It's time to bust some slavery myths about Utah Slavery. Dr Paul Reeve & Christopher Rich have written a book called "This Abominable Slavery." Was Brigham Young making Utah a slave state or a free state? Newly discovered documents from the 1850s are causing us to re-evaluate past narratives. Check out our conversation...
https://youtu.be/mBMGRPn1P_8
Don’t miss our other conversations with Paul Reeve! https://gospeltangents.com/people/paul-reeve/
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Meet Paul & Chris
GT: Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I'm excited to have two amazing historians. Chris, you're new to the show. Tell us who you are and you're almost a doctor now. Right? Give us your background a little bit.
Christopher: Almost. I'm a PhD candidate right now, actually a student of Paul's. In a previous life, well, I still am an attorney. I was active duty military for 11 years in the Army JAG Corps.
GT: Oh, wow.
Christopher: I came out of there, switched over to the reserve side and started going down the history track here at the University of Utah.
GT: Wow.
Christopher: So we've been working with Paul for little over 10 years now on this book.
GT: But can you handle the truth?
Christopher: I actually had somebody ask me that one time during a deposition. It was really [strange,] and yes, yes, I can.
GT: Do you feel like Tom Cruise cross examining Jack Nicholson?[1]
Christopher: There have been some moments like that where I've gone away afterwards and said, yeah. I could be in a movie.
GT: Well, great. Well, Paul, could you go ahead and reintroduce yourself. You're a three-time guest here on Gospel Tangents.
Paul: Yeah. I’m Paul Reeve. I'm currently chair of the history department at the University of Utah and Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies.
GT: Yeah. And tell us about the book you two as well as your third co-author, which we couldn't get here unfortunately. Tell us about your new book that just released.
Paul: This Abominable Slavery. The title is a quote from Orson Pratt.
GT: Go ahead and show it.
Paul: It is based upon a variety of newly transcribed speeches from the 1852 Legislative Session and the 1856 Utah Constitutional Convention that were captured in Pitman Shorthand and LaJean transcribed them.
GT: LaJean Carruth.
Paul: LaJean Carruth. She's a co-author on the book. The book wouldn't exist without her transcriptions. We have a new source base that no prior scholars had access to. And so, we tell the story of Utah's answer to pressing national questions, can human beings be held as slavery?
GT: And at one time the answer was yes. Well, very good. So, I think I told Paul this earlier, but for my audience, some of you may not know that Paul was my either second or third guest here on Gospel Tangents.[2] And I remember at the beginning of the interview, I said, so are you working on any other books? And you were working on this book. So I think that was eight years ago. I think, I can't remember. But , so I've been waiting for eight years for this book, so I know you guys have been working hard on it, but I'm very excited that this book's out finally.
Paul: Yeah, we are too. It's taken a long time, but happy that it's finally here.
GT: All right. Well, great. Chris, I we got to get a Mormon myth out of the way right off the bat. I remember, when was MHA in San Antonio? Was that seven years ago?
Christopher: 2012, I believe.
GT: Oh my goodness. Was it that long ago? That's 12 years.
Christopher: Yeah.
GT: Oh, wow. You two, I don't remember who else, but I know you two were giving a presentation and there's a well-known apostle, Charles Rich, who held slaves. Are you an apologist for Charles Rich?
Christopher: You had mentioned this, I believe, and a few times when I have been discussing our research, the implication has been that I am an apologist for Charles C. Rich. I am not related to Charles C. Rich. It's a different Rich family. I am a Kimball. I am a Woolley. I can go back to some of those early families, but we are not related at least, well, probably through polygamous marriages, but otherwise [not related.]
GT: All right. So we can put that to bed.
Christopher: Yes, fortunately.
GT: You're not representing Charles Rich here.
Christopher: All my ancestors were northerners so far as I know, so
GT: Oh, wow. All right. Well, give us a little bit about your background. Where did you get your bachelor's, your JD, and then you're currently working on a PhD in history here, right?
Christopher: Sure. I actually started at the University of Utah studying history, I don't know how long ago. I did my first two years here, but ultimately got my BA at Brigham Young University.
