Scott Woodward: After the 1838 Mormon War and their official expulsion from Missouri under the executive order of Governor Lilburn W. Boggs, Latter-day Saints relocated to Illinois, where they built up the city of Nauvoo and a number of other settlements in Hancock County. After only a short time of relative peace, they were again embroiled in conflict with their enemies, which culminated in the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. This was followed two years later by the Battle of Nauvoo and yet another expulsion from a U. S. state with the blessing of its governor. Then it was off to the West, where, not long after the saints’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, conflicts began to arise with Native Americans, and by 1857, U. S. President James Buchanan had ordered a force of 2,500 military personnel, under the command of Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston, to march to Utah to ensure that Brigham Young be replaced as the governor of Utah, which brought on the Utah War. Today on Church History Matters, we discuss all of this and, of course, trace Latter-day Saint involvement in the violence which occurred along the way. I’m Scott Woodward, and my co-host is Casey Griffiths, and today Casey and I dive into our fifth episode in this series on peace and violence in Latter-day Saint history. Now let’s get into it.

Casey Griffiths: Hello, Scott.

Scott Woodward: Hello, Casey.

Casey Griffiths: Here we are once again, talking about violence.

Scott Woodward: Talking about violence.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and we don’t want to make it sound like we’re taking that lightly or not, but sometimes if you don’t laugh, you’re going to have to cry at some of the stuff that we have to deal with here.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. I have a neighbor who apologized to my wife and said, “I just started listening to your husband’s new series about violence, and it was so heavy I had to stop.” And my wife said, “It’s totally okay. You’re not required to listen to every episode. It’s totally cool. You don’t have to apologize.” If this is a topic that’s not working for you, just skip to another topic or wait until we come up with a new series or something, but I thought that was cute and also, you know, kind of poignant. If this topic is a little too heavy and not your jam right now, that’s totally okay. It’s here when you need it. That’s what this series is. It’s for those who are wrestling with this question about violence and religion generally, as well as specifically the criticism against Latter-day Saints as potentially being a violent faith. So if this is a question that you are wrestling with, then we hope that this series is helpful. If it’s not, we’re not offended if you’re not sticking with us through this whole thing. That’s okay. That’s okay.

Casey Griffiths: I’m just happy that your neighbors listen to this. You know, my neighbors have never come up and been like, “Hey, good podcast,” even though, you know, I’m desperate for their approval. I do have people at church that come up and say, “Hey, good podcast” and stuff like that.

Scott Woodward: So your neighbors aren’t just showering you with approval now that you’ve got this church history podcast going, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: I thought once I had a podcast, they would respect me, but I don’t know if they do or not. Maybe I need to, you know, do a better job on my yard or something like that.

Scott Woodward: Tough crowd.

Casey Griffiths: People at my gym, though, have come up and asked me questions, and that’s kind of difficult because I’m sitting there, like, out of breath, and someone’s like, “Hey, tell me about this letter that Thomas Sharp wrote. And I’m going, “Well.” I just—I can’t switch into professorial mode when I’m winded, and I’m winded most of the time at the gym. It’s a new experience for me, so. But I’m hanging in there.

Scott Woodward: That’s hilarious. Well, good job. You’ll get there. Your neighbors will come around, I feel like.

Casey Griffiths: And I have to say I don’t think that our subject today is entirely unpleasant. In fact, it’s . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Like, it’s interesting. It’s sort of fun, you know? It’s kind of the craziest time in the history of Utah. We’re talking about the Utah War today.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And, boy, is this a fascinating period in the history of the church. Like, there’s so much happening and so many interesting characters and plot twists and surprises, and some difficult things. And—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —I think our listeners probably know that we don’t always record our episodes in order. A couple of days ago we had the chance to sit down with Rick Turley and Barbara Jones Brown and talk about Mountain Meadows, and Rick Turley, who is somebody I just really admire, sort of said, yeah, this period, where we’re talking about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and things surrounding it, is the most difficult thing to talk about in church history, but his attitude was, if we can talk about that, we can talk about anything.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Even if this is difficult, you’ll hang in there with us because this is worthwhile stuff to know, and it’s stuff that every Latter-day Saint needs to be aware of so that it doesn’t ever happen again.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, really important lessons to learn from this history. And so, yeah, we’re going to try to bridge today from the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, which we talked about in our last episode, to the Utah War. How do we go from there to here? So let me just kind of start a little bridge here: So after the Mormon War and the extermination order in Missouri, the Latter-day Saints relocate to a place called Commerce, Illinois. Later the name is changed to Nauvoo, Illinois by the prophet. They settle there and in other settlements in Hancock County and across the river in Iowa. After a relatively short period of peace, Casey, about four-ish years of peace, conflict begins to raise its ugly head again, and the saints are embroiled in another spat of controversies that is eventually going to culminate in the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, and we have gone into detail in a previous series—in fact, we dedicated an entire series to the martyrdom of the prophet Joseph, his brother Hyrum. And so if anyone’s interested to get into the details of that, we recommend that other series, and so we’re going to just gloss over that right now, hours and hours of content. We’re just going to gloss over that and talk about how . . .

Casey Griffiths: We didn’t gloss over, by the way. I think we did, like, ten episodes on the martyrdom, and so . . .

Scott Woodward: We did a lot.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Go back and listen to those. We just won’t revisit it here because . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: We’ve covered it.

Scott Woodward: We’re showing some restraint right now by not digging into any of the details of that. Suffice it to say Joseph and Hyrum were killed because of intense conflicts, some coming from within the church, and some coming from without the church. The combination of those forces brought about the very tragic death of our prophet and his brother. Kind of leading up to the martyrdom—in fact, some of the—just days before the martyrdom, Joseph expressed to some of his friends that the reason that he was willing to go to Carthage was because he did not want the horrors of Missouri to be revisited upon the Saints in Illinois. In fact, according to Dan Jones, one of the prophet’s friends, when Joseph Smith was leaving Nauvoo to Carthage, he says to Jones, “I love the city of Nauvoo too well to save my life at your expense. If I go not to them,” to Carthage, ”they will come here and act out the horrid Missouri scenes in Nauvoo. I may prevent it. I fear not death. My work is well nigh done. Keep the faith, and I will die for Nauvoo.” Pretty dramatic statement there recorded by Jones, and you see the prophet’s concerns about Missouri happening again. If he’s got to die to prevent another Missouri from happening in Illinois, he’ll do it.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. It really seems like the specter of what happened in Missouri, especially Hawn’s Mill, have kind of haunted the prophet, and as we went through those sources linked to the martyrdom again, the thing that impressed me over and over again was that after Missouri, whenever Joseph Smith was confronted with violence, he chose the least violent path away from it. So even, like, these guys that published the Nauvoo Expositor who threatened to kill him and on one occasion even, like, pull a gun on him, he’ll fine them, you know? He’ll be like “hundred-dollar fine.” He won’t hit back. He tries to use legal and peaceful means, even to the point to where the Dan Jones statement seems to illustrate that one of the reasons he went to Carthage was he thought, even if it results in my death, it’s better than Missouri happening all over again.

