I am a fan of B.H. Roberts (his The Truth, The Way, The Life is a personal fave), but also a fan of Emmeline Wells. They once “butted heads” over the issue of woman suffrage:
Election of B.H.
Roberts
Trained in early
childhood as a blacksmith, without formal education until his teens, B.H. Roberts
graduated from the University of Deseret (University of Utah) as class
valedictorian in 1878, and began a career as a teacher, writer, and orator.
After significant mission work in England, Roberts returned to Utah in 1888 and
was appointed to the LDS First Council of Seventy. Roberts was a committed
polygamist who married three wives and who initially disapproved of the
Woodruff Manifesto—reputedly calling it “a cowardly proceeding” (Edward Leo
Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood [Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1986], 261).
As a delegate to
Utah’s 1895 constitutional convention, which was held preparatory to its last
and successful bid for statehood, Roberts led the opposition to the inclusion
of Utah woman suffrage. In opposing the woman suffrage plank, Roberts
conflicted with the church-endorsed campaign of the Mormon women’s Relief
Society (Jean Bickmore White, “Woman’s Place in the Constitution: the Struggle
for Equal Rights in Utah in 1895,” Essays on the American West, 1973-1974,
edited by Thomas G. Alexander [Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press,
1975], 91-92). Roberts believed that attaching woman suffrage to the proposed
state constitution would be an obstacle to Utah’s admission statehood (Truman
Madsen, Defender of the Faith, 218). He framed his opposition to woman
suffrage in the classic conservative rhetoric of that time, arguing that he
placed “woman upon a higher pinnacle.” He had, he declared: “a higher respect
for her [woman] than . . . to drag her into the arena of political life” (“Meetings
of Women,” Salt Lake Tribune, n.d., Scrapbook, Brigham Roberts
Collection, LDS archives). Despite the opposition, the woman suffrage provision
was included in the completed state constitution and Utah was admitted to
statehood with the vote restored to Utah’s women. After the Utah women achieved
the vote, Susan B. Anthony and Dr. Anna Shaw (1847-1919) visited Salt Lake
City. Shaw later recalled that the Mormon women had wanted her to challenge Roberts
to a debate on woman suffrage but that Roberts had refused because “he was not
willing to lower himself to the intellectual plane of a woman” (Anna Howard
Shaw, The Story of a Pioneer [New York: Harper, 1915], 283).
Therefore, the Mormon
women did not greet Roberts’ candidacy for Congress in 1898 favorably. At the
request of a “prominent Mormon woman” (Emmeline B. Wells?) (“That Polygamous
Congressman,” Clipping. Alice Stone Blackwell Scrapbook, Library of congress),
Susan B. Anthony had sent a letter to the Utah papers urging the women of Utah
not to vote for Roberts. Other prominent Mormons, both Republicans, publicly
opposed Roberts' candidacy. Governor Heber M. Wells (1859-1938), Emmeline Wells’
nephew, predicted that Roberts’ election would be to the detriment of Utah.
George Q. Cannon, church leader, also expressed his disapproval of Roberts’
candidacy (Madsen, Defender of Faith, 244).
The most vehement
attack upon Roberts came from the Salt Lake ministers and the Republican press,
and it focused upon Roberts’ polygamy (B.H. Roberts. A Comprehensive History
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. [Salt Lake
City: Brigham Young University Press, 1922], 6:362-63). Despite this, Roberts
was successfully elected on November 8th with a substantial vote, but his
victory did not end the controversy. Within a month, the Reverend William Paden
of the Salt Lake City First Presbyterian Church called a meeting of the
Ministerial Association. The Association launched a campaign to prevent Roberts
from being seated, although there was no precedent for congressional rejection
of a duly-elected member of the House of Representatives. A new antipolygamy
crusade had begun. (Joan Smyth Iversen, The Antipolygamy Controversy in U.S.
Women’s Movements, 1880-1925 [London: Routledge, 1997], 187-88)
