4 The Twilight of Reconstruction: 1879

Unhindered by the winter’s snow the train plowed eastward through the Rocky Mountains, tunnels and snow sheds aiding its way. Traveling as fast as “rail and steam could convey” its passengers, the Union Pacific crossed the Great Plains then traversed the Mississippi on an ice-covered bridge. Inside the train a middle-aged woman gazed at the icy water below. More than thirty years had passed since she had seen the “noble” river. Then she had traveled by foot on the river’s frozen surface with “a little handful of despised Mormons” fleeing westward; now she was “dashing at railroad speed” toward the “great capital of the American nation.” There she would address the “National Suffragists” at their annual convention and meet the “Chief Executive of the United States.” Wearily, Emmeline Wells stepped off the train in Washington, D.C., on the morning of January 8, 1879—five-and-a-half days after embarking in Salt Lake City.¹

The invitation for women from Utah to attend the 1879 January convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association was issued during the last days of the radical era of the nineteenth-century woman suffrage movement. Evidence of the radicalism of the Anthony- ^[242] Stanton wing of the movement appears in the accounts of the National’s meetings; in the kinds of resolutions submitted, debated, and passed by the membership; and in the democratic nature of the discussions surrounding those issues.² Moreover, throughout the 1870s the National Association continued to welcome the participation of a relatively diverse group of suffragists whose personal concerns added to the variety of issues the association addressed.³ The “tactical militancy” and large “vision of female emancipation,” historian Ellen DuBois argues, are among the other characteristics that mark this era as the “most radical” period in the “history of woman’s rights.”⁴

The National’s ideological stance and open-door policy, as well as personal antagonisms, remained factors in the inability of the two wings of the woman suffrage movement to work cooperatively or reconcile their differences. Yet the split had positive implications as well: the woman suffrage movement accommodated a wider range of opinion and more diverse group of people than might have been the case had only one national organization existed—its strength lay in its diversity, not its unity. Although the schism in the movement lessened the presumed impact of a united front, in truth, ^[243] it is doubtful that any political strategy employed by suffragists would have hastened women’s enfranchisement.⁵

At the end of the 1870s, the two wings of the national movement continued to deal differently with Utah’s women. The willingness of the “National Suffragists” to share their stage with Mormon polygamist women supported its claim to represent the interests of a wide array of suffragists, its leaders’ mode of operation and its ongoing interest in “side issues.”⁶ The presence of polygamist women at the National’s annual convention also shows that its platform remained spacious enough to allow controversial topics to be aired: there was even room for those who viewed polygamy as a religious freedom, and those who found the condemnation of polygamy morally hypocritical and believed that political and economic concerns were the real driving force behind the anti-Mormon campaign.⁷ Leaders of the American Woman Suffrage Association would have been unable to conceive of inviting Mormon women onto their convention platform.

Still, the two associations did agree on some matters relating to Utah. By 1879 neither organization believed that Mormon women would “vote out” polygamy or that the New Movement reformers would revolutionize Utah. Both associations also continued officially to condemn polygamy and were eager to show their support of the ^[244] ballot in Utah did not mean that they supported polygamy, although the National’s willingness to listen to Mormon women left them vulnerable to that accusation.

Mormon women’s success in garnering the support of the National Woman Suffrage Association was significant for a number of important reasons, not the least of which was that it helped galvanize Utah’s “antis”: women who opposed polygamy and the L.D.S. Church. Following the strategic path that the New Movement reformers had taken, non-Mormon women and their ex-Mormon sympathizers established an official organization and sought help from outside the territory, including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the national network of Protestant women reformers. They quickly condemned the appearance of Mormon women at the National’s convention and denounced their claims as legitimate representatives of women’s rights from Utah. Thus the argument over territorial representation shifted from a contest between New Movement and Mormon suffragists to one between Mormon women and anti-polygamy advocates: anti-Mormon women hoped to replace Mormon women on the National’s board, despite the fact that some anti-polygamy activists criticized woman suffrage in Utah on the grounds that Mormon women voted as instructed. ^[245]

In 1879 a ruling against the Mormons by the United States Supreme Court proved a turning point in the anti-polygamy campaign. Consequently, it also altered the relations between Utah’s activist women and the national woman suffrage movement. The ruling gave legal clout to the opponents of polygamy and offered hope to those who sought to end Mormon domination in the territory. But it also reinforced the unity of the Saints by provoking their resistance to outside intervention.⁸ The intensifying conflict between Utah’s women added to the mounting difficulties that national woman suffragists were already confronting in the shifting political climate of the late 1870s. At the end of 1879, however, anti-polygamy activists had reason to feel encouraged by the growth of their campaign and the recognition they had gained among woman’s rights advocates.

The events of 1879 show the impact of changing circumstances in the broader political culture on the dynamics of the relationship between Utah’s women and national suffragists. The response of the National Association suggests a growing recognition of the serious nature of these changes as well as its attempt to find new ways of dealing with Utah’s women. Finding political solutions for the competing claims of Utah’s women, it seems, was far easier than resolving the philosophical ^[246] questions raised by the presence of polygamist suffragists. The complex interactions between these groups of women provide insight into the changing nature of women’s political activism in the fading light of Reconstruction.

*     *     *

The invitation to Mormon women to appear among the National suffragists illustrates several characteristics of the Anthony-Stanton wing in the late seventies, including the fact that some of its leaders were either slow or unwilling to accommodate their political tactics to changing political tides. Others seem to have experienced a political reality time lag: the full implications of the congressional retreat from Reconstruction and the effects of the social turmoil and disorder expressed in labor strife had yet to affect either their political perceptions or tactics. The refusal of some to adjust to new political circumstances can be credited to an abiding faith that they would see their cause prevail. The intransigence of other leaders was bolstered by their continuing conviction that, despite the contrary ruling of the Supreme Court, “political rights were inherent, not bestowed” by the Constitution. Although Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the ^[247] most resilient and vocal advocate of that position, other suffragists undoubtedly shared her convictions.⁹

Never one to be hindered by opposition—or it seems by political reality—Sara Spencer authored the bold proposition for women from Utah to attend the National Association’s annual convention. Spencer’s identification with the struggles and accomplishments of women, as well as her compulsion to side with the underdog, undoubtedly explain her comment in the fall of 1878: “Let us by all means have one or more of the enterprising, public-spirited women of Utah present. If we mistake not, our Gentile sisters have much to learn from these heroic women. What we read of their business, ability, courage and patriotism is an inspiration to us.”¹⁰ Nor is it surprising to discover that Spencer’s suggestion came in response to a letter written by Emmeline Wells informing Spencer of recent political activities of Mormon suffragists.¹¹

Wells wasted no time reprinting Spencer’s letter in the Woman’s Exponent, and she quickly set the wheels in motion to act on Spencer’s proposition.¹² At a November mass meeting of Mormon women, called to counter one organized by anti-polygamy advocates, Wells drafted a resolution of “sincere and heartfelt thanks” to the “ladies of the National Woman’s Suffrage Association” ^[248] who, despite their opposition to polygamy and “without sympathy” for Mormonism, “bravely defended the cause of woman’s rights in Utah.”¹³

Spencer’s call for Utah’s women to attend the National Association’s convention was presented to Mormon leaders for their consideration; seeking the counsel and approval of the hierarchy on important matters was common practice among Mormons. Undoubtedly, the possibility of Mormon women being allowed to speak in their own defense and for their church would be viewed as important and helpful to the current efforts of the Saints.

