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Book Review: The Mormon Menace: Violence And Anti-Mormonism In The Postbellum South, Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

“Whereas anti-Mormon violence had been characteristic of virtually every northern locale of Mormon settlement during the antebellum period,” Patrick Mason writes in his history of the subject, “violent assaults on Mormon missionaries became an increasingly southern practice in the years after the Civil War” (93). What distinguishes Mason’s book from other chapters in the sad saga of religious persecution is his excellent analysis of the complexities that result when political agendas, regional norms and interests, and theories on the proper role and limits of government all collide in the face of religious heterodoxy. Virtually all late nineteenth-century citizens and politicians …