5 Retreat and Revision: 1880–1882

In the early morning hours the cavernous hall was finally silent and transformed. The walls were covered with placards and flags, the metal girders laced with red, white and blue bunting. The scene, the press agreed, was of “striking interest.”¹ Outside a sign announced the event: THE NATIONAL REPUBLICAN CONVENTION, 12:00 Noon, June 3, 1880.

Once the delegates were seated, the floor presented a uniform vision of nineteenth-century masculinity; a gray haze of tobacco smoke hung overhead, while underfoot the floor turned brown with tobacco juice.² A few women sat among the “distinguished guests;” the most conspicuous wore white satin badges reading National Woman Suffrage Association 1880. Although grateful for their seats, the suffragists were angry not to be recognized as “accredited delegates.”³ Still, they remained hopeful. The gestures made toward women by the Republican Party in 1872 and 1876 had fostered hope that their claims would soon be taken seriously. This was, woman suffragists believed, “the year of our opportunity.”⁴

The first year of the new decade, however, did not live up to those expectations. Instead, it foreshadowed the conservative, even regressive, nature of politics in ^[321] the 1880s. When the Republican convention gave woman suffrage less, not more, recognition, it became clear that whereas the “Negro’s hour” was a fleeting one, the “woman’s hour” was being indefinitely postponed. Indeed, for woman suffragists, internal conflicts surrounding the election of James A. Garfield set in motion a series of organizational changes, which converged with a conservative ideological shift that had surfaced in the National Association two years earlier.⁵ The force of these changes combined to move the National Association away from its radical past. Thus, 1880 marks a turning point in the nineteenth-century woman suffrage movement; after that year, the factors, which had created the schism in the movement, in Eleanor Flexner’s words, were “steadily diminishing in importance.”⁶

The conservative ideological change of 1878 has been identified by Ellen DuBois as a “reformulation of the demand for woman suffrage” which asserted, among other things, that woman suffrage would ensure order and stability. This rationale, she argues, reflected a “new, antidemocratic spirit behind woman suffrage.”⁷ Given the economic and political developments of the seventies, including mounting labor conflicts, social displacements and an acceleration of class divisions, it is not surprising that more conservative arguments in support of ^[322] woman suffrage would surface. Woman suffragists had always claimed the curative power of the vote; the difference was that after 1880, the changes made in response to the internal conflicts and external political events noticeably altered the National Association’s tactics and priorities.

Following Garfield’s election, and despite a few minor gains in the national Congress, any forward momentum the woman suffrage movement might have stalled as it encountered the apathy, and antipathy, of the broader political culture. Although the rights of women were ignored during Reconstruction, following its abandonment anti-suffragism flourished.⁸ Moreover, the shift from “ideological politics” to the “professionally managed politics” of the Gilded Age moved women even farther from the sources of political power.⁹ As the decade progressed, woman suffragists struggled to accommodate new political realities.

The conflicts and failures of 1880 forced woman suffragists to confront their own strategic and institutional failings.¹⁰ Both branches began a process of introspection and change that eased the way for their unification. The National Association responded to changing political tides by exerting more organizational control and uniformity in order to emphasize institution-building ^[323] and narrowing its focus to broaden its constituency. As early as 1881, the National’s annual conventions show changes in the nature of topics addressed and resolutions that were passed, and a vigorous attempt to avoid controversial issues. The same year the American Association experienced a serious insurrection by women who were “growing weary” of its “narrow—and notably unsuccessful—program” and wanted a more “diversified, woman-led” organization.¹¹ Moreover, the American’s leaders also began to waver in their previously firm support of the Republican Party.¹²

There continued to be important, albeit subtle, differences in the way the National and American Woman Suffrage Associations dealt with Utah’s female activists. The National continued to include various representatives from Utah on its board—a courtesy the American did not extend until 1889. In the eighties both associations continued to support woman suffrage in the territory, but Belva Lockwood and another lawyer, Phoebe Couzins, were among the few suffragists who persisted in discussing the larger issues raised by “the Mormon question.”¹³ Other suffragists who had spoken openly in defense of Mormon women became less visible forces inside the movement.¹⁴

The Supreme Court’s 1879 ruling had altered the political landscape for Utah’s women. That landmark ^[324] decision, coupled with shifts in the politics of the broader culture, contributed to the changing relationship between territorial activists and the woman suffrage movement. As anti-Mormon sentiment hardened into proposals for federal legislation, both Mormon women and their anti-polygamy adversaries sought to strengthen their support from outside the territory and gain the political advantage at home.

In the 1880s, Mormon women’s activism changed in response to growing threats both to Mormondom and woman suffrage in the territory, and because the efforts of Mormon suffragists were increasingly important to the overall political strategy of church leaders.¹⁵ Those changes were demonstrated by a new and aggressive defense of polygamy by Mormon women and closer scrutiny of their activities by the brethren. Yet, the new defensive tactic of Mormon suffragists widened the gap with national suffragists and failed to help their cause.

Utah’s anti-polygamy activists were also affected by the changes in the woman suffrage movement and shifts in the broader culture, but those changes helped their cause. The Supreme Court’s ruling provided the legal basis for a national movement against polygamy, while the surge of female evangelical and temperance activism added ^[325] strength and numbers, and proved central to the ultimate success of anti-polygamy advocates.

Establishing these changes in the woman suffrage movement and among Utah’s activist women between the 1870s and 1880s is important here because such an interpretation is at variance with the dominant view of this history. This dominant argument states that in the 1880s, “woman’s rights advocates were becoming more vocal defenders of Utah,” and that national suffragists’ support of Mormon women reached its “height in 1886.” In addition, the argument continues, because woman suffrage and “Mormonism” were “tied” together during the eighties, the “national suffrage association” was “greatly weakened” because of “its identification with ‘the Mormon Question.’”¹⁶

This study argues that after 1880, the woman suffrage movement became less vocal, not more so, on the issues raised in Utah; whatever damage was done to the National for associating with Mormon women occurred in the 1870s. As Anthony, Stanton and Gage began writing the History of Woman Suffrage in 1880, they were sufficiently concerned about the growing criticism of their identification with the “Mormon cause” that they marginalized the activities of Mormon suffragists.¹⁷ Only after polygamy was no ^[326] longer an issue were Mormon women given full credit for their activities.¹⁸

In March 1882, the Edmunds Act disfranchised all polygamists, male and female, in an effort aimed at curbing the power of the L.D.S. Church and destroying polygamy; anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy sentiment flourished in the same conservative political climate that nurtured organized anti-suffragism.¹⁹ The Edmunds Act altered the complex relationships between Utah’s women and national suffragists. For the latter, the act changed the nature of their defense of the ballot in Utah and allowed them to distance themselves from the problems Mormon women represented. Mormon women soon recognized that even though more restrictive anti-Mormon legislation might follow, support from national suffragists was waning. As a result of the Edmunds Act, territorial women who opposed polygamy became the official representatives to the National Woman Suffrage Association.

