n
Whiggery, the Wilmot
Proviso and Deseret:
How Zachary Taylor’s Plan to
Save the Union Sparked Mormon
Statehood Ambitions, 1849-1896
A PAPER PROPOSAL BY JOHN HAMER
A
lthough the traditional map of the proposed “State of Deseret” (see
fig. 1) is reproduced regularly in Mormon history books (e.g., The
Mormon Experience, p. xxi, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 85, Historical Atlas
of Mormonism, p. 91), Deseret is rarely shown in the context in which the
state was proposed. In Forgotten Kingdom, David Bigler points out that
Deseret had been “staked out by fewer than ten thousand settlers,” but as
it appears on the map, the territory would have been “about twice the size
of Texas.” Without any context, the proposed Mormon state seems about
as quixotic as Joseph Smith’s presidential candidacy — lying somewhere
between hubris and absurdity. When details of the contemporary national
debate over slavery in the territories are taken into account, however, it
becomes clear that although immediate statehood for Deseret was always a
long-shot, for a brief moment the possibility was conceivable.
The aquisition of large tracts of land from Mexico after the Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, re-opened the long-festering national question
of the extension of slavery into the territories. Prior to the Civil War, states
had significantly more autonomy from federal oversight; territories were a
Instead, the proposed Deseret borders are often superimposed over a map showing reductions of the Utah Territory 1850-1868, visually implying that territory which had never
actually belonged to the Mormons was taken away by the U.S. federal government.
David L. Bigler, Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West,
1847-1896, p. 46.
MHA PAPER PROPOSAL
C A N A D A
WA S H I N G TO N
NORTH
D A KO TA
M O N TA N A
MINNESOTA
OREGON
SOUTH
D A KO TA
IDAHO
W YO M I N G
I O WA
NEBRASKA
N E VA D A
U TA H
CA
DESERET
LI
COLORADO
KANSAS
FO
RN
IA
OKLAHOMA
ARIZONA
NEW
MEXICO
TEXAS
The Traditional Portrayal of the
Proposed Mormon
State of Deseret
MEXICO
Fig. 1 — The Proposed State of Deseret is usually shown outside of the historical context
in which it was presented, i.e., North America in 1849. Instead it is usually employed as
along with a sequence of reductions of the Utah Territory.
different matter. Because the territories were subject to direct Congressional
control, national battles such as the conflict over slavery were often played
out in the territories.
In 1820, the Missouri Compromise had specified that slavery would not
be extended into any new territory north of the 36º30’ parallel. Prior to
the 1848 Mexican Cession and after the admission of Arkansas (1836) and
Whiggery, the Wilmot Proposal and Deseret
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
49° Boundary Settled 1846
O re g o n
Te rri to r y
M innesota
Territor y
I O WA
Unorganized
Territories
Territory Ceded
to the United States
by Mexico
36°30' Missouri
Compromise Line
Territory
Ceded by
Mexico and
Claimed by
Texas
Indian
Territor y
TEXAS
Mexican Cession
Western Territories of the United
States in 1848, Including Lands
Ceded by Mexico by the Treaty
of Guadeloupe Hidalgo
MEXICO
Fig. 2 — Immediately after the Mexican Cession, a huge swash of territory was added
to the United States. Part of this was claimed by the recently annexed state of Texas,
althought the Federal government did not necessarily recognize this claim.
Florida (1845) as slave states, only the Indian Territory (later Oklahoma)
fell within this zone. Although it was universally conceded that the desert
lands of the Mexican Cession were not suitable for plantation agriculture,
the theoretical potential for slavery extension in these newly acquired
territories, some of which were south of 36º30’, became symbolic for both
Northerners and Southerners.
MHA PAPER PROPOSAL
Rather than simply accept the de facto reality that slavery would never
take root in the new Southwest, northern Whig Representative David
Wilmot attached a controversial amendement to on of the House’s Mexican
War appropriations bills. Known as the “Wilmot Proviso,” it would have
banned expansion of slavery into any territory acquired from Mexico. More
evenly balanced between the North and the South, the Senate failed to pass
the Wilmot into law, but it remained a point of contention, and the fight
over slavery expansion threatened to tear apart both the national Whig and
the Democratic parties — as well as the Union itself — on sectional lines.
In 1848, the Whig Party extended its presidential nomination to
Zachary Taylor, a celebrated general in the Mexican War. Taylor won the
presidency in November, but because of the dispute over slavery extension,
Congress had still failed to provide a government for the Mexican Cession
between his election and his inauguration the following April. Although a
Southerner, Taylor opposed expansion of slavery into the territories. Keeping
his true intentions secret except to a few key insiders, Taylor launched
a plan to circumvent the Wilmot Proviso and eliminate the question of
slavery expansion into new territories by eliminating the possibility of new
territories. Rather than create any territories, Taylor planned to curtail the
slave state of Texas’ land claims and from the remainder of the Cession to
immediately admit two large free states to the Union.
To accomplish this, Taylor secretly dispatched agents to California
and New Mexico to urge the populations to form conventions and petition
for immediate statehood. In addition, he appointed John Wilson as an
Indian agent and instructed him to negiotiate with the Mormons who had
just settled in the Great Basin under the leadership of Brigham Young. If
Young and the Mormons agreed to participate in Taylor’s plan, Wilson was
to take Mormon representatives to California’s constitutional convention in
San Francisco. Whig historian Michael Holt argues that Taylor’s plan was
“breathtaking in scope and ingenious in conception” and that if successful,
it had “brilliant political potential.”
