Mormonism and polygamy
Polygamy was practiced by leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for more than half of the 19th century, practiced publicly from 1852 to 1890 by between 20 and 30 percent of Latter-day Saint families. Note that there are various denominations that are considered Mormons and they have different beliefs and practices; the Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy has been controversial, both within Western society and the LDS Church itself. America was both fascinated and horrified by the practice of polygamy, with the Republican platform at one time referencing "the twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery." The private practice of polygamy was instituted in the 1830s by founder Joseph Smith. The public practice of plural marriage by the church was announced and defended in 1852 by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Orson Pratt, by the request of church president Brigham Young. For over 60 years, the LDS Church and the United States were at odds over the issue: the church defended the practice as a matter of religious freedom, while the federal government aggressively sought to eradicate it, consistent with prevailing public opinion.
Polygamy was a significant factor in the Utah War of 1857 and 1858, given the Republican attempts to paint Democratic President James Buchanan as weak in his opposition to both polygamy and slavery. In 1862, the United States Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, which prohibited plural marriage in the territories. In spite of the law, Mormons continued to practice polygamy, believing that it was protected by the First Amendment. In 1879, in Reynolds v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Morrill Act, stating: "Laws are made for the government of actions, while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinion, they may with practices."In 1890, church president Wilford Woodruff issued a Manifesto that terminated the practice of polygamy. Although this Manifesto did not dissolve existing plural marriages, relations with the United States markedly improved after 1890, such that Utah was admitted as a U. S. state in 1896. After the Manifesto, some Mormons continued to enter into polygamous marriages, but these stopped in 1904 when church president Joseph F. Smith disavowed polygamy before Congress and issued a "Second Manifesto", calling for all plural marriages in the church to cease and established excommunication as the consequence for those who disobeyed.
Several small "fundamentalist" groups, seeking to continue the practice, split from the LDS Church, including the Apostolic United Brethren and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Meanwhile, the LDS Church continues its policy of excommunicating members found practicing polygamy, today seeks to distance itself from fundamentalist groups that continue the practice. On its web site, the church states that "the standard doctrine of the church is monogamy" and that polygamy was a temporary exception to the rule. Many early converts to the religion including Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, Lyman Johnson, recorded that Joseph Smith was teaching plural marriage as early as 1831 or 1832. Pratt reported that Smith told some early members in 1831 and 1832 that plural marriage was a true principle, but that the time to practice it had not yet come. Johnson claimed to have heard the doctrine from Smith in 1831. Mosiah Hancock reported that his father was taught about plural marriage in the spring of 1832.
The 1835 and 1844 versions of the church's Doctrine and Covenants prohibited polygamy and declared that monogamy was the only acceptable form of marriage: In as much as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife. William Clayton, Smith's scribe, recorded early polygamous marriages in 1843, including unions between Smith and Eliza Partridge, Emily Partridge, Sarah Ann Whitney, Helen Kimball and Flora Woodworth. Clayton relates: "On the 1st day of May, 1843, I officiated in the office of an Elder by marrying Lucy Walker to the Prophet Joseph Smith, at his own residence. During this period the Prophet Joseph took several other wives. Amongst the number I well remember Eliza Partridge, Emily Partridge, Sarah Ann Whitney, Helen Kimball and Flora Woodworth; these all, he acknowledged to me, were his wedded wives, according to the celestial order. His wife Emma was cognizant of the fact of some, if not all, of these being his wives, she treated them kindly."As early as 1832, Mormon missionaries worked to convert followers in Maine of polygamist religious leader Jacob Cochran, who went into hiding in 1830 to escape imprisonment due to his practice of polygamy.