*     *     *

Anticipating the national elections in the spring of 1880, spirits were high among woman suffragists. “I want the rousingest rallying cry ever put on paper,” Susan Anthony instructed Sara Spencer.²⁰ Anthony hoped they could gather between two and three thousand women for a Chicago meeting preceding the nominating convention and ^[327] collect “10,000 postals from all over the country.” This, she told Spencer, would have a “tremendous influence” on the Republican convention. Anthony asked Spencer to write Elizabeth Cady Stanton, making the “points with which you want to fire her soul and brain . . . with your thought she will do splendid work.” The “thunder and lightning” Anthony called for did produce a deluge, not only of participants at the National’s Chicago mass meeting, but of “postals” as well.²¹ For numbers and “enthusiasm,” the mass meeting was “unprecedented in all the records of the movement.”²²

The 1880 “call,” signed by Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan Anthony and Sara Spencer, had a particularly insistent tenor: “The woman who to-day is derelict in her duty is an enemy to her sex and her country. . . . Let no matter of mere personal convenience or inconvenience, prevent your presence.”²³ The leaders emphasized that they wanted an “assembling of all woman who want to vote, including women who were not yet officially members of the National Association.”²⁴ By June, Spencer reported 53,200 woman suffrage petitions and tracts had been mailed—500 to members of the Congress alone.²⁵ The National’s suffragists rarely underplayed the importance of any convention, but they seemed to think the coming election was especially critical. ^[328]

The election of 1880 appears to have been particularly important to woman suffragists because they believed that it, like the last, might go to the House of Representatives for final resolution.²⁶ If so, they speculated hopefully, their support might become a valuable commodity.²⁷ In addition, the issue-oriented third parties, Greenback-Labor and National Prohibitionist, actively sought the support of woman suffragists.²⁸ The strong showing of the Greenback party in the mid-term election led some suffragists to speculate that if it became a deciding factor in an electoral showdown, and if woman suffrage was incorporated as a fundamental Greenback principle, suffragists could enhance their political power.²⁹ Other woman suffragists felt that focusing on third parties was a waste of time.³⁰ Suffragists of various political persuasions debated among themselves how best to position their cause.³¹

In January, the N.W.S.A. pledged to support the party that would commit to woman suffrage and “to assign to oblivion” any presidential candidate who did not.³² At the annual business meeting in May, however, some fissures appeared indicating that the National’s suffragists divided on the question of party affiliation. As a result, the National changed its pledge from ^[329] supporting any party “which makes the rights of women a square issue” to not supporting any party, “whatever name called,” that did not “emphatically endorse and support” woman’s political equality.³³ It was an important difference.

Given the variety of political possibilities, the National’s election strategy included regional meetings and appeals to the Democratic, Greenback and National Prohibition party conventions by woman suffragists who “had some political preference for the party to be addressed.”³⁴ Woman suffragists also were asked to lobby delegates from their own state.

The first inkling of the difficulties woman suffragists would confront in the 1880 election was the Republican Party’s refusal to provide the National’s women with the number of tickets Sara Spencer requested.³⁵ The platform committee did grant Susan Anthony ten minutes to speak, but the committee chairman “sternly” forbade a committee vote on the issue of woman suffrage. The suffragists’ last hope was that they would be allotted a few minutes to address the convention as they had done in 1876; again, however, they were disappointed.³⁶ The convention took thirty-six ballots and a week to nominate Garfield, but the Republicans did ^[330] not give woman suffragists either the “splinter of 1872” or “its comrade splinter of 1876.”³⁷

Nor were the Democrats ready to embrace woman suffrage, although according to some suffragists their reception was at least more courteous. Although the platform committee debated the plank until “2 a.m., no such result was reached.” Democratic inaction was attributed to the “extreme Southern element,” which feared “the political recognition of Negro women of the South.”³⁸ The “two parties with dead issues,” Spencer concluded, “granted cold courtesy to women.”³⁹

As some woman suffragists had suspected, they received a more positive response from the newer political parties.⁴⁰ The National Prohibitionists endorsed woman suffrage without qualification. However, the N.W.S.A.’s January pledge notwithstanding, Matilda Gage wrote that the Prohibitionist party was “too small” with “little likelihood of ever being successful” to make it “best for women,” even temperance women.⁴¹ The lack of endorsement of the prohibitionists by either the National or the American suggests that Gage’s sentiments were widely held; the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union did not endorse either the Prohibitionist party or woman suffrage until 1881.^{42 [331]}

Although the Greenbackers endorsed woman suffrage, various woman suffragists interpreted the significance of that endorsement differently.⁴³ Susan Anthony told the Greenbackers that woman suffrage would have to be considered a “fundamental principle of their party” if they expected women to support them. “Women,” she claimed, “would not accept finance first and woman afterwards.”⁴⁴ After an all-night session, the convention “adopted by acclamation” a woman suffrage plank that represented the first half of a resolution submitted by the National Association.⁴⁵ The Greenbackers did not adopt the part of the pledge that committed them to refusing to affiliate with any party that did not support woman suffrage.⁴⁶

The Greenbackers’ action raised two important questions for woman suffragists: first, whether its recognition of woman suffrage was strong enough to satisfy the National’s requirement that it be a “fundamental” principle of the party and thus deserving of support from suffragists; and second, whether, in fact, the National’s suffragists had pledged to support “any” party that endorsed woman suffrage. Conflicting answers to those questions created serious problems among the leadership of the National Association. Before the national conventions, Sara Spencer stated publicly that ^[332] if the Democrat or Republican Party “ignores our rights, or trifles with them” and a third party “marches up to our standard,” woman suffragists were “solemnly bound by our own pledges to do our utmost with voice and pen to aid that party.”⁴⁷ After the conventions, she stood by that position, believing that the Greenbackers were “gloriously right upon finance, labor and human rights,” and that, in view of both “the pledges women have made” and “our own principles” and “interests,” woman suffragists owed their “allegiance” to the Greenback-Labor party.⁴⁸

Neither Gage nor Anthony agreed with Spencer’s interpretation of the actions of the Greenback-Labor party.⁴⁹ Gage stated that “so far,” the “rule” of the Greenbackers had been to “sell out;” nothing less than a real commitment to the suffragists’ “iron clad” resolution would “secure” their support. “Splinters and half-loaves have had their day. We now demand the whole,” Gage concluded.⁵⁰ Anthony reasoned that third parties were powerful only if they became deciding factors in an electoral standoff. If the Greenbackers proved a factor in an electoral victory, she wanted assurance that the Greenback-Labor pledge would be “on all occasions its test of affiliation.” Otherwise, she said, “no third party can be anything to us politically.” The second ^[333] section of their resolution, Anthony explained, was the suffragists’ only guarantee.⁵¹

This disagreement became public after both sides published their positions.⁵² When Gage’s opposition to the Greenbackers appeared in the National Citizen and Ballot Box, Spencer, who was editor of its “Washington Department,” responded. Gage, apparently with Anthony’s approval, asked Spencer to change parts of her letter before the National Citizen would reprint it. Spencer refused, claiming that although Anthony and Gage had “laid upon” her the “heaviest burdens of the work,” they were now denying her a chance to express her own opinions. Stanton apparently believed that Spencer’s letter should have “gone out to our Association.” But that gesture of support was not enough to prevent Spencer from resigning as the National’s corresponding secretary or from sending her letter to the Woman’s Journal. The Journal promptly issued an “extra edition” and sent it to “4000 leading suffragists,” including members of the National Association.⁵³ These actions sparked rumors in the woman suffrage world that Lucy Stone had “made overtures” to Spencer to join her association.⁵⁴

Although Spencer argued that suffragists owed the Greenbackers their “allegiance,” she was considerably less resolute on the suffragists’ pledge to “assign to ^[334] oblivion” any candidate who did not support woman suffrage. Her letter of grievances also condemned suffragists who were “unjustly attacking” her friend, James Garfield, although no one knew better than Spencer how dismissive Garfield was of woman suffrage.⁵⁵ Garfield repeatedly ignored her appeals for help, even after she begged him for “a word” to keep him from going “down in history as being opposed to the rights of women.”⁵⁶

