2 Deepening Rivalries: 1872–1875

Inside Lincoln Hall woman suffragists assembled slowly. Shivering they huddled together in the entryway, reluctant to take seats in the freezing auditorium. When Elizabeth Cady Stanton stepped onto the stage, the suffragists hurried to their places. Coats came off, but gloves and hats remained in place. By the time Susan Anthony, Victoria Woodhull, and others joined Stanton on the platform enthusiasm had warmed the audience.¹ It was January 10, 1872, the fourth time suffragists from the National Woman Suffrage Association had journeyed to Washington, D.C., for an annual convention.

Only “a few days since,” reported District of Columbia newspapers, “the Lucy Stone ring of the woman suffragists held a three day convention” in the same hall.² Although the two “rings” of the woman suffrage movement worked vigorously for women’s political equality and were concerned with other aspects of women’s inequality, their annual conventions reflected their differences. The voice of the American Woman Suffrage Association, the Woman’s Journal, was quick to point out that their convention was “filled with ‘representative men,’ as well as women, who ^[83] were willing to avow their belief in the importance of suffrage for women.” The entire convention, the Journal reassured its readers, “was conducted with such dignity and decorum as to leave no point of attack for the ill-disposed.”³ That was rarely the case at the National’s gatherings.

That the American Woman Suffrage Association saw itself as representing a more respectable “class” seems evident. Henry Blackwell, Stone’s husband and editor of the Woman’s Journal, reminded Susan Anthony that she worked with a “different class” of woman, and on occasion he urged Anthony to “exert an influence” or “they” would “undo” all he had done.⁴ Blackwell’s “class” did not promote the discussion of controversial topics but tried to keep the focus of their organization on woman suffrage. The National’s suffragists, on the other hand, were concerned not only with women’s political equality but also with economic and social questions as well. That perspective provoked complex and controversial discussions.

The differences between the two branches of the movement were important not only because they fueled rivalries and reinforced animosities, but also because they shaped strategies and determined alliances during the 1870s. The differences between the two associations often have been labeled as “radical” and “conservative,” though ^[84] some historians, like Steven Buechler, have warned against the use of such “simplistic” terms, claiming that “traditionally” the contrasts have been “overdrawn.”⁵ Certainly when the nineteenth-century woman suffrage movement is viewed in the national context, the differences fade in the light of the dominant attitude toward woman suffrage. Most opponents generally lumped woman suffragists together as “strong-minded” women, although many anti-suffragists singled out the “radical wing” for their strongest condemnation.⁶

Nevertheless, the tensions and conflicts between the two organizations that resulted from these differences reveal diversity in the movement, which may be obscured if woman suffragists are narrowly defined, as traditionally they have been, as “white, middle class reformers.”⁷ Buechler himself has described the early movement as manifesting a “dazzling diversity of arguments and orientations.” That diversity reflected more than ideological variety; it also demonstrated diversity in the movement that contributed to the split and their persisting differences in the 1870s.⁸

Nineteenth-century woman suffragists observed the contrasts between their two organizations, and each “ring” believed that its difference was its source of strength. Some woman suffragists deplored the schism and urged reconciliation; others eventually opposed union of the two ^[85] associations even after the differences had begun to wane.⁹ In fact, one of the important benefits of the split in the movement was that it promoted a broader spectrum of participants: the National Association provided safe haven for women of many stripes, whereas the American Association ensured a place for women who valued the appearance of respectability and believed that the movement would have greater appeal if it reflected a less radical orientation and included men in leadership positions.¹⁰

Historians have tended to lament the split, believing it weakened the cause and contributed to the movement’s failure to win the vote in the nineteenth century.¹¹ Ellen DuBois broke new interpretive ground by showing that the schism among equal rights advocates had positive ramifications; it resulted in the emergence of “independent suffragism” that laid the groundwork for modern American feminism. Thus, the failure to win the vote no longer overshadows other contributions of nineteenth-century suffragism. Although DuBois’s study ended with the founding of the two national woman suffrage organizations in 1869, she cites the election of 1872 as the high point of women’s political expectations and claims that after that time, the differences between branches began to fade.^{12 [86]}

This study asserts that the radicalism and vitality of the movement and the differences between its two wings had greater endurance than DuBois’s time frame suggests.¹³ And in contrast to historians who see the division in the movement as “unfortunate,” a closer look at the 1870s suggests other benefits of the split: persisting differences in the movement fed competition and conflict among woman suffragists and while that blocked consensus on women’s rights questions, it may have also spurred a more vigorous feminist dialogue. Equally important, the existence of the National Association, with its exclusively female leadership and dependence primarily on the power of women’s activism, encouraged the further politicization of gender issues at the heart of feminism and gave women greater opportunities for decision-making and leadership.¹⁴

The critical political strategy that came to define the National Association’s action “during most of the 1870s” was the argument developed by Francis and Virginia Minor in 1869 that under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, women were already enfranchised; it was up to women to claim their rights. The National’s suffragists called this strategy the “New Departure,” which also defined the differences between the political tactics of the two wings of the movement. The New Departure period, DuBois argues, “was one of the most ^[87] radical in the history of woman rights, both in its tactical militancy and in it larger vision of female emancipation.”¹⁵

The response to Anthony and Stanton’s trip to the West by some of the American’s suffragists illustrates some of the continuing differences between the woman suffrage branches, including the persistence of the National’s radicalism that had energized its inception.¹⁶ The developing relationship between national woman suffragists and women in Utah not only shows the differences between the two national organizations but also that the grounds for defending the vote in Utah changed over time in response to both internal and external events.

When Anthony and Stanton visited Utah Territory in 1871, they established the foundation for a relationship with territorial suffragists by heralding the New Movement reformers as the bright hope for Utah’s women—an assessment that many outsiders shared. But in 1872 the political world of Utah’s female activists was shifting in response to converging political events that began with a campaign for statehood. That event provoked the emergence of organized anti-polygamy activism, created conflict among New Movement women, and stimulated sentiment to repeal Utah’s woman suffrage law. As a result, the statehood campaign also energized Mormon women to a new level of activity in their own defense. These changes ^[88] inside the territory soon complicated the relations between Utah’s women and national women suffragists.

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Returning from her trip to the far West in 1871, Elizabeth Cady Stanton summed up her experience in the columns of the periodical the Golden Age, offering a litany of praise for the wonders of the West where she had “fine audiences,” cordial social reception, and the “compliments of the press.”¹⁷ Yet, she reported, upon returning home she found an article by Hannah Tracy Cutler in the Woman’s Journal highly critical of the western campaign.¹⁸ Stanton was enraged. Cutler was a close friend of Lucy Stone, the 1870–71 president of the American Woman Suffrage Association, and, as Stanton put it, “one of the Boston clique.”¹⁹

After a visit to Salt Lake City, Cutler wrote that in the West, “the better class” of people “strongly opposed” the “radical views” of the “Victoria league” and greatly regretted that “women of such talent” as Anthony and Stanton did not use it with “wiser discrimination.” She feared it would take years to undo what had been done by these women who “dress Woman Suffrage up in the habitments of the most dangerous forms of social evil.” And she concluded: “Our work is rendered more difficult as these people make known their plans.”^{20 [89]}

Stanton retorted that her only fear for the Boston group was that they would “burst with self-righteousness.”²¹ Then, she fired off a letter to her close friend Martha Coffin Wright, telling her that Cutler’s “impertinent” article was motivated by “sheer envy,” since “she could never get a Bakers dozen to hear her anywhere.” Stanton asked her to write the Journal’s editors and ask them what they hoped to “gain” for the cause by such action.²²

The hostility between Cutler and Stanton in 1871 reflected the strain between the two branches of the suffrage movement. Stanton knew, in fact, what the Woman’s Journal’s editors hoped to gain by reprinting Cutler’s article: they wanted to distance the American from the National because they believed Anthony and Stanton’s “radical views” were damaging the cause.²³ By suggesting that Anthony and Stanton were part of a “Victoria league,” Cutler was suggesting that they were in league with the views of Victoria Woodhull, who was notorious for her defense of free love—sexual relations outside of a legal marriage—and for her condemnation of the double sexual standard.²⁴

In January 1871 Woodhull had appeared before the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, arguing that under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments women had the right to vote; all that was necessary to ^[90] enfranchise women, she argued, was a declaratory act from Congress. The idea was not new; it was the argument that the Minors had presented two years earlier at a National Association’s convention, and it eventually worked its way to the Supreme Court as Minor v. Happersett.25 But Woodhull’s advocacy gave greater visibility to the idea, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton turned her “critique of women’s subordination in marriage” and “sovereignty of the individual” into a “much more concrete program for women’s sexual rights” that was aired from the National’s platform.²⁶

At the same time that Woodhull was addressing the congressional committee, the National Association was holding its Washington, D.C., convention. Hearing about Woodhull’s appearance, its leaders went to hear her speak. Attracted by her appearance and modest style, and not intimidated by the reputation that preceded her, Anthony and Stanton asked Woodhull to address their convention. Before many weeks passed, Woodhull had begun working herself into a leadership position in the National.

