Thursday, February 4, 2021

B.H. Roberts vs. Emmeline Wells et al.

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)