Title: B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena
Author: John Sillito
Publisher: Signature Books
Genre: Biography
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: 586
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN13: 9781560852940
Price $34.95
Reviewed by for the Association for Mormon Letters
To think that a man who opposed women’s suffrage in Utah and supported the priesthood ban for black males (though it be a hundred years ago) is “considered by many to be among the handful of significant intellectuals produced by Mormonism” (p. viii) was almost too mind-bending for me to accept. This was my framework when I started reading B. H. Roberts: A Life in the Public Arena, the biography of a twentieth-century Mormon figure I knew only the bare bones about.
The author, John Sillito, warns his readers in the introduction that this book will not consider Roberts’s controversial views on the Book of Mormon, his historical contributions, the inner workings of the First Council of Seventy on which he served, his family history, nor his “psycho-historical” motivations. This cautionary notice roused my appetite to know more about those very things! Would the book, focused more on Roberts’s actions and activities, be equal to my curiosity about the apparent contradictions of the man?
I came to feel that Sillito was wise in his selection of information to discuss in this biography. A concentration on the events of Roberts’s life resulted in more than 500 pages of important text material which will be essential to understanding the more inner processes. Reading this biography will be an invaluable first step to those who are beginning to embark on a study of Roberts or his era.
The life of Brigham Henry Roberts spanned nine decades (1857-1933) of important development of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a boy of nine years old, he “marched beside our ox teams every foot of the way from the Missouri river to these mountain valleys,” which gave him a connection and association with the pioneers of Utah (484). He served as a missionary in the days they went out “without purse and scrip,” and was later a mission president in a more modern era of Church service. He married three wives before the 1890 Manifesto banning plural marriage[1] and wrestled with how he would respond to this directive. And his political career began before Utah politics acquired the dominantly Republican flavor it would have later in his life.
Sillito has done an outstanding job at weaving disparate historical sources into a pleasant, readable narrative. This is always a challenge in writing a biography. In Roberts’ early years of missionary service, for example (throughout most of the 1880s while a married man and a member of the First Council of Seventy), the information was drawn from letters to his mother, his autobiography, journals, and letters of associates, notices in newspapers of the day, local and Church histories, and more. Yet, the result is a harmonious and articulate chronicle. Throughout the book, the author has deeply plumbed the available primary sources—in some cases gaining access to collections that are closed to the general public.
The chapter I found most interesting, though unsettling, was Chapter Nine: A Congressional Contest (229-255). In 1895, Roberts had been associated with the Democratic party for many years and was selected as a candidate for United States Congress. Utah Democrats felt that he would have been an equally excellent choice for the Senate or the governor of the state. The chapter tells the story of the difficulties Roberts faced among Utah voters because of the position he had recently taken against women’s suffrage as well as his stand against high tariffs, which many believed protected American industries. To his advantage in the campaign, he supported the coinage of silver. Roberts’s campaign went well, due in part to his amazing oratorical skill, which he had developed on his mission. The biggest complication, writes Sillitoe, came from then Apostle Joseph F. Smith, who used his General Conference platform to speak out against “one of the Seven Presidents of Seventy” who had “done wrong in accepting obligations without first consulting and obtaining the consent of those who presided over them” (237).
Roberts, to the contrary, had sought to communicate with Church leaders in almost every important decision he made in his life. He felt that the First Presidency had had ample opportunity to correct him if he had made an error in accepting the congressional nomination. Besides, LDS leaders had declared that Church and state were to be separate and that the Church would not interfere with political affairs. Roberts was brought before a “Meeting of the presidents of the Seventies & 12 Apostles,” called to repentance for statements he had made during the campaign and told to “fall into line” (248). Elder Roberts, upset by the charges, responded that he would not change his views. Instead, he called their bluff and offered to resign as a Seventy and “fall back into the ranks” (249). The amount of time church authorities spent counseling with him about this decision shows his value to the organization. He would not yield for some time and insisted he would not change his mind. But finally, he was emotionally moved by a conversation he had with Apostles Heber J. Grant and Francis M. Lyman. He wrote them a letter saying that he had acted with good conscience, but if church leaders believed he was “in the wrong I will bow to them, and place myself in their hands as the servants of God” (251).
This humbling relieved “the Brethren.” At the next General Conference, it was announced that Church leaders who sought positions that might interfere with their duties must obtain clearance beforehand. This potentially allowed them to pick and choose candidates whom they wished to advance politically. The proposition was put into a political manifesto that Apostle Moses Thatcher refused to sign. He was promptly dropped from the Quorum and not given the same considerations that Roberts had been.
Later chapters are of interest as they discuss the monumental decision of Congress not to seat this Utah polygamist and the implications the ruling would have for future Utah politicians in Roberts’s lifetime. Chapter Ten: “A Public Relations Mission and a Romance” (257-291) was also quite fascinating as it presented a dilemma that Roberts faced when he became interested in a woman after the 1890 Manifesto against plural marriage had been put into place. In this, as well as his other chapters, Sillito deftly presents the facts of Roberts’s life from primary evidence and leaves the reader to make conclusions and inferences. The author does not infer what Roberts or other characters in his life must have felt but presents accounts from letters, journals, newspaper articles, and other writings to tell the tale. It’s as admirable an example of biography writing as one can find.
This book will have wide appeal among Latter-day Saints. For those interested in biographies of Church figures, this is a must for their collections. B.H. Roberts researchers and aficionados will find it an important resource in understanding the important events of his life. The book will be of interest to Church historians as it covers a period in which the Church transformed into its most modern iteration.
[1] The date of Roberts’s third marriage to Margaret Curtis Shipp was not recorded and is believed by some to have occurred shortly following the Manifesto. Sillito presents the facts that are known and the opinions of others but does not take a position on the issue in this biography.