Among Cochran's marital innovations was "spiritual wifery", "tradition assumes that he received frequent consignments of spiritual consorts, that such were invariably the most robust and attractive women in the community". The majority of what became the Quorum of the Twelve in 1835 attended Mormon conferences held in the center of the Cochranites in 1834 and 1835. Brigham Young, an apostle of the church, became acquainted with Cochran's followers as he made several missionary journeys through the Cochranite territory from Boston to Saco, married Augusta Adams Cobb, a former Cochranite. Joseph Smith publicly condemned polygamy, denied his involvement in it, participants were excommunicated, as church records and publications reflect, but church leaders began p
Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City is the capital and the most populous municipality of the U. S. state of Utah. With an estimated population of 190,884 in 2014, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which has a population of 1,153,340. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo Combined Statistical Area, a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along a 120-mile segment of the Wasatch Front, comprising a population of 2,423,912, it is one of only two major urban areas in the Great Basin. The world headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is located in Salt Lake City; the city was founded in 1847 by followers of the church, led by Brigham Young, who were seeking to escape persecution that they had experienced while living farther east. The Mormon pioneers, as they would come to be known, at first encountered an arid, inhospitable valley that they extensively irrigated and cultivated, thereby establishing the foundation to sustain the area's present population.
Salt Lake City's street grid system is based on the north-south east-west grid plan developed by early church leaders, with the Salt Lake Temple constructed at the grid's starting point. Due to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was named Great Salt Lake City. In 1868, the 17th Utah Territorial Legislature dropped the word "Great" from the city's name. Immigration of international members of the church, mining booms, the construction of the first transcontinental railroad brought economic growth, the city was nicknamed the Crossroads of the West, it was traversed by the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, in 1913. Two major cross-country freeways, I-15 and I-80, now intersect in the city. Salt Lake City has developed a strong outdoor recreation tourist industry based on skiing, the city hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, it is the industrial banking center of the United States. Before settlement by members of the LDS Church, the Shoshone and Paiute had dwelt in the Salt Lake Valley for thousands of years.
At the time of Salt Lake City's founding, the valley was within the territory of the Northwestern Shoshone. One local Shoshone tribe, the Western Goshute tribe, referred to the Great Salt Lake as Pi'a-pa, meaning "big water", or Ti'tsa-pa, meaning "bad water"; the land was treated by the United States as public domain. The first American explorer in the Salt Lake area was Jim Bridger in 1825, although others had been in Utah earlier, some as far north as the nearby Utah Valley. US Army officer John C. Frémont surveyed the Great Salt Lake and the Salt Lake Valley in 1843 and 1845; the Donner Party, a group of ill-fated pioneers, had traveled through the Great Salt Lake Valley in August 1846. The valley's first permanent settlements date to the arrival of the Latter-day Saints in July 1847, they had traveled beyond the boundaries of the United States into Mexican Territory seeking a secluded area to safely practice their religion away from the violence and the persecution they experienced in the Eastern United States.
Upon arrival at the Salt Lake Valley, president of the church Brigham Young is recorded as stating, "This is the right place, drive on." Brigham Young claimed to have seen the area in a vision prior to the wagon train's arrival. They found. Four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young designated the building site for the Salt Lake Temple; the Salt Lake Temple, constructed on the block called Temple Square, took 40 years to complete. Construction started in 1853, the temple was dedicated on April 6, 1893; the temple serves as its centerpiece. In fact, the southeast corner of Temple Square is the initial point of reference for the Salt Lake meridian, for all addresses in the Salt Lake Valley; the pioneers organized a state called State of Deseret, petitioned for its recognition in 1849. The United States Congress rebuffed the settlers in 1850 and established the Utah Territory, vastly reducing its size, designated Fillmore as its capital city. Great Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital in 1856, the name was shortened to Salt Lake City.
The city's population continued to swell with an influx of converts to the LDS Church and Gold Rush gold seekers, making it one of the most populous cities in the American Old West. Explorer and author Richard Francis Burton traveled by coach in the summer of 1860 to document life in Great Salt Lake City, he was granted unprecedented access during his three-week visit, including audiences with Brigham Young and other contemporaries of Joseph Smith. The records of his visit include sketches of early city buildings, a description of local geography and agriculture, commentary on its politics and social order, essays and sermons from Young, Isaac Morley, George Washington Bradley and other leaders, snippets of everyday life such as newspaper clippings and the menu from a high-society ball. Disputes with the federal government ensued over the church's practice of polygamy. A climax occurred in 1857 when President James Buchanan declared the area in rebellion after Brigham Young refused to step down as governor, beginning the Utah War.
