Ask anyone who knows something about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the nineteenth-century American South, and you will get variations of the same response: the Saints (often derided as Mormons) faced violence in the region and were never able to make much headway. Most previous scholars have focused on this violence, or if not that, the missionaries themselves who preached in the region. These two entry points—missionaries and murders—have defined much of the scholarship on Saints in the South. But what if we stop asking why the Saints faced such violence and start asking how, where, and when they succeeded in the nineteenth-century American South? When viewed from this vantage point, it appears that the Saints did best when white conservative southerners were distracted by other threats; that the best missionaries in the region were frequently southerners themselves; and that most violence directed against the Saints was more often to stop success they already had, not to battle some nebulous threat.
By exploring how Saints succeeded in the South, we can see a previously obscured genesis for the religion in the region. Using diaries, newspaper dispatches, congregational minutes, and mission records, this dissertation argues that while the nineteenth-century American South was a place of opposition for the Latter-day Saints, it was a field of opportunity also.