Spencer could not see that, like her, other suffragists vacillated as a result of their confusion and frustration over, as Gage put it, how to “make a power of ourselves.”⁵⁷ Woman suffragists had been fighting over questions of power and partisanship since the Republicans abandoned the woman’s cause in the mid-1860s in the course of passing the Fourteenth Amendment. The intense conflicts surrounding the issue, which had fueled the split in the movement, were rekindled quickly whenever the question of partisanship erupted. The all-out effort by the National Association to secure party support in 1880 surpassed its previous attempts; the failure to win a plank in either platform for woman suffrage seemed more profound than ever before, and disappointment degenerated into personal attacks and counterattacks. ^[335]

There were other reasons for the confrontation between Spencer and other leaders of the National, not the least of which was her personal style. Anthony described Spencer as a “bright, brainy executive,” but her “fearful tongue” had been used against “each and every one” of her co-workers.⁵⁸ Spencer’s driven sense of mission obviously had its costs. The boldness that earned her a reputation as a defender of unpopular causes and won her many supporters was also a source of many women’s qualms about her.⁵⁹

In September 1880, Spencer informed James Garfield she was preparing to organize “a new and more hopeful and efficient organization.”⁶⁰ When Susan Anthony got wind of Spencer’s intentions, she said Spencer would find that “she is mistaken as to her own popularity & power to draw people to her.”⁶¹ Anthony said that the young workers had been asked “to bear & forbear with her—because of the drudgery she did for the society.” Anthony did not believe a “single one” of them “wishes with her—to get rid of Stanton & Anthony.” Anthony compared Spencer’s behavior with Lucy Stone’s: she was “concocting a succession” while the National was “keeping her dishonesty . . . from the public,” as she and Stanton had done with Stone.^{62 [336]}

Until the National’s stationery could be changed, Anthony hurriedly scratched off Spencer’s name from its list of officers, and the History of Woman Suffrage reflects the same inclination; little remains to suggest the central role she played in the organization in the 1870s. Spencer contributed to her own invisibility by keeping much of the material she collected as corresponding secretary; apparently, it was lost along with other personal papers in a devastating fire that she was lucky to escape.⁶³ For the remainder of her life, Spencer continued speaking on behalf of underprivileged women and befriending Mormon women, even in the 1880s when the pressure not to do so intensified.⁶⁴

Spencer’s presence in and departure from the National Association illustrate both the positive and negative aspects of the National Association during the 1870s. Her advocacy of a wide range of issues relating to woman’s autonomy—the right to determine their own sexual choices, and freedom from physical coercion—contributed to the National’s discussion of such issues; such far-ranging discussions nourished the growth of feminist thought. She also exemplifies the growing number of professional and self-made women who identified with the militant tactics and radical philosophy of the National. The freewheeling nature of the National’s conventions and ^[337] the intellectual diversity, which fed debate, were embodied in Spencer, and these characteristics were central to the National’s vitality in the 1870s. Such traits, however, were also sources of both internal and external conflict, and in 1880 Susan Anthony came to see such traits as having more negative than positive implications; they were signs of organizational weakness and thus were related to the National’s continuing failures.

After the bitter conflict with Spencer, Susan Anthony, always the central political and organizational strategist, began to reexamine the Association. One of the problems, she explained, was the “large latitude” the National’s suffragists gave “to each other and to all whom we invite to our platform;” another was the need for “carefully matured” plans, combined with the “vital” obligation for “all” to act and abide by those plans. One solution she proposed was to have an “official Secretary’s report;” this, she thought, might reduce numerous debates over conflicting interpretations and perceptions of actions taken by the Association. She also cited the necessity of getting woman suffragists to put their own cause before the “love of the political party;” the current independence among its members, Anthony ^[338] claimed, meant that the National could not get their own woman suffrage “army” to toe the line.⁶⁵

Henry Blackwell did not blame the lack of success during the election year, as Anthony had done, on the “love of the political party;” rather, he criticized the National Association for its lack of partisanship.⁶⁶ The National’s suffragists had failed to get a woman suffrage plank in the platform of either major party, he claimed, because they were not officially affiliated with a political party. He maintained “as a Republican, he had found no special difficulty heretofore in securing a formal recognition of Woman Suffrage in half a dozen Republican platforms, State and Nation.” To him the “ladies’” failure at the most recent conventions was due to the current problems of the party and “also to a mistake in method.” The National’s lack of partisan commitment, he claimed, meant the women appeared at the conventions as “outsiders.”⁶⁷

Anthony was outraged. The American Association, she fumed privately, was “too weak and too wicked for anything or anybody decent. They do nothing—give no plan of work to their people but growl—they surely do enough of that.”⁶⁸ Susan Anthony’s opinion notwithstanding, in the fall of 1880, the American Association worked vigorously to get a plank in the Massachusetts Republican ^[339] party platform, yet Blackwell’s efforts were as unsuccessful as the National’s had been at the Republican national convention. Although the National and American had declared their differences over party affiliation and took separate approaches to the national parties, ultimately the results were the same: in 1880 neither major party would endorse woman suffrage, and after that time the Republican party both locally and nationally showed less interest in the cause than ever before.⁶⁹

Attempting to resolve internal organizational problems and external factors as well, Anthony began to narrow the National’s focus of concerns in hope of broadening its constituency base.⁷⁰ These changes are readily seen by comparing the substance of conventions held in 1879 and 1881.

At the 1879 annual convention, the National’s suffragists had advocated a wide range of issues in addition to woman suffrage, including: Congress should appoint women as census-takers so that all women will be noted; women and laborers should form a coalition and work together to demand that reform and industrial schools be opened and industrial training be at the public expense; when women were to be institutionalized for any cause, that they should be placed in facilities for women only; women should have the right to their own ^[340] interpretation of the scriptures; and women teachers should be paid the same as men. This was also the convention that had passed the resolution claiming men had no right to legislate upon marriage or religious faith in Utah until the nation’s women had the right to vote. ⁷¹

In 1881 the only resolution passed at the National’s annual convention, which did not deal directly with woman suffrage, was one that noted the deaths of Lydia Maria Child, Lucretia Mott and George Eliot.⁷² Moreover, the lively debates that marked the proceedings in the 1870s were lessened, simply by the shift in the subject matter of resolutions.⁷³

Other changes in the woman suffrage movement were a result of the passage of time. Increasing time was devoted at annual conventions to eulogies for departed comrades. The first generation of suffragists was aging; in 1880 Elizabeth Cady Stanton turned sixty-five and Susan Anthony sixty, and their trusted colleague, Matilda Joslyn Gage, was only a few years younger. In 1879 Stanton announced that she was retiring from the lecture circuit and would be replaced by her daughter, Harriot.⁷⁴ The next year she also announced that she “positively” declined the presidency of the National, a gesture that became an annual ritual, annually ignored. Soon, Anthony ^[341] too found younger shoulders to lean on. She replaced Sara Spencer with one of the younger workers, Rachel Foster, a wealthy, educated woman from a well-respected Quaker family. Foster seemed to have all the qualities Anthony was searching for, including a less independent nature.⁷⁵

Change was also underway in the American Association. In 1880 Lucy Stone turned sixty-two. Like Stanton, she was increasingly bothered by health problems, and she was preparing her daughter, Alice, to become an editor of the Woman’s Journal. After Alice became an editor, Susan Anthony’s activities were no longer conspicuously missing from its pages, suggesting that her exclusion was linked to the long-standing animosity between these two dominant personalities. Although Henry Blackwell was seven years younger than Stone, his interests, never focused solely on woman suffrage, were becoming less so. Other American Association stalwarts, such as Julia Ward Howe and Mary Livermore, were also in their sixties. By the 1880s their work on women’s issues was directed increasingly away from woman suffrage: Howe began to focus on the Association for the Advancement of Women, while Livermore became a leader in the Massachusetts W.C.T.U.