A division of the United States Army, comman
Lorenzo Snow
Lorenzo Snow was an American religious leader who served as the fifth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1898 until his death. Snow was the last president of the LDS Church in the nineteenth century and the first in the twentieth. Snow was the fifth child and first son of Oliver Snow and Rosetta L. Pettibone, residents of Mantua Township, who had left New England to settle on a new and fertile farm in the Connecticut Western Reserve. Lorenzo had siblings Leonora Abigail Snow, Eliza R. Snow, Percy Amanda Snow, Melissa Snow, Lucius Augustus Snow, Samuel Pearce Snow. Despite the labor required on the farm, the Snow family valued learning and saw that each child had educational opportunities. Snow received his final year of education at Oberlin College, founded by two Presbyterian ministers. Snow made his living as a school teacher when not engaged in church service. In 1831, Joseph Smith, the Latter Day Saint prophet, took up residence in Hiram, four miles from the Snow farm.
The Snow family soon took a strong interest in the new religious movement. Snow recorded that he heard the Book of Mormon being read aloud in his home in Mantua and met Smith at Hiram in 1831. By 1835, Snow's mother and his older sister Eliza, had joined the Latter Day Saint church. Eliza soon moved to the church headquarters in Kirtland and worked as a school teacher. She, in her biography of Snow, claims to have fostered his interest in Mormonism while he was at Oberlin. Eliza invited Snow to attend a school of Hebrew newly established by the church. During his visit there, in June 1836, Snow was baptized by John F. Boynton, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. While living in Kirtland in 1837, Snow was called to serve a short mission in Ohio, traveling "without purse or scrip." He recorded that relying on the kindness of others for his meals and lodging was difficult for him, as he had always had sufficient means to care for himself. When he returned to Kirtland in 1838, Snow found Smith's followers in turmoil over the failure of the Kirtland Safety Society.
Snow and the members of his extended family chose to move to Missouri in the summer of 1838 and join the Latter Day Saints settling near Far West. Snow became ill with a fever, was nursed for several weeks by his sister Eliza. On his recovery, Snow left for a second mission to Illinois and Kentucky in the fall of 1838, he served there through February 1839, when he learned that the Latter Day Saints had been expelled from their settlements in Missouri. He traveled home by way of his former mission area in Ohio, he was cared for by members of the church. He remained in Ohio and working with church members until the fall of 1839. During the school year of 1839 -- 40, Snow taught in Ohio, he sent money to his family, which had by settled in Nauvoo, Illinois. Shortly after he arrived in Nauvoo, Snow was asked to serve a mission in England. After an unpleasant sea voyage from New York City, Snow met with some of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve who had opened the British Mission in 1839, including Brigham Young, Heber C.
Kimball, Parley P. Pratt. Snow worked in the Manchester area, had success in Birmingham, where he baptized people in Greet's Green and organized a branch in Wolverhampton. Snow was assigned to preside over church members in London. During his administration, church membership in the city increased from 100 to 400 members, he was released from his mission by Pratt, who by was president of an expanding European Mission. Snow arrived home on April 12, 1843, was accompanied by a shipload of 250 British converts. After visiting with his family, Snow again secured a teaching position for the winter, teaching at Lima, thirty miles from Nauvoo. In late spring 1844, he returned to Ohio and baptizing new converts and distributing recent church publications to members, he was working in Cincinnati, when he learned of the assassination of Joseph Smith. Snow promptly returned to Nauvoo. During the period of disorganization and schism that followed Smith's death, Snow chose to follow the Quorum of the Twelve under Brigham Young.
