During the nineteenth-century debates over slavery, many of the institution’s most ardent defenders opposed a liberal society for being antithetical to the Southern slave economy. One theorist in this mold was George Fitzhugh, a Virginian lawyer and social theorist whom the famously-caned Radical Republican Charles Sumner described as “a leading writer among Slave-masters.” Writing only a few years before the outbreak of the American Civil War, Fitzhugh became one of the foremost apologists for the peculiar institution, arguably providing some of the most sophisticated anti-liberal, pro-slavery arguments of the time. 

Fitzhugh’s writings also provide a window into how a minority religion became entangled in the competing political philosophies of the day. Across two major pro-slavery works—Sociology for the South (1854) and Cannibals All! (1857)—Fitzhugh highlighted “Mormonism” (officially the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) as the prime example of the backwardness and misbegotten fruit of Northern liberalism. Attacks on Mormonism were certainly nothing new in this time, especially regarding its practice of polygamy. Yet, northern critics tended to describe Mormonism as illiberal and its practice of polygamy as being more in line with Southern slavery. 

Fitzhugh was distinctive in that his target was not Mormonism itself. Instead, Fitzhugh used Mormonism as a stick to rhetorically bludgeon liberalism: a political doctrine Fitzhugh labeled as an “exuberantly false,” “arborescently fallacious,” “unphilosophical,” “presumptuous,” and “infidel philosophy of the 18th century.” In many ways, Fitzhugh’s views of liberalism echo the post-liberal critics of today. And Joseph Smith’s religious movement acted for him as the poster child of everything wrong with liberalism; a demonstrable proof of the inferiority of Northern society. Fitzhugh saw Mormonism as a warped attempt to flee the excesses of Northern liberalism and recover the alleged benefits of Southern culture. But the continued existence and ultimate flourishing of what many consider to be a religious oddity may be a testament to the success and intended goal of the liberal project that Fitzhugh despised.

The North’s “Unnatural” Culture

According to Fitzhugh, the North’s comparative liberalism produced a culture that was at war with nature itself. In Cannibals All!, Fitzhugh fleshed out this argument by appealing to Aristotle (as did many slavery defenders), declaring that liberal theorists “propose to dissolve and disintegrate society; falsely supposing that they thereby follow nature.” In Sociology for the South, Fitzhugh argued that:

no heresy in moral science has been more pregnant of mischief than this [social contract] theory of [John] Locke. … Man is born a member of society, and does not form society. Nature, as in the cases of bees and ants, has it ready formed for him. … He has no rights whatever, as opposed to the interests of society; and that society may very properly make any use of him that will redound to the public good. 

Building on this questionable view of human nature, Fitzhugh believed that “universal liberty has disintegrated and dissolved society, and placed men in isolated, selfish, and antagonistic positions—in which each man is compelled to wrong others, in order to be just himself. But man’s nature is social, not selfish, and he longs and yearns to return to parental, fraternal, and associative relations.”

In Fitzhugh’s mind, “Mormonism” was evidence of the unnatural culture of Northern liberalism; one of several unholy by-products of an alien system. He referred to these by-products as “the moral, religious, and social heresies of the North.” Yet, Mormonism was not just one of many “superstitious and infidel isms at the North,” but “a monster development of the isms”: 

Mormonism had its birth in Western New York, that land fertile of isms—where … all heresies do most flourish. Mormonism now is daily gathering thousands of recruits from free society in Europe, Asia, Africa, and our North, and not one from the South. It has no religion, but in place of it, a sensual moral code, that shocks the common sense of propriety. But it holds property somewhat in common, draws men together in closer and more fraternal relations, and promises (probably falsely) a safe retreat and refuge from the isolated and inimical relations, the killing competition and exploitation, of free society.

Across the pond, European Catholics expressed similar critiques. For the German Jesuit Cardinal Karl-August von Reisach, Mormonism represented the unfortunate result of America’s Protestant spirit, sectarianism, and individualism. While Reisach saw Mormonism as an outgrowth of American culture more broadly, Fitzhugh placed Mormonism’s development solely at the feet of the liberal North. Much like Reisach, Fitzhugh labeled Mormons as “the legitimate fruits of modern progress”:

In Utah, (the highest and latest result of liberty, equality, and fraternity,) the family dwelling, which in heathen Rome was a temple of the Gods, has been converted into a den of prostitutes. What a rise, from pious and pagan Æneas, to Brigham Young the Yankee Christian of the latest cut and newest fashion!