Still, differences between the two organizations remained. The American’s leaders continued to believe in ^[342] state-by-state enfranchisement efforts, which the National Citizen and Ballot Box characterized as “blind leaders of the blind.”⁷⁶ The National also felt that the viability of the movement depended on women’s leadership. According to Anthony in 1880, the difference between the two organizations was that “they place men in official positions—and we do not.” That “little point of difference,” she maintained, made the National society “a live one and theirs a dead one.” Men, she added, “cannot make women’s disfranchisement hurt them—as it hurts us.”⁷⁷ For its part, the American appointed men to leadership roles. Henry Blackwell continued to defend that position and worked to maintain connections between the American and other male reform advocates.

Frustrated by the intensive political conflicts during the summer of 1880 and the presidential candidates’ lack of interest in woman suffrage, Anthony exclaimed to fellow suffragist Elizabeth Boynton Harbert that she was “as much at sea as to our true work” as “anyone can possibly be.” The National’s leadership suggested that their members should leave the presidential election “generally alone.”⁷⁸

So Stanton, Anthony and Gage focused their energies instead on writing the History of Woman Suffrage, a remarkable undertaking that ultimately produced six ^[343] mammoth volumes, the first three of which were completed by 1886 by the original trio.⁷⁹ The History has been described as “a prolonged, deliberate effort on the part of activists to ensure their place in the historical record.”⁸⁰ But what the project also ensured was that much of the energy of its authors was devoted to that work, which was especially intense during the initial years. After the completion of the second volume in 1882, Stanton’s family blamed the undertaking for her declining health and insisted she take a long European rest. Anthony soon followed her. Gage’s health was also failing. That, and the time required for writing the History of Woman Suffrage, hastened the end of the National Citizen and Ballot Box, which Gage had written and published largely on her own. The loss of this tool also muffled her radical, if sometimes intemperate, voice.⁸¹ After 1880, one biographer notes, Gage’s “participation in the movement slackened.”⁸²

These changes helped facilitate the shift to a new, more conservative generation of leaders who affirmed and implemented Anthony’s reorganizational vision. Although the new generation, which included Rachel Foster Avery, May Wright Thompson Sewall, and Ellen H. Sheldon, brought fresh energy and other considerable attributes, they “were not, for the most part,” Eleanor Flexner states, ^[344] “distinguished by the breadth of their social views.”⁸³ During the radical era, woman suffrage leaders such as Stanton, Gage, Blake, Spencer and Lockwood had made significant contributions to the growth of feminist thought over the course of the National’s conventions, on the lecture circuit, through a range of political and social causes, and in their voluminous writings. The generation that came to power in the 1880s added relatively little; indeed, the new generation was best noted for their administrative and organizational skills.⁸⁴

By 1882 Anthony’s effort to build a more powerful coalition had forged a new alliance with the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, despite the objections of Stanton and Gage, who declared the W.C.T.U. was “the great dangerous organization of the movement.”⁸⁵ Anthony, however, saw Frances Willard’s call to “Do Everything,” which included a “Home Protection” ballot and the Union’s vast network of local temperance organization, as an exciting opportunity.

The growing alliance between the National and the W.C.T.U. illustrates some important changes that had occurred inside both organizations by 1881. The Union’s endorsement of woman suffrage in 1881 represented a move into political activism, which frightened its ^[345] conservative members as much as the N.W.S.A.’s outreach to the Union alarmed its more radical members. In fact, both Anthony and Willard were trying to find new ways for both organizations to be more effective.

Anthony’s attempts to broaden the National’s power base by securing the cooperation of the W.C.T.U., and her efforts to reduce the “large latitude” of the seventies, could not have come at a better time for the opponents of polygamy, nor a worse one for Mormon suffragists. For the anti-polygamy women, the growing relationship between the National and the Union was hopeful; from its founding, the Anti-Polygamy Society had received the help and support of W.C.T.U.’s leaders.

*     *     *

The growing hostility between Utah’s women during the summer of 1880 had less to do with the presidential campaign and more with the anxiety of the Mormons and the anticipation of anti-Mormons as calls for new legislative action mounted. The growing anti-Mormon campaign increased the sense of unity and defiance among the Mormons, which anti-Mormons viewed as provocative and seditious. Tempers flared among men, and the feelings among women were no less unfriendly.⁸⁶

Between 1880 and 1882, Mormon women and their anti-polygamy adversaries fought political battles on two ^[346] fronts. In Utah, each became increasingly involved with the internal politics of the territory. Mormon women tried to win the right to run for political office, defended a court challenge to Utah’s woman suffrage law, and participated actively in the territory’s congressional election campaign. Anti-polygamy activists had no apparent interest in Mormon women’s efforts to run for public office, and if they were concerned with the challenge to the woman suffrage law, it was not reflected in the pages of the Anti-Polygamy Standard. But they too were actively involved in the November 1880 election because they wanted to remove Mormon representative George Q. Cannon from Congress.

As important as these struggles at home were, Utah’s competing factions of women were more concerned with their efforts outside the territory. Anti-polygamy women rapidly moved their crusade beyond Utah’s borders to the halls of Congress and the homes of Christian reformers. They also continued seeking the support of woman suffragists. For their part, Mormon women were anxious to maintain their standing in the National Association, and they wanted woman suffragists to continue defending the ballot in Utah. Mormon suffragists, however, were fighting not only for their political rights but religious ones as well. Their dual responsibility made ^[347] their efforts both increasingly significant to their community and controversial outside of it. In turn, the ensuing nature of their activism altered their relationship with National suffragists. The most critical stage of those changes occurred between 1880 and passage of the Edmunds Act in 1882.

In the fall of 1880 Mormon suffragists faced the first real test of woman suffrage in Utah when the non-Mormon Liberal party challenged the territorial woman suffrage law in court. Emmeline Wells instantly cabled women in the national movement asking for their support. “Stand by your guns,” answered Belva Lockwood, “Allow no encroachment upon your liberties.”⁸⁷ If Mormon suffragists feared that the presence of Sarah Ann Cooke on the board of the National Association would lessen support for their cause, this first test was undoubtedly reassuring. Utah’s woman suffrage law withstood the court challenge.

Then, in the fall of 1880, the anti-polygamy women changed their approach to woman suffragists. Instead of criticizing them for their support of the vote in Utah, the Anti-Polygamy Standard reaffirmed its support of the principle of woman suffrage. It also asked for support, stating that the anti-polygamy movement “desired especially to gain the attention of the Suffragists,” ^[348] since they “who have fought so bravely” for the vote, and their “experience as an organized force,” could “render” the anti-polygamy cause “efficient help.”⁸⁸

These new tactics coincided with the growing interest of anti-polygamy women in territorial politics. In the spring of 1880, Utah’s newly appointed governor, Eli H. Murray, arrived in the territory. He was eager to assist the Liberal’s efforts to curb the political power of the Mormons, and his interest pumped new life into the Liberal party. By fall it had begun to reorganize, an event that anti-polygamy women hailed. The Anti-Polygamy Standard claimed that for two years its movement had maintained “all the opposition” to the “dominant power,” while striking some “telling blows at polygamy.” And the editorial urged the Liberals to “renew the combat” with “energy and vigor until victory is at last secured.”⁸⁹ The Standard’s comments support the observation that it was women in the territory during the 1870s who had been the major factors in the anti-polygamy crusade.