The National Association’s annual business meeting and anniversary convention in May 1871 became known as the “Woodhull Convention” because of the degree to which she dominated the proceedings. Her militant cry, “We mean treason; we mean secession,” brought applause from the audience and denouncements from the press, and deepened ^[91] the hostilities between the two associations. It also foreshadowed the problems that Woodhull would create for the woman suffrage movement.²⁷

By the time Anthony and Stanton left for their western campaign, Woodhull’s name had become linked with theirs. Indeed, Woodhull’s presence exposed differences between the two associations over not only political strategies or the scope of issues but also who each would allow to represent their cause. Organizationally the American had been able to exploit the pre-existing abolitionist-Republican reform network, while the National was forced to hustle for its members. When the National cast its broad net in search of supporters it captured a disparate group of suffragists representing a wide range of interests. To Henry Blackwell that diversity was seen as “class” differences between the branches of the movement; to the National’s leaders it demonstrated the comprehensive nature of their ideology and the fact that their organization was open to all.²⁸

What bothered Hannah Tracy Cutler and others was the militancy and willingness of the National Association to engage the so-called side issues, that is, to advocate a course or support a theory that would distract from a focus on political equality in an effort to advance other fundamental changes for women. Stanton’s growing interest in open discussions of sexual issues, including the idea ^[92] of “self-ownership,” appalled many suffragists, and her notion that natural rights extended beyond the public sphere into marital relations, including divorce, was seen as a threat both to family life and to the organized woman suffrage movement. Stanton’s ideas when seen in conjunction with Anthony focus on women’s economic exploitation provoked feminists such as Cutler to label the National’s suffragists “radicals.”²⁹

Despite the “radical” label, when Anthony and Stanton visited Utah it was the reform possibilities of the New Movement women that had earned their praise and won their support, not the Mormons’ attempt to redefine marital relations. But the fact that Anthony and Stanton were willing to meet with any group of women, including polygamous ones, left them vulnerable to criticism. By 1872 their identification with Woodhull and Mormon polygamists deepened the hostilities between the two national organizations. The National’s search for allies and a constituency partially explains its willingness to open its doors to all comers, but the way the branches of the movement responded to the situation in Utah also illustrates the persistent differences that contributed to the split in the movement.

The Seneca Falls woman’s rights convention in 1848 marked the beginning of the woman’s rights movement in America. That historic meeting, organized by Elizabeth ^[93] Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott and other female abolitionists, was called to discuss “the social, civil, and religious conditions and rights of women.”³⁰ Their meeting has been described as anticipating “every demand of nineteenth century feminism.”³¹ In 1850 Lucy Stone advanced the movement by organizing the first woman’s rights convention in order to broaden the base of activism by seeking a national constituency.³²

Although Susan Anthony had met and admired both Stone and Stanton, she did not fully embrace the movement until a woman’s rights convention in 1852.³³ These conventions, a regular feature of the 1850s, often shared the platform at various events with abolitionists. However, the order of their importance was at times a source of disagreement among promoters of both causes.

During the Civil War, the woman’s rights movement came to a halt, but women activists were not idle. Anthony and Stanton founded the Women’s National Loyal League, which focused its wartime efforts on a massive anti-slavery petition drive. The campaign collected four hundred thousand signatures and is credited with providing the impetus for the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment.³⁴ The leaders in the campaign, including Stone, believed that their efforts to secure freedom for the slaves was the first step in securing equal rights for all. These activists and other women who were directly involved in ^[94] the war believed their wartime efforts merited political recognition.

But after the war ended, conflict erupted in the equal rights community over the proposed Fourteenth Amendment. Viewed as a centerpiece of Reconstruction, the purpose of the proposed amendment was to secure the political rights of freedmen. Although universal suffrage had been a central tenet among equal rights activists, fidelity to this broader agenda was weaker among the newly empowered radical Republicans, resulting in a commitment to “Negro suffrage” only.

During congressional debates on the amendment, Anthony and Stanton again organized a petition drive. This time they sent ten thousand signatures directly to Congress asking for the inclusion of woman suffrage in the amendment.³⁵ The Republicans, however, feared that linking black and female suffrage would jeopardize the amendment. As passed the Fourteenth Amendment was problematic: it granted political equality to the freedmen, but those rights were not guaranteed. It was also regressive for women, ignoring woman suffrage and introducing gender distinctions into the Constitution by using the word “male.”³⁶

During congressional debates over the Fourteenth Amendment and the months of ratification that followed, former allies engaged in heated exchanges. For some who ^[95] had been committed to universal suffrage, the number of flaws in the amendment was sufficient to demand opposition. Others, persuaded by Republican arguments that this was the “Negro’s hour,” viewed the amendment as a stepping-stone toward political rights for all Americans. This conflict caused the first serious crack in the unity of the post-war equal rights community.³⁷

A political referendum in Kansas in 1867 widened that fissure. In that ballot Negro and woman suffrage appeared as separate issues. Instead of treating the issues as compatible, an ugly battle ensued. The Republicans who advocated black suffrage resorted to anti-woman rhetoric; even Stone, having been convinced by Anthony and Stanton to campaign in Kansas, was angered by the nature of Republican opposition, as was her staunchly Republican husband, Henry Blackwell. At the same time some woman suffragists resorted to arguments, which were elitist at best, and racist at worst.³⁸

At a critical moment in the campaign, Anthony received an offer of help from Democrat George Francis Train. Wealthy and eccentric, Train was known for his unpopular stances, including support for woman suffrage and sympathy for the Mormons. Nevertheless, Democratic support now appeared the only way to win; soon he and Anthony were canvassing the state together. The Train-Anthony campaign was a disaster, failing to convert Democrats while ^[96] angering Republicans who hated Train’s sympathy to the South during the Civil War and were incensed by his “anti-Negro attitudes.” Still, Train’s oratorical skill and personal flair made him one of the “few males to break through the Kansas Republicans’ barrier against women’s rights.”³⁹

Both measures lost in Kansas, yet Anthony and Stanton left the state satisfied with their efforts: woman suffrage had received approval from nearly one-third of the voters, and they had accepted Train’s offer to fund a woman suffrage newspaper.⁴⁰ That paper, The Revolution, provided Anthony, Stanton, and Parker Pillsbury with a vehicle for promoting woman suffrage and sometimes for airing their anti-Republican sentiments as well.⁴¹ For three years the daring and contentious “radical feminist newspaper,” as Ellen DuBois describes it, aired topics that touched all aspects of women’s exploitation and prescriptions for emancipation.⁴² But it also advocated “educated suffrage,” a not-so-subtle slap at black suffrage, and a position that brought Anthony and Stanton further condemnation of their association with Train.⁴³

Anthony defended Train’s support, saying that to support woman suffrage she would “take money from the devil.” Lucy Stone retorted that Anthony was not only taking his money “but the devil too.”⁴⁴ And she said that ^[97] the Train-Anthony association “must have been a monstrous hoax invented by the enemy.”⁴⁵

Lucy Stone may have never known that the Train-Anthony association resulted, in part, from the political maneuvering of Henry Blackwell and Republican Senator Samuel N. Wood, an advocate of woman suffrage. Blackwell and Wood thought Train would attract Democratic votes to their cause and that the “tough and uncompromising Anthony” could keep him in line. But when the Train-Anthony strategy proved a disaster, Blackwell joined in condemning Anthony. One historian has claimed that Blackwell’s motives were to wrest the woman’s suffrage leadership away from Anthony and Stanton, and return it to the Republican camp—thus, Blackwell bears the major responsibility for the movement’s split.⁴⁶ Blaming Blackwell alone underplays other significant conflicts among suffragists that preceded the actual split: conflicts based on issues other than partisan politics, which reflected differences of style, philosophy, and strategic thinking.

