Stephen Selwyn Harding (28 February 1808-12 February 1891) was Governor of the Utah Territory from 1862 to 1863, succeeding John W. Dawson and preceding James Duane Doty. He was an ardent abolitionist, and he was a member of the Liberal Party of Utah.
Biography[]
Stephen Selwyn Harding was born in Palmyra, New York on 28 February 1808, and his family moved to Ripley County, Indiana in 1820; Harding would open his own law firm in the Indiana towns of Richmond and Versailles. He unsuccessfully stood as a candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Indiana in 1842 and for Governor of Indiana in 1846, but President Abraham Lincoln appointed him Governor of the Utah Territory in 1862. Harding initially tried to appease the Mormons, but he soon became critical of the LDS Church leadership and the Mormon practice of plural marriage, leading to the Mormons successfully petitioning to remove Harding from office. Harding later served as the US consul in Valparaiso, Chile, but he decided, for domestic reasons, to serve as Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court. In 1865, he was removed from office for incompetence and immorality, and he became an active leader of the Liberal Party of Utah. Harding died in 1891.