SOT LitnerStandard of Truth listener companion
Which coin is he on?
S2E10 · Abraham Lincoln and the Latter-day Saints Part 1
0:00 / 1:11:11
13 chapters
← All episodes
Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 10 · 1:11:11

Abraham Lincoln and the Latter-day Saints Part 1

A Republican congressman titled his 1860 speech for the Homestead Act "Give the public lands to the people... and extinguish Mormonism," and his party printed it for the whole country.

Press play above. The page follows along.
The question ·

What was Abraham Lincoln's involvement with the Latter-day Saints, and what impression did the Saints make on him during the Civil War?

Richard

Listeners asked about Abraham Lincoln and the Latter-day Saints, so Richard and Gerrit start a series by setting the stage. Gerrit explains why American members long to connect their faith to heroes like Lincoln, and why projecting the present onto the past is risky, using everything from forged letters of Paul to Seneca to Richard's first sighting of bottled water on his mission. He shows how the new Republican Party was born with a platform against the "twin relics of barbarism," slavery and polygamy, and why the same religious fervor that drove abolitionists often drove anti-Mormonism. The episode reads from Maine congressman Stephen C. Foster's 1860 speech promoting the Homestead Act as a way to overwhelm Utah's polygamists, and ends with John C. Fremont, Thomas Hart Benton's son-in-law, as the party's first nominee, setting up where Lincoln fits next week.

Who comes upAbraham LincolnJames BuchananPaul the apostleSenecaEber D. HoweHarriet Beecher StoweStephen C. FosterStephen A. DouglasJohn C. FremontThomas Hart BentonWilliam Henry HarrisonBrigham Young
Now playing · 0:39

Which coin is he on?

Richard brings several listener emails about Lincoln and the Saints, and Gerrit expected a quiz question about currency.