When Emmeline Wells left Salt Lake City for Washington, D.C., she had the sanction of the new L.D.S. president, John Taylor, and the companion he selected to accompany her, Zina Young Williams, Brigham Young’s widowed daughter.¹⁴ The mission, the Deseret News reported, had the “confidence and faith of their sisters,” the blessings of the leading brethren and, most likely, the financial support of the church.¹⁵

Spencer’s proposal was assured of a warm reception by L.D.S. leaders when she and other national suffragists appeared before congressional hearings six months earlier with George Q. Cannon, Utah’s congressional delegate. The suffragists had joined Cannon to protest a bill that was submitted as an election-reform measure because one of ^[249] its so-called reforms was a proposal to annul woman suffrage in the territory.¹⁶

Sara Spencer’s protest went a step further. She stated that she also opposed any legislation which would deprive Mormon women of “the protection of their husbands” or “make their children fatherless and themselves social outcasts.”¹⁷ By that Spencer meant she would oppose punitive legislation for Mormon polygamists—a bold statement for any non-Mormon to make.¹⁸ But in Spencer’s case it was not surprising. For years she had focused on the problems arising from sexual misconduct, and the double-standard of sexual behavior; in addition, her day-to-day experiences among the outcasts of Washington made good parenting from any source seem far more beneficial than, for example, any negative effects of a home guarded by a covey of sister-wives.

Between the time Spencer proposed that Mormon women attend the National Association’s convention and the arrival of Wells and Williams in Washington, the stakes for their mission were raised measurably. Two days before they arrived in the nation’s capital, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling in Reynolds v. United States. The Reynolds case was initiated by L.D.S. leaders to test the constitutionality of the Morrill Act of 1862, which contained measures to prosecute ^[250] polygamists, unincorporate the church, and bar the church from owning real estate.¹⁹ In 1874 George Reynolds, Brigham Young’s secretary, agreed to be prosecuted for polygamy under the act, but not until October 1878 did the case finally make its way to the United States Supreme Court.

The Saints waited confidently for the Reynolds ruling, convinced that the court would find existing legislation in violation of their guarantee of religious freedom. They believed the Constitution was “divinely inspired” and “steadfastly” held that the First Amendment “would ultimately shield them from polygamy prosecutions.”²⁰ The Saints were shocked and angered by the high court’s ruling: establishing a difference between religious belief and practice, it ruled that although the Congress could not legislate against belief or opinion, it was “free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order.”²¹

Polygamy, Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite argued, however benign it appeared in some instances, had always been “odious” among Europeans and was an offense to common law. Moreover, it was both subversive of “social order” and “a social evil.” To defend the last point, the court cited political scientist Francis Lieber, who had ^[251] argued, “polygamy fostered a patriarchal form of society which ‘fetters the people in stationary despotism.’” Mormonism, Lieber claimed, was “characterized by ‘vulgarity,’ ‘cheating,’ ‘jugglery,’ ‘knavery,’ ‘foulness’ and as ‘bearing poisonous fruits.’”²² Polygamy was defined by the court as “both conduct and as a social evil and therefore beyond the protection of the First Amendment.”²³ Not only did the court find the existing anti-polygamy law constitutional, but the ruling also opened the way for more “effective” legislation.

Because the 1862 Morrill Act, which was the basis for the Mormons’ test case, was about to expire, L.D.S. leaders understood that their only immediate option was to prevent future legislation from being passed. Thus, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, the mission of Wells and Williams became even more critical. Adding to that pressure, the Mormon women also knew their presence in the capital would not be viewed enthusiastically from many quarters.²⁴

Arriving in Washington, D.C., however, the Mormon suffragists were “cordially welcomed” by Susan Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. That they were made to feel “perfectly at home” by the “National’s Suffragists,” Wells credited to “the broad platform by which they stand before the world.” But Wells’ most effusive praise was ^[252] saved for their “courageous defender,” Sara Spencer. Meeting her, Wells effused, “our heart went forth in great waves of love.” Soon Wells and Williams were swept into the pre-convention flurry: they were assigned committee posts and attended a planning session at the home of attorney Belva Lockwood, another of their stalwart defenders.²⁵

Accompanied by Anthony and Stanton the next morning, the Mormon women were given “prominent” seats on the platform at Lincoln Hall along with other invited guests.²⁶ Over the course of two days, Wells and Williams were presented, as Wells saw it, with “more opportunities” to speak on the “Utah question” than they “could possibly have expected.” Indeed, she observed, “we felt delicate in responding to their kind and pressing solicitation to speak, knowing how very unpopular Mormonism is in the world.”²⁷ Their delicacy notwithstanding, the sisters appear to have been quick to take advantage of every opportunity to present their case.

News that two Mormon women would be addressing the National’s annual convention spread rapidly though Washington—that, and the chance to see Brigham Young’s daughter, filled the convention hall. When Williams rose, one reporter noted, all eyes “centered” on her.²⁸ This ^[253] “interest” in the twenty-nine-year-old woman stemmed not only from her status as the daughter of the legendary Mormon leader and the widow of a polygamist, but also from her appearance, which was rumored to be anything but downtrodden. Her fine looks, the press noted, were enhanced by “a well fitting brown silk suit and a fur cap,” and “handsome diamond earrings and finger rings.” Williams’s message was brief. She thanked the suffragists for being “received as a sister,” defended the ballot in Utah, and asked for help in blocking disfranchisement efforts.²⁹

Wells spoke to a resolution that condemned any effort by the federal government to disfranchise Utah’s women, and she discussed the “educational influence” of woman suffrage in the territory.³⁰ She stated that the franchise should not be “wrested from them” because it was “the only safety they enjoy,” possibly a reference to the growing anti-Mormon crusade. Adding that Mormon women had never “broken any law of the Territory,” she argued that for them to be deprived of the vote would be “unjust as well as impolitic.” The Mormons, like woman suffragists who saw the Supreme Court finding on Minor v. Happersett as misguided, simply believed that the higher court was wrong to criminalize polygamy. Wells also discussed the continuing campaign by Mormon suffragists ^[254] to change territorial laws so that women could run for public office. The territorial legislature had approved such a measure, but the non-Mormon governor, an official of the federal government, had vetoed it.³¹

Wells and Williams later reported the results of their convention appearance in glowing terms, but the actual response of the audience remains rather murky, a fact abetted by the reluctance of both Mormon women and other woman suffragists to broadcast either internal controversy or conflict.³² But after Williams and Wells spoke, Sara Spencer apparently felt the need to defend their presence—an act that some in the audience probably viewed as one of kindness, others with regret. Taking the stand, Spencer reminded the audience that the “women of Utah” were “called here by the leading suffragists,” and she wanted “to say a word” for them because they were “too modest” to speak for themselves.³³

The Mormons, Spencer informed the convention, “took good care of their children,” unlike many men in the Capital who refuse to provide for their illegitimate children. If Congress would not provide for these abandoned children, she proclaimed, “she would favor polygamy for the District.” Polygamy, she stated, “was preferable to the licensed social evil, which is being advocated by many of our bloated public men.”³⁴ As one ^[255] reporter put it, Spencer believed that the “difference between the Mormons and the Christian statesman is that the Mormons marry their mistresses, the congressmen don’t.”³⁵ Spencer’s sentiment was of questionable help either to the Mormons or to the woman-suffrage cause.