After Ulysses S. Grant secured the White House in 1868, the Republicans sought to finalize their Reconstruction agenda. Recognizing the shortcomings of the Fourteenth Amendment, they proposed a new amendment to prohibit explicit disfranchisement on account of race, and they empowered Congress to enforce it. But they continued ^[98] to ignore woman suffrage. As a result the Fifteenth Amendment became an additional source of strife in the equal rights community.⁴⁷ Those who favored ratification, despite their disappointment over woman suffrage, included Lucy Stone, Henry Blackwell, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson; those opposed included Anthony, Stanton, and Pillsbury, who voiced in The Revolution the anger they felt at what they viewed as a betrayal by the Republicans.

The formation in 1869 of two competing woman suffrage organizations, both claiming “national” representation, institutionalized and perpetuated the conflicts in the woman’s rights movement. In May, Anthony, Stanton and others organized the National Woman Suffrage Association at a reception at the Woman’s Bureau following a contentious Equal Rights Association meeting. These suffragists, representing a number of states, had come to New York at the request of Anthony and Stanton. They shared Anthony and Stanton’s belief that the time had come for women to lead the efforts to secure their own political, social, and economic equality.⁴⁸ Passage of a Sixteenth Amendment granting woman suffrage was their goal, but that focus was not to exclude a wide range of other women’s issues. In establishing the National Association, Ellen DuBois has argued, these suffragists created the first “independent woman’s movement,” which ^[99] she claims was “the greatest achievement of feminists of the postwar period.”⁴⁹

The founding of the American Woman Suffrage Association the following November was a direct response to the “national” claims of their opponents. In 1868 pro-Republican suffragists had organized the New England Woman Suffrage Association in order to counter the actions of Anthony and Stanton and their opposition to the Fifteenth Amendment. To assert their own leadership these suffragists felt a new organization was necessary. They called for a meeting in Cleveland and appealed directly to men for support and leadership. To Stone, the cause had suffered for “the lack of organizing talent of men in its management.”⁵⁰ Henry Ward Beecher was elected as the first president, though Blackwell and Higginson were the real male leaders; Stone and Julia Ward Howe were the most prominent female leaders.

Unlike its rival, the American Association did not coalesce around a new strategy for gaining suffrage. Instead, the organizing impetus developed “from the necessity of countering the direction the National Association was leading the woman suffrage movement.”⁵¹ Soon the American came to espouse a different political course from its rival by working to gain woman suffrage on a state-by-state basis. ^[100]

The difference between the two branches became more visible when, on the second anniversary of The Revolution in January 1870, Stone and Blackwell directly challenged the voice of the National with their new publication, the Woman’s Journal.52 Theirs would be a respectable journal, they hoped, that appealed to an emerging class of professional and club women, whom historian Kathleen Barry has dubbed the “reformist elite.” The Journal promoted an anti-sphere philosophy, equal access and pay, and heralded female achievements, but their critique drew back from the full implications of those demands. On the other hand, Anthony, Stanton, and Parker Pillsbury, the editors of the Revolution, Barry continues, “applied their ‘analytical tweezers’ and feminist thinking to any political question they considered important.” Of course, what Anthony and Stanton considered important often infuriated their critics and attracted like-minded women, who in turn reinforced National’s radical image.⁵³

For the more conservative members of the American Association, discussions of such controversial topics as sexual relations were seen as a threat to their cause, and considering the fact that even support for woman suffrage alone was viewed in most quarters as “radical,” their concerns now seem unwarranted. For Stanton marital relations were central to her preoccupation with women’s self-ownership; and her advocacy of birth control ^[101] and discussions of marital rape and prostitution showed that she was not squeamish about discussing polygamy with Mormon women.

Still, the initial rationale for supporting woman suffrage in Utah in 1872 was the same for both the National and American associations: the supposed curative power of the vote. Some defenders argued that Mormon women would vote down polygamy, others believed if woman suffrage endured in the territory, the Gentile population would soon outnumber the Mormons, thus ending the institution. How the relationship between Utah’s women and national suffragists developed over time reflects changes in both the world of national woman suffragists and that of Utah’s women as well.

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Months after the departure of Anthony and Stanton from the territory in 1871, Utah’s women entered a statehood campaign that is a landmark in the political history of Utah’s women. For the first time in the territory’s history, women helped select delegates to a constitutional convention, and they voted on ratifying a proposed state constitution that contained a woman suffrage clause. Other territorial women took a different course. They launched a petition drive against statehood and voted against the proposed state constitution. ^[102]

For Utah’s politically active women the statehood campaign was also significant for other reasons. When the petition drive turned into a bitter assault on the Mormons and polygamy, it created internal conflict, which damaged the solidarity of the New Movement’s former Mormon women. Moreover, the opposition campaign also redirected the reform energies of both the ex-Mormon and non-Mormon women away from woman suffrage and toward anti-polygamy efforts. That shift seems to have hampered their chances of sustaining a non-Mormon woman suffrage movement in the territory. This first political confrontation between Utah’s women deepened the divisions in their community beyond repair until the late 1880s.

The statehood campaign of 1872 was the territory’s fourth bid, but at no earlier time had the opportunity appeared so promising. Mormon historian B. H. Roberts cited several reasons that at this time statehood seemed possible. The uncertainty of the upcoming national elections made every electoral vote critical: a pledge to Grant’s reelection, the Mormons were advised, might give the idea of statehood new appeal to the Republicans if a concession could also be made on polygamy. The possibility of admitting Utah into the Union with a specific prohibition against any future plural marriage contracts, thus ensuring the end to the vexing “Mormon question,” was an editorial topic in many papers. In addition, a growing ^[103] division in Utah’s non-Mormon community over the benefits of statehood made the Mormons’ prospects for support from “friends” inside the territory more feasible. With the possibility of a compromise on polygamy and the support of some “Gentiles,” statehood advocates had “good grounds” for optimism. And Roberts asserts: “not a few among the ‘near’ leaders of the ‘Mormon’ people favored such a step as was now proposed.”⁵⁴

Rumors that the Mormon leadership was considering trading polygamy for statehood had been circulating since Thomas Fitch, “the silver-tongued orator-politician,” arrived in the territory. His presence was seen as solid evidence that a new approach to statehood was in the making. By November 1871 the opposition, and its press, was becoming alarmed that the new strategy might work. Soon, the Salt Lake Tribune began attacking all prominent people whom they feared might be in favor of the new Mormon scheme.⁵⁵

Although polygamy was an issue, the anti-statehood campaign of 1872 was more concerned with political and economic control. Opponents insisted that statehood would strengthen the hand of the L.D.S. leadership.⁵⁶ The cry of the Liberal party, the political wing of the New Movement reform, was to rid the territory of Mormon “despotism and tyranny in Utah.” As long as the Congress appointed some territorial offices, including the governor and judges, ^[104] there would continue to be some non-Mormon representation. Some non-Mormons also feared the possibility of the Mormons gaining the authority to tax the growing mining industry, the one economic sector under non-Mormon control.⁵⁷

In the anomalous political milieu of territorial Utah, the opponents of statehood admonished the Mormons, who had sought congressional conditions for statehood, calling the constitutional delegates the “Judas Leaders.”⁵⁸ Behind their anger was the concern that the compromise might work and the conviction that the proposal was a sham: the Mormons, the opponents of statehood maintained, would never accede to any plan that would contribute to the demise of plural marriage.⁵⁹

