Utah S Anonymous Twin Relic of Barbarism
John Rosswog
Utah & the West
March 27, 2003
Utah’s Anonymous Twin Relic of Barbarism:
Oscar Crosby’s Life as a Utah Slave
At the entrance to the infamous Main Street Plaza in the heart of downtown Salt Lake City stands the Brigham Young Monument with an inscription that commemorates the names of the one hundred and forty-eight Mormon pioneers that entered the Salt Lake Valley in the summer of 1847. It is widely known that these pioneers brought polygamy to the Wasatch Front, an institution considered by many Americans to be a relic of barbarism. A closer look at the inscription reveals an addendum, separated by a bar (a ten-inch, engraved line segment) from the principal part of the list. Under the bar are the names Oscar Crosby, Green Flake, and Hark Lay bearing the title of “Color Servants.”[1] This arrangement of names is circumstantial evidence of the existence of Utah’s anonymous twin relic of barbarism—slavery. The presence of the institution of slavery in Utah is personified by Oscar Crosby’s migration to and departure from Utah and is portrayed by the Mormon positionon slavery and the ramifications of African American slavery on the Territory’s development.
In 1846, Oscar Crosby was the chattel of the Crosby family in Mississippi (it was customary for slaves to adopt the surname of their owner). Oscar’s master William Crosby was a southern slaveholder who was strongly devoted to the LDS faith. A native of Tennessee who was serving a mission in Mississippi named John Brown recruited the Crosbys to join the 1847 Mormon migration to the SaltLakeValley. Brown became an influential person in bringing not only Oscar Crosby to Utah, but also the southern practice of slavery. Originally four slaves joined Brown’s group that was to unite with the main Mormon company stationed at Winter Quarters in eastern Nebraska. In his journal Brown recorded on the decision to bring slaves,
We called a council to consider the matter. We concluded to send some six pioneers, one of whom was to take charge of the whole, being mostly black servants. It fell to my lot to go and superintend the affair, William Crosby to send one hand, John H. Bankhead one, William Lay one, and John Powell one, his brother David; and I was to take one besides myself.[2]
The trip to Winter Quarters was harsh, especially on Crosby and the other three slaves. Brown wrote in his journal, “It finally turned cold and we had a very severe time of it. The negroes suffered the most.”[3] On the arrival at Winter Quarters, Brown reported that two of his company’s four slaves had died—Brown’s slave Henry and Bankhead’s slave—but the “two black boys survived the trip.”[4] Crosby and Hark Lay had suffered through and survived the brutal winter of 1846-47. Along with another slave named Green Flake, Crosby and Lay accompanied the Mormon migration to the SaltLakeValley.
In the summer of 1847, Crosby and the rest of the Mormon pioneer wagon train—one hundred and forty-three men, three women, two children, and two other slaves besides Crosby—reached its destination, the Salt Lake Valley. Folklore recounts that Flake drove Brigham Young’s wagon into the valley.[5] Crosby, along with the other pioneers and slaves, performed rigorous labor, such as plowing fields, building cabins, and installing fences, that was essential in the development of the early Mormon settlement in Utah. The 1850 Census of the UtahTerritory accounted for Crosby and forty-nine other African Americans living in Utah; twenty-six were listed as slaves. It was also indicated in the Census that the twenty-six African Americans in bondage were scheduled to go to California.[6] This was not the case for all the slaves in Utah because the Territory’s slave population existed throughout the 1850s and into the 1860s.[7] After four years as a slave in Utah, Crosby departed from the Territory to settle in San Bernardino, California with his master. Since California was free soil, Crosby gained his liberty upon arrival in the PacificCoast state.[8]
During Crosby’s time in Utah, the Compromise of 1850 was passed which allowed for Utah to become part of the United States and its status—free or slave—to be determined by popular sovereignty in exchange for California’s admittance into the Union as a free state.[9] The Mormons neither endorsed nor condemned slavery. In a conversation with the antislavery editor Horace Greeley, Brigham Young exemplified the Mormon position on slavery. Greeley recorded that Young informed him that Utah was “not adapted to slave labor” and slavery would prove to be “useless and unprofitable” in the Territory.[10] In the same interview, Young also told Greeley, “We consider it of dive institution, and not to be abolished until the curse pronounced on Ham shall have been removed from his descendants.”[11] In 1852, the year after Crosby had departed from Utah, the Territorial legislature legalized the practice of slavery under the act entitled “An Act in Relation to Service.”[12] The slave act outlined the proper treatment of slaves and the obligations of both the slave and the slave owner. Section Five of An Act in Relation to Service stated,