Chapters

Tap a chapter to jump there

Transcript

162 moments · tap a time to play from there
Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. In this week's podcast, we wanted to address several emails that we've received about Abraham Lincoln. We received quite a few emails asking about Abraham Lincoln's engagement with the Mormons.
Gerrit I thought you were gonna say, which currency he's on. I figured at some point, it would just become quizzes that people were asking us.
Richard They wanted to know.
Gerrit Can you tell us what coin he's on?
Richard Yes, well, they wanted to know specifically perhaps his involvement with the Latter-day Saints and perhaps also the Latter-day Saints kind of impression that they had on him as he was executing the Civil War.
Gerrit Well, wow, that's a pretty big question. Whenever you start to talk about a broad time period and what someone thought about something over the course of that time period, you can only scratch the surface. If we do anything on this podcast, it's essentially say every week, yeah, there's too many sources on that to know. And that's basically what we say every week is like, ah, boy, yeah.
Richard We'll get to it.
Gerrit We'll get to it eventually.
Richard We're getting to it.
Gerrit Yeah, get some estimates on that and we'll go back to you. But there's a lot going on. Now, of course, Abraham Lincoln is a very minor person in Illinois at the time the Latter-day Saints are there. And so that's kind of a natural connection. And we're not the first religious group to try to make wider connections to more popular people of the time. Some of the early forgeries in early Christian writing during the time that the New Testament books were being written were supposedly letters that Paul the apostle wrote to the great Roman orator and writer Seneca. Now, Seneca is this amazingly popular Roman philosopher, and so of course, later Christians want to ask the question.
Gerrit Seneca was brilliant. Seneca was a foundation of some of our current culture and belief. I'm sure that he must have been impressed with Christianity. He must have been impressed with Paul. They likely wrote back and forth to one another. Now, no scholar actually believes those letters between Paul and Seneca are in any way authentic. For starters, they're written hundreds of years after Paul's dead. So it makes it harder for Paul to write it unless he's having a nice angelic experience here writing back to Seneca. But the idea behind it is the same. You have a group of believing Christians who at the time Paul was living, there are not very many Christians. And they don't really get a whole lot of notice empire wide in the empire, because there's not very many of them. But as more and more Christians become a part of the empire, they then look back on their history and they want, they hope for some kind of connection between someone who's popular in their culture and someone who's the founder of their faith.
Gerrit That they want those two things to be equal. They want their Roman history and their religion to coincide in a way that bolsters both their patriotism and their Christianity. So this is, it's actually, it's not an uncommon idea or question if you're an American Latter-day Saint. Now look, if you're a Latter-day Saint in France, you're not listening to this podcast. And second of all, if you were listening to it, I'm assuming only because you had an American friend who forced you to listen to it, but if you were listening to it, it would be very different. There's not a whole lot of Latter-day Saint, French Latter-day Saints that are incredibly concerned with how much Abraham Lincoln had a relationship with Latter-day Saints in Illinois or after.
Richard Oh, absolutely. And shout out to Pierre and all of the other possible LeDucs that are listening in Lyon and France.
Gerrit I used French just because, but you're French-Canadian though, right?
Richard We got kicked out in 1690. We've been out of there for a while.
Gerrit Yeah. And there weren't even very many French in Quebec, so at the time. So, I mean, you were of the few that were.
Richard And even then we never rose to prominence.
Gerrit There were six of them, we couldn't get a city council. I mean, you're making a killing now on this free podcast. So I think everything's coming up right now.
Richard Well, so it's interesting that you're talking about connecting that to kind of this, kind of a popular figure from government or from politics or whatever it is. So we went and looked up C-SPAN. So now everyone will officially be tuning out.
Gerrit Yeah, just so everyone, if you just tune in, this isn't C-SPAN, so you don't need to try to find something else. We said the word C-SPAN.
Richard So every year C-SPAN does a survey of US presidential historians and the worst president, who do you think that would be?
Gerrit I mean, it's going to be Richard Nixon is going to come up a ton.
Richard Richard Nixon is pretty low.
Gerrit Yeah, I would guess.
Richard He's 31st.
Gerrit Richard Nixon, Andrew Johnson.
Richard Johnson's low. Johnson's 43rd.
Gerrit Yeah, if it was-
Richard Buchanan comes in and number 44.
Gerrit Yeah, playing the hits, making the top chart at 44. Cannon.
Richard But the number one, and it's number one- Every year. Every year, Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln, yeah. And when you do a poll of just the folks, just the people-
Gerrit I must say, though, I've never been asked that question. No one ever sent me a poll.
Richard They have not. Well, so-
Gerrit Don't throw a party for me.
Richard And you've been the good guy.
Gerrit I've been the good guy.
Richard Has anyone seen that video?
Gerrit I pray that everyone listening to us has watched the old Prodigal Son video.
Richard It is the absolute greatest.
Gerrit If you haven't, stop listening to the podcast, go find it and watch it, even though we're talking about it.
Richard Oh, and he throws a tantrum and the wife gets super self-righteous.
Gerrit No one ever threw a party for me. What does that mean? You've been the good guy.
Richard I just want to keep quoting more of that movie.
Gerrit We could quote the whole thing.
Richard So, number one, Abraham Lincoln, number two, George Washington.
Gerrit Yes, every year.
Richard Every year. So, it makes sense that people would want to connect the two things, this hugely iconic figure from our country's history and the thing that's the most important to them likely is the gospel.
Gerrit Well, you notice too, even in those surveys, Abraham Lincoln is the first. Why is James Buchanan the last? I mean, look, I know why Latter-day Saints hate James Buchanan, but just as a spoiler alert, there aren't too many Americans who care that James Buchanan sent an army to Utah. That's not foremost on the... There are very few presidential historians who are like, James Buchanan, how dare he violate Mormon civil rights? They don't care at all about Mormon civil rights. So why do they hate James Buchanan, do you think?
Richard Because he's responsible for the Civil War. Because he's responsible for the Civil War. So you have the person at the bottom responsible for it and the person at the top who...
Gerrit Yeah, it really is. It's book ended, right? I mean, James Buchanan did nothing to prevent the secession of the South. I mean, there's probably some, I guess, James Buchanan family member out there that, or biographer that would challenge it. No, he did all kinds of things. He said he didn't think there should be a war. I mean, yeah. I mean, I'm not saying James Buchanan wanted the Civil War to happen.
Richard But you're not not saying it.
Gerrit I'm not not saying it because he did nothing to keep it from happening. So you can see that the Civil War really is. It really is kind of this this marker in all of American history. I mean, there's a reason why when you take an American history course, that the Civil War is the marker, right? You go up to the Civil War and that's the end of the course. Or you start at the beginning of the Civil War and move on. But the Civil War is seen as kind of this, the most important event in American history for a lot of reasons, obviously, most surrounding the end of slavery. And I think for many Americans, they get to look back on that in a kind of, as a kind of like, here is where our nation got it right, and who's the person who was getting it right most? Well, it was Abraham Lincoln. And so, yeah, it's not a surprise. You could ask just about any American who their favorite president was, and unless there's some kind of hyper-partisan person outside of a, you know, a primary for a presidential candidate, they'll tell you whichever president is president right then, but it'll be Abraham Lincoln, and sometimes George Washington.
Gerrit You know, you don't have a whole lot of people like, actually, Grover Cleveland. You don't get a lot of that. Or, you know, Benjamin Harrison. I just really liked what he thought about tariffs. So I think that that is exactly what's going on. For an American Latter-day Saint, you look for ways that your church that means so much to you, your religion that means so much to you, integrates and interacts with your American culture and American history that means so much to you. And so this is actually a pretty common question that I get from people, you know, what did Latter-day Saints think of Abraham Lincoln? What did Abraham think of Latter-day Saints? How many Latter-day Saints fought in the Civil War? They are all questions of people who are in modern times wanting to kind of project their faith backward into the past.
Gerrit Now, as I talked about on previous podcasts, projecting your current feelings, your present back onto the past, is actually fraught with a lot of peril. And the peril there is accuracy and understanding. The most natural human tendency that exists is to assume that the way things are is the way they've always been, or at least the way they always should have been. Maybe there was some kind of an anomaly, but they should have always been there. If you think about just in my own lifetime, I won't try to indict anyone listening, since it's only my mom or Rachel's mom. I only have a pretty good idea, the age limit there. But I recall as a young man, I remember when there was an attempt to first start to market water bottles, that you would buy water that was in a bottle.
