Chattanooga’s Southern Star

One of the least researched and least known facets of Mormonism is the history of the Church in the southern United States. This omission is, in a sense, understandable. Mormon missionary activities in the South during the antebellum period were scattered and sporadic and, frankly speaking, far less important than the efforts of the Church to find a permanent home where its members could establish themselves and worship without persecution. Similarly, while missionary activities in the post–Civil War South were far more extensive than those preceding the war they were largely ignored by contemporary observers in the swirl of controversy surrounding the polygamy question and the corollary issue of statehood for the territory of Utah, and little has been done in recent years to correct this situation. While scholarly research on Mormonism has been voluminous in the past thirty years, few scholars have focused their attention on Mormon activities in the South. As a consequence, a void in both Mormon history and the religious history of the South remains largely unfilled.

A window through which one can gain a fascinating glimpse of the LDS church in the South in the late nineteenth century is Southern Star, the weekly tabloid published at the headquarters of the Southern States Mission in Chattanooga, Tennessee, from 8 December 1898 until 1 December 1900. An examination of its contents provides significant insight into the status of the Church in the southern states near the turn of the century. This glimpse reveals that as the nineteenth century drew to a close Mormonism in the southern part of the United States was a faith still struggling to define, defend, and sustain itself in a largely hostile environment.

The publication of Southern Star came after more than a half century of sporadic missionary activity in the South, beginning shortly after a general conference of the Church at Amherst, Ohio, on 25 January 1832. At this meeting, four elders, Luke Johnson, Seymour Brunson, Amasa Lyman, and Zerubabbel Snow, were instructed to preach in the “south countries,” meaning the area south of Ohio. As a result of their labors, a small branch of the Church was soon organized in Cabell County, Virginia (now West Virginia), although the exact date of its establishment is not clear. Within a short period of time, other elders proclaiming the new dispensation established Mormon congregations in other areas of Virginia as well as in Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, North and South Carolina, and Louisiana.¹

Very little is known about these itinerant elders and the small, scattered congregations they established in the antebellum South. The missionaries who first brought the teachings of Mormonism into the region were in all probability like most other early LDS converts, people of limited means, usually small farmers and craftsmen, and it appears that each remained in the South only a few months before returning to his home. The congregations they established were all very small, ranging in size from as few as seven or eight members to no more than twenty to twenty-five, at most.²

Mormon missionary activities in the South declined appreciably after the murder of Joseph Smith in 1844 and ended completely with the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. With many of the normal patterns of life disrupted by the rapidly spreading hostilities, Church officials deemed it wise to keep their missionaries completely out of the region, and it was not until several years after the end of the fighting that the Church again began seeking converts in the southern states.³ It appears that a few dauntless Mormon elders ventured into the South in the late 1860s and early 1870s, and finally in 1875 the Church resumed significant missionary activities in the region. In that year Church officials in Salt Lake City appointed Elder Henry G. Boyle of Pima, Arizona, to serve as president of the Southern States Mission, which originally encompassed the states of Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and Virginia. Slightly later its jurisdiction was expanded to include North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Maryland, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and, for several years, Ohio.⁴

Originally, Church authorities appointed seven elders to serve alongside President Boyle. These elders and those who followed them were, to say the least, a courageous lot as the South was at that time probably the most dangerous of all Mormon missionary fields. Southerners were, of course, in the throes of ridding themselves of the last vestiges of “Radical Reconstruction” and they were at that time in no mood to tolerate the intrusion of carpetbaggers, especially those who preached polygamy, a doctrine as odious as any that ever reached the nostrils of southern Protestants. As the Mormon missionaries gradually spread their activities throughout the region, lurid rumors stalked them like strange phantom figures. It was said that Mormon elders had broken up homes and turned family members against one another, that they baptized their women converts in the nude, and that the flower of southern womanhood was being lured away to lives of slavery in the harems of Mormon patriarchs in Utah. The Church’s opponents also charged that Mormons preferred to preach in the more isolated areas of the southern countryside because of the general ignorance prevailing there. Following the murder of President James A. Garfield, some suggested that the president’s assassin, Charles J. Guiteau, was a Mormon and that the news of the president’s death was received with joy in Salt Lake City.⁵

Complicating the situation in the South was the tendency of southern converts to emulate the example of earlier members in gathering with their fellow Saints. As early as November 1877, a group of about eighty southern Mormons made their way to Scottsboro, Alabama, and from that point traveled westward by rail under the direction of Elders John Morgan, James T. Lisombee, and Thomas E. Murphy to the San Luis Valley of Colorado. Over the next few years they were gradually joined by several hundred additional southern converts who along with Mormons from southern Utah largely populated the Colorado communities of Manassa, Richfield, and Sanford.⁶ The Mormon converts who left the South and made their way to the settlements of southern Colorado never amounted to more than a minuscule fraction of the region’s total population, yet to opponents of the Church this desire of southern Mormons to leave the region of their birth for the wilderness of the Far West seemed somehow devious and sinister and was cause for added suspicion.

