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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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| Name | John Thomas Caine |
| Address |
Salt Lake City, Utah , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
January 08, 1829
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| Died | September 20, 1911
(82 years)
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| Contributor | Some say... |
| Last Modifed | Thomas Walker
Sep 02, 2011 01:31pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | John Thomas Caine was an intellectual Democrat who represented Utah Territory from 1883-1893 in the United States Congress and prepared the way for Utah's inclusion into the United States. Caine was born 8 January 1829, on the Isle of Man off the northeast coast of Ireland, and died 20 September 1911, in Salt Lake City at the age of 82. He came to the United States when he was 17 and was converted to Mormonism by the New York Mission shortly after his arrival in 1846. He went to St. Louis where he ministered for three years to victims of cholera. There, he met and married Margaret Nightingale in the autumn of 1850 and became a United States citizen in 1851. Before coming to Utah in 1852, he worked almost exclusively on Church emigration from the British Isles.
Upon arriving in the Utah Territory, he found work digging vegetables, then began to teach at a district school near Big Cottonwood Canyon. After 1853, John Caine became prominent as an actor and stage manager with the Deseret Dramatic Association. In 1854 he was called to serve a mission to Hawaii and left his wife and children with a family having the similar name of Cain. After a little more than a year in the Islands, he was called home by the LDS church to participate in the Territorial Legislature, and as a recorder for the Nauvoo Legion. He became a Lieutenant Colonel, and helped defend against the incursion of Federal troops. When Utah made peace with General Johnston, and Governor Cumming displaced Brigham Young, Caine became Brigham's personal secretary, usually working in the LDS church business office.
During the 1860's, Caine either worked with the Salt Lake Theatre, or acted as Brigham Young's liason with the Perpetual Emigration Fund. In 1870 he carried Utah's protest against the Cullom Bill to Washington, D.C. The Cullom Bill proposed a sweeping assault on Utah institutions. It would outlaw polygamy, suspend trial by jury in polygamy "related" trials, empower the governor to appoint local officials, and force the Mormon Church to open its financial and property books to the governor or his appointee who would then make an annual report of his findings. Fortunately, legislators from other states recognized the bill's repeated violations of civil rights, and defeated the measure.
In 1870 the Utah Magazine, representing former Mormons who sought to develop the business community independent of Church authority, evolved into the Tribune, an anti-Mormon paper. The liberal Mormons associated with the Daily Telegraph moved that paper to Ogden to take advantage of new business life brought by the railroad. To fill the void of a newspaper sympathetic to the Church, yet separate from it, as well as to provide an advertising medium to both Mormon and Gentile merchants, John T. Caine joined three others in the establishment of the Salt Lake Herald.
After being elected recorder for Salt Lake City during the depression of 1873, John Caine, who was still active in drama and journalism, became a regent of the University of Deseret. After George Q. Cannon was denied his seat in Congress, and his elected position was called "vacant," John Caine was elected to represent Utah and fill out the 1882-1883 Congressional year. Almost all of the John T. Caine papers in the file date from the ten-year period in which Caine argued for freedom of religious belief.
Because of the radical "reconstruction" policies toward Utah that the Republican Administrations adopted in the late 1860's the majority of Mormons during the latter nineteenth century supported the Democratic Party. Afraid that Utah, once admitted to the Union, would become a single party state, representatives of the Republican Party promised a commitment to statehood if the Mormons would give the Republicans greater support. In this context, John T. Caine agreed not to run for Congress in the fall of 1892, and when his term ended in March 1893, he stepped down to a Republican, brought to power by the newly found sympathies of the Utah electorate. Before leaving office, he presented the petition which finally secured the act enabling Utah to become a state.
After retiring from office, he became Auditor of Public Accounts for the Territory, and later Superintendent of Water Works. Little is known about his last eleven years, except that he suffered from rheumatism. Even so he would occasionally attend the theatre which he had helped establish and strengthen during his fifty years as a public citizen.
Years before, after delivering a missionary sermon in Hawaii, John Caine remarked that, "I had liberty and I believed the Saints were edified because I was myself." That early observation characterizes the entirety of his life and work.
Biographical Chronology
1829 Born 8 January on the Isle of Man to Thomas Caine and Elinor Cubbon
1846 Arrived in New York City and converted to Mormonism
1850 Married Margaret Nightingale
1853 Prominent actor and stage manager of the Deseret Dramatic Association
1854 Called to Hawaiian mission for the LDS Church
1856 Recalled to Utah to help defend against Federal incursion
1861 Became stage manager and broke ground for Salt Lake Theatre
1866 Brigham Young's liaison on the Perpetual Emigration Fund
1870 Formed partnership and began the Salt Lake Herald newspaper
1873 Regent of the University of Deseret
1881 Alfred Henry Caine married Margaret Ann Mitchell, 16 March
1882 Filled the seat vacated by George Q. Cannon, when the latter was banned from the US House of Representatives
1890 Alfred Henry Caine died of typhoid fever 29 December
1893 Voluntarily retired from Congress upon request from LDS Church authorities
1911 Died 20 September in Salt Lake City, Utah
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