In
January 1867, Congress passed legislation prohibiting the territories from discrimination
based on race, making any territorial ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment
symbolic (“Universal Suffrage in the Territories,” Weekly Champion and Press
[Atchison, Jans.], February 14, 1867, 1). Utah was eager to show its
support for the amendments; the Union had won, and the Saints knew they needed
to side with the allies. They hoped the gesture would persuade northern states
to support Utah statehood. Meanwhile, other western states and territories
dragged their feet. Idaho Territory agreed to the federal legislation in 1874 (George
Connor and Christopher Hammons, eds., The Constitutionalism of American
States [Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008], 612). Oregon
rejected the amendment outright in 1870 and did not adopt it until 1959 (Patricia
Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West [New
York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1987], 279. See also Quintard Taylor, In
Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West [New
York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1999], 336 note 54). California waited until
1962 (Linda Peavey and Ursula Smith, Pioneer Women: The Lives of Women on
the Frontier [Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996], 131). Thomas L.
Kane saw Utah’s willingness to support the hotly debated Fifteenth Amendment as
leverage to persuade the Republican Party to support Utah statehood: “I have
proposed to our party leaders . . . to carry the Fifteenth Amendment by the
admission of a number of new States including Utah. They ought to see
now more plainly that they need her” (Thomas L. Kane, Letter to Brigham Young,
October 13, 1869, Brigham Young Office Files, Box 40, fd. 14, CHL). To expedite
the territory’s support, the territorial legislature opted to forgo a
constitutional convention, submitted amendments “erasing the word ‘white’” from
the constitution, then ratified the document by popular vote—14,000 to 30 (Brigham
Young, Letter to William H. Hopper, January 31, 1867; Brigham Young, Letter to
Thomas L. Kane, October 26, 1869, MSS 792, Box 15, fd. 4, HBLL). Whatever
Brigham had said in 1852 about blacks participating in government (“Negroes
shall not rule us, . . . I will not consent for the seed of Cain to vote for me
or my brethren),” he was more than willing to accommodate the federal government
now (For his comments from 1852 on the black vote, see Collier, The
Teachings of Brigham Young, 3:49-50). Since territories had no ratifying
power, Utah’s support amounted to a symbolic show of support for the new racial
order. (Russell Stevenson, Black Mormon: The Story of Elijah Ables [2013],
60-62, emphasis in bold added)
