[This transcript is automatically generated and may contain errors.]

Scott Black: Welcome to the Virtual Jewel Box podcast of the Tanner Humanities Center.

I'm Scott Black, Director of the Tanner Humanities Center, and I'm delighted to welcome you to our conversation with Paul Reeve and Jordan Watkins about Paul’s book, co-written with Christopher Rich and LaJean Purcell Carruth, This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah.

Paul Reeve is Professor of History and the Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah. He's the author, most recently, of Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness, and Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood. He is also General Editor of the database Century of Black Mormons.

Jordan Watkins is Associate Professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Slavery and Sacred Texts: The Bible, the Constitution, and Antebellum Historical Consciousness, and is an editor of a volume in the Documents series of the Joseph Smith Papers.

Welcome, Paul.

Paul Reeve: Thank you. Good to be here.

Scott Black: Welcome, Jordan.

Jordan Watkins: Thank you. Great to be here.

Okay, so I'm excited to talk about your book. It's a great book, and I look forward to our conversation. We're going to start with some questions about slavery in Utah, since that's the topic of the book, but first I wanted to ask you about co-authoring—just the experience of writing with others. There are two other authors listed here. Maybe you could just briefly talk about what that experience was like?

Paul Reeve: Yeah, sure. I worked closely with Christopher Rich and LaJean Purcell Carruth. LaJean provided the transcripts of the primary sources—the speeches—that allowed this book to even exist. They were recorded and captured in 1852 by George Watt, who was an expert in Pitman shorthand, a 19th-century version of shorthand. Most of those speeches sat in his collection until 2013, untranscribed. LaJean transcribed them into longhand, and so we had a flood of new information. The book wouldn’t exist without her transcriptions.

Christopher Rich is a legal scholar who had published an article in Utah Historical Quarterly on “An Act in Relation to Service,” the bill that the legislature passed in that 1852 session to govern the relationship between white enslavers and their Black enslaved. Prior scholarship hadn’t really dug deeply into the legal implications of what took place in 1852 in Utah Territory. Chris joined me and provided the legal analysis, and I think as a result the book is much richer.

Obviously, collaborating with other people, sometimes you don’t always agree. We had to meet, go over things, and arrive at a conclusion we were all comfortable with. The book is the result—and I think it’s better for that engagement.

Jordan Watkins: Yeah, I think your different areas of expertise come through in the text, and I really appreciated that. Your book challenges the common belief that slavery was absent in Utah. Can you offer an overview of what slavery looked like in practice, both before and after the Utah legislature passed laws on Native American and African American servitude and enslavement?

Paul Reeve: Yeah, sure. We begin the book with the arrival in 1847 of Latter-day Saints into the Salt Lake Valley. They are fleeing the United States, and the Salt Lake Valley at the time is part of northern Mexico. On July 22, 1847, two days ahead of Brigham Young, three Black enslaved men enter the valley with Orson Pratt’s advance company. By the time Brigham Young arrives, they are planting crops and diverting streams. African American slavery arrives in the Salt Lake Valley two days ahead of Brigham Young.

Indigenous enslavement predates the Latter-day Saints by at least 60 years among the Western Ute, and even longer among the Eastern Ute, who had been engaged in human trafficking and bartering human beings with Spanish colonizers and other Native American groups. So both forms of enslavement—African and Indigenous—exist in the Salt Lake Valley at the moment of Latter-day Saint arrival. By 1852, they have to decide what to do about it, and the legislative session is the result.

Jordan Watkins: Could you say more about that? Why did Brigham Young encourage legislation on these matters? What do you think motivated him, and what were the laws passed in 1852?

Paul Reeve: What we believe brings the issue to the forefront is the arrest of New Mexican traders who arrived in Utah Territory without a trading license. They had a license from the governor of New Mexico, but not from the governor of Utah. They approached Brigham Young, and he rejected their application. They were arrested with a woman and children who, it was believed, they intended to take back to New Mexico and sell.