In 1845, Snow was involved in work in the Nauvoo Temple. Before leaving Nauvoo, Snow took two wives, he took seven more. Charlotte Squires. Married October 1844. Leonora Charlotte Snow Roxcy Armatha Snow Mary Adaline Goddard. Married 1845. Rosetta Adaline Snow Oliver Goddard Snow Isadore Percy Snow Sarah Ann Prichard. Married 21 April 1845. Eliza Sarah Snow Sylvia Snow Lorenzo Snow, Jr. Parinthia Snow Laurin Alvirus Erastus Snow Harriet Amelia Squires. Married 17 January 1846. Abigail Harriet Snow Lucius Aaron Snow Amelia Herrietta Snow Alonzo Henry Snow Celestia Armeda Snow Ele
Anti-Mormonism
Anti-Mormonism is discrimination, hostility or prejudice directed against the Latter Day Saint movement The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The term is used to describe persons or literature that are critical of their adherents, institutions, or beliefs, or physical attacks against specific Saints or the Latter Day Saint movement as a whole. Opposition to Mormonism began before the first Latter Day Saint church was established in 1830 and continues to the present day; the most vocal and strident opposition occurred during the 19th century during the Utah War of the 1850s, in the second half of the century when the practice of polygamy in Utah Territory was considered by the U. S. Republican Party as one of the "twin relics of barbarism" along with slavery. Modern-day opposition takes the form of websites, videos or other media offering alternative views about Mormonism or non-violent protest at large Latter-day Saint gatherings such as the church's semiannual General Conference, outside of Latter-day Saint pageants, or at events surrounding the construction of new LDS temples.
Opponents believe that the church's claims to divine origin are false, that it is non-Christian, or that it is a religion based on fraud or deceit on the part of its past and present leaders. In 2015 the FBI began tracking anti-Mormon hate crimes in the United States and have noted an increase in incidents over time; the term, "anti-Mormon" first appears in the historical record in 1833 by the Louisville Daily Herald in an article, "The Mormons and the Anti-Mormons". In 1841, it was revealed. On August 16 of that year, the Latter Day Saint Times and Seasons reported the Mormons' confidence that although the Anti-Mormon Almanac was designed by "Satan and his emissaries" to flood the world with "lies and evil reports", still "we are assured that in the providence of God they will tend to the glory of God—the spread of truth and the good of the church". Mormonism had been criticized by dozens of publications since its inception, most notably by Eber D. Howe's 1834 book Mormonism Unvailed; the Latter Day Saints labeled such publications "anti-Christian", but the publication of the Almanac and the subsequent formation of an "Anti-Mormon Party" in Illinois heralded a shift in terminology.
"Anti-Mormon" became, on the lips of the church's critics, a proud and politically charged self-designation. Today, the term is used as a descriptor for persons and publications that oppose the LDS Church, although its precise scope has been the subject of some debate, it is used by some to describe anything perceived as critical of the LDS Church. Siding with the latter, less-inclusive understanding of the term, Latter-day Saint scholar William O. Nelson suggests in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism that the term includes "any hostile or polemic opposition to Mormonism or to the Latter-day Saints, such as maligning Joseph Smith, his successors, or the doctrines or practices of the Church. Though sometimes well intended, anti-Mormon publications have taken the form of invective, demeaning caricature and legal harassment, leading to both verbal and physical assault." Many of those who have been labeled "anti-Mormon" object to the designation, arguing that the term implies that disagreement or criticism of Mormonism stems from some inherent "anti-Mormon" prejudice, rather than being part of a legitimate factual or religious debate.
Eric Johnson, for example, makes a distinction between "personal animosity and intellectual dialogue". Johnson insists that he is motivated by "love and compassion for Mormons", that while he " plead guilty to being against Mormonism", he finds the suggestion that he is anti-Mormon "both offensive and inaccurate." Stephen Cannon elaborates, It is helpful to know that Mormons are a group of people united around a belief system. Therefore, to be "anti-Mormon" is to be against people. Christians who desire to communicate the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Mormons are never to come against people of any stripe. Yes, evangelical Christians do have strong disagreements with Mormonism, but the argument is with a belief system and not a people; the LDS people are no worse than any other group of people. Any dispute is to be a disagreement with the "ism", not the "Mormon". James White, rejects the term because of a lack of reciprocal terminology, he wrote to one LDS apologist, "If you will identify yourself as an anti-Baptist, I'll let you call me an anti-Mormon."Even some members of the church who write negatively about it those who call into question its divine nature, have had their writings labeled anti-Mormon.
