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S4E13 · Live Studio Audience Part 2 (Politics and Polygamy)
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Standard of Truth · Season 4 · Episode 13 · 1:06:06

Live Studio Audience Part 2 (Politics and Polygamy)

In the 1880s Idaho's territorial legislature passed a test oath that kept every member of the Church from voting, and the Supreme Court upheld it in Davis v. Beason.

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The question ·
When did Utah transition from a Democrat to Republican state? And what are some of the reasons?
Richard

In part two of the live recording, an audience question asks why Utah went from Democrat to Republican. Gerrit explains that early Saints were fervent Democrats, that the early Republican Party was openly anti-Mormon, and that sugar tariffs, Joseph F. Smith and Theodore Roosevelt helped change things. Elizabeth, who indexes naturalization records, asks why immigrants had to swear they were not anarchists or polygamists, and Gerrit shows how anti-immigrant cartoons lumped Mormons with other feared groups. He describes Idaho's test oath that kept every Church member from voting, a law the Supreme Court upheld in the case of Davis versus Beason. He closes on Joseph Smith's forgiving character, from Oliver Cowdery to Philastus Hurlbut, and his own testimony.

Who comes upJoseph SmithAbraham LincolnJoseph F. SmithTheodore RooseveltReed SmootOliver CowderyPhilastus HurlbutPaulBarry Goldwater
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Part two, applause track

