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The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South
"It incarnates every unclean beast of lust, guile, falsehood, murder, despotism and spiritual wickedness." So wrote a prominent Southern Baptist official in 1899 of Mormonism. Rather than the "quintessential American religion," as it has been dubbed by contemporary scholars, in the late nineteenth century Mormonism was America's most vilified homegrown faith. A vast national campaign featuring politicians, church leaders, social reformers, the press, women's organizations, businessmen, and ordinary citizens sought to end the distinctive Latter-day Saint practice of plural marriage, and to extinguish the entire religion if need be.
Placing the movement against polygamy in the context of American and southern history, Mason demonstrates that anti-Mormonism was one of the earliest vehicles for reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Southerners joined with northern reformers and Republicans to endorse the use of newly expanded federal power to vanquish the perceived threat to Christian marriage and the American republic.
Anti-Mormonism was a significant intellectual, legal, religious, and cultural phenomenon, but in the South it was also violent. While southerners were concerned about distinctive Mormon beliefs and political practices, they were most alarmed at the "invasion" of Mormon missionaries in their communities and the prospect of their wives and daughters falling prey to polygamy. Moving to defend their homes and their honor against this threat, southerners turned to legislation, to religion, and, most dramatically, to vigilante violence.
The Mormon Menace provides new insights into some of the most important discussions of the late nineteenth century and of our own age, including debates over the nature and limits of religious freedom; the contest between the will of the people and the rule of law; and the role of citizens, churches, and the state in regulating and defining marriage.
Placing the movement against polygamy in the context of American and southern history, Mason demonstrates that anti-Mormonism was one of the earliest vehicles for reconciliation between North and South after the Civil War and Reconstruction. Southerners joined with northern reformers and Republicans to endorse the use of newly expanded federal power to vanquish the perceived threat to Christian marriage and the American republic.
Anti-Mormonism was a significant intellectual, legal, religious, and cultural phenomenon, but in the South it was also violent. While southerners were concerned about distinctive Mormon beliefs and political practices, they were most alarmed at the "invasion" of Mormon missionaries in their communities and the prospect of their wives and daughters falling prey to polygamy. Moving to defend their homes and their honor against this threat, southerners turned to legislation, to religion, and, most dramatically, to vigilante violence.
The Mormon Menace provides new insights into some of the most important discussions of the late nineteenth century and of our own age, including debates over the nature and limits of religious freedom; the contest between the will of the people and the rule of law; and the role of citizens, churches, and the state in regulating and defining marriage.
252 pages, Hardcover
First published December 30, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 8, 2014
Very well written and very interesting arguments. Mason does a great job of using sources to solidify his arguments. I am really interested in the history of the South, the history of Mormonism, and the Postbellum period. So this book was a great read.
Mason's main argument throughout the book seems to be that polygamy was the big issue for Southerners. They were afraid the Mormon missionaries were going to convert their wives and daughters and then steal them away to Utah to be confined to a life of misery as a plural wife. Mason argues that there were over 300 incidents of violence toward the Mormons between 1875 and 1900, much of it threats of whippings and running them out of the county. Some of these episodes did end in violence, like Joseph Standing's murder and the Cane Creek massacre.
Mason argues that violence to the Mormons was fairly unique to the South because of the vigilante culture, and the sense of honor Southern (white) men had to protect (white) womanhood. The Southern argument spilled over into the national scene with the Edmunds Act of 1882 and the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which put severe restrictions and penalties on polygamists.
Mason concludes with case studies from the Jewish and Catholic communities of the South and how they assimilated into Southern Protestant culture resulting in less violence towards them as religious communities than as ethnic and social groups; whereas the Mormon community saw themselves as a separate (and better) religious community that also caused a general feeling of animosity between them and the Southerners.
A very interesting and compelling argument. If you're interested in this kind of history I highly recommend.
Mason's main argument throughout the book seems to be that polygamy was the big issue for Southerners. They were afraid the Mormon missionaries were going to convert their wives and daughters and then steal them away to Utah to be confined to a life of misery as a plural wife. Mason argues that there were over 300 incidents of violence toward the Mormons between 1875 and 1900, much of it threats of whippings and running them out of the county. Some of these episodes did end in violence, like Joseph Standing's murder and the Cane Creek massacre.
Mason argues that violence to the Mormons was fairly unique to the South because of the vigilante culture, and the sense of honor Southern (white) men had to protect (white) womanhood. The Southern argument spilled over into the national scene with the Edmunds Act of 1882 and the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which put severe restrictions and penalties on polygamists.
Mason concludes with case studies from the Jewish and Catholic communities of the South and how they assimilated into Southern Protestant culture resulting in less violence towards them as religious communities than as ethnic and social groups; whereas the Mormon community saw themselves as a separate (and better) religious community that also caused a general feeling of animosity between them and the Southerners.