Looking for danger in every corner, the Salt Lake Tribune focused on woman’s rights advocates “who if possible, will handmaid our State into existence with the polygamic compromise.” According to the Tribune editor, “such innovative spirits as Victoria Woodhull, Mrs. Tracy Cutler, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony” with their “peculiar social and political schemes, such as female suffrage, the reconstruction of relations between the sexes and the general remodeling of society” had “much of a common cause” with the Mormon people. Such women, the article continued, were among the “forces which the Mormon people could call out to their help.” The “Mormon ^[105] sisterhood” and the woman’s rights women were, after all, “drawn together by strong sympathies and peculiar thoughts and practices,” the editorial concluded.⁶⁰

Attitudes among Mormon women regarding their political activity were, nonetheless, as diverse as their initial response to enfranchisement had been. On one end of the spectrum was the conservative counsel of Eliza R. Snow, who reminded Mormon women only days after Anthony and Stanton left the territory to remember that “Order is heaven’s first law,” and not to fool themselves thinking that “ingress to the ballot box and access to financial offices” would elevate women.⁶¹ On the other end was Sarah M. Kimball, who promoted a wide range of discussions concerning women’s welfare, and encouraged political and economic activities aimed at strengthening their public activism.⁶²

Political activism was not new to Mormon women: they had employed the petition as a means of addressing grievances as early as the 1840s and had played a role in their enfranchisement in 1870.⁶³ But the importance of the 1872 statehood campaign provided a legitimate rationale for increasing their activism, and a petition drive among non-Mormon and ex-Mormon women seems to have supplied an additional incentive to move into action since the petition condemned both the church and polygamy. With the ballot in their hands, Mormon women entered a new phase ^[106] that included interacting with their brethren in the political arena, a phase that many Mormon men seem to have welcomed.

On February 3, the Salt Lake Herald reported, Mormon “ladies” came out in “force” for a nominating meeting for the upcoming election for city officers and delegates to the constitutional convention. With a “large representation” of women “occupying places of honor on the front benches,” George Q. Cannon moved that “one or more ladies” serve on the committee to nominate city officers. His motion was received with “applause.” Sarah Kimball and Bathsheba Smith received the nod. A committee of seven was chosen to nominate delegates for the upcoming constitutional convention; Elizabeth Howard and Wilmarth East were selected. When that committee chose its nominees, it broke new ground: of the nineteen delegates, nine were non-Mormons.⁶⁴

Broadening the participatory base for the constitutional convention reflected new political thinking.⁶⁵ In part, this strategy was designed to diffuse critics who cried for the separation of church and state. But it also reflected a new pragmatism in the Mormon camp, which was struggling to prevent the issue of polygamy from again proving a hindrance to statehood.⁶⁶ Delegates to the convention listened as Senator Thomas Fitch advised them that even though their doctrine may be “true theology” and ^[107] may have all the advantages its adherents claimed, it was “an anomaly in this Republic.” Therefore, taking steps to end polygamy, he continued, were necessary because “the press calls for it, the pulpit thunders for it, the politicians rage for it, the people insist upon it. You may delay the issue but you cannot evade it.”⁶⁷ The convention also heard a spurious rebuttal from a non-Mormon opponent of statehood, William Haydon, who asked bitingly what the “world” would say when it discovered that the Saints were “ready and willing to sacrifice one of their divine ordinances for the sake of a state government.”⁶⁸

What the constitutional convention forged neither confronted the issue directly, nor avoided it.⁶⁹ They asked Congress to set the terms by which the territory could come into the Union and for those terms to be submitted to the voters in the territory for their approval. The issue caused heated debate among the delegates. On one side were most non-Mormons and the Mormons who were inclined to seek an “honorable” compromise; on the other were Mormons who saw in this effort a willingness to trade polygamy for statehood. Still, the compromising pragmatists prevailed. The constitution, its delicate compromise and woman suffrage intact, now required ratification by the public.^{70 [108]}

The debates during the constitutional convention reveal a palpable tension between those who wanted the Congress to set the terms of admission and those who did not.⁷¹ George Q. Cannon defended the idea as a way of forcing Congress to express its will. But neither his public statements—the accusations leveled at him by his critics, notwithstanding—nor his correspondence with Brigham Young suggests a willingness to sacrifice polygamy.⁷² Letters between Cannon and Young show that the proponents hoped that if Congress “prescribed any terms,” they would be “such as we could honorably accept.”⁷³

Some historians have concluded that if Congress had set the terms, the pragmatists would have prevailed, and the 1872 constitution would have “legitimately solved the Utah problem.”⁷⁴ But Congress did not act on the submission, so what the Mormons would have “honorably” accepted remains speculative. Whatever they might have accepted or rejected, the result of the Mormons’ attempt to allow for maximum flexibility in the 1872 statehood campaign created a climate of ambiguity which gave rise to charges and counter-charges. The Mormons were accused alternately of hypocrisy for being willing to sacrifice polygamy or treachery because they would not be willing to abandon polygamy but would lie about their intentions; they responded with hair-splitting arguments and a vague ^[109] line of defense that further exacerbated distrust. Non-Mormon opponents, who feared the tactic would succeed, were so vitriolic in their accusations that they too impeded any real chance for seeking a long-term compromise. Because distrust and anger drove much of the speculation, ultimately the campaign had particularly painful ramifications for Utah’s competing factions of women and aggravated their conflicts.

For Mormon women the outcome of the constitutional convention was cause for celebration, because woman suffrage had been included. When the convention adjourned, Bathsheba Smith advised the Woman’s Journal of that fact.⁷⁵ Two weeks later she wrote that the vote on the new constitution was the “largest ever polled.”⁷⁶ Woman’s presence on Election Day, she added, offset “the recent heavy immigration of gold diggers” who were prone to “rowdyism and drunkenness.”⁷⁷ The civilizing effect of women voting was an argument all suffragists used in promoting their cause. Hearing such news, the Woman’s Journal responded: “Well, done, Utah!”⁷⁸

Words of praise directed at Mormon women from the national suffragists were not what the female opponents of statehood wanted to hear.⁷⁹ Earlier, when the Salt Lake Tribune had declared a “common cause, with kindred purposes and ambitions” between Mormon women and national suffragists, the paper placed the New Movement women in an ^[110] uncomfortable position, for they were the ones who had begun to develop a close relationship with the national leaders.⁸⁰ Even more problematic, the question of woman suffrage had entered the statehood debate on the Mormon side—not where the women of the New Movement would have wanted it.

Fanny Stenhouse, president of the New Movement’s Ladies Mutual Improvement Society, was particularly outraged by the actions of the convention.⁸¹ Although once an ardent defender of her church and polygamy, by 1872 she was an unrelenting critic of both.⁸² Stenhouse could not imagine the Mormons voluntarily accepting any political gain in exchange for the elimination of the “bitter miseries of polygamy.”⁸³ She saw her calling as the education of her polygamous sisters and public; with the help of Providence, polygamy would then be destroyed.⁸⁴

The constitutional convention, with its suggestion of compromise, represented to Stenhouse another manipulation of Mormon women by the church hierarchy just as they had been manipulated into believing the doctrine of plural marriage in the first place. Calling the ratification election “an abomination,” she wrote a scathing letter to the Salt Lake Tribune.85 By voting for ratification of the constitution, she argued, Brigham Young had voted polygamy away; no longer could the Mormons claim their practice to be divine. She would have “respected” Young, she added, if ^[111] he had said polygamy was a divine law and, “State or no State, we dare not lay it aside.” She asked Mormon women “not to consent to lay aside polygamy, unless [Brigham Young] will confess to you that he has been fooling you all these years.”⁸⁶

