Davis Bitton, who just completed a monumental work on George Q. Cannon, has been a prolific historian for 40 years. But early on, his scholarly gears shifted from early modern European history to Mormon history, where his name has become legendary.
After earning a doctorate from Princeton, Bitton taught at the University of Texas at Austin, then at the University of California at Santa Barbara, before settling down for 29 years as a professor at the University of Utah.In 1995, he retired from teaching and has been devoting most of his time to his writing.
"I enjoyed my career," Bitton said. "I enjoyed the teaching. It was always a delight.
"I had been apprehensive about retirement, because I had heard about people who had difficulty with it. But when I retired, I didn't miss my teaching for one minute. It just seemed that I went from one to the other, and I've enjoyed my retirement every bit as much as my career as a professor."
Author of "The French Nobility in Crisis," a standard book in the field of European history, Bitton plans to finish at least one more major book in the field -- the story of the religious controversy of the 16th and 17th centuries. "I've been accumulating material for a number of years, and I've pretty much got it in my head. It's a matter of writing it up and properly documenting it."
Asked why he has kept his hand in both fields of history, Bitton, 69, said that when he began his career, even though he is a Mormon, he never considered becoming a Mormon historian. "Study Mormon history all the time? Who'd want to do that?
"It seemed kind of narrow, although I was interested in it. There were no jobs in it. I didn't even think of myself as an American historian. I had become interested early in European history, and in graduate school, I thought the real powerhouses were in that field. There is enough there to keep a person interested for two or three lifetimes, and I've always enjoyed teaching it."
So far, Bitton has written a dozen books in Mormon history. Although the U. always encouraged him and rewarded him for his writings, he continued to teach European history exclusively. "When it was suggested occasionally that I might teach a class or seminar in Mormon or Western history, I disqualified myself and said my training was not in that area. I didn't want to spread myself over two positions or be an excuse for the university not to hire a Utah historian."
For 10 years, he served as assistant LDS Church Historian to Leonard Arrington, in addition to his U. faculty position. Bitton and Arrington collaborated on "The Mormon Experience," a hallmark book on Mormonism written for scholars and non-Mormons. He also wrote "Mormons and Their Historians" and "Guide to Mormon Diaries and Autobiographies," both of which are now considered fundamental books in Mormon history.
Bitton's latest book on George Q. Cannon is his most important biographical work. He thought of Deseret Book as the publisher, because Cannon was a founder of Deseret Book. "George Q. Cannon and Sons was the predecessor of what became Deseret Book. So the question is, would Deseret Book, as a church-owned publisher, allow an honest and thorough biography of the man? I think it speaks very well of them that they welcomed it and were glad to do it. They treated it with a lot of respect and made it a book to be proud of in terms of design and editing."
He had to cut the original manuscript considerably, from 1,400 pages, but he is sure that any other publisher would have expected the same. If he had not cut it, he said, "it would have been a two-volume work or one no one would have finished reading."
Bitton calls Cannon "the Gordon B. Hinckley of the 19th century. He was first counselor to four successive church presidents. He was an additional counselor to Brigham Young and first counselor to John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff and Lorenzo Snow. He really occupied an important position."
He also finds an easy comparison with the dynamic J. Reuben Clark Jr., an ambassador to Mexico who was internationally connected before becoming a long-standing counselor to several LDS presidents in the 20th century.
In spite of his historical importance, there has never been a full-scale Cannon biography until now. The fact that Cannon's journals were not available made it difficult for historians to tackle his life. "No historian would want to write a biography and then find out the year after he finished it that the journal was suddenly available."
No wonder Bitton was "elated" when members of the Cannon family offered him access to a typescript copy of the George Q. Cannon journal. "I was very glad to embark on it. I didn't realize at the time how long it would take. I gave it my full attention from the middle of 1995 until now. I was delighted to work on someone so important and so interesting. There is just an abundance of material -- the massive journal, the letters, the Congressional record and on and on. It was a challenge to plow through all that, but I did it."
Bitton considers Cannon a "man of many parts" and said, "As you go through a person's life, you think you will find some insincerity, some feet of clay or whatever, but he was totally dedicated. There was no pretense there. He had a sense that he was engaged in the great work of the Lord. You combine that with his enormous ability. He was a man of towering intellect, and he had the ability to get things done. If you were setting up a business, he was just the kind of person you would want in charge."
According to Bitton, "Some people may be impressed by intelligence and others by spirituality -- but Cannon had both." An articulate man, he had enormous crowd appeal, but he was also very effective getting things done behind the scenes. Although some people suspected Cannon was really running the church as the "power behind the throne," Bitton said his research demonstrates that Cannon "was the very model of a counselor.
"He would give his best judgment when called upon, but he would always defer to the president. He was never an empire builder."
It was evident, Bitton said, that every LDS Church president he served was mightily impressed with Cannon. They also appreciated his unique ability to talk effectively with national figures, including Abraham Lincoln and every U.S. president who succeeded him. Cannon was especially enamoured of Samuel H. Tilden, the Democratic candidate for president against Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican, in a famously disputed election of 1876 that Hayes finally won.
Bitton sees Cannon as "the pivotal figure" in the shift that moved Mormons away from the Democratic Party and toward the Republican Party, an affiliation that has generally lasted. Mormons belonged to the People's Party in the early days, so they were not officially Democrats, but they became disillusioned, Bitton said, with the Democrats' failure to defend the Saints in their trials.
"When the national Republicans showed a willingness to reconsider their position, the Mormons got the chemistry to make the shift. The challenge was to persuade enough Saints to vote Republican to avoid lopsided victories in the state."
As popular as Cannon was, Bitton said that he had his enemies, especially "the crusaders against polygamy. He seemed the main adversary who talked with U.S. presidents and slowed their crusade. They saw him as a superstitious, possibly well-intentioned person who defended something that did not deserve to be defended."
Bitton admires his subject strongly and considers him a "people person" who was "totally dedicated to a cause and was willing to work for it day after day, year after year. If you needed someone today to head a sports franchise, George Q. Cannon would be the man."
Cannon was a man of enormous diversity and depth who stood up for polygamy until the manifesto was issued, Bitton said. Then he gave an eloquent sermon in the tabernacle to convince the members of the Church that it was right to rescind it. "It was a masterful job, full of faith and recognition of the valor of those who had lived the principle, yet emphasizing continuous revelation."
There has never been a more important Utah name than Cannon. One Cannon family member told Bitton, "Cannons are like Ford cars. You pass one, and there's another one in front of you!"
Besides his future European book, Bitton is completing a revision of the "Historical Dictionary of Mormonism," originally published five years ago. He is also completing a book on the social and cultural history of Mormonism down to 1900, dealing mainly with territorial Utah. Finally, he has completed two-thirds of a memoir about his own life, but he is undecided as to whether a Bitton autobiography would be interesting to the public.
Although he plans considerably more words of analysis on Mormonism and its historical development, Bitton also plays the piano in concert and will almost certainly continue to do so. He practices every day, and, periodically, he performs a concert -- most recently in Malta.
"It's very therapeutic. It's more of a right-brain exercise. I worked up four Schuman pieces in California and played them in a recital setting with an audience. Whenever I feel like it, I do something on it. One thing I do is play in nursing homes, but If I never performed publicly, it would still do a lot for me."