Scott Woodward: But, unfortunately, Joseph and Hyrum’s death only temporarily prevented violence against the saints. But within two years, the Saints were forced to evacuate Nauvoo under threat of violence once again. And so on our way to the Utah War I just want to take a few minutes and talk about the violence that happened there in Nauvoo, something called the Battle of Nauvoo, and then we’ll talk about the Saints coming out to the Intermountain West and things that happen out here. We’re going to continue to follow the model, Casey, that you broke out for us, the three-part model, the different categories of violence that Latter-day Saints have been involved in, and it breaks down like this: Category one, situations where the saints were the victims of violence, just straight up victims. Other than acting defensively to protect their homes and families the saints don’t really engage in retaliatory violence here. The most common example is one that we already cited, which is the 1833 violence in Jackson County and Joseph and Sidney at the John Johnson home in 1832. Category two is where the saints actually fight back, where they may not have started the violence, but they were willing to strike back to try to finish it. There is retaliation. There is tit for tat. Lex taliones. And the most common example of this is our last episode with the 1838 Mormon War. We’re going to see a little bit more of Category 2 today as we talk Utah War. Category 3, then, is when the saints are the aggressors, and we haven’t had any instances of that yet in our history up to this point, but what we’re talking about today actually sets the scene for, and is the context of, the worst example of Category 3 that the saints ever were involved in, and that’s the Mountain Meadows Massacre, which we’ll talk about beginning in our next episode. So our burning question of the day today essentially is this: What episodes of violence took place during the saints’ removal from Nauvoo and their experience in the Intermountain West? Honestly, the violence surrounding the trek west and the immediate years following has incidents that fit into all three categories, so we’re just going to briefly explore instances that represent all three during this episode. First, the Battle of Nauvoo, which takes place September of 1846; second, conflicts with the Native Americans in the Great Basin, particularly what’s called the Walker War, which takes place from July 1853 to May of 1854; and then, finally, we’ll dive into the Utah War, which takes place from 1857 to 1858. How’s that sound?

Casey Griffiths: That sounds good.

Scott Woodward: So you want to start us out with the Battle of Nauvoo, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. Again, we covered a lot of the violence in Nauvoo in our series on the martyrdom, but we did kind of end that with the trial of Joseph and Hyrum Smith’s murderers and didn’t go much further. Now, there’s not a lot of violence that takes place because Brigham Young basically accedes to the demands of the anti-Mormons in Hancock County and agrees to remove the saints and even leaves earlier than he originally intended to, but there was some violence. For instance, you’ll remember Thomas Ford, our old friend, who was the governor—

Scott Woodward: Our old friend.

Casey Griffiths: —of Illinois, who we argued may have been complicit in Joseph Smith’s death either ignorantly or deliberately, and I think you landed on the side of deliberately.

Scott Woodward: Deliberately. Yeah, I think so.

Casey Griffiths: And I was kind of like, no, I think he was just sort of dumb. I think it was ignorance, and I still think that, but I’m open to other ideas. Anyway.

Scott Woodward: It’s hard to be that dumb now, but—anyway, yeah, we debated this, and it was fun, and—

Casey Griffiths: I don’t know if I would underestimate the intelligence of American politicians, to be honest with you, but yeah. Okay. So Tom Ford writes a history of Illinois, and he summarizes the saints’ departure from Nauvoo like this: He says, “It is with much satisfaction that I am enabled to state that the people called Mormons have been removed from the state.”

Scott Woodward: Jerk.

Casey Griffiths: “The great body of them removed voluntarily, but a small remnant of them were barbarously expelled with force, and in a manner which reflects but little credit on the state or its institutions.” So give him a little credit: he is a little introspective, and—

Scott Woodward: He’s not proud of the way that we were kicked out, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He’s not proud of how it ended. What he’s referencing here when he says the “small remnant” that were “barbarously expelled [by] force” is what’s known as the Battle of Nauvoo. It took place in September 1846, and just setting the scene, by the time the battle takes place, most of the Saints had evacuated the city. They were gone. Brigham Young and the first group start to leave as early as February 1846. I mean, we’ve all seen those dramatic paintings of the Saints crossing the ice while the Mississippi River is still frozen.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But a small number of Latter-day Saints remained in Nauvoo, and these were sometimes poorer Latter-day Saints who had trouble cobbling together the resources to head West. Some of the people that participated in the Battle of Nauvoo were actually new settlers who had come up and purchased the land cheap and kind of fell under the dangers posed by these anti-Mormon forces that were just dead set on getting every Latter-day Saint out of Nauvoo, even if it was just a small number who were essentially no threat to them. The other thing is that the battle of Nauvoo helped draw national attention to what was happening to the saints as well. In particular, there was a philanthropist from Philadelphia named Thomas L. Kane, who’s going to be big in our story today. Kane comes after the Battle of Nauvoo, and he travels all the way across Iowa and even goes to Winter Quarters, and he writes a really moving speech that he gives in Philadelphia to try and help people understand what was happening to Latter-day Saints, this refugee crisis. In fact, here’s how he describes the plight of the Saints: Thomas Kane wrote, “Dreadful indeed was the suffering of these forsaken beings, cowed and cramped by cold and sunburn, alternating as each weary day and night dragged on. They were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poor house, nor friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick. They had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike, all of them were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort them—to comfort those whom the sick shiver of fever was delivered to the marrow.” And so, I mean, Kane actually fell sick himself. Disease was so rampant among the saints at Winter Quarters that he gets sick, and he’s nurtured back to health by the Latter-day Saints, and for that he remains a loyal friend to them for the rest of his life, though he does have, you know, complicated moments when plural marriage is announced. He’s going to play a big role in the later part of the story here. But while some saints are out on the plains, and some are setting up Winter Quarters—and the whole exodus, at least the first phase of it when they cross Iowa, was much, much more difficult than they thought it was going to be. There’s a few Latter-day Saints back in Nauvoo who are trying to get packed up to go, but they don’t have much protection. The Nauvoo Legion, who up to that time was one of the largest armed forces in the United States, had already left the city, and they’re not really involved in the Battle of Nauvoo, with a few exceptions. But even though the saints are in the process of leaving Illinois, their enemies want to expedite the process. And you might recognize some of the names I’m going to mention here. The two main motivators behind the attack appear to have been Thomas Sharp, our old friend from the series on the martyrdom, and Levi Williams, two of the men who were indicted for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith.

Scott Woodward: So they were not satisfied with the martyrdom. They needed to go further and bring this upon the Saints.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and a lot of this happens after they’re acquitted in their trials for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. In fact, some people think it may have emboldened them: that, basically, they killed two people. They led a mob that killed two people, and there were no legal consequences whatsoever for it. Nothing happened. They didn’t even hold a trial for the murder of Hyrum Smith. The prosecutor dropped out. And so they are emboldened, and they launch a plan to just forcibly get any Latter-day Saints that are remaining out of Nauvoo, and they’re organizing anti-Mormon forces. When you read histories of this, sometimes they’re called the Carthaginian forces because they mostly come from Carthage, Illinois.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But this is a town-versus-town, but with others from Warsaw helping, and the whole situation kind of comes to a head on September 10, 1846, when 1,000 members of the anti-Mormon forces actually march on Nauvoo. So they come to literally invade Nauvoo. In Nauvoo there’s about 150 men to set up defenses while women and children shelter near the temple. The temple’s still standing at this point, and so the way the battle went down, if you’ve been to Nauvoo, Mulholland Street is the main street up on the bluff by the temple, and that’s the direction that the invading forces come in from, so the defenders of the city set up two makeshift cannons. They weren’t actually real cannons: They were made from a steamboat shaft. And then they barricade Mulholland Street facing Carthage. So imagine a kind of setup like you see in Les Misérables.

Scott Woodward: The cannons weren’t even real?

Casey Griffiths: Well, I mean, they’re doing the best they can here.

Scott Woodward: I mean, were they functional, or were they just . . . ?

Casey Griffiths: They were functional. I actually went to Nauvoo a couple weeks ago with some of my teaching assistants, and in the museum in Nauvoo, that’s not operated by the church—it’s operated by the locals—there’s cannonballs from the battle of Nauvoo that are stored in there, and so the cannons did function, but it sounds like the defense was improvised.