News that the “ladies of Salt Lake,” who opposed statehood and polygamy, were organizing a petition became known at the end of January 1872. The Tribune was pleased, calling it an “eminently wise and proper” course. This petition, the paper claimed, would “neutralize the effect of any petition coming from the Mormon ladies,” who are “wholly subject to the dictation of the priesthood.” Unlike the Mormon women, these activists were “uncontrolled,” their efforts compelled only from a “thorough knowledge of polygamy.”⁸⁷

The petitioners asked “that the protection of the general government may not be withdrawn from them by the admission of that territory as a state.” And they launched an unwavering attack against church leaders: “No more bloody despotism has disgraced the earth in modern times;” “the history of [Brigham Young’s] reign . . . is written in characters of blood . . . no man’s life, or woman’s honor, has been safe;” disobedience to church leaders could result in death; church members had been “robbed” of their property; and thousands of women were in a condition of “abject slavery.”⁸⁸ In response the Mormon press issued an equally ^[112] strong counterattack: “For plain, pointed, downright mendacity we have not seen anything to excel this document for some time; and every lady that attaches her name to so foul and false a statement will disgrace herself.”⁸⁹

But that did not deter the petitioners from canvassing for women who were unafraid of such a consequence. On March 12, they sent four hundred signatures and a memorial to Congress.⁹⁰ In addition, women participated in other events designed to block statehood, including a rally at the Liberal Institute.⁹¹ Women were also among the delegates chosen to lobby Congress against statehood, since they could “most effectually show up the trick of conceding polygamy” and that it was not made “in good faith.”⁹² Brigham Young noted that Fanny Stenhouse, Mrs. E.L.T. Harrison and a third woman were “talked of as delegates to Washington” to lobby in opposition to statehood, a fact that seemed of little concern.⁹³ For one national newspaper, the plan to send non-Mormon women to Washington, was “a good one qualitatively,” but “extremely weak quantitatively. . . . There should be two hundred of them at the very least.”⁹⁴

On May 16 the Deseret News published the full text of the women’s opposition petition and the names of the women who had signed it, which generally included how long each had been in the territory and a member of the L.D.S. church. To be “charitable,” the News claimed, it would ^[113] assume that “many whose signatures appear were ignorant of the contents of the petition.” But from there the Mormon paper’s criticism went downhill: the petitioners were “a motley crowd,” mostly “Gentiles, hating the ‘Mormons’ or apostates, hating them still worse.” Hitting bottom it announced: “We do not doubt it, for very likely some of the petitioners are as great criminals as ever went unhung.”⁹⁵

The uproar was immediate. Disclaimers began pouring in from women, or in some instances husbands or fathers, who claimed never to have read the petition; others said they had been duped into signing. In response, the Salt Lake Tribune wrote that Mormon “teachers” were extracting the recants and excommunicating those who did not. It blasted the News’s accusations of fraud and praised the petitioners, claiming that they had done more to block statehood than all the other petitions put together.⁹⁶

Three days after the News published the petition, its sponsors responded. They acknowledged that some of the signers might not have expected to see their names in the News, even though the Herald had issued an early warning that for any woman to sign would be to “disgrace” herself. Given that warning, they continued, if anyone “chose to sign the paper without reading it, surely no one but herself was to blame.”^{97 [114]}

Mary Hampton Godbe, however, did not blame herself for signing the petition. She wrote an angry letter saying that she would “not be true to myself” if she did not respond. Only a small part of the petition was read to her, she claimed, and now she knew why: she found it “untrue and bitter in the extreme.” And she wanted “no connection with it, or with those who framed it.”⁹⁸ By publicly severing her relations with the women who “framed” the petition Godbe was ending her association not only with women who had been active in the Ladies Mutual Improvement Society but also with her sister-wife, Annie.⁹⁹

Mary’s angry reaction to the petition suggests the possibility that the failure of the New Movement women to maintain the L.M.I. Society was related to the internal controversy that the petition campaign created. Mary had organized woman suffrage meetings for ex-Mormon women even before Anthony and Stanton arrived in the territory, and after their visit she was listed as an officer in the National and an active participant in the Pacific Slope Woman Suffrage Conventions.¹⁰⁰ Losing her leadership most likely hurt efforts to maintain woman suffragism outside the Mormon community.

How long these hard feelings lasted is unclear, but from all appearances the statehood campaign not only shifted the focus of New Movement women to an anti-Mormon ^[115] campaign, it ended on a bitter note that wounded their solidarity. Perhaps the New Movement women could have organized to keep a non-Mormon woman suffrage movement in the territory alive; but the editorial support for Mormon women from the Woman’s Journal and the attack on woman suffragists by the Tribune made it more difficult for the New Movement women to sustain their suffrage activism. The L.M.I. Society was already struggling. By April 1872 its membership had dwindled so much that they no longer needed the large hall of the Liberal Institute for their meetings.¹⁰¹

Among the first and most prominent women in the New Movement to shift her energies entirely into the anti-polygamy campaign was Fanny Stenhouse, the president of the Society. But following her publication of Expose of Polygamy in Utah: A Lady’s Life Among the Mormons (1872), Stenhouse moved onto the national lecture circuit, speaking against polygamy and the L.D.S. Church. Her woman suffrage interest soon took a decidedly back seat to her anti-polygamy campaign.

After the early seventies, Stenhouse’s name was no longer connected to woman suffrage, although her lecture appearance at Boston’s Tremont Temple won the praise of Lucy Stone.¹⁰² Stenhouse’s second book, “Tell It All”: Woman’s Life in Polygamy, was touted as the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of polygamy, a comparison that was reinforced by ^[116] Harriet Beecher Stowe’s introduction. Yet, unlike Stowe’s sympathetic portrait of the victims of slavery, Stenhouse’s volunteer “slaves” are pitiful dupes or ignorant fanatics, while the priesthood “masters” rival Simon Legree.¹⁰³

Stenhouse’s personal experience with polygamy, marital estrangement, and her philosophical sympathy with the New Movement were the sources of her alienation from her former community. Her books and lectures contributed to the growing anti-polygamy campaign. On another front, her dismissal of woman suffrage in Utah contributed to the campaign to disfranchise territorial women.

After the statehood campaign and until the late 1880s, the woman suffrage movement in the non-Mormon and ex-Mormon community was sustained only by individual advocates. Only a year after Stanton and Anthony left the territory, the New Movement was encountering serious difficulties that eventually moved its men as well as its women into less visible roles in the community.

The statehood campaign, and especially the attack by the Deseret News on their anti-statehood petition drive, further politicized many non-Mormon and ex-Mormon women. Refusing to back down after being attacked, they republished their complaints with an additional pledge: “In the future, the defenders of this system may expect to hear further from, THE LADIES WHO CIRCULATED THE ^[117] PETITION.”¹⁰⁴ Three of these “ladies” kept that promise, their outrage intact. But in doing so they were instrumental in shifting the political agenda of non-Mormon women away from woman suffrage to an anti-polygamy and anti-Mormon campaign.

*     *     *

Of the women who led the anti-statehood campaign, the most vocal during these years was the one whose name topped the list of petition signatures: “Mrs. A. G. Paddock.”¹⁰⁵ Most likely it was she who should be credited with turning the campaign against statehood into an anti-polygamy and anti-Mormon drive.

Paddock, a relative newcomer to the territory, was among the many non-Mormons who arrived in Utah after the completion of the transcontinental railway in 1870. Born in New York State in 1840, young Cornelia moved to Nebraska in 1868; shortly thereafter she married A.G. Paddock.¹⁰⁶ When Paddock arrived in Utah she brought with her experience in Protestant benevolent work and moral convictions that appear to have been particularly incensed by all things Mormon. Her arrival in Utah at the peak of the New Movement dissent gave wide scope to her passion for pointing out evil wherever she spied it. The social structure was in a state of flux as former friends parted ways, while the non-Mormon community was growing in number ^[118] and increasing in power because of their new alliance with New Movement leaders.