A very interesting and compelling argument. If you're interested in this kind of history I highly recommend.
May 28, 2011
In the interests of full disclosure, I am personally acquainted with the author and have the utmost respect for his scholarship. In addition, I am Mormon myself, I lived in the south from 1989-2000, and I have a religion degree. I also have at least one ancestor, a great-great grandfather, who served in the Southern States mission in the 1890s. I really enjoyed this book. Prior to reading it, I didn't know any of the details of anti-Mormon activity in the South in the period, but I was confident that there had been some. I was startled to learn the specifics of the violence because it was new to me, but at the same time it was not surprising. I had much more sympathy with the anti-Mormon position of many southerners than I expected. Crossing the line into violence and murder lost the sympathy, though. I was entertained by some of the elaborate mental hoops being jumped through by both Mormons and those who railed against them. Patrick Mason's work magnifies a little known segment of history and places it in a helpful broader context of what was happening on the national scene at the time. I will be passing my copy on to other members of my family, and no doubt they will also enjoy it.
January 3, 2012
Here you will find one person's answer to why the Southern states were such a dangerous place for Mormon missionaries between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the century.It is scholarly and well done. The conclusions make sense. It is difficult for Mormons to listen to all the rhetoric that vilifies and dehumanizes the leadership they freely choose to follow. This book is helpful in shedding some light on the basic misunderstandings that brought about the vigilante actions in the Southern states and which continue to be trotted out from town to time even in our more enlightened and tolerant present.
March 15, 2014
An interesting analysis (with some riveting, heart-breaking stories) of how Mormon's were treated in the South in the late 1800's. The reason behind nearly all of the persecution (according to the author, and he makes a very good case) was the clash between Mormon's practice of polygamy and the South's Victorian mores. Southern men viewed it as their duty to protect their women from the horror of polygamy. I found it very interesting that the reasoning of the southern preachers against polygamy is the exact same reasoning advanced today against gay marriage (e.g., "traditional families are the foundation of a stable society").
August 2, 2011
Mason explores the intersection of mainstream and marginal by describing what southern hospitality might have meant to early Mormon missionaries. The southern male, who defined his role as being a protector of female virtue and the home, used violent means to combat polygamy-espousing proselytors. Full review later.
February 17, 2012
Patrick does a fine job of explaining why southerners showed so much animosity towards the saints.
June 4, 2020
Perhaps reading this book just as George Floyd was killed and riots broke out across the U.S. was not the most timely choice for me. This book gave me an understanding of the South that I hadn't quite all put together before, but the southern code of honor Mason details here in conversation with Mormon missionaries is still very much with us. That is not a compliment. The sexism, misogyny, violence, racism, religious idiocy, and disdain for law and order that was used to violent effect against Mormons in the 19th century (Mason does talk briefly towards the end about violence against Jews and Catholics as well, and notes throughout the book that of course it was worse for African-Americans) is still very much with us.
I didn't really like the south much before I read this book. Now I have absolute disdain for it.
The book is a passable discussion of southern culture when dealing with outsiders, namely Mormons. But all it really did is make me hate southern culture. That's what I get for reading this book these past two or so weeks.
I didn't really like the south much before I read this book. Now I have absolute disdain for it.
The book is a passable discussion of southern culture when dealing with outsiders, namely Mormons. But all it really did is make me hate southern culture. That's what I get for reading this book these past two or so weeks.
August 25, 2011
It was really interesting reading this book in the context of the upcoming presidential election with very viable Mormon candidates and the usual talk about the religious right's antipathy toward Mormonism. As Mason's book shows, villifying Mormons is a practice more than a century old and it is fascinating to find that the arguments, both justified and unjustified, haven't really changed in all that time. The book is only about 200 pages, making it very approachable for a scholarly work, and it has a few great images from the late 1800s -- political cartoons and threatening notes.
May 16, 2012
There is a lot of research here, and yet despite his obvious education, Mason's thesis is not dry history. There certainly is history here, and lots of it. But he presents event after event in a non stop, rapid fire manner that never lets you dwell too long on any single one. While each chapter has its theme, he draws upon so many different events to explain his ideas, that by the time you have read one section, you have already dipped into every aspect of the Mormon experience in the post Civil War south.
April 18, 2016
Very good. Chronicles an aspect of American and Mormon history that I've never seen mentioned before. The organization led to some undue repetition and the most audacious claim (that anti-Mormon sentiment and vigilantism catalyzed the North-South healing post-Reconstruction) seems almost ephemeral. But the history work is solid, and Mason does a good job at nuancing the application of his work. Probably only recommended for Mormon studies nerds.