In such an atmosphere, tragedies soon occurred. The first of these was the fatal shooting of Elder Joseph Standing by an anti-Mormon mob at Varnell’s Station, Georgia, on 21 July 1879. From time to time, similar events took place, and by the end of the nineteenth century five Mormon missionaries had been killed while serving in the South. No one was ever convicted of any of these crimes, and while murder was the exception, threats and lesser acts of violence committed against Mormon missionaries occurred almost daily. Indeed it must have taken a particular brand of faith to answer the call to labor in the mission fields of the South in the late nineteenth century. The Mormon elders who walked in pairs along the lonely backroads, traveling—to use the Mormon term—“without purse or script,” were almost entirely dependent on the hospitality and goodwill of the people on whom they called for their daily bread and shelter. While there is no record of any of them dying of hunger or exposure, they often walked with empty stomachs and were commonly pelted with rocks and eggs and often roused in the dead of night and beaten with whips, harnesses, switches, tree limbs, barrel staves, and any other weapons their opponents could lay their hands on.⁷

If Mormon leaders in the South could do little to change the attitudes that tolerated and condoned such behavior, they could at least take stops to maintain the morale of those most affected by it—the missionaries laboring in the region and their converts. To leaders of the Southern States Mission, it appeared that one of the best ways to boost flagging spirits among missionaries and members was to publish a mission paper, an activity which by the late nineteenth century had become a respected weapon in the Mormon arsenal. Beginning with the publication of the Evening and Morning Star at Independence, Missouri, in 1832, mission leaders had frequently established newspapers as a means of combating error and maintaining discipline and morale among Church members.⁸

While some of these publications lasted only a short time, others enjoyed a much longer life. One of the most successful of these nineteenth-century Mormon publications was the British mission’s Millennial Star, first published in May 1840. Leaders of the Southern States Mission were convinced that this journal had played a vital role in the ongoing success of the British mission, and they hoped for similar results in the southern United States. Through such a publication, missionaries would have a forum to report on their activities, members could learn of the successes and tribulations of their brothers and sisters, and Church authorities in the mission headquarters in Chattanooga, as well as those in Salt Lake City, would have an avenue for maintaining contact with their scattered members and traveling elders in the South.⁹

The idea of publishing a newspaper for the Southern States Mission seems to have originated with Elias S. Kimball, who served as president of the mission from 1894 to 1898. While he was not able to bring the proposed publication into reality, his successor, Ben E. Rich, strongly supported the proposal, which finally came to fruition late in 1898. On 3 December of that year, the first issue of Southern Star was published at the mission headquarters in Chattanooga. Weekly editions followed until publication ended abruptly in December 1900.¹⁰

Southern Star was throughout its lifetime a typical nineteenth-century Mormon publication, being both tendentious and provincial: tendentious in the sense that its raison d’être was the propagation of the Latter-day Saint gospel; provincial in that it took little interest in national or world events occurring outside the confines of the Mormon church. Its editors did, however, have a strong interest in the past. As David Brion Davis has written in a recent review article, Mormon faith traditionally has rested on a belief in the literal historicity of sacred events, beginning with Joseph Smith’s vision of God and Christ as physical beings and the subsequent appearances of the Angel Moroni. This intrusion of, to quote Davis, “sacred power into mundane history” led to the establishment of the restored Church in 1830 and its missions around the word.¹¹ Given this belief in the sacredness of the Mormon past, it is not at all surprising that Southern Star contained a running narrative of the history of the Church in the South, which carried over from one edition to the next. These historical articles were always placed near the front of each issue. Many issues, in fact, began with historical accounts emphasizing the fulfillment of God’s purpose through the tenacity of his Saints in the South. The bias of the accounts notwithstanding, they remain an excellent source of information on the origins of Mormonism in the southern states.

