This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah

by W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich

On July 22, 1847, a group of about forty refugees entered the Salt Lake Valley. Among them were three enslaved men, two of whom shared the religion, Mormonism, that had caused them to flee. The valley was also home to members of the Ute tribe, who would sometimes barter captive women and children to Spanish colonizers. Thus, the question of whether the Latter-day Saints would accept or reject slavery in their new Zion confronted them on the day they first arrived. Five years later, after Utah had become an American territory, its legislature was prodded to take up the question then roiling the would they be slave or free?

George D. Watt, the official reporter for the 1852 legislative session, reported debates and speeches in Pitman shorthand. They remained in their original format, virtually untouched, for more than one hundred and fifty years, until LaJean Purcell Carruth transcribed them. In this eye-opening volume, Carruth, Christopher Rich, and W. Paul Reeve draw extensively on these new sources to chronicle the session, during which the legislature passed two important one that legally transformed African American slaves into "servants" but did not pass the condition of servitude on to their children and another that authorized twenty-year indentures for enslaved Native Americans.

This Abominable Slavery places these debates within the context of the nation's growing sectional divide and contextualizes the meaning of these laws in the lives of Black enslaved people and Native American indentured servants. In doing so, it sheds new light on race, religion, slavery, and unfree labor in the antebellum period.

Genres: History

312 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2024

About the author

W. Paul Reeve is Chair of the History Department and Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah where he teaches courses on Utah history, Mormon history, and the history of the U.S. West. His book, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, (Oxford, 2015) received the Mormon History Association’s Best Book Award, the John Whitmer Historical Association’s Smith-Pettit Best Book Award, and the Utah State Historical Society’s Francis Armstrong Madsen Best History Book Award. In 2023, Deseret Book published his Let's Talk about Race and Priesthood, with a foreword by Darius Gray. He is the recipient of the Utah Council for the Social Studies’ University Teacher of the Year award. He is Project Manager and General Editor of a digital database, Century of Black Mormons, designed to identify all known Black Latter-day Saints baptized between 1830 and 1930. The database is live at http://centuryofblackmormons.org

Reviews

[Erik Champenois · Rating 5 out of 5]

"This Abominable Slavery" covers two legislative acts in Utah in 1852: An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners, and An Act in Relation to Service. A somewhat dense but extremely informative book that contextualizes these acts through covering both the status of different types of labor, servitude, and slavery in early America, and the history of slavery among the Latter-day Saints up to 1852. Servitude in early America encompassed not only slavery, but other inegalitarian forms of labor, including apprenticeship, which Brigham Young himself experienced as a youth.

The intent of the legislative acts discussed here was to draw a moderate position that would avoid capture by the pro-slavery and anti-slavery politics of the day. For example, African Americans were to serve more as indentured servants than as property, with their existence in Utah in theory requiring their consent to move and serve their enslaver/employer. There were no more than about 56 at a time, or a total of 100 over time, enslaved people in pre-Civil War Utah. In practice, the enslaved likely did not experience the legislative acts as fostering an atmosphere any different than that experienced elsewhere in the nation.

An important and informative work that includes treatment of debates between Brigham Young and Orson Pratt - with the latter condemning the Act in Relation to Service as getting too close to slavery. Foundational for understanding the intersection of LDS and African-American history, Native American history, and the messy origins of the LDS race ban.

[Gene Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of Brigham Young’s Mistakes

Apostle Dieter Uchtdorf famously and openly acknowledged over the pulpit in general conference that past presidents have made mistakes and are therefore not infallible. This book is the forgotten story of such highly consequential mistakes by then president Brigham Young that took over a century to be recognized and repudiated by his successors as Church presidents. Countless people suffered the consequences of these mistakes including a racism that still persists among the membership despite the relatively recent repudiation by the current president Nelson. Leaders have recently and repeatedly expressed racist ideas that have required repeated official reiteration of the repudiation of all racism. This book shines a needed light on this story of the mistakes that will contribute to the purging of residual racism among members. Those who pretend they are not racist and that this story is just woke propaganda may perpetuate these mistakes to some degree longer but eventually the sincerely apologetic acceptance of the responsibility personally to root out these vestiges of historical racism will prevail as this story is remembered and repeated throughout the membership of the Church and those whose ancestors and predecessors were Church members. Pretending there isn’t any racism today is simply willful ignorance of the worst kind.

