The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History

During the nineteenth century, as the territory of Utah pursued statehood, it faced intense national scrutiny. The innate protestant values of American conservatism brought constant backlash to the Utah territory as republican lobbyists continually pushed for disenfranchising polygamists in the name of upholding traditional values. As Utah was one of the first territories to grant women suffrage, the rest of the nation believed Mormon women were victims of polygamy and coerced into voting for their husbands’ choices: the rhetoric that women were suffering from Mormonism is a continual ideology present from before the Civil War and up until the eventual acceptance of Utah’s constitution in the late 1880s. In retaliation, the suffragists advocated for their autonomy through protests and media, in conjunction with the national suffrage movement. This paper situates the Mormon Suffragists as the center of political activism in the Utah territory as they combatted both religious intolerance and gender discrimination, all amid statehood application.