The astonishing attacks on American Mormons usually depicted LDS members as the “dregs” of society—poor, uneducated immigrants, bound to “despair” by their religion.  Off on the left, there’s a sign, “Mountain Meadow.” That refers to one of the worst moment in the history of Mormonism, when a group of Mormons massacred a wagon train of settlers passing through Utah. It helped to cement the idea that Mormons were violent and anti-democratic.  The women carry the label “sealed.” Mormons had defended polygamy by saying the women had been sealed to their husbands in “celestial marriage.” In this cartoon, in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated, the women are being consigned to a bleak fate, a “cave of despair.” This was part of the anti-Mormon message of this period: that the religion was anti-women. One problem with the argument: in trying to destroy Mormonism, Congress repealed a woman’s right to vote, which Mormon’s had granted decades before the rest of the country.

Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspapers 4 Feb 1882.