected our recognition as a sovereign State, with the domestic institutions of slavery and polygamy, as established by the patriarchs and prophets of old, under divine authority, and renewed in the saints of Latter-day, through God’s chosen rulers and prophets.” In contrast, the handbill said the Republicans were standing in the way of the saints and the fulfillment of the scripture when in the last days “seven women [shall] lay hold to one man.” The flyer was supposedly ordered by “the President and Rulers, at Great Salt Lake on the Fourteenth Day of August, 1856.”40 It was a fake, of course. It used words that were neither a part of the style nor the vocabulary of the Mormons, and nothing in the present-day church archives gives the document the least credence. It was undoubtedly the product of some Republican operatives who hoped to use antiMormon prejudice to peel votes from Buchanan—what modern politicians would call “dirty tricks.” Nevertheless, leading opinion-makers took the 36 “The Latest News,”New York Tribune, June 27, 1856. Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: By the Author, 1886), 140. 38 Chicago Tribune, July 15, 1856, cited in New York Times, July 21, 1856. 39 Ibid. 40 As reproduced in The Mormon, November 15, 1856. 37 120 |
