The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America

by Gordon, Sarah Barringer

• ISBN13: 9780807826614
• ISBN10: 0807826618
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

From the Mormon Church's public announcement of its sanction of polygamy in 1852 until its formal decision to abandon the practice in 1890, people on both sides of the "Mormon question" debated central questions of constitutional law. Did principles of religious freedom and local self-government protect Mormons' claim to a distinct, religiously based legal order? Or was polygamy, as its opponents claimed, a new form of slavery--this time for white women in Utah? And did constitutional principles dictate that democracy and true liberty were founded on separation of church and state? As Sarah Barringer Gordon shows, the answers to these questions finally yielded an apparent victory for antipolygamists in the late nineteenth century, but only after decades of argument, litigation, and open conflict. Victory came at a price; as attention and national resources poured into Utah in the late 1870s and 1880s, antipolygamists turned more and more to coercion and punishment in the name of freedom. They also left a legacy in constitutional law and political theory that still governs our treatment of religious life: Americans are free to believe, but they may well not be free to act on their beliefs.

Author Biography

Sarah Barringer Gordon teaches in the Law School and the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Preface	xiii
Introduction Faith and the Contested Constitution	1	(18)
PART ONE The Laws of God and the Laws of Man
The Power of the Word(s)	19	(36)
The Twin Relic of Barbarism	55	(30)
The Logic of Resistance	85	(34)
PART TWO Days of Judgment
Law and Patriarchy at the Supreme Court	119	(28)
The Erosion of Sympathy	147	(36)
The Marital Economy	183	(38)
Epilogue The (Un)Faithful Constitution	221	(18)
Notes	239	(58)
Bibliography	297	(26)
Acknowledgments	323	(2)
Index	325