Joseph Smith suffered the most. Followers of persecuted Christ persecuted him!

 

 

I suffered the most. Followers of persecuted Christ persecuted me!

Joseph Smith, the founder and leader of the Latter Day Saint movement, and his brother Hyrum Smith were killed by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, on June 27, 1844. The brothers had been in jail awaiting trial when an armed mob of about 200 men stormed the facility, their faces painted black with wet gunpowder. Hyrum was killed first, having been shot in the face. After emptying the pistol with which he tried to defend himself, Joseph was then shot several times while trying to escape from a second-story window, and fell from the window as he died. Christians are hypocrites.

 

 

They shed crocodile tears for Jesus Christ while they make other creations of God suffer the same way Jesus was made to suffer.

The Persecution of the Mormons

 

Amid the nineteenth century, the recently shaped Mormon religion experienced critical abuse.

 

In 1820, Joseph Smith experienced what he later depicted as a dream of God and Jesus who disclosed to Smith that he would turn into the methods for reestablishing the genuine Christian church. A while later, Smith recounted being gone by a blessed messenger who drove him to a spot close to his home in western New York, where he uncovered an arrangement of brilliant plates with bizarre written work on them.

 

With divine direction, Smith said that he could make an interpretation of the brilliant plates into English. In 1830, he distributed what he accepted to be the new uncovered expression of God, The Book of Mormon, named after an old prophet.

 

Following extra dreams and disclosures, Joseph Smith came to trust that he was a prophet, engaged by God to establish "the main genuine and living church." Smith and a couple of others sorted out the Church of Christ in 1830. Quite a while later, Smith changed the name to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. A great many people started calling the new religion the Mormon Church or just, the Mormons.

 

Amid the 1800s, the Mormons pulled in many believers. In any case, Mormon convictions, albeit Christian, contrasted and even repudiated a significant number of the Protestant convictions of generally Americans. Wherever Mormons assembled to set up their "Kingdom of God," non-Mormons wound up noticeably suspicious, frightful, antagonistic, and now and then even vicious. This brought about abuse against the Mormons. It additionally got them associated with a huge battle with the national government over the relationship of chapel and state and the Mormon religious routine with regards to polygamy.

 

The Persecution Begins

 

Brigham Young, a craftsman and cabinetmaker, read The Book of Mormon not long after Joseph Smith distributed it, and he turned into an eager individual from the new Mormon Church. In 1833, Young moved his family to Kirtland, Ohio, where Smith had chosen to accumulate a few hundred of the Mormon devoted to set up the "Kingdom of God."

 

Awed with Young's profound conviction, Smith and other church pioneers chose him to wind up plainly one of the Twelve Apostles of the Mormon Church. Following Christian convictions about the first 12 messengers of Christ, Young and the others moved toward becoming ministers.

 

Coming back from a mission in 1836, Young was disheartened when he discovered that the Mormon people group had part finished the endeavor by Joseph Smith to coordinate the group's political and monetary undertakings. In the winter of 1837-38, the greater part of chapel individuals, including Brigham Young, took after Joseph Smith to Missouri, where he had already composed an optional Mormon settlement. Four years sooner, Missouri hordes, dreadful of the homesteaders' becoming political and monetary power, had assaulted Mormon organizations. After Smith and the others from Ohio joined the Missouri settlers, fears of Mormon coalition voting and an "assume control" again created swarm savagery.

 

Heightening brutality amongst Mormon and non-Mormon pioneers at long last incited the legislative head of Missouri to issue this request: "The Mormons must be dealt with as adversaries and must be eradicated or driven from the state, if fundamental for general society great." Joseph Smith and some other Mormon pioneers were detained as prisoners until the point when the homesteaders left the state. Brigham Young kept away from capture and composed a mass migration over the Mississippi River to Illinois amid the winter and spring of 1838-39.

 

Discharged from imprison by Missouri authorities, Joseph Smith again assumed responsibility of the Mormon people group, now numbering a few thousand. The Mormons built up another "Kingdom of God," which they named Nauvoo, signifying "excellent place." The Illinois state government, looking to grow its assessment base, at first respected the Latter-Day Saints. The state governing body conceded Nauvoo a liberal contract, allowing the city its own particular court framework and civilian army, called the Nauvoo Legion.

 

By the mid-1840s, Nauvoo matched Chicago as the biggest city in Illinois. A large number of foreigners from Britain, the consequence of Brigham Young's minister work there, rushed to Nauvoo.