May 29, 2015
Account of Southern U.S. anti-Mormon violence and polemic rhetoric. Perhaps overly triumphalistic in favor of the Mormon persecution complex--would like to see the writer give a fairer account of Southern psychology and the complexities of Southern indignation.
April 17, 2017
"A Mormon has a right to believe what he will. His thoughts may be as free as the unconfined air, and his conscience should by no means be restrained by legal enactments. But his acts are quest a different thing."
-Raleigh News and Observer, July 20, 1881
I’ll get this out of the way first thing: this is not a book that everyone will be into. It fills a very specific niche--late nineteenth century American fringe religions. Frankly, if I wasn’t Mormon, I never would’ve picked this book up.
That’s right, I’m a Mormon. A non-practicing one, but still one of the tribe. Growing up, I learned Church history mostly through Sunday School and early-morning Seminary (a class I attended every morning before school during my high school years). It was a pretty sanitized form of that history that started with Joseph Smith and pretty much ended with Brigham Young entering the Salt Lake Valley. And since this was the pre-internet era and I grew up as a Mormon loner in Michigan rather than the Mormon Belt, that was the only history I knew.
Thank goodness for the internet and the new, modern era in Mormon history scholarship. Because now I can get my history-loving hands all over new books about old subjects that no Mormon would have ever dared to write about back in the era of Church Retrenchment. There’s a new freedom to discuss and understand difficult topics that even contemporary Church leaders would prefer that we not know.
Personally, I’m loving it. And it’s why I picked up this book. Because who knew that there was violence against Mormons in the post-Reconstruction South? I certainly didn’t.
The book itself is interesting and fairly informative. Mason did his best work in detailing the types of violence and analyzing Mormon reactions to it but his central thesis about the causes of the violence, that Southern men turned to violence in an attempt to protect Southern women, did not work for me.
Don’t get me wrong, Mormon missionaries were seen as a threat to women because, of course, they were only sent out to ensnare innocent women and ship them back to the polygamous whorehouses in Salt Lake. Well, at least, that was according to the anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy discourses that ran through the country during that time. And while people did sincerely believe in those Mormon boogeymen, Mason’s reasoning falls flat because I don’t think he actually understood the nature and causes of lynching. And it shows whenever he awkwardly tries to compare anti-Mormon violence with the lynching of African-Americans.
Those passages are awkward, and uncomfortable, and I dearly wish he had not compared the two types of violence. Because beyond the surface similarities (extra-judicial violence against a minority group) the two types of violence are simply not comparable.
Furthermore, in trying to connect the so-called reason for the violence (protection of women) Mason unwittingly legitimizes its use. Extra-judicial violence is about power, not protection, and Mason stumbles, big time, any time he argues otherwise.
However, Mason truly shines when he sticks to analyzing Mormon culture and Mormon reactions to that Southern violence. These chapters were especially interesting to me because they helped to connect the dots between what I knew about Mormon history and my experiences with contemporary Mormon culture. There is a strong persecution complex that is threaded through the Mormon identity and it was clearly conceived during the Polygamy era--a time when it was Mormons against a sinful world that was trying to wipe them out.
They weren’t wrong. The United States was trying to wipe out Mormons, in fact, one of the earliest immigration acts outlawed the entry of “polygamists” which was commonly, at the time, understood to refer to Mormons. It was a crazy, mixed-up time that, before I picked up this book, I knew very little about.
Mormons don’t talk about polygamy. It’s the Church’s dirty little secret, and for good reason--the Church’s practice of polygamy nearly destroyed the Church. It’s abundantly clear, even from the little I know, that if the Church hadn’t abandoned the practice it would not have continued as an institution into the 20th or 21st centuries. Well, it might have survived Warren Jeffs’ style, little communes dotted throughout the desert, but that would be it.
To me, that’s the most interesting thing of all. While the Mason’s book is interesting, the things it made me contemplate were even more interesting. It inspired me to think about the way that Mormon practice and culture took a giant 180 in the early 20th century, how Mormons actively worked to assimilate into American culture, and not just assimilate, they would be the most American Americans they could possibly be. It transformed from a militant fringe religion into a conservative church strongly associated with the image of nice, attractive, white people with smiles, dressed in stereotypical Sunday-going-to-church clothing.
We turned so completely that a religion that once espoused a radical form of marriage as one of its deepest doctrines is now fighting tooth and nail to uphold “traditional” marriage and “traditional” families. There’s an irony and a deep hypocrisy there that is both kind of hilarious and deeply sad. Sad for the Church but even sadder for us queer Mormons who no longer have a home.
The Mormon Menace was an interesting little book with some good and some not-so-good historical analysis. As an armchair historian it made some interesting points and as a Mormon it encouraged a little inspiration, but I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it to the general reading public.
