The founding -- The Republican ascendancy -- Public morality -- Demography : family and children -- Economy -- The time of disorder -- The downwinders' tale -- Downwinder politics -- Water -- Federal land regulations and conflicts -- The Utah State Legislature -- Utah's governors -- Governing -- Courts and public law -- Budgeting, spending, taxing, revolting -- Utah schools -- Recapitulation.
"Utah Politics and Government covers Utah's religious heritage and territorial history, its central political institutions, and its political culture, while situating Utah within the broader American political setting"--
Utah is a peculiar place, and Utahns are a peculiar people. Men overwhelming dominate Utah business and politics. But it was also the first state in the nation where women cast a vote and is home to the nation’s first female state senator (who had to defeat her husband in order to get there). Utah today has the highest level of foreign language fluency with international trade a key driver of the state’s economic development. Utahns overwhelmingly believe in limited government and reduced public spending. However, from its initial founding, Utah also has a proud history of supporting the arts, through both public and private efforts. When Utah was first established by Latter-day Saint pioneers, its settlers chose a place where they could be completely isolated from the rest of the nation. Within that isolation, it makes sense that the political culture could turn out to be, well, a little bit quirky.
Mary Lois Walker Morris was a Mormon woman who challenged both American ideas about marriage and the U.S. legal system. Before the Manifesto provides a glimpse into her world as the polygamous wife of a prominent Salt Lake City businessman, during a time of great transition in Utah. This account of her life as a convert, milliner, active community member, mother, and wife begins in England, where her family joined the Mormon church, details her journey across the plains, and describes life in Utah in the 1880s. Her experiences were unusual as, following her first husband's deathbed request, she married his brother as a plural wife in the Old Testament tradition of levirate marriage. Mary Morris's memoir frames her 1879 to 1887 diary with both reflections on earlier years and passages that parallel entries in the day book, giving readers a better understanding of how she retrospectively saw her life. The thoroughly annotated diary offers the daily experience of a woman who kept a largely self-sufficient household, had a wide social network, ran her own business, wrote poetry, and was intellectually curious. The years of "the Raid" (federal prosecution of polygamists) led Mary and Elias Morris to hide their marriage on "the underground," and her to perjury during Elias's trial for unlawful cohabitation. The book ends with Mary Lois's arrival at the Salt Lake Depot after three years in exile in Mexico with a polygamist colony.
A project of the Utah Women's History Association and cosponsored by the Utah State Historical Society, Paradigm or Paradox provides the first thorough survey of the complicated history of all Utah women. Some of the finest historians studying Utah examine the spectrum of significant social and cultural topics in the state's history that particularly have involved or affected women. The contents are as follows: A Comparison of Utah Mormon Polygamous and Monogamous Women Jessie L. Embry and Lois Kelley Innovation and Accommodation: the Legal Status of Women in Territorial Utah, 1847-96 Lisa Madsen Pearson and Carol Cornwall Madsen Conflict and Contributions: Women in Utah Churches, 1847-1920 John Sillito Utah's Ethnic Women Helen Z. Papanikolas The Professionalization of Utah's Farm Women, 1890-1940 Cynthia Sturgis Gainfully Employed Women in Utah Miriam B. Murphy From Schoolmarm to State Superintendent: The Changing Role of Women in Utah Education, 1847-2004 Mary Clark and Patricia Lyn Scott Scholarship, Service, and Sisterhood: Utah Women's Clubs and Associations, 1847-1977 Jill Mulvay Derr Women of Letters in Utah Gary Topping Utah Women in the Arts Martha Sontag Bradley-Evans Women in Politics: Power in the Public Sphere Kathryn L. MacKay Utah Women's Life Stages: 1850-1940 Jessie L. Embry
As unique as is Utah's formative history of civil and religious conflict, its political institutions today broadly resemble those found in other American states. While its majority Mormon population translates into an enormous Republican advantage in local and national elections, Utahns have taken a more centrist stance on some issues such as immigration, while Utah itself has become the third‑fastest-growing state in the country since 2000. The mostly geographically rural state is demographically urban, and Salt Lake County is now a swing county in some elections. Utah Politics and Government offers an accessible analysis of Utah's political cultures, starting with the state's unique pioneer heritage, its development into a secular American state, and its explosive modern growth. The book covers the state constitution and its place in the federal system, ongoing public lands disputes, and major political institutions. Several original datasets covering the last thirty years in Utah politics provide contemporary context and analysis. The final chapter offers practical advice to citizens wishing to engage with their elected officials. Adam R. Brown has written a book that is beneficial not only for educational purposes but also for the average citizen who wishes to understand how Utah's government operates, get involved in state politics, and make informed choices.