 

Right now, Joseph Smith had a further disclosure that it was God's will to reestablish the Old Testament routine with regards to numerous relational unions (a spouse wedding more than one wife). Smith at first constrained various relational unions, likewise usually called polygamy, to chapel pioneers. Later it was permitted among other profoundly and financially qualified church individuals.

 

In 1844, Smith made the Council of Fifty that turned into "the Municipal bureau of the Kingdom of God set up on the Earth, and from which all Law radiates." The individuals from the Council of Fifty and the pioneers of the Mormon Church were indistinguishable. Along these lines, the Nauvoo government appeared as a religious government, a brought together church and state.

 

The fast advancement of Nauvoo's monetary and political power, alongside bits of gossip about interesting Mormon religious ceremonies, significantly agitated different Illinois inhabitants. They especially detested the Mormon routine with regards to voting in decisions as a coalition at the course of Joseph Smith. At that point in 1844, Smith chose to keep running for leader of the United States. This joining of religion and governmental issues additionally excited general sentiment in Illinois. Nor did all Mormons in Nauvoo endorse of Joseph Smith's political exercises.

 

A disagreeing daily paper in Nauvoo blamed Smith for delegated himself lord. Accordingly, he and individuals from the Council of Fifty obliterated the paper's printing press. State specialists imprisoned Smith and a few others for impelling a mob. The representative sent a state volunteer army to monitor Smith against crowd viciousness. In any case, the civilian army itself turned into a lynch horde and shot Smith to death in his correctional facility cell on June 27, 1844.

 

Subsequent to debating who ought to supplant Joseph Smith as prophet and leader of the Mormon Church, a crisis gathering of the Latter-Day Saints chose Brigham Young. Yet, soon vigilantes started to consume the homes and homesteads of the Mormon pioneers in a decided push to drive them out of Illinois.

 

Brigham Young and the other church pioneers understood that they couldn't stay in Nauvoo under such perilous conditions. They at that point drove an epic movement of 16,000 Mormons to the Great Salt Lake Valley in the western wild.

 

The Question of Utah

 

At Salt Lake City in 1848, Brigham Young and alternate pioneers of the Mormon Church sorted out "The State of Deseret." The Mormon individuals chose Young as their representative and other church pioneers to extra government posts. The Council of Fifty stayed as the law-production body.

 

In 1850, Deseret alongside California connected for admission to the Union as new states. Suspicious of the Mormons, Congress denied statehood to Deseret yet made it a U.S. domain with another name: Utah. President Millard Fillmore designated Brigham Young the regional senator.

 

At the point when Washington sent government judges and different authorities to Utah, the Mormons regularly declined to collaborate with them. Moreover, church pioneers chose every one of the contender for the new regional assembly.

 

Back in Washington, numerous individuals from Congress felt that the Mormons did not regard government expert or U.S. law. Adding to this recognition, Brigham Young commented that he would not surrender his office as senator if the president picked not to reappoint him. Additionally right now, Protestant clergymen wherever were censuring Mormon polygamy as unethical.

 

In 1854, Young's term as regional senator finished, and he was not reappointed. Following quite a while delay, recently chose President James Buchanan selected another legislative head of the Utah domain in 1857. However, relations between the government and the Mormons had turned out to be poisoned to the point that Buchanan was influenced a condition of insubordination existed in Utah. He hence sent a government military power of 2,500 warriors to coercively introduce the new senator.

 

As yet going about as senator, with the Missouri and Illinois mistreatments in his brain, Brigham Young announced military law in Utah. He issued a declaration setting up the Mormon individuals "to repulse any such debilitated attack." He likewise assembled the Nauvoo Legion to hassle the attacking government armed force by annihilating supply wagons and catching stallions.

 

At the point when the armed force entered the Utah region, Young requested the entire clearing of Salt Lake City. He even considered setting it ablaze. Things stayed at a stalemate until June 1858, when the Mormon pioneers consented to submit to government specialist if the armed force would camp outside Salt Lake City and not hurt the general population. The government concurred, and President Buchanan likewise acquitted every single Mormon "subversion and treacheries."

 

The Attack on Mormon Polygamy

 

Driven by Republicans who marked servitude and polygamy the "twin relics of boorishness," Congress banned different relational unions in 1862. Brigham Young and other Mormon pioneers were charged under this law. In any case, feelings were hard to get on the grounds that few marriage records existed and a spouse couldn't affirm against her significant other under Utah regional law. In addition, most juries comprised of Mormons who, if not polygamists themselves, felt for the blamed.