GT: Boo.
Christopher: I got my JD at the University of Virginia School of Law.
GT: Okay.
Christopher: Then I got an LLM from the Judge Advocate General's School, and now I'm back at Utah getting my PhD.
GT: What's an LLM?
Christopher: A Master of Law.
GT: Oh, okay. So I'm just trying to get more letters after my name. That’s what it comes down to.
Christopher: Wow. Because doesn't [JD stand for] Juris Doctor? Right? So, you got a masters after you got a doctorate?
Christopher: Yeah, it's usually not necessary. Most people just get the JD. In the JAG Corps, we go through and we have a year where we take various courses and we get an LLM out of it. Some people go on to get a civilian LLM and I ended up leaving the JAG Corps before I had that opportunity. But the LLM is in military law with an emphasis in national security law. So, the last few years that I was active duty, I was doing a lot of national security law issues. My last job was Chief of National Security Law for First Special Forces Command. I still work with special forces.
GT: Okay. Well, very good. Well, and Paul, I was joking with you last week. I couldn't remember where your office was. And so I looked it up on the University of Utah website and I was very disappointed to find out that you had two degrees from the school down south as Urban Meyer used to say.
Paul: I do. I have a bachelor's and a master's degree from BYU, and then my PhD is from the University of Utah.
GT: And you've repented of your ways and you're a true Ute now.
Paul: Yes. Yes.
GT: That was a good answer.
Did Utah Try to Become Slave State?
GT: All right. Well, let's dive into the book. Chris, I know you're the law expert, and I know a lot of people have said, and Paul, jump in as well, but a lot of people have said, and I and I want to bust a myth if this is a myth. Even I have said this, so correct me. When Utah was applying for statehood, there's a story out there that California was trying to come in as a free state, and New Mexico, I think was coming in as a free state, and that Utah needed to come in as a slave state in order to keep the balance of power in Congress. True or false?
Christopher: So there were a lot of proposals about how to organize the Mexican Cession after the US-Mexican War. And a lot of the questions had to do with the spread of slavery. So it was always pretty much understood that California was going to come in as a free state, but there were actually proposals that California and what is now Utah would come in together as one great big state, that ultimately after several years, they would be separated and so forth.
GT: And it was like the size of Texas, right?
Christopher: It is an enormous [size.] I mean yeah. Utah territory was pretty big on its own.
GT: Deseret Territory, right?
Christopher: Oh, well, Deseret would have been absolutely enormous. So there were a lot of these questions and Zachary Taylor, the president had done that on purpose to try to avoid congressional debate over the question of slavery. But what you ultimately have happen is because the debates go on so long, California, Utah and New Mexico all send in their own proposals to enter into the union as states. Ultimately, California is accepted as a free state. New Mexico and Utah are organized as territories under the principle of popular sovereignty, the idea being that the citizens of those territories would be able to decide for themselves whether slavery would be legal or not. Now, there was a lot of question about what that actually meant. It was purposely vague. Some people argued that state legislature or excuse me, that territorial legislatures could immediately make that determination. Some people said that you can only make that determination when you're actually going to become a state. And that question wasn't actually answered until the infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857, which ultimately said that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can bar slavery in a US territory. But for quite a few years, there were a lot of questions about what would actually happen in the territories. As a practical matter, nobody in Congress believed that Utah or New Mexico would legalize slavery. They believed that the climate was not conducive to slavery. They believed that slavery could only exist in places like the south, which were conducive to plantation agriculture.
GT: Okay. So the idea is, it was we're going to let the states decide what they want to be, not that—because I've heard a quote that I I swear was attributed to Brigham Young, but maybe not. You guys are the experts that said, we must be a slave state in order to enter the union.
Christopher: And so Brigham Young, the evidence demonstrates that he always wanted Utah to come in as a free state. Now, there was some discussion about whether they needed to cozy up to Southerners. And there is at least one Latter-day Saint, Almon Babbitt, who went to Washington D C and his feeling was that in order for Deseret to be admitted to the union,