That arrest brings the issue to the forefront. There’s chronological overlap between the trials of John Pedro Leon Luján and the legislative session. Brigham Young, in his opening speech to the legislature, refers to the trials. There’s also personnel overlap—some individuals involved in the trials are also involved in the legislature.

The legislature addresses both African American and Native American enslavement. The newly transcribed speeches reveal that they were grappling with real legal challenges as well as moral dilemmas. Many legislators looked backward to various unfree labor categories they were familiar with—indentured servitude, apprenticeships, etc.

For Native Americans, they passed a 20-year indenture bill. The idea was that if a white settler purchased a Native woman or child from a trafficker, that person would then be indentured for up to 20 years to repay the debt incurred. The ideal, rarely realized, was that the individual would acquire a skill and integrate into white society.

For African Americans, the legislature passed a bill that, in Brigham Young’s mind at least, elevated enslaved people above the condition of mere property. The U.S. was grappling with the fundamental question: can human beings be held as property? Southerners said yes; anti-slavery Northerners said no. That question was only resolved by civil war.

In Utah, the bill granted enslaved African Americans some rights. If you have rights, you are not mere property. It freed no one, though. Young called it “servitude” rather than “slavery.” Orson Pratt rejected that distinction and said it was all slavery, including the indenture system for Native Americans.

The book draws out this debate and situates it within the broader 1850s context in which the entire nation is struggling with these same questions. So Utah is not operating in a vacuum—it’s responding to both local developments and national tensions.

Jordan Watkins: Yeah, your comments there lead to a couple of other questions. One is about the primary sources the book is rooted in. You've said a little about their origins and transcription—can you say more about how they were recovered, and maybe highlight some of the most valuable or revealing ones?

Paul Reeve: Sure. It's rare for historians to gain access to 60 to 70 pages of newly transcribed primary sources that no one has previously worked with. That’s the foundation of this book. Beyond the legislative speeches, we also searched state archives for documentation of Native American indentures and African American enslavement in compliance with the laws that were passed.

The origins of this project go back to my earlier book Religion of a Different Color. I was researching when Brigham Young made specific pronouncements about racial priesthood and temple restrictions. I had zeroed in on the 1852 legislative session and submitted an inquiry to the LDS Church History Department: is there a Pitman shorthand version of Brigham Young’s speech—either from January 5 or February 5, 1852?

At the same time, I had shared a draft chapter with Christopher Rich, and he suggested that the key speech was likely from February 5. The Church History Library responded that there was no shorthand version of the January 5 speech—but they hadn’t addressed February 5. So I resubmitted the inquiry, this time only asking about February 5. That led to the discovery of a file in George Watt’s collection that had sat untouched from 1852 until 2013.

LaJean Carruth, a Pitman shorthand expert at the Church History Library—and truly one of the few people on the planet still able to read Pitman shorthand—was then assigned to work on it. For the next several months, we were on pins and needles as her transcriptions came in. They revealed intense theological and legal debates in 19th-century Utah. As a result, we now know much more about racial priesthood and temple restrictions in the LDS faith—and about the nature of slavery and servitude in the Utah Territory.

Among the standout documents, I’d highlight Orson Pratt’s anti-slavery speech. It’s one of the gems. He was stridently opposed to all forms of unfree labor. He said, you can call it indenture or servitude, but it’s all slavery if people are being held against their will. He also represented a “free labor ethic” emerging in the North. Meanwhile, Brigham Young and most legislators were looking backward to older labor categories from their upbringing.

I’d also point to Brigham Young’s February 5, 1852, speech. It’s arguably the worst speech in the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Utah Territory. He makes a theological case for a priesthood restriction on men of Black African ancestry and opposes Black male suffrage in the territory. He says, “We just as well make a bill here for mules to vote as Negroes and Indians.” It’s deeply racist and uses biblical curses—Cain and Ham—to justify exclusion, even though Joseph Smith had allowed Black men to be ordained.

So those two speeches alone—Pratt’s and Young’s—offer powerful new evidence and context.