The immediate political issue that concerned both Mormon and anti-polygamy women was the coming election for representative to the national Congress, a seat filled by George Q. Cannon. For Utah’s competing factions, Cannon symbolized far more than political representation. The Woman’s Exponent called him “a strong ^[349] advocate for equal political privileges and justice for woman.”⁹⁰ For women opposing polygamy, Cannon represented Mormondom at its most vile: “a man living in criminal relations with several women” whose presence in the Congress was an insult to “every loyal and virtuous wife in the country.”⁹¹

The election brought the antagonism between Utah’s women to the ballot box. The Anti-Polygamy Standard urged Mormon women to prove they could “think and act” for themselves and to “throw aside your dread of priestly tyranny and espionage and vote for Allen G. Campbell.”⁹² The Woman’s Exponent appealed to Mormon women with the same sense of urgency: the ballot “was an imperative duty to maintain and exercise;” women’s vote would be an “important factor in the November election.”⁹³ Cannon won the election, but the non-Mormon governor gave the election certificate to Campbell stating, among other things, that Cannon was a polygamist.

The battleground then shifted from Utah to Washington. That pleased anti-polygamy women since it meant that the House of Representatives would have to confront the issue of polygamy.⁹⁴ Cannon’s contest for his seat did, in fact, keep “the Mormon question” alive before Congress. And efforts to replace Cannon proved an added stimulus to the passage of the Edmunds Act, ^[350] which eventually enabled the House to declare his seat vacant.⁹⁵

The campaign against Cannon in 1880 gave the national anti-polygamy crusade a focal point. The opponents of polygamy appealed to their growing numbers to petition Congress to prevent Cannon from taking his seat and to draft legislation to end polygamy.⁹⁶ In the meantime, Jennie Froiseth, editor of the Anti-Polygamy Standard, took the campaign to the East.⁹⁷ In her effort to advance the anti-polygamy cause, she met with many prominent women, including several leaders of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, whose continued support was considered critical to the anti-polygamy campaign. In New York, Froiseth also lectured to the women of Sorosis and received their endorsement for the cause. To her, that alone made the trip worthwhile. She also spoke at several churches and was pleased to note that Reverend Phebe Hanaford, Universalist minister, author and woman suffragist, gave the cause her full endorsement, “extending to us the right hand of fellowship.”⁹⁸

Anti-polygamy women were also working on another front. In 1881 Cornelia Paddock published The Fate of Madam La Tour, A Tale of Great Salt Lake. Although the book was a fictional melodrama, Paddock claimed it was based on real circumstances that “far surpass in ^[351] strangeness and romance” the fiction. The book was endorsed by Utah’s governor Murray and the associate justice of Utah’s Supreme Court. Its second printing ran to one hundred thousand copies.⁹⁹ Around the same time Jennie Froiseth published Women of Mormonism: or, The Story of Polygamy as Told by the Victims Themselves, a full length version of a series she had published earlier in the Anti-Polygamy Standard. Froiseth’s book claimed the honor of an introduction written by Frances Willard, whom the Salt Lake Tribune noted, was “by some considered the most intellectual woman in America.”¹⁰⁰ Willard stated that the book proved the importance of the anti-polygamy movement, not simply for the help it gave Mormon women, but for “self-protection” of other women.¹⁰¹

While Mormon women felt particularly insulted and alarmed by the anti-polygamy campaign, the L.D.S. leadership was increasingly concerned about the rapid growth of the anti-polygamy crusade and its growing success among woman suffragists. The brethren had long recognized the benefits derived from Mormon women’s enfranchisement. In the 1870s, however, the implications of Mormon women’s political activism seemed considerably less critical than they had become. But once Mormon women entered the national arena and anti-Mormon legislation began to mount, women’s activism was perceived by L.D.S. ^[352] leaders as more significant. As a result women’s activism was increasingly integrated into the overall political strategies of the church. This was a double-edged sword for Mormon women, for while they were taken more seriously, their actions also came under increasing scrutiny.

The campaign by Mormon women to secure the right to hold political office provides one example of the growing interest in the political ramifications of their actions. Although as early as 1878 Mormon women had been nominated for public office, territorial law prohibited them from holding office. Legislation to change the law was introduced in the territorial assembly, but failed to gain passage.¹⁰² When the measure was reintroduced in 1880, Mormon women embarked on an aggressive petition drive, pressuring their brethren to support the change.¹⁰³

Wondering about the political implications of such a measure, L.D.S. President John Taylor sought the counsel of George Q. Cannon.¹⁰⁴ Cannon reassured Taylor about the activism of the women, candidly noting that he had “full confidence that our women could be [as] controlled, so far as office and its candidates is concerned, as the men.” He also added his support for the principle of the measure, and he thought that its passage would place the Mormons in the “van of this movement.” Moreover, if the ^[353] governor refused to sign the measure, Cannon speculated, his action would create “a powerful element in sympathy with us;” or alternatively, he added, if the bill became law and Congress tried to nullify the act, they would have “a hornet’s nest about their ears.” Cannon apparently believed there was nothing to lose by supporting the sisters’ demands.¹⁰⁵

During the 1870s church leaders had been, in general, in a reactive position vis-à-vis Mormon women’s political actions: the sisters went to the brethren for their counsel and support. The trip to Washington taken by Emmeline Wells and Zina Y. Williams is an example. Wells took the proposal to the L.D.S. leaders for approval. A later journey taken by Charlotte Godbe followed the same pattern, but when the results of her trip were not so helpful to the church as Wells’ and Williams’ trip had been, the experience may have served as a warning to the brethren.

The incident with Godbe began when she approached the leadership with a request to represent Mormon women at the National Association’s January convention in 1880. From the time Wells and Williams appeared on the National’s platform, Godbe had been eager to do the same. In fact, after the Salt Lake Herald announced the appearance of Wells and Williams in Washington, Godbe ^[354] advised the paper that calling them “delegates” was incorrect since they were attending because of a “personal favor.” She also inferred that she was the first representative from Utah among woman suffragists, and that her efforts had opened the way for the suffragists’ acceptance of “polygamous wives.”¹⁰⁶

Despite her earlier support for the New Movement, Godbe now wanted to go to the nation’s capital with the blessings of the L.D.S. president, John Taylor: the church had become, for lack of a more appropriate nineteenth-century phrase, the only game in town. Godbe wrote Taylor’s personal secretary, John Nuttall, and asked him to intervene in her behalf. He did and reported back that Taylor thought the “object [she] had in view a good one.”¹⁰⁷ Taylor subsequently gave Godbe a personal “blessing” for her mission, an action that seems to reaffirm the earlier conclusion that Godbe’s status in the church had been protected by her privileged upbringing. The interaction between Taylor and Godbe also suggests her continuing desire for support from the patriarchy, which may have been reinforced because of her peculiar status within all of Utah’s communities of women.