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast. In this podcast, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat and Professor Richard LeDuc explore the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the life and teachings of Prophet Joseph Smith. They examine the original historical sources and provide context for events of the past. They approach the history of the Church with faith, expertise and humor.
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, Atlantic monthly subscriber, Professor Richard Latuke.
Richard Hello, Gerrit. We're here in Part 2 of our Live Studio Audience podcast recording.
Gerrit And we got the applause track rewrapped.
Richard No one's here anymore.
Gerrit Mainly no one's here at all. Our live event was a total dismal failure.
Richard We're so glad to have everybody back from their restroom breaks.
Gerrit This isn't like one of our tours where we lose people.
Richard Well, Gerrit, we'll get right to it here. This is very exciting. We have, in this episode, we're going to talk about politics. We're going to talk about polygamy. We're going to talk about Idaho playing the hits. Jumping straight in to the Phebe Draper, Palmer Brown Google form. It's normally a mailbag, but most of these questions came through Google form of those that attended. When did Utah transition from a Democrat to Republican state? And what are some of the reasons?
Gerrit Why in the world would you have me answer a question like this? Well, I know the presidential election is coming up, and no one has strong feelings about that. Why don't we just talk a little bit about... Why don't we just talk about, like, partisan politics for a while? That, like, many listeners love that.
Richard Well, so, I mean, here we're showing when Utah voted Democrat versus Republican. Lyndon Johnson, after him, we're like, Nope, never again. We're not doing it. We did it to that beagle's ears. We're never doing it again.
Gerrit Well, so, it actually is a little bit counterintuitive because most Latter-day Saints are fervent, fervent Democrats for most of the early history of the church. And that doesn't make... That may not make sense to you today, you know, because you're like, wait a minute, every single person in my elders' corps, I'm pretty sure is a Republican. You know, I mean, I don't... I kid around because I don't know where everyone's from. But the reality is... Man, I said it again. Taisley's in my head. Yeah. Yeah. Taisley, why? Why? I prayed for your son. So, back in the 19th century, that made a lot of sense because the Whig Party, which was the other party, and some might say the forerunner of the Republican Party. I mean, obviously, there's differences, but most of the prominent Whigs later become prominent Republicans.
Gerrit So, Abraham Lincoln, for instance, was a member of the Whig Party, and then he became, you know, obviously, spoiler alert, president. And so, the Whig Party was the party of the Evangelical Christian. And so, we've talked about this on the podcast before as well, but when we think of Evangelical Christianity, we almost always think of the American South. But in Abraham Lincoln's time, and before that, in Joseph Smith's time, it is the American Northeast that is the most Evangelically religious, where religion is the most important thing of every day. The South is actually the least religious part of the country, and the most religious part is New England. Now, it's completely literally the opposite, where the least religious state in the Union today by the numbers is Vermont. Vermont in 1830 is the most religious state by the numbers.
Gerrit So it's completely different than it once was. And so these Evangelical Christians, and obviously they all weren't, but it was the party of Evangelical Christians, you could see why Latter-day Saints might not feel too terribly loved by them, because some of you have had the experience of speaking to someone who is a very fervent Christian, who also wants you to know what kind of hell you're going to burn in and how quickly you're going to get there. You might share with them all kinds of, you know, like, oh, well, my church believes that abortion is wrong in most cases, so does mine. My church believes in traditional marriage, so does mine. Oh, you're a Mormon, well, you're going to burn in hell. I mean, it doesn't matter that you share some of those similar beliefs on those social issues or whatnot, because what really matters is that you don't belong to traditional Christianity.
Gerrit And so it's a pretty natural thing for someone in that situation to see this party that has all of these diehard pastors. I mean, the senator from Vermont at the time of some of the anti-polygamy laws that are passed is literally a Presbyterian minister, right? So wonder which side he falls on, right? And so most Latter-day Saints are Democrats, and they vote as Democrats because the Democratic Party is more open to both immigration and to... And again, I'm not making a commentary about today, okay? I'm talking about history, so...
Richard There's a long pause there. We need the AA batteries for the microphone.
Gerrit I'm just going to continue talking and pretending that this is going very well. How many genes is this? Yeah, that we're taking the batteries from the on-air sign so that people can hear us. So the Democratic Party at the time was more subtle religiously, and part of that was due to their more pro-immigration stance, and they were softer in their anti-Catholic rhetoric. Look, they're still anti-Catholic, okay? I mean, you aren't going to find someone who's pro-Catholic and running for office in the 1820s and 30s, but they're less anti-Catholic. And so, and they're also the party of the small farmer, which many Latter-day Saints are. And so, all throughout the Kirtland time period, most Latter-day Saints are voting in blocks for Democrats.
Gerrit And in fact, it's one of the things that spurs the Missouri violence in the Mormon War in Missouri. The Whig candidate for the state legislature knows that if the Mormons vote, they're all going to vote for the Democratic candidate. And so, he shows up at the election polling place and with a mob, he stirs up a mob to try to prevent the Mormons from voting. So, the fact that Latter-day Saints voted in a block in that sense has always been something that precipitates violence. In Nauvoo, again, the Latter-day Saints are primarily Democrats, which causes the Whig newspapers in the state to be the leaders of anti-Mormonism. They were the first extreme anti-Mormons going off of their moguls doing their triple backflips. Until, right up until the moment... What are you doing?
Gerrit Richard's changing up the microphone here. Again, this is a live event. It's a live event for which we didn't prepare, obviously, even though we checked everything. The battery says it's clear full. Yeah, it says that. Yeah, why would I trust the machine that's designed to tell me that? Anyway, in Nauvoo, when Joseph Smith switches parties from supporting the Democrats to saying that he's going to vote for Henry Clay, the Whig candidate, suddenly all these newspapers that have just been fervent anti-Mormon newspapers, all these Whig newspapers, overnight are like, you know, that Joseph Smith is a wise leader of his people. And I know it's hard to believe that in America, there could be a, you know, that there was a time when people involved in politics, the only thing they cared about, I'll be right back. You're doing great. The only thing they cared about was, you know, whether or not they won elections.
Gerrit But back in the 19th century, that's all they cared about. And it led people to kind of disingenuous positions, where one week a newspaper is saying, those Mormons are a real problem for our state. Oh, they're going to vote for our guy? Well, they've always been industrious people. And you kind of get this. So, well, when they move out to Utah for a little while, they actually move towards the Whig Party because the Democratic Party has done so little for them. You know, Governor Ford's a Democrat. Martin Van Buren's a Democrat. James Buchanan, who's sending the Army out to Utah, is a Democrat. But the Whig Party actually collapses, and so you have nothing left. In its wake, you have the Republican Party, whose founding document says it's designed to prevent the spread in the territories of the two twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy.
Gerrit Well, while the Whig Party had been made up of a lot of leaders who were themselves.
Richard Evangelical in their Christianity and therefore relatively antagonistic towards Latter-day Saints, the Republican Party was... Rob pointed out, by the way, the same thing happened at the Grammys. We're on par with their production value. I got the tape off.