 

In 1879, two years after Brigham Young kicked the bucket, the U.S. Incomparable Court was approached to choose whether the First Amendment's certification of flexibility of religion secured the act of polygamy. The judges drew a line between religious conviction and activity. The court referred to a letter composed by Thomas Jefferson to James Madison soon after the appropriation of the Bill of Rights. The two men were very instrumental in getting the Bill of Rights received. Jefferson expounded on the First Amendment:

 

Accepting with you that religion is an issue which lies exclusively amongst man and his God; that he owes record to none other for his confidence or his love; that the administrative forces of the administration achieve activities just, and not suppositions, - I think about with sovereign love that demonstration of the entire American individuals which proclaimed that their lawmaking body ought to "

Joke of Mormonism comes effortlessly for some Americans. Pundits have offered many reasons, however even they have thought that it was hard to turn their look from Mormon eccentricities. Subsequently, they have missed a basic capacity of American hostile to Mormonism: the confidence has been strangely consoling to Americans. As a current case, the Broadway hit "The Book of Mormon" parodies the religion's innocence on racial issues, which is striking given that the most gnawing reactions have concentrated on the show's portrayals of Africans and darkness.

 

As a Mormon and a researcher of religious history, I am unsurprised by the juxtaposition of Mormon taunting and racial lack of care. Against Mormonism has since a long time ago covered America's inconsistencies and relieved American self-question. In the nineteenth century, enemies charged that Mormon men were overbearing patriarchs, that Mormon ladies were virtual slaves and that Mormons maliciously obscured church and state. These allegations all contained some reality, however the similar informers denied ladies the vote, reinforced bigot man centric society and enthroned standard Protestantism as something of a state religion.

 

Regardless of interior division, oppression and times of uncontrolled absconding, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has kept on developing, despite the fact that it keeps on making Americans uneasy. The political researchers Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell found that Mormonism positioned with Islam close to the base of the rundown of Americans' "most regarded" religions.

 

Influencing Mormons to look awful helps other people can rest easy. By envisioning Mormons as bigoted rubes, or as unorthodox degenerates, Americans from left and right can envision they are, by differentiate, tolerant, reasonable and really Christian. Glove Romney's office is just the most recent open door for such generalizations to be publicized.

 

Contemporary hostile to Mormonism has a tendency to rise either from the mainstream left or from the zealous Protestant right. For the left, Mormonism frequently works as a remain in for distress over religion by and large. Mormon religious practice offers a considerable measure of truly, well, religious religion: custom underclothing, immersion for the dead, mystery sanctuary ceremonies and "closeness" (a term summoned in the past in assaults on Catholics and Jews). Any religion looks unusual all things considered, yet the picture of Mormonism appears got somewhere close to interminable oddness and strait-bound tastelessness.

 

Keep perusing the principle story

 

At the point when an apparent peculiarity is supported by Mormon cash or developing political clout, the left gets nervous. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell and HBO's Bill Maher have turned to cartoon, stereotyping and overstatement in their hostile to Mormon assaults. Liberals were insulted by Mormon financing of Proposition 8, the 2008 prohibition on same-sex marriage in California. They laugh at Mormonism's all-male ministry and inquire as to why church pioneers still can't seem to completely renounce the supremacist lessons of past specialists.

 

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For the right, Mormonism figures in much more muddled ways. The Mormon street to respectability has regularly driven, as it improved the situation Mr. Romney, through Harvard Business School; master business Republicans have discovered prepared companions among very much put Mormons. In any case, many general population zealous Protestants call Mormonism a faction — as the minister Robert Jeffress did the previous fall — or a "non-Christian religion." Indeed, fervent contempt has been the main impetus behind national hostile to Mormonism.

 

The concise "brilliant age" of Mormonism's sure picture — about 1935 to 1965, as indicated by Jan Shipps, maybe the main non-Mormon researcher of the Latter-day Saints — concurred with a time of preservationist Protestant withdraw. Humiliated after their battle with pioneers in the mid-1920s, zealous Protestants pulled back from open engagement, assembled their own noteworthy church and instructive systems, and re-developed in the 1970s as a considerable power on the political right. The resulting "countercult" development inside zeal focused on Mormonism with fervor.