Scott Woodward: Jury-rigged steamboat shafts turned into cannons.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, they’re doing the best they can with what they have, and again, it’s about 150 versus 1,000 people.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And so the thousand-man anti-Mormon group comes up, and there’s skirmishes on the 11th and 12th of September, and then on the 13th there’s a full-on siege of the city. They push forward in spite of this opposition, and it doesn’t take very long before the defenders are overwhelmed and they’re pushed back through the city. So house-to-house battles as they’re moving back, but the entire battle doesn’t last very long. They get pushed from Mulholland all the way down to the river within about an hour and 45 minutes, and the defenders of the city eventually get backed up against the Mississippi River, and several of them are killed. Not a lot: We’re talking maybe two or three of the defenders, but they surrender at their water’s edge and they give up their arms. Now, somebody that was involved in the defense was a guy who’s also going to be important in the story named Daniel H. Wells. Squire Wells, as Joseph Smith called him, was not a Latter-day Saint. He does join and later on becomes a member of the First Presidency and leads the Nauvoo Legion during the Utah War, but he kind of reasons with the defenders. This is what one of the defenders records him saying: he said, “What interests have the Saints to expect from its defense? Our interests are not identified with it but in getting away from it. Who would urge the propriety of exposing life to defend a place for the purpose of vacating it?” So Daniel Wells basically reasons with the defenders and says, why are you trying to defend something that you’re going to leave? This is just pride.

Scott Woodward: You’re planning on evacuating anyway, so—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —why defend it?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. So the defenders of Nauvoo give up. They evacuate the city. The attacking forces enter, they ransack homes, they burn fields, and they desecrate the temple. Some of the remaining saints are literally thrown out of their homes. Some were thrown into the river in a form of mock baptism. That’s how the sources describe it.

Scott Woodward: Oy.

Casey Griffiths: And a preacher in the mob actually climbed to the top of the temple tower in Nauvoo and cried, “Peace, peace, peace to all the inhabitants of the earth. The Mormons are now driven.”

Scott Woodward: That’s ironic. A preacher crying on the top of the temple, “Peace,” because the Mormons are driven.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, I mean—

Scott Woodward: He’s part of the mob. He’s part of the mob.

Casey Griffiths: That’s messed up. This is actually kind of weirdly—they get forced across the river, and Brigham Young hears that they have been forcibly removed.

Scott Woodward: Where’s Brigham Young at this time?

Casey Griffiths: Brigham Young’s on the other side of the state. He’s at the Missouri River on the other side of Iowa—

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: —setting up Winter Quarters, when word comes of the battle of Nauvoo, and he gives a speech that is very similar to the speech he’s going to give about ten years later, when the handcart pioneers are trapped in Wyoming, where he says, we’ve got to go back, and we’ve got to rescue them. We’ve got to organize ourselves so that we can make sure these people okay. And it’s sort of the dress rehearsal for the handcart rescue that will happen in Utah later on.

Scott Woodward: Got it.

Casey Griffiths: But this is the violent end to the saints’ time in Nauvoo. After this Nauvoo becomes a ghost town. Those that have been to Nauvoo will see that it’s alive and it has its own kind of unique and beautiful history, but it still kind of has this ghostly feel to it, like it used to be something huge. It’s a little small. Some of the most beautiful writing about it comes from Thomas Kane. So several months later, this philanthropist from Philadelphia arrives in the city, and here’s what he wrote: He said, “The town lay as in a dream, under some deadening spell of loneliness, from which I almost feared to wake it, for plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing in the paved ways. Rain had not entirely washed away the prints of the dusty footsteps.”

Scott Woodward: Oh, wow.

Casey Griffiths: “Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty workshops, roadwalks, and smithies. The spinner’s wheel was idle. The carpenter had gone from his workbench and shavings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner’s vat, and the fresh-chopped light wood stood piled against the baker’s oven. The blacksmith’s shop was cold, but his coal heap and his ladling pool and crooked waterhorn were all there, as if he’d just gone off for a holiday. No work people anywhere looked to know my errand. If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket latch loudly after me to pull the marigolds, heartsease, and lady slippers and draw a drink of the water-sodden well bucket and its noisy chain, or knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunted over the beds for cucumbers and love apples, no one called out to me from any open window, or a dog sprang forward to bark an alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in houses, but the doors were unfastened, and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearths.” Like, this guy’s a good writer.

Scott Woodward: Kind of a ghostly, haunting description.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. I easily classify, and disagree with me if you will, the Battle of Nauvoo as Category 1.

Scott Woodward: They had the cannon.

Casey Griffiths: They did have a cannon, but it was entirely defensive, and they didn’t even set up defenses until they were attacked, and then it’s kind of a rout to begin with.

Scott Woodward: I think that’s right. I think that’s right. There’s no retaliation. There’s just a—almost a weak defense and then total surrender.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. It kind of boggles the mind on both sides. Like, why were the anti-Mormons so set on getting every Mormon out of the county if they were already leaving, and the defenders, too, which I’m guessing they just didn’t have time to get organized and leave. Why risk their lives defending a city? That’s what Daniel Wells finally reasons with them is why are you doing this if you already decided you’re going to vacate the city? Don’t waste any more blood for a place that you’ve already chosen to give up. And so I’d say this is probably category one.

Scott Woodward: I agree. Okay, so now let’s transition from, okay, we leave Nauvoo, we’re headed to Utah, and we arrive in Utah. Okay, so kind of upload all the pioneer stories and things here, right? We’re headed to Utah. When the Saints begin to arrive in Utah, they were wary—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —of conflicts with the Native Americans. Brigham Young later recalled—he said, “When we first entered Utah, we were prepared to meet all the Indians in these mountains—kill every soul of them if we had been obliged to do so. This preparation has secured to us peace.” Okay, that’s pretty violent rhetoric.

Casey Griffiths: And you’re going to notice a marked shift in the rhetoric as we move from Joseph Smith to Brigham Young. Brigham Young talked, and could talk big, essentially. His record is actually pretty good, especially when it comes to Native Americans, though there are some aberrations, especially early on, but you’ll notice they’re in this completely unknown wilderness, and they’re wary of Native Americans, even though they do have this scriptural belief that Native Americans are part of the house of Israel and they want to see them as their allies and also potential converts to the church that they also get the feeling that when they get into the territory, they’ve got to basically send a message that they’re not messing around.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And they won’t be taken advantage of. And I think that’s where that kind of tough talk comes from, where he says they were prepared.

Scott Woodward: We’re prepared to kill every soul of them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and you can kind of understand how the saints are coming from a pretty defensive posture, having been the victims of violence very recently in Nauvoo, and now making all this sacrifice out into this unknown territory, where there are potential threats in the Native Americans who might see the Latter-day Saints as those who are encroaching upon their territory, right? And so they recognize there could be some conflict, and they need to be ready. Here’s some more of Brigham Young: Here’s what he cautioned the Saints to do. He told them to build defenses against attacks from Native Americans. He said, “Every settlement that has been made in these valleys of the mountains has received strict charges from me to build in the first place a fort and live in it until they were sufficiently strong to live in a town, to keep their guns and ammunition well prepared for any emergency, and never cease to keep up a night watch if any apprehensions of the Indians being hostile were entertained. We have suffered nothing from them compared with what we have suffered from white men who are disposed to steal, and I would rather take my chance today for good treatment among Indians than I would among white men of this character. I have always acknowledged myself a coward,” he says, “and hope I always may be to make me cautious enough to preserve myself and my brethren from falling ignobly by a band of Indians.” So be on the lookout, be ready, build forts, have your guns ready just in case. Now, unfortunately there are some conflicts—

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: —between the Saints and Native Americans that break out not too long after they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. The first skirmishes come in Utah Valley, where a group of Indians known as the Timpanogos Utes, or the fish eaters, lived. In late 1848 some church members who moved to settle Utah Valley called for reprisals against Ute bands who stole their livestock and horses. Brigham Young initially rejected such talk. He said, “Many elders have prayed to be among the Lamanites, and now they want to kill them.” And so he taught that the Indians are the children of Abraham, the descendants of Israel, and the remnants of Israel, so he’s going back and forth here, it sounds like, right? On the one hand, we need to be prepared and ready to defend ourselves. On the other hand, don’t retaliate against the Indians because these are remnants of the house of Israel. I mean, what do you want to say about that tension—Brigham Young?

Casey Griffiths: Well, I mean, again, I think the Saints are nervous.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: They’re moving into this territory that they haven’t seen before. Let’s acknowledge here, too, that racism against Native Americans was just endemic among—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —19th-century Americans. It was just a thing. The saints have this push and pull amongst themselves to where they’re still Americans, and some of them still harbor racial prejudice against the Indians, but they also have this doctrine teaching that the Indians are descendants of the house of Israel, and they don’t want to fight with them. They also, like Brigham Young acknowledged, see them as possibly potential allies against the white Americans that have been persecuting them, so there’s an interesting dynamic, push and pull, that goes on here, and, again, Brigham Young early on, I think was basically playing it tough so that the Indians would know that they wouldn’t be taken advantage of, and he softens a little bit as time goes on, as they stay in the Utah territory and make more and more friends with Native Americans.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. So in those first incidents where we get cattle theft and horse theft, Brigham says, hold on, do not retaliate, but after several more months of cattle theft, Brigham Young changes his mind. Little Chief, who is one of the leaders of the Utah Valley Utes, meets with several Latter-day Saint scouts in Utah Valley, and he complains about former members of his band who stole Mormon cattle and encouraged, “The big white Captain Young to send up some men and kill those mean Utes.” Little Chief, one of the leaders of the Utah Valley Utes, actually meets with several Latter-day Saint scouts in Utah Valley, and he complains about former members of his band who stole Mormon cattle. And so he actually encourages “The big white captain,” who’s Brigham Young, “to send up some men and kill those mean Utes,” meaning this chief is encouraging Brigham Young and the Saints to actually hunt down those Indians, those Native Americans, who stole their horses and kill them. So, prompted by this, actually, Brigham Young does authorize an expedition that does track down these horse thieves and killed them, with the exception of a 16-year-old boy who surrendered, so that’s pretty intense.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Several more incidents in Utah Valley led Brigham Young to authorize even greater uses of force. As more Indian raids took place, Brigham decided to “use up the marauders,” he says. He declared, “They must either quit the ground or we must.” And several Native Americans were executed by the militia.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: So this is getting intense.

Casey Griffiths: These early conflicts that took place in Utah Valley were pretty brutal is my understanding. And—

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: —at least one of them was started by the saints—not under Brigham Young’s direction, but just the Saints who were settling in Utah Valley started a conflict with the Native Americans over something as dumb as a shirt. They killed a Native American and then threw him into Utah Lake. They’d already cut him open and filled him with stones—like, violent stuff.

Scott Woodward: Oh my word.

Casey Griffiths: Again, not authorized by Brigham Young and not done by policy, but Brigham Young seems to, once he hears of more and more conflict, sort of say, all right, we’re going to show them that we’re serious, and there’s some brutal stuff that happens here, though not necessarily under Brigham Young’s direction.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, and then over time it seems like Brigham Young softens his stance in dealing with Native Americans. Like—so from 1853 to 1854, the Saints do engage in a war—more like a series of raids—led by Walkara, who was a Ute chief. But then Brigham Young actually negotiates an end to the war, and then afterwards he frequently teaches that it’s easier to feed the Indians than to fight them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, that’s the big—

Scott Woodward: I like that.

Casey Griffiths: —quote that is always associated with Brigham Young: I’ve always said it was easier to feed the Indians than it was to fight them.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And they take this approach: Let’s preach the gospel, let’s feed them, and let’s don’t engage in conflict. And for the most part, there’s still exceptions to this, like the Circleville Massacre that happened later on, but the Saints do have a generally better record with the Native Americans than their contemporaries throughout the West.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, it’s almost like they began engaging with them in the same way that others were engaging with the Native Americans, but then Brigham Young does a pivot and says, let’s not actually do it that way. I don’t like where this is going.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: There’s a letter that he wrote to Jacob Hamblin, who was a missionary that was sent out to the Indians, and here’s what Brigham Young said: “Dear brother, your note of the 19th last month came to hand on the 3rd. I’m happy to learn of the success and the general prosperity of the mission, and trust that the genial and salutary influences, now so rapidly extending to the various tribes in that region, may continue to spread abroad until it shall pervade every son and daughter of Abraham in their fallen condition,” referring to the Native Americans. “The hour of their redemption draws nigh, and the time is not far distant when they will receive knowledge and begin to rise and increase in the land and become a people whom the Lord will delight to own and bless. In regard to the cattle, you should control them and use them for the best interest of both the missionaries and the Indians. The Indians should be encouraged in keeping and taking care of stock. I highly approve of your designs and doing your farming through the natives. It learns them to obtain a subsistence by their own industry and leaves you more at liberty to visit others and extend your missionary labors among them. A few missionaries to show and learn them—” I like how he says “learn.” “And learn them.” “And learn them to raise stock and grain and then not eat it up for them is most judicious, and you should always be careful to impress upon them that they should not infringe upon the rights of others. And our brethren should be very careful not to infringe upon their rights in any particular, thus cultivating honor and good principles in their midst by example as well as precept. I wish all the missionaries to aid and assist Brother Amasa all they can in his explorations. As ever, I remain your brother in the gospel of salvation. Signed, Brigham Young.” So this seems very . . .

Casey Griffiths: It’s progressive, right? I mean . . .

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: There’s still kind of this white man superiority—

Scott Woodward: For sure. For sure.

Casey Griffiths: —that kind of comes through it, but at the same time, too—

Scott Woodward: Let’s be genial to them. Let’s be helpful to them. Let’s train them. Let’s teach them.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, I mean, he has a progressive attitude. Like, there’s even statements from Brigham Young where it sounds like he recognizes the cultural differences between the two. On one occasion, he taught, “Why should men have a disposition to kill a destitute, naked Indian who may steal a shirt or a horse and thinks it no harm, when they never think of meting out a like retribution to a white man who steals, although he has been taught better.” And so there is this recognition from Brigham Young that people just inherently treat Native Americans worse than they treat European settlers, and that that’s not right.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And other things tend to win him the confidence of most Native American—not all, but most Native Americans in the Great Basin, and Latter-day Saints are generally seen by the Native Americans as more peaceful, more cooperative, and more friendly towards them.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. And while Brigham Young’s efforts to work with Native Americans weren’t, like, always successful, others did take note that they were trying, right? Like, Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, he stated that, “No governor has ever done so well by the Indians since William Penn as Governor Young,” which is a cool compliment.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: When Brigham Young passes away, one local chief paid him a compliment by saying, “What shall we do? Who will be our friend now?” That’s pretty touching. So he did work—like you said, over time, he softens. They come in kind of hard, and then by the end here, they’re pretty soft towards the Native Americans. They didn’t know quite what to expect, but I think they learned how to work with them rather than against them.