Gerrit Yeah, that was a good excuse to get the tape off. But the Republican Party was... it had essentially in its founding documents an anti-Mormon statement. And so the Republican Party very early on was seen as the party that was antagonistic to Latter-day Saints. If you read journals of people like Wilford Woodruff in the 1860s, he's not going to be saying nice things about Republicans, because the Republicans are the ones who in 1860 are sponsoring the Homestead Act for the purpose of crushing the Mormons of Utah underneath the advancing tread of our Christian civilization. That's not a way to win friends among the Mormon population. I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be crushed under anyone's tread. Right? So all throughout the 19th century, the Republican Party had this very anti-Mormon bent.
Gerrit So you're thinking, yeah, but Richard just put up a slide that shows a lot of ours on there. Well, things start to soften for a couple of reasons. First, the church invests heavily in trying to create sugar from sugar beets. The Utah Idaho Sugar Company is created. A good friend of mine is an expert on this. If you ever want to read some books on it, Matt Godfrey is an expert on this. But the thing about sugar beet production is it's in its infancy in America at the time. And they needed there to be taxes on imported. This is the most boring thing we've ever talked about.
Richard You're right.
Gerrit Robin Andrew left. These are two of my best friends. They just got up and left.
Richard NC State's up seven, guys.
Gerrit They went to go check. Now you feel guilty. Now you're coming back. They were halfway to their car. Well, it is about a tariff, though. That's the thing. It's not a rice tariff, but it's a sugar tariff. Republicans were the ones in favor of tariffs against free trade, and the Democrats were the ones who were more in favor of free trade. So the church starts to have an economic incentive to want Republicans to kind of win out when it comes to policy disagreements, because we really need some of those tariffs to help the Utah-Idaho sugar production. I said this on the podcast just the other day, though. This was not an easy transition, because if you've grown up hating the Republican Party because they want to destroy you, because they're throwing thousands of people in jail over anti-polygamy laws, because they're constantly speaking out against your religion, it's not a quick flip to just say, you know, I think maybe we could get a better sugar price.
Gerrit I mean, it's not an easy...
Richard I mean, I don't know.
Gerrit He won Richard over. You know what? That's sound policy. And so one of the first Latter-day Saints in America... One of the first Latter-day Saints in church leadership to transition to becoming a Republican is Joseph F. Smith.
Richard Remember the F.
Gerrit And also... And in fact, there's record of one of the conferences where he's speaking, and he's actually being catcalled by apostles behind him on the stand, because he says something kind of in jest, and someone behind him from the... that's only the Quorum of the Twelve behind him, calls out, that's because you're a Republican! And everyone's laughing. Like the Muppets. No, yeah, it's like... it's Sattler and Waldo. I don't know how that's going to translate to the... For those of you listening at home, I apologize for the poor audio quality and content. But it's still very, very, very new. The very first election in Utah goes for the Democrats, but that transition is going...
Gerrit It's sped along by the fact that many Republicans in Congress... Now, again, this is going to come as a surprise to you, but there were many Republicans in Congress who, seeing that Utah was going to become a state now that they've stopped openly practicing plural marriage with the Manifesto, they go from being very antagonistic towards Mormons to starting to try to win their votes. Again, it's a surprise. It's something that you don't expect that a politician would try to win votes. But this is what happens. And one of the most foremost among that is Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt is one of the people trying to bridge the gap between the old Republican animosity towards Mormons and Mormons reaching out saying, hey, we like tariffs and this kind of thing. And in fact, there's a senator that's elected in Utah. First of all, Congress...
Richard Teddy? Roosevelt? Theodore Roosevelt, yeah. Franklin's picture is up.
Gerrit I know his picture is up. I don't want to talk about him. As a partisan...
Richard You've always been a bull moose guy.
Gerrit He comes later. He comes later, but no, Theodore Roosevelt is... He's one of the people that champions the cause, because what has happened is that in... Utah becomes a state, but the Congress repeatedly refuses to allow our congressmen and senators to take their seats in the Congress and in the Senate. On the argument that, well, people like, you know, they are... They're practicing polygamy. And polygamy is illegal. I don't care that you've done your little manifesto saying you aren't going to enter in any more new polygamist marriages, you know, that we're not prosecuting as much anymore. And so it really comes to a head when Reed Smoot, who's a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, runs for senator from Utah, and he wins, he himself is not a polygamist. He's never practiced polygamy. And so what does the Congress do? They try to deny him from being seated, even though he hasn't ever practiced polygamy.
Gerrit Why? Because you're a member and a leader of that church that did and still does. Because again, the manifesto doesn't end polygamy. People who are already in polygamous marriages stay in them. Now, some people use the manifesto as an excuse to abandon their wives, and Wilford Woodruff has to stand up and conference and chastise them for that. But Joseph F. Smith, he's the president of our church during this time period, and he has three wives. So it doesn't end plural marriage, it ends new plural marriages. But people who had already entered into plural marriages, they stay in them. Obviously women can divorce their husbands at any time from a plural marriage, but people who choose to stay in their plural marriage, stay in it, right? So it's a huge, big controversy, and Theodore Roosevelt is one of the ones who comes out really strongly in favor of allowing Reed Smoot to have his seat.
Gerrit And in fact, defends the character of Mormons. Like, you guys keep telling me how horrible they are, and I've, I don't know, this guy seems fine. I mean, I went hunting with him. You know, Theodore Roosevelt is kind of a rough and tumble guy, but that leads to early Utah politics being Republican, and not until Woodrow Wilson's second term, when Wilson's re-elected, does he narrowly win in Utah as a Democrat. And then you have, as you can see, more Republican victories right up until everyone in America becomes a Democrat. And that's with the Great Depression. And FDR sweeps the field, and you can see that with FDR all the way up through Truman, Utah is this Democratic state. Now, one thing that's very different about politics today than was then is in the 1950s, you could not tell whether or not someone was a Democrat or Republican by their religiosity.
Gerrit You couldn't tell. Today, sometimes people equate religiosity with one party or another party, because one of the easier ways to determine whether or not someone, how someone voted in the last election, is to ask them how often they attend religious services. I'm not talking about Utah, I'm talking about in America. If the answer is they attend religious services every week, it's like 85 to 90 percent that they voted Republican. Now, that doesn't mean that there's not incredibly faithful Democrats who go to church every week. So stop going to your elders quorum and saying that. But that wasn't the case in the 1950s. In the 1950s, the level of religiosity in each party was exactly the same. So that wasn't a deciding factor. That grew and changed over time. And so it's not that surprising that you see this election in 1964 for Lyndon Johnson.
Gerrit Goldwater lost a lot of states that Republicans normally won. And so that's kind of a landslide election. Is that enough?
Richard That's great.
Gerrit Good enough. All right.
Richard That's very good. Now to polygamy.
Gerrit I just said the word polygamy.
Richard We're going to get into it even more. Hello, professor and possibly doctor. That's very generous.
Gerrit Wow, that person is super generous.
Richard I swear. And definitely Dr. Dirkmaat. Okay, that's gratuitous.
Gerrit Okay, that's funny.
