Women's History Month 2020: Suffrage and Polygamy

Wives of Brigham Young, and Himself Wikipedia

Suffrage. It seems like a very pro-woman, early feminist idea. The radical notion that women should  have equal citizenship rights with men. But what perplexed 19th century suffragists was that women in Utah were some of the earliest to claim suffrage rights even though they lived a principle that appeared to be in total opposition to equal rights. In fact, they believed that Mormon women were enslaved by Mormon men's lust and desire. Many of those Utah women who could vote were living as polygamous wives. 

Nineteenth century, anti-Mormon books were penned by non-Mormon and ex-Mormon women. Authors such as  Jennie Froiseth and Fanny Stenhouse,  whose tell-all book introduction was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, likened polygamy to slavery and insisted that Mormon women were the slaves of Mormondom. Jennie Froiseth, a suffragist,  toured the country and lectured about the evils of polygamy and encouraged membership in the Anti-Polygamy Society. 

An Unsightly Object, Wikipedia

Not surprisingly,  Froiseth and other writers used the slavery analogy to paint a picture that polygamy caused the total degradation of Mormon women. First wives were seen as slaves and victims to their husbands who took younger women as subsequent wives. Subsequent wives blamed the first wife for poor treatment including a lack of basic necessities like food. Slave imagery was used by writers to implore their readers that it was their duty to "free" Mormon women. 

In the fight against polygamy, it was an early belief that enfranchising Mormon women would lead to their voting out Mormon men in power and the practice of polygamy. Many anti-Mormons took this stance as a way to get rid of the "twin-relic of barbarism (slavery and polygamy). Instead, Mormon women used the power of suffrage to vote much like their male spouses and kin did as they supported pro-polygamy candidates. Later, the rally cry of anti-Mormons was that Mormon women could not save themselves, they had to be saved by non-Mormons. "Froiseth, a long time believer in the enfranchisement of women and later the vice president of the Utah Women's Suffrage Association (1888), firmly believed Mormon women should not have the right to vote—at least until polygamy was outlawed. She recognized this was inconsistent with her beliefs about women's rights but concluded, by her own judgement, that Mormon women were too heavily influenced to make voting decisions for themselves" [1]

It would be an understatement to say that Mormon polygamy shook up Victorian America. Polygamy was a scandal second only to slavery. The white, Victorian family was seen as essential to American civilization. American Protestants of the 19th century were outraged by various religious groups an warned of their slavish adherence to leaders like Joseph Smith in the US, and outside the US, the Pope. These groups were the enemy.

Polygamy provided much fodder for women's rights activists in the nineteenth century. In a time when women were rebelling against the repressiveness of Victorianism, Mormonism represented the very worse of American culture- extreme male dominance. 

Resources

"Utah and the 19th Amendment," National Park Service (https://www.nps.gov/articles/utah-women-s-history.htm: accessed 11 March 2020). 

Sisters for Suffrage, Church History Museum (https://history.churchofjesuschrist.org/landing/museum/sisters-for-suffrage?lang=eng: accessed 11 March 2020). 










Information not cited is from Gena Philibert-Ortega's MAR Thesis, Barbarism and Divine Principle: Women's Responses to Nineteenth Century Mormon Polygamy. (Claremont School of Theology (1998)
[1] "Jennie Anderson Froiseth," Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennie_Anderson_Froiseth: accessed 11 March 2020).