Ithaca College

Pearl Ponce (History) presented a paper at a Union/Disunion Conference organized by Plymouth University.

Held on the anniversary of Britain’s historic vote to leave the European Union, the conference, organized by Plymouth University’s Nineteenth Century Studies Consortium, was dedicated to exploring other examples of global union and disunion over the long nineteenth century.  Ponce’s paper, “Attempting Disunion:  Mutable Borders and the Mormon Experience with the United States, 1846-1858,” explored what happened when the Mormons, in order to escape persecution and anti-Mormon violence, left the United States to settle around the Great Salt Lake Basin in Mexico in 1846.  Unfortunately for the Mormons, the Mexican-American War broke out two months later and, in the treaty that ended that war, were swept back into the American Union.  They attempted to manage the nature of their forced reunion by securing greater control of the territory organized in 1850, but ultimately the United States and Utah Territory were on the verge of war a dozen years later when President James Buchanan sent the U.S. army to enforce the replacement of Brigham Young, Utah’s Governor and also the head of the church, when he refused to leave his post.

The conference program can be found here: https://plymouthuniversitynineteenthcenturystudies.wordpress.com/union-and-disunion-programme-registration/