The Idaho Anti-Mormon Test Oath, 1884-1892

Abstract

HOSTILITY AGAINST THE MORMONS in Idaho was so intense that in 1884 the legislature directed a test act against the offending Saints. No member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints thereafter could vote, hold office, or serve on a jury. Almost a fouth of the territory's population was afflicted. Issues of denial of civil liberties through the enforcement of this test oath were argued in the United States Congress and before the United States Supreme Court in 189o, but without reversal of Idaho's proscriptive oath. Not until 1892, with settlement of the polygamy controversy and withdrawal of the Mormon church from politics, did the Idaho legislature relent and rescind the oath. For some years Mormons had constituted an important minority in Idaho. A Utah boundary survey, approved February 15, 1872, transferred a number of substantial Mormon settlements to Idaho jurisdiction. Thereafter, the largest Mormon population outside Utah was in southern Idaho. An organized anti-Mormon movement, matching one which had just commenced in Utah, stirred southeastern Idaho shortly after the boundary survey. Its inception can be traced in part to attempts to halt Mormon expansion northward from Utah; to distrust engendered by Mormon social and religious separatism; to reaction against economic codperatives, which the Mormons introduced in 1868 and adopted widely in 1874; and to objection to the Mormon custom of unanimous, cooperative voting for Democratic political candidates. The Independent Anti-Mormon party of Oneida County captured southeastern Idaho in 1874 and remained in office for almost a decade. Shifting patterns of settlement, however, led to disorganization and to local collapse of the anti-Mormon movement in the elections of 188o and 1882.