Casey Griffiths: They do fall victim to some of the racial attitudes that are just common among European Americans at this time. So I probably classify this as category two, where they went back and forth, but eventually they settle on a more peaceful course. I mean, we’d be unfair if we weren’t acknowledging that there were some extremely violent conflicts when the saints first got here, but that later on, they settle into more of a conciliatory course where they’re trying to help the Native Americans and they’re trying to teach them the gospel and they’re not dead set on conflict with them. In fact, they sort of see them as allies and friends.

Scott Woodward: What do you think about the disproportionate retaliation of killing for stealing, right? Like, they steal cattle, and so the Saints hunt them down and kill some of them. Like, would you—does that start to get close to category three for you, or maybe not?

Casey Griffiths: It might. A lot of the sources I looked at here were from John Turner, who wrote a really good biography of Brigham Young. John Turner’s not a Latter-day Saint, but his book on Brigham Young, I thought, was really fair, and his judgment was that kind of looking at the standards of the time, that was pretty common, I guess. I would say it was probably a little bit more harsh than was warranted, but we would also say it was provoked, that they were being warned by some Native Americans, too, that if they didn’t take action, they would be taken advantage of to a large degree, and so we might be verging a little bit towards Category 3 here, but it seems like it happened, and it happened early, and they correct it, so I’m going to say we’re still probably in Category 2.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, interesting. Like, you noted that it was actually Native Americans who encouraged the Saints to kill the horse thieves. Like Little Chief, when he says, you should hunt them down and kill those thieves, it’s like, hmm. It was almost to say, like, okay, from outside looking in, culturally, like this looks horrific, but in the context of the times that was—like you said, this is the way things were done. That doesn’t excuse it, of course. It does not excuse it. But it helps us to see with that empathetic lens, like, that’s how you deal with the horse thieves back then, I guess.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: Then over time, Brigham’s like, well, you wouldn’t kill a white man for stealing, so let’s not kill Native Americans. How about that? Like, that’s where he lands, right? By the end, he lands on that note, which, again, none of this is excusing anything, but we’re just trying to understand the nature of the violence in the context of the day.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, and I’d also point out that the end of the Walker War, the struggle the saints have with Chief Wakara, the end of the war doesn’t result in the saints taking away land or trying to wipe out the Native Americans. They end it successfully without further violence, and Brigham Young, I believe, actually meets with Chief Wakara, and both of them agree that violence between their peoples isn’t desirable and that they want to be friends. Wakara is a really interesting figure that maybe we should dive into in future episodes, but it doesn’t end badly, I guess you’d say. They fight, and then it’s resolved peacefully without further violence or a total victory for either side, which is really rare among Native American European conflicts in the Intermountain West in the 19th century.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, that’s important to note. So it takes us about 10 years in the West to develop decently good relationships with the Native Americans. On the other hand, our relationship with the United States at the time was not so good.

Casey Griffiths: No.

Scott Woodward: And all of these threads start to converge together in the 1857-1858 conflict that we know today as the Utah War.

Casey Griffiths: So let’s talk about the Utah War, because this is where things started to get really crazy.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So the Utah War was an extensive and expensive conflict for the United States and for the Saints, I’ll say. Some historians have referred to the Utah War as the nation’s first civil war, but it was East versus West rather than North versus South, and the conflict on one side pits Brigham Young, president of the church—but he’s also acting as the governor of Utah and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Utah—against James Buchanan, who was president of the United States. James Buchanan’s another one of those complex figures. He’s not generally rated highly among presidents of the United States. In fact, he’s usually—in most historical surveys of effective presidents, Buchanan’s usually near the bottom, and the Utah War actually is part of that discussion, too.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, “Buchanan’s Blunder,” right?

Casey Griffiths: Militarily, it also pits the Nauvoo Legion—that’s Utah’s territorial militia: They hang on to the name from Nauvoo—against nearly one third of the United States Army, though we should note the United States Army was not huge at this time. It was pre–Civil War. And, fortunately, the Utah War saw no military battles. There were conflicts and violent conflagrations, but it ends in a peaceful way, too. It ends with a negotiated settlement, Brigham Young willingly gives up the governorship, and it does cause dramatic changes within the church and the western regions of the United States. Up to this time, really for the first ten years that the church was in the Great Basin, we were what church members would call a theodemocracy, where both ecclesiastical and civil authority were vested in the same person: Brigham Young. And that was just a recognition of reality. Almost all of the European settlers in the Great Basin were Latter-day Saints, and Brigham Young was their leader in every sense of the word.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But the Utah War starts to shift that balance, too, and even the names of the Utah War are interesting. Like, I looked it up on Wikipedia, and different names for the Utah War include the Utah War, the Utah Campaign, some sources call it the Mormon War or the Mormon Rebellion, but my favorite name is Buchanan’s Blunder.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. My favorite, too.

Casey Griffiths: Partially because blame for the war has largely fallen upon the head of James Buchanan because he did some unreasonable things. He sends the army to Utah without notifying Brigham Young, who’s the territorial governor at the time. He doesn’t even send a telegram to Brigham Young telling him that he’s being removed: He just sends the army. He doesn’t send any investigators. He doesn’t do anything to try to resolve the situation peacefully: He just pulls the trigger and sends this army out, and it turns into a big fiasco. As the war progressed, public opinion turns against Buchanan. The New York Times—this is one of my favorite statements about the Utah War, too: The New York Times summarize the war by writing, “The Mormon War has been unquestionably a mass of blunders from beginning to end. Whichever way we look at it, it is a great mass of stupid blunders.”

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And so—

Scott Woodward: So back us up. Tell us what exactly, like, caused the war. Like, what was in Buchanan’s mind to lead him to, like, send the army out? Like, what was at stake for him?

Casey Griffiths: Well, people are still sort of like, why did he react this way? And there’s a lot of theories—and these are just theories, I want to say, but this is 1857. We’re three years away from the actual Civil War between North and South that happens. Some people have wondered if Buchanan was looking for something to unite the North and South against each other. It is interesting to look at names in the Utah War and then find out where they landed during the Civil War. For instance, Albert Sidney Johnston, who’s the guy who leads the army to Utah, actually resigns from the army. He’s from Texas. He’s from the South.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Goes back home, becomes a Confederate general, and fights against Ulysses S. Grant at the Battle of Shiloh, where he’s killed.

Scott Woodward: Wow.

Casey Griffiths: And so some people—I mean, some historians have speculated, maybe Buchanan reacted or overreacted because he was trying to create a conflict that would unite the States that were on the very verge of bloodshed at this time. I mean, Civil War is going to be the bloodiest war in the history of the country.

Scott Woodward: So what did he use as the justification for the war? Like, what was the provocation in Utah that he was reacting to?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, so let me set the scene a little bit. Utah is not the most desirable place for a federal official who’s looking to climb the ladder, right?

Scott Woodward: It’s not the plum assignment?

Casey Griffiths: It’s not the plum assignment. So the federal officials that are sent to the Utah territory are not of the highest caliber, I’ll say.

Scott Woodward: Okay.

Casey Griffiths: And, second, they’re dealing with an already hostile population. Like, the Saints came to Utah because they wanted self-rule. They do agree to be an American territory, but they’re here because they want autonomy and they don’t like these federal officials telling them what to do. And there’s no love lost between the federal officials and the saints. For instance, one, who’s named W. W. Drummond, who’s a territorial associate justice, writes a letter where he calls the Latter-day Saints, “Damned rotten-hearted scoundrels and poor, miserable blacklegs, broken down political hacks, robbers, and whoremongers.”

Scott Woodward: Jeez.

