BiblioVault - Books about Spencer, Thomas M.

The Missouri Mormon Experience

Edited by Thomas M. Spencer

University of Missouri Press, 2010

The Mormon presence in nineteenth-century Missouri was uneasy at best and at times flared into violence fed by misunderstanding and suspicion. By the end of 1838, blood was shed, and Governor Lilburn Boggs ordered that Mormons were to be “exterminated or driven from the state.”

The Missouri persecutions greatly shaped Mormon faith and culture; this book reexamines Mormon-Missourian history within the sociocultural context of its time. The contributors to this volume unearth the challenges and assumptions on both sides of the conflict, as well as the cultural baggage that dictated how their actions and responses played on each other.

Shortly after Joseph Smith proclaimed Jackson County the site of the “New Jerusalem,” Mormon settlers began moving to western Missouri, and by 1833 they made up a third of the county’s population. Mormons and Missourians did not mix well. The new settlers were relocated to Caldwell County, but tensions still escalated, leading to the three-month “Mormon War” in 1838—capped by the Haun’s Mill Massacre, now a seminal event in Mormon history.

These nine essays explain why Missouri had an important place in the theology of 1830s Mormonism and was envisioned as the site of a grand temple. The essays also look at interpretations of the massacre, the response of Columbia’s more moderate citizens to imprisoned church leaders (suggesting that the conflict could have been avoided if Smith had instead chosen Columbia as his new Zion), and Mormon migration through the state over the thirty years following their expulsion.

Although few Missourians today are aware of this history, many Mormons continue to be suspicious of the state despite the eventual rescinding of Governor Boggs’s order. By depicting the Missouri-Mormon conflict as the result of a particularly volatile blend of cultural and social causes, this book takes a step toward understanding the motivations behind the conflict and sheds new light on the state of religious tolerance in frontier America.

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The Other Missouri History

Populists, Prostitutes, and Regular Folk

Edited & Intro by Thomas M. Spencer

University of Missouri Press, 2005

The essays in The Other Missouri History explore a wide range of topics in Missouri social history. By dealing with the lives of ordinary Missourians, these pieces examine the effects of significant social and economic change at all levels of society. With a broader scope in Missouri history than previous studies, this book demonstrates how Missourians have been affected by issues of race, class, and gender.

Gregg Andrews's essay, “The Racial Politics of Reconstruction in Ralls County, 1865–1870,” examines how race shaped the political culture in Ralls County during the Reconstruction Era. Andrews argues that race-baiting was used prominently by editors of the Ralls County Record to discredit Radicals in the county and was perhaps the most powerful political weapon that conservatives and later Democrats could use to gain the allegiance of voters.

Farmers are another popular topic for those practicing the “other Missouri history.” Michael J. Steiner's “The Failure of Alliance/Populism in Northern Missouri” provides insight into the economic and rhetorical reasons for the failure of Populism in Missouri. Steiner contends that white farmers in northern Missouri were happy with the status quo and rejected calls for radical reform and major change in the agricultural economy.

Women began to become active in public life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Janice Brandon-Falcone's “Constance Runcie and the Runcie Club of St. Joseph” examines the first two decades of an important women's club that still exists in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Also included in The Other Missouri History are essays by Deborah J. Henry, Daniel A. Graff, Bonnie Stepenoff, Robert Faust, and Amber R. Clifford.

Because of the diverse issues addressed, this volume will appeal to general readers of Missouri and Midwestern history, as well as to those who teach courses in history and have sought a supplemental text.

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The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration

Power on Parade, 1877-1995

Thomas M. Spencer

University of Missouri Press, 2000

The Veiled Prophet organization has been a vital institution in St. Louis for more than a century. Founded in March 1878 by a group of prominent St. Louis businessmen, the organization was fashioned after the New Orleans Carnival society the Mystick Krewe of Comus. In The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration, Thomas Spencer explores the social and cultural functions of the organization's annual celebration—the Veiled Prophet parade and ball—and traces the shifts that occurred over the years in its cultural meaning and importance. Although scholars have researched the more pluralistic parades of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, very little has been done to examine the elite-dominated parades of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This study shows how pluralistic parades ceased to exist in St. Louis and why the upper echelon felt it was so important to end them.

Spencer shows that the celebration originated as the business elite's response to the St. Louis general strike of 1877. Symbolically gaining control of the streets, the elites presented St. Louis history and American history by tracing the triumphs of great men—men who happened to be the Veiled Prophet members' ancestors. The parade, therefore, was intended to awe the masses toward passivity with its symbolic show of power. The members believed that they were helping to boost St. Louis economically and culturally by enticing visitors from the surrounding communities. They also felt that the parades provided the spectators with advice on morals and social issues and distracted them from less desirable behavior like drinking and carousing.

From 1900 to 1965 the celebration continued to include educational and historical elements; thereafter, it began to resemble the commercialized leisure that was increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. The biggest change occurred in the period from 1965 to 1980, when the protests of civil rights groups led many St. Louisans to view the parade and ball as wasteful conspicuous consumption that was often subsidized with taxpayers' money. With membership dropping and the news media giving the organization little notice, it soon began to wither. In response, the leaders of the Veiled Prophet organization decided to have a "VP Fair" over the Fourth of July weekend. The 1990s brought even more changes, and the members began to view the celebration as a way to unite the St. Louis community, with all of its diversity, rather than as a chance to boost the city or teach cultural values. The St. Louis Veiled Prophet Celebration is a valuable addition not only to the cultural history of Missouri and St. Louis but also to recent scholarship on urban culture, city politics, and the history of public celebrations in America.

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