| Furious Judas and the Monarch of Mormonism |
| Frank and George Q. | Frank J. Cannon, son of George Q. Cannon and his second wife, Sarah Jenne, was a newspaper man, as his father had been. Like his father, he served as territorial Utah's delegate to Congress (1895–1896) and went on to become one of the state's first two senators (1896–1899). | |||||
| Frank's career and lifestyle | Successively a Republican, Silver Republican, American (party), and Democrat, he was arguably Utah's most popular orator for many years. He was also a binge drinker and womanizer, and at the same time, the church's chief lobbyist and financial agent. | |||||
| Silver Republicans | In his first year as senator (1896), Frank alienated Republican party leadership by switching his allegience to the schismatic Silver Republicans, who eventually endorsed Democrat William Jennings Bryan's failed bid for the presidency. | |||||
| Utah's debt | As important as silver was to Utah, the church leadership had political debts to the regular Republicans, and Frank's defection did not go down well. | |||||
| Frank and the First Presidency | Frank gave the entire church leadership heartburn, it seems, except his father, who lived in denial of his favorite son's dissolute lifestyle. President Wilford Woodruff nearly always, if not always, followed his First Counselor's lead. At least this appears true when it came to Fank. | George
Q. Cannon 1898 Diary (2) |
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| Joseph F. Smith | Second Counselor Joseph F. Smith, I surmise, was torn between disgust for Frank and loyalty to his file leaders, but when it came right down to it, it was loyalty he held in highest esteem. | |||||
| Demise of the Cannons | The Twelve were loyal too … to a point. As soon as President Woodruff passed away (1898), senior apostle Lorenzo Snow took charge, firing Frank and, blaming George Q. for the church's financial woes, all but retiring the once-most-powerful leader in church. | 1898 Digest | ||||
| Frank was furious. He adored his father. | ||||||
| Tom Kearns | President Snow had one thing going for him in Frank's eyes, however—the decision to grant the next Senate seat to mining magnate Thomas Kearns, a Roman Catholic, instead of newly-ordained (April 1900) apostle Reed Smoot. | |||||
| Respect | Frank may have also been somewhat restrained by his father's feelings about how church presidents should be regarded, regardless of one's differences. | |||||
| George Q.'s death | George Q. passed away in April 1901, and as he had been the one dispatched to retrieve his father injured when jumping from a train in an abortive escape attempt years earlier, it was Frank who went to return the body to its home. | |||||
| Joseph F., Frank, and Reed | Six months later, President Snow died, and Joseph F. Smith ascended to the presidency. He and Frank had a history that went back at least ten years, but they had never openly, or even privately that I can tell, fought. It should not have come as a surprise to Frank that Joseph F. would carry out President Snow's desire that Reed Smoot get the next Senate seat, but the election of 1902 was no doubt the breaking point. | |||||
| Smoot hearings | Protestant clergymen and business men in Utah immediately contested the election and four years of Senate hearings commenced in early 1903, with President Joseph F. Smith as the first witness. | |||||
| Tom dumped | As political maneuverings developed, it became clear that the church would dump Senator Kearns in favor of another Republican, George Sutherland. (Senators, at the time, were elected by the state senators, not by popular vote, which worked in the church's favor. ) | |||||
| Denounces the church | But before he left the Senate, Tom delivered a speech denouncing church leadership in a style most observers believed sounded more like Frank than Tom, though by now they undoubtedly were of one mind. | |||||
| Purchases
the Tribune Endorses Salt Lake's American Party Utah's "axis of evil" |
Tom and fellow mining financier David Keith bought the Tribune, and with election season approaching, Tom endorsed—and financed—Salt Lake's recently formed American Party, and though he had been serving as Democratic party chairman, Frank soon followed. | |||||
| It was not publicly announced, but Frank was installed as editor of the Tribune in October and began ratcheting up the paper's anti-Mormon editorial stance. | ||||||
| Anti-Mormon | "Anti-Mormon" was a convenient and emotion-laden characterization that stuck despite Frank's insistence that it was only a corrupt leadership that he was after. | |||||