Women's suffrage in Utah

An Act Conferring upon Women the Elective Franchise, enacted February 12, 1870

Women's suffrage in Utah was first granted in 1870, in the pre-federal period, decades before statehood. Among all U.S. states, only Wyoming granted suffrage to women earlier than Utah.^[1] However, in 1887 the Edmunds-Tucker Act was passed by Congress in an effort to curtail Mormon influence in the territorial government, disallowing the franchise of the majority of residents of the state.

Repeal by the Edmunds-Tucker Act

One of the provisions of the Edmunds–Tucker Act was the repeal of women's suffrage; full suffrage was not returned until Utah was admitted to the Union in 1896. The opposition of the majority of Utahns to this act was secured by a provision that required a test oath against polygamy. This was broad enough to include the majority of Mormons who were not directly involved in polygamy. All who would not swear this test oath were ineligible to vote, serve on juries, or hold most other government offices. In addition, the Justice Department sent west a host of federal marshals to investigate the private lives of church members. These were unable to identify individuals properly due to the blanket nature of the oath.

Impact on Mormon polygamy

The town of Beaver City was the seat of the federal court and the marshals involved in the holding of women and children there. For this reason the LDS Church issued the 1890 Manifesto renouncing future polygamous marriages solemnized by the Church.^[2]

During the most of the second half of the 19th century federal Laws which deemed each incident of overnight cohabitation a separate felony. Such laws had a chilling effect on the lives of women and children throughout the late 19th century, many of those impacted relocated to other territories or across the border to Mexico or Canada.^[3][4][5]

See also

• Timeline of women's suffrage

Notes

1. National Constitution Center, Map: States grant women the right to vote
2. https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/1.p15?lang=eng
3. History of the Church, unabridged, Deseret Book
4. Comprehensive History of the Church, B.H. Roberts
5. The Story of the Latter-day Saints, Deseret Book, 1976

References

• Alexander, Thomas G. (Winter 1970). "An Experiment in Progressive Legislation: The Granting of Woman Suffrage in Utah in 1870". Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (1): 20–30.
• Beeton, Beverly (Spring 1978). "Woman Suffrage in Territorial Utah". Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (2): 100–20.
• Beeton, Beverly (1986). Women Vote in the West: The Woman Suffrage Movement, 1869-1896. New York: Garland Publishing. ISBN 0-8240-8251-6.
• Clark, Rebekah Ryan (2005). "An Uncovered History: Mormons in the Woman Suffrage Movement, 1896-1920". In Madsen, Carol Cornwall; Silver, Cherry B. New Scholarship on Latter-day Saint Women in the Twentieth Century: Selections from the Women's History Initiative Seminars, 2003-2004. Symposium Proceedings in Latter-day Saint History. Provo, Utah: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. pp. 19–38. ISBN 0-8425-2630-7.
• Madsen, Carol Cornwall, ed. (1997). Battle for the Ballot: Essays on Woman Suffrage in Utah, 1870-1896. Logan: Utah State University Press. ISBN 0-87421-222-7.
• Van Wagenen, Lola (1994). "Unity, Victory, Discord--The Struggle to Achieve Woman Suffrage". Beehive History 20: 2–8.
• Van Wagenen, Lola (2003). Sister-Wives and Suffragists: Polygamy and the Politics of Woman Suffrage, 1870-1896. Dissertations in Latter-day Saint History. Provo, Utah: Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History. ISBN 0-8425-2525-4.
• White, Jean Bickmore (Fall 1974). "Woman's Place Is in the Constitution: The Struggle for Equal Rights in Utah in 1895". Utah Historical Quarterly 42 (4): 344–69.
• White, Jean Bickmore (1994), "Women's Suffrage in Utah", in Powell, Allan Kent, Utah History Encyclopedia, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, ISBN 0-87480-425-6, OCLC 30473917