The West was thus riddled with legal and political exceptions that muddied the distinctions between freedom and slavery. Recent scholarship has offered complex views of various labor categories in operation in both California and New Mexico. Utah, however, has not received the same level of inquiry; it has primarily been viewed within the context of Later-day Saint history, somehow divorced from the broader forces then fracturing the nation. The bill that legislators passed to regulate white enslavers has been poorly understood, incorrectly labeled a “slave code,” and Utah branded an anomaly in the American West. Indeed, Utah is sometimes erroneously described as the only territory created from the Mexican Cession to legalize African American slavery. A trove of newly discovered documents, scrutinized here for the first time, allow us to integrate Utah into the national story and fill in this missing piece of the Mexican Cession puzzle.