Casey Griffiths: And, I mean, them’s fighting words, right? The Deseret News, which is established in Utah during this time, acknowledges that “lying letters, though written by nobodies, have excited and bewildered the public mind,” so these federal officials are writing back and basically saying, we can’t get anything done because the Mormons won’t let us do anything, and the Latter-day Saints don’t have much of a chance to make their case, either, but the central charge seems to be that Brigham Young has absolute power, that he’s the head of both church and state, which was true.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But that the Latter-day Saints were in rebellion against the United States. Buchanan gives this speech where he says that if Brigham Young’s government shall come into collision with the government of the United States, the members of the Mormon Church will yield implicit obedience to his, Buchanan’s, will.

Scott Woodward: So there’s not actually a rebellion happening. It’s the potential for rebellion. If there’s ever a conflict between the U. S. Government and Brigham Young’s will, they know that the Saints will go with Brigham Young.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah.

Scott Woodward: They want to split Brigham’s power here. They want to put some other governor in the place who’s not LDS so as to divide the power that is consolidated at the time of Brigham Young. Is that right? Something like?

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And it does kind of come to a head when these federal officials that are criticizing the Saints abscond from the territory. Like, they come to feel that they’re being threatened, and so they all up and leave together and go back East with these reports that the Latter-day Saints are in rebellion, and Buchanan, here’s the problem, instead of sending people to investigate, or even contacting Brigham Young and saying, “Are you in rebellion?” just calls out the army, but at the time—Latter-day Saints had announced in 1852 they were practicing plural marriage, and that really excites the nation, and a lot of people are basically looking at Latter-day Saints as this kind of strange group in the Western United States that they need to get rid of. Even Stephen A. Douglas, okay, who is going to run for president against Abraham Lincoln and lose, but earlier was a good friend of the Saints while they were living in Illinois, makes a speech where he says this: “When the authentic evidence shall arrive, if it shall establish the facts about Utah which are believed to exist, it shall become the duty of Congress to apply the knife and cut out this loathsome, disgusting cancer.”

Scott Woodward: Ay-yi-yi.

Casey Griffiths: And those are tough words, too, right? Like, everybody’s saying, we’ve got to put an end to Mormonism, and at the very least, they’ve got to replace the government in Utah because Brigham Young is both the secular and the spiritual leader of the territory. So President Buchanan orders out a force of 2,500 military personnel, which is a huge number for this time period. Like I said, the American army was always relatively small until the Civil War, and he orders them to travel to Utah and to escort Alfred Cumming, who’s going to be appointed as the new governor of Utah. And it was launched without as much as an investigative committee set to determine if rebellion was taking place. In fact, the army’s coming to Utah, and there might be indications, too, that the army wasn’t intending to be violent, just to forcibly make sure that Brigham Young left the governorship. In fact, a supply captain from the army, Captain Stuart Van Vliet, arrives in Salt Lake City, and Brigham Young confronts him and says, “Congress has promptly sent investigating committees to Kansas and other places as occasion has required, but upon the merest rumor, it has sent 2,000 armed soldiers to destroy all the people of Utah without investigating the subject at all.” And that is a really valid concern to bring up. So while Van Vliet is in Utah, Brigham Young kind of puts on a show for him, basically invites him to a church service, and with Van Vliet sitting nearby, Brigham Young gets up and gives a speech where he says the following: he says, “They say their army is legal, and I say that such a statement is false as hell and that they are as rotten as an old pumpkin that has been frozen seven times and then melted in the harvest sun.” And then in the speech, he goes on to just basically say, here’s our strategy. He says, if the army forces its way to Utah, “they would find nothing but a barren waste. We should burn everything that was wood and every acre of grass that would burn. They would not find anything to eat in this territory when they come.” And this is all deliberate. Brigham Young wants the army to know what his strategy is going to be. That’s that they’re going to basically destroy everything before they get there and leave them with nothing but scorched earth when they come.

Scott Woodward: So a bit of psychological warfare first. He’s like, if you guys come—

Casey Griffiths: A little bit, yeah.

Scott Woodward: —this is what’s going to happen. So you might as well not come. Hopefully the Saints don’t actually have to do that if the army gets the hint, but . . .

Casey Griffiths: He’s grandstanding a little bit, Brigham Young is, because he knows that this army captain is with them.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But private journal entries that he makes during this time indicates that he’s trying to use words to avoid violence. For instance, this is from his journal: “If I have to fight, I wish to give my enemies fair warning.” And then he said, “And then, if they will not take it, they must abide the consequences. I wish to meet all men at the judgment bar of God without any to fear me or accuse me of wrong action.” And so, yeah, he publicly and privately saying, I want them to know what we’ll do. Because they’ve been pushed and pushed and pushed, and finally they’ve traveled a thousand miles into the wilderness, and they’re saying, where would we go from here? Like, what would we do? Brigham Young in the speech says, this is the last mob that’s going to come upon Latter-day Saints. We’re not going to be forced from our homes again.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And it works—I mean, to a certain degree. So Van Vliet sees the territory, sees how sincere the Saints are in their desire to defend it. He also sees the geography. The narrow mountain passes that lead into Salt Lake kind of make it a natural fortress, and he also reports back the strategy for what it’s going to be. Like, he writes back to the army and says, “Their plan of operations will be burn up grass, cut up the roads, and stampede the animals so as to delay the troops until snow commences to fall, which will render the road impassable.” And his assessment is actually a pretty good summary of what Brigham Young and the Nauvoo Legion plan to do, which is slow down the army so that there’s more time to try and get word to Buchanan so that cooler heads will prevail, so that when the army comes into Salt Lake, they’re not going to be guns blazing. They’ll have a chance to basically share their side of the story.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Yeah. So let’s talk about the strategy, then, during the war. So we’ve got the rhetoric at first, trying to explain the game plan, to delay the army on its way, right? Brigham Young will do what he said he would do, and in fact, Brigham Young and Daniel H. Wells do direct a company of mounted militia led by a guy named Lot Smith to go out and slow down the army by stampeding their cattle and burning their supply trains, meaning the cattle and supply trains of the army. But here’s his instructions: he says, “Save life always when it’s possible. We do not wish to shed a drop of blood if it can be avoided. This course will give us great influence abroad.”

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. They’re kind of saying, hey, we have the moral high ground right now. We’re being persecuted, but if we shed blood, we’ll lose the moral high ground.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, that’s right.

Casey Griffiths: I also think that they just—they were acknowledging that they don’t want the conflict to turn violent, and so they’re directing these raiders to avoid loss of life whenever possible.

Scott Woodward: So then Brigham Young’s strategy consists of three major points: The first one is that Latter-day Saint militia would slow the army’s approach by intercepting their supply trains, burning the prairie grass their animals needed to survive. It’s hoped that this would slow down the army enough that they wouldn’t be able to make it to Utah before the winter snow sets in. That would make it impossible for the army to pass through. In fact, Daniel H. Wells, who commanded the Nauvoo Legion, he sent the following directive to his troops: “On ascertaining the locality or route of the troops, proceed at once to annoy them in every possible way. Use every exertion to stampede their animals and set fire to their trains. Burn the whole country before them and on their flanks. Keep them from sleeping by night surprises. Blockade the road by felling trees or destroying the river fords where you can. Watch for opportunities to set fire to the grass on their windward, so as, if possible, to envelop their trains. Leave no grass before them that can be burned. Keep your men concealed as much as possible, and guard against surprise.” That’s strategy number one. Strategy number two: If the troops did make it through, the Saints would destroy their own settlements and then flee to the mountains or some other remote region to escape the army. Third leg of the strategy: Brigham believed that if conflict came to an all-out war, an alliance with the Native Americans in the region might provide an advantage. On August 4th, 1857, Brigham sends a letter to Jacob Hamblin, a missionary who works with the Indians, that read, “Continue the conciliatory policy toward the Indians which I have ever recommended.” And then he said, “Seek by works of righteousness to obtain their love and confidence, for they must learn that they have either got to help us, or the United States will kill us both.” That’s leg number three of the strategy here.

