This Abominable Slavery

W. Paul Reeve is the chair of the History Department and Simmons Chair of Mormon Studies at the University of Utah. He is author of Let's Talk About Race and Priesthood (Deseret Book, 2023) and Project Manager and General Editor of an award-winning digital database, Century of Black Mormons, designed to name and identify all known Black Latter-day Saints baptized into the faith between 1830 and 1930. The database is live at www.CenturyofBlackMormons.org Christopher B. Rich, Jr. is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah. He holds a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law and an LL.M. from the Judge Advocate General's Legal Center and School. He served for 11 years in the U.S. Army JAG Corps before transitioning to the Reserves. He has published award-winning articles in the fields of National Security Law and 19th century Latter-day Saint history.LaJean Purcell Carruth is a senior historian at the Church History Department in Salt Lake City. She is aprofessional transcriber of 19th and early 20th century documents written in Pitman shorthand, Taylor shorthand, and in the Deseret Alphabet. Through her work, hundreds of previously illegible shorthand documents are now available for research. Her research specialties include Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, 19th century Mormon history, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and race and priesthood in 19th century Utah.

• Introduction: The 1852 Utah Territorial Legislative SessionChapter 1: Servitude and Slavery in Antebellum AmericaChapter 2: Slavery among the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1847Chapter 3: Slavery among the Latter-day Saints, 1847-1852Chapter 4: The Trial of Don Pedro León LujánChapter 5: An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and PrisonersChapter 6: An Act in Relation to ServiceChapter 7: Race and Election LawChapter 8: ImplicationsChapter 9: Slavery, Priesthood Denial, and Brigham Young versus Orson PrattChapter 10: Utah's JuneteenthAppendix1. Legislative Chronology, 18522. An Act for the Relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners3. An Act in Relation to Service

In This Abominable Slavery, Reeve and his co-authors have delivered a hugely important contribution to our understanding of slavery and the beginnings of the temple/priesthood ban. There are lessons to be learned here regarding how we relate to the intersection of history and religion. The past is always seen through a murky lens, but works such as This Abominable Slavery go a long way in providing much-needed clarity on both our past and the present.