Newly created territories in antebellum America were designed to be extensions of national sovereignty and jurisdiction. Utah Territory, however, was a deeply contested space in which a cohesive settler group the Mormons sought to establish their own popular sovereignty, raising the question of who possessed and could exercise governing, legal, social, and even cultural power in a newly acquired territory. In "Unpopular Sovereignty," Brent M. Rogers invokes the case of popular sovereignty in Utah as an important contrast to the better-known slavery question in Kansas. Rogers examines the complex relationship between sovereignty and territory along three main lines of inquiry: the implementation of a republican form of government, the administration of Indian policy and Native American affairs, and gender and familial relations all of which played an important role in the national perception of the Mormons ability to self-govern. Utah s status as a federal territory drew it into larger conversations about popular sovereignty and the expansion of federal power in the West. Ultimately, Rogers argues, managing sovereignty in Utah proved to have explosive and far-reaching consequences for the nation as a whole as it teetered on the brink of disunion and civil war. "
"Westwood provides an inside account of a period that reshaped national politics. Second-wave feminism, party reform, and the civil rights and antiwar movements opened up American politics. As a principal in shaping that reform, Jean Westwood not only helped build the road; she traveled it."--BOOK JACKET.
This book is a joint project of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs and the Utah State Historical Society. It is distributed to the book trade by Utah State University Press. The valleys, mountains, and deserts of Utah have been home to native peoples for thousands of years. Like peoples around the word, Utah's native inhabitants organized themselves in family units, groups, bands, clans, and tribes. Today, six Indian tribes in Utah are recognized as official entities. They include the Northwestern Shoshone, the Goshutes, the Paiutes, the Utes, the White Mesa or Southern Utes, and the Navajos (Dineh). Each tribe has its own government. Tribe members are citizens of Utah and the United States; however, lines of distinction both within the tribes and with the greater society at large have not always been clear. Migration, interaction, war, trade, intermarriage, common threats, and challenges have made relationships and affiliations more fluid than might be expected. In this volume, the editor and authors endeavor to write the history of Utah's first residents from an Indian perspective. An introductory chapter provides an overview of Utah's American Indians and a concluding chapter summarizes the issues and concerns of contemporary Indians and their leaders. Chapters on each of the six tribes look at origin stories, religion, politics, education, folkways, family life, social activities, economic issues, and important events. They provide an introduction to the rich heritage of Utah's native peoples. This book includes chapters by David Begay, Dennis Defa, Clifford Duncan, Ronald Holt, Nancy Maryboy, Robert McPherson, Mae Parry, Gary Tom, and Mary Jane Yazzie. Forrest Cuch was born and raised on the Uintah and Ouray Ute Indian Reservation in northeastern Utah. He graduated from Westminster College in 1973 with a bachelor of arts degree in behavioral sciences. He served as education director for the Ute Indian Tribe from 1973 to 1988. From 1988 to 1994 he was employed by the Wampanoag Tribe in Gay Head, Massachusetts, first as a planner and then as tribal administrator. Since October 1997 he has been director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs.
This complex story of women's battle for the ballot in Utah has been interpreted from diverse perspectives. Carol Cornwall Madsen has compiled the best current scholarship and writing on the topic. Together, these essays both represent well the varied points of view of scholars and provide a full history of woman suffrage in Utah.