Casey Griffiths: So they’re going to leverage their relationship with the Native Americans and see them as allies, and a lot of the most extreme rhetoric surrounding the Utah War given by church leaders is this, the Native Americans are going to be our saviors. Like, they’re going to join with us, and that’s how we’re going to have the sufficient force to fight the army if it comes to that.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: But, again, the strategy is to stall, essentially, to try and see if they can negotiate peacefully.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: And so throughout the summer and fall of 1857, Latter-day Saint raiders, particularly a contingent of the legion commanded by Lot Smith, who later become known as the Mormon raiders, harass Johnson’s army. They delay its approach to the Utah territory. In fact, the most dramatic encounter takes place on October 4th, 1857, when a wagon train that was supplying the army—so this isn’t the actual army: this is the wagon train—is captured by Lot Smith. Lot Smith runs up and captures them, and then he sort of politely explains, like, we’re the Mormon Raiders, and we’re going to burn your wagons. And the way Lot Smith tells the story, and Lot Smith was a good storyteller, was that the captain of the wagon train exclaimed, “For God’s sake, don’t burn the wagons,” and Lot Smith says, “I replied it was for His sake I was going to burn them,” and then he burns them. And, again, Lot Smith writes this great narrative that’s really lively. I just want to share a couple of my favorite excerpts from it. So he talks about harassing the army. They burned two large wagon trains. At one point they steal a bunch of government beans and he records, “We fell back on Fort Supply, eating the beef we had borrowed and sampling some half-cooked government beans. This experiment developed as never before conceived in my imagination the enormous pressure the human stomach is capable of sustaining without damage and came very near developing the necessity for someone else to write this sketch.” So government beans, he feels, are more dangerous than . . .

Scott Woodward: Gorging themselves on beef that they “borrowed,” he said. Beef that we borrowed, and the half-cooked government beans.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, I mean, the strategy does work. The army is slowed down and delayed. The army also gets more and more annoyed, if that was part of the idea, too, to where some of the soldiers are really spoiling for a fight as they get closer to Utah, but they don’t make it to the mountain passes before winter sets in, and the army basically has to accept that they’re not going to make it before winter, and that buys several additional months to figure things out. In fact, the army expected to winter at the edge of Utah Territory at Fort Bridger, which had been purchased by the church, but when they get there, they find that the fort is a smoldering pile of ashes due to Lot Smith and the other raiders. They burn it down, basically, and that ticks them off further: They have to spend this miserable winter in Fort Bridger, spoiling for the spring when the snow will melt and they can go through the mountain passes and lay waste to the saints. So that’s the situation when winter starts in 1857: that the army’s at Fort Bridger, Daniel Wells has called out Mormon militia. They’re way outnumbered, but they’re going to dig in on the rims of Echo Canyon. If you’ve ever driven from Salt Lake to Evanston, Wyoming, you’ll go through Echo Canyon, and there are these huge kind of red cliffs, and that’s where the Nauvoo Legion, if the conflict came to it, was going to fight. They would fight the army when it was kind of funneled into this narrow canyon that they have to go through to get to Salt Lake.

Scott Woodward: Yeah, I remember seeing—going up there and seeing, like, there’s certain places strategically up on the top where they would have, like, boulders and stuff, and they were planning on pushing those boulders down and harassing the army from up top as well, if they could.

Casey Griffiths: And everybody’s talking big. Like, the Nauvoo Legion is saying, yeah, if they come into Echo Canyon, we’ll wipe them out. Men from the army are saying, we have artillery, and we’ll make a short work of you if you try to do that, and it looks like once the snow melts, it’s going to be bloodshed: that the Utah War is going to turn hot, and people are going to get killed, and that’s when the first glimmer of hope arrives.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: It’s just about Christmas 1857 when this mysterious rider comes into Salt Lake going by the name of Dr. Osborne, and he immediately gets off his horse and says, I want to meet with Brigham Young, and it turns out that it’s our old friend from Nauvoo, Thomas Kane.

Scott Woodward: Thomas L. Kane.

Casey Griffiths: Okay, so here’s what’s happening on the other side of the continent while the raiders and then Johnson’s army are fighting with each other: So Thomas Kane, who was a longstanding friend of the Saints, he kind of had a period where he cut off contact with the Saints after they announced plural marriage, but once he hears what Buchanan’s planning, Thomas Kane sort of says, I know Brigham Young. I know that he’s not really guilty of the things that he’s been charged with, and he, along with John M. Bernheisel, who was the congressional delegate of the Utah territory, went to Washington, D. C., and they plead with James Buchanan to embolden them—to basically empower them to be peace commissioners. Like, Kane just basically says, yeah, I’ll negotiate with you. I know Brigham Young. I think we can resolve this without bloodshed, and Buchanan is kind of like, well, if you can get there before the army, good luck. And so Kane accepts the challenge, and he doesn’t think he can beat the army to Utah, so he does something completely different: He charters a ship, and he sails down to Panama. He crosses the Isthmus of Panama, then sails up to San Francisco Harbor, then journeys over land and gets to Utah just before Christmas 1857.

Scott Woodward: Oh, man.

Casey Griffiths: Brigham Young saw Kane, he wrote, “Very pale and worn down,” and immediately gave him a blessing. So he goes in and meets with them, says, are you guys in rebellion? Brigham Young says no. Thomas Kane says, then I will go on through the mountain passes and tell the army that you’re not in rebellion, and we’ll find out a way to resolve this peacefully. Brigham Young is so moved that he gives Thomas Kane a blessing, and he says, “Brother Thomas, the Lord sent you here, and he will not let you die. No, you cannot until your work is done. I want you to have your name live with the saints to all eternity. You have done a great work, and you will do a greater work still.” So this guy, Thomas Kane, like I said, is a hero.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: He goes through all this just to get to Salt Lake, and then he goes through the mountains, assisted by Latter-day Saints, even though it’s still covered in snow, and he gets to Fort Bridger on March 12th, 1858. And at first he’s greeted by skepticism from the army commanders, who spent the winter sort of languishing in the cold and really wanted to fight the Latter-day Saints. And, I mean, to make it worse, a series of misunderstandings that happened when Kane gets there led Kane to challenge Albert Sidney Johnston to a duel, so they get into an argument, and Kane’s like, I demand satisfaction, sir, and they were going to duel, but Alfred Cumming, who’s the governor who’s supposed to replace Brigham Young, calms them both down, and he agrees to go with Kane back through the mountains without the army. So they’re traveling through Echo Canyon, and one story from the Utah War—this is in Whitney’s History of Utah—says the bonfires had been lit on both sides of the canyon to make it look like there were more men defending the canyon than there actually were, and by the time Kane and Cummings make it to the Salt Lake Valley, they’re convinced that the number of defenders in Echo Canyon are way more than are actually there.

Scott Woodward: Another psychological warfare technique here.

Casey Griffiths: Psychological warfare, yeah. Chess move back and forth.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: So when Cummings gets to Utah, Brigham Young meets with him, and Brigham Young agrees to step down as governor, but on a few conditions: He said the army could enter Utah, but he didn’t want them to occupy Salt Lake. He sort of wisely realized that the army with the state they were in and the Saints with the state they were in should not be in close contact with each other. So he says, you can come through Salt Lake, but the army can’t encamp here, and he also takes steps to show the army that they’re really serious. So Brigham Young comes up with a plan that today is known as the move South, which was basically everybody in the Salt Lake Valley, who estimates at the time were around 30,000 Latter-day Saints, relocated to Utah Valley. They moved south to Utah Valley, at least temporarily, and then that summer, when the army comes through, all they find is a settlement abandoned. In fact, this is when the foundations of the Salt Lake Temple are actually buried and then plowed to look like a field.

