Item Detail
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22566
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0
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0
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English
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The Puritans in Utah
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The Puritan Ethic and Woman Suffrage
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New York, N.Y.
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Oxford University Press
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27-46
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"In the course of this reconstruction it will be argued that Mormonism in the nineteenth century, in spite of polygamy, represented the Puritan ethic, and that woman suffrage came about in Utah to bolster the power of the Mormon Church in its effort to defend that ethic" [p. 28]. "To the Mormons . . . there could be no better way of proving that their system of polygamy was not degrading to women, that Mormon wives were not kept in a form of slavery, than to declare woman suffrage in Utah, at the very time when Negro suffrage (by the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment) was being offered to the former slaves to protect them from their former masters. Although there seems to be no evidence of any public discussion of woman suffrage in Utah at this time, its adoption on February 12, 1870, by the territorial legislature would appear to have been a calculated move on the part of the Mormon hierarchy to forestall federal legislation on polygamy" [p. 33]