 

Hostile to Mormon assaults by evangelicals have sold out tension over the divisions in their development and their slipping social specialist as authorities of religious validness. Some enormous hearted evangelicals have as of late connected with Mormons with honest to goodness seeing, however they should now battle off charges of getting excessively comfortable with Satan's flunkies. Since evangelicals are hard squeezed for solidarity in the first place, and in light of the fact that they have characterized themselves less and less as far as notable Christian ideologies, their protests to Mormonism may convey less and less social weight.

 

Numerous preservationists, truth be told, appear to be more worried about Mr. Obama's political apostasies than with Mr. Romney's religious ones. It might be that Mr. Obama's disagreeability will demonstrate a key factor in Mormonism's kept mainstreaming. With legislative issues and religion so inseparably connected in our way of life, a Romney administration would involve enduring impacts for Mormonism and its picture. Fragments of the religious right may at last influence peace with, if not exactly to acknowledge, Mormonism's different heterodoxies. The left may battle to grasp a relentlessly broadening confidence that has progressively worldwide reach.

 

This race, paying little heed to result, obviously pushes the United States onto new political landscape in light of the fact that neither one of the candidates speaks to the religious old watch. However, until the point that Americans work through our conflicting driving forces in regards to confidence, decent variety and opportunity, there is no motivation to trust hostile to Mormonism will leave at any point in the near future.

Jesus told his followers that they would be persecuted, but promised them a great reward in heaven (Matt. 5:11-12). Latter-day Saints believe that righteously enduring persecution can bring blessings in both this life and the next. Although suffering is as unwelcome to Latter-day Saints as to any other people, they strive to respond with patience and faith and to avoid bitterness or revenge (Matt. 5:43-47; D&C 101:35; cf. 98:23-27).

Although Latter-day Saints claim no greater suffering than many others who have also been persecuted for their religious beliefs through the ages, many Latter-day Saints have been persecuted, beginning with Joseph Smith (see JS-H 1:33). As the Church grew, persecutions increased; the Latter-day Saints faced threats, murder, rape, mayhem, property damage, and revilement in Kirtland, Ohio (1831-1838), in Missouri (1831-1839), and in the area of Nauvoo, Illinois (1839-1846), culminating in the assassinations of Joseph and Hyrum Smith at Carthage, Illinois, in 1844 (Hull, pp. 643-52).

The isolation and safety of the Great Basin in the American West, to which the main body of the Church fled beginning in 1846-1847, lasted only a few years before persecutions were renewed. The Great Basin area became part of the United States in 1848 after the Mexican-American War, and soon federal laws against the practice of plural marriage forced many Latter-day Saints into hiding or to settlements in Mexico and Canada. More than one thousand Latter-day Saints, mostly polygamous husbands, were fined and imprisoned. Ultimately, antipolygamy legislation disenfranchised the Saints and disincorporated the Church, allowing confiscation of Church property. After the 1890 manifesto enjoining plural marriage, anti-Mormon persecution declined substantially, but other hostilities persisted.

Anti-Mormon literature has often incited and precipitated persecution, from early attempts to discredit Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, to recent films misrepresenting LDS doctrine. LDS missionaries have sometimes especially been persecuted. Some missionaries sent to England and Scandinavia in the 1830s and 1850s were confronted by mobs, threats, imprisonment, and physical harm. Several missionaries and potential converts were murdered in the United States at the height of antipolygamy agitation during the 1870s. As recently as 1990, two LDS missionaries were killed in Huancayo, Peru, by anti-American terrorists, and Church property was vandalized or destroyed in several South American countries.

Scriptural examples provide comfort and perspective to Latter-day Saints by showing that in God's eternal plan persecutions are sometimes allowed, with blessings then coming to the persecuted (Ivins, pp. 408-413). The biblical stories of Joseph (Gen. 37-46) and Esther (Esth. 2-9) demonstrate that faith can overcome persecution and bring honor to the persecuted. In the Book of Mormon, the Ammonites provide a poignant example of a people who became dedicated to righteousness, willing to suffer persecution and death rather than break their covenants (Alma 24). Many have also been comforted by the Lord's words to Joseph Smith when he was falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned. Despite his many trials, the Lord reminded Joseph that the Savior had endured even more, and promised him, "All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good" (D&C 122:7). He expanded the Prophet's perspective to eternity with the statement "Fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever" (D&C 122:9).