Ex-Mormons who write about the church are frequently labeled anti-Mormon when their writings are not inflammatory in nature. The debate on, "anti-Mormon" arises in Mormon discussions of authors and sources. Stephen Cannon has argued that use of the label is a "campaign by Latter-day Saints to disavow the facts presented by labeling the source as'anti-Mormon'". Critics of the term claim that the LDS Church frames the context of persecution in order to cultivate a persecution complex, or that Mormon authors promote the ideal of a promised heavenly reward for enduring persecution for one's beliefs. Mormons respond to these accusations by questioning whether critics like Johnson and Cannon have Mormons' best interests at heart. For Brigham Young University's 100 Hour Board, the "anti-Mormon" label serves the purpose of warning Latter-day Saints away from individuals who espouse "hatred and
Anthon H. Lund
Anthon Henrik Lund was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a prominent Utah leader. Lund was born in Denmark, to unmarried parents. Lund's mother died. At that time, his father was serving in the war over Schleswig-Holstein. Lund was baptized a member of the LDS Church at age 12. In 1862, Lund immigrated with his grandmother to the United States, he arrived in Utah Territory in September and settled in Sanpete County, following the tradition of many Scandinavian immigrants. In 1864, Lund was a teamster in a Back Mormon pioneer company; the next winter, he served as a school teacher. In 1865, he responded to Brigham Young's request that men come to Salt Lake City and learn to be telegraph operators. In 1866, Lund became the telegraph operator for the Mount Pleasant station, where he was ordained as a seventy by Peter Madsen Peel. From 1884 to 1885, Lund served as president of the Scandinavian Mission of the church.
Lund served in the Utah Territorial Legislature. He introduced the legislation that resulted in the founding of Utah State Agricultural College, which became Utah State University. Lund served on the Utah Capitol Grounds Committee when it was formed in 1888. Lund became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on October 7, 1889. Church president John Taylor had died two years earlier. Lund was ordained along with Marriner W. Merrill and Abraham H. Cannon. At the time of his ordination, Lund was the only monogamist in the Quorum of the Twelve, his wife was Sarah Ann Peterson, who he had married in 1870. In 1891, Lund became the president of the Manti Temple. From 1893 until 1896, Lund was the president of the European Mission, he made a journey to the Ottoman Empire in 1897, where he organized the Turkish Mission and looked into sought out a gathering place for the Armenian church members in that mission. In 1899, Lund dedicated the southeast cornerstone of the Sanpete Stake Academy; that same year, Lund delivered a General Conference sermon in which he emphasized that it was no longer church policy to encourage members of the church to emigrate to the western United States.
In 1900, Lund became the superintendent of church religion classes. Church president Joseph F. Smith selected Lund as second counselor in the First Presidency on October 17, 1901, he served in that position until April 7, 1910, when Smith called him as first counselor, to replace John R. Winder, who had died in March. Lund assumed a myriad of duties, including heading various church agencies and again serving as a temple president. Lund served as a member of several writing committees to revise the church's standard works and other publications, he participated in numerous businesses in Utah, including the Hotel Utah, the Amalgamated Sugar Company, ZCMI. Lund was the first member of the First Presidency. While he was a member of the First Presidency, Lund fulfilled civic roles, he replaced John Henry Smith as a member of the Utah Capitol Commission. After the death of Joseph F. Smith in 1918, new church president Heber J. Grant retained Lund as first counselor in the First Presidency. At this time, Lund assumed the position of President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Lund served as Church Historian from 1900 to 1921. While in this office, he supervised the movement of the office and its materials to the new Church Administration Building in 1917. Lund served as president of the Genealogical Society of Utah and was the first editor of the Utah Historical and Genealogical Magazine. From 1911 to 1921, Lund was the president of the Salt Lake Temple. Lund died in Salt Lake City on March 2, 1921, from a duodenal ulcer, an ailment that plagued him for many years, he was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery. John A. Widtsoe was called to the Quorum of the Twelve after his death. Utah State University's mathematics hall is named for Lund. Lund, Nevada, is named for Lund. Good Neighbor policy Media related to Anthon H. Lund at Wikimedia Commons Works by or about Anthon H. Lund in libraries
David King Udall