During the convention, Matilda Joslyn Gage also addressed the issues raised by the presence of Mormon women, although her argument had considerably more intellectual substance than Spencer’s and focused on the conflict between the federal government’s responsibilities and states’ rights. In fact, Gage outlined the National’s position on the problems presented by Utah’s women without mentioning the word “polygamy” or “Mormon.” She dealt with polygamy by calling it the “religious aspect of the question,” which she stated was a concern only so far as “it touches, or is touched by women’s political rights.” But “the Utah question” she explained, was more than “simply a religious question,” because the government was “continuously striving to touch the political rights of the women of this territory.” Utah’s federally appointed governor, she added, had “so far transcended the duties of his office as to suggest the disfranchisement of Utah women,” and nearly every recent session of the Congress included bills that would do so.^{36 [256]}

Congress, she reminded the audience, did not grant Utah’s women the vote, and it had argued repeatedly that woman suffrage was a local question. Yet, she added, Congress “proposes to disfranchise those women as a punishment for their religious belief.” The real issue raised by proposals to disfranchise Utah’s women, she believed, was the “inconsistency of United States laws and their especial injustice to women by interference with those rights secured them by state or territorial laws.”³⁷

Gage’s skillful argument shows the careful analysis some woman suffragists had made of the legal and constitutional issues raised during their battles surrounding the legal implications of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, as well as the amount of attention they had given to the various attempts to challenge local, state, and federal voting regulations. That Gage could see an area of common ground between the legal battles that suffragists had spent so many years fighting and the legal position of the Mormons is not surprising for the constitutional claims of both the Mormons and suffragists had been rejected by the same Supreme Court. Moreover, in trying to focus beyond the question of polygamy to the broader issues it raised, she apparently managed to keep the attention on areas of women’s mutual ^[257] concerns; thus, she was able to use a highly controversial issue to broaden the dialogue about women’s issues rather than allowing it to end the debate.

The question of the role of the federal government and its relationship to the states was another of the larger issues for woman suffragists at the 1879 convention. And the presence of Mormon women was not the only controversy that surfaced during the course of the convention, nor was the “Mormon question” the major problem worrying the National’s leaders. Woman suffragists were far more concerned about the flagging will of the Republicans to defend Reconstruction and the new power of the Democrats following the 1878 mid-term elections, which gave them control of both houses of Congress. These changes, they feared, did not bode well for their cause.

Woman suffragists knew that soon their appeals would fall on a generation of politicians with whom they shared neither a history of political activism nor bonds of moral commitment. The fading light of Reconstruction created a sense of urgency for suffragists: after all, if women were bypassed at the height of Reconstruction, what could they expect now that even those commitments were evaporating? ^[258]

Stanton had opened the convention expressing those concerns. “The air of Washington,” she observed, was “heavy with the wrecked hopes of disappointed statesmen, of those who led by personal ambition and party allegiance, have sacrificed principle to expediency.” To the politicians who had served “faithfully and well,” but were nearing the time of writing “the last chapter” of their public career, she asked, “what page” would women find therein “to which they can proudly point and say: ‘This was for us?’”³⁸

“Years ago,” she reminded the convention, “we prophesied on this platform” that the failure to include women in the rights extended by the Reconstruction amendments was a “violation of principle and the spirit of the amendments.” At that time, she continued, woman suffragists argued that the “illogical decisions in our courts and the frivolous arguments in Congress on the constitutional rights of women” would “blunt the moral sense of the whole nation and ultimately imperil the liberties of the colored voters of the South.” Now, she added, “our prophecies are fulfilled.”³⁹

Stanton’s observations were particularly painful to two men whose faces were familiar among the ranks of woman suffragists: Frederick Douglass and another black abolitionist, Robert Purvis. The issue of universal ^[259] suffrage versus black suffrage, debated during the campaign for the Fifteenth Amendment, had created bitter divisions in the woman suffrage camp as well as along other racial and gender lines.⁴⁰

Rather than confront Stanton on the issue, however, Douglass and Purvis exchanged heated words over where the blame lay for the collapse of Reconstruction. Purvis called President Hayes “a traitor,” which was received with both hisses and applause; Douglass argued that the president was restrained by the limited power of his office. Then a voice cried out, “What’s this to do with women’s rights?” Purvis answered, “There are two millions of black women. I speak for them as I speak for the rights of all women and men.” He was also speaking of “rights for black people,” he added, because “on this platform they can be spoken of.”⁴¹

Elizabeth Cady Stanton took the stand, and like Sara Spencer’s defense of Mormon women, she reminded the audience that Douglass and Purvis had been invited to participate in the convention. “If the hissers did not like the sentiments expressed,” she snapped, “they had the liberty to retire.”⁴²

The National’s 1879 convention shows several aspects of the status of the movement at the end of the decade. That black men and Mormon women were welcome on its ^[260] platform suggests a continuing commitment to the participation of a diverse body of women’s rights advocates and to the idea that its conventions remained a place for airing a wide range of issues. At the same time, the convention shows that while Stanton fully recognized the implication of the changing political climate for black Americans, she was still struggling with what the changes meant for woman suffragists. Moreover, although suffragists like Stanton were sensitive to the changing political atmosphere and recognized the conservative turn of national politics, they still remained confident enough not to feel compelled to avoid controversy.

Although the presence of Mormon women may have created problems for the National’s suffragists, that did not prevent them from being included on a committee, along with Spencer and Gage, appointed to call on President Rutherford B. Hayes after the convention was over.⁴³ Hoping to bolster woman suffrage by obtaining the support of the White House, Spencer and Gage made their woman suffrage case to Hayes, as “briefly as possible,” and they also explained the presence of Mormon women, the National Association’s support of woman suffrage in Utah and its opposition to polygamy.^{44 [261]}

The “kindly sympathy” the president showed “the two Mormon women,” the Philadelphia Sunday Times reporter “Miss Grundy” claimed, was the “beauty of the interview.” Hayes seemed “pained” after the women explained that enforcement of the anti-polygamy act would make “fifty thousand women outcasts and their children illegitimate.” He told the Mormon women to put their case in writing, “since he did not trust his memory with such an important matter,” but added “how little he could do to help them” because of the Supreme Court ruling.⁴⁵ “How favorable an impression the party produced on Mr. Hayes,” another witness concluded, “is best proved by his offer to bring his wife in to see them,” which the group of women “gratefully accepted.” Lucy Hayes “heard the Mormon wives with such earnest sympathy as to completely win their hearts.”46

During the Mormon women’s stay in Washington, D.C., Spencer ushered them around the capital.⁴⁷ “Her voice,” Wells recounted on her return, “was open sesame to every portal,” and her “championship was more potent than an army with banners.”⁴⁸ Wells and Williams presented a memorial to Congress, which was referred to the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.⁴⁹ When they were given a hearing before that committee, Spencer accompanied them and spoke on their behalf. Asked what ^[262] legislation she would be willing to endorse for Utah, she answered, any law that would “protect these women and their children, and repeal whatever does them wrong.”⁵⁰

Such support earned Spencer the most effusive praise of all the women Wells met in Washington. She “possessed great executive ability” and spoke from the soul, but in a “most concise and comprehensive manner.” Wells said that although Spencer remained “behind the curtain,” she did the work of a dozen women and “has as fine talents as one could ask for to make a mark in the world—to win fame,” an observation that reveals as much about Wells’ own ambitions as anything else.⁵¹

Not surprisingly the Salt Lake Tribune saw Spencer in a different light, referring to her sarcastically as “our Sara.”⁵² She was “the very last person [the Mormon women] should have had with them,” the paper stated, if they expected to make a “favorable impression, for she was long since voted a nuisance.”⁵³ Having secured Spencer’s “services” and those of “other expert lobbyists,” the paper’s Washington correspondent noted, “the Mormon delegation” was “constantly at work morning, noon and night,” their cause “mainly” aided by “experienced persons of the woman’s rights persuasions” who “have great influence with certain old women in both Houses of Congress.”^{54 [263]}

One of the important aspects of the Mormon women’s trip among woman suffragists is its significance to their opponents. It provided anti-polygamy women with more evidence of what they portrayed as a growing threat to the home and family: the blight of polygamy had breached the territorial boundaries and thus was most certainly becoming a national threat.