Jordan Watkins: I remember reading those transcriptions for the first time a couple of years ago—it was a remarkable experience. As you say, it’s rare for a historian to come upon a cache of documents like that. Since we’ve brought up Orson Pratt again, let’s return to the title of the book: This Abominable Slavery. That’s a phrase from Pratt. Can you tell us a bit more about the context of that phrase and why you chose it for the title?

Paul Reeve: Absolutely. Orson Pratt was both a territorial legislator and an apostle in the church. That overlap of church and state is crucial here. Brigham Young, remember, was territorial governor and president of the church. Religion and politics were heavily intertwined.

Pratt called the proposed “Act in Relation to Service”—which governed the relationship between white enslavers and Black enslaved persons—“this abominable slavery.” He wanted the bill rejected entirely. He especially focused on Section 3 of the bill, which would have passed the condition of servitude on to the next generation. He rejected Protestant pro-slavery interpretations of the Bible and insisted that biblical curses were not transgenerational. Whatever happened in ancient times, he said, had no bearing on 19th-century Utah.

He defined people of Black African ancestry as “innocent Africans.” He rejected the idea that God had revealed anything to justify slavery or racial restrictions. He argued that there was no divine permission to legalize slavery. So he used both legal and theological arguments in defense of a free labor system.

Jordan Watkins: That really illustrates that Utah in this period wasn’t monolithic. There were strong disagreements—even among the top leaders of church and state. I think that’s one of the most important themes in the book. Could you now say more about how the practice of slavery in Utah compared to slavery in Southern states—or even unfree labor systems in Northern states? Was this “slavery” or not?

Paul Reeve: That’s one of the book’s central questions. In Brigham Young’s mind—and likely in some other legislators’ minds—the answer is: no, this was not chattel slavery. The law they passed granted some rights to the enslaved. For example, Section 3, which would have made servitude hereditary, was modified. We found the original draft and saw that 18 words were crossed out—words that would have passed on slavery to the next generation. They didn’t replace those words with affirmative language stating that the condition wouldn’t pass on, but the redaction suggests intent.

The law required that enslaved people give consent before being sold or taken out of the territory. That’s legally significant—if you must give consent, you’re not mere property. The law also required the education of the enslaved, in contrast to Southern laws that banned Black literacy.

It also criminalized sexual relations between white enslavers and their Black enslaved—aimed at curbing exploitation and rape, which were endemic in the South.

Still, the law freed no one. You could arrive enslaved in Utah and remain enslaved. It’s hard to know how much actual consent enslaved people had. But we did find one court case where a Black man resisted being taken out of the territory—and the law upheld his right to remain. That’s one data point suggesting the law was at least sometimes enforced.

But again, if you were enslaved, it’s unlikely you woke up the day after the law passed thinking, “My life is better now.” We try to understand both the law’s intent and its impact, and the answers aren’t always the same.

We also emphasize that these legal distinctions matter—especially when viewed from the perspective of lawmakers—but they don't negate the lived reality of being held in bondage. Even if Utah law granted some rights or used the term “servant” instead of “slave,” the fundamental conditions of coercion and racial hierarchy remained. From the perspective of the enslaved, a change in terminology doesn’t necessarily mean a change in circumstance.

Jordan Watkins: That really gets at the heart of the tension you explore—between law and lived experience. I also appreciated that the book puts Utah into conversation with broader developments in the American West. Slavery is often framed as a North-South issue, but your book reminds us that it was very much a Western issue too. Can you talk more about how Utah's 1852 law relates to similar legislation in other Western states or territories?

Paul Reeve: Yes, great question. Much of the existing scholarship on Western slavery has focused on New Mexico and California. New Mexico had widespread debt peonage and Indigenous slavery. California, though admitted as a free state in the Compromise of 1850, had major loopholes in its laws that allowed slavery to persist. Southern enslavers migrated to California during the Gold Rush, and many of them were elected to the state legislature. They attempted to divide California and create a slaveholding Southern half.

