This Abominable Slavery

Five Latter-day Saint leaders discuss the racial priesthood restriction in newspaper articles published between 1852 and 1857

Documents Introduction

Willard Richards, counselor to Brigham Young in the governing First Presidency of the Church and editor of the LDS owned Deseret News led out in openly acknowledging the racial priesthood restriction just three months following the legislative session. Apostles Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, and John Taylor's co-editor William Appleby, along with Oregon and California mission president George Q. Cannon, then followed with publications of their own. Whatever restraints that might have been in place before 1852, Young’s forceful position to the legislature seems to have freed other leaders to speak publicly of the racial restrictions in newspapers aimed at both Latter-day Saint audiences as well as curious outsiders. Latter-day Saints thus attempted to make it clear to their Protestant counterparts that they too rejected racial equality and accepted biblical curses, even though they added their own unique theological twists in doing so. In fact, the final article published in New York City in The Mormon includes an air of superiority as it indicates that the Latter-day Saints had special insight into racial curses. It draws on the Book of Abraham to make its case, a book unique to Latter-day Saints. Despite the book’s influence in shaping racial understanding in the 1850s, Latter-day Saints did not canonize it and accept it as scripture until 1880, three years after Brigham Young’s death.[1]

[1] Terryl Givens with Brian M. Hauglid, The Pearl of Greatest Price: Mormonism’s Most Controversial Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 2-3, 51.