It shall be the duty of masters or mistresses, to provide for his, her, or their servants comfortable habitations, clothing, bedding, sufficient food, and recreation. And it shall be the duty of the servant in return therefor, to labor faithfully all reasonable hours, and do such service with fidelity as may be required by his, or her master or mistress.[13]
The act also advocated that the slave owner “correct and punish his servant in a reasonable manner” and the courts could declare a slave contract void, if the master was guilty of cruelty, abuse, or neglect toward his slave.[14] Under this legislation, Mormons and non-Mormons in Utah engaged in owning, selling, purchasing, and even donating (e.g., Green Flake was offered as tithing) slaves until the United States Congress abolished the practice of slavery in the territories in June 1862.[15]
Oscar Crosby was a single individual in the barbaric American institution of slavery, but his presence as a slave in Utah was instrumental in shaping the settlement of the Territory. Even though slavery existed only on a small scale in Utah as compared to the vast slave holdings of the American South, the institution had ramifications on the future development of the Territory. In many ways, such as slave status, labor, and legislation, the Utah system of slavery was a microcosm of the larger Southern institution of slavery. In 1850, Utah was the only western territory that held African Americans in bondage.[16] With slavery being legal in the Territory, many African Americans bypassed settling in Utah. Alex Bankhead, an early African American Utahan who was a devoted member of the LDS Church, stated, “[freedmen] left Salt Lake City and other sections of the Territory, for California and other states.”[17] After emancipation, the railroad and military brought small numbers of African Americans to Utah, but it was not until the 1920s and 1930s that a sizeable population developed in the state.[18]
Compared to polygamy, its twin of barbarism, slavery in Utah remains an anonymity to the general population, for few people realize that such an institution ever existed in the state and was confirmed by the LDS Church. However, compelling evidence of Utah’s slave past can be found in historical essays, past legislation, census records, pioneer journals, and a stroll through the Main Street plaza where the name of Oscar Crosby, Color Servant, is engraved on a commemorative bronze plaque.
Bibliography
Beller, Jack. “Negro Slaves in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly. CD-ROM: Utah History Suite.
Carter, Kate B. The Story of the Negro Pioneer. Salt Lake City, Utah: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1965.
Coleman, Roland G. “Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy,” in The Peoples of Utah, ed. Helen Z. Papanikolas. Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah State Historical Society, 1976.
Lythgoe, Dennis L. “Negro Slavery in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly. CD-ROM: Utah History Suite, 1971.
May, Dean L. Utah: A People’s History. Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1987.
Neff, Andrew L. History of Utah: 1847-1869, ed. Leland H. Creer. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News Press, 1940.
Nichols, Jeffrey. “Slavery in Utah.” at the Utah History to Go website:
Utah Legislature. “Act in Relation to Service,” Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah. Great Salt Lake City, Utah: B.H. Young, Printer, 1852.
U.S., Bureau of the Census, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850. Washington, D.C., 1853.
Endnotes
[1] Brigham Young Monument. “In Honor of Brigham Young and the Pioneers” (Salt Lake City, Utah: Main Street Plaza, unveiled July 24, 1897).
[2] John Brown, Autobiography of Pioneer John Brown, 1820-1896, ed. John Zimmerman Brown (Salt Lake City, Utah: Stevens & Walls, Inc., 1941), 71.
[3] Ibid., 72.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Roland G. Coleman, “Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy,” in The Peoples of Utah, ed. Helen Z. Papanikolas (Salt Lake City, Utah: Utah State Historical Society, 1976), 116.
[6] U.S., Bureau of the Census, The Seventh Census of the United States: 1850 (Washington, D.C., 1853), 993.
[7] Roland G. Coleman, “Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy,” 117.
[8] Dennis L. Lythgoe, “Negro Slavery in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly (CD-ROM: Utah History Suite, 1971).
[9] Jeffrey Nichols, “Slavery in Utah.” at the Utah History to Go website:
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[10]Horace Greeley, Overland Journey From New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859, ed., Charles T. Duncan (New York, 1964), 180.
[11] Ibid., 179.
[12]Roland G. Coleman, “Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy,” 120.
[13] Utah Legislature, “Act in Relation to Service,” Acts, Resolutions, and Memorials of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah (Great Salt Lake City, Utah: B.H. Young, Printer, 1852), 81.
[14] Ibid., 82.
[15]Roland G. Coleman, “Blacks in Utah History: An Unknown Legacy,” 117.
[16] Jack Beller, “Negro Slaves in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly (CD-ROM: Utah History Suite).
[17] Dean L. May, Utah: A People’s History (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1987), 144.
[18]Ibid., 145.