Returning home after nearly a month in Washington, D.C., Wells and Williams were hailed by the Saints. The attention and status that came to the returning sisters personally and to Mormon women in general was conspicuous. What the trip also did was bolster the sisters’ sense of self-worth, increase their confidence, and add to their credibility and stature in the community. It was no small thing for the suffragists to return and tell of meeting with the President and Mrs. Hayes, speaking to congressional committees, or dealing with the press. The significance of the trip for all Mormon suffragists was not lessened by the fact that they, no less than their brethren, could not halt the congressional sentiment to intervene in the situation in Utah, but they had represented their own interests and those of their community. Those achievements were ones that Mormon women never saw in anything less than a positive light. ^[264]

That is not to say their perception of their venture went unchallenged. When they reported on their trip to their Relief Society sisters, a reporter from the Salt Lake Tribune referred to them as “two roosters . . . crowing over their achievements.” The Mormon women claimed, according to the paper, to have “exacted a promise from all” that “no legislation” would be passed during this session of Congress.⁵⁵ But the newspaper asserted the presence of the “two concubines” in Washington, and “their boasting publicly of being such,” had done much “to open the eyes” of the nation to the “demoralizing effect” of polygamy.⁵⁶ Wells and Williams reported that “generally” they were treated “well” by the press and the members of Congress. They did admit to being treated “badly” by “professing Christians, ministers and church ladies” in Washington.⁵⁷ Soon, it became clear that the kind reception they received at the White House and by Congress was simply courtesy; the treatment they had received from religious activists indicated more accurately what was ahead.

The Mormon women were not the first women from Utah to present their cause to Mrs. Hayes. Hoping to lessen any positive effect of the visit by Mormon women to the capital, before Wells and Williams arrived in Washington, anti-polygamy advocates had sent their own memorial ^[265] asking Hayes for her support. Challenging Mormon press reports of the Mormon women’s meeting with Lucy Hayes, the Salt Lake Tribune reported Hayes’ comment that she “sympathized with everything” which attempted to better the condition of women. This was not an expression of support, but rather, an allusion to the anti-polygamy petitions she had received “from Utah and elsewhere.”⁵⁸ Indeed, a year later Lucy Hayes assured the women of the Anti-Polygamy Society that they would have her “cordial cooperation.”⁵⁹

The events surrounding the National’s 1879 convention illustrate the persistence of important elements in its mode of operation which had been present from its beginnings, including the ready access it provided for an array of women’s rights advocates. These events also show that despite the growing recognition of the changing political climate, some of the National’s leaders saw no need to adjust their own political behavior to accommodate those changes. Where that perspective related to their interaction with Mormon suffragists, it was quickly challenged.

*     *     *

Alarmed by the National Association’s recognition of Mormon women and Mormon women’s increasing involvement in the politics of the territory, in the fall of 1878 anti- ^[266] polygamy women in Utah moved to organize.⁶⁰ These “aroused” women, the Salt Lake Tribune reported, proposed to appeal to “the moral forces of the country.” They held a women’s mass meeting in November with the immediate goal of drafting a memorial to Congress seeking enforcement of the anti-polygamy law of 1862. These actions were necessary, the Tribune stated, because Congress had failed to pass effective anti-polygamy legislation for Utah.⁶¹ They also planned to circulate their memorial in order to collect signatures in the territory and across the country.⁶² They hoped to win the endorsement of and assistance from the nation’s ministers and “all Christian associations,” and also looked for support from the woman suffrage movement.⁶³

At the mass meeting, a Ladies’ Anti-Polygamy Society was organized. “In order to have any permanent influence with the outside world,” one woman claimed, “we must have a permanent organization, and be in a position to keep urging our claims both upon the country and Congress until the end is attained.”⁶⁴ Attending this initial meeting and apparently assisting with its organization were two officers of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.), Almira Losee and a Mrs. E. Langdon.⁶⁵ Their support meant that the newly formed society had a link to a women’s network that “easily outstripped other ^[267] women’s organizations in size and importance during the 1870s.”⁶⁶ The effort to end polygamy fit nicely with the W.C.T.U.’s “Home Protection” focus and the growing political activism identified with its “Do Everything” policy that was being promoted by Frances Willard.⁶⁷ More important, being identified with the W.C.T.U. gave the anti-polygamy initiative credibility with, and access to the Christian reform network.⁶⁸ Both of the visiting W.C.T.U. officers expressed their support for and interest in the anti-polygamy drive. “The whole country,” Langdon stated, “is now alive to the Mormon evil.”⁶⁹ With this effort, she hoped, the “final blow against polygamy was being struck;” with that, the report ended: “Miss Losee gave vent to a very fervent and audible ‘amen.’”⁷⁰

The women’s anti-polygamy campaign also emerged in the same climate that generated the social purity movement of the mid-1870s. Susan Anthony was among the backers of the so-called purity crusade, as were other former abolitionists and conservatives, such as Anthony Comstock.⁷¹ The social purity movement advanced arguments that were adapted by both defenders and opponents of polygamy. The Saints argued that plural marriage curbed prostitution because it gave all women the opportunity to marry and be provided for, an argument that seems compatible with the purity crusaders’ ^[268] pessimistic vision of male morality. Citing plural marriage as a means of solving the problem of “the social evil” suggests not only that the Mormons recognized the power of the social purity movement, but that they were also struggling to find rationales for plural marriage which would be effective with non-Mormons; and it appears that other National suffragists in addition to Spencer argued that polygamy was preferable to prostitution.⁷²

Opponents of polygamy amplified the purity crusaders’ dark vision of male morality. Mormon men were described as corrupt and lascivious brutes who lived in harems with their degraded concubines. Mormon women were also condemned. Many of their critics accused them of betraying women’s God-given role as the guardians of morality. Like the legislation of the social purity crusade, which according to historian Lori Ginsburg, “can only be described as repressive,” the anti-polygamy campaign eventually produced legislation that was both punitive and coercive.⁷³

The new Ladies’ Anti-Polygamy Society did not choose as its first president a notorious anti-polygamy advocate like Cornelia Paddock or Fanny Stenhouse; rather, they selected an elderly and apparently beloved ex-Mormon, Sarah Ann Sutton Cooke.⁷⁴ When she arrived in the territory in 1852 with her husband William, five sons and ^[269] one daughter, Cooke was not a Mormon. William and the boys had contracted to work in the California gold fields, and the forty-four-year-old Sarah had decided to accompany them. Exhausted by the overland trip and delayed by the illness of one child, Cooke found Salt Lake “inviting” and remained behind to wait for her husband’s return. During William’s absence and over the objections of her young daughter, Cooke embraced Mormondom.⁷⁵ It was, she later claimed, “the great mistake of her life.”⁷⁶