Gerrit And I remember thinking how ridiculous it was.
Richard I was on my mission. I was tracking. Somebody had their garage open, and there was a case of bottled water. And I didn't understand what was happening. I was like, what is going on? This is 1998.
Gerrit Were you allowed into their garage?
Richard Oh, no, no, no. I was on my mission. No, no, no. I was going to say. I wasn't in countries that were welcoming.
Gerrit I thought you were going to say something. I was in America.
Richard I was in California.
Gerrit I thought you were going to say something like, and someone offered me a bottle of water.
Richard No, no, no. That never happened.
Gerrit That never happened, yeah.
Richard No, no. It was very, very hot, but never happened. So I remember talking to this person. It was like I threw the fact that I was a missionary out the window, and all I wanted to do was try to understand why it is that they purchased this water.
Gerrit Yeah, so you were like, we'd like to talk to you about how God has a plan for our lives, but first.
Richard You have got to help me understand.
Gerrit Why do you have a case of water? Was there a tsunami? We're in California.
Richard No, I remember a similar one. I was like, I don't understand what's happening.
Gerrit Yeah, well, I mean, and he was like, oh, no, I'm just worried that the Dodgers will make the World Series. I'm just prepping in case there's fallout or something. But the reality is that seemed incredibly weird to me at the time. I mean, yeah, I had no problem buying a Coke or other perhaps non-caffeinated beverage as well. I mean, whatever it could have been. Coke is a general term in that regard. And now, you know, bottled water is not just commonplace. It's actually an expectation, right? So it's not even just, hey, wow, that's not weird that there's bottled water. It's actually really weird if someone doesn't hand you bottled water. If you're looking for a drink, oh, I'll have a bottle of water. Oh, we don't carry that. How could you not actually carry that?
Richard So just in the US in 2019, total bottled water sales were just under $20 billion in the US, $19.4 billion in bottled water sales.
Gerrit Yeah. And so people are buying something that for most people is essentially free.
Richard It would have been 23, 24 years ago. I'm like, I don't understand. This is the craziest thing I've ever seen.
Gerrit And so that's part of the point of this is that when we have a current reality, it actually becomes really difficult to imagine a different reality. For many Latter-day Saints today, they equate their membership in the church. Again, we're talking about US Latter-day Saints. So please forgive me, all of you listeners in Canada, all of the listeners in the Maldives, the hundreds, thousands of people that we have listening in Guyana. I mean, I know that you're there. We recognize you. We'll do a podcast on you later. But unless my mom or Rachel's mom travels to one of those countries, I'm pretty sure that nearly everyone listening is actually in the United States. But if you're not, we'd love to hear from you. In fact, we'd love to hear from you.
Richard Absolutely.
Gerrit Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. But at any rate, they often, an American Latter-day Saint, they see their patriotism as part of their belief. Right? So part of being a good Latter-day Saint is also being a good American. And so with that kind of a mindset, your belief about the past is kind of a reverential one. You see American history, not just as American history, but in some ways your Latter-day Saint history, because it's how God brought things together in the country for the restoration of the gospel. Now, I know I'm generalizing here. I'm sure there are people listening, well, I've never thought that way at all. If you are that person, then you already know that you're among the minority of American Latter-day Saints.
Richard It's also in our articles of faith, right? We talk about this idea of being a good citizen is part of who we are.
Gerrit Right, so not only do we think that we should obey the law though, that because of several sections in the Doctrine and Covenants, we believe that the Constitution of the United States is actually inspired by God, right? And that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, and that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, and that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, and that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, and that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, and that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, and that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, and that God had redeemed the land by the shedding of blood, so you can see why the American story and the Latter-day Saint story can be viewed as one and the same thing. Now, while there might be a lot of places where you can cross over with that, where that might be the case, the problem is the very Latter-day Saint who is making that claim, who is connected in their mind, you know, American history and Latter-day Saint history as being the same thing, that very Latter-day Saint understands that we moved to Utah, which at the time wasn't the United States. And so what is going on and how do we reconcile those things?
Gerrit I teach courses on Latter-day Saint history from 1844 to 1900, and I would say probably one of the most surprising aspects of that course for students is having to come to terms with just how antagonistic the United States government is towards the Latter-day Saints in Utah and kind of retributively how antagonistic Latter-day Saints in Utah are towards the United States government. Surprisingly, if you have a government that's trying to destroy your religion and throwing members of your family in jail and taking away your right to vote and taking away your property and taking away your right to serve on juries, you don't feel very kindly disposed towards them. And that, because we don't know that part of our history, at least many people don't know it as well, they don't recognize that that kind of animosity would exist.
Gerrit I think many Latter-day Saints think things were bad, Joseph got murdered, we got out of dodge, and then things were fine again. You know, and we look at, we look at the Mormon battalion essentially, it's just kind of like reconciliation effort, where Latter-day Saints soldiers go out to fight, so of course we're loyal and everything's great with the government. And what that does is it actually, it very much oversimplifies what is an incredibly complex relationship. And history is really complicated. If anything, if this podcast has taught you anything, it's A, we aren't qualified to do a podcast. B, we probably shouldn't be doing a podcast, but also C, that history is complicated. And the attempts to try to make it seem simple end up being just that. They make it seem more simple than it is.
Gerrit And I'm not saying that we don't simplify things. We obviously do. We've got all kinds of documents that we're just...
Richard Oh yeah, that's the main part of the podcast.
Gerrit The whole point of the podcast is, how can we make this not even accurate? No, but the point is that history and people from history are far more complex than we are usually willing to allow them to be. An example of this is Eber Howe. We've talked about Eber Howe on previous podcasts. Eber Howe is the, I mean, you don't want to call him like the godfather of anti-Mormonism in America. What title do you think Eber Howe would like in that regard?
Richard The sultan of anti?
Gerrit The sultan of anti, the grand duke of anti-Mormon slander. I mean, he writes the first anti-Mormon book in American history, and it's so persuasive. It's so well done. And I'm not saying I believe anything. I'm saying he comprehensively attacks the faith that that book just keeps getting repeated and repeated and repeated. And the arguments in it are used as justifications to persecute Latter-day Saints for decades and decades. Even to this day, there are arguments that are commonly made by antagonists of the Latter-day Saint faith that come directly from Eber Howe's anti-Mormon book. To put it mildly, Eber Howe has at best been the source of thousands of destroyed testimonies, broken families, and crushed hopes and dreams and faith because of the lies that are in his book.
Gerrit At worst, that book justifies and spurs anti-Mormon violence against Latter-day Saints. Because if you become convinced that the entire Mormon idea is just a fraud that's trying to cheat people out of their money, that's trying to drag their souls down to hell, that you can actually use the arguments from Eber Howe's book to justify actual violence. Now, to what extent? I don't know. But the point is, Eber Howe has led to the suffering of thousands of people and continues to lead to it as his utterly fraudulent arguments are repeated by people today and affect people's faith even today. So you might think that I'm about to say, and so Eber Howe is the worst person who ever lived.
Gerrit No, he's not. Because here's the other half of Eber Howe's personality. He also is someone who was very active in abolitionist movements and was very active in the Underground Railroad. So the same person who I have a loathing for because of what he did to my faith, I have respect for, for what he did for the dozens of enslaved African Americans that he helped get to freedom in Canada. So what do I do with that? Again, we often want to believe that people are whatever, whatever sound bite we've decided they are from the past or even the present. But Ibrahau is a complex individual. He is the bane of Latter-day Saint existence in the 1830s and 1840s.