Scott Woodward: In the old movie, Mountain of the Lord. A lot of people will recognize that scene, yeah.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah, there’s a great scene in Mountain of the Lord where someone’s like, “These Mormons,” you know, “have a field in the middle of their city? What a strange people.” And I think the guy who’s playing Albert Sidney Johnston says, “I believe, sir, that they are ready to burn down every last structure in this city should we cause any provocations.” And I don’t know if that’s exactly what happened, but the army just kind of marches through.

Scott Woodward: That was pretty good reenactment, Casey. Nicely done.

Casey Griffiths: Thank you. Thank you. That’s my thespian training coming through.

Scott Woodward: My favorite line in the whole—in the whole movie is when Brigham Young puts his cane in the ground and says, “Here we will build a temple to our God.”

Casey Griffiths: Oh, yeah.

Scott Woodward: He, like, says it in the most cool, like, way, which I’m sure is totally reflective of reality.

Casey Griffiths: I think that happened! I think that happened. Wilford Woodruff recorded that.

Scott Woodward: Did he say it in that cool of a voice? Because it was really—

Casey Griffiths: Well, I don’t know what Brigham Young’s voice sounded like. We don’t have any audio recordings, but it’s hard to imagine Brigham Young saying something and it not sounding objectively awesome.

Scott Woodward: Way cool.

Casey Griffiths: The guy was great at big statements.

Scott Woodward: Anyway.

Casey Griffiths: At any rate, okay.

Scott Woodward: Back to war.

Casey Griffiths: Because of Brigham Young and Governor Cummings, the army marches through the city, but then goes on to Cedar Valley, close to where present-day Eagle Mountain is. There’s actually still a town out there called Cedar Fort, and they stay there. The army builds what’s called Camp Floyd, which there’s still a little historic site you can visit there. They’re there for the next two or three years until the Civil War breaks out. Alfred Cummings becomes a really good friend to the Saints. Like, he’s a really good guy, and he serves out his full term, but he’s from Georgia, so when his term is done, he goes back to the United States, which at this point has been separated into the North and the South, and he tries to make it back to Georgia, but he can’t because the war’s happening, and Albert Sidney Johnston, like we mentioned earlier, actually goes back, joins the Confederate army, and dies fighting against Ulysses S. Grant.

Scott Woodward: So the Utah War—what category would you put that in, Casey?

Casey Griffiths: You know, I was thinking about this, and I would probably go category two, but, like, a good category two? Does that . . . Because, I mean, for all of his talk, Brigham Young, and the documentary record, I think, represents this, really didn’t want bloodshed, and on one level, you could say it’s just because he’s not an idiot and he realizes that if the people in the army are killed, it’s going to escalate just like it did in Missouri and previous places, and it’s going to lead to worse and worse violence.

Scott Woodward: Yeah.

Casey Griffiths: That’s, like, the most practical way of viewing it. I believe that Brigham Young genuinely didn’t want blood to be shed either: that he wasn’t interested in killing for the practical reasons we’ve stated, but also because, you know, he’s a Christian. He’s the leader of the church, and he recognizes the effect violence has on people, and he doesn’t want anyone to die. So the saints do fight back, but in a bloodless fashion that doesn’t result in many people getting killed, though there are some people that are killed: again, a very small number in the direct conflict between the Nauvoo Legion and the U. S. Army, but I’d rate it as category two because the saints fought back, but in the least violent way that they could. I mean, they do burn wagons and supply trains, and it costs a lot among the saints, especially the ones that have to move South, but they seem to avoid human bloodshed as much as they can, the general leadership of the church does.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. Well said. I guess the results, or the effect of the Utah War, is that it ends the period of what you call theodemocracy, right? This civil and ecclesiastical government under Brigham Young’s jurisdiction. Also, Alfred Cummings proves to be a pretty good, fair, decent governor of the Utah Territory.

Casey Griffiths: We’ve got to give Alfred Cummings a lot of credit, too, for not being a hothead and for trying to resolve it, and after Brigham Young leaves the governorship, he is very fair to the Saints. He treats them very well.

Scott Woodward: And speaking of people who deserve a shout out, how about Thomas L. Kane? Man, he probably single-handedly averted a very bloody conflict, and so props to Thomas L. Kane. Yeah, we actually have a place in Utah named after him, right? Kane County.

Casey Griffiths: And let me add too, a few years ago, Matthew Grow wrote a biography of Thomas Kane called Liberty to the Downtrodden, and it just made me love the guy even more. Like, Thomas Kane was just a good man who did everything he could to make sure there was peace and to help the Saints, and this episode kind of renews his friendship with the Saints. Later on he’ll make periodic visits to Utah. He even brings his wife, Elizabeth Kane, and they write books and tracts to try and help the Saints become known among the people who would discriminate against them. So this guy isn’t just a hero in the Utah War: he is a person that deserves a lot of our honor for being a peacemaker. Even though he never becomes a Latter-day Saint, he is one of our best friends and an important figure in our history.

Scott Woodward: Yeah. I love that, man. We wish we could say that the Utah War was completely bloodless.

Casey Griffiths: I mean, at this point it could just be, like, a funny story. It wasn’t funny to the people that were happening at the time, but it has funny episodes, but if we were to say the Utah War is bloodless, we would be missing a huge part of the story.

Scott Woodward: And we should probably point out, too, that the hysteria in Utah over the approaching army does actually lead to one of the most tragic episodes in Latter-day Saint history, and that’s what we call the Mountain Meadows Massacre. And so this Utah War really does set the contextual stage for what we’re going to talk about next time.

Casey Griffiths: Yeah. And, again, the Utah War was difficult for everybody involved, but it’s really the backdrop for Mountain Meadows that gave us the reason to talk a little bit about it. You’ve got to understand what’s happening in the Utah War and how much tensions have been raised and how much hysteria was happening throughout the territory to understand what, you know, was effectively the darkest day in the history of the church, which is the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and I believe that’s what we’re going to talk about next time.

Scott Woodward: Yes, sir. Well, thank you, Casey. Until next time.

Casey Griffiths: All right. Thank you, Scott. Until next time.

Scott Woodward: Thank you for listening to this episode of Church History Matters. In our next episode, Casey and I talk about the darkest and most violent episode in our church’s history, when, on September 11, 1857, a group of Latter-day Saints in southern Utah participated in the wholesale massacre of around 120 men, women, and children at a place called Mountain Meadows. If you’re enjoying or gaining value from Church History Matters, we would love it if you could pay it forward by telling your friends about it or by taking a moment to subscribe, rate, review, and comment on the podcast. That makes us easier to find. Today’s episode was produced by Scott Woodward and edited by Nick Galieti, with show notes and transcript by Gabe Davis. Church History Matters is a podcast of Scripture Central, a nonprofit which exists to help build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making Latter-day Saint scripture and church history accessible, comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere. For more resources to enhance your gospel study, go to scripturecentral.org, where everything is available for free because of the generous donations of people like you. Let me say that again: All of our content is free because people like you donate to make it possible. So if you’re in a position where you’re both willing and able to make a one-time or ongoing donation, please be assured that your contribution will help us at Scripture Central to produce and disseminate more quality content to combat false and faith-eroding material out there in the digital marketplace of ideas. And while Casey and I try very hard to be historically and doctrinally accurate in what we say on this podcast, please remember that all views expressed in this and every episode are our views alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of Scripture Central or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.