[David Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

BOOK REVIEW -This Abominable Slavery, Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah, by W. Paul Reeve (01.12.25)

This book is unflinching honesty and a work of profound moral clarity. It is an essential, painful, and ultimately hopeful examination of a neglected chapter in American and Mormon history. Reeve does not write with an ax to grind. He writes with the precision of a scholar, the humility to see both the triumphs and tragedies of history, and clear-eyed empathy, Reeve confronts the troubling realities of race, slavery, and theology in 19th-century Utah Territory, placing the Latter-day Saints squarely in the broader American struggle over human bondage.

Reeve’s study demonstrates how the early LDS Church, often seen as a persecuted minority on the American frontier, paradoxically became entangled in the moral and legal defense of slavery, both African and Indigenous, at a time when the rest of the nation was careening toward civil war. Drawing on sermons, legislative records, and personal correspondence, Reeve lays bare the theological justifications for racial bondage advanced by some Mormon leaders, including Brigham Young.

Paul could not have achieved this seminal work without the assistance of LaJean Purcell Carruth, one of the only people on the planet that knows Pitman shorthand. Kathleen and I met her a few years ago at the Mormon History Association conference in Rochester. We sat next to her at lunch one day and had a fascinating conversation with her about her work. The legislative minutes lay bare the conflict between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions that to some degree ran along geographical lines of early Mormons depending on the region of their origin prior to joining the LDS church and migrating to the Utah Territory. He shows how these ideas were not anomalies but were embedded in efforts to define Utah's social order and the racial hierarchy it sought to preserve.

To read this book is to grapple with the dissonance of a faith that proclaimed prophetic revelation and divine destiny while enacting policies that dehumanized others in the name of religious doctrine. Reeve does not sensationalize; he documents. His tone is not accusatory, but responsible, insisting that history be accountable to truth, even when truth is difficult. And not be completely brushed aside by the excuse that the past is always a product if it’s era. It is much more complex.

Yet what makes This Abominable Slavery more than a historical autopsy is its insistence on moral reckoning. Reeve’s work is animated by a clear belief that confronting the past is not an act of condemnation, but of repentance. In so doing, he offers a model for how faith communities can wrestle with their histories not to excuse or erase them, but to transform them. This is a book that asks hard questions not just of the LDS Church, but of anyone willing to reflect on the intersection of race, religion, and power.

Reeve’s work emerges at a time when both America and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are slowly, unevenly, but undeniably beginning to reckon with past injustices. This book contributes mightily to that effort. Its scholarship is impeccable, its moral vision bracing, and its hope grounded not in forgetting, but in remembering well. Reeve landmark work is painful, necessary, and ultimately redemptive. It is a gift to the present and a challenge to the future.

On a personal note, I learned more about my maternal 3 GGF Abrham Smoot. He was a well-off convert from the Southern States. When the Saints moved westward, he joined the trek with some of his slaves and thus was one of the first slave owners in the territory. Family folklore for generations was that good old grandpa graciously freed his slaves after they arduous trek.to the desert of the Salt Lake Valley. Turns out that was not exactly the case. Grandpa was a wealthy man. He became the first mayor of Provo and the 1st president of the Brigham Young Academy, now BYU. His statue resides in front of the administration building that bears his name. His son later became an Apostle of the church and a long-serving US Senator. His name graces one of the worst legislative actions in history, the Smoot-Hawley Act.

Selected Quotes:

“Slavery in Utah was not an aberration; it was a system sanctioned, structured, and sustained by religious conviction and legislative authority.”

“The stain of racial servitude, once justified in the name of divine will, calls for repentance not only in belief, but in institutional memory.”

“To know the past honestly is not to wallow in guilt—it is to prepare the soul for the labor of reconciliation.”

“Mormonism’s 19th-century entanglement with slavery should not be dismissed as a relic of the times. It is a mirror held to the face of a faith still learning how to see.”

[Kevin Folkman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the fall of 1852, Haden Church crossed the plains to settle in Utah, bringing with him a Black slave known only as Tom. Shortly thereafter, Church sold Tom to Salt Lake City Mayor Abraham Smoot for whom he labored until his death in 1862. Tom died not knowing that as a slave entering the Utah Territory his legal status was no longer as a slave, but as an indentured servant who had the right to vote and to consent to his transfer of servitude from Church to Smoot. In effect, although the territorial legislature banned slavery and set up various levels of servitude in 1852, Tom’s actual status and living conditions were not noticeably different than that of slaves in the antebellum South.

This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah by co-authors Paul Reeve, Christopher Rich, and LaJean Carruth is the best of history, going far beyond the typical questions of what happened to explain the more important questions of how and why. Utilizing recently transcribed accounts of the 1852 Utah Territorial Legislature, the authors reveal the complexity of Utah slavery during the challenging years leading up to the outbreak of the U.S.Civil War. Beyond just the question of Black slavery, Utah’s settlers were also dealing with the violence of Indian slave trading, and issues of apprenticeships and voluntary servitude.