After speaking at the National Association’s convention, Godbe met with George Q. Cannon and gave him ^[355] an account of her work.¹⁰⁸ Cannon was pleased and reported back to Taylor that although at home Godbe’s personal style sometimes “arouses objections,” in the world, he believed, she “serves a good purpose.”¹⁰⁹ Two weeks later Cannon changed his mind, stating that he had recently learned things, which had caused a “modification” of his view.¹¹⁰ Subsequently, perhaps consequently, Godbe’s appearance was barely noted in Utah’s press.¹¹¹

What Godbe said at the convention appears to have been harmless enough. She spoke of the benefits of woman suffrage to the territory and claimed that she always voted freely.¹¹² But Taylor’s valued “blessing” notwithstanding, Godbe did not defend the church or polygamy. Had she done so undoubtedly the press would have reported it; moreover, the Anti-Polygamy Standard did not condemn her visit as it had that of Wells and Williams. That Godbe did not defend plural marriage certainly would not have surprised her Mormon sisters—her “painful experience” in polygamy was not something she kept private. In addition, the hard feelings that Godbe created in 1876 over her “defense” of Mormon women were equally public. Most likely, the “leading” sisters would have been cool to the idea of Godbe representing their interests in the nation’s capital, which suggests that they were not consulted on the matter. Godbe’s ^[356] reticence to mention her church or its practices may have been the result of specific instruction from the National’s leaders not to mention the issue of polygamy or the Mormons.

Although the incident is suggestive only, the next women who journeyed to the East representing Mormondom were specifically “called” to defend their church, woman suffrage and plural marriage. In the summer of 1881, the Deseret News announced the new proselytizing effort: “under the sanction of the Church authorities,” Sister Zina D. Young and Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson were to start on a tour of eastern states. The combination of Young and Ferguson must have seemed inspired. When the name of Dr. Romania Pratt was added, their mission seemed destined for success. The three women had a unique combination of experiences and talents, the News claimed, that made them particularly equipped to “represent the ladies of Utah so long misrepresented by pseudo champions and pretended well wishers, anxious to gain wealth and notoriety by affecting an interest in their peace and well fare.”¹¹³

By 1881 the constant barrage of “slanders” from their “pseudo champions” had begun to crack the general stoic demeanor of the sisters. In June Emmeline Wells observed that: “The ‘Mormon’ question is sorely agitating the public mind . . . until a very ocean of bitterness . . . seems to ^[357] have flooded the hearts of the people.”¹¹⁴ Wells had always defended plural marriage, but her defense slowly moved to a different level: “The fruits of this method of life will be more apparent in the next generation. Social science will yet be glad to deal with this subject, in light of reason and common sense.” Mormon women, she added, were “more very much more sorry” for anti-polygamy activists who were working to “destroy [Mormon] institutions” than they could ever be for “these poor, deluded Mormon women.”¹¹⁵ The qualifying statements about the difficulties of polygamy, or comments that like monogamy, polygamy had difficulties, began to wane. Not unexpectedly, the more the Mormons were attacked, the more defensive they became.

The three women “missionaries” were not easily intimidated, nor would they evoke sympathy or pity—their self-confidence ensured that. Their “mission,” in fact, proved to be an aggressive defense driven by the fever of anti-Mormonism, the threat of federal legislation and by concerns of the L.D.S. leadership as well as the readiness of Mormon women to launch a more militant defense of their own. It was also somewhat of a disaster.

Of the leading sisters in Mormon Zion, “Aunt Zina” D. H. Young was second only to her sister-wife of Brigham Young, Eliza R. Snow. The presence of “Aunt Zina,” as ^[358] everyone called her, on the mission to the East gave it a level of stature not associated with her two better educated, but less elite, companions. Young also had personal warmth that drew people to her and an unflappable belief in the “saving principle” of plural marriage that for Mormons was no less than inspirational.¹¹⁶

Dr. Romania Bunnell Pratt was eighteen years younger than Zina Young, though she too shared a long history with the Saints.¹¹⁷ Like many other young Mormon women, while her husband served church missions, she bore the responsibility for the children. In 1873, her husband gone, she answered Brigham Young’s plea for women to become doctors. Pratt left her young children in the care of her mother; sold everything she owned and went east to become a doctor.

Pratt graduated from Bellevue Hospital College in 1877. The completion of her medical education was ultimately funded by the L.D.S. Relief Society. When she returned from medical school, she found her husband in ill health and a new wife on the scene. In 1881 Pratt resolved to return to New York for further training, and she also decided to seek a divorce. That decision did not alter either her standing in the church or her willingness to defend its teachings. Divorce in Mormondom ^[359] was not uncommon, a fact that critics liked to point out.¹¹⁸

The third member of the missionary trio, Ellen Brooke Ferguson, was in many respects a Mormon anomaly. When she arrived in Utah in 1876, she was a trained doctor and a non-Mormon, and she had left behind an established reputation in the national woman suffrage movement.¹¹⁹

Ellen Brooke was born in England in 1844. Her father was a prominent lawyer who paid close attention to his daughter’s education. At Cambridge she studied medicine under William Ferguson. In 1857, Ellen married the considerably older doctor, and two years later the couple moved to the United States, settling first in Ohio.¹²⁰ It is in Ohio where Ellen’s name first appears in connection with woman suffrage.¹²¹ After the Civil War, the Fergusons lead a peripatetic life, using their combined skills to support a growing family, but Ellen maintained her suffrage efforts first in Indiana and then in Illinois.

By 1870 her talents were known by Susan Anthony, who described “Mrs. Dr. Ferguson” as a “splendid speaker” and recommended that she be invited to address the National Woman Suffrage Association’s convention in January 1871.¹²² Anthony had shared the platform with Ferguson in Cleveland, Ohio, at the first annual meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association. At that meeting, ^[360] Ferguson had given an impassioned appeal for the “consolidation” of the movement, urging that a committee be appointed to “bind together the two associations.”¹²³ The National and American associations, she argued, must be “twin-sister heralds of liberty, equality and enfranchisement to a down-trodden and dis-crowned womanhood . . . preaching the true Gospel of woman’s salvation.”¹²⁴

In 1872 Ferguson and Anthony gave back-to-back addresses at the Illinois Woman Suffrage Association.¹²⁵ By 1874 she was a member of the Association for the Advancement of Woman (A.A.W.) and spoke at their second Woman’s Congress; at that time she was affiliated with Champagne University and living in Normal, Illinois.126 In 1875 Ferguson left for England “for her health;” after that her name disappears from the national woman suffrage scene.

When Ellen Ferguson returned to the United States after her 1875 “health” trip abroad, she found that her husband was preparing to move to Utah. Through Mormon missionaries, he had “become interested in the affairs of the Territory” and struck up a personal correspondence with Brigham Young. Ellen agreed to join him. The Fergusons went straight to southern Utah to be with Young, and there both were baptized. For the next few ^[361] years they lived in various locations; in each Ellen tried to earn a living using her various talents. By 1879, however, it was reported that William’s “mind” had begun “giving away,” and by 1880 he was dead.¹²⁷ With three children to support, Ellen decided to focus on her medical career.¹²⁸

By leading a mission to the East, the three women, in fact, were capitalizing on Ferguson’s and Pratt’s intentions to receive additional medical training in New York, and Zina Young’s longing to visit family in the East. The sisters’ mission started smoothly enough, despite Young’s concern that she had failed to do their cause justice at a temperance meeting in Vermont.¹²⁹ Ferguson went to Long Island where she received an invitation from Isabella Beecher Hooker to visit her in Hartford, Connecticut. There Ferguson met the Reverend J. C. Kimball, who advised her to postpone lecturing since the nation was mourning the death of President Garfield, but he invited her to speak at his memorial service for Garfield.¹³⁰ At that service, Ferguson got a hint of what was ahead, when she had to refute a rumor that the Mormons had prayed for Garfield’s death because of his anti-Mormon views.