On his return, however, William too joined the church and shortly afterward left for New Zealand and Australia where he served as a missionary for several years. While her husband was on his mission, Cooke became integrated into the Mormon community. At first she earned a living as a music and day-school teacher, but soon she became a valuable member of a circle of highly regarded performers in the territory. She was also a private music instructor in Brigham Young’s household and for years played the organ in the old Tabernacle.⁷⁷ Her musical career ended when an accident during a theatrical performance crippled her arm. That event also left her angry with Brigham Young for claiming her arm had not healed because of her insistence on calling a doctor, rather than having faith in his healing powers.^{78 [270]}

Although Cooke’s apostasy dates to the New Movement era, her defection had other causes. She began “to doubt,” she stated, “when she first heard Brigham Young’s family prayers expressing so much vindictiveness” toward Mormondom’s enemies. Cooke had not experienced the persecutions of the early Mormon years, so she did not share the collective memory that bound the pioneer community together with strands of fear, anger, and sometimes paranoia. For her the Mormons’ “bitter denunciations” of their opponents illustrated a lack of Christian love and charity.⁷⁹

Indeed, historians have portrayed the era that Cooke describes as marked by “harsh hyperbole, offensive rhetoric and militant posturing” by both Mormon leaders and federal officials.⁸⁰ The animosity between the Mormons and federal authorities in the late 1850s had cast a shadow over the community that contributed to confrontations between the Mormons and outsiders, including the Mountain Meadows Massacre.⁸¹ During the 1870s, anti-Mormons recounted these events endlessly.⁸²

The pivotal event in Cooke’s relationship with the Mormons, however, had occurred following her husband’s death many years earlier after he returned from his mission. Filling in “by request” as a policeman at the jail in October 1858, William had been shot when ^[271] a prisoner attempted to escape.⁸³ Consequently, according to her account, Brigham Young secured a home for her. But the transaction became the source of a bitter and protracted lawsuit initiated by Cooke against Young in 1871 when he tried to claim ownership of the residence.⁸⁴ Young counter sued, but Cooke won, becoming the first person “who ever made Brigham Young pay in a United States court,” much to the delight of anti-Mormons.⁸⁵

Cooke retained as her counsel the Mormons’ legal nemesis, Robert N. Baskin, which testified to her degree of anger and resolve.⁸⁶ Young’s clash with the “Widow Cooke” was, in fact, far less damaging than the effects of Cooke’s attempts to discredit the L.D.S. Church. Ultimately, her efforts contributed to the Saints’ abandonment of polygamy.

Between the time she initiated her lawsuit and became president of the Anti-Polygamy Society, Cooke established herself as a prominent figure in the world of non-Mormon women in Salt Lake City. She helped organize the first public reading room in the city, and in 1875 she became a founding member of the Blue Tea, an exclusive cultural club “for the literary elite . . . who were,” one historian claims, “frankly learners.”⁸⁷ That association gave way to the “Ladies Literary Club” in 1877, in which Cooke again played a leading role.^{88 [272]}

The relationships developed in these cultural clubs helped provide an organizational basis for the Anti-Polygamy Society; several members of the Blue Tea were also associated with the organized anti-polygamy drive.⁸⁹ Equally important, Cooke also advocated temperance and early on had established a relationship with the W.C.T.U.⁹⁰ Through these various activities, she became a respected and apparently beloved leader in the non-Mormon community.⁹¹ Cooke’s former position of esteem in the Mormon community and her willingness to confront the L.D.S. leaders made her a potent force in the anti-polygamy campaign.⁹²

The organization of the Ladies’ Anti-Polygamy Society also brought a new non-Mormon into the spotlight, Jennie Anderson Froiseth. Chosen as a vice president of the Anti-Polygamy Society, Froiseth soon rivaled Cornelia Paddock as the loudest non-Mormon voice in the territorial campaign against polygamy. Given Paddock’s long domination of anti-polygamy efforts in the territory, it is interesting that she was not selected as an officer of the new organization, despite her “very stirring and eloquent address” at the 1878 organizing meeting.⁹³ The slight may have been a deliberate political choice, or it may have reflected how some non-Mormon women felt about their contentious representative. ^[273] As early as 1876, Paddock’s strident voice may have begun to grate even on non-Mormon women inside the territory.⁹⁴

Froiseth has been described as “a companion-at-arms” to Paddock; certainly, their books share many of the same qualities and a few of the same stories, and they shared the same zeal to destroy plural marriage. Still, Froiseth was the more effective leader, and in April 1880 she became the driving force behind the society’s newspaper, the Anti-Polygamy Standard. After the Anti-Polygamy Society “went national,” it was also Froiseth who traveled around the country lecturing against polygamy and establishing new branches of the organization.⁹⁵

Jennie Anderson first visited the territory in the company of her brother Finlay, apparently in 1870.⁹⁶ Colonel Finlay Anderson was “an old and celebrated correspondent of the New York Herald” on assignment to the western territories; because Jennie “presided” over his household, she traveled with him.⁹⁷ While in Utah she met Bernard Arnold Martin Froiseth, a surveyor and mapmaker, and shortly afterwards, they were married in New York City.⁹⁸ When the newlyweds returned to the territory in 1871, Jennie’s attributes were praised by the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, Oscar Sawyer, who had known her for “many years” both “at home and abroad.”⁹⁹ Froiseth and her husband were active in the ^[274] social life of the non-Mormon community and the parents of six children.¹⁰⁰

When Jennie Froiseth arrived in Utah she was well educated, well traveled, and had been exposed to the world of American journalism. She had been born in Ireland on December 6, 1849, and as a child, immigrated with her family to New York. Later, she returned to Europe for five years to attend convent schools in Florence and Berlin, where she learned to speak German fluently. Although younger than many other of the non-Mormon activists in the territory, in 1875 Froiseth organized the Blue Tea and became its first president. But not until she became involved in the anti-polygamy campaign three years later was she identified with the work for which she is remembered.

After the initial meetings of the Anti-Polygamy Society, Cooke, Paddock and Froiseth worked to expand the network of anti-polygamy advocates.¹⁰¹ Soon anti-polygamy societies began forming in other parts of the territory and throughout the nation.¹⁰² Utilizing the network of Christian reformers, they initiated a petition drive that called for the enforcement of the 1862 Morrill Act.¹⁰³ Shortly after Emmeline Wells and Zina Williams spoke to the Judiciary Committee in 1879, Congress was inundated with a “flood” of anti-polygamy petitions signed by a ^[275] variety of “counties, churches and temperance organizations.” How many signatures were gathered is unclear, but hundreds of petitions reached Congress and each apparently had “fifty to two-thousand” signatures.¹⁰⁴

Despite these efforts, when Congress adjourned in the spring of 1879, the Salt Lake Tribune complained that it left Utah “out in the cold.” But the paper did not credit the inaction of Congress to Mormon men or women, nor did it blame anti-polygamy activists; rather, it blamed the lack of “Liberal” agents in the nation’s capital.¹⁰⁵ Soon, funds were being collected by non-Mormons in the territory to underwrite lobbyists in the nation’s capital; heading the drive was Jennie Froiseth’s husband.¹⁰⁶ The anti-Mormon campaign came to reflect the division of labor in the Froiseth household: women tended to attack polygamy, while men more often assailed the political and economic aspects of the “polygamic theocracy.”

Anti-Mormons were less disappointed by the actions of President Hayes in December 1879. In his annual message, Hayes called for “more comprehensive and more searching methods for preventing, as well as punishing” the crime of polygamy. His harsh condemnation of the Mormons was echoed successively by presidents James A. Garfield and Chester Arthur. As Washington abandoned the South, its ^[276] reformist energies turned to solving the “Mormon problem.”¹⁰⁷

*     *     *

The National Association was not indifferent to the problems created by the presence of Mormon women at their annual convention, and it was aware of the growing anti-polygamy campaign. Almost immediately after the convention the National’s suffragists were compelled to clarify various statements and restate their position on the “Mormon question.”