The LDS response to persecution is to temper sorrow and anger in accordance with scriptural counsel. The Savior's admonition to turn the other cheek (Matt. 5:39-42) is expanded in the Doctrine and Covenants: Great rewards are promised to those who do not seek retribution and retaliate, but the persecuted may seek for justice after they have suffered repeated offenses and given their adversaries adequate prior warnings (D&C 98:23-31). Patience and tolerance are admonished in the Book of Mormon (Alma 1:21) and in Articles of Faith 11 and 13. A true Latter-day Saint hopes to be reconciled to, and perhaps even to convert, an enemy.

 

1858–1896 Persecution

                                                                   

The Era of Official Persecution: The U.S. Civil War, polygamy, and the struggle for statehood (1858–1896)

The Campaign against Polygamy

Utah was largely removed from the horrors of the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). The Latter-day Saints (“Mormons”) continued to settle large swaths of the American West and to establish beautiful cities, such as Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Temple was begun in 1853, the famous Tabernacle was built, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, named for its justly famous venue, was begun by Welsh immigrants. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ (“Mormon Church”) leadership was reorganized following the chaos of the exodus from Nauvoo. The Relief Society, which had lapsed in the intervening years of settling and persecution, was restarted and Eliza R. Snow, famous for her poetry, became the President. The Relief Society started magazines and built their own buildings. They campaigned for women’s rights and started the first hospitals in Utah.

However, once the Civil War was concluded and slavery was ended, the federal government turned its eye back to Utah to end the other “relic of barbarism,” polygamy, or plural marriage. Mormons often referred to polygamy as “The Principle.” In 1862, the Morrill anti-bigamy bill was passed which made it illegal to have more than one wife. This was difficult to enforce, and so very few were ever prosecuted under this law. Brigham Young was arrested, but eventually released without trial.

Utah’s isolation and independence made it difficult to vigorously prosecute the Mormon polygamists. Throughout the rest of Brigham Young’s life, only token efforts were made to attack polygamy. Instead, the Utah Territory and the Mormon Church moved forward. Brigham Young oversaw the construction of temples in St. George, Logan, and Manti—all in Utah. In 1869, the Church established the first incorporated department store in the world: Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution, commonly called ZCMI. In 1870, Utah became the first territory or state to give women the right to vote (although Wyoming gave them the right later that year and held their elections before Utah, thus Wyoming became the first state where women actually voted). Anti-Mormon forces hoped that Mormon women would vote contrary to the men of the Church, but this was not the case. Toward the end of his life, Brigham Young organized a society for young ladies, called the Retrenchment Society, and re-organized the quorums and bodies of the priesthood to be more efficient and more in harmony with the revelations given to the Prophet Joseph Smith. On August 29, 1877, Brigham Young died while visiting the city of St. George in southern Utah.

Jesus Christ, was central to its mission and teachings. The Quorum of the Twelve Apostles led the Church until John Taylor, a British convert, became the third president in 1880. That year, the Church celebrated its jubilee by forgiving debts and holding numerous parties. The Church also accepted the Pearl of Great Price as one of the standard works, or scriptural canon, of Mormonism.

Persecution from the government only increased as the Mormon Church continued to grow. In 1882, the Edmunds Act, which outlawed cohabitation with more than one woman, was passed. To enforce this, U.S. President Chester A. Arthur sent the Utah Commission. All Mormons who practiced polygamy were disenfranchised: stripped of the right to vote or forbidden to hold public office. Many of them were also jailed. Although this clearly violated U.S. constitutional law forbidding ex post facto laws, over 1,300 men were jailed. In Idaho, a loyalty oath was instituted in 1885, which required all residents to swear they opposed polygamy or any organization that taught it in order to be given the right to vote. This effectively disenfranchised all Mormons. Mormons appealed these laws all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, but things only got worse. In 1887, the U.S. Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which disincorporated the Mormon Church and seized virtually all of its property. It required loyalty oaths from local officials, which kept even Mormons who were not practicing polygamy (of which there were many) from holding office and which allowed the federal government to appoint state officers and even control what textbooks could be allowed in classrooms.

Many thousands of Latter-day Saints languished in prisons. Federal appointees, many unfriendly to the Mormons, were appointed as judges and magistrates in the territory. Mormon leaders went into hiding. Thousands of Mormons fled to Canada and Mexico at this time, where some of their descendents still live today, though some Mormons left Mexico for the United States during the war with Pancho Villa in the early twentieth century.

