Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, and Scoundrel
2022; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 90; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/26428652.90.3.08
ISSN2642-8652
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoThe long wait for a full-length biography of Frank J. Cannon is over. Val Holley's lively, well-written, and carefully-researched Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, and Scoundrel brings Frank to life in vivid, controversial colors, making up for the deficiencies of Cannon's political autobiography, Under the Prophet in Utah: The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft.Holley provides the full chronology of Frank's fascinating life with important detailed information and analysis. Holley describes the profound influence on young Frank by two senior leaders in the LDS church—his father, George Q. Cannon, and apostle Franklin D. Richards, to whom Frank was closely related through his mother and for whom he was named. Frank went to live and work with the Richards family in Ogden when he was thirteen years old (George Q. later regretted his decision to permit this) and he ever after claimed Ogden as his home town. There, Frank fell in with a relatively tough crowd from whom he learned bad habits but also became best friends and close political compatriots with Ben E. Rich, a strait-laced Mormon. Frank's first wife, the lovely Martha Anderson Brown (Mattie), was also from Ogden.Holley reviews Frank's education (he studied under a strict German as a child and graduated from the University of Deseret with B. H. Roberts, James Henry Moyle, and Martha Paul [later Hughes Cannon]). We learn of minor political offices Frank held, his creative campaigning, his assignments to Washington (largely at his father's instance) to lobby as a young monogamous Mormon, and his crucial role in preparing the country and Utah for Utah's statehood. Frank played a central part in the end of the People's Party and the development of the Republican Party (and thus the two national party system) in Utah. He ran for territorial delegate twice, winning the second time, and had the good fortune of being delegate when Utah became a state, which paved his way to the U.S. Senate. Cannon's entrepreneurial activities and his financial representation of the LDS church in the 1890s are chronicled at some length.Along the way, Holley unflinchingly describes some of Frank's peccadillos—an illegitimate son with his daughter's nanny in Logan, his periodic carousals with prostitutes that would last for days, and his drunken assault on a prosecutor who Frank believed had been overly aggressive in interrogating a wife of George Q. Cannon.Frank emerges as a resourceful, clever political campaigner and office holder, and talented business booster. He developed into an outstanding, persuasive orator, perhaps the best Utah has ever seen, and a powerful editorialist. Holley describes the “Oedipal” 1896 Senate election which included the half-hearted late entry of George Q. Cannon into that race against Frank at the request of LDS prophet Wilford Woodruff. Holley tracks Frank's election and his three-year term, during which he bolted the Republican Party over the silver issue and helped found the Silver Republican Party.Holley argues that few remember Frank Cannon's contributions to statehood because he was blackballed after turning on the LDS church. I am not so sanguine that Frank's central role has been forgotten any more than others’: the crucial parts played by Isaac Trumbo, Morris Estee, James Clarkson, Joseph Rawlins, and Hiram B. Clawson, to name a few, have been largely forgotten without any decree from Joseph F. Smith. Even George Q. Cannon, who most deserves the title “father of Utah statehood,” is not often remembered today by non-historians.As Holley recounts well, Frank eventually fell out with Joseph F. Smith and the LDS church after his father's death and his days as agent for the church ended. Frank reacted with furious journalistic attacks as editor of the Salt Lake Tribune on Joseph F. Smith and Reed Smoot after Smoot was elected senator in 1905. Holley does not fully describe several of Frank's meanest attacks. His vicious editorials ultimately resulted in his excommunication in March 1905. As we are told, behind the scenes, Frank also led the opposition to Smoot's being seated in the Senate, working with his close friend, Senator Fred Dubois of Idaho.Holley effectively tells how badly former Senator Cannon and soon-to-be former Senator Dubois reacted in February 1907 when the Senate voted 43–27 (with 20 not voting) to let Reed Smoot retain his seat. Not long after, ever-suffering Mattie, who remained a member of the LDS Relief Society General Board through all of this, got sick and quickly died at the age of fifty. Suffering two profound losses and needing a change of scenery, Frank moved to Denver.Soon Frank was attacking corruption in Colorado politics at Denver newspapers. He befriended Judge Ben V. Lindsey, who wrote an exposé of political corruption in Colorado in a book called The Beast, co-written with Harvey J. O'Higgins. Through Lindsey, Cannon was introduced to O'Higgins and became part of a remarkable collection of progressive reformers and intellectuals living in Denver.O'Higgins, a gifted New York-based writer, was fascinated by Frank Cannon's sad story of alienation and expulsion from the LDS church and saw parallels between Ben Lindsey's crusade against Colorado corruption and Frank Cannon's crusade against Joseph F. Smith. Frank collaborated with O'Higgins on Under the Prophet in Utah. The popularity of the work launched Frank onto the national lecture circuit.After an eight-year run lecturing to hundreds of thousands of fascinated listeners on the dangers of the still-polygamous “Modern Mormon Kingdom,” Frank moved on. He spent his last decade dabbling in entrepreneurial activities such as mining and maintaining his absolute belief that bimetallism would solve many of the world's economic woes. His work on the silver issue briefly brought him back to some national attention before his death in 1933.Frank J. Cannon is an engaging, well-written biography. It provides important new insights and analysis into Frank's life. There are some holes, however. Holley does not attempt to account for Frank's apparent victory over alcohol—the last mention in the book of his drinking was in 1898, though he went on a drinking dive into Salt Lake City's red light district after his excommunication from the church in 1905. This appears to have been an important change in his life and the reasons for the change, if they could be divined, are important. It would also be interesting to learn more about Frank's personal life with Mattie and May and his children, his mother, his dozens of siblings and scores of cousins, with Ben Rich and other political friends, and with so many others. This is likely limited by historical sources but more personal details may have permitted us to better understand the complicated Senator Cannon.To Holley, Frank J. Cannon was a fearless, eloquent, and gifted crusader against corruption wherever he encountered it, whether in Mormon leadership or Denver politics. Frank was all of these things and, at times, was well compensated for his work. As to his attacks on the Mormon hierarchy, some might argue that Frank's animus was more personal than ideological or moral. He was frustrated by his loss of station after his father died. He had made pledges in the late 1880s to U.S. government officials that the LDS church would end polygamy and political domination (though Frank exaggerated the details of those promises when he described them later). These pledges helped Utah achieve statehood but were not fully kept by many church leaders and members. Frank knew about new polygamous marriages, polygamous couples continuing to live together, and the church continuing political involvement, but did not express outrage or crusade against them until after his estrangement from the church. Holley does not spend much time on the “scoundrel” part of Frank Cannon other than his illegitimate son and his early drinking and associations with prostitutes. Frank could be extraordinarily vicious and this part of his personality is not particularly well developed.Holley quotes Bernard DeVoto to argue that Frank may have made an extraordinary statesman for Utah for decades. DeVoto was brilliant and could turn a wonderful phrase but was hardly an unbiased judge of the Mormons and Utah. Frank's instability was not the usual grist of statesmanship. He was a member of at least five different political parties between 1889 and 1906 and could not play politics well enough to be reelected once, let alone for many terms. He was, however, an enormously talented, charismatic, and complicated man and through the excellent Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, and Scoundrel we know and understand him much better than we ever have.
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