Now I need to go back and go through all of the little sticky notes I made, because whatever I meant by “Authoritarianism and John Taylor. Varying definitions of ‘theodemocracy,’” deserves a lot more thought.
-Raleigh News and Observer, July 20, 1881
I’ll get this out of the way first thing: this is not a book that everyone will be into. It fills a very specific niche--late nineteenth century American fringe religions. Frankly, if I wasn’t Mormon, I never would’ve picked this book up.
That’s right, I’m a Mormon. A non-practicing one, but still one of the tribe. Growing up, I learned Church history mostly through Sunday School and early-morning Seminary (a class I attended every morning before school during my high school years). It was a pretty sanitized form of that history that started with Joseph Smith and pretty much ended with Brigham Young entering the Salt Lake Valley. And since this was the pre-internet era and I grew up as a Mormon loner in Michigan rather than the Mormon Belt, that was the only history I knew.
Thank goodness for the internet and the new, modern era in Mormon history scholarship. Because now I can get my history-loving hands all over new books about old subjects that no Mormon would have ever dared to write about back in the era of Church Retrenchment. There’s a new freedom to discuss and understand difficult topics that even contemporary Church leaders would prefer that we not know.
Personally, I’m loving it. And it’s why I picked up this book. Because who knew that there was violence against Mormons in the post-Reconstruction South? I certainly didn’t.
The book itself is interesting and fairly informative. Mason did his best work in detailing the types of violence and analyzing Mormon reactions to it but his central thesis about the causes of the violence, that Southern men turned to violence in an attempt to protect Southern women, did not work for me.
Don’t get me wrong, Mormon missionaries were seen as a threat to women because, of course, they were only sent out to ensnare innocent women and ship them back to the polygamous whorehouses in Salt Lake. Well, at least, that was according to the anti-Mormon and anti-polygamy discourses that ran through the country during that time. And while people did sincerely believe in those Mormon boogeymen, Mason’s reasoning falls flat because I don’t think he actually understood the nature and causes of lynching. And it shows whenever he awkwardly tries to compare anti-Mormon violence with the lynching of African-Americans.
Those passages are awkward, and uncomfortable, and I dearly wish he had not compared the two types of violence. Because beyond the surface similarities (extra-judicial violence against a minority group) the two types of violence are simply not comparable.
Furthermore, in trying to connect the so-called reason for the violence (protection of women) Mason unwittingly legitimizes its use. Extra-judicial violence is about power, not protection, and Mason stumbles, big time, any time he argues otherwise.
However, Mason truly shines when he sticks to analyzing Mormon culture and Mormon reactions to that Southern violence. These chapters were especially interesting to me because they helped to connect the dots between what I knew about Mormon history and my experiences with contemporary Mormon culture. There is a strong persecution complex that is threaded through the Mormon identity and it was clearly conceived during the Polygamy era--a time when it was Mormons against a sinful world that was trying to wipe them out.
They weren’t wrong. The United States was trying to wipe out Mormons, in fact, one of the earliest immigration acts outlawed the entry of “polygamists” which was commonly, at the time, understood to refer to Mormons. It was a crazy, mixed-up time that, before I picked up this book, I knew very little about.
Mormons don’t talk about polygamy. It’s the Church’s dirty little secret, and for good reason--the Church’s practice of polygamy nearly destroyed the Church. It’s abundantly clear, even from the little I know, that if the Church hadn’t abandoned the practice it would not have continued as an institution into the 20th or 21st centuries. Well, it might have survived Warren Jeffs’ style, little communes dotted throughout the desert, but that would be it.
To me, that’s the most interesting thing of all. While the Mason’s book is interesting, the things it made me contemplate were even more interesting. It inspired me to think about the way that Mormon practice and culture took a giant 180 in the early 20th century, how Mormons actively worked to assimilate into American culture, and not just assimilate, they would be the most American Americans they could possibly be. It transformed from a militant fringe religion into a conservative church strongly associated with the image of nice, attractive, white people with smiles, dressed in stereotypical Sunday-going-to-church clothing.
We turned so completely that a religion that once espoused a radical form of marriage as one of its deepest doctrines is now fighting tooth and nail to uphold “traditional” marriage and “traditional” families. There’s an irony and a deep hypocrisy there that is both kind of hilarious and deeply sad. Sad for the Church but even sadder for us queer Mormons who no longer have a home.
The Mormon Menace was an interesting little book with some good and some not-so-good historical analysis. As an armchair historian it made some interesting points and as a Mormon it encouraged a little inspiration, but I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it to the general reading public.
Now I need to go back and go through all of the little sticky notes I made, because whatever I meant by “Authoritarianism and John Taylor. Varying definitions of ‘theodemocracy,’” deserves a lot more thought.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews