Download or read book Massacre at Mountain Meadows written by Ronald W. Walker and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-09 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 11, 1857, a band of Mormon militia, under a flag of truce, lured unarmed members of a party of emigrants from their fortified encampment and, with their Paiute allies, killed them. More than 120 men, women, and children perished in the slaughter. Massacre at Mountain Meadows offers the most thoroughly researched account of the massacre ever written. Drawn from documents previously not available to scholars and a careful re-reading of traditional sources, this gripping narrative offers fascinating new insight into why Mormons settlers in isolated southern Utah deceived the emigrant party with a promise of safety and then killed the adults and all but seventeen of the youngest children. The book sheds light on factors contributing to the tragic event, including the war hysteria that overcame the Mormons after President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops to Utah Territory to put down a supposed rebellion, the suspicion and conflicts that polarized the perpetrators and victims, and the reminders of attacks on Mormons in earlier settlements in Missouri and Illinois. It also analyzes the influence of Brigham Young's rhetoric and military strategy during the infamous "Utah War" and the role of local Mormon militia leaders in enticing Paiute Indians to join in the attack. Throughout the book, the authors paint finely drawn portraits of the key players in the drama, their backgrounds, personalities, and roles in the unfolding story of misunderstanding, misinformation, indecision, and personal vendettas. The Mountain Meadows Massacre stands as one of the darkest events in Mormon history. Neither a whitewash nor an exposé, Massacre at Mountain Meadows provides the clearest and most accurate account of a key event in American religious history.
Download or read book The Mountain Meadows Massacre written by Juanita Brooks and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Fall of 1857, some 120 California-bound emigrants were killed in lonely Mountain Meadows in southern Utah; only eighteen young children were spared. The men on the ground after the bloody deed took an oath that they would never mention the event again, either in public or in private. The leaders of the Mormon church also counseled silence. The first report, soon after the massacre, described it as an Indian onslaught at which a few white men were present, only one of whom, John D. Lee, was actually named. With admirable scholarship, Mrs. Brooks has traced the background of conflict, analyzed the emotional climate at the time, pointed up the social and military organization in Utah, and revealed the forces which culminated in the great tragedy at Mountain Meadows. The result is a near-classic treatment which neither smears nor clears the participants as individuals. It portrays an atmosphere of war hysteria, whipped up by recitals of past persecutions and the vision of an approaching "army" coming to drive the Mormons from their homes.
Download or read book American Massacre written by Sally Denton and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In September 1857, a wagon train passing through Utah laden with gold was attacked. Approximately 140 people were slaughtered; only 17 children under the age of eight were spared. This incident in an open field called Mountain Meadows has ever since been the focus of passionate debate: Is it possible that official Mormon dignitaries were responsible for the massacre? In her riveting book, Sally Denton makes a fiercely convincing argument that they were. The author–herself of Mormon descent–first traces the extraordinary emergence of the Mormons and the little-known nineteenth-century intrigues and tensions between their leaders and the U.S. government, fueled by the Mormons’ zealotry and exclusionary practices. We see how by 1857 they were unique as a religious group in ruling an entire American territory, Utah, and commanding their own exclusive government and army. Denton makes clear that in the immediate aftermath of the massacre, the church began placing the blame on a discredited Mormon, John D. Lee, and on various Native Americans. She cites contemporaneous records and newly discovered documents to support her argument that, in fact, the Mormon leader, Brigham Young, bore significant responsibility–that Young, impelled by the church’s financial crises, facing increasingly intense scrutiny and condemnation by the federal government, incited the crime by both word and deed. Finally, Denton explains how the rapidly expanding and enormously rich Mormon church of today still struggles to absolve itself of responsibility for what may well be an act of religious fanaticism unparalleled in the annals of American history. American Massacre is totally absorbing in its narrative as it brings to life a tragic moment in our history.
Download or read book Blood of the Prophets written by Will Bagley and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The massacre at Mountain Meadows on September 11, 1857, was the single most violent attack on a wagon train in the thirty-year history of the Oregon and California trails. Yet it has been all but forgotten. Will Bagley’s Blood of the Prophets is an award-winning, riveting account of the attack on the Baker-Fancher wagon train by Mormons in the local militia and a few Paiute Indians. Based on extensive investigation of the events surrounding the murder of over 120 men, women, and children, and drawing from a wealth of primary sources, Bagley explains how the murders occurred, reveals the involvement of territorial governor Brigham Young, and explores the subsequent suppression and distortion of events related to the massacre by the Mormon Church and others.
Download or read book Mountain Meadows Massacre written by Richard E. Turley (Jr.) and published by Brigham Young University Studies. This book was released on 2009 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents two newly discovered collections of documents relating to the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre.
Download or read book Mountain Meadows Massacre written by Richard E. Turley (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have long debated the circumstances surrounding the massacre, one of the most disturbing and controversial events in American history, and painful questions linger to this day. Based on the highest curatorial standards, this invaluable collection allows readers the opportunity to form their own conclusions about the forces that lay behind this dark moment in western U.S. history.
Download or read book The Mormon Rebellion written by David L. Bigler and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David L. Bigler and Will Bagley use long-suppressed sources to show that--contrary to common perception--the Mormon rebellion was not the result of Buchanan's "blunder," nor was it a David-and-Goliath tale in which an abused religious minority heroically defied the imperial ambitions of an unjust and tyrannical government. They argue that Mormon leaders had their own far-reaching ambitions and fully intended to establish an independent nation--the Kingdom of God--in the West. --from publisher description.
Download or read book House of Mourning written by Shannon A. Novak and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On September 11, 1857 some 120 men, women, and children from the Arkansas hills were murdered in the remote desert valley of Mountain Meadows, Utah. This notorious massacre was, in fact, a mass execution: the victims were bludgeoned to death or shot at point-blank range. The perpetrators were local Mormon militiamen whose motives have been fiercely debated for 150 years." "In House of Mourning, Shannon A. Novak goes beyond the question of motive to the question of loss." "By integrating archival records and oral histories with the first analysis of skeletal remains from the massacre site, Novak offers a detailed and sensitive portrait of the victims as individuals, family members, cultural beings, and living bodies." "The history of the massacre has often been treated as a morality tale whose chief purpose was to vilify (or to glorify) some collective body. Resisting this tendency to oversimplify the past, Novak explores Mountain Meadows as a busy and dangerous intersection of cultural and material forces in antebellum America, House of Mourning is a bold experiment in a new kind of history, the biocultural analysis of complex events."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book September Dawn written by Carole Whang Schutter and published by Carole Whang Schutter. This book was released on 2007 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On September 11, 1857, the first act of religious terrorism in the United States took place in Utah when a group of fanatical Mormons massacred a prosperous wagon train of 120 settlers from Arkansas and Missouri on their way to California. Driven by a despotic Brigham Young who thundered chilling messages of Blood Atonement from the pulpit, the faithful committed polygamy, murder and castration in the name of God. Based on one of America's most horrific historical events, this is the story of the improbable romance between two nineteen-year-olds from starkly different worlds, the son of a Mormon Bishop, and the daughter of a Christian pastor. In a beautiful, pristine valley called Mountain Meadows, Jonathan, tormented by the execution of his beautiful mother by a lecherous Apostle, falls in love with beautiful, spirited Emily. Ordered to spy on the wagon train by his father, Jonathan tames a magnificent wild black stallion and wins the heart of the girl who has captured his. The tension builds to a crescendo with the growing conflict between Jonathan and his father Jacob. Fanatically wedded to the cause, Jacob believes in the righteousness of the atrocity commanded by the Prophet and the leaders of the Mormon Church. Another victim of the tragedy is Jonathan's beloved brother, good-natured Micah, who self-destructs in the process of becoming a mass murderer. In the midst of the massacre, Jonathan must choose between his brother and his faith, or Emily. As Jonathan races to save Emily before September Dawn, the reader is left breathless with heart-pounding anticipation as the scope and magnitude of their love amidst the searing fire and ashes of the Mountain Meadow Massacre dramatically, and unforgettably, unfolds.
Download or read book Camp Floyd and the Mormons written by Donald R. Moorman and published by Utah Centennial Series. This book was released on 2005 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Camp Floyd and the Mormons traces the history of the sojourn of "Johnston's Army" in Utah Territory from the beginning of the Utah War in 1857 through the abandonment of Camp Floyd in Cedar Valley west of Utah Lake at the outbreak of the Civil War. The book describes the relationship between the invading army and the local Mormon population, gives an account of Indian affairs in Utah, and describes the activities of federal officials in Utah during that volatile period. Completed posthumously by Gene Sessions, Moorman's colleague at Weber State University, Camp Floyd and the Mormons is a comprehensive analysis of the history of frontier Utah as a decade of isolation ended and confrontations with the United States government began. Moorman had unprecedented access to materials in the LDS Church Archives on subjects ranging from the Mountain Meadows Massacre to the Mormon responses to the presence of the army in Utah from 1858 through 1861. First published by the University of Utah Press in 1992, this reprint edition includes a new introduction by Gene Sessions in which he recounts Moorman's research adventures during the 1960s "in the bowels of the old Church Administration Building, where Joseph Fielding Smith and A. Will Lund watched over the contents of the archives like wide-eyed mother hens."