David King Udall, Sr. was a representative to the Arizona Territorial Legislature and the founder of the Udall political family. His great-grandson Tom represents the state of New Mexico in the United States Senate. David King Udall was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1851, his parents, David Udall and Eliza King, had immigrated to the United States from England earlier in the year. In 1852 they followed the Mormon Trail to Utah, they settled in Nephi. Udall spent his childhood farming; as a teenager, he spent a short period as a laborer building the Union Pacific Railroad which became part of the First Transcontinental Railroad. In 1875, Udall married Eliza Stewart. Shortly thereafter he was called by the LDS Church on a mission to England, where he remained until 1877. In 1880, while again living in Nephi, Udall was called to be the Mormon bishop in St. Johns, Arizona. At the time, St. Johns was a small and Hispanic Catholic community. After moving his family there, Udall purchased lands and directed improvements geared toward creating a larger Mormon settlement of the area.
The outraged local residents were happy with the prior state of things, Udall became a hated figure to many. In 1882, Udall took a second wife, Ida Hunt, a granddaughter of Jefferson Hunt and through her mother Lois Barnes Pratt, of Addison Pratt; that same year the U. S. Congress passed the Edmunds Act to aid in the prosecution of polygamists. Udall was indicted on charges of unlawful cohabitation in 1884, he was never convicted, because his second wife lived in another town, prosecutors could not locate Ida to compel her testimony against him. Prosecutors remained determined to make an example of Udall, in 1885, he was indicted and convicted on perjury charges, related to a sworn statement he made about the land claim of a fellow Mormon, he spent three months in a Federal Prison in Detroit, before receiving a full and unconditional pardon by President Grover Cleveland on December 12, 1885. The perjury conviction stemmed from an affidavit. Udall's bail was posted by Baron Goldwater. Udall was appointed to be a Stake president, a higher position in the Mormon hierarchy, in 1887.
He held that position for the next 35 years. Throughout that time he ran a number of business ventures of varying success. In 1899, he served a single term as a Republican representative to the Arizona Territorial Legislature. In 1903, he married the former Mary Ann Linton, widow of John Hamilton Morgan, a representative to the Utah Territorial Legislature; this marriage ran contrary to the LDS Church's decision to ban polygamy in 1890. Years Matthias F. Cowley, the official who performed the ceremony, was stripped of his priesthood by the LDS Church; when the marriage came to light, Udall was never sanctioned, but he was forced to cease marital relations with Mary. He did, continue to support her and her children financially until the children reached adulthood. In 1906, a Prescott Federal Grand Jury indicted Udall and several others on charges of polygamy, a violation of the Edmunds Act. After Marshal Ben Daniels served Udall and the others, they went to Prescott and paid their fines of $100, went back home.
From 1927 to 1934 he served as the president of the LDS Mesa Arizona Temple. He wrote an autobiography, Arizona Pioneer Mormon, in collaboration with his daughter, by Ida, Pearl Udall Nelson, his wives and Eliza, preceded him in death in 1915 and 1937, respectively. He died in 1938 in Arizona. William J. Flake Miles Park Romney Ellsworth, Mormon Odyssey: The Story of Ida Hunt Udall, Plural Wife, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0252018753 Miller, Mark Edwin, "St. Johns' Saints: Inter-ethnic Conflict in Northeastern Arizona, 1880-1885", Journal of Mormon History, 23: 66–99 Udall, David King. Udall, Morris King, Too Funny To Be President, New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company, ISBN 0805005935 "David King Udall", The West, PBS, 1996 Herman, Daniel J. "Arizona's Secret History: When Powerful Mormons Went Separate Ways", Common-place, American Antiquarian Society, 12 David King Udall collection at the University of Arizona David King Udall collection at Utah State University
Grover Cleveland
Stephen Grover Cleveland was an American politician and lawyer, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, the only president in American history to serve two non-consecutive terms in office. He won the popular vote for three presidential elections—in 1884, 1888, 1892—and was one of two Democrats to be elected president during the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1933. Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans, his crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism, he fought political corruption and bossism. As a reformer, Cleveland had such prestige that the like-minded wing of the Republican Party, called "Mugwumps" bolted the GOP presidential ticket and swung to his support in the 1884 election.
