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The United States House of Representatives election in Utah for the 54th Congress was held on November 5, 1895, in anticipation of statehood, which was achieved on January 4, 1896.
Utah Territory had been represented by a delegate since 1851. Utah Territory was originally significantly larger than the current state, including most of Nevada, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming, which borders it held when the first delegate was elected, and was reduced in size in several stages. The territory had been colonized by Mormons who had sought to join the Union as the State of Deseret.
Due in large part to controversies over the beliefs of the Mormon majority, especially in regards to polygamy, the territory's admission as a state was delayed for a long time, and by the time of its admission, it was one of only four remaining territories in the contiguous United States.
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republican | Clarence E. Allen | 20,563 | 49.7 | ||
| Democratic | Brigham H. Roberts [2] | 19,666 | 47.5 | ||
| Prohibition | J. Hogan | 1,150 | 2.8 | ||
| Total votes | 41,379 | 100.00 | |||
| Republican win (new seat) | |||||
Reed Smoot was an American politician, businessman, and apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. First elected by the Utah State Legislature to the U.S. Senate in 1902, he served as a Republican senator from 1903 to 1933. From his time in the Senate, Smoot is primarily remembered as the co-sponsor of the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which increased almost 900 American import duties. Criticized at the time as having "intensified nationalism all over the world" by Thomas Lamont of J.P. Morgan & Co., Smoot–Hawley is widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the worsening Great Depression.
The Territory of Utah was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from September 9, 1850, until January 4, 1896, when the final extent of the territory was admitted to the Union as the State of Utah, the 45th state. At its creation, the Territory of Utah included all of the present-day State of Utah, most of the present-day state of Nevada save for Southern Nevada, much of present-day western Colorado, and the extreme southwest corner of present-day Wyoming.
Since Utah became a U.S. state in 1896, it has sent congressional delegations to the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives. Each state elects two senators to serve for six years. Before the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, senators were elected by the Utah State Legislature. Members of the House of Representatives are elected to two-year terms, one from each of Utah's four congressional districts. Before becoming a state, the Territory of Utah elected a non-voting delegate at-large to Congress from 1850 to 1896.
George Quayle Cannon was an early member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and served in the First Presidency under four successive presidents of the church: Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, and Lorenzo Snow. He was the church's chief political strategist, and was dubbed "the Mormon premier" and "the Mormon Richelieu" by the press. He was also a five-time Utah territorial delegate to the U.S. Congress.
The Liberal Party was a political party established in the latter half of the 1800s in Utah Territory before the national Democrats and Republicans established themselves in Utah in the early 1890s.
The 1890 Manifesto is a statement which officially advised against any future plural marriage in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Issued by church president Wilford Woodruff in September 1890, the Manifesto was a response to mounting anti-polygamy pressure from the United States Congress, which by 1890 had disincorporated the church, escheated its assets to the U.S. federal government, and imprisoned many prominent polygamist Mormons. Upon its issuance, the LDS Church in conference accepted Woodruff's Manifesto as "authoritative and binding."
Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that held that religious duty was not a defense to a criminal indictment. Reynolds was the first Supreme Court opinion to address the First Amendment's protection of religious liberties, impartial juries and the Confrontation Clauses of the Sixth Amendment.
Eli Houston Murray was Governor of Utah Territory between 1880 and 1886. The city of Murray, Utah was named for him.
Frank Jenne Cannon was the first United States Senator from Utah, who served from 1896 to 1899.
Lee Mantle was an American businessman and politician from Montana. A Republican, he was most notable for his service as a United States Senator from 1895 to 1899.
The Utah Republican Party is the affiliate of the Republican Party in the U.S. state of Utah. It is currently the dominant party in the state, controlling all four of Utah's U.S. House seats, both U.S. Senate seats, the governorship, and has supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature.
Angus Munn Cannon was an early Latter Day Saint leader and Mormon pioneer.
The Edmunds Act, also known as the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882, is a United States federal statute, signed into law on March 23, 1882 by President Chester A. Arthur, declaring polygamy a felony in federal territories. The act is named for U.S. Senator George F. Edmunds of Vermont. The Edmunds Act also prohibited "bigamous" or "unlawful cohabitation", thus removing the need to prove that actual marriages had occurred. The act not only reinforced the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act but also made the offense of unlawful cohabitation much easier to prove than polygamy misdemeanor and made it illegal for polygamists or cohabitants to vote, hold public office, or serve on juries in federal territories.
Possibly as early as the 1830s, followers of the Latter Day Saint movement, were practicing the doctrine of polygamy or "plural marriage". After the death of church founder Joseph Smith, the doctrine was officially announced in Utah Territory in 1852 by Mormon leader Brigham Young. The practice was attributed posthumously to Smith and it began among Mormons at large, principally in Utah where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had relocated after the Illinois Mormon War.
Both houses of the United States Congress have refused to seat new members based on Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution which states that:
"Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as each House may provide."
Women's suffrage in Utah was first granted in 1870, in the pre-federal period, decades before statehood. Among all U.S. states, only Wyoming granted suffrage to women earlier than Utah. Because Utah held two elections before Wyoming, Utah women were the first women to cast ballots in the United States after the start of the suffrage movement. However, in 1887 the Edmunds–Tucker Act was passed by Congress in an effort to curtail Mormon influence in the territorial government, disallowing the enfranchisement of the women residents within Utah Territory.
Early in its history, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had a series of negative encounters with the United States federal government. This led to decades of mistrust, armed conflict, and the eventual disincorporation of the church by an act of the United States Congress. The relationship between the church and the government eventually improved, and in recent times LDS Church members have served in leadership positions in Congress and held other important political offices. The LDS Church becomes involved in political matters if it perceives that there is a moral issue at stake and wields considerable influence on a national level with over a dozen members of Congress having membership in the church in the early 2000s, and about 80% of Utah state lawmakers identifying as Latter-day Saints.
The 1900 United States presidential election in Utah took place on November 6, 1900, as part of the 1900 United States presidential election held in each of the forty-five contemporary states. State voters chose three representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
The 1896 United States presidential election in Utah was held on November 3, 1896 as part of the 1896 United States presidential election. Voters chose three representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president. This was the first time Utah participated in a presidential election, having been admitted as the 45th state on January 4 of that year.
The twin relics of barbarism refer to the popular nineteenth-century phrase that linked the practices of slavery and polygamy in the United States. Attention to these twin relics increased following the 1856 Republican National Convention as the party acknowledged both practices in their party platform. Within the party's planks, they called on Congress to firmly denounce the "twin relics of barbarism –– Polygamy and Slavery." During this period, slavery was widely practiced among southern states, and polygamy was becoming prevalent among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The growth of these practices stoked fear and uncertainty in the nation at large as the two practices were seen as "incongruous with the pure and the free, the just and safe principles inaugurated by the [American] Revolution." As a result of the widespread opposition to each, they were increasingly coupled together in national print media throughout the country. Following the Civil War, slavery was abolished and equality for African-Americans began with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Polygamy was eventually outlawed in the 1880s following the passage of numerous pieces of anti-polygamy legislation including the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, the Edmunds Act of 1882, and the Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887 as well as the landmark Supreme Court case Reynolds v. United States.