SOURCE: “Chattanooga's Southern Star: Mormon Window on the South, 1898-1900,” in Brigham Young University Studies, Vol. 28, No. 2, Spring, 1988, pp. 5-15.

In the following essay, Buice contends that the writings in the Chattanooga, Tennessee Southern Star offer invaluable insight into the expansion of Mormonism into the southern states.

One of the least researched and least known facets of Mormonism is the history of the Church in the southern United States. This omission is, in a sense, understandable. Mormon missionary activities in the South during the antebellum period were scattered and sporadic and, frankly speaking, far less important than the efforts of the Church to find a permanent home where its members could establish themselves and worship without persecution. Similarly, while missionary activities in the post-Civil War South were far more extensive than those preceding the war they were largely ignored by contemporary observers in the swirl of controversy surrounding...