Did church members own slaves?
Question
Gramps,
I am not sure of dates but it seems that the church existed before slavery was fully abolished. Are there any instances known about where members had slaves?
Liz
Answer
Dear Liz,
Yes, the Church was established during the antebellum years (the years before the Civil War) and both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young lived during that period. (Joseph Smith prophesied of the coming Civil War. Doctrine and Covenants 87).
While the Church was established in New York and Illinois, there could not have been slaves, because these states were anti-slavery. Thus many of the first members of the Church were from the North and tended to be anti-slavery. When the body of the Church moved to Missouri where the persecution they were suffering increased, it was in part because the pro-slavery Missiourians feared that the mostly anti-slavery Mormons would swing the vote.
When Joseph Smith ran for President of the United States, part of his platform was a plan to eliminate slavery. He suggested we “pay every man a reasonable price for his slaves out of the surplus revenue arising from the sale of public lands, and from the deduction of pay from members of Congress.” Joseph Smith: Campaign for President of the United States
Slavery was legal in Utah, due to the Compromise of 1850. When the Saints moved to the Utah territory, there were three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay and Oscar Crosby in the first pioneer company in 1847. When slave owners converted to the church, some gave the slaves their freedom before migrating, or after arriving in Utah, others brought their slaves with them
One family freed their slaves, but because the woman was a widow, one of the slaves, “Faithful John” traveled across the plains with them to help the widow and her children make the trip. Once they were arrived and established, he set out to return to the East to look for his wife (who was sold by his previous owner.) However, the family later received word that he had died before reaching the East.
One family brought their slave, a woman named Biddy Mason. She was born in Missouri and “belonged” to Robert Marion Smith. When Smith and his family joined the church they took Mason with them to Utah. She herded cattle, cooked, served as a midwife and tended her own children. In 1851, Robert Smith got gold fever and went to California. Apparently, he was unaware that California was a free state. In 1856 Mason petitioned the court and was able to obtain freedom for herself and her daughters. She went on to become a successful entrepreneur.
There likely were other slaves in Utah as well, but I believe this was the exception, and not the rule. It is notable that there were free black people who joined the Church as well. Elijah Abel, the first black man to receive the Priesthood (from Joseph Smith) and Jane Manning James are two of our black pioneers.
Gramps
So if Joseph Smith himself bestowed the Priesthood upon a black man, where and when did it come down that black men couldn’t hold the Priesthood?
Joseph was said to have not known Elijah Able was black. Brigham Young fiercely believed “the negro to be the cursed descendant of cain”, relegated to “an inferior race due to rebellion in the pre-earth existence.” He went on to say if someone had even one drop of “negro blood”, his blood should be spilt. Despite Elijah Able remaining valiant and true he was not allowed to do his own Temple work. His descendants also remained true to the church and secretly intermarried with white families until they were indistinguishable from other white members.
My ancestors John and Caroline Butler (he served as a body guard to Joseph Smith) were given slaves on their wedding day by her parents, and they freed them the same day because they didn’t believe slavery was a good thing. This was before they encountered the LDS church. The two freed slaves stayed voluntarily with the family through all of church history and even came out to Utah with them as members of the family, not regarded as slaves or servants at all.
Joseph Smith taught that slavery was wrong.
That’s a neat tale.
On the topic of the restriction of African blacks to the priesthood: Since there really is no evidence that suggests otherwise, nor doctrine to support it, nor any known reason that was ever given by Brigham Young for the institution of the restriction on African blacks, it was quite clearly the social custom of the day that was to blame. Further, it was left up to the membership to interpret the meaning of the restriction, giving rise to an unfortunate display of supposition and “doctrinal folklore” to shore it up (for example, assuming that blacks were not valiant in the premortal realm or that the curse of Cain involved being given black skin, neither of which are supported by revelation). As a result, these suppositions then perpetuated and traditionalized the restriction until the Lord directly intervened to correct what should have been recognized as a rather embarrassing violation of existing revelation, and thus rendering the restriction a mystery as to how it came to pass. I submit that the restriction on African blacks was never instituted by way of revelation, and the lifting of the restriction in the 1970s was the Lord directly intervening to correct a rather obvious and doctrinally backwards error that was nothing more than a pervasive social custom of the era.
I agree with Robert. It was a mistake. It should have never happened. It was not divinely inspired. And the revelation in 1978 was to correct this wrong.
My family is from the south and owned slaves. One day doing genealogy I found the receipt of purchase for one of my families slaves. I felt impressed to ask my yule who works at the temple if I could do the work for him. I was pleased to hear that this is allowed and that even though he was a slave on Earth he could finally receive the blessings of the gospel in heaven.