While like other “social experiments attempting to practice community of property, of wives, children,” Fitzhugh understood Mormonism to be “stronger evidence than all other of the tendency of modern free society towards No-Government and Free Love. In the name of polygamy, it has practically removed all restraints to the intercourse of sexes, and broken up the Family. It promises, too, a qualified community of property and a fraternal-association of labor.” 

The Twin Relics of Barbarism

Fitzhugh’s criticisms of Mormon polygamy and communitarianism reflected those of the broader society. For example, the religious beliefs, social norms, and potential political power of the Mormons chafed against Missourian localism, resulting in the Mormons’ violent expulsion from the state and an official extermination order by the Missouri governor in 1838. However, Fitzhugh’s depiction of Mormonism as too liberal and too equal contrasted with many Northern takes, which tended to describe Mormon polygamy as a form of slavery. The Republican Platform of 1856 specifically coupled polygamy and slavery as “the twin relics of barbarism.” In his memoirs, former Union general and US president Ulysses S. Grant compared “people who believed in the ‘divinity’ of human slavery” to “people who believe Mormonism and Polygamy to be ordained by the Most High. We forgive them for entertaining such notions, but forbid their practice.” 

What would have likely surprised many Northerners was the anti-slavery impulse found throughout early Mormonism. The Book of Mormon (published in 1830) featured a righteous king who outlawed slavery (Mosiah 2:13; cf. Alma 27:9). An 1833 revelation from Joseph Smith stated that “it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.” Even Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential platform included the abolishment of slavery by 1850. However, this anti-slavery impulse was inconsistent throughout Smith’s lifetime and among the Saints. By the time Fitzhugh produced his manuscripts, Utah under Brigham Young’s leadership had introduced gradual emancipation legislation to accommodate slave-owning converts; a compromise that apostle Orson Pratt at the time said was “enough to cause the angels in heaven to blush.”

Despite these more contemporary illiberal manifestations from the Latter-day Saints, Fitzhugh nonetheless believed the religion had a complete “disregard [for] the natural relations of mankind” and could only survive in Fitzhugh’s mind “under a self-elected despotism like that of Joe Smith, or Brigham Young, [by] becom[ing] patriarchal, and … los[ing] the character intended by its founders, and acquir[ing] a despotic head like other family associations.” This is when “it works well, because it works naturally.” Fitzhugh’s affinity for and prescription of despotism contrasted with what he saw as Mormonism’s liberal impulse. 

Civil Liberties

While Fitzhugh worried about the “diabolical rights” of “Chinese idolaters” and the “devil deity” of the “negroes,” “Mormonism [was] still a worse religious evil” that demonstrated why “religious liberty must be restricted as well as other liberty.” As far as Fitzhugh was concerned, “Mormons … would no sooner be tolerated in Virginia than Pyrrhic Dances and human sacrifices to Moloch. … No gross violation of public decency will be allowed for the sake of false abstractions.” One could argue that Fitzhugh anticipated by over 30 years the opinion of Chief Justice Morrison Waite in Reynolds v. United States, which solidified Congress’s power to prohibit polygamy: “Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?”

Fitzhugh also regarded various other liberties with disdain: “Liberty of the press, liberty of speech, freedom of religion, or rather freedom from religion, and the unlimited right of private judgment, have borne no good fruits, and many bad ones.” Mormons are then listed among those fruits who supposedly “disturb the peace of society, threaten the security of property, offend the public sense of decency, assail religion, and invoke anarchy.” Ironically, Latter-day Saint leaders have also argued for the connection between these liberties and the rise of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For example, an 1833 revelation by Joseph Smith recognized the Constitution as being divinely established “by the hands of wise men whom [God] raised up unto this very purpose.” More recently, former Utah Supreme Court justice and current LDS apostle Dallin H. Oaks taught:

Without a Bill of Rights, America could not have served as the host nation for the Restoration of the gospel, which began three decades later. There was divine inspiration in the original provision that there should be no religious test for public office, but the addition of the religious freedom and antiestablishment guarantees in the First Amendment was vital. We also see divine inspiration in the First Amendment’s freedoms of speech and press and in the personal protections of other amendments, such as for criminal prosecutions.