Richard I'm not very witty, so I will keep my question brief and just not expect an answer. As many of you may.
Gerrit There's no way you've made it this far to get this answer.
Richard Yes, it's true. We do apologize that we don't get to all. We get lots and lots and lots of emails. We're so grateful for them.
Gerrit Cards and letters.
Richard We don't get a lot of cards. We did get one card. We got a Valentine's Day card.
Gerrit We did get a Valentine's Day card.
Richard From Barney Madsen's family. I was like, what? That's fantastic.
Gerrit Very kind.
Richard Yeah, it was very kind. Anyway, back to believe me. I was recently doing some indexing of US naturalization records from the early 1900s. I noticed that the forms required applicants for citizenship to swear that they were not an anarchist or polygamist and also did not believe in polygamy. I realize these particular forms are from after the manifesto, making the practice of polygamy defunct in the church. Gerrit just talked about that a little bit. But even I, in the 1900s, grew up with my parents teaching that polygamy was a true practice and that we may return one day. I reference my older sister often singing, one day my prince will come in the millennium and he'll ask me to be his number three.
Gerrit I have never heard that before ever.
Richard That is very funny. Disney's working on it. We need a polygamist princess.
Gerrit This is the last episode of Standard of Truth podcast.
Richard So my question is, was there a time, or perhaps even today, when citizenship was denied to immigrants based on their possible belief in polygamy? Were no members of the church allowed to immigrate to the US during this time, or did they just have to lie on their declaration of intentions? Declarations of intentions. Also, were members of the church considered anarchists? Anarchists.
Gerrit It's also a heavy metal band. Anarchy.
Richard We're going to be editing this. My poor reading. Anarchists. Back then, if so, it seems these forms were particularly designed to keep Latter-day Saints out of the country. Very curiously yours, Elizabeth.
Gerrit This is a great question.
Richard Anarchists.
Gerrit Yeah, anarchists.
Richard Anarchists.
Gerrit Yeah, anarchists. I mean, you can say it however you want.
Richard Every time I see anarchy, I see antichrist is what I see in it. It seems aggressive.
Gerrit It does.
Richard It would be a government form. Are you the antichrist?
Gerrit I mean, wouldn't it be great if there was a form you filled out?
Richard Like, we're going to trip the antichrist.
Gerrit He just keeps going down the check mark. I got to get through this. I want to get in there so I can, you know... I've got to practice polygamy. It's happening. Oh, crap. So this is a good question. And you already know from the nature of the question, you can place the time period of the declarations of intent that she's looking at. I don't know exactly when they are, but I know that they're between 1906 and 1941, because that's the time period that the declaration of intent that immigrants, incoming immigrants had to sign, had to declare, had to swear an oath to. Like most laws, they respond to current things that are going on at the time. So, like, it'd be a pretty weird thing, although maybe not completely off base for our Congress today, to like debate and have a huge series of laws passed against keeping your VCR, right?
Gerrit Like, that'd be pretty weird, right? And we've got to make sure that no one is allowed to copy from VHS to Betamax. If they do, that's how you know. I mean, again, given how slow Congress works, maybe that one is just working its way through the Congress. But if I were to see a law with no date on it that said, hey, here's what you can't do with VHS tapes, I would be like, okay, that's probably from the 1980s and the 1990s, right? Because the law is responding to what people are dealing with right then. The 1906 Immigration Act is what sets these standards and kind of codifies immigration. Between 1890 and 1910, the United States has its largest immigration that it has of any 20 year period percentage wise. I know that you hear a lot about immigration today, and yes, the United States has millions of immigrants who come to the United States today.
Gerrit They do. But there's also almost 400 million people in America today, right? So when you hear three or four million immigrants come, that is a lot of people. I'm not saying that it's not, but it's roughly somewhat less than 1% of the existing population or a little bit more depending on whatever number you're using. In 1900, there's less than a hundred million Americans, and there's more than one and a half to two million people arriving every year. So it is fewer aggregate numbers of... I made this as boring as I thought.
Richard No, you're getting to it. We're getting to bullying me. It's coming, it's just running around.
Gerrit I don't know. I think I'm just going to stay on immigration for a while, because I like topics that aren't controversial.
Richard It's fine.
Gerrit So...
Richard Officer R who works for ICE.
Gerrit Don't tell them who he works for. The people here know who Officer R is. Everyone else, he's anonymous. Anyway... So... Immigration is a really big deal. Most of that immigration is coming from southern and eastern Europe at that time. This is when most Italian... If any of you have any Italian ancestry, it's like 90% that... If you just got off the boat from Sicily yesterday, okay. But if you have Italian heritage in your ancestry, it's like 90% that it happened probably between 1895 and 1910. Almost certainly. Because that's when almost all Italians come. Same thing for people who have Greek ancestry. It's just... You can see a shift in where people are coming through immigration. Well, there is... So what are people responding to? Let me start with the first part of the last part of the question, which makes no sense.
Gerrit The first part of the last part. Were Latter-day Saints considered anarchists? As you can see by the image we have up, that maybe Richard will post a link to, but probably won't post a link to.
Richard I will say that I will post it.
Gerrit I like how we at least tell people we're going to post it.
Richard We will not post it.
Gerrit This is not a very pro-Mormon cartoon that is part of a major US newspaper. There are literally thousands of these types of cartoons, and if you can't see them, it shows a crocodile and a, you know, basically like, what was the name of the giant turtle from Godzilla? Is that Mothra? No. No, Mothra's a moth. What's his name?
Richard I don't know.
Gerrit Someone's got to be a Godzilla person to do this.
Richard What?
Gerrit It was kind of a religious thing, so I couldn't get it.
Richard Sodom is the name of the moth.
Gerrit It turned into a pillar of salt. But you can see that this image is designed to make these reptiles, and what does it say? Religious liberty is guaranteed, but can we allow foreign reptiles to crawl all over us, and us is spaced out to make it look like US? And one is called Roman Catholicism, and guess what most of the people arriving from Italy believe in? And the other is the Mormon Church. So, Latter-day Saints are hated for a lot of reasons. Your friends and extreme anti-Mormon going off the mogul, telling you that they know everything about it, they really want to reduce everything down to it's just polygamy, it's just polygamy, it's just polygamy. It isn't just polygamy. Not with the origins of anti-Mormonism. Remember that people are being murdered in Hans Mill before anyone's practicing polygamy.
Gerrit Polygamy just becomes the easiest excuse for the hatred that people already manifest towards the religion. It's the way to win the argument, right? Well, I hate Mormons. That's kind of weird that you hate people. Yeah, that makes sense. Once you say that, then it's okay to hate somebody. But you can see from this that there's an attempt to dehumanize Latter-day Saints. They're foreign reptiles. Never mind the fact that the vast majority of Latter-day Saints are American citizens. That doesn't matter, because they must be some kind of weird foreigners, or they wouldn't believe in that fake Joe Smith and his Bible, right? So, certainly, there are people who see Latter-day Saints as destabilizing the American government because of their false religion and because of the practice of polygamy and da-da. But actually, very specifically, the reason why this gets entered into the 1906 law is the previous president of the United States prior to Theodore Roosevelt.
