The Gentile Opposition in the Wasatch Region: A Study in Religious and Social Conflict (1862-1890)
Graduation Date
Spring 1947
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Degree Granting Institution
Catholic University of America
Program Name
Humanities
Abstract
The career of the Sovereign State of Utah, of necessity a story of religious and social conflict, has aroused many apologists (Mormon in the main) but has yet to find one adequate historian. Before a balanced picture of the Mormon state can be presented, there is need of many special studies. During the past two decades, a number of dissertations have appeared which are of value to an understanding of Utah development; but only one comprehensive study of the role of the Gentile, or non-Mormon, in early Utah has been made.
The Reverend Robert J. Dwyer, in his The Gentile Comes to Utah (Washington, D.C.: 1941), has treated the position of the non-Mormon element during the thirty years preceding the Woodruff "Manifesto" which marked the capitulation (exterior, at any rate) of the Saints to the demands of the United States with regard to plural marriage; and he has rightly centered his attention on Salt Lake City, the hub, not only of Mormondom but of the economic system of Utah as well.
But it seemed to the present writer that there remained something to be said of the other Gentiles of the Wasatch region, the settlers and founders of the non-Mormon towns which gradually ringed Salt Lake City round and served as springboards from which attacks on the Mormons might be launched.
Material on these anti-Mormon activities is to be found mainly in the local, press of the period; for Corinne and Park City, two of the most important Gentile settlements, had newspapers for a large part of the period from 1862 to 1890. Many other contemporary accounts pertinent to a study of the nature of the present one have been locked away in travel books and the reminiscences of the chance visitor to Utah or the pioneers, both Gentile and Mormon.