In the meantime the mission of the Mormon women had been widely publicized and condemned. Matilda Gage’s ^[362] reaction reflects the growth of anti-Mormon sentiment. After noting the personal attributes of both Young and Ferguson, Gage remarked that it was “surprising” such women would “lend themselves” to propagating a religious system that teaches woman’s inferiority to man and that it is her “duty to prostitute herself to his basest passions.” In fact, Gage continued, the prostitute “driven by want” was “more to be respected than educated women who with open eyes lend themselves as panders to a vile priesthood, to sustain a viler church based upon the degradation of their sex.” Although Gage’s vicious attack was leveled at both women, the appearance of Ferguson, “a thoroughly cultured woman of varied accomplishments and great knowledge,” most alarmed Gage, and no doubt other suffragists who had known her.¹³¹

Unaware of the degree of growing hostility, Ferguson and Young left for Buffalo where Ferguson was to give a paper at the Woman’s Congress.¹³² On their arrival, they were welcomed by Sara Spencer, who also introduced them to the members and officers of the Association for the Advancement of Women, and submitted their names for membership. But the A.A.W. was not the N.W.S.A., and Spencer did not hold a position of power in the organization. The Mormon women’s membership was denied, not because they were polygamists (which Ferguson never ^[363] was and Young was no longer), but because they were Mormons.¹³³

While the women were waiting for the A.A.W. board to vote, they were asked about a newspaper report that Mormon missionaries were recruiting young foreign girls as prostitutes; they were also asked, in reference to polygamy, if they did “not hope that the government would put an end to such an awful practice.” Ferguson replied that the missionary report was “entirely false;” concerning the government ending polygamy, “no man could stop it.” Following that unproductive exchange, Young and Ferguson listened as one speaker stated that “polygamy destroys freedom and equality,” and another “begged the audience ‘not to forget in their pitiful sympathy the downtrodden women of Utah.’” Ferguson confronted the latter woman after the session and told her “in the name of God and truth and humanity never again on any public platform to ask for pity for the ‘Mormon’ women.”¹³⁴

Things did not improve after the sisters left Buffalo. They missed their connecting train and had to stop for four hours in Rochester. Because “Dr. Ferguson [was] acquainted with Susan Anthony,” they decided to pay her a visit. Although Anthony was in New York City, her sister invited the women “to stop to dinner.” But the ^[364] dinner conversation turned into a “sharp talk,” and the Mormon women added another disappointing encounter to their experiences.¹³⁵ Shortly thereafter, Ferguson and Pratt approached Henry Ward Beecher for a space in which to present their case, but “he treated them with disdain,” even though he had been once granted the same courtesy in Utah.¹³⁶

The situation for the Saints was deteriorating rapidly. Anxiety increased when the opening session of the 1881–82 Congress revealed a mounting volume of anti-Mormon legislation, including bills to disfranchise Utah’s women. In Utah, Emmeline Wells was anxious for Mormon women to actively oppose such sentiment, and she wanted Young and Ferguson to attend the upcoming National Woman Suffrage Association convention. Her sentiments were reinforced when she and Eliza R. Snow called on “Pres. Taylor and found him very anxious to have a memorial to the Congress from the women of Utah.”¹³⁷ Wells immediately cabled George Q. Cannon for advice. Cannon tried to calm both Taylor and Wells by telling them that no one knew what legislation would emerge; only when that was known would it be time to take action.¹³⁸ He did not encourage Ferguson and Young to join him in Washington.

An exchange between Cannon and Wells illustrates Cannon’s newfound interest in Mormon women’s public ^[365] activities. Wells had conveyed her fear to Cannon that he did not have the same “faith in woman’s diplomacy” which she had. He replied, “Perhaps not; but I think very highly of her,” and he added that he believed the time had come “for woman to assume her proper share of responsibility in this work.”¹³⁹ That Cannon had not seen Mormon women as having a “proper share” of responsibility for the work for Zion in the 1870s suggests that during those years, their political activity had not been viewed with the same sense of urgency as it was in 1881.

Cannon did not take the political support of woman lightly, and before the N.W.S.A. convention, he talked to Lockwood, Anthony and Jane Spofford.¹⁴⁰ Cannon reported to John Taylor that although Lockwood and Anthony stated they would “render all the aid in their power” to stop legislation to disfranchise Utah’s women, he concluded that suffragists were becoming “very defensive about their loyalty to monogamy.” As a result, he did not think the presence of Mormon women in the capital would be a good idea.¹⁴¹ The decision, Emmeline Wells noted, disappointed “Aunt Zina & Dr. Ferguson.”¹⁴² Clearly, the sisters’ mission was not having its desired effect.

Despite the absence of Mormon suffragists, the National Association could not avoid the issue of polygamy entirely. In December 1881 Senator Morgan ^[366] submitted a bill to disfranchise Utah’s women, stating, “Never was there a picture more disgusting or more condemnatory of the extension of the franchise to women as contradistinguished from men then is presented in the Territory of Utah to-day.”¹⁴³ Woman suffragists spoke in opposition to the measure not only because it proposed to disfranchise women, but also because it distinguished between the actions of men and women.

Phoebe Couzins, who with Belva Lockwood was one of the National’s lawyer-activists, submitted a resolution condemning Morgan’s bill, calling it “a travesty of common justice,” but added, “surely the men and not the women, if either, should be deprived of the suffrage.” The “territorial complication,” she asserted, should not be left to men to decide since “the government of men permitted the establishment of a religious colony, so-called, whose basis of faith was the complete humiliation of woman.” That the enfranchised Mormon women have not “thrown off the yoke of religious despotism” should not be surprising since “from time immemorial man has used religion to degrade women;” there is no better example of “perverted religious teaching as the absolute faith manifest by the women of Utah.”¹⁴⁴ Her defense of woman suffrage in Utah could hardly have been encouraging to the Mormons. Whether or not the presence of Mormon women ^[367] might have redirected the nature of Couzins’ so-called defense is difficult to know. Most likely, Emmeline Wells’ “faith in woman’s diplomacy” would have been sorely tested.

By the end of January, the contours of the anti-Mormon legislation were beginning to emerge. A bill introduced by Senator George Edmunds had gained support, and it included measures to annul woman suffrage in the territory. With the threat to woman suffrage in Utah a reality, when the New York Woman Suffrage Association held its annual convention, two weeks after the N.W.S.A.’s Washington meeting, all three Mormon women attended. Pratt praised the speeches of both Anthony and Gage.¹⁴⁵ She especially appreciated Anthony’s candor and defended her “terse and decided” manner, seeing in it an example of how to accomplish anything when you were “dead earnest.” There were certainly times in life, Pratt added, for “not mincing matters.”¹⁴⁶

During the convention, Pratt, Young and Ferguson spoke to Anthony about the pending legislation and the threat to woman suffrage, and this time, it was Pratt who did not mince words. Having listened to the position of the Mormon women, Anthony asked them to whom she should go for the “Anti-Mormon account.” Pratt replied that if Anthony had been as eager to hear the Mormon side of ^[368] things as she was “the anti-side,” the Mormon women would be suffering a “great deal less” than “we now do.” Anthony paused for a moment, then added that woman suffragists had to “guard the cause by shunning even the appearance of evil,” especially in the “present feverish state of society.” Anthony also said that they should continue defending the vote in Washington, and that although she did differ with them on polygamy, she had no “schism on the suffrage question.”¹⁴⁷

“No schism” on the suffrage question was not exactly the way it turned out. During the course of debates over the Edmunds bill, its sponsors removed a clause that would have annulled woman suffrage. Instead, they proposed disfranchising all polygamists, male and female, in effect leaving the principle of woman suffrage untouched. With this brilliant stroke, supporters of the bill hoped to undercut the opposition of woman suffragists, and it worked. Anthony and most woman suffragists did not oppose the legislation, since it did not touch the ballot for so-called innocent women.

