Item Detail
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'The Twin Relic of Barbarism': A Legal History of Anti-Polygamy in Nineteenth Century America
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1995
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The author claims that above all, anti-polygamists in the second half of the nineteenth century were troubled by a perceived crisis in marriage. Mormon polygamy provided a meeting ground, a place for debating the political importance of marriage, the role of women in politics, the interdependence of monogamy, democracy and civilization. Anti-polygamists not only criminalized plural marriage in the territories in 1862, they also redefined the role of religion in political life. The evils of a union of church and state were manifest in Utah, they claimed. This thesis looks at the ways that Mormons fought the laws and also at the impact that these trials had on the separation of church and state in America.
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Medium Designator: Ph.D. diss.