In a typical issue of Southern Star, the opening article dealing with the Church’s past would be followed by one or more theological essays. These were printed under such titles as “What Is Faith?” “Perfection the Aim of Life,” “Sunlight of Your Soul,” and “Is the Book of Mormon an Inspiration?” to cite a few examples.¹² These discussions, along with the Articles of Faith, which were reprinted with each issue, were doubtless intended to maintain the purity of Mormon doctrine and the morale of the Church’s scattered members in the largely hostile southern environment. The closing pages of each issue were usually devoted to news from throughout the mission, sometimes illustrated with photographs, sketches, and editorial cartoons. Here were found biographical sketches of current state mission presidents, as well as articles dealing with conference meetings, the organization of new branches, the distribution of Mormon literature, the appointment and release of various missionaries, and the latest instances of mob violence committed against the Saints in the South.

The source of much of this violence was the issue that more than any other shadowed and haunted the editors of Southern Star throughout the lifetime of the paper: polygamy. The hoary rumors of old continued to circulate through the South, despite the issuance of the Manifesto by President Wilford Woodruff in 1890, and were given new vitality by an event that occurred not too long before the publication of the first issue of Southern Star. In 1898 B. H. Roberts, an admitted polygamist and former missionary who served as acting president of the Southern States Mission in 1883 and 1884, was elected to the United States House of Representatives from his home district in Utah. This reminder that polygamy was still practiced immediately raised the ire of many southern Protestants. Typical was the response of the Florida Baptist Convention, which in 1899 adopted a set of resolutions denouncing the election of Roberts as “a menace to every home and the honor of every woman in our land.” The resolutions further implored the members of the Florida congressional delegation to use their “utmost endeavors” to secure Roberts’s expulsion and the adoption of a constitutional amendment forever prohibiting any polygamist from holding a federal office. Similar sentiments were soon expressed by a number of southern newspapers such as the Gainesville [Florida] Sun and the Atlanta Constitution.¹³

Each of these attacks was reprinted in the columns of Southern Star accompanied by rebuttals. The 7 January 1899 issue of the Star characterized B. H. Roberts as a man of great ability and presence before whom “others shake like aspen leaves whenever he appears.” The editorial asked its readers to consider what might happen if, instead of seeking admission to Congress, Roberts was trying to gain admission to heaven. “Think of Abraham refusing Roberts a place on the grounds that he is a polygamist.” And finally, “Now, candidly if Brother Roberts is good enough to enter heaven, to recline on Abraham’s bosom, and to play on harps of everlasting glory, is he not good enough for Congress? I think so.” A later issue of the Star added a slight dash of humor to the Roberts defense. When the Chattanooga News commented that Roberts had bought more toys than any other member of Congress, the Star replied that that was not because he had more children than anyone else in that body but because he acknowledged all he did have.¹⁴

While editors, such as those in Gainesville and Atlanta, limited their opposition to words, others were not so restrained. One of the most violent events to take place during the lifetime of Southern Star occurred in Jasper County, Georgia, on 25 July 1899. Elders Smith E. Rogers and G. M. Porter were warned not to enter the county, and when they failed to heed these warnings a mob broke into the Eudora, Georgia, home of William H. Cunard on the evening of the twenty-fifth and dragged the two elders off into the darkness. In the melee, Mrs. Cunard was accidentally shot in the face with a blast from a shotgun. The elders were carried to the county line and in return for their freedom promised not to return to Jasper County.¹⁵

It was not just in the more isolated rural areas of the South that the Mormons faced the threat of mob violence during this period. Events recounted in numerous issues of the Star indicated that in the towns and cities of the region a similar threat existed, although the opposition was not always violently expressed. From the inception of their missionary activities in the South, the Mormons had always had more success winning converts in the countryside than in urban areas. The explanation offered was that the worldly spirit prevailing in the cities worked against the success of the gospel, “money thus filling the vacuum of lacking faith,” as Southern Star expressed it. This omission, however, troubled mission leaders, and in the spring of 1896 the decision was made to begin preaching in the towns and cities of the South in an effort—again to use the Mormon expression—“to capture” them for the Lord.¹⁶