The Edmunds bill was approved in the Senate in mid-February and passed the House a month later, becoming law with the signature of President Chester Arthur on March 22, 1882. The new legislation was, in reality, a series of amendments to the Morrill Act of 1862, which the ^[369] Supreme Court had declared constitutional. The act made polygamy a felony that would bring a fine and/or a prison term of up to five years; polygamous living—a far easier crime to prove—was defined as “unlawful cohabitation,” a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and up to six months in prison. In addition to disfranchising all polygamists, it also declared that they could neither sit on juries nor run for office, a restriction that also applied to anyone who believed in polygamy. Juries were therefore assured of having no members who believed in the practice. A board of five commissioners would run the territory and oversee Utah’s electoral process.¹⁴⁸ Edmunds acknowledged that his bill was “intended” to be severe: “Desperate cases,” he claimed, “need desperate remedies.”¹⁴⁹

The eastern mission of the three Mormon women ended before the Edmunds bill was passed. Their return to Utah received considerably less fanfare than their departure. Only one group might have allowed them to speak, the N.W.S.A.’s Washington convention, yet Cannon had not encouraged them to attend.¹⁵⁰ In their encounters with woman’s rights activists, they managed primarily to maintain their strength under fire. Although it might be extreme to say that their aggressive defense hurt the Mormons’ cause, certainly nothing was gained by it. Woman suffragists did not oppose the new efforts to ^[370] disfranchise polygamist women; in fact, they became more outspoken in their condemnations not only of polygamy, but also of the Mormons themselves. Ironically, Mormon women might have had more success with women’s rights advocates by pleading for sympathy than by demanding their rights.

*     *     *

For months following the passage of the Edmunds Act, Utah’s women operated in a climate of uncertainty: neither faction knew what the real consequences of the new law would be. Mormon suffragists and anti-polygamy activists focused their energies instead on the political issues at hand. Mormon women worked to secure a woman suffrage clause in the newly proposed constitution that was another effort to win statehood: it was the first time in the territory’s history that women’s efforts had secured such a result.¹⁵¹

In the fall of 1882 both factions sent representatives to Nebraska to attend the National Woman Suffrage Association’s annual business convention.¹⁵² At these meetings, officers for the coming year were selected and local organizations gave their reports. Emmeline Wells and Zina Young prepared a territorial report that Wells presented despite some minor complications. Cornelia Paddock was also present at the ^[371] convention, and although she had to listen to Wells’ report she nonetheless had the satisfaction of being elected to the executive committee for the first time. Now the National’s list of officers included two representatives from the anti-polygamy faction—Paddock and Sarah Ann Cooke in addition to Emmeline Wells.¹⁵³

Returning to Utah, both factions also began vigorous efforts to get their supporters to vote in the November election for George Q. Cannon’s seat. The Anti-Polygamy Standard claimed that as a result of the Edmunds Act, “at last it is possible to have a fair election in this territory.” Mormon women, the article continued, now had the chance they had been waiting for, but they must grab “the helping hand” being extended.¹⁵⁴ Voter participation was heavy despite the disfranchisement of 12,000 polygamists.¹⁵⁵ Still, Mormon women helped elect their non-polygamous candidate John T. Caine by a margin of 19,000 votes. The results infuriated the Liberals, who sent a letter of “grievances” to Washington asking for the Mormons to be stripped of “all political power.” In addition, Utah’s ruling body of five commissioners recommended disfranchising the remaining Mormon and non-Mormon women as well.¹⁵⁶

While the Liberal party was bemoaning the continuing political power of the Mormons, the anti-polygamy women ^[372] were discovering that passage of the Edmunds Act had its down side: they had to struggle to maintain the momentum of their campaign and keep the Anti-Polygamy Standard afloat. In November, they tried to boost interest in the Standard by reprinting the Salt Lake Tribune’s 1879 account of the Mormons’ secret Endowment House ceremony, which had apparently been written by a Mormon woman.¹⁵⁷ Still the February and March issue of the Standard had to be combined. In June, the Woman’s Journal issued a plea for support so the publication could continue. Despite a warning that the Edmunds bill had not settled the problem of polygamy—plural marriages were still being performed—the February– March issue proved to be the Standard’s last.¹⁵⁸

On the surface the Edmunds Act seemed to have resolved a major problem for the national woman suffrage movement: it began untangling woman suffrage from polygamy. Disfranchisement of all polygamists meant that only non-polygamous or non-Mormon women exercised the vote in the territory. Defending women’s right to the ballot in Utah would no longer mean defending polygamist suffragists; any further attempt to tamper with woman suffrage in Utah could be defended as an attack against the principle. Woman suffragists came to refer to those women who voted after the passage of the Edmunds Act as ^[373] “innocent women,” a label interestingly enough applied by Mormon suffragists as well. Referring to Utah’s voting women this way helped remove any “appearance of evil” from woman suffragists; using that language also meant that most suffragists had implicitly accepted the basic assumption of the Edmunds Act: that polygamists were guilty of a crime.

The American Woman Suffrage Association took this position almost immediately.¹⁵⁹ After the passage of the Edmunds Act, it protested vigorously against any proposal that would remove woman suffrage in Utah.¹⁶⁰ Yet, at the same time, the condemnation of Mormondom increased in the Woman’s Journal. After a visit to Utah in 1883, where she was hosted by Cooke, Paddock and Froiseth, Alice Stone Blackwell’s references to Utah turned markedly anti-Mormon.¹⁶¹ So although the American was willing to defend the principle of woman suffrage in Utah, it added to the anti-Mormon rhetoric of the day. Though it may be too hard on the American to link its anti-Mormon rhetoric to the ultimate disfranchisement of Utah’s women (in fact, nothing either the National or American said in defense of the vote in Utah ultimately made any difference), Blackwell’s comments certainly did not help matters for Utah’s suffragists. ^[374]

Protecting woman suffrage in Utah, it seems, was never destined to be simple. The Edmunds bill had not untangled woman suffrage from the larger question of the political power of the Mormons. To deal with that issue, Senator Edmunds came up with additions to the original act, including disfranchising Utah’s remaining women voters. He argued that Mormon women voted as they were directed; because they outnumbered non-Mormon women, their votes merely reinforced the power of the Mormon theocracy.

Once the Edmunds Act of 1882 had become law, a variety of new proposals emerged to reinforce its measures, even though questions remained about the constitutionality of disfranchising polygamists in the first place. Some had raised objections to the Edmunds bill because the vote was taken away “before conviction by his peers of any crime.” To solve that problem, Congress had been empowered to establish qualifications for voters in the territories, and it disqualified polygamists, although Edmunds never discussed what it was about polygamy that interfered with the ability to make sound judgments. Other critics interpreted the act as imposing a punishment, and violating the constitutional prohibition against bills of attainer. But none of the criticisms or qualms stopped the forward movement of ^[375] measures designed to impose increasingly restrictive and punitive legislation.¹⁶²

By the end of 1882 the nature of women’s activism both in Utah and in the national woman suffrage movement was on the verge of shifting. The Edmunds Act established a new set of rules for Mormon women and anti-polygamy activists. Changes that had been set in motion in 1880 by the National Association awaited full implementation. For Utah’s women and the nation’s woman suffragists, the rest of the decade would be spent struggling to accommodate new political realities. ^[376]