Joseph Smith’s quest for religious freedom and individual rights manifested later in his theological and political life. Smith declared that he was “the greatest advocate of the Constitution of the United States there is on earth.” Yet, he worried that even though the Constitution “provides that all men shall enjoy religious freedom … it does not provide the manner by which that freedom can be preserved.” Smith’s advocacy for religious freedom continues today in the church he founded, perhaps validating Fitzhugh’s concern about the intrinsic liberal nature of the faith. 

Mormonism as a Reactionary Movement

Fitzhugh’s negative assessment of Mormonism helped him build his case for the Southern slave society. He believed that Mormonism was, to some degree, reactionary in nature. The freedom granted by the North provided space for Mormonism to emerge. Yet, in Fitzhugh’s estimation, this freedom was also the motive behind its emergence: 

All the isms concur in promising closer and more associative relations, in establishing at least a qualified community property, and in insuring the weak and unfortunate the necessaries and comforts of life. Indeed, they all promise to establish slavery—minus, the master and the overseer. As the evils which we have described are little felt at the South, men here would as soon think of entering the lion’s cage, as going into one of their incestuous establishments.

For Fitzhugh, the natural reaction to liberalism was to attempt to return to the old order. But these botched returns did not settle back into the rightful, paternal order of a slave society. Instead, they resulted in social distortions like that of polygamous Mormonism. This provided an explanation to Fitzhugh as to why Mormonism “beats up monthly thousands of recruits from free society in Europe and America, [it] makes not one convert in the slaveholding South. Slavery is satisfied and conservative.” This was because “slavery [is] right in principle, and necessary in practice, with more or less of modification, to the very existence of government, of property, of religion, and of social existence.”

Quoting approvingly from Nehemiah Adams’s book A South-Side View of Slavery, Fitzhugh explained that “popular delusions and fanaticisms [such as Mormonism] … do not find subjects at the South. … Many things which we feel called to preach against here are confined to the boundaries of the Free States.” Fitzhugh declared that “such defects do not exist in slave society,” leaving the South free of the “isms that deface and deform free society.” The very existence of Mormonism was proof that liberalism was a social ill. This led Fitzhugh to determine, “Slave society needs no defence till some other permanent practicable form of society has been discovered. None such has been discovered.”

Mormon Success is Liberal Success

Despite its minority status, Mormonism has played a significant role on the US political stage, raising questions about popular sovereignty, statehood, and religious freedom and identity. The suspicion and negative feelings toward Latter-day Saints during the nineteenth century to some degree continue even today. Fitzhugh’s arguments demonstrate that Mormonism can be seen as a kind of ideological Rorschach test, with observers reading into the religion all of their worst cultural fears. The disagreements and contradictions between the North and the South led to a massive war. But these opposing forces agreed on at least one thing: a disdain for Mormonism. For the North, Mormonism was of the same barbaric strand as Southern culture. For the South (and Fitzhugh in particular), Mormonism was the inevitable distortion of Northern liberalism. Throughout US history, Mormonism has been embedded in the public conversation of what it is and, especially, what it is not to be truly American. 

And yet, Mormonism’s eventual integration into American society demonstrates that the actual fruit of liberalism was not social decline, but greater tolerance. Not barbarism, but increased freedom and rights. Fitzhugh’s criticisms of the faith were wildly biased and inherently bigoted, but his recognition that liberalism would be the means through which various individuals and groups would be able to live out their lives in unpredictable ways cannot be denied. Under liberalism, slaves would be loosed (much to Fitzhugh’s chagrin). And people could, in the words of Joseph Smith, worship “Almighty God according to the dictates of [their] own conscience. … Let them worship how, where, or what they may.”