In the nineteenth century, the Mormons were a minority religious group living on the fringes of the United States in both a geographic and social sense. Yet, in the twenty-first century, historians are increasingly realizing that the history of this marginal religious “other” sheds a great deal of light on the American past broadly conceived. This essay briefly describes an important moment in early Mormon history that illuminates our developing understanding of religious liberty in the early American republic, and the political obstacles Americans outside mainstream protestant Christianity faced in their efforts to obtain equal treatment under the law as American citizens.