The End of Polygamy

In July 1887, Mormon President and Prophet John Taylor died while in hiding. His funeral was small, since sheriffs were waiting by to arrest any Mormon leaders who attended. Some two years later, Wilford Woodruff, an early convert to Mormonism from Ohio, became the fourth President of the Mormon Church. He began his ministry in hiding. After much prayer and discussion with the other Apostles, President Woodruff received a revelation from God in 1890. It showed him what would happen if the Mormon Church continued to practice polygamy. All the Mormon temples and churches would be lost. All their men would languish in jail and no missionaries would be sent out.  President Woodruff prayed fervently to know God’s will and was shown that the wisest course would be to cease practicing polygamy. He realized that temple work and missionary work were much more important. He also remembered that the Lord had said he sometimes commands His children to practice polygamy and sometimes forbids it. In October 1890, the Church accepted this revelation as the will of God.  Polygamy within Utah Territory ceased, although plural marriages were performed for a short time afterward outside the United States.

With the official end of polygamy, persecutione eased somewhat. In 1893, the Salt Lake Temple was finished and dedicated, forty years after it was officially begun. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed its first concert outside of Utah at the Chicago World Fair in 1893. Mormon missionaries made their first appearance in parts of the South Pacific and Asia at this period. By 1901, they were preaching in Japan. In 1894, Wilford Woodruff received another revelation showing that children were to be sealed, or bound for eternity by the power of the priesthood, to their parents in the temple. Also in that year, President Grover Cleveland, who had long been friendly to the Mormons and had opposed the Edmunds-Tucker Act, pardoned all polygamists. In 1896, Utah was admitted into the union as the forty-fifth state. In September 1898, Wilford Woodruff died while visiting Mormon congregations in California.

Persecution Continues

Despite the official declaration that polygamous marriages were no longer to be performed, many U.S. citizens were suspicious that polygamy continued. Reed Smoot, a Utah citizen who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1902, did not practice polygamy, but because he was a Mormon, there was an uproar. Controversy continued for several years about whether he should be allowed to serve in the Senate or not.

Confusion continued, as it still does today, about those who chose to continue polygamy and their relationship to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Polygamy officially ended in the Mormon Church in 1890. It became an excommunicable offense in 1904 (as it remains today) for members of the Church to enter a polygamous marriage. However, there were several groups who broke off from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who continued the practice. The confusion arises about the continuation of polygamy today because many of these groups still refer to themselves as “Mormons.” Since the media continues to refer to Latter-day Saints as “Mormons” today, it is easy for the public to assume that all Mormons are still practicing polygamy. However, anyone who enters into this practice will be excommunicated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many who call themselves “Mormons” today who practice plural marriage have never even been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

These distinctions were lost on the general public 100 years ago as they still are today, and many battled to oust Smoot from the Senate. A four-year conflict ensued. The argument against Smoot was not that he practiced polygamy, because he didn’t, but that he was a “Mormon” as well as an apostle in the Mormon Church. Just a few years before the Smoot debate, B.H. Roberts, another prominent Utah Mormon, was denied the seat he had been elected to in the House of Representatives because he practiced polygamy (which he had entered into before the official declaration). This in itself would never be tolerated today. It becomes even more important to note again that Smoot did not practice polygamy; yet he was still denied his seat.

On February 20, 1907, the Senate defeated the proposal to remove Smoot from office, and he was allowed to serve out his term in the Senate. He was even reelected in 1908 and served until March 1933.

Utah Gains Statehood

The citizens of the Utah Territory petitioned for statehood for decades before it was finally granted. They were denied statehood on the basis of polygamy and their citizens who had fled the country and were deemed “unpredictable.” For anyone who is familiar with the severe persecution before (and after) the Latter-day Saints fled to the Salt Lake Valley, the surprise does not come that the government denied their petition for statehood, but that they requested the statehood in the first place. However, shortly after the Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, the territory was won by the United States and became U.S. land, which it had not been earlier. In order to preserve their rights (which obviously did not work for some time), they sought more government protection through statehood.

Not only were Utah citizens denied statehood, they also had an outside form of government imposed on them. While Utah had granted full voting rights to women in 1870, one of the provisions of the Edmunds-Tucker Act (which already stripped many citizens of their right to vote) repealed women’s suffrage. Women did not regain suffrage until 1896, when Utah was finally admitted to the Union as a state.