Cornelia Paddock received her first taste of notoriety in 1872 when she delivered two lectures at the Liberal Institute.¹⁰⁷ The opponents of statehood who had “requested” the lecture by this “intelligent true-hearted Christian lady,” enthusiastically recommended attendance to “everyone interested in the future welfare of the territory.”¹⁰⁸ The first evening Paddock discussed polygamy “as a social problem, and its effects upon the physical conditions of the women and children of the race;” she followed this up with a discussion of the “domestic and moral relations of the system” on the second evening.¹⁰⁹ “The women of Utah,” the Salt Lake Tribune remarked, “have good reason to congratulate themselves upon having obtained so brave and earnest a champion as Mrs. Paddock.”¹¹⁰ How the Mormon portion of Utah’s women felt about their new “champion” is not difficult to imagine.¹¹¹

In the climate of conflict surrounding the 1872 statehood campaign, Cornelia Paddock found her niche in Utah. Not coincidentally she had been asked to deliver her lecture the same week that the statehood convention was held: in Paddock the “antis” found a strong female advocate whose tendency toward sarcasm characterized many nineteenth-century adversaries. ^[119]

A battle line between Utah’s women was drawn on June 1, 1872. On one side, “Mrs. Paddock” announced that the pages of the Salt Lake Tribune would be “open to any woman who desires to speak what she knows and testify to that which she has seen.”¹¹² Her announcement was intended to counter the appearance of the Woman’s Exponent on the same day, a new monthly produced by and for L.D.S. women.¹¹³ For its part the Mormon women’s journal declared it would not speak for those “few women of Utah who with disappointed hopes or perverted minds may be disposed to rail in bitterness against principles honestly entertained by a whole community,” but would represent those who “have been slandered in the most malevolent manner.”¹¹⁴

A month later the Tribune commended the women of Utah for speaking out: “It matters not on which side they speak, whether the polygamic or the monogamic side. Let them talk out the woman’s question, and the exchange of thoughts and feeling will soon bring them to an understanding of what is for their good and happiness in life.”¹¹⁵ In the fall the paper urged the women of Utah to use its pages “to agitate the woman subject and maintain the woman’s cause until these valleys reverberate with the theme.”¹¹⁶ But the exchange of thoughts and feelings took a vitriolic turn and became, as the editor of the Woman’s Exponent Emmeline Wells later described it, “diamond cut diamond”: woman against woman.^{117 [120]}

The first indication of the style of Paddock’s opposition appeared when territorial women began withdrawing their endorsements from the women’s anti-statehood petition. A Mrs. Zabriskie complained that if she had read the heading she would not have signed the petition. “The heading reads,” Paddock replied, “To the Senators and Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled.” And she quipped: “Possibly Mrs. Zabriskie may have thought that the petition was addressed to Brigham Young.”¹¹⁸ Thus began Cornelia Paddock’s relentless attack on polygamy, the L.D.S. church, and the idea of Mormon women voting in Utah.¹¹⁹

By 1873 the outlines of a new phase in the campaign against polygamy were evident. Women from inside the territory, outspoken adversaries such as ex-Mormons Stenhouse, and Sarah Ann Cooke, and non-Mormon Paddock, led the new assault. Through the non-Mormon press and churches in Utah, their bold condemnations provided a particularly effective female perspective for the opposition.¹²⁰

Not that female opponents had ever been missing from the ranks of those who opposed polygamy. Beginning with the secret introduction of plural marriage to the Saints, opposition had come from women as well as men. Among the first, and certainly the most visible woman to oppose “patriarchal marriage” was Joseph Smith’s first wife, ^[121] Emma.¹²¹ Her vehement opposition planted “disorder and disunity among the sisters,” some of the patriarchy concluded, and resulted in the cessation of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo in 1844.¹²² “Sister Emma’s” rebellion cast a shadow over the Mormon sisterhood long after she and her Mormon sisters parted company on the banks of the Mississippi.¹²³

Women writers outside the Mormon community began focusing on polygamy in the 1850s. Some of their early works combined moral outrage with sexual titillation, while others were melodramatic works of fiction.¹²⁴ “The sex and lust theme” in anti-polygamy literature, writes sociologist Kimball Young, “was played upon almost ad infinitum and, viewed in cold, historical perspective, ad nauseam.”¹²⁵

As early as 1855 Maria Ward identified what many critics saw as the major problem with polygamy: the degraded status of women imposed by the institution.¹²⁶ But the mainstay of the early accounts of polygamy relied upon the sensational; Ward’s own fictional story describes a polygamous wife whose opposition to polygamy was expressed within earshot of a Mormon elder. For that infraction, Ward states, the woman was “stripped nude, tied to a tree and scourged until the blood ran from her wounds to the ground.”^{127 [122]}

Although sensationalism continued to characterize tales of polygamy, the 1870s marked a break with the past. Anti-polygamy narratives began to come from inside the territory rather than from outside because there were growing numbers of non-Mormons and apostate Mormons who confronted the institution daily. Eyewitness accounts, reporters’ stories and novelists’ tales had their own appeal, but books and lectures delivered by women who lived in Utah had quite another. Nothing matched the sensation created by the exposes written by former polygamist women such as Fanny Stenhouse. The financial success of Stenhouse’s lecture-circuit appearances led her to focus her reforming energies outside the territory, and eventually she moved to California.¹²⁸ As a result until 1878 Cornelia Paddock’s writings dominated the women’s opposition to polygamy from inside the territory.

Most of what Paddock had to say about the church, polygamy, or the other supposed Mormon crimes was not new to the Mormons. The Deseret News had never been reluctant to print what “anti-Mormons” were saying. What was different about Paddock was that she lived in the territory, and her non-Mormon husband had lived there since 1858.¹²⁹

Paddock’s pen had a particular edge because she had the confidence of former Mormon women like Sarah Ann Cooke who had spent years in the territory and in the church, ^[123] and who had been privy to information and the gossip of insiders. Unlike ex-Mormons who still had friends or family relations with whom they wished to live in peace, the community that Paddock moved into was diverse enough by 1872 for her to exist quite apart from the Saints.¹³⁰ Securely positioned within the non-Mormon community, Paddock believed it was her “duty” to speak out.¹³¹

At first Paddock’s writing was fairly standard anti-polygamy fare. Central themes included the idea that the institution was “degrading” and “enslaving” to women to a degree “unparalleled in the civilized world,” and that polygamy suppressed woman’s “natural feelings” in defiance of her “true nature.”¹³² She rarely failed to add her own particular touch, stating, for example, that polygamy promoted “crimes and abominations that would disgrace a community of Hottentots.”¹³³ On a more pragmatic level, Paddock came to espouse the need for effective anti-polygamy legislation, and she also attacked woman suffrage, as it was utilized by Mormon women, as meaningless.¹³⁴

The full force of Paddock’s pen was unleashed by a shift in ownership of the Salt Lake Tribune during the summer of 1873. For three years the New Movement leaders had influenced both the style and content of the paper, despite conflicts with its managing editor, non-Mormon Oscar W. Sawyer.¹³⁵ An erratic editorial policy on the ^[124] issue of plural marriage—Sawyer’s anti-polygamy and anti-Mormon writings troubled the reformers—reflected those tensions. But replacing Sawyer with a member of the New Movement did not solve the newspaper’s editorial or financial problems.

By 1873 the Salt Lake Tribune, like the New Movement itself, was encountering trouble: without funds and in debt it was sold to outsiders. The new owners believed, as Sawyer had, that the only hope for their paper was to break the hold of the church on the territory through the power of the federal government. Consequently, they endeavored to create a climate that would “inflame national sentiment” and “compel effective federal intervention.”¹³⁶ Lacking the restraining hand of the New Movement reformers, the Tribune adopted that strategy as part of a new approach. Among the beneficiaries of this course was the new editor’s ideological sister, Cornelia Paddock.