Gerrit Theodore Roosevelt isn't elected president at first. He's elected vice president. But William McKinley is murdered by an anarchist, who's actually born in America. His parents are Polish. He has a very... I couldn't begin to spell his name, but it's Leon Czolgosz, but there's like seven Zs and four Os. Anyone with Polish ancestry knows. My name is Dirkmaat. I got nowhere to talk. Leon Czolgosz had just murdered William McKinley a few years earlier because he was an anarchist, an anarchist wanted to bring down all governments. And it was actually a rising movement in the early 20th century. It's part of the Spanish Civil War. When that breaks out in the 1930s, there's a whole faction that's an anarchist movement. So Congress responding to the assassination of William McKinley in the new Immigration Act causes people to declare that they are not an anarchist if they're coming.
Gerrit So that's not specifically directed towards Latter-day Saints, though if you were to ask someone in 1906, do you think that Mormons are like anarchists? Sure. I mean, they're like reptiles and we ate them, but yeah. So that one isn't directed at them in particular, but it is directed at the great fear. I mean, before there was the Red Scare, before you had anti-communism, you had anti-anarchism, which is very hard to say. If you're trying to do a tongue twister, that's one you should try. But the next part of that is obviously directed at Latter-day Saints. And remember, even though the manifesto ends plural marriage, it ends new plural marriages. Smith is the serving prophet of the Church and testifying before Congress when he is badgered by the senators there saying, Oh, you say that you're following the laws and you're a good American, but how many wives do you have?
Gerrit His response is, I refuse to abandon the wives of my youth. He's been married to him for decades at this point. So, it is not, there's not a whole lot of Latter-day Saint polygamists living in Italy or Greece, okay? I mean, obviously, we're not getting a whole lot of Latter-day Saint migration. This is before Vincenzo di Francesco. It's okay, just, yeah. I saw you ten cell.
Intro No, we have one of the greatest.
Gerrit The greatest, the greatest, the greatest. So, it really isn't going to affect very many Latter-day Saints coming, but when you look at an image like this, it's hard for me to explain to everybody here how hated Mormons were in the United States. I mean, I know you kind of get it because you're like, I'm pretty sure I feel kind of hated now. It was way more. As ostracized as you feel at times, as much as you feel like people have so many negative things to say about you, I mean, it was a crazy thing, that latest Pew survey that came out, okay, that demonstrated every religious group in the United States has a negative view of Latter-day Saints, all of them. And yet, so you would expect on the other side of that, you would have a negative view of everyone else from Latter-day Saints.
Gerrit What do you find? The most stark thing of that entire survey is there was only one religious group in America that had a net positive view of every other religious group, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, evangelical Christian, mainline Christian, and it was Latter-day Saints. Which first of all, congratulations, that's awesome. I mean, I didn't even make a sound. We should love everybody, regardless of what they believe. That's what Joseph Smith taught in his dying days, the last few days of his life. He is advocating that you should love everyone, no matter what they believe. So that's awesome. But we are talking about 2024, and the majority of people of faith, when asked about Latter-day Saints, despises them. That's weird, right?
Gerrit It's not because we are out there hating them. Obviously, we are not. We are like, hey, I love you, I want to come to dinner. Leave me alone, I don't want to hear your Satan book. You know, I mean, so it is, you can see how dehumanized from this. And look, I could give you thousands of images, but because immigration is seen as this negative in America in this early time period, tying it to Latter-day Saints is a way of demonstrating just how negative it is, even though by far the vast majority of immigrants coming to the United States are not Latter-day Saints. But by making it seem like the most nefarious elements of immigrants who come are either anarchists or Latter-day Saints, what are you saying about immigrants? You're saying they can be a real problem, like these reptile Mormons, is what you're saying. So racism plays a great deal with it, but anti-Mormonism even more so.
Richard So we're about to show a picture.
Gerrit Well, wait, let me read this first before you show it.
Richard The picture is a little...
Gerrit No, we're not pulling any punches here in the sense that I want you to see just how racialized Latter-day Saints were in the late 19th century. How people attempted to use the existing bigotry that existed. Again, spoiler alert, there's a lot of bigotry in American history, okay? They try to use the existing racial bigotry that's there to foster greater anti-Mormonism by attempting to racialize Latter-day Saints. So maybe go ahead, go ahead and show it. You may not be able to read that, but that is Mormon Elder, and they give him the last name of Barry so they can mock him. He's Elder Barry. Mormon Elder Barry, out with his six-year-olds who take after their mothers. And for those of you who are listening, who aren't here to see this, we will not be sending this in.
Gerrit We will not. It's an image of obvious, all of these little children who are all just mockeries and stereotypes that are just overtly racist from various different ethnicities and races around the world. Chinese, Native American, Black. I mean, one's clearly a Southern European or at least designed to be. I mean, back then, you know, Italian was considered a race rather than, you know, white as it's often seen today. And so you can see that part of the anti-Mormon argument utilized race as a way to do that. The Mormons have all these foreign immigrants that are joining, and so this is actually an anti-miscegenation argument.
Gerrit Yeah, you want to know what's wrong with polygamy. Polygamy is not just wrong because polygamy is wrong. You look at these Mormon elders, they're marrying outside of their race on top of that. Now, of course, the reality is in Utah, there's very little of that that's going on. And in fact, most Latter-day Saints in the 19th century in Utah, they hold similar racial views to the other Americans around them. But that doesn't stop opponents of the church and anti-Mormons from arguing the opposite as a way of stirring up feelings against them. So the actual Declaration of Intent, what she was talking about, this is how it reads, I'll read it to you, at least part of it. First of all, it's like, you know, I came, on this boat, on this day. You know, I am, so you have to, by an oath, swear this. I am not an anarchist. I am not a polygamist, nor a believer in the practice of polygamy.
Gerrit And is my intention in good faith to become a citizen of the United States of America and to permanently reside therein, so help me God. And you had to swear to that in order to be, to be admitted to the country. Well, to give you an idea of just how antagonistic, just how antagonistic the nation was to Latter-day Saints, as I said, this is a 1906 immigration law. The manifesto was 16 years earlier, but the hatred is still there. And the fact that Latter-day Saints are still practicing polygamy, they're just not entering into new plural marriages, is still seen as an affront. Much of this comes to a head, not only with the Reynolds case, which we talked about in a previous podcast several minutes ago. But when Idaho, my beloved home, where I grew up, when it petitions to become a state, when Idaho petitions to become a state, they have a problem, and that is that there's quite a few of these Mormons that I'm not a big fan of that live in the southeastern part of that state.
Gerrit And so in the territorial legislature in Idaho, they passed laws preventing all Mormons from voting. Now, you're thinking, wait a minute, all of them couldn't vote? Yeah, all of them couldn't vote. And the way that they did that was by saying, unlike, you know, we have laws today that if you commit a felony, you might lose your right to vote, right? But you also have to be convicted for that felony. There's no law that says that if you are put on trial for bank robbery but acquitted, you no longer have the right to vote. There's certainly not a law that if someone walking down the street points at you and says, pretty sure that dude robbed a bank once, you still have the right to vote, okay? It's one of the things that the founders were most concerned with is that everyone had to be innocent until proven guilty, and there had to be due process in our legal system.