The response to this new direction in Mormon missionary work varied. In some cities, such as Columbus, Georgia; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Lynchburg, Virginia, Mormon elders seem to have been cordially received. In others, such as Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama, city officials resorted to various means to prevent the Mormons from teaching. In Hattiesburg in March 1899 local authorities pressured their fellow townsmen into refusing the Mormons permission to meet in various public buildings, such as the courthouse or the local opera house, and they finally had to hold their meetings in the parlor of the St. Nicholas Hotel. Mayor R. N. McKellar of Shreveport, Louisiana, delivered a strong tongue-lashing to two elders who ventured into that city in May 1899 and then grudgingly gave them permission to hold a series of public meetings there. One of the more interesting responses to the Mormon entry into the cities occurred in Nashville. While attempting to preach on a street corner in that city one October evening in 1899, Elder J. Urban Allred of Lehi, Utah, was suddenly surrounded by a detachment of the Salvation Army, and the elder’s voice was soon drowned out by “the boom of the big drum, the tinkle of tambourines and the strident voices of the squad singing salvation.” The captain in charge then reportedly made some remarks denouncing the Mormons, and when he finished he and his followers wheeled and marched off as suddenly as they had appeared. Retaking the corner and regaining his composure, Elder Allred remarked that if this was the customary time and place for the Salvation Army to meet in Nashville, he would speak at some other time. In Chattanooga, in contrast to Nashville, there seems to have been relatively little anti-Mormon sentiment, with the exception of occasional stentorian blasts from some of the Baptist pulpits in the city.¹⁷

Southern Star’s response to these incidents varied. At times the newspaper expressed itself in tones that were both tart and angry. In commenting on the Hattiesburg, Mississippi, difficulties and the support given by the local newspaper to those who opposed the Mormons, Southern Star characterized the Hattiesburg Progress as “a small souled mendacious paper that assumes to dole out the news in semi-weekly blotches to 500 stipendiary, who no doubt tearfully realize that a slimy reptile often creeps into their household.” When two Mormon elders were roughed up and had paint smeared on them in Albemarle, North Carolina, in March 1900, an editorial predicted, “It may be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of Judgment than for Albemarle, North Carolina.” And when a bill was introduced in the South Carolina House of Representatives that attempted to make itinerant Mormon elders subject to the vagrancy laws, the paper voiced the opinion that “Jesus would have a hard time of it if he were to visit South Carolina traveling without purse or script.”¹⁸

Responses such as these, however, were the exception. Considering the treatment Mormons were often subjected to, most of the Star’s editorial comments were remarkably calm and judicious. Rather than engaging in vituperative exchanges with the Church’s opponents in the region, the paper generally urged restraint and patience, as in its response to the Eudora, Georgia, mobbing. In commenting on that event, the 5 August 1899 issue emphatically but calmly assured its readers that the Mormons would not be driven out of the state of Georgia or any other state. Mormon missionaries were in the South “to advocate the Gospel of peace and to teach mankind that it is impossible . . . to love God and hate their fellow men.” And when events such as those in Eudora occurred, Mormons must “be more vigorous in advocating truth, religious tolerance and charity.”¹⁹

In addition to counseling tolerance and restraint, the editors of Southern Star passed along through its columns an abundance of practical advice to the missionaries who had been called to serve in a region whose customs and habits were different from those of the region from which they had come. Almost every issue contained articles dealing with such commonplace but important matters as food, bodily hygiene, the southern climate, contagious diseases, and the temperament of southern Protestants. Elders were warned to eat in moderation as the foods most commonly prepared in the South were very different from those they were accustomed to in the West. They should bathe as often as possible but not in stagnant water, which might be “supercharged with deadly microbes.” They should not walk too far in the summer heat and should avoid drafts while cooling off. In tending to the sick through anointing and the laying on of hands, discretion should be exercised, especially “when a disease so loathsome and so highly contagious as smallpox is believed to be under consideration.” While martyrdom was commendable, suicide was not. Noting that anti-Mormon sentiments tended to reach their peak during the summer revivals, elders were urged to conduct themselves in a “quiescent manner” at that time of the year.²⁰

And there were the ways of the flesh. The 29 April 1899 issue of Southern Star ran a picture of a Mormon mother, Mrs. George Palmer of Farmington, Utah, seated in her home surrounded by her three daughters in nightshirts, under the caption, “Papa’s on a Mission.” The photograph was followed by a brief message from President Rich urging missionaries not to give in to temptation when a vision of wife, children, and home was before them. This admonition was perhaps timely as elders were sometimes separated from their families for as long as three years while serving in the South.²¹

Along with articles dealing with the grind and dangers of life in the Southern States Mission were numerous accounts of miraculous occurrences. These, like the historical narrative, were intended to help legitimize Mormon beliefs. Thus the 19 March 1899 issue of the Star recounted the experience of Elders John P. Morris and Charles J. Call near Good Hope, Virginia. While trying to make their way to a speaking engagement, the two became lost in the darkness on an unfamiliar road. Suddenly there appeared before them “a volume of heavenly light” composed of hues of orange, silver, and purple. Shaped like a huge cornucopia, it traveled just in front of them down the center of the road. When the two emerged from the forest in which they had been lost, the light suddenly disappeared, and they found themselves within two hundred rods of the schoolhouse where they were to speak.²²

