{"id":41844,"date":"2021-06-11T07:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-11T12:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.timesandseasons.org\/?p=41844"},"modified":"2021-06-11T07:00:20","modified_gmt":"2021-06-11T12:00:20","slug":"saint-senator-and-scoundrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2021\/06\/saint-senator-and-scoundrel\/","title":{"rendered":"Saint, Senator, and Scoundrel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe lack of any biography of Frank Cannon seemed a glaring gap in [Utah] annals. It was high time to tell his story.\u201d\u00a0 Val Holley recently stated this during an interview with Kurt Manwaring where they discussed Frank Cannon and Holley\u2019s recently-published biography, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/uofupress.lib.utah.edu\/frank-j-cannon\/\">Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel<\/a><\/em>\u00a0(University of Utah Press, 2021).\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post to that interview, with quotes and some commentary.\u00a0 Feel free to read the full interview <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fromthedesk.org\/10-questions-val-holley\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In summarizing Frank Cannon\u2019s accomplishments, Holley stated that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Frank Cannon was Utah\u2019s first U.S. senator after it became a state in 1896. During the 50 years he lived in Utah, he was also (in chronological order) founder and editor of the Ogden Standard, territorial delegate to Congress, state Democratic Party chairman, editor of Ogden\u2019s Daily Utah State Journal, and editor of the Salt Lake Tribune.<\/p>\n<p>He was one of many sons of George Q. Cannon, who had five wives. Frank\u2019s mother was the second wife, Sarah Jane Jenne.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Most frequently in the Church, however, Frank Cannon is known for his \u201csustained attacks on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints\u2019 recidivism in polygamy and alliances with trusts and corporations,\u201d which \u201cdiscomforted many Utahns, not only in the early 20th century but in the present day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Frank Cannon\u2019s relationship with the Church was a very complicated one.\u00a0 He had, what Holley called, \u201cyouthful periods of sustained drunkenness and debauchery,\u201d during which his father, \u201cGeorge Q. came close to disowning him.\u201d\u00a0 Later, however, Frank embraced the Church and became very useful to the organization, both due to his talent for diplomacy and for writing.\u00a0 For example, Holley stated that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Frank Cannon had an admirable record of diplomatic triumphs in Utah\u2019s path to statehood. His father sent him on numerous missions to Washington, D.C., to negotiate the means of reconciliation between the Church and the federal government.<\/p>\n<p>A summary of his achievements would include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Obtaining a more merciful array of federal judges for Utah who would be lenient to convicted polygamists;<\/li>\n<li>Testifying persuasively against punitive bills that threatened the forfeiture of all Latter day Saints\u2019 right to vote;<\/li>\n<li>and spearheading the dissolution of Latter-day Saint and Gentile political parties while founding the Republican Party of Utah.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>He was also useful to the Church during its fiscal crisis of the 1890s, recruiting friendly financiers to invest in church enterprises.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Frank was also \u201cfrequently summoned to advise the First Presidency during [Wilford] Woodruff\u2019s presidency.\u201d\u00a0 According to the interview, Frank Cannon was also the actual author of the book <em>The Life of Joseph Smith<\/em>, published under George Q. Cannon\u2019s name, but written by Frank at George\u2019s request.<\/p>\n<p>In time, however, Frank Cannon\u2019s relationship with the Church soured.\u00a0 Val Holley explained that:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Being at George Q.\u2019s bedside while he lay dying was a spiritual experience for Frank. It prompted him to live more like a Latter-day Saint than ever before. He donated a large sum of money to the British Mission, wrote articles praising Joseph F. Smith\u2019s ascension as Church president, and hosted weekly Sunday school meetings at his Washington, D.C., home. (That city had no organized Latter-day Saint congregation in 1901).<\/p>\n<p>But Frank quickly became disillusioned at Joseph F. Smith, who made financial deals with trusts and corporations and secretly encouraged the subversion of the church\u2019s pledges to abandon polygamy. Frank said he had assumed that his father, owing to apostolic seniority, would have become president of the church and ruled it according to correct principles. But George Q.\u2019s death cleared the way for what Frank saw as Smith\u2019s misrule.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The ongoing (secret) practice of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.churchofjesuschrist.org\/study\/manual\/gospel-topics\/the-manifesto-and-the-end-of-plural-marriage?lang=eng\">post-Manifesto polygamy<\/a> and alliances with trusts and corporations turned Frank against the Church.\u00a0 He went on to give \u201canti-polygamy lectures throughout the U.S.,\u201d among other attack\u2019s against the Church\u2019s administration\u00a0 Holley characterized Frank Cannon\u2019s efforts as \u201cunflinching courage in speaking truth to power\u201d, but Cannon\u2019s role in the Church\u2019s history is controversial, hence his characterization of Frank as a \u201cscoundrel\u201d in the biography\u2019s title.<\/p>\n<p>For more on Frank Cannon, including a discussion of his relationship with his father, the significance of Ogden in Utah history, the unique circumstances of Cannon\u2019s senatorial race, and some of Frank\u2019s more dubious claims, read the full interview <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fromthedesk.org\/10-questions-val-holley\/\">here<\/a>.\u00a0 It\u2019s interesting information\u2014I hadn\u2019t known about Cannon\u2019s contributions to the Church so much as his later efforts against it beforehand, and he seems like a fascinating and colourful character in our history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe lack of any biography of Frank Cannon seemed a glaring gap in [Utah] annals. It was high time to tell his story.\u201d\u00a0 Val Holley recently stated this during an interview with Kurt Manwaring where they discussed Frank Cannon and Holley\u2019s recently-published biography, Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, Scoundrel\u00a0(University of Utah Press, 2021).\u00a0 What follows here is a co-post to that interview, with quotes and some commentary.\u00a0 Feel free to read the full interview here. In summarizing Frank Cannon\u2019s accomplishments, Holley stated that: Frank Cannon was Utah\u2019s first U.S. senator after it became a state in 1896. During the 50 years he lived in Utah, he was also (in chronological order) founder and editor of the Ogden Standard, territorial delegate to Congress, state Democratic Party chairman, editor of Ogden\u2019s Daily Utah State Journal, and editor of the Salt Lake Tribune. He was one of many sons of George Q. Cannon, who had five wives. Frank\u2019s mother was the second wife, Sarah Jane Jenne. Most frequently in the Church, however, Frank Cannon is known for his \u201csustained attacks on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints\u2019 recidivism in polygamy and alliances with trusts and corporations,\u201d which \u201cdiscomforted many Utahns, not [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10397,"featured_media":41845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2890],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-history","category-from-the-desk"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Frank-J-Cannon-grave.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41844"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41844\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41846,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41844\/revisions\/41846"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}