Predictably, Sara Spencer was the first who found it necessary to explain comments attributed to her. Reports of her remarks regarding the immorality of “public men” had created a stir, and her statement that polygamy “was preferable” to licensing prostitution in the district (an idea being debated in Congress) provided the press with the material for sensational reports. Spencer denied she intended a slur against Congress. The press, she claimed, had “misapprehended” her because she “frequently asserted” that “as a class,” congressmen were “morally above many of those who are active in electing them.”¹⁰⁸ Nevertheless, her highly quotable statements apparently traveled across the nation.¹⁰⁹ Despite Spencer’s clarifications, the comments attributed to her in the National Citizen and Ballot Box proved to be ones that ^[277] lent themselves readily to embellishment. Spencer’s strong convictions and bold assertions, as woman suffragists would soon acknowledge, were a double-edged sword.

Shortly after the Mormon women returned to Utah, Gage also found it necessary to defend the National’s actions. In an article under the heading “Falsehoods,” she attacked several papers, which had published statements claiming that women suffragists supported polygamy. To one account she responded: “It is laughable and it is wonderful that a paper with the usual fairness and good sense as the [Rochester Evening] Express, should thus distort facts and give through its columns such false impressions.”¹¹⁰ But just as claims that woman suffragists supported “free love” had been difficult to deny, the claim that they supported polygamy was hard for them to refute effectively.

Criticism from inside the woman suffrage movement was equally aggravating. Stanton wrote to Anthony and Gage in April 1879, asking if they had seen in the Woman’s Journal the “strictures on us” for having the Mormon women on “our platform.”¹¹¹ If Congress allowed George Q. Cannon to sit among them without “it being supposed to endorse polygamy,” she fumed, “we could permit Mormon women the same privilege.” “When Congress proposes to ^[278] disfranchise the women of a Territory,” she asked, “where should they go to plead their case but to the National Woman Suffrage Association?”¹¹²

The Woman’s Journal had printed the critical letter from Amanda Dickinson on its front page, and although she had conceded that the National Association “explicitly denied” the charges that it supported polygamy, she stated that “the denial [could not] entirely counteract the mischief already done.” Polygamy, Dickinson concluded, was not better than prostitution, as some of the National’s women had claimed; it was worse.¹¹³

Gage responded angrily to the letter, accusing the National’s critics of “catering to public opinion,” which she compared to the “degraded slave” who “to curry favor with the master helps pull down his fellow slave,” or even worse, “lays obstacles in the way” of escape. “We have not rebuked the Woman’s Journal for this and many other evidences of the slave spirit, because we have only pity for those women who turn and rend their sister women working differently from themselves,” wrote Gage. She concluded her rebuttal noting that when she became a newspaper editor, she pledged that “women of every class, condition, rank and name, [would] find this paper their friend, it matter not how wretched, degraded, fallen they may be,” and she intended to stand by that pledge.^{114 [279]}

Despite strikingly different childhood circumstances from those of Sara Spencer, Matilda Gage’s early life also had assured her commitment to women’s rights and to think for herself. Gage had been prepared both intellectually and morally for a life-long commitment to social change and human rights by parents dedicated to a range of reforms including free thought, abolition, and women’s rights. Born in 1826 in Cicero, New York, Matilda was an only child. Both parents were committed to her education. Her physician father passed on to her his knowledge of Greek, mathematics, and physiology; her mother no doubt served as a role model for women’s activism. Young Matilda completed her formal education at Clinton Liberal Institute, and in 1845 she married Henry H. Gage, an enterprising and eventually successful young merchant.¹¹⁵

Gage and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had been friends since 1847, when Stanton moved to Seneca Falls. Gage was, as Stanton described it, already part of the “magnetic circle of reformers” in central New York State.¹¹⁶ At the first Woman’s Rights convention in Rochester, New York, in 1852, Gage made her public speaking debut, as did Susan Anthony. “Trembling in every limb” and scarcely audible, Gage was the “youngest speaker” at the gathering of two thousand women’s rights ^[280] advocates. Indeed, public speaking was never her forte; her writing expressed her brilliant mind far more powerfully.¹¹⁷

Throughout the fifties and sixties, Gage devoted her energy to her young family. But by 1869 when the National Association was organized, her name appears among its founders; subsequently, she submitted articles to the Revolution.118 Gage was among the many suffragists who attempted to vote in 1871, and a year later she vigorously defended Anthony throughout New York after Anthony was arrested for voting. By 1875 Gage’s organizing ability had won her the presidency of both the New York State and the National associations. She relinquished the latter position to Stanton during the Centennial year, apparently for publicity.

Of the women whose activism and beliefs defined the contours of the National Association in the late 1870s, few were more critical than Gage. Still, the strength of Gage’s convictions, like that of Spencer’s, was not always matched by political finesse, and on occasion, her intellectual and moral certitude resulted in intemperate attacks.¹¹⁹

Gage’s response to the letter published by the Woman’s Journal criticizing the National exemplifies her impatience with others. After carefully defending the ^[281] National’s stance, her rebuttal lapsed into a personal attack: “It ill becomes the Woman’s Journal to cast a slur upon those women whose married life is not in accord with its ideas of right, for Lucy Stone’s own married life at its inception, and even to this day is a protest against the laws of marriage as recognized by the Christian Church and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”¹²⁰ Her conclusion reminded the Journal’s readers about the person who lives in a “Glass House.”¹²¹

The Woman’s Journal chose not to respond. Instead Henry Blackwell wrote a scathing article condemning polygamy, “monogamy is the rock upon which the church of Woman’s Equality is founded” and the L.D.S. church, “under the dictation of an unscrupulous priesthood the fundamental law of civilized morals has been abolished in Utah.” Blackwell added that if President Hayes suppressed polygamy, he would “complete the mission of the Republican party,” which many years earlier had declared war against the “twin relics of barbarism,” slavery and polygamy, and “his name [would] go down in history along with that of Lincoln.”¹²² Little more than a week after Blackwell’s statement, it was reprinted and praised in the Salt Lake Tribune.123

In 1879, Henry Blackwell also cited the increased activity of anti-polygamy women as a new rationale for ^[282] supporting woman suffrage in Utah. He argued that it was not unreasonable to believe that the vote, in the hands of anti-Mormon women, could be the “thin end of the wedge that will split the peculiar institution in pieces.”¹²⁴ Indeed, the growing presence of the Anti-Polygamy Society gave woman suffragists, such as Blackwell, a new rationale for defending woman suffrage in Utah, which also showed their opposition to polygamy and the Mormon Church. Having given up on the New Movement reformers’ ability to change Mormondom and Mormon women’s apparent refusal to do so, some woman suffragists now placed their faith in the activism of anti-polygamy women.

As the decade of the 1870s came to a close, the issue of polygamy further complicated the already strained relations between woman suffragists. The National Association faced far more complex considerations on the topic of Utah’s women than did the American. Its history of inclusiveness, coupled with a commitment to defend all women, continued to leave the National vulnerable to controversies and criticism. Moreover, its open door also prevented it from ignoring appeals from women in the anti-polygamy campaign, even when such women opposed woman suffrage in the territory.