In a similar but slightly more vindictive vein, Elders O. D. Flake and A. B. Porter wrote from Mississippi late in 1898 that ministers who had fought them had been known to drop dead in their pulpits, others who had cursed them had been stricken so that they could no longer speak, and towns that had rejected them had been burned to ashes within days. And in the spring of 1899, Elder E. B. Dorman reported from Alabama that a horde of grasshoppers had invaded Crenshaw County, from which two elders had been driven several years earlier and were devouring everything in sight. Dorman admitted that he had not seen the grasshoppers but said he had been told about them by “reliable parties who have witnessed the phenomenon.”²³

Descriptions of the miraculous also included conversion experiences. Rather typical was that of Mrs. Mary F. Quinn of Hill City, Tennessee, who characterized herself as a studious person who had been studying the doctrines of the Seventh-Day Adventists. On a bitterly cold night in January 1897, she went to bed but could not sleep. Soon she heard a low murmur, but when she got out of bed she could not find the source of the voice and claimed that for the next hour she listened to one of the best sermons she had ever heard. Six weeks later, two Mormon elders began preaching in the area, and when she went to one of their meetings to her amazement she found herself listening to the same sermon she had heard in January. Shortly thereafter both she and her husband were baptized into the Church.²⁴

Long before the printing of the first issue of Southern Star, Church authorities in Salt Lake City had gradually concluded that most of those who became Mormons should remain where they were rather than gathering with their fellow Saints. As economic opportunities became more limited in the West, the Church began de-emphasizing the gathering, and by 1907 this change of mood and outlook had become rooted in Church policy. Foreign members were urged to stay in the country of their conversion and build up the Church there. As Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton have expressed it, Zion would now move to the scattered members rather than the scattered members to Zion.²⁵

This changing emphasis found expression in some of the earliest issues of Southern Star. An editorial printed on 4 February 1899 stated that while the doctrine of the gathering had not been suspended, its unwise application had caused problems, and consequently great care should be exercised in advising or urging Saints to emigrate to the Far West. The climate of that region was vastly different from that of the South, as were the customs of the people, and economic opportunities were far less abundant than in an earlier day. All things considered, the editorial concluded that it would be better for most of the Church’s nine thousand southern members to remain in their homes. They would certainly still have many unpleasant things to contend with, but their presence would be of incalculable assistance to the missionaries still laboring in the South, and their example would do more to allay anti-Mormon prejudices than the best sermons that could be preached.²⁶

For almost two years after this advice was printed, Southern Star continued to observe, editorialize, and exhort in behalf of the Latter-day Saints in the South. Its labors suddenly ended, however, when the final issue of the paper was published on 1 December 1900. No advance warning of this decision had been given in earlier issues, and the explanation offered was rather vague. The announcement stated that the editors had labored continuously for the continuation of the Star, “but existing conditions at the present time, and Church affairs generally, warrant us in concluding it best to cease publication.” Elaborating a little on this statement, the editors added that when the Star was first printed in 1898 there had been five hundred missionaries in the field in the South, and each of them, as well as their families in the West, subscribed to the paper. Now there were only three hundred elders laboring in the South, and the decline in readership brought on by this reduction in the missionary force made continued publication very difficult. Thus, “if the Star must die, and her end is inevitable, why let us see to it that she goes not to her resting place a poor, famished, impoverished, indebted skeleton, but in robustness, vivacity and honor, free from debt, that she may justly merit a righteous and glorious resurrection.” On a more practical note, the editors asked all those who were in arrears with their subscriptions to clear up this indebtedness as quickly as possible. They also announced that bound volumes of the paper would go on sale after the first of the year, each to be placed in “a neat, substantial binding, ornamental to any library in the land, and worthy of a place in every home.” And finally there was this plaintive note, part reflection, part hope:

Many homes have been brightened, and many hearts gladdened by the presence of this weekly messenger of truth and righteousness. Its irradiating gleam will still shed a ray of light divine, and the holy principles of the everlasting Gospel for which it has vigorously contended, will yet prevail in every land and clime.²⁷

How many hearts were gladdened and how much strength the readers of Southern Star drew from its columns, no one can say. Yet this much seems certain. However subjective the prism through which its news was reported, the events described in Southern Star reveal that at the end of the nineteenth century the limits of religious toleration in the South were still rather tightly constrained and that to be a Mormon in that region at that time required not only faith but no small amount of personal courage as well.