"No ordinary feelings": Mormon women's political activism, 1870-1920

Abstract

This dissertation explores the rhetoric and strategies Mormon women employed in their efforts to defend and secure suffrage in the 19th and 20th centuries. Women citizens in Utah Territory became the first in the United States to cast ballots under an equal suffrage law in 1870. Their votes immediately attracted national security, enmeshing their suffrage rights in the national conflict over the Mormon practice of polygamy. They entered the suffrage movement to defend their voting rights against Congressional legislation and to support the push for a federal suffrage amendment.