Gerrit And he is the jewel, the bright star of hope to those runaway slaves trying to outrun slave catchers and get to freedom. And the reality is that's how many people from the past are. They are judged from the past at times, incredible heroes and at times, incredible villains.
Richard So, but Ibrahau might be kind of a perfect example of, I guess, the Republican Party in the 1860s.
Gerrit Yeah, I mean, when we're talking about Ibrahau in the 1830s, when he writes out, there's no Republican Party, right? But one of the things, as I said, that's actually very, it's very uncomfortable for some American Latter-day Saints to come to terms with is the Republican Party, when it's founded, is founded with two goals. Its first presidential platform is the elimination of the twin relics of barbarism from the territories, slavery, which I think everyone can get behind, and polygamy. And the reality is the Republican Party is founded as one of its stated goals as an anti-Mormon party. And much of their rhetoric, many of the things that they say, revolve around that. Now, we've said before in a podcast that once the Latter-day Saints are practicing plural marriage, well, that becomes the easy argument, the easy justification for anti-Mormon beliefs and thought.
Gerrit But it would be a very inaccurate idea to think that there wasn't any anti-Mormonism until people started practicing plural marriage. There's a lot of dead people in Missouri that testify to the fact that there's a lot of anti-Mormonism without the practice of plural marriage. Polygamy just becomes the easiest argument to make and to win. It even is today. I mean, how many of you have been in a conversation with someone about what you believe and as it's going very well, the next thing they say is, what about polygamy? Because they know that that's the next place that they can go, at least in an American context. And so that the problem is many Republicans, Republicans are very often white evangelical Christians from the Northeast in Joseph Smith's time and then well up into the time of the Civil War. The most religious places in the United States were New England and the upper Midwest.
Gerrit So essentially Ohio up through to Vermont. Now you don't think of, Richard's laughing because I said the word Vermont. No, just it's a state by New Hampshire.
Richard I'm familiar with those states.
Gerrit Craig Wilson, he doesn't even know where you live. I think he's been to your house.
Richard Well, he's another potential listener to the podcast. We don't want to eliminate our Vermont, New Hampshire listeners.
Gerrit Yeah, if we eliminate the entire capital of Vermont, we'll have lost zero listeners.
Richard But no, so I just laugh at the idea of Vermont's a beautiful state, full of wonderful dairy products, but religious, they ain't.
Gerrit Well, in fact, according to surveys, they are the least religious state in the United States.
Richard But this is kind of the point, right? How much things change.
Gerrit Exactly. So if I were to ask any American right now, what is the most religious part of the United States?
Richard They would not say Vermont.
Gerrit Again, if they knew that Vermont was a state, they wouldn't say Vermont. They would say the American South, right? They'd say, oh, South is Bible Belt. That's the most religious. That's the most religious now. And that's one of the things that's very difficult to understand. We talked a little bit about this when we were talking about the First Vision podcast way back in the beginning, back before you were listening, before we had microphones that really worked, before you stopped listening also. I mean, really, it was a long time ago. But the American religious landscape, geographically, was very different. There's a reason why Joseph Smith had his vision where he did in New York, because it was one of the most religious places in the country. Vermont and New Hampshire, the most religious places in the country. Massachusetts, Ohio, the least religious places, Georgia, South Carolina. Now, that's not the ideal that we project when we think about the American South, because over the course of the next hundred years, religiosity in the country shifts south and west to where now the most religious state in the Union is Oklahoma, right?
Gerrit So that shift happens. But, you know, Texas was not the most religious state in the Union in Joseph Smith's time. Well, it wasn't in the Union until Joseph was murdered after that. But it's not the most religious state. It's one of the least religious states. That's not to say that people in Texas weren't Christians. I'm not saying that.
Richard So what you're saying is that people in Texas aren't Christians?
Gerrit Exactly. Everyone listening who's like either from Texas or like, no, my great great grandfather, he was, I know that I'm talking statistically. Statistically speaking, the most fervent religious people were in the Northeast. And that's surprising to a modern day listener because they think of those places as being the least religious. That's because 150, 180 years passed in between and things change. So the Republican Party, well, it came, it came about on out of the ashes of the Whig Party. We've talked about the Whig Party before. Remember the American Hair Club for Men Party? That's the worst named party ever in American history. But the Whig Party was a national party that had some elements of it that were opposed to slavery. But primarily were focused on economics. They wanted to focus on having a national banking system, on having national tariffs that helped improve the country internally.
Gerrit They were never the most popular party. The Democratic Party was both older and far more popular. And that Whig Party was really found itself in a minority in most states. And really struggled when it came to presidential elections. They finally win a presidential election in 1840 when William Henry Harrison is able to win. That's the slogan that, if you remember Richard, you know, Tippecanoe and Tyler too. Yeah, but you knew the Rumsey.
Richard Rumsey Dumsey, Rumsey Dumsey.
Gerrit Yeah, yeah, currently, shot to Cumsey. But then, of course, he dies right after that. And then his vice president is basically a Democrat, so that doesn't help them at all. They finally will get Zachary Taylor elected as a Whig president, and then he will also die in office. So the Whigs are ever, you know, ever climbing, never reaching the mountaintop, essentially when it comes to politics. They're this minority politics, a political party. But when the Whig party finally collapses, surrounding arguments of American slavery and the expansion of slavery, the Republican Party is, it does not make the same attempts to be a national party. By that, I mean the Republican Party, essentially from its inception, it was founded in, you know, Wisconsin, is a sectional party. It's a party of people from the North.
Gerrit And the prevention of the expansion of slavery is a primary, expanding slavery. That is a primary purpose of the party's creation. For the Whigs, there were some anti-slavery Whigs, some very fervent anti-slavery Whigs, but that wasn't the purpose of the party. That was part of what members of the party thought. The Republican Party was founded with the express intent to prevent slavery from expanding. And so many of these members of the Republican Party were following that from an evangelical Christian position. Why do you hate slavery? I hate slavery because it's a sin in the eyes of God. Well, it shouldn't be terribly surprising to you that the same person in the 1840s and 1850s and 1860s, who is so religious that they've decided that slavery is a national evil that has to be eliminated regardless because slavery is a sin in the eyes of God, that same person also sees Mormonism as a sin in the eyes of God because it's not regular Christianity.
Gerrit And that kind of becomes the other side of the coin that we're really excited about someone when, as we look back in the past and they adamantly hate slavery because they know it's a sin. I mean, all of us clap and jump up and down and say, you're right, why didn't more people listen to you? Well, the same thing that makes that person say, slavery is a sin in the eyes of God, is the same thing that makes them say that Mormonism is a sin in the eyes of God. And so often you find that your quite fervent abolitionists are also your quite fervent anti-Mormons. Several of the most rigorous antagonistic laws against Mormons are written by incredibly pious believers, some of them ordained preachers, in fact, because they think they're trying to cleanse the Christian nation from the apostasy that Mormonism is and keep people from going to hell.
Gerrit So that's an important thing to understand, first of all, that when we look back on the past, we all want to be abolitionists. Of course we do. And we say to ourselves, we're watching a movie about slavery in the past, and we're horrified by the evils of it, and we want to beat up the people that are in it. And we say to ourselves, if I lived back then, I would never... We get a sense of righteous indignation that says, if I lived in the past, I would be at the forefront of anti-slavery belief. And I think that's true. I don't think people are lying about that when they say that, but the problem is they're saying it with their current light and knowledge that they have now. Of course, if you got into a time machine today and went back into the past, I would hope and pray that you would carry with you the same slavery is wrong understanding that you have right now.
Gerrit But we're not talking about getting in a time machine. We're talking about what did most Americans think at the time. And most Americans, by most scholarly standards, are relatively ambivalent about slavery. They just are. We talked about this with Joseph Smith's presidential campaign. I'm not saying that most Americans are, you know, pro-slavery. But very much so, even in the north, even where slavery was outlawed, very few Americans would be considered abolitionists, people who were agitating for the end of slavery. And those few who are, almost always are doing so with a religious purpose behind them. You think of people like Harriet Beecher Stowe. Harriet Beecher Stowe is absolutely arguing that slavery is an evil in the eyes of God on the basis of religion.