Gerrit But the laws that were passed in Idaho and the federal laws that were passed that covered Utah territory didn't do that. It's one thing to say, if someone's convicted of practicing polygamy, we'll make that a felony, and then therefore they're no longer going to have the right to vote. That's not what the laws of Idaho or the federal laws said. They said, if you are even a member of a church that in any way supports the idea of plural marriage or celestial marriage or polygamy, the fact that you are a member of that church in and of itself without any trial, without any claim that you're doing something wrong, that in and of itself disenfranchises you. And this is put into the Idaho Constitution. 1889 is when it's drafted.
Gerrit Article, you have it up. Oh, there you go. How about that? Thank you, Richard. Normally, you're just over there looking at North Carolina State and how they're doing.
Richard NC State looks like they're going to win. It's exciting.
Gerrit That's crazy. That's what we call a bid thief in the lingo, right? Suffrage in elections, right? It's very clear that not only have you committed a felony or if you've embezzled public funds, anyone who is a bigamist or a polygamist or is living in what is known as the patriarchal, plural or celestial marriage or in violation of any law of this state or the United States forbidding any such crime or who in any manner, think about how that can be interpreted, in any manner, teaches, advises, counsels, aids or encourages any person to enter into bigamy, polygamy or such patriarchal, plural or celestial marriage or to live in violation of any such law or to commit any such crime or who is a member of or contributes to the support, aid or encouragement of any order, organization, association, corporation or society which teaches, advises, counsels, encourages or aids any person to enter into bigamy, polygamy or patriarchal, plural or celestial marriage or which teaches or advises the laws of the state prescribing rules of civil conduct are not the supreme laws of the state, Let's see you can catch the rest of the state.
Gerrit So that's all to say, if you are a member of the church, if you pay tithing, you no longer have the right to vote. If you go to church on Sunday, you don't have the right to vote. You know what's the best part about this law? The hypocrisy with which it was enforced. Several hundred Latter-day Saints in Idaho leave the church so that they can keep their right to vote. And guess what? They still aren't given the right to vote. Because that wasn't the intent of the law. In fact, the sponsor of the law is named Fred Du Bois. Some of you might know where Du Bois is. Yeah, well, you'll learn to hate him. He is the most... Like honestly, we should change the name of things there. Like we're talking about how we want to rewrite a little bit of history because of how... Fred Du Bois is the most virulent anti-Mormon person there is. He's spearheaded preventing all Mormons from voting for years.
Gerrit And he actually, again, some of the best part about politicians in the 19th century is they don't try to lie about what they're doing. He tells Congress, I'm not even going to pretend that these laws don't exist to just prevent Mormons from voting. They shouldn't have the right to vote. Guess what Congress does being presented with that Constitution? They passed the Idaho Constitution 270 to 1.
Richard Who is the 1?
Gerrit I don't actually remember.
Richard I will get on that, the Craig Rinser stuff, the Idaho Constitution. NC State's up 9.
Gerrit But notice what else is part of that law. Notice what comes next right after that. So you just finished going on. Most of that disclaimer is anyone who's in any way affiliated with any church, religion, whatever that practices polygamy. And then the very next line, nor shall Chinese or persons of Mongolian descent, not born in the United States, nor Indians, not taxed, who have not severed their tribal relations and adopted their habits of civilization, either vote or serve as jurors or hold any civil office. Latter-day Saints are barred by the same laws, the same racist laws that are barring Chinese and Native Americans and those of Mongolian descent. Guess who gets to decide that? Yeah, the white guy work in the polling booth, okay? He gets to decide whether or not you count as that. And these laws, they go up for, they're challenged at the Supreme Court.
Gerrit As one of the Supreme Court cases is called Beeson versus Davis, 1890, that is challenging whether or not you can disenfranchise, not just like five people, a third of your voting electorate because they belong to a religion. Not because they're practicing polygamy. Sure, there are several thousand people in Idaho that were practicing polygamy or in polygamous marriages, right? But a third of the state's population belongs to the church. None of them have the right to vote by virtue of the fact that they belong to the church. And Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field, who we don't have a t-shirt for, but we probably should, he writes the opinion. And he says, he continues to compare Mormonism to the laws of like a sacrificial cult that murders people, like the Aztecs throwing bodies down pyramids.
Gerrit He says that we wouldn't be okay with any laws that advocated fornication, although clearly we are, that advocated fornication or human sacrifice. In those cases, swift punishment would follow the caring and effective of its doctrines, and no heed would be given to the pretense that as religious beliefs, their supporters could be protected in their exercise by the Constitution of the United States. Few crimes are more pernicious to the best interests of society, receive more general and more deserved punishment. However free the exercise of religion may be, it must be subordinate to the criminal laws of the country, passed with reference to actions regarded by general consent as properly the subjects of punitive legislation. So not only does he rule against the Latter-day Saints, he spends a good portion of his ruling comparing Mormons and the practice of plural marriage to human sacrifice.
Gerrit I mean, I get it, lots of people don't like plural marriage. I get that. There is a difference between people willingly entering into marriages that they, by the way, can leave whenever they want. I know that you don't think that's the case because you're watching some kind of show on Netflix today. That's just so you know, that's not history, right? In Utah, not only can women get divorces from their polygamous marriages, it actually becomes a scandal because since women can get a no contest divorce in Utah, women will hop on the transcontinental railroad from New York where they can't get a divorce, come to Utah territory, get a divorce in Utah and then take it back to New York. And New York had to recognize the fact that they were divorced. And so you had these articles in newspapers saying, not only are the Mormons destroying the family because of their polygamy, now they're destroying it because of divorce. I mean, Mormons can be proud.
Gerrit We were like the nation's leaders in women being able to get divorces. And so the ruling was very negative. So we use that as an example of just how anti-Mormon the laws were at the time. And again, back then, politicians didn't try to sugarcoat it. They were more than willing. In fact, it was super popular to say, yeah, I'm trying to pass this law because I hate Mormons. Everyone does. You know, come hate them with me, basically. Today, things are obviously a little bit more nuanced.
Richard No clue to answer your question.
Gerrit What was the question? We'd have to go back. You go back through the congressional record, you could probably find it. Yeah.
Richard A little bit of homework. The crack research staff, we look for about five minutes, and then if we can't find it in the top, we don't go to page two on Google searches, by the way. So we consider that to be the dark web, and we do not go there.
Gerrit We're almost out of time, and I know we've gone way too long, and we'll never ever have a live event again. I wanted to talk a little bit, because I know that this is a very, I know this is a topic that really is difficult for people, and I promise that we'll cover it in season 38, in part because there's so many moving parts to it that it makes it very difficult to explain. It's so antithetical to our culture today. It's so hard to comprehend. And yet, I mean, there are hundreds of thousands of Latter Day Saints during that time period who are practicing plural marriage because they believe that this is what God wants them to do. And if you think that it's only men that are defending plural marriage, you only need to read the petitions that women are sending to Congress saying, how dare you tell me how I can live my life? I know we're sitting here thinking, well, no, I'm sure they really hated it.
