The Mormon-Suffrage Relationship: Personal and Political Quandaries

Abstract

The nineteenth-century history of the women's suffrage movement, the schism between the National (Anthony-Stanton) and the American (Stone-Blackwell) suffrage associations, and the rise of the mass of women energized by the temperance crusade has a rarely told subplot, the story of the Mormonsuffrage relationship-an alliance fraught with political, ideological, and personal difficulties. This relationship exacerbated the tensions between the rival suffrage groups, and when the middle-class evangelical women of the social purity movement turned to an antipolygamy crusade in the 1880s, the individuals within the alliance confronted both personal and political dilemmas. Along the uneasy path of the Mormon-suffrage relationship, leading suffragists took positions that sometimes were dictated by political expediency and at other times evolved from strongly held views of marriage, morality, and/or civil liberties. This paper examines the political and personal quandaries created for some of the leaders of the movement as the