Early in its history, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) had a series of negative encounters with the federal government of the United States. This led to decades of mistrust, armed conflict, and the eventual disincorporation of the church by an act of the United States Congress. The relationship between the church and the government eventually improved, and in recent times LDS Church members have served in leadership positions in Congress and held other important political offices. The LDS Church becomes involved in political matters if it perceives that there is a moral issue at stake and wields considerable influence on a national level with over a dozen members of Congress having membership in the church in the early 2000s, and about 80% of Utah state lawmakers identifying as LDS.

19th century Many of the political problems faced by the LDS Church stemmed from the controversial practice of polygamy. The practice started with Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, secretly taking on additional wives and was practiced publicly after his death.

Joseph Smith

Early LDS scriptures speak favorably of the United States government. The Book of Mormon (published 1830) contains a passage that favorably describes the American Revolution, though in the overall text most of the principles in the US Constitution are "slighted or disregarded altogether". An 1833 revelation from Joseph Smith gives divine credit to the establishment of the United States Constitution.

In 1839, Joseph Smith visited U.S. President Martin Van Buren to plead for the U.S. to help roughly 20,000 LDS settlers of Independence, Missouri. The Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs, in attempt to resolve the 1838 Mormon War, had issued executive order on October 27, 1838, known as the Mormon Extermination Order. It authorized troops to use force against LDS adherents to "exterminate or drive [them] from the state". Smith and his party appealed to members of Congress and to President Van Buren to intercede for his followers. According to Smith's grandnephew, Van Buren said to Smith, "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I take up for you I shall lose the vote of Missouri".

After failing to receive the assistance of the President, Smith took his case to the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Senator Garret Wall. The Judiciary Committee did nothing to help the LDS people, lacking the political willpower to launch an investigation into the Mormon War. The negative experience with Van Buren marked the beginning of decades of antagonism between the leaders of the Church and government officials. The White Horse Prophecy reportedly followed in 1843, where an adherent recounted that Joseph Smith predicted the United States Constitution would "hang like a thread". The accounting is disputed as an inaccurate account and not accepted as doctrine by the LDS Church.

After his experience with Van Buren and finding no support from any of the other presidential candidates, Smith decided to run as an independent in the 1844 U.S. presidential election. He proposed the redemption of slaves by selling public lands and decreasing the size and salary of Congress; the ceasing of imprisonment of criminals (except in cases of murder); the reformation of criminals via education and public work; the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and parts of Canada; the securing of international rights on high seas; free trade; the re-establishment of a national bank; and the reduction of the public debt.. His top aide, Brigham Young, campaigned for Smith saying, "He it is that God of Heaven designs to save this nation from destruction and preserve the Constitution." The campaign ended when Smith was attacked and killed by a mob while in the Carthage, Illinois, jail on June 27, 1844.

When Smith's followers gathered in Nauvoo, Illinois, an Anti-Mormon party sprung up to oppose the Church's political influence in the state.

Utah Territory and statehood

After Smith's death, the majority of his followers followed Young as Mormon pioneers emigrating to the Salt Lake Valley. Young petitioned President Polk for federal assistance for their westward migration. Assistance came in the form of the enlistment of around 500 Mormons in the U.S. Army during the war with Mexico. The men's salaries were used to help pay for the migration of the larger body of the Saints.

In 1849 the Mormons petitioned Congress that a huge swath of land which they had settled be admitted into the Union as the State of Deseret. The Mormons hoped for statehood so that they would have the ability to elect their own leaders, and hopefully avoid the persecution which they had so recently escaped. Because of their previous experiences, they were convinced that self-governance was the only safeguard to their religious freedom, and they worried about the possible introduction of "unsympathetic carpetbag appointees" if Deseret were relegated to territorial status. Concern over the practice of polygamy as well as other issues made statehood politically unviable. However, Congress instead incorporated "Deseret" into the greatly reduced but still enormous Utah Territory as part of the Compromise of 1850. The compromise struck a delicate balance on the issue of slavery. The Mormons had introduced slavery to the area upon their arrival.

John M. Bernhisel, a Mormon representative in Washington, D.C., strenuously lobbied President Millard Fillmore for an all-Mormon slate of territorial officials. He urged the president that "the people of Utah cannot but consider it their right, as American citizens to be governed by men of their own choice, entitled to their confidence, and united with them in opinion and feeling." The president therefore appointed Brigham Young, as the territory's governor, and assigned prominent positions to several other Mormons. But, Fillmore also gave a number of territorial appointments to non-Mormons. The relationship between the non-Mormon federal officials and the Mormons was frequently contentious. Not long after their appointment, the federal officials, fearing for their safety, abandoned their positions, which were left unfilled for several years.

