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Fact check: What role did slavery play in the early history of the Mormon church?
Executive Summary
The early Mormon church’s history in Utah included enslavement and racial debates that shaped territorial laws and ecclesiastical practice; recent primary-source work shows leaders like Brigham Young and Orson Pratt publicly clashed over slavery and Black voting rights during the 1852 legislative session, and these debates contributed to a long-lasting ban on Black priesthood and voting restrictions [1] [2]. New digital archives and academic forums assembled by historians such as W. Paul Reeve have broadened access to those primary sources and reframed how scholars and the Church confront this legacy [2] [3].
1. Database uncovers a buried legal and rhetorical battle over slavery in Utah
A digital collection titled This Abominable Slavery aggregates primary documents from the 1852 Utah legislative session and related records, exposing speeches and motions that reveal active debate over slavery, voting rights, and race among territorial leaders. The database includes speeches by Brigham Young and Orson Pratt that demonstrate diverging positions: Young opposed voting rights for Black men while Pratt advocated for their enfranchisement, and the legislative outcome reflected Young’s influence, producing restrictions that later tied into ecclesiastical practice [2] [1]. The archival release has prompted scholars to reconsider the lawmaking context of early territorial Utah [2].
2. Leaders’ words mattered: Brigham Young’s stance and its institutional consequences
Primary sources collected in the recent database show Brigham Young’s 1852 rhetoric characterized by opposition to Black civil and political equality, and historians link the prominence of his voice in territorial governance to the adoption of restrictive laws and subsequent Church policy that barred Black men from priesthood ordination for almost 130 years. Scholars argue this departure from earlier practices associated with Joseph Smith became embedded in policy and culture, affecting both civil law in Utah Territory and internal Church ordinances through the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries [4] [1] [2].
3. Internal dissent: Orson Pratt and counterarguments to exclusion
The primary evidence compiled in the database includes Orson Pratt’s speeches advocating for Black male suffrage and civil rights, offering a documented counterpoint to Young’s stance within early LDS leadership. Pratt’s position demonstrates that early Mormon leadership was not monolithic on race and slavery; contemporary scholars use these records to show the existence of principled opposition within the Church hierarchy. The presence of recorded dissent complicates narratives that attribute policies solely to doctrinal inevitability, indicating political, regional, and personal factors also shaped outcomes [1] [2].
4. Scholarly gatherings and institutional reckoning at BYU and beyond
Academic conferences, including events at Brigham Young University, have convened to examine the “unsettling truths” revealed by these archives, bringing historians, archivists, and Church-affiliated audiences into dialogue. These forums emphasize both the documentation of Indigenous and African American servitude and the need for institutional reckoning; presenters argue that understanding the legal and rhetorical origins of racial restrictions is essential for contemporary reconciliation efforts. The conferences and database releases function as catalysts for new scholarship and for Church leaders and members to confront difficult aspects of their institutional past [3] [2].
5. Indigenous enslavement and broader patterns beyond African chattel slavery
The archival materials highlighted by historians include evidence of Indigenous servitude and indenture in Utah Territory, complicating the narrower narrative of African chattel slavery. Historians assembling the database emphasize that early Utah’s labor and race practices encompassed multiple forms of coercion, which intersected with Mormon settlement patterns, territorial governance, and missionary encounters. This broader view shifts attention from a single-institution explanation toward a regional labor system in which Church leaders and settlers participated in, debated, and legislated over coerced labor practices [2].
6. Relief Society records and women's experiences add nuance to the story
Women’s organizational records, notably those associated with the Relief Society, provide fragmentary but revealing insights into household dynamics, slaveholding, and the lived experiences of both enslaved and free women in Mormon communities. While some Relief Society minutes and meetings do not explicitly narrate slavery, subsequent archival analysis suggests the organization operated within a social world where slavery, polygamy, and gendered labor intersected. These sources complicate monolithic portrayals by documenting varied female responses and roles in the social economy of nineteenth-century Mormon settlements [5] [6].
7. What the sources agree on and where questions remain
Across the digital archives and conference literature, scholars converge on several facts: slavery and indentured servitude occurred in early Utah, key leaders publicly debated civil rights in 1852, and those debates influenced territorial law and Church practice for decades [2] [1]. Disagreements persist over the weight of doctrinal versus political motives, the degree of institutional culpability versus individual agency, and how to contextualize Indigenous servitude alongside African enslavement. Ongoing archival work and multidisciplinary scholarship continue to refine timelines and causal links, urging transparency and further research [1] [4] [3].