Study Guide: Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth Century America.

What is the Mormon Question?

What thesis does Gordon argue in this book? The title indicates the book is about religion, marriage, and law--what does it have to do with the West? How does the West figure into this story? By the way, pay attention to the issues related to each of the other components (religion, marriage, and law), too.

What did it mean to become Mormon?
What is celestial marriage? Zion?
Describe the social, legal, and economic structure of territorial Utah. Why does Gordon think it was important?
Who and what were antipolygamists?

How did antipolygamy relate to antislavery? How did their relationship figure into 19th-century politics?
What was the Mormon Reformation? What was Bleeding Kansas? How do they relate to this story?
What was the Mormon War?
Why couldn't the Mormons enjoy religious freedom in the West? Or could they?
Who was Justin Morrill? What did he achieve in 1862?

Summarize arguments for and against polygamy.
What was the Poland Act?

What was the Reynolds decision and what did it mean for Mormons and for the West?
Gordon refers to a contest of wills between Utah and Washington, D.C., during the 1880s. What does she mean?
Why do you think people in the East got so worked up about polygamy, especially polygamy in Utah?
What was the Edmunds Act?
What was the Edmunds-Tucker Act?
How did the West figure into some people's concerns about the state of marriage in the United States?

By the 1880s, it seems a number of fears plagued Americans. How were they manifested in Utah and what did mainstream society try to do about it?
What was the Dawes Act and what did it, and American Indians, have to do with the issues discussed in this book?

How might it be said the West shaped the U.S. Constitution? How might relations between Mormons and the U.S. government reflect other types of West-East relationships?

On what levels does this book relate to the West?