Almost immediately Paddock moved to the center of the conflicting tactics for ending polygamy. The new owners of the Tribune believed Congress should settle the question, whereas the New Movement reformers continued to argue that federal intervention would backfire, producing sympathy for the Saints and further “ennobling” the institution in the minds of the Mormons. Even more to the point, they argued, federal laws would be easy for the ^[125] Mormons to evade.¹³⁷ The former Mormons claimed that polygamy was a “dying institution.” Its end would be better accomplished by “the growing sentiment of Mormon mothers” who in “these times” state: “my daughter shall be no man’s second wife.”¹³⁸

For Paddock anything less than an all-out assault on polygamy, and the church itself, was unthinkable. She needled the Tribune for reprinting the sentiments of the New Movement reformers “without comment,” and she lashed out at the basis of the ex-Mormons’ argument. Paddock concluded, erroneously, that the members of the New Movement did not want the federal government to interfere in the issue of polygamy or, indeed, “any” matter in the territory.¹³⁹

In response to Paddock, the reformers warned against the fanatic who, “brandishing a sword,” would merely arouse “the combativeness of the community, inflame their feelings and stay the progress of reason and reflection.” They added that Paddock, “feeling her anti-polygamic mission invaded,” had gone off on a “tangent,” showing a “startling facility for confounding ideas peculiar to other ladies that we have heard of.” The most effective “apostles of polygamy,” the article concluded, “are these half blind zealous souls who go about calling upon government to interfere and crush it out.”¹⁴⁰ The plea, which urged a judicious approach to the “Mormon question,” ^[126] appeared in the new voice of the reformers, the Salt Lake Leader; it was ignored by anti-Mormons. For its part the Mormon press found nothing to praise in the Leader’s appeal; shortly after this exchange the Mormon press hailed the end of the new publication’s brief life.¹⁴¹

By the fall of 1873, Paddock began to hit her stride. She related stories of violent acts committed against women who opposed their husband’s wishes to practice polygamy: “he rose from his knees, took the carving knife from the shelf, and seizing her by the hair, attempted to cut her throat,” while another “disobedient wife” was kept “bound with cords for two years.”¹⁴² She also published her first series of articles, which allegedly came from “various documents and narratives” entrusted to her “custody.” Explaining that it had become her duty to give this information to “the world,” she called the series, “Lost Chapters from the History of the Saints.”¹⁴³

In addition to her steady barrage of comment on and criticism of activities in Utah, in 1874 she also sought to persuade national suffragists not to support woman suffrage in the territory.¹⁴⁴ A year after publishing her first series, Paddock submitted another, “Tied to the Stake: or Martyrs of the Latter Days,” which appeared in regular installments in the Tribune well into 1875.¹⁴⁵ This material later comprised In the Toils: or Martyrs of the Latter Days, the book that brought national recognition to ^[127] Paddock.¹⁴⁶ Her growing reputation as the fountainhead of anti-polygamy activity gave her credibility among certain woman’s rights advocates.

The growth of the anti-polygamy crusade owed much to the writings of women, as did the resulting increase of anti-Mormon sentiment. When the anti-polygamy crusade and anti-Mormon feeling combined with the political and economic aspirations of many non-Mormons in the territory, a new level of opposition was created from inside the territory. An indication of their combined strength was foreshadowed by the successful effort to block statehood in 1872.

*     *     *

The significance of the campaign for statehood had implications for women that reached beyond the territorial borders. National suffragists viewed the campaign as a testament to the benefits of woman suffrage, because women in the territory were active on both sides of the issue—that in itself lent credence to their democratic claims for enfranchising women.¹⁴⁷ National suffragists watched the formation of the new statehood constitution with interest, noting that half the support for the new compromise constitution had come from women.¹⁴⁸

In 1872 woman suffragists outside the territory still continued to cling to the hope that women in Utah would vote to end polygamy. During the statehood campaign, that optimistic belief seemed justified after the Salt Lake ^[128] Tribune declared that the Mormons were willing to barter with Congress over polygamy.¹⁴⁹ When the non-Mormons suggested that in voting for the new statehood constitution the Mormons were voting away polygamy, the notion of a trade-off was reinforced.¹⁵⁰ Nothing could have made national woman suffragists happier.

The statehood campaign, however, had other political outcomes that proved troublesome for national suffragists. The first was a move to disfranchise Utah’s women. Sentiment to repeal Utah’s woman suffrage law was not new; it had emerged almost as soon as the law was passed in 1870. But in the wake of the bitter statehood battle, a focused effort to disfranchise Utah’s women began in earnest.

Before the referendum on a constitutional convention was held, the Salt Lake Tribune urged its readers to “wake up” every lawful voter and for them to come out in full support of the “National” ticket as opposed to the “Theocrats.”¹⁵¹ Non-Mormon women were urged to “meet” the “formidable power” of the Mormon women’s organization with a “counter organization.”¹⁵² But because the non-Mormon and ex-Mormon women were busy with their anti-statehood petition drive, only a few women expressed their opposition to statehood by voting against holding a constitutional convention. ^[129]

Failing to defeat efforts to hold a constitutional convention, the Tribune changed its stance. It called the votes of Mormon women “illegal;” the majority of these women, the paper claimed, were foreign-born and had been naturalized through plural marriage—an accusation denied by L.D.S. leaders. If only “legal” Mormon women voted, the paper reasoned, and if most non-Mormon women voted, the result would make the Liberal party “a power in the land.”¹⁵³

Having lost their attempt to stop the constitutional convention, its opponents shifted their attention to the national Congress, where they hoped to try a new tactic to lessen the Mormons’ political power. This one focused on disfranchising all of Utah’s women as part of a broad program of election reforms. But the real intent of the legislation was to lessen the number of Mormons able to vote. That “scarcely a lady” voted the non-Mormon ticket appears also to have proved to non-Mormon men that woman suffrage held little promise of contributing to their political power.¹⁵⁴ Soon the Washington efforts bore fruit. On April 3, 1872, Mr. Wheeler in the House of Representatives introduced “a bill to promote the purity of elections in the Territory of Utah,” which included measures to disfranchise Utah’s women.¹⁵⁵

The introduction of national legislation to disfranchise Utah’s women and the confrontation between ^[130] non-Mormon and ex-Mormon women during the statehood campaign catalyzed Mormon women. In June 1872 the Woman’s Exponent appeared; prior to that time when Mormon women sought national recognition for noteworthy achievements, they had to write national journals and hope for the best. Sarah Kimball was a correspondent to the Phrenological Journal, and letters from Bathsheba Smith regarding the statehood campaign were published in the Women’s Journal.156 But with the appearance of the Exponent, Mormon women had a new medium through which to “speak for themselves” and to represent their own ideas about “woman’s rights” to national advocates.¹⁵⁷

The Exponent encouraged interest in political issues even in remote regions of the territory—a fact that provides evidence of interest in women’s issues outside of Salt Lake City and beyond the elite women’s leadership.¹⁵⁸ The new publication also gave Mormon women national visibility while bolstering their credibility as woman suffragists.¹⁵⁹ Equally important, the Exponent gave Mormon women a new means for rebutting outside attacks and publicizing any effort that appeared to threaten the vote.¹⁶⁰

Congressional efforts to restrict women’s access to Utah’s polling places in 1872 came immediately to the attention of national woman suffragists.¹⁶¹ But not until 1873 did the threat seem sufficiently alarming for the ^[131] national movement to take concerted action. In May, the National Association passed a resolution condemning a new bill submitted by Senator Frelinghuysen that included disfranchising the women of Utah. The American Association followed suit.¹⁶²

Earlier, Henry Blackwell had dissected the “abominable bill;” he was especially incensed that it had passed a Republican Senate because the 1872 Republican presidential platform had included a pledge to treat women’s rights with “respectful consideration.” Noting this hypocrisy, he asked if this constituted “respectful consideration” of women’s rights in the territory.¹⁶³ He also condemned the Salt Lake Tribune, stating that its change in attitude toward woman suffrage was “one of the most painful facts connected with the recent shameful conspiracy against the rights of Women in Utah.” Still, he assured his readers that “we have no sympathy with Mormonism. . . . We abhor polygamy and long to see it suppressed.” He stated that the disparity of numbers between “Gentile” and Mormon women was temporary, whereas the principle of woman suffrage would be a “permanent and inestimable benefit.”¹⁶⁴