Gerrit I know that that's how we feel inside. And plural marriages are like monogamous marriages in the sense that there are terrible ones. There are amazing ones. There are ones that just seem fine. There are ones where people hate every last second of it, and there are ones where people say it's the greatest thing that they've ever done. Now, just so everyone's aware, we don't practice plural marriage now. Anyone who came here thinking that this was some kind of a speed dating event, we don't practice plural marriage now.
Richard So maybe we have just a couple minutes left, and then we're insanely over on time.
Gerrit I'm so sorry about all of this. I'm so sorry the podcast exists.
Richard So polygamy is coming in hot, but maybe we can end with a question that we received. One of the things that I love the most about the podcast is when Gerrit talks about his testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. And we received a great question. Do we have any historical records of what did Joseph feel as one by one his closest friends left him in the church or were kicked out of it? Did Joseph express his feelings about Oliver, Martin, Sydney, David, etc.? It seems like those who originally helped the most were all against him at some point. That must have been painful.
Gerrit I mean, we obviously have some historical records. I was just reading one this past week for an unrelated topic in which someone says, again, it's a reminiscent account, in which someone says they're talking in Nauvoo and Oliver Cowdery is brought up, and Joseph kind of lowers his head and says, you know, poor Oliver, poor Oliver. You can tell it's a painful thing to him. But right before Joseph dies, they are actually reaching out to Oliver Cowdery. They keep trying to encourage him to come back, and they're kind of in almost negotiations with him to come back. And he doesn't come back before Joseph dies, but he does come back shortly thereafter. I think Joseph felt alone and isolated a lot at times because his closest friends left the church and abandoned him. He felt frustrations because, you know, as he said, it was so hard to teach anything to these people. You teach them the smallest thing and they fly apart like glass.
Gerrit You know, I hope that that's not who we are. I hope we aren't flying apart like glass. One of the best qualities that Joseph Smith had... Now look, I can't sugarcoat it for you and tell you that Joseph didn't get mad. He was a passionate guy. He got in a fistfight with his brother that's recorded in his journal for crying out loud. Then they send letters back and forth to each other about whose fault it really was. It's great. And Joseph's like, well, if you'd let me take my coat off without sucker punching me, I could have, you know... Look, William, you know that I've taken you down enough times. It's basically what you would expect an older brother to write to a younger brother. And so Joseph does get indignant and he gets angry. He especially gets angry when people's words are calculated to hurt other people or to bring persecution against the church, which will hurt other people. And so he's passionate in that regard.
Gerrit At the same time, he's incredibly forgiving in a way that you would not... you almost wouldn't think is possible. When people talk about the character of Joseph Smith and they malign him and they say, oh, Joseph Smith this and Joseph Smith that, that's not the Joseph Smith that I know. Joseph Smith's a sinner. We're all sinners. There are days he wishes he could have back, I guarantee it. But when it comes to people petitioning to get back into the church after they've sinned, after they've been excommunicated, after they've apostatized, he is incredibly, incredibly merciful. And, you know, I said this before, as a historian, you're actually, you wish he wasn't. I mean, that sounds terrible. Like, I need Joseph to only care about justice and not mercy, you know.
Gerrit But when someone like Philastus Hurlbut, who was in attendance today, when someone like Philastus Hurlbut is excommunicated for committing adultery, and he's properly, and petitions and begs to get back into the church, you see Joseph saying, you know, look, the bishop's court was right. You needed to be excommunicated. You committed adultery on your mission, by the way. But because you're so penitent, we'll let you back in. And you're yelling at the page. Not him, Joseph. He's about to be doing, you know, double 720s off a mogul with his anti-mormonism. Don't let him back in, you know. But he was just always, he was always willing to extend mercy to the point where, you know, he even said, because God's been so merciful to us, we have to follow that example and be merciful to others.
Gerrit When he was teaching the Relief Society, he said that he was going to preach mercy. Suppose that Jesus Christ and the angels were to object to us because of some small thing. We have to be merciful and overlook the faults of others. Of course, he famously said, the closer we get to God, the more willing we are to look upon our fellow suffering sinners and cast their sins upon our backs and help carry them. One of the reasons why I love Joseph Smith is because he taught me about Jesus. I know the Bible teaches about Jesus. I get it. And there's all kinds of, you know, there's no Christians listening, but there's all kinds of Christians listening, saying, well, if you just read the Bible, you'd believe in Jesus. I don't think that I would have. I believe that Jesus Christ was resurrected and that he died for our sins because I know that Joseph Smith saw him.
Gerrit I love Paul's testimony of Joseph. I love it. I believe it. But the reason why, sorry, Jesus, Paul's testimony of Jesus. But the reason why I believe it is because of Joseph Smith's experience. The Holy Spirit first testified to me that Jesus was actually my Savior and that this wasn't a bedtime story. That this wasn't just something cooked up over the course of years and there's all kinds of pseudepigrapha and everything else, right? Was reading Joseph Smith explaining how he met and talked with the Lord Jesus Christ? That's what spurred me to read Paul's testimony of when he saw Jesus, to read the Apostles' testimonies. I'm not saying I couldn't have gotten a testimony the other way, but I didn't.
Gerrit The way I came to know that Jesus really does live is by having the Holy Spirit speak to me and tell me Joseph Smith saw him and talked to him. And not just one time, multiple times. And not just by himself, with other people present. The Lord Jesus Christ lives. I don't, I sometimes feel like a pretty poor vessel trying to carry a message. Because of my work experience, my study, my training, I got to see and do things that most people don't have the ability to do it. And I regret all the time that I'm not a better communicator of what it is that I know to be true.
Gerrit And I'm just a sinner. And I fail all the time. You'd love to believe that when I go and I talk to someone who's struggling with church history questions, that I just go in there and I knock it out of the park, and you know, next thing you know, they're no longer going over the anti-Mormon moguls, and they're all back in. I fail almost all the time. And every time I come out of those conversations, there's like a little bit of me that dies inside where I just, I so desperately want people to believe because I know that it's true. Not only that, I know how much happier people are going to be if they believe. I know that they'll have answers to questions that other people don't have answers for. I know that if they believe, they'll have peace. The world's going to be awful. But they'll have peace knowing what the purpose of this life is, and that eventually, your Savior is going to make everything right.
Gerrit I want to pre-apologize, maybe it's a post-apology. If ever I'm saying something or doing something on the podcast that really upsets you or offend you, probably, I'm just winging it. You know, I don't really know the right way to do this, or the right way to say things, or the right way to teach. I just know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I know that Jesus Christ died for you, and he desperately loves you. And I wish I had the ability to convey that. And I'm just so grateful for your testimonies. I said it before, Richard and I would have stopped doing this a long time ago, if there weren't people like you who felt like it mattered. So thank you so much, and thank you for supporting us, and thank you for coming.
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.