Despite the National’s leaders’ strong defense of the presence of Mormon women on their stage, they were ^[283] nonetheless sensitive to the subsequent criticisms. During the month Gage was drafting her reply to the Woman’s Journal, the National Association was trying to appease its critics and respond to anti-polygamy activists. At its annual May meeting in 1879, held this time in St. Louis, the National elected a new slate of officers, which included both Emmeline Wells and Mary Godbe. Then, in order to reaffirm their commitment to all women and to try to reinforce their neutrality on the issues raised in Utah, the National selected an additional representative from Utah for its roster of officers: Sarah Ann Cooke, new president of the Ladies’ Anti-Polygamy Society and critic of woman suffrage in the territory. Nevertheless, at the same time the National also passed a resolution that stated, “Resolved: That men have no right to legislate upon marriage or religious faith in Utah Territory or elsewhere, until woman, whose most vital and sacred interests are controlled thereby, has a voice in the national counsels.”¹²⁵

By the end of 1879, the National’s board reflected its success in finding a political solution to the demands of Utah’s competing factions. The National’s leaders apparently were able to negotiate a political settlement that more or less appeased Utah’s women, which illustrates their political skill. At the same time, what ^[284] the presence of all of Utah’s factions on the board also suggests is that a political accommodation was possible because the association had managed to deal with the complexity of the conflicting perspectives in a politically astute fashion—all sides believed that the National was sympathetic to its interests.

*     *     *

The Supreme Court ruling in the Reynolds test case changed the dynamics of the anti-polygamy crusade. It not only altered the nature of relations between Utah’s women, but also affected their relations with national suffragists. Energized by the high court’s finding and angered by the Mormons’ defiant response, women in the Anti-Polygamy Society labored vigorously to establish a national constituency for their crusade.¹²⁶ They also worked to supersede Mormon women as the representatives of women’s rights in the territory and among woman suffragists. Thus, in the spring of 1879 the divisions in Utah deepened, and the dynamics between its female activists and those outside the territory grew even more complex.

A second polygamy trial, following on the heels of the Reynolds Supreme Court ruling, became the focal point for Utah’s opposing factions of women; it was also a harbinger of the sensational polygamy trials of the ^[285] 1880s.¹²⁷ For six months, the territorial press and public debated the particulars of the “Miles case.”¹²⁸ The case was of special interest to Utah’s anti-polygamy women: the arrest of John H. Miles came about apparently because of their “intervention.”¹²⁹ Later, it was cited as the genesis of the Ladies’ Anti-Polygamy Society.¹³⁰

The accusations against Miles made sensational gossip in the anti-Mormon community. He was charged with marrying three women on the same day, one of whom felt betrayed, either because she was not wife number one of three, or because she was one of three, depending on who was telling the story.¹³¹

Events surrounding the trial prompted a protest demonstration by the Saints, which dwarfed all previous ones, but the event also provoked the territory’s anti-Mormons and attracted negative attention to Mormon women.¹³² The protest erupted during the course of the trial after Emmeline Wells’ husband, Daniel, was jailed for forty-eight hours for contempt of court. Wells had performed the plural marriages in question and was asked by the prosecution to describe the sacred garments worn by the Saints in their Endowment House ceremonies. He refused, stating that the question was both irrelevant to the prosecution and violated the sanctity of his religious covenants.^{133 [286]}

The question was particularly sensitive to the L.D.S. community because only a few months earlier a Mormon woman had given a detailed description of the Endowment House ceremonies, including sketches of the clothing associated with those rituals, to the Salt Lake Tribune.¹³⁴ The paper not only published the material, it also prepared a special pamphlet for broader circulation. Eventually, the material was republished in the Anti-Polygamy Standard as well.¹³⁵

Overnight, Daniel Wells’ resistance mushroomed into a provocative symbol for the Mormon community. Upon his release from jail, he was greeted with a hero’s parade and mass meeting at the Tabernacle for the Saints to express their unity and resolve to defend their beliefs. Mormon women seized this public opportunity to express their support for Wells, their church, and their “rights.”¹³⁶ Hundreds marched in the protest parade, carrying banners with statements such as “We care less for the cut of our aprons than the loss of our rights” and “Women in Favor of Polygamy.”¹³⁷

That the participation of Mormon women was particularly vexing to anti-Mormons is illustrated by the portrayal of a Mormon female “Processionist” in the Salt Lake Tribune (Fig. 1). Because the political activities of Mormon women were an endless object of ridicule, the ^[287] image is not surprising. The aggressive Mormon female was a subject as dear to cartoonists’ hearts as the degraded one. The Tribune’s illustration is nevertheless helpful because it sharply contrasts with an illustration portraying the same event, which appeared in Leslie’s Weekly (Fig. 2).¹³⁸

^[289] Figure 1. Salt Lake Tribune, 11 May 1879.

^[290] Figure 2. “Detachment of 400 Mormon Women,” Leslie’s Weekly, 31 May 1879.

These conflicting visual images underscore the contrasting perceptions of politically active Mormon women and vividly illustrate the nature of the problem that association with Mormon women presented for national suffragists.¹³⁹ Although the depiction in the Tribune is so grotesque as to be absurd, the power of a negative image is undeniable, as is the degree of hostility the activities of Mormon women provoked. On the other hand, Leslie’s illustration shows how and why Mormon women appeared sympathetic to some woman suffragists who applauded such public demonstration by women, even though in this case, the cause seemed misguided. The appearance of respectability in Leslie’s undoubtedly pleased and perhaps surprised Mormon women. But of the two, Leslie’s may have been more problematic for the Mormons: which image, one might ask, was more likely to anger and excite anti-polygamy advocates? ^[288]

For women in the national suffrage movement, such contrasting images were reinforced by conflicting information from Utah’s women as they vied for support.¹⁴⁰ In the spring of 1879, after the National Association included Sara Ann Cooke on its board, the competition between Utah’s Mormon and anti-Mormon women intensified. Letters from Emmeline Wells to the National Association describing the political activities of Mormon women were quickly contradicted by Cooke and other women in the Anti-Polygamy Society.¹⁴¹

To better promote their cause; in April 1880 the Anti-Polygamy Society began publishing the Anti-Polygamy Standard. The goal of the monthly was to challenge the voice of the Woman’s Exponent and denounce any support for the Mormons. After Cooke became an officer of the National Association, anti-polygamists paid special attention to the views of the National’s suffragists. Now with their own voice and the Constitution on their side, they were equipped with new means for advancing their cause.

The National Association’s effort to make their defense of the political rights of Mormon suffragists comprehensible to anti-polygamy advocates was a formidable task. In 1880 Wells sent an update of Mormon women’s political activities to the National Citizen and ^[291] Ballot Box. Gage published the report, adding “by an unlooked for combination of circumstances the political rights of the women of the United States are indissolubly connected with the political rights of the women of Utah. To disfranchise them is to stab us.”¹⁴² Gage also included an endorsement of statehood for Utah and restated the National’s position on religious and political rights, which she had advanced at the Washington convention in 1879.¹⁴³

To the Anti-Polygamy Standard, however, Gage’s argument sounded like “mere twaddle.”¹⁴⁴ In the editor’s view, “moral and mental liberty should take the precedence of political enfranchisement.” Although the ballot was “desirable,” the article asserted, the “want of it” did not “degrade the female sex, nor pollute the home like polygamy.”¹⁴⁵ By accepting the “bait” of Mormon woman suffrage, which the “Suffrage Association has been silly enough to swallow,” the article continued, woman suffragists “have injured their own cause.”¹⁴⁶