Wilson was able to persuade the Mormons to send delegates to a
statehood convention in California. Unfortunately, when they arrived they
found that the convention that had been called would only encompass
California’s present boundaries and not the massive expanse of land that
Taylor’s plan required. The Mormons were left in limbo. Even with a
reduced California, the Taylor plan might have still had a chance if a third
Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics
and the Onset of the Civil War, p. 438.
Ibid., p. 439.
Whiggery, the Wilmot Proposal and Deseret
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
O re g o n
Te rri to r y
M innesota
Territor y
I O WA
K ansas and
Nebrask a
Territories
CALIFORNIA
NEW
MEXICO
Indian
Territor y
TEXAS
President Taylor’s Plan for the
Mexican Cession
Denying Texas’s Land Claims and
Granting Immediate Statehood to
California and New Mexico
MEXICO
Fig. 3 — In a little known plan to avoid the question of slavery in the new territories,
Whig President Zachery Taylor secretly sent agents to California, New Mexico and also
the Mormons, spurring them to petition for immediate statehood.
state could be carved out of the Cession between New Mexico and California
and immediately admitted into the Union. This is precisely what the
Mormons proposed in 1849. Sensing the opportunity, an earlier petition
for territorial status was discarded and the Mormons created a new petition
MHA PAPER PROPOSAL
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
O re g o n
Te rri to r y
M innesota
Territor y
CA
K ansas and
Nebrask a
Territories
I O WA
LI
FO
DESERET
R
N
I
A
NEW
Indian
Territor y
MEXICO
TEXAS
1849 Mormon Proposal for the
State of Deseret
In the Context of President Taylor’s
Plan for Immediate Statehood for
California and New Mexico
MEXICO
Fig. 4 — Seen in the context of Taylor’s immediate statehood plan for California and New
Mexico, the proposed state of Deseret makes substantially more sense.
for immediate admittance of their “State of Deseret.”
In the meantime, however, the other leg of Taylor’s plan had collapsed.
Taylor’s agents failed to persuade the New Mexicans to petition for
immediate statehood. Instead, their convention requested territorial status
— which brought all the questions Taylor had hoped to circumvent to the
Bigler, 45-47.
Whiggery, the Wilmot Proposal and Deseret
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
O re g o n
Te rri to r y
M innesota
Territor y
I O WA
Unorganized
Territories
CA
Utah
Te rri to r y
LI
FO
RN
I
A
New M ex i co
Te rri to r y
Indian
Territor y
TEXAS
Compromise of 1850
The Admission of California, the
Resolution of the Texas Border
Dispute and the Organization of
the Utah and New Mexico Territories
MEXICO
Fig. 5 — In the event, Taylor’s plan faltered and Congress instead adopted the
“Compromise of 1850.” Texas was given a generous settlement of land, California was
admitted as a free state, New Mexico and Utah were given territorial status and all the
territories were opened to the possibility of slavery on the basis of popular sovereignty.
fore. If New Mexico was to become a territory with all of the incumbent
questions of slavery expansion into such territories, then there was no
reason to grant Deseret statehood.
With the failure of the Taylor plan, Congress, led by Democrat Stephen
Douglass, Whig Henry Clay and others, found a different solution to
MHA PAPER PROPOSAL
question of slavery in territories. Known as the “Compromise of 1850,”
their legislation gave Texas some (but not all) of its land claims, banned the
slave trade in the District of Columbia and initiated the Fugitive Slave Act.
It also admitted California as a free state and established that the remaining
territories of the Cession would be open to slavery on the principle of
“popular sovereignty.” Under this plan, local residents, rather than
Congress, would decide whether or not to allow slavery in each territory.
Out of the remainder of the Cession, Congress created two territories: New
Mexico and “Utah.”
Brigham Young pragmatically took what he was given, becoming
governor and indian agent of the new Utah Territory on February 5, 1851.
But the Mormons, awakened to the idea of immediate statehood by Zachary
Taylor’s plan to circumvent the Wilmot Proviso, were never again satisfied
with anything less. Petitions for full statehood were sent again in 1862,
1867, 1872, 1882, 1887, and finally 1895.
n
J O H N HAMER is an independent researcher based in Ann Arbor,
Michigan. A professional map-maker, he has created maps for numerous
museums and university presses including the University of Michigan
Press, the Smithsonian Institution Press and the Strategic Air and Space
Museum.
In the field of Latter Day Saint history, John produced a brief historical
atlas of Caldwell County, Missouri, entitled Northeast of Eden. He has
presented papers at the conferences of the Mormon Historical Association
(MHA) and the John Whitmer Historical Association (JWHA). His first
paper at MHA is being published by Deseret Book as an article in the
compilation, “Zion’s Walls Shall Ring With Praise”: Essays on the Mormon
Experience in Missouri.
He has also illustrated articles in The Journal of Mormon History
and the John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. He is currently
producing maps for Herald House’s upcoming history of the Community
of Christ, From Restoration to Community: The Journey of a People, and
for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Joseph Smith Papers
Project.
John is the Executive Secretary of JWHA and an active member of
MHA.