Gerrit I mean, her and her father and her brothers are all just, you know, magnificent preachers and orators and teachers. And it's their Christianity that is pushing their anti-slavery sentiments. So with that understanding, I mean, one of the groundworks you have to lay when you start to approach this era is while we look back at the Republican Party of the late 1850s and the early 1860s as the party we wish we all were, right? This is the party that's opposed to slavery. This is the party that's opposed to slavery. Because we don't know our history very well, we don't realize that that Republican Party is also adamantly anti-Mormon and advocating for anti-Mormon laws, advocating for anti-Mormon positions, and trying to do things that will not only prevent the church from growing, but for many of them, they want to see it exterminated.
Richard So, what are some examples then of things that the Republican Party did that members of the church might be surprised at or hearing as it relates to?
Gerrit Well, I mean, again, we're talking about the Republican Party in the 19th century, so this is not...
Richard No, so yeah, tell me what Donald Trump did.
Gerrit That's part of the problem. When I used to teach American history courses, and we'd end up, you have to talk about politics, one of the disclaimers you have to give to the students is, just so you know, there isn't any way to make any of these parties from the 1800s equal what it is that you believe today, because some people are so tribal in their political beliefs. That's exactly what they would do. I would have students every class I ever taught when I taught the early American history class, every class I taught, I would have at least one, if not multiple students, send me an email, pull me aside after class and ask, so where do you think like the Democratic Republicans were more like what, you know, the Republicans are today? Or do you think, I mean, because for them, they've created this value system of if it's Democrat good, Republican bad, or if it's Republican good, Democrat bad, and they want to view history through that same completely black and white lens because it makes things easy.
Gerrit We just talked about simplicity. It's really easy if you can label things from the past and then you know where you stand on them. And frankly, when 150 plus years have gone by, those kinds of labels are relatively that they're not very helpful. I mean, let's take for example that the Republican Party in Brigham Young's time has many evangelical Christian elements to it. Well, you could say, well, that's kind of similar. Okay, very similar. But the Republican Party in Brigham Young's time was also very much opposed to a large standing army. They were opposed to any type of military expenditures. The Republican Party then was in favor of very large tariffs, import taxes on goods that were manufactured in other places. I mean, today you might think more of Republican Party being more about free trade, although there's other elements of it.
Gerrit But the whole point being, you can't simply determine what it is that someone believes in the past by having a political party affiliated with them. That's overly simplistic and not very helpful. So for those of you, you know, hardcore Republican listeners we have, as we talk about the Republican Party in the 1850s and 1860s, you don't have to feel like it's an indictment on what you believe. We've talked a great deal about the Democratic presidents and governors that affected the Latter-day Saints being driven out of Missouri and then out of Illinois. And similarly, if you happen to be a Democrat listening, that doesn't mean that you are the one who drove them out of Illinois. That's not how that works, okay? But after the Republican Party is founded, there is now a national party that is definitively opposed to Mormonism.
Gerrit And this becomes a unique problem for the church because, look, no one loved Mormons before. It's not like, oh, suddenly there's a party that doesn't like Mormons. I mean, again, it was...
Richard But they just, they hated them locally.
Gerrit Yeah, it was, well, yeah, Democrats and Whigs were driving Latter-day Saints out of states already. So it was never just this kind of thing that, you know, that they were loved by the political parties. The reality was they tried to work with political parties. It rarely worked out. They, often violence against Latter-day Saints was specifically because of the political impact that they, at least one of the reasons because the political impact they could have in the area. But the Republican Party made being anti-Mormon part of what being a Republican was. And so that shifts this kind of antagonistic rhetoric. And one of the things it does is it actually places, it places Democrats very much on the defensive. Why? Well, at this point, by the late 1850s, again, for those of us new to Latter-day Saint history, the Mormons are already in Salt Lake at that point, so they get there in 1847.
Gerrit So by the mid to late 1850s, when the Republican Party is coming into its own, the Latter-day Saints have been out there for about a decade, but living in the territories as they do places them square in the arguments of the expansion of slavery, the arguments for the Republican Party was not, we're going to abolish slavery everywhere, although there were some Republicans who certainly were abolitionists. The argument was, we're not going to let slavery expand to the federal territories in the West. Democrats, of course, on the other hand, wanted to allow slavery, again, generally, there are obviously some who didn't, but generally wanted to allow slavery to expand to the territories in the West. So where does Mormonism so-called factor into that? Well, Democrats were very wary of attempts by Republicans to pass laws to outlaw polygamy in the territories.
Gerrit Marriage then, I mean, it still is that now, but you almost never hear anyone referring to it, but marriage is considered a domestic institution. You almost have to sit up straighter in your chair when you say it that way. Meaning it's something that's a part of someone's home life. Slavery was also considered a domestic institution. Now, I know that they're not terribly related, I guess, unless you're in a terrible marriage or whatever, but in the nomenclature of the 19th century, slavery and marriage were both domestic institutions, is how they were referred to. So Democrats saw the problem of allowing precedent to be set. If we say that you have the ability to outlaw one kind of domestic institution in the territories, namely plural marriage, then wouldn't you then have the ability to outlaw another kind of domestic institution in the territories, slavery?
Gerrit Republicans see this too, and in fact, Mormonism becomes a very useful cudgel to beat Democrats with, because a Republican could stand up in Congress and say, my esteemed colleague from Georgia claims that he cares about morality and cares about this country, but just today he voted against a law that would have banned the most pernicious evil in the entire world, Mormon polygamy. And why did he do it? Because he cares about it. So it became, you know, really, Latter-day Saints and their practice of plural marriage became this kind of millstone that was being hung around the necks of Democrats. And that, that becomes so pervasive that it's, it's probably one of the main things that pushes the ever hated James Buchanan to send an army to Utah with very little provocation, because the Democrats were taking all kinds of fire for being, you know, closeted Mormons, being, being pro Mormons being because they were voting against anti polygamy bills, because everyone hated polygamy, just like everyone hated Mormonism.
Gerrit So Republicans are going to, they're going to really make this point over and over again. For Republicans and for many Americans generally, I mean, then and now, I guess, polygamy is the most evil of all the evils. And it sounds weird to say, right? Because you're thinking about this time period and all you're thinking is, yeah, I'm not happy with polygamy, but owning a person is actually worse than that. That, you know, slavery is by far worse than polygamy. Well, remember what I said. In the mid 1850s, most Americans were relatively ambivalent about slavery, meaning most Americans in the North certainly weren't in favor of slavery. They weren't in favor of slavery's expansion, but they were not adamant to see it end either. It was kind of a general feeling that they had that I'm not okay with slavery, but it's not because they were stamping their feet and pounding their fist about how immoral it was.
Gerrit They lived in a society that was incredibly stratified, that there were some people who were just fated to fail, and they saw slaves as being the bottom rung of that society. Of course, there's a bunch of racial bigotry that's a part of that as well.
Richard So then I guess maybe there's this idea that the majority of the North or the Republican Party at that time were primarily abolitionists, but you're saying that's not the case.
Gerrit I'm saying that most Americans, and again, even in the North, Republicans are not the majority yet. They're not going to be until 1860 in most states. They're opposed to slavery generally, but not in any way that you would be sitting here today. Today, if you're someone who's a proponent of owning another person, you're pretty far outside of what is acceptable society. And you also aren't allowed to have kind of an ambivalent position on it. If someone said, what do you think about slavery? And you said, I don't know, how would that affect my stock portfolio? You would be the worst person who ever lived, right? But in the mid-19th century, like I said, there's a kind of ambivalence. I'm not saying everyone is. Obviously, there are abolitionists, but then we make up two to three percent of the American population. So most people are not adamant abolitionists.
