DOC The Definitive Journals of Lewis Clark; Vol. 6: Down the Columbia to Fort Clatsop by Meriwether Lewis; William Clark in History

Description

Newly created territories in antebellum America were designed to be extensions of national sovereignty and jurisdiction. Utah Territory; however; was a deeply contested space in which a cohesive settler group—the Mormons—sought to establish their own “popular sovereignty;” raising the question of who possessed and could exercise governing; legal; social; and even cultural power in a newly acquired territory. In Unpopular Sovereignty; Brent M. Rogers invokes the case of popular sovereignty in Utah as an important contrast to the better-known slavery question in Kansas. Rogers examines the complex relationship between sovereignty and territory along three main lines of inquiry: the implementation of a republican form of government; the administration of Indian policy and Native American affairs; and gender and familial relations—all of which played an important role in the national perception of the Mormons’ ability to self-govern. Utah’s status as a federal territory drew it into larger conversations about popular sovereignty and the expansion of federal power in the West. Ultimately; Rogers argues; managing sovereignty in Utah proved to have explosive and far-reaching consequences for the nation as a whole as it teetered on the brink of disunion and civil war.