Download or read book Mountain Meadows Witness written by Anna Jean Backus and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip Klingensmith (b. 1815) was born in Pennsylvania to Philip Klingensmith and Mary Anderson. His ancestors were German Lutherans who settled in Pennsylvania in the late 1600s. Philip eventually moved to ohio where he married Hannah Creemar (1826-1891). They became members of the LDS Church and settled in Nauvoo, later moving to Utah. In Utah the Klingensmith family eventually settled in Cedar City where he was called as the bishop. In 1857 the Mormons received news of the approaching army and what became known as the Utah War started. In the fall of that year, the Mountain Meadows Massacre ocurred, wherein a non-Mormon wagon train was attacked and destroyed by Indians and Mormon militiamen. Philip Klingensmith was involved and later went with other men, including John D. Lee who was eventually tried and executed for his part in the tragedy. Philip gained the enmity of members of the Church by leaving the Church and turning state's evidence against Lee. Philip was married to three wives and was the father of twenty-four children. He and a number of his family eventually settled in south-eastern Nevada and southern Utah.
Download or read book Captain Alexander Fancher written by Burr Fancher and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles the life of Captain Alexander Fancher as a Tennessee infant, Illinois teenager, Missouri hog man, Arkansas cattle drover, and leader of the ill-fated Mountain Meadows wagon train. Alexander Fancher started his third overland trek in 1857 with some 140 family members, 900 cattle, over 20 wagons, four carriages, many horses, and gold to establish a ranch in California. That trip ended with $100,000 worth of property stolen, 121 men, women, and children killed, and 17 orphaned children. After an exciting life, 45-year-old Captain Alexander Fancher was robbed and killed by religious fanatics on September 11, 1857.
Download or read book Parley P Pratt written by Terryl L. Givens and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, Parley P. Pratt was the most influential figure in early Mormon history and culture. Missionary, pamphleteer, theologian, historian, and martyr, Pratt was perennially stalked by controversy--regarded, he said, "almost as an Angel by thousands and counted an Imposter by tens of thousands."Tracing the life of this colorful figure from his hardscrabble origins in upstate New York to his murder in 1857, Terryl Givens and Matthew Grow explore the crucial role Pratt played in the formation and expansion of early Mormonism. One of countless ministers inspired by the antebellum revival movement known as the Second Great Awakening, Pratt joined the Mormons in 1830 at the age of twenty three and five years later became a member of the newly formed Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, which vaulted him to the forefront of church leadership for the rest of his life. Pratt's missionary work--reaching from Canada to England, from Chile to California--won hundreds of followers, but even more important were his voluminous writings. Through books, newspaper articles, pamphlets, poetry, fiction, and autobiography, Pratt spread the Latter-day Saint message, battled the many who reviled it, and delineated its theology in ways that still shape Mormon thought.Drawing on letters, journals, and other rich archival sources, Givens and Grow examine not only Pratt's writings but also his complex personal life. A polygamist who married a dozen times and fathered thirty children, Pratt took immense joy in his family circle even as his devotion to Mormonism led to long absences that put heavy strains on those he loved. It was during one such absence, a mission trip to the East, that the estranged husband of his twelfth wife shot and killed him--a shocking conclusion to a life that never lacked in drama.
Download or read book History of Utah 1889 written by Hubert Howe Bancroft and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 870 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Life and Times of John Pierce Hawley written by Melvin C. Johnson and published by Greg Kofford Books, Incorporated. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Pierce Hawley's forty-year odyssey in the American interior was in pursuit of his dream to find a true Mormon restoration faith. The story describes John Pierce Hawley and Mormonism, particularly the Latter-day Saints and the Wightites, and the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Download or read book Essentials in Church History written by Joseph Fielding Smith and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-05-28 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essentials in Church History is a religious text by Joseph Fielding Smith. It presents the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormon history. An illuminating read for anyone interested.
Download or read book The Politics of American Religious Identity written by Kathleen Flake and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1901 and 1907, a coalition of Protestant churches sought to expel newly elected Reed Smoot from the Senate for being a Mormon. Here, Kathleen Flake shows how the subsequent investigative hearing ultimately mediated a compromise between Progressive Era Protestantism and Mormonism and resolved the nation's long-standing "Mormon Problem."