During the 1856 U.S. presidential election, a key plank of the newly formed Republican Party's platform was a pledge "to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery."GOP Convention of 1856 in Philadelphia, Independence Hall Association Website Although polygamy was a focus of the Republican party platform, more than three decades would pass before the LDS Church was stopped from performing new polygamous marriages.

President James Buchanan sent U.S. forces to Utah in 1857–58 in order to appoint a new governor over the territory and take control away from church president Brigham Young. These events were known as the Utah War. The tragic Mountain Meadows Massacre occurred in the context of these events.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln was relieved to receive a telegraphed reassurance from Brigham Young that the Utah territory had no intent to secede from the United States. Lincoln's policy for dealing with the Mormons was to leave them alone. He told a Mormon messenger, "You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone I will let him alone." In 1862, congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act with the purpose of outlawing polygamy in Mormon territories. However, as part of his decision to leave the Mormons alone, Lincoln choose not to enforce the law.

The passage of the Poland Act in 1874 paved the way for the first prosecutions under the Morrill act from 12 years earlier. Believing the law to be in violation of the first amendment right to the free exercise of religion, Young asked George Reynolds, secretary to the First Presidency, to serve as a defendant for a test case before the Supreme Court. The unanimous decision from the court was to uphold the anti-polygamy laws and Reynolds' sentence of two years in prison.

In 1882, Congress passed the Edmunds Act, which made polygamy a felony. A key aspect of the Edmunds Act was that it was no longer necessary to prove a bigamous marriage took place to get a conviction, cohabitation was enough. More than 1,300 Mormon men were imprisoned under the terms of the act. Church president John Taylor was forced to go into hiding for several years, frequently moving to avoid capture from the federal authorities.

In 1887, Congress enacted the Edmunds–Tucker Act. The act disincorporated the church and seized its assets. The act was also responsible for disenfranchising women, which had been given the right to vote in Utah before any of the 37 states at that time. Women voters in the state were disproportionately Mormon, so giving women the right to vote and rescinding that right was a way to control Mormon influence on elections. The anti-polygamy laws were challenged in court but two Supreme Court rulings (Davis v. Beason and The Late Corporation of the [LDS Church] v. United States) upheld the right of the government to prohibit polygamous marriages and to seize the property of the LDS Church.

A few months after losing its case before the Supreme Court, church president Wilford Woodruff stated that the church had ended the contracting of new polygamous marriages, reversing the long-standing practice of evading or ignoring anti-polygamy laws. Woodruff said that this announcement was the result of a revelation from Jesus Christ. The text of the revelation is known as the 1890 Manifesto. Campaigning against polygamy had been a focus of the Liberal Party. With that issue resolved and with the entrance of the major national parties into the state, the Liberal Party disbanded in 1893. Another effect of the 1890 Manifesto was to weaken any enthusiasm in congress for the passage of more anti-polygamy legislation. This opened up the door for the Utah Territory to be recognized as a state.

In the 1870s, the People's Party was created in Utah Territory and backed by the LDS Church. The anti-Mormon Liberal Party existed at the same time but won few elections. The Salt Lake Tribune was the newspaper of the Liberal Party while the Deseret News supported the pro-Mormon People's Party. Church leaders realized that one obstacle to achieving statehood was that its population did not participate in either of the two major national political parties. It was decided that the People's Party should be disbanded. The Republican Party had opposed statehood for Utah. Because of this, the majority of Mormons in Utah leaned Democrat. However, church leaders did not want to see the entire body of the church turn Democrat leading to a continuation of the status-quo where there was one political party supported by the church and another party opposed to it. George Q. Cannon was sent by the First Presidency of the Church to instruct party leaders to make sure that Church members were split between the Republicans and Democrats. In some instances, local bishops stood in front of their congregations and instructed everyone seated on one side of the building to join one party and those families on the other side should join the other party.

In 1895, Woodruff instituted a rule, informally known as the Mormon Political Manifesto, that general authorities of the church should not seek political office without prior permission of the First Presidency. In 1898, B. H. Roberts became the first church member to be elected to Congress. Due to Roberts being a polygamist, he was refused a seat in the Congress. A special election was held to fill his seat, and William H. King, the congressman who had preceded him, won the election. Roberts later testified during the Smoot Hearings, when opponents of the LDS Church demanded that Republican Reed Smoot, a monogamist, be refused his senate seat because Smoot was a Mormon apostle.

20th century