THE MORMON QUESTION ENTERS NATIONAL POLITICS, 1850-1856 BY RICHARD D. POLL*
TN the years immediately preceding the Civil War, the "Mormon •*• Question" figured in American life in a dual capacity. On one hand, the peculiarities of the Latter-day Saints appealed to the reform spirit which was particularly strong at the time. On the other hand, the assumed desirability of prohibiting the "domestic institution" of plural marriage suggested to antislavery spokesmen the political argument which was embodied in the "twin relics of barbarism" plank of the Republican platform of 1856. If Congress did not have the power to curb the marital excesses of the Saints, how were they to be checked? And if Congress did have such power, might it not also be exercised to exclude the "peculiar institution" of the South from the territories? The interrelation of reformism and sectionalism in the national approach to Utah affairs is one of the intriguing features of the history of the ante-bellum decade. Neither the moral nor the political aspect of the "Mormon Question" appears to have been noticed in the organization of Utah Territory. On the contrary, the desultory discussions of Utah during the debates on the Compromise of 1850 prompted Delegate John M. Bernhisel to write to Brigham Young: "The ignorance of the collected wisdom of the nation in regard to our region of country is most profound."1 The rejection of Deseret's bid for statehood was an aspect of the contest for sectional advantage, rather than a judgment upon any of the qualifications of the residents of the Great Basin except, perhaps, their insufficient numbers. Failure of the effort to attach the Wilmot Proviso to the organic act caused antislavery congressmen to lose interest in Utah, and the Mormons were indebted to Southerners and Northern advocates of "popular sover> eignty" for the government which they received.2 *Dr. Poll is chairman of the History Department at Brigham Young University, and this article is based in part upon the author's doctoral dissertation, "The Mormon Question, 1850-1865: A Study in Politics and Public Opinion," completed at the University of California, Berkeley. ijoumal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, entry of September 7, 1850, in Church Historian's Office, Salt Lake City. Congressional Globe, 31 Cong., 1 sess., appendix, 1485, 1776. The House rejected the Wilmot Proviso amendment, 69 to 78.