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Mainly no one's here at all. Our live event was a total dismal failure.

GerritBanter

My church believes in traditional marriage, so does mine. Oh, you're a Mormon, well, you're going to burn in hell.

GerritBanter

I mean, I don't know about you, but I don't want to be crushed under anyone's tread.

GerritBanter

Well, it is about a tariff, though. That's the thing. It's not a rice tariff, but it's a sugar tariff.

GerritBanter

Polygamy just becomes the easiest excuse for the hatred that people already manifest towards the religion.

GerritInsight

We should love everybody, regardless of what they believe. That's what Joseph Smith taught in his dying days, the last few days of his life.

GerritInsight

We were like the nation's leaders in women being able to get divorces.

GerritBanter

we don't go to page two on Google searches, by the way. So we consider that to be the dark web, and we do not go there.

RichardBanter

At the same time, he's incredibly forgiving in a way that you would not... you almost wouldn't think is possible.

GerritInsight

The way I came to know that Jesus really does live is by having the Holy Spirit speak to me and tell me Joseph Smith saw him and talked to him.

GerritInsight

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 was all about polygamy.
The Manifesto ended all plural marriages in 1890.
Women in plural marriages were trapped.
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

Early Latter-day Saints were fervent Democrats because the Whigs and the first Republicans were openly hostile to them; sugar tariffs, statehood and Theodore Roosevelt helped change that.

In 1889 Idaho barred every Church member from voting, even those who never practiced plural marriage, and the Supreme Court upheld it in Davis v. Beason.

Though nearly every faith views Latter-day Saints negatively, Latter-day Saints view every other faith positively, just as Joseph taught us to love everyone.

Joseph Smith was quick to forgive and taught that the closer we get to God, the more we help carry our fellow sinners' burdens.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
The live studio audiencePart two, with the applause track rewrapped, dead mic batteries, and tape coming off like the Grammys (0:59, 6:35, 11:23).
Doctor inflationRichard is introduced as an Atlantic Monthly subscriber, and the email offers "professor and possibly doctor" (0:38, 21:58).
Japanese rice tariffs"It's not a rice tariff, but it's a sugar tariff" (13:42).
Richard and the sports bettingNC State score updates keep coming, and it's a bid thief (13:40, 45:11).
Officer RRichard nearly reveals who Officer R works for; the people in the room know, everyone else doesn't (28:15).
Extreme anti-Mormon mogulsAnti-Mormons doing triple backflips and double 720s off the moguls (8:55, 59:08).
The crack research staffThey'll search for five minutes and never go to page two of Google, which is the dark web (53:10).
Season 38Plural marriage will be covered in season 38 (53:26).
IdahoGerrit's beloved home state and Fred Dubois, the anti-Mormon you'll learn to hate (41:40, 46:25).
One day my prince will comeElizabeth's sister sang that he'd ask her to be his number three; Disney needs a polygamist princess (22:46).
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
The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company and how tariffs shifted Latter-day Saint politics, starting with Matthew Godfrey's work (12:44).
The Reed Smoot hearings and Joseph F. Smith's testimony before the Senate (17:27).
Political cartoons that tied Latter-day Saints to immigrants, anarchists and race (37:26).
The Idaho test oath, Fred Dubois, and Davis v. Beason (49:10).
Joseph Smith's 1842 Relief Society sermons on mercy (1:00:09).
SOT Litner · S4E13.