As his second administration began, disaster hit the nation when the Panic of 1893 produced a severe national depression, which Cleveland was unable to reverse. It ruined his Democratic Party, opening the way for a Republican landslide in 1894 and for the agrarian and silverite seizure of the Democratic Party in 1896; the result was a political realignment that ended the Third Party System and launched the Fourth Party System and the Progressive Era. Cleveland was a formidable policymaker, he drew corresponding criticism, his intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 to keep the railroads moving angered labor unions nationwide in addition to the party in Illinois. Critics complained that Cleveland had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term. So, his reputation for probity and good character survived the troubles of his second term. Biographer Allan Nevins wrote, "n Grover Cleveland, the greatness lies in typical rather than unusual qualities.
He had no endowments. He possessed honesty, firmness and common sense, but he possessed them to a degree other men do not." By the end of his second term, public perception showed him to be one of the most unpopular U. S. presidents, he was by rejected by most Democrats. Today, Cleveland is considered by most historians to have been a successful leader ranked among the upper-mid tier of American presidents. Stephen Grover Cleveland was born on March 18, 1837, in Caldwell, New Jersey, to Ann and Richard Falley Cleveland. Cleveland's father was a Congregational and Presbyterian minister, from Connecticut, his mother was the daughter of a bookseller. On his father's side, Cleveland was descended from English ancestors, the first of the family having emigrated to Massachusetts from Cleveland, England in 1635, his father's maternal grandfather, Richard Falley Jr. fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill, was the son of an immigrant from Guernsey. On his mother's side, Cleveland was descended from Anglo-Irish Protestants and German Quakers from Philadelphia.
Cleveland was distantly related to General Moses Cleaveland, after whom the city of Cleveland, was named. Cleveland, the fifth of nine children, was named Stephen Grover in honor of the first pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Caldwell, where his father was pastor at the time, he became known as Grover in his adult life. In 1841, the Cleveland family moved to Fayetteville, New York, where Grover spent much of his childhood. Neighbors described him as "full of fun and inclined to play pranks," and fond of outdoor sports. In 1850, Cleveland's father moved to Clinton, New York, to work as district secretary for the American Home Missionary Society. Despite his father's dedication to his missionary work, the income was insufficient for the large family. Financial conditions forced him to remove Grover from school into a two-year mercantile apprenticeship in Fayetteville; the experience was valuable and brief, the living conditions quite austere. Grover returned to his schooling at the completion of the apprentice contract.
In 1853, when missionary work began to take a toll on his health, Cleveland's father took an assignment in Holland Patent, New York and the family moved again. Shortly after, he died from a gastric ulcer, with Grover reputedly hearing of his father's death from a boy selling newspapers. Cleveland received his elementary education at the Fayetteville Academy and the Clinton Liberal Academy. After his father died in 1853, he again left school to help support his family; that year, Cleveland's brother William was hired as a teacher at the New York Institute for the Blind in New York City, William obtained a place for Cleveland as an assistant teacher. He returned home to Holland Patent at the end of 1854, where an elder in his church offered to pay for his college education if he would promise to become a minister. Cleveland declined, in 1855 he decided to move west, he stopped first in New York, where his uncle, Lewis F. Allen, gave him a clerical job. Allen was an important man in Buffalo, he introduced his nephew to influential men there, including the partners in the law firm of Rogers and Rogers.
Millard Fillmore, the 13th president of the United States, had worked for the partnership. Cleveland took a clerkship with the firm, began to read the law, was admitted to the New York bar in 1859. Cleveland