Gerrit They just aren't there. And then there's a whole spectrum. There's some people who think, well, okay, I'd be fine with it if there was a gradual emancipation. Or there were others who were like, you know, I guess I'd be fine one way or the other, but I don't want to pay for it. And then there were others that in the North did not want to see the slaves freed precisely because they were bigoted racists. They thought if black slaves were freed, that it would destroy civilization. In the North, people thought that, not just the South. I mean, an example that's actually a really bad example, but to show you how difficult it is to kind of come up with an example, I'll often ask my students at BYU to try to make this point. I'll say, if I were to ask you as a survey, if I were to have you write down on a survey, should BYU become a more green campus?
Gerrit The vast majority of my students would say yes. Almost all of them. I mean, there would be a couple that would be like, no, like, we shouldn't do anything to help there. I get it. There'd be a couple. But most of them would respond, absolutely, we should become a more green campus. If the follow up to that was great, since we're all agreed we should become a more green campus, we're going to triple tuition rates so that we can pay to have solar panels installed everywhere so that we can eliminate all of our gas automobiles so that everything surrounding the campus is renewable. Now, faced with that statement, suddenly the people in favor of becoming a green campus shrink considerably. When they didn't have to make any sacrifice at all, their tendency was towards that. They felt, oh yeah, we should do that. But the moment they thought that they would have to sacrifice to get to that point, they were pretty far. Now again, there would be two or three of the students who would be like, yep, I'm not paying for this anyway, my dad is, so go ahead, what difference does this make?
Gerrit You know, mom's the one writing the checks, so I guess, sure, triple it, I don't care. But the reality is that their adherence to that is not as big as people might think it is. I mean, you see this when it comes to environmental issues all the time, that people have a general sense of, yeah, I want to be more environmentally friendly, but you know, on a national survey, you know, the number that people were willing to pay each month extra on their electric bill specifically to fight, you know, climate change was less than $10. So that, you know, yeah, I'm all in, except that I'm not all in at all. And that's, there's nothing that's exactly the same as the way Americans felt about slavery. But I'm just trying to demonstrate that there was a general feeling in the North of annoyance about the power of the South, because they had more political power than they should have because of slavery, that there were constant arguments about it because of slavery.
Gerrit But we're just creating a false history when we think that every person who lived in the North was adamantly, desperately trying to end slavery all throughout the 1850s. It's just not really the case. And it's part of the romanticization of our own history, to look back so that we could say, oh, yes, there were so many people trying to end it. Well, there were some people trying to end it. But unfortunately, there were far more people who were fine with slavery staying the way it was than there were those who were trying to end it. At any rate, what that meant was, while many Americans were ambivalent about slavery, no Americans were ambivalent about polygamy and Mormonism. So if you could make slavery equal polygamy, if you could say these are both moral evils, which is exactly what the Republican Party did on their platform, we're going to eliminate the two twin relics of barbarism in the territories, slavery and polygamy.
Gerrit Just by joining those two things together, you've put them on the same moral plane. And while you might find many Northerners who are relatively ambivalent about slavery, you wouldn't find very many that were in any way ambivalent about Mormonism or about plural marriage. They were all adamantly opposed to it. So by saying that they were equal, well, then that helped make your argument. So to give you an idea of, so I guess I said, you know, James Buchanan sends the Army out to Utah. He's a Democratic president. It's a Democratic Congress that he's addressing. But at least some of what's going on there is by sending the Army to Utah, that blunts the criticism that Democrats are being soft on Mormonism because they won't pass any of these proposed anti-polygamy laws. There's another bill that Republicans are trying to pass that they've been pushing. Really, people have been pushing it for almost a decade in various forms, and that is the Homestead Act.
Gerrit You've probably heard all about the Homestead Act when Richard's looking at me as though people haven't heard all about the Homestead Act. But the Homestead Act was an idea first, and then it became a law, to settle the American territories in the West by means of giving property away to people. Now, that sounds like the world's worst business model, but the idea behind it is, in order to get people to move to some of these places that aren't terribly very good places to live that people don't really want to live, if we gave them property, then that might cause them to move there. So you could go there and you could get your 160 or 360 acres, depending on what's going on, and that would be your property after you live there for a certain amount of time. Generally, when you learn about this in school, if it's criticized at all, it's criticized for the point that it is a...
Gerrit it's of course displacing Native Americans, it's flooding American settlers on the Native American lands. That's where the criticism comes from. But the sponsors of this bill, the people who are trying to pass it, leave no uncertain terms about what the point of the Homestead Bill is. And again, it's the Republican Party that's trying to push it. Stephen Foster is a Republican representative from Maine, and he gives this very large impassioned speech before Congress in 1860, so just before the secession crisis is going to envelop the nation with the election of 1860. So this is mid-1860, rhetoric is high, feelings are high, but it gives you an idea of what Republicans in Congress are talking about at the time as they try to sponsor this bill. This is how he titles his speech. Republican land policy homes for the million. Give the public lands to the people and you settle the slavery question.
Gerrit Obliterate the frontiers. Dispense with the standing army and extinguish Mormonism. Now, that's the title of the speech. And it is printed by the Republican Congressional Committee and distributed all over the country because it's it's what Republicans believe the reason why to pass the Homestead Act. And let me give you a little bit of flavor from the act itself. What does he say? After giving several reasons why that why they should pass the bill, I mean, some of them are he claims would be more helpful for for Native Americans. He talks about how badly Native Americans have been treated and then proceeds to talk about how we need to pass this bill. And in order to take more lands from Native Americans, but he is going to to to really focus in on Latter-day Saint. There is another evil, he says, which the remoteness and wildness of our immense territories has fostered into a fearful importance.
Gerrit I allude to polygamy, that foulest product of the 19th century, which seems to denote a decline in civilization. Mormonism, we are aware, sprung up in the older states, but polygamy was unheard of until the saints removed beyond the reach of civilization. In Missouri and Illinois, that fanatical and persecuted sect was suspected of some practices inconsistent with morality. But it was not until they felt themselves secure in the mountain fastness of Utah, a thousand miles beyond the frontiers of civilization, that they threw off all disguise and shocked the moral sense of the country and the world by the open practice of polygamy. They feel secure from any molestation in that remote and not easily accessible region. We know what their history has been. They have publicly defied the government. They have trampled on the laws of Congress. And notwithstanding that millions of money have been spent in sending an army to subdue them, they still revel in licentiousness, insult your judges, mock your army, and murder your citizens.
Gerrit How do you feel, Stephen Foster?
Richard Yeah, he seems pretty straightforward.
Gerrit It's unfortunate that Stephen Foster has the same name of the American Balladeer from the exact same time. You know, Oh, Susanna, you know, kind of thing.
Richard Yeah, that's what everyone was thinking.
Gerrit I kid you not. Every time I taught a Civil War history class, I would assign this paper for students to analyze because it's not very well known or there wasn't anything on the internet. It was really hard for them to cheat. Now they would still try to cheat. That's the point, right? But because it has the same name, even though this is Stephen C. Foster instead of Stephen F. Foster, it's a classic mistake. Yeah, classic mistake. I would have students write papers about Stephen Foster and his balance and not about what the paper is about at all. And I mean, every single time, every class I had it. So if you ever take a class for me on Savor history, you've been warned. Anyway, he's going to go on again, trying to tie the support of Mormonism, or at least the refusal to act against plural marriage to the problems surrounding slavery. Sir, it was but the other day that a bill was introduced in this body for the abolition of polygamy.