During the winter of 1873–74, both of the national woman suffrage associations worked to defeat the Freylinghuysen bill.¹⁶⁵ Although several of the objectionable features of the bill had been stricken, woman suffragists continued to work against its passage.^{166 [132]} The National Association passed two resolutions at its annual Washington meeting, arguing that woman suffrage in Utah must be defended since it was still the “surest guarantee of the peaceful extinction of polygamy.”¹⁶⁷ Representatives from Pennsylvania, New York, and New England woman suffrage associations also lobbied Congress.¹⁶⁸ Ultimately, the bill was returned to committee—in essence, defeated. One member of the American Association claimed the victory was “chiefly owing to the searching, logical editorial of the Woman’s Journal which placed the subject in its true light” as well as the efforts of various suffrage organizations.¹⁶⁹

By 1874, however, defending the vote in Utah based upon the idea that it would hasten the end of polygamy was no longer tenable. That conclusion was one result of the appearance of the Woman’s Exponent. Although the journal provided evidence of the interest and concern of Mormon women in political, economic, and social equality for women, it also clearly established that they were devoted to the teachings of their church, including polygamy. Thus, national suffragists had to find new ways to rationalize their continuing support of woman suffrage in the territory. The passage of temperance legislation in Utah, for example, was credited by suffragists to the “1000 voting women in Salt Lake City.”^{170 [133]}

Still, by 1874 the criticism and pressure on national woman suffragists to defend the ballot in Utah began to have an effect. The American Association conceded that “forcible interference by Federal authority” may be “right and expedient and necessary” to stop their “semi-barbarious institution.” In the event of federal intervention, Henry Blackwell asked, would not Mormon women need “every right and privilege of citizenship more than women who are more happily circumstanced?”¹⁷¹ But the difficult struggle to find arguments, which would continue to serve as valid rationales for defending the vote in Utah, signaled the beginning of a change in the way that the American Association approached the problem presented by polygamist women voting in Utah. Clearly, the issue of polygamy was becoming an additional political burden for a cause that to many Americans already seemed a threat to motherhood and home.

*     *     *

Four political events in 1872 shaped the activism of woman suffragists for the following three years. The single positive development occurred in the chaos surrounding the reelection bid of President Grant.¹⁷² As the Republican party fractured into parts, foreshadowing the end of Reconstruction, woman suffragists benefited from its efforts to maintain the support of liberal reformers. Both woman suffrage associations attended the ^[134] National Republican convention and pressed for a plank in the platform. Although the Republicans refused to go that far, they gave what skeptics called a “splinter:” a minimal nod of “recognition.”¹⁷³ Blackwell, ever optimistic that the Republicans would recognize their cause, told Anthony that the 1872 recognition would give woman suffragists “endorsement and victory in 1876.”¹⁷⁴ Hoping Blackwell was right and finding that the Democrats were unwilling to recognize their claims, Anthony and other National suffragists worked with the American for Grant’s reelection bid.¹⁷⁵

The election of 1872 also proved a dramatic climax of suffragists’ growing attempts to vote under the rights they believed were granted by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Susan Anthony was one of hundreds of women across the country that tried to vote in 1871 and 1872. Subsequently, Anthony was arrested and fined, and her public defense and trial consumed much of her energy during the following year.¹⁷⁶ The opposition they encountered hardened the women’s resolve to prove their case, and until the Supreme Court ruled against them in 1875 their advocacy of rights under the Reconstruction amendments was the centerpiece of the National’s activism.

Victoria Woodhull was at the center of the third and most damaging event related to the reelection campaign, even though the National had severed its ties with her. ^[135] Woodhull had sought an alliance between suffragists and the International Workingmen’s Association, and despite the support for Woodhull of Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Isabella Beecher Hooker; Anthony took actions to end the effort, citing Woodhull’s divided loyalties and self-interest. Rebuffed by the National and increasingly denounced because of her unconventional stances, during the summer of 1872 a defensive Woodhull made counter-charges. Crying hypocrisy, she revealed a sexual liaison between Henry Ward Beecher, the famous preacher and past president of the A.W.S.A., and Elizabeth Tilton, his parishioner and wife of his best friend, Theodore Tilton. Woodhull’s information came from Stanton, among others, but in the ensuing controversy everyone even remotely connected to the scandal, including the woman suffrage movement, was damaged. On election eve, Woodhull was jailed, the first person charged under the Comstock law.¹⁷⁷

Still, the National did not disavow its concern with “side issues” or controversial topics. Stanton’s focus on women’s right to self-ownership, which included condemnations of marital rape and the advocacy of birth control, were hardly less earthshaking than Woodhull’s advocacy of “free love.” In fact, the sexual topics, including the double sexual standard and prostitution, were increasingly discussed among the National’s ^[136] suffragists during the 1870s and sparked controversy and resolutions at annual conventions.

The broad scope of the National’s interests proved a double-edged sword. It gave a vitality and immediacy to Anthony and Stanton’s branch of the movement, but it also increased its vulnerability to criticism. Women who were interested in such questions were drawn to the National, and among its leaders, women such as Matilda J. Gage, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Clemence Lozier, and Paulina Wright Davis were willing to speak publicly on such issues during the 1870s.¹⁷⁸ The National relied on women who were self-starters, and many of these were fired by the strength of their own radical convictions. Given these factors, it is not surprising that even when the National’s suffragists realized that Mormon women were not going to vote away polygamy, they could not close the door on the broader issues raised in Utah.¹⁷⁹

The New Movement women, with their dreams of reform and advocacy of woman suffrage, had facilitated the support of Utah’s women by national suffragists. But during the statehood campaign, their own solidarity seems to have been one of the casualties of the battle. Their women’s movement, like their men’s movement, was a reform effort in a time when reform was not the order of the day. By 1873 there were early indications of the problems that would ultimately arrest the growth of the reform movement ^[137] and diffuse the impact of New Movement men and women. Moreover, the anti-polygamy campaign became a far more compelling problem for Utah’s non-Mormon women inclined to activism than protecting their political equality.

By 1875 the New Movement itself had lost its momentum and was grinding to a halt. The religious reform that the Godbeites called for, a combination of Spiritualism and Mormonism that had attracted many able Mormons, failed to gain enough adherents to be self-sustaining. The movement’s leadership also faltered as economic and other pressures mounted.¹⁸⁰ The Liberal party, the political arm of the movement, slipped out of the control of the Godbeites and into the hands of anti-Mormon extremists. The main concern of the party became to destroy Mormon political and economic power; polygamy was a seen as a means to that end.

One result of the anti-Mormon campaign, however, was exactly what the New Movement leaders had feared: it hardened the Mormon’s resolve and deepened antagonisms. The New Movement’s attempt to seek change while preaching moderation brought condemnation from many non-Mormons, even those sympathetic to their concerns. Thus, the New Movement leaders, both male and female, were in a peculiar position in the community, and as the decade progressed, they became increasingly marginalized.^{181 [138]}

Of course, as New Movement leaders had warned earlier, by “brandishing the sword” the “antis” succeeded in “arousing the combativeness of the community.”¹⁸² Faced with an increasing barrage of attacks, Mormon women moved to defend themselves from their “would-be sympathizers” who appeared in “sheep’s clothing.”¹⁸³ Nothing empowered Mormon women more than attacks on their families, their church, and their community, even though they had witnessed the difficulties of plural marriage.

Mormon women had been politicized in the early years of their church by assaults from outside, and their willingness to speak out in defense of their community had helped secure their own enfranchisement in 1870. But in 1872 their activism took a new turn in response to increased anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy belligerence during the statehood campaign. With their new publication, the Woman’s Exponent, and new inspiration, Mormon women seized Utah’s woman suffrage banner with one hand as they hoisted the polygamy standard with the other.

The failure to include women as citizens of the United State in the Reconstruction amendments can be seen as the most significant lost opportunity for women of the nineteenth century; Utah’s statehood campaign of 1872 seems an equally notable lost opportunity for its citizens. What might have been the Utah Compromise of 1872 was instead a seedbed of distrust and animosity that ^[139] resulted in the bitter confrontations ahead for Utah’s men and women. ^[140]