California’s laws allowed enslavers to keep people in bondage temporarily, as long as they were eventually removed from the state. Some estimates suggest there were over 1,000 enslaved African Americans in California during this period, despite its “free state” status. California also passed Native American indenture laws that resembled Utah’s.

So Utah fits into this Western puzzle. Our book is trying to provide the missing piece. Utah’s African American servitude law, in Brigham Young’s mind, was a middle ground. He rejected both abolitionist extremism and Southern-style chattel slavery. Of course, those nuances have been mostly lost in the 21st century, but they mattered deeply at the time—and were hotly debated even then, as Orson Pratt’s opposition demonstrates.

Jordan Watkins: I appreciate that framing. It helps us see that Utah was not an outlier—it was participating in broader regional patterns, but also trying to carve its own path. You’ve touched a bit on the voices of the enslaved and indentured, but I want to return to that. The book tries to recover those voices where possible. What were some of the challenges you faced, and what stories stood out as especially revealing?

Paul Reeve: That was one of the hardest but most important parts of the project. We were able to find two Native American indenture records—one from Sanpete County, one from Iron County. Both involved Native children being taken to local officials and registered under the law. One of the records specifies that the child is to be apprenticed in farming; the other uses the term “apprenticeship” but doesn’t name a specific trade.

We suspect there was a broad spectrum of experiences. Some Latter-day Saints probably saw themselves as rescuers—taking Native children in and treating them as part of the family, sometimes even calling them “son” or “daughter.” In other cases, we have probate records that list Native children as property, right alongside tools and grain.

Most tragically, many of these children likely died before the end of their indenture—due to disease, malnutrition, or other hardships. Some did marry into white settler society. We tell the story of one indentured Native woman who married a European Latter-day Saint convert and was sealed to him in a temple ceremony. That suggests a degree of integration—but we also know many did not experience such outcomes.

For African Americans, we lack first-person accounts from those enslaved in Utah. The one exception is a retrospective comment from Alexander Bankhead, who said that being enslaved in Utah wasn’t much different than in the South. There were no large plantations, but the labor demands were the same.

One story we tell is that of Tom, an enslaved man inherited by Hayden Wells Church while Church was returning from Europe. Tom was brought to Utah, baptized into the LDS faith, and eventually traded to Abraham Smoot, his bishop. He died in 1862, just two months before Congress outlawed slavery in all U.S. territories. So Tom would have been freed by federal law—but he didn’t live to see it. He spent ten years under the 1852 law, and we found no evidence that it ever changed his life. That’s a hard truth, but it’s important to confront.

Jordan Watkins: Yes, that chapter really stood out to me. I imagine a lot of readers will want to know, not just what the law said, but what it meant in practice. And your book gives a range of examples that complicate easy generalizations. Shifting gears a bit, let’s talk about politics. What role did slavery play in Utah’s pursuit of statehood? And how did national debates about slavery shape Utah’s trajectory?

Paul Reeve: Great question. Before the 1852 laws were passed, Utah’s stance was essentially silence. One of Utah’s national allies advised the Saints to stay neutral—don’t take a pro-slavery stance, or you’ll alienate Northerners; don’t take an anti-slavery stance, or you’ll alienate Southerners. So Utah tried to avoid the issue in its first push for statehood.

Even with the passage of the 1852 laws, Brigham Young saw it as a middle-ground approach—one that wouldn’t bring Utah into the crosshairs of either side. The first application for statehood doesn’t mention slavery. The second is similarly neutral. But in 1856, during another constitutional convention, a southern delegate named Seth Blair proposed that the constitution explicitly protect slavery. That proposal was defeated—thanks in large part to another powerful anti-slavery speech by Orson Pratt.

So we see these tensions play out. Southerners, though small in number, wielded outsized influence. The total number of African American enslaved people in Utah Territory from 1852 to 1862 was around 30 to 40. Native indentures may have reached 400 by the turn of the century. But despite their small numbers, enslavers had disproportionate political sway. That’s a pattern we also see nationally.