Gerrit It met with my hearty support. I had no constitutional doubt or scruple about voting to suppress a practice, which is a felony at common law and an insult to decency and morality. So you'll notice what the debate is here. There actually isn't a law against polygamy in the territories. And so that's what he's saying. It's a felony to common law. Well, I mean, you're just saying that it is, or it's a felony to morality and decency. There actually isn't a law against it. And of course, Latter-day Saints in Utah have legalized it. So it's legal in Utah territory. So the federal government now needs to step in and pass a law. The fact that a practice so monstrous, this is Foster again, not me, the fact that a practice so monstrous has sprung up in one of the organized territories of the Union, proves the necessity of a general law to prohibit it, not only in Utah, but in all the territories. But who is to put that law in force in Utah?
Gerrit There is the institution of polygamy, there the institution of polygamy has been permitted to grow up to such proportions as to defy suppression by any ordinary legal process. The whole population sustain it and practice it or desire to practice it. It's very funny. They all either are polygamists or desperately want to be polygamists. Not really borne out by the numbers you practice polygamy, but that's certainly how it's viewed. Who is to put that law in force? The Mormons? You know, so he's making the argument that if you were to make polygamy illegal, well, then the problem is no one would be able to enforce the law anyway. Have we no experience with the integrity of Mormon sheriffs and juries? Have they not screened or acquitted the most heinous murderers who murdered in the cause of polygamy? Not entirely sure what he's referring to there, but this is it's possible he's making reference to what is now known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. But at that time, Latter-day Saint involvement was not known, just simply assumed.
Gerrit And in fact, for Brigham Young, he was told it was perpetrated by Native Americans. But easy, again, millstone to hang around the neck. But of course, the only reason they would have done it was for polygamy.
Richard We'll get to the Mountain Meadows Massacre in a later podcast.
Gerrit Probably at Season 14, and that's when it's Rachel's mom and my mom who are hosting.
Richard Very good.
Gerrit It won't be us.
Richard We'll get to it soon.
Gerrit Yeah, we'll never get to it. Anyway. And are they the men to put in force your law, which abolishes their favorite institution? Apparently, polygamy is their favorite institution. Sir, it is idle to expect such a thing. There is only one way to render the abolition of polygamy, to render it effectual, is to encourage the settlement of the territories as rapidly as possible. To the effect this, no plan could be better devised than the Homestead Bill, which lately passed this body, but which I fear is doomed to hang up for a long time in the other wing of the Capitol if it ever passes that body. If such a law were passed, a very few years would suffice to fill the territories with population and to overwhelm the polygamists of Utah beneath the advancing tread of Christian civilization. Just think of the imagery there, right? That we are going to essentially trample the polygamists of Utah out. And he's making the argument that, you know, no one's going to want to live in Utah, which is part of the reason why Brigham Young moved there in the first place.
Gerrit They're certainly not going to want to move there with a bunch of religious fanatics, but what if you gave them free land? As soon as we get a majority of people in Utah that aren't Mormons, then we can pass bills against polygamy and have them stick. He is going to go on, and after advocating for a transcontinental railroad, which would help take all of these settlers to these lands in the West, he's going to say, these measures if adopted would develop the resources of the country. They would people the wilderness and convert it into smiling fields and peaceful homes for millions of Christian families. Notice the very distinct thing that he's looking for there. This influx of population, as I pointed out, is the only sure remedy for polygamy. So it is stated Republican Party policy that one of the main reasons to try to pass the Homestead Act is to flood Utah with properly Christian, meaning non-Mormon Christian settlers, and therefore you can end polygamy with also taking some other shots and asides at the church as well.
Gerrit So the reality is, if you are a Latter-day Saint and you are reading in newspapers things that Republican Party politicians have to say about your faith, you aren't going to be very disposed to the Republican Party. Because while Democrats will certainly take shots at you, the Republican Party has made it a key to their platform the attacks upon your church. They're the ones trying to pass anti-polygamy bills. They're being blocked by Democrats in the Senate, but they're the ones trying to do that. So when you read history from the late 1850s and early 1860s, you actually shouldn't expect to find that Latter-day Saints are super supportive of the national politicians who say they want them to be crushed under the advancing tread of Christian civilization. That shouldn't come as a huge surprise.
Richard So the Republican Party is not big fans of the Latter-day Saints, but what about Abraham Lincoln, then?
Gerrit Right. Abraham Lincoln is a Whig politician before he becomes a Republican, and then as we all know becomes the first Republican president. He is going to rise to prominence nationally relatively quickly in a pretty short space of time. So much of the time period we're talking about in the mid-1850s, he's just not a big national figure. Not really until his run for Senate, and he becomes famous because of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which he loses, by the way. Not the debates. I mean, I feel like he won the debates, but he loses his campaign for Senate because back then, senators were elected by the state legislatures. They were not elected by the population. So it didn't matter how wonderfully great your arguments were. If your party didn't win a majority in the state legislature, then you weren't going to become a senator, and that's exactly what happens. Illinois has a majority of Democrats in their state house, and they elect Stephen Douglas rather than Abraham Lincoln to be their senator.
Gerrit He rises to national prominence because of that. So most Latter-day Saints, of course, aren't going to be terribly familiar with Abraham Lincoln until he starts getting that national press from the Lincoln-Douglas debates. And then, of course, as you move into the election of 1860, he's going to have much more prominence because he's going to become the Republican Party candidate, and the Democratic ticket is going to be fractured across multiple parties. The Democratic Party will actually break up into a kind of a Southern Democratic Party, a Constitutional Union Democratic Party, a National Democratic Party, because they're all trying to appeal to these different wings of a divided Democratic electorate that's based in the South, but also has millions of adherents in the North. One other thing that really causes Latter-day Saints in Utah to have a great skepticism of the Republican Party is the first presidential candidate that they put up is John C.
Gerrit Fremont. I don't know if you know John C. Fremont from his, you know, exploration days. Latter-day Saints had actually used Fremont's maps of California in order to make their way to what was then Alta, California, Mexican California, which is where Utah was when the Saints moved there. Fremont is a well-known abolitionist, which makes it very well that he's the Republican candidate for president. But he's the one, it's his campaign that first marks the end of the twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy. And he has a special personal connection to Latter-day Saints that many people don't know. And that is his wife, Bessie, is the daughter of Thomas Hart Benton, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. Senator Benton is probably single-handedly the primary reason why Latter-day Saints were not able to get a hearing in the United States Senate for all of the crimes that have been committed against them, because he was a very powerful senator, and he made sure that no debate or discussion on reparations for things that happened to Mormons in Missouri ever got discussed.
Gerrit So if you're a Latter-day Saint, having just left everything, traveled a thousand miles to live next to a salt lake, and you hear of this new party that arises through the newspapers, and this party has a platform of trying to destroy a tenant of your religion, and then they nominate as their presidential candidate, the son-in-law of the person you hate most on earth, you're probably not going to flock to be a part of that party. So it's important to understand on the eve of the election of 1860, already the Republican Party has been actively trying to suppress Latter-day Saint religion. And Democrats have been pushing back against those efforts, not because they care about Latter-day Saints at all, but because they care about the precedent it might set. So the nature of feeling towards Republicans in Utah territory is incredibly negative.
Gerrit And honestly, whatever political party you are right now, if you're sitting there thinking, he won't mention constitutional, well, there he is, right? Whatever political party you're a part of, imagine if the leader of either that party or the opposition party came out with a presidential platform to prevent Latter-day Saint marriages and temples because it was unfair, it was unequal. How would you feel towards that party and that presidential candidate if it was something they talked about over and over again, it was part of their party platform? Would you support them? Or would you say, no, thanks? So as we talk about in our next episode, we're going to talk about where does Abraham Lincoln fit into this as he is part of and then soon to be the leader of the party that is the most adamantly opposed to Latter-day Saints in the country.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