Wells’ letter and Gage’s response also infuriated Cooke. She dashed off a letter to the National Citizen, stating that although Wells and other “advocates” in Utah “wish to be counted as co-workers,” Mormon women could not endorse “or express approval” of the National’s recent resolution condemning “the theory of a masculine ^[292] head to rule the family, the Church or the State.” If a Mormon woman did endorse the resolution, she would be “denounced an apostate,” and if she did not repent, Cooke insisted, she would be excommunicated. In “no other place in Christendom,” Cooke concluded, are women “so systematically and thoroughly taught to consider themselves man’s inferior as in this territory.” Polygamy, she declared, “is utterly and entirely opposite to equality.”¹⁴⁷ Cooke also sent a copy of her letter to the Anti-Polygamy Standard, which promptly published it, although the editor had already sharply denounced Wells, Gage and the National Association.¹⁴⁸

Gage did not respond or publish Cooke’s letter in the National Citizen until August.¹⁴⁹ Then it was her turn to fume: “It seems necessary to again remind Mrs. Cooke that Woman Suffragists are battling for woman’s equality of political rights with man. Religious wrong and political wrong are very closely welded together. When we burst one chain we burst the other.”¹⁵⁰ For Gage, the subjection of women under polygamy was part of the more significant problem of religious inequality in general.

As for the resolution, Gage argued, it was “very likely” neither Mormon men or women would endorse it. In fact, she claimed, widespread opposition to the resolution was expected because it was designed to ^[293] persuade men and women to oppose the idea of a “divine masculine head anywhere.” The resolution, she emphasized, had been condemned immediately by the non-Mormon religious press: “It is not Mormon elders alone who wish to keep women in spiritual bondage.” The Church, she asserted, “has always taught the pious fiction of woman’s created inferiority to man.” Defending the National Association and the National Citizen, she added, “the causes of woman’s degradation look far beyond the vision of even the anti-polygamy society. . . . WOMAN MUST HAVE FULL POLITICAL RIGHTS in order to free herself from even religious trammels and therefore the National Association knowing it is doing underlying work, does not direct its energies against forms of religious belief.”¹⁵¹

By the late 1870s, the topic of women and religion had become increasingly important to Gage, Stanton, and other women in the National Association. Gage began her campaign to persuade woman suffragists of the central role of religion in woman’s degradation in 1878, and Stanton had been discussing the issue for years.¹⁵² The issue of religion continued to surface among the National’s suffragists because its leaders included feminists who persisted in that discussion. Yet, Gage’s response to anti-polygamy women appears to close down the ^[294] discussion of the issues that polygamy raised and fly in the face of her pledge to stand by all women.

Stanton shared Gage’s desire to focus the discussion of religion on the overarching questions it raised, but she never balked at criticizing religious practices she thought degraded women, including polygamy. Yet, Stanton never lost cognizance of the complexity of the issue. In the spring of 1879, following the appearance of Wells and Williams at the National convention, Stanton was struggling with the problems that polygamist suffragists represented, and she recalled her visit to Utah in 1871. Standing in the midst of the Mormons, she stated, “so earnest in making their experiment in religion and social life,” she was reminded of all they had “suffered and accomplished.” At that moment she said, “I appreciated, as never before, the danger of intermeddling with the religious ideas of any people.”¹⁵³

Indeed, in the Utah case the National’s suffragists faced an irresolvable confrontation between two sets of complex and interrelated issues: their advocacy of constitutional rights and protections, their defense of women’s right to make private choices about their own lives and bodies, the tension between the government’s responsibility for citizens’ welfare as well as concern with the government’s infringement on personal liberty ^[295] and of coercive power, and a recognition and appreciation of the differences between women. All of these issues, suffragists such as Stanton and Gage apparently realized, were being played out against historically imposed cultural and religious norms and values. In fact, in many respects, the complex issues raised by polygamist suffragists anticipated current tensions among cultural values, and religious beliefs and practices that have come to concern a global network of feminist thinkers.

That the National’s suffragists could not find a way around the apparent philosophical conundrum these tensions represented in some respects underscores their skill in earlier being able to strike a political compromise with Utah’s factions. Whether that political maneuver proved helpful to the National’s own political goals, however, seems unlikely.

*     *     *

Throughout the 1870s, many National suffragists believed that women’s political equality was impossible to isolate from other issues that touched the welfare of women. They recognized that social change was achieved only by following a tortuous path, which confronted women’s internal resistance as well as external obstacles. Still, the situation in Utah caught them in a bind. Trying to reconcile Mormon women’s political and ^[296] religious rights, and the issue of religion as a source of women’s degraded status and resistance to change, while espousing women’s right to personal liberty and autonomy was a difficult, perhaps impossible, task. It has been said that Stanton “forged the thunderbolts” and Anthony “fired them,” but in the 1870s the National’s firing line was fortified by a second tier of women daring enough to work in a minefield of explosive issues.¹⁵⁴ The militant aspect of the National continued to contribute to the division in the woman suffrage movement.

The schism among woman suffragists has been cited as a reason for its failure in the 1870s and 1880s. But during the 1870s the success of the movement must be measured by other standards—although it failed to achieve its primary goal, it did make positive contributions to public life. Most obviously, it provided an institutional structure for female political activists, many of whom used the movement as a means for discussing other social and economic changes for women. Though some of the controversial issues raised by the National’s suffragists created conflict and did little to boost the movement’s political viability, discussion of them nurtured feminist thought. ^[297]

The invitation to Mormon women issued in the fall of 1878 illustrates the National’s commitment to inclusiveness, even though much of its institutional decision-making was informal, even unilateral. Informality was central to the National’s dynamic nature in the 1870s. Sara Spencer’s 1879 claim that the Mormon women were “called” to the National’s convention by the “leading suffragists” may or may not have been accurate; the “call” could have come from Spencer alone.¹⁵⁵ Nonetheless, the very presence of Mormon polygamists on the convention platform suggests that part of the National’s strength and vulnerability came from the same sources: the absence of bureaucratic structures and the “large latitude” given its members.¹⁵⁶ Although these policies fostered intellectual freedom and creativity, the lack of organizational boundaries also left room for arbitrary or autonomous action that could, and did, create internal problems.

If the presence of Mormon women caused problems at the 1879 convention, that was not uncommon. The reports of these annual events often show them to be hardly smooth running, “sisterly” gatherings that suffragists would have liked them to appear.¹⁵⁷ The National’s conventions in the 1870s were interrupted not only by ^[298] outsiders who attended for that purpose, but also by a variety of eccentrics within the membership.¹⁵⁸

Throughout the seventies, the National’s interest in a wide range of women’s issues also tended to foster conflict. Discussions at its biannual meetings were as intellectually invigorating as they were controversial. Sharp debates and differences of opinion did not frighten these women; they took as much pleasure in oratory excellence, witty or sarcastic rebuttals, and well-honed arguments as their male counterparts.¹⁵⁹

The National Association attracted women who were outspoken and intrepid, but not always blessed with the political judgment or finesse of either Stanton or Anthony. Inevitably, certain subjects provoked arguments: political party affiliation, religion and attitudes toward men, for example.¹⁶⁰ And disputes bruised feelings. In times of rising confidence such conflicts did not seem to present problems, but during discouraging periods, when nerves were frazzled, peaceful resolution was less common; 1880 was one of those times.

In the fall of 1879, woman suffragists began directing their attention to the presidential elections in 1880. The “splinter” recognition in the 1872 and 1876 Republican platforms gave many suffragists hope that 1880 ^[299] would mark a turning point in woman suffrage history. It did, but not in their favor. ^[300]