Brigham Young's 1852 Defense of Slavery

Summary: In 1852, Brigham Young publicly defended slavery before the Utah Territorial Legislature, tying his argument to race-based theology and helping shape the racial restrictions that later became part of LDS institutional history.

The purpose of this article is not to mock Latter-day Saints today or to pretend modern LDS members automatically approve of nineteenth-century racism. Many do not. The LDS Church itself now disavows earlier racial theories used to justify priesthood and temple restrictions. But historical honesty requires us to deal plainly with what happened.

On January 23, 1852, Brigham Young addressed the Utah Territorial Legislature. At the time, he was not merely a private religious thinker. He was both governor of Utah Territory and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In that setting, Young defended slavery and connected it to a theological interpretation of race, priesthood, and the so-called curse of Cain. The surviving transcript records him saying, “I believe in slavery” and, later, “I am a firm believer in slavery.”

This was not an offhand remark buried in private correspondence. It was a public address before the territorial legislature while lawmakers were debating how Utah would handle slavery. The University of Utah’s This Abominable Slavery project identifies this speech as the moment when Young “speaks on slavery and for the first time publicly articulates a racial priesthood restriction.”

Young’s argument was not simply political. He framed slavery as something supported by his understanding of scripture and divine order. In the January 23 transcript, he argued that because he believed in the Bible, priesthood, and the “order of God,” he believed in slavery. He also connected Black servitude to a curse, claiming that he was not authorized to remove what God had placed upon that “class.”

That theological move is the real issue. Young did not merely say, “This is the law of the land,” or “This is the unfortunate condition of the age.” He gave slavery a religious defense. He treated racial servitude as part of a divinely ordered condition and connected it to priesthood restriction. In the same speech, he said there should be a law requiring enslaved people to serve their masters because, in his words, “they are not capable of ruling themselves.”

The wider historical setting confirms the seriousness of this moment. On February 4, 1852, Brigham Young signed An Act in Relation to Service into law. According to University of Utah historian W. Paul Reeve, the act was distinct from Southern chattel slave codes in some ways, since it gave enslaved people limited protections and did not include a perpetual hereditary clause. But it still did not free enslaved persons. It governed the relationship between Black enslaved people and their white enslavers in Utah Territory.

This means the fairest reading is neither exaggeration nor whitewashing. Utah’s law was not identical to the most brutal slave codes of the Deep South, but it still legally protected slavery in the territory. The National Park Service summarizes the uniqueness of Utah’s situation by noting historian D. Michael Quinn’s observation that Utah was the “only western territory where African-American slavery and slave-sales were protected by territorial statute.”

It is also important to say that not every Latter-day Saint leader agreed with Young. Orson Pratt argued against slavery during these debates, asking why Utah should allow slavery when it could avoid it. He called it “this abominable slavery” and wanted the bill rejected entirely. That internal opposition makes Young’s defense even harder to dismiss as merely “a product of the times.” There were men in his own religious and political environment who knew better and said so.

From a Christian perspective, the theological problem is severe. Scripture teaches that all human beings are made in the image of God: “So God created man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). Paul teaches that God made all nations from one blood or one man (Acts 17:26). The gospel breaks down ethnic hierarchy in Christ: “There is neither Jew nor Greek… slave nor free… for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Paul condemns “enslavers” or “man-stealers” in 1 Timothy 1:10, placing them among sins contrary to sound doctrine. James condemns partiality as sin (James 2:1–9). Revelation pictures the redeemed as coming from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation (Revelation 5:9).

This does not mean every biblical text about slavery is simple. The ancient world had complex systems of servitude, debt labor, household slavery, and empire-based slavery. But race-based bondage defended as divinely ordained is not apostolic Christianity. The image of God does not come in ranks. Baptism does not create a second-class body of believers. The priesthood of Christ does not need racial gatekeeping.

Modern LDS sources now openly acknowledge parts of this history. The LDS Church’s own Gospel Topics material states that in 1852 Brigham Young announced that Black men of African descent could not be ordained to the priesthood and that the restriction also affected temple endowment and sealing ordinances for Black men and women. The same LDS source says Young’s explanation drew on ideas identifying Black people as descendants of Cain and Ham, and that the Church has since disavowed those justifications.

Another LDS Church history page states that there is “no reliable evidence” that Black men were denied priesthood during Joseph Smith’s lifetime, but that in 1852 Young publicly announced the restriction. It also says that later explanations for the restriction are not accepted today as official doctrine.

That creates a serious historical and theological tension. If the restriction was not clearly taught from the beginning, and if the later racial explanations are now disavowed, then Young’s 1852 teaching cannot be treated as a minor footnote. It raises hard questions about prophetic authority, doctrinal development, institutional racism, and whether a church leader’s public teaching can be both authoritative in its time and later rejected as wrong.

The point is not that modern Latter-day Saints are personally guilty for Brigham Young’s words. They are not. But honest history does not allow us to pretend the words were never said, or that they were harmless, or that they were only private prejudice. Young spoke as governor and church president. He publicly defended slavery. He tied that defense to religious reasoning. And his views formed part of the background to LDS racial restrictions that remained in place until 1978.

For Christians committed to truth, the lesson is sober. No religious leader should be placed above correction. No claimed prophet should be shielded from the historical record. And no theology should be trusted when it contradicts the image of God in man, the unity of humanity in Adam, and the reconciliation of all peoples in Jesus Christ.

Bottom line: Brigham Young’s 1852 defense of slavery is documented, public, and theologically significant. It was not merely personal prejudice. It was a leading LDS authority defending slavery before lawmakers and connecting that defense to religious teaching.