Quote board

Make a share card from any line

The most natural human tendency that exists is to assume that the way things are is the way they've always been, or at least the way they always should have been.

GerritInsight

Somebody had their garage open, and there was a case of bottled water. And I didn't understand what was happening.

RichardBanter

Why do you have a case of water? Was there a tsunami? We're in California.

GerritBanter

If anything, if this podcast has taught you anything, it's A, we aren't qualified to do a podcast. B, we probably shouldn't be doing a podcast, but also C, that history is complicated.

GerritBanter

So the same person who I have a loathing for because of what he did to my faith, I have respect for, for what he did for the dozens of enslaved African Americans that he helped get to freedom in Canada.

GerritInsight

But no, so I just laugh at the idea of Vermont's a beautiful state, full of wonderful dairy products, but religious, they ain't.

RichardBanter

So what you're saying is that people in Texas aren't Christians?

RichardBanter

Well, the same thing that makes that person say, slavery is a sin in the eyes of God, is the same thing that makes them say that Mormonism is a sin in the eyes of God.

GerritInsight

But we're not talking about getting in a time machine. We're talking about what did most Americans think at the time.

GerritInsight

It's very funny. They all either are polygamists or desperately want to be polygamists.

GerritBanter

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
Anti-Mormonism started because the Saints practiced plural marriage.
Most Northerners in the 1850s were abolitionists fighting to end slavery.
After leaving Illinois, the Saints settled in and things were fine with the government.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

It's natural to want our heroes to share our faith, but projecting today onto the past puts accuracy at risk.

People from history are complicated: Eber Howe harmed thousands with his anti-Mormon book and also helped enslaved people reach freedom.

The same conviction that made some Americans call slavery a sin made many of them call Mormonism a sin too.

In 1860 a Republican congressman openly promoted the Homestead Act as a way to flood Utah with settlers and end polygamy, so Utah's Saints had reason to distrust the new party.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
Which coin is he on?Gerrit figured listener questions would become quizzes eventually (0:52, 0:59).
We'll get to itEvery week the answer is "there are too many sources," so they'll get some estimates and get back to you (1:21, 1:48).
The French LeDucsA shout-out to Pierre and the LeDucs in Lyon; Richard's family got kicked out in 1690 and never rose to prominence (5:05, 5:15, 5:27).
You've been the good guyThe hosts quote the old Prodigal Son video and urge everyone to go watch it (7:01, 7:04).
The audience: Gerrit's mom (and Rachel's mom)Gerrit won't guess listeners' ages since it's only his mom or Rachel's mom, plus the thousands in Guyana and the Maldives (11:08, 14:23).
Richard and the missionariesRichard abandoned his missionary purpose to ask a California family why they bought bottled water, in 1998 (12:18, 12:44).
The sultan of antiRichard's title for Eber Howe, upgraded by Gerrit to the grand duke of anti-Mormon slander (20:19, 20:20).
We're huge in... VermontRichard laughs at the word Vermont, and losing Montpelier would cost them zero listeners (26:19, 26:42, 26:46).
Richard and the campaign slogansTippecanoe and Tyler too, and Rumsey Dumsey, after the Whigs, "the American Hair Club for Men Party" (29:02, 30:41).
Episodes promised, never madeMountain Meadows will come in Season 14, when Rachel's mom and Gerrit's mom are hosting (1:01:28, 1:01:30).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

Go deeper

Deep dives the episode points toward
Read Stephen C. Foster's 1860 speech, "Republican Land Policy: Homes for the Million," and see how the Homestead Act was sold (54:28).
Eber Howe's two legacies: the first anti-Mormon book and his work on the Underground Railroad (19:47).
The 1856 Republican platform and the twin relics of barbarism (24:13).
Thomas Hart Benton and why the Saints never got a Senate hearing for the Missouri crimes (1:07:17).
How American religiosity shifted from New England to the South and West over a century (27:18).
SOT Litner · S2E10.