SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Vigilante violence was endemic to 19th-century America, with Mormons on both ends of it.
Members of the new faith that emerged in upstate New York in 1830 saw their homes destroyed, their lands lost, their women brutalized and their prophet murdered, but they also perpetrated “inexcusable” attacks of their own - including the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre - sometimes in retaliation and sometimes in the wake of fiery rhetoric from top LDS leaders.
This is the view put forth in a new “Gospel Topics” essay, posted by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at lds.org.
It is part of a series of recent articles produced by the Utah-based faith to explain sometimes-sticky historical or theological LDS issues. Other entries include the church’s teachings about the nature of God, its former ban on blacks from its all-male priesthood and its long-discarded practice of plural marriage.
The current essay, titled “Peace and Violence Among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints,” spells out signature episodes in LDS history of bloody acts committed by and against Mormons, and attempts to put them in “historical context.”
“While historical context can help shed light on these acts of violence, it does not excuse them,” the essay states matter-of-factly. “What was done here long ago by members of our church (at Mountain Meadows) represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct.”
Non-LDS historians found much to praise in the new essay.
“In a compressed space - with useful documentation - the piece deals openly and unabashedly with history of a church that includes lots and lots of violence in its past, especially against Latter-day Saints but also by Latter-day Saints,” says Sarah Barringer Gordon, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania who has written extensively about Mormon history. “The connections between the two kinds of violence are explored helpfully.”
The article mentions tensions in Missouri between Latter-day Saints and their neighbors that ultimately led to the murders of LDS founder Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. It describes a Mormon paramilitary group known as Danites formed to respond to rampaging Missouri mobs.
It also looks at the love-hate relationship between Mormon settlers in Utah and American Indians. These believers viewed the natives as a “chosen people” and descendants of major players in their faith’s signature scripture, the Book of Mormon. Still, they occasionally battled over land and resources.
“Peaceful accommodation between Latter-day Saints and Indians was both the norm and the ideal,” the essay says. “At times, however, church members clashed violently with Indians.”
Conflicts with the U.S. government reached their peak in early 1857, when President James Buchanan sent an army to replace Joseph Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, as territorial governor amid reports that Mormons were rebelling against federal authority. The so-called Utah War spurred widespread worries among Latter-day Saints of a return of Missouri-scale persecution.
The most violent episode in Mormon history was known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.
In September 1857, a southwestern Utah Mormon militia laid siege to a wagon train of emigrants en route from Arkansas to California. Verbal clashes ensued over grazing and supplies, and some of the emigrants threatened to join the approaching federal army.
LDS Stake President Isaac C. Haight sent a militia major, John D. Lee, to attack the company. They did, slaughtering 120 men, women and children on Sept. 11, 1857.
The essay asserts that a rider had been sent to Young before the raid to seek his guidance and forestall an attack.
“The express rider returned two days after the massacre,” it says. “He carried a letter from Brigham Young telling local leaders to ’not meddle’ with the emigrants and to allow them to pass through southern Utah.”
The LDS Church excommunicated two members for the carnage and a grand jury indicted nine. But only Lee was convicted and executed.
The essay points to the critically acclaimed 2011 book “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” by historians Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Glen M. Leonard. It concludes that “while intemperate preaching about outsiders by Brigham Young, George A. Smith and other church leaders contributed to a climate of hostility, President Young did not order the massacre.”
Western historian Will Bagley strongly disagrees with that assessment.
“Brigham Young ordered the massacre as a political move,” says Bagley, author of “Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows,” ’’and the church has been putting forth to this very day the same alibi - the letter - that Young created as the crime was underway.”
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, https://www.sltrib.com
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