Jordan Watkins: That’s fascinating. And it leads to one more question: if there were so few enslavers, and if Brigham Young didn’t believe in “property in man,” why legislate at all? Why not just end the practice?

Paul Reeve: I think Brigham Young was trying to hold the church together. And that meant, in his mind, appeasing southern converts—many of whom arrived with enslaved people. What he failed to fully appreciate is that enslaved Black people were also part of his faith community. By prioritizing white enslavers, he marginalized Black Saints.

We point out in the book that the Presbyterians, Methodists, and Baptists had already split along sectional lines over slavery. Brigham Young didn’t want that to happen in his church. But in doing so, he missed the opportunity to offer a clearer moral and theological stance—and to more fully include Black Latter-day Saints. He was focused on retaining white Southerners, not necessarily expanding the faith in a more inclusive way.

Jordan Watkins: That’s really revealing—and it ties Utah’s story directly into the national one. You show how political and religious calculations aligned with broader patterns of Southern influence and compromise. To wrap up the political thread: could you say more about Orson Pratt’s 1856 anti-slavery speech? How did it differ from, or build on, his 1852 arguments?

Paul Reeve: In 1856, Pratt made several new and important points. For one, he flatly rejected the idea that people of African descent were under the curse of Cain. He said, “We have no proof that Africans are descendants of Cain.” That’s a direct repudiation of Brigham Young’s theological justification for priesthood restrictions.

He also appealed to revelation. He cited a statement from Joseph Smith in which God allegedly declared that “no man should be in bondage to another.” Pratt framed that as binding scripture that their constituents believed in—and he insisted it should guide legislative decisions. So in 1856, his argument wasn’t just political or legal—it was deeply theological, and he used scripture to support a free labor ethic.

Most significantly, his speech helped defeat the proposal to make Utah a slave state. That proposal, advanced by Seth Blair, was rejected in a roll-call vote, 26 to 5. Thanks to Pratt’s intervention, the 1856 constitution submitted to Congress made no mention of slavery. So he was pivotal—not just in shaping the debate, but in determining the outcome.

Jordan Watkins: That’s a powerful legacy. To close out, I want to ask what further research might build on your book. What unanswered questions do you think remain most urgent?

Paul Reeve: The biggest one, in my view, is: how did slavery end in practice in Utah? Legally, Congress outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude in all U.S. territories in June 1862. But we don’t know how that played out locally. Were enslavers aware of the law? Were enslaved people? Did they act on it? Did Utahns consider themselves exempt, because they believed their system wasn’t really “slavery”?

There’s just a black hole in the record. Was Utah’s “Juneteenth” actually in 1862, when Lincoln signed the federal law? Or did enslaved people remain in bondage until the 13th Amendment in 1865? We couldn’t find evidence to answer that. But I hold out hope that some letter, diary, or document is sitting in an attic or archive, waiting to be discovered. That would be a major contribution to this field.

Jordan Watkins: I’m sure readers will want to explore more. Where can people access the primary sources you’ve used—especially the transcriptions of those legislative speeches?

Paul Reeve: We created a companion website: thisabominableslavery.org. It’s hosted by the Marriott Library at the University of Utah, in cooperation with the Church History Library. You can read all of the transcribed speeches—Brigham Young’s, Orson Pratt’s, and others. The site is organized to match the chapters of the book, so you can go back and forth between the narrative and the sources. We wanted transparency. Anyone can read the original words and come to their own conclusions.

Jordan Watkins: That’s a fantastic resource. This has been a great experience for me. It’s a great book—one I heartily recommend. Like all strong scholarship, it doesn’t just answer questions—it raises new ones and invites deeper thinking. This Abominable Slavery is definitely worth a read.

Paul Reeve: Thank you, Jordan.

Scott Black: You’ve been listening to the Virtual Jewel Box podcast of the Tanner Humanities Center. Our music is provided by Jelly Roll Morton: “Perfect Rag.” Thanks for listening.