As Reeve and his co-authors relate, the problems surrounding Black Slavery were complicated by abolitionist pioneers from New England, wealthy converts from the South who held slaves as property, and an 1852 federal law banning slavery in the territories unless approved by the territorial legislatures. In addition, Indian slave traders had been active in the Great Basin long before the Saints arrived in 1847. Within months of the pioneer’s arrival, an Indian named Baptiste offered two teen-aged Indian slaves to Charles Decker, a son-in-law to Brigham Young. When the offer was rebuffed, Baptiste immediately killed one captive, prompting Decker to purchase the other. Such scenes played out far too often, prompting a need for a resolution to the Indian slave trade. Add to this that many of the new arrivals in Utah financed their travel using the Perpetual Emigration Fund. Upon arrival in Utah Territory they found themselves in an economy where cash was almost non-existent, forcing then into a form of servitude to repay their debts to the Fund.

The 1852 session of the Utah Territorial Legislature then became a focal point for the debate over slavery and servitude as they grappled with the underlying realities of the problem. As most members of the legislature were also leaders in the LDS church, the debates took on a theological as well as political slant. Brigham Young often found himself arguing with apostle Orson Pratt and other church leaders over the status of Blacks in the church.

Eventually, the legislature passed two laws, one outlawing slavery and regulating various forms of servitude, and another to specifically address the matter of Indian slave trading. Both laws attempted to regulate servitude by requiring slaves brought to Utah and also purchased Indian slaves to be registered as servants via a process involving probate courts and the consent of those entering such arrangements. They also regulated all persons who entered into servitude and apprenticeship arrangements.

On February 5, 1852, the day after the two laws had been passed, Brigham Young took the opportunity of addressing the issues of race and slavery in theological terms, a speech that the authors argue is “perhaps the most important speech [Young] ever gave.” [p161] In that speech, never published in the Journal of Discourses or the Deseret News, Young laid out his views on race and the priesthood that had held implications reaching down into the 21st Century. Wilford Woodruff made notes that covered only a fraction of the speech, and with some inaccuracies. In Young’s speech, only recently transcribed from George Watt’s unique version of Pitman shorthand, the Church President and Territorial Governor claimed that Blacks were of the seed of Cain, and thus were cursed to be servants and could not hold the church’s priesthood, nor serve in civic leadership. Young’s views on the “Curse of Cain” were adapted from the standard theories of race in Jacksonian America, but took on extra theological weight when Young declared “If they cannot bear rule in the church of God, what business have they in bearing rule in the state and government of this territory?” [165]

As noted in the case of the slave Tom mentioned above, while laws had been implemented and a process put in place to regulate a post-slavery environment, the law was not well known and frequently ignored, nor were penalties applied to those who violated the provisions of the laws. When the U.S. Congress banned slavery outright in the territories in 1862, the relative isolation of Utah and its remoteness still made the transition an uneven and inconsistent process. Even with a relatively small number of slaves in the territory, such examples like Tom’s were not uncommon.

In This Abominable Slavery Reeve and his co-authors have delivered a hugely important contribution to our understanding of slavery and the beginnings of the temple/priesthood ban. There are lessons to be learned here regarding how we relate to the intersection of history and religion. The past is always seen through a murky lens but works such as This Abominable Slavery go a long way in providing much-needed clarity on both our past and the present.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

This excellent book offers a comprehensive re-evaluation of human bondage in Antebellum Utah, drawing on newly discovered Pitman shorthand transcripts from the 1852 legislative session (among other things). It integrates Utah’s experience into the broader national debate on slavery, challenging previous misconceptions. The study reveals complex “kaleidoscopic labor categories” beyond a simple free/slave binary view, including various forms of voluntary and involuntary servitude. It highlights Brigham Young’s approach favoring “servitude” over chattel slavery, contrasted with Orson Pratt’s outspoken opposition, viewing such servitude as outright slavery. The book also provides dual perspectives, analyzing legislative intent alongside the lived realities of enslaved African American and Indigenous individuals.

[Kendall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thinking about all the work that went into this book makes my head hurt. I am so grateful that these historians were willing to do that work. I feel like I now have a better understanding of how the issue of slavery fed into the issue of Black people's role in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Things usually become clearer with context, and in many ways that was true of this book. I still have so many questions that I don't think I'll ever get answers to in this life, but I'm learning to be okay with that.