Customer Reviews

The 1838 Mormon War in Missouri

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I am an active member and priesthood holder in the LDS Church. I'm electing to remain anonymous on this review as I don't want the grief that oftimes comes with supporting unpopular historical perspectives.

The review written by Lindsay below is a significant distortion of LeSueur's book. The author does not portray the Missourians as peaceful and the Mormons as troublemakers, rather it gives a very balanced view that shows while the Missouri pioneers were easily stirred to violence, that the situation could have been much more peaceful if the Mormons had not engaged in several destabilizing activities.

The book is very well written and steps one through the events that led up to the Mormon expulsion from Missouri. Along the way we are exposed to the perspectives of believing Mormons who tried to head things off and impart some sanity to the situation. Members who later were used as scapegoats by Mormon authorities, in order to somehow justify how things could have gone so badly for inspired leaders.

The Mormons did suffer terribly and deserved far better protection from government officials. However the later histories written of these events were understandably tainted by the anger of those writting them. These histories have been perserved within the LDS Church to this day as being accurate.

If one is interested in knowing more about this period, then I recommend this book highly as the single best reference available. LeSueur, who once worked as a historian at Brigham Young University, uses both Mormon and non-Mormon sources, balancing them nicely. This book received several positive reviews from both Mormon and professional historical societies.

This is the definitive book on the 1838 period of Mormon history. LeSueur is fair, and treats it as the historian that he is. As a strong Mormon, I view LeSueur as the most impartial of the many authors I have read on this period of Mormon history.

I have read this book several times over the years and am doing so again at the present time. I have always wondered if the author is Mormon or not. The treatment is balanced and factual as far as I know and I have never been able to detect a bais in the author either for or against Mormonism. I was priviledged to live in the Kansas City area for about 3 years in the 1990-93 time frame and used this book as my reference in visiting all of the sites that were involved in the war and are discussed in the book. It was very helpful to me in this study and I recommend it to others.

Lesueur gives a fair account of Mormon history in this text. He gives the "historian's" veiw on this subject; very fair and impartial. He is not Mormon or anti-Mormon, just an historian that gives facts supporting both sides of the equation. I am an ex-Mormon who's family has deep ties with the early days of The Latter Day Saints. Most of my family are still Mormons today who are happy in their beliefs. I do not seek to change their beliefs just my own.

This book shows a glimpse of pioneering attitudes in early United States history. LeSueur comes from a Mormon background, but shows that both Mormons and non-Mormons in this conflict shared in the blame. Both sides thought it was appropriate to use force to remove undesirable people from their communities. Both sides reacted to rumors and exaggerations and escalated the problems. Both sides showed belligerence and militancy. And both sides insisted they were innocent and the other side was totally at fault.

Later, in the 1850s, some of these Missourians were involved in bloody skirmishes with their neighbors in Kansas - lasting through the Civil War. Meanwhile, also in the 1850s, Mormon Danites were still at work against apostates and dissenters in Utah. Also, in 1857 Mormons massacred 120 innocent men, women and children in a wagon train going through Utah at Mountain Meadows.

LeSueur's book is well written and provides much documentation, but LeSueur has an axe to grind. In this book, he suggests that the Missourians were fairly good-natured and that the Mormons were the ones most responsible for the escalation in mob violence against the Mormons and for the ensuing "Mormon War." This depiction is only possible by ignoring the history of the Saints in Missouri prior from 1831 to 1837, a period which receives about two paragraphs of treatment. But failure to understand prior persecution and expulsion from other counties in Missouri makes it impossible to properly understand the replaying of those events in Caldwell County in 1838. The Saints had already been through the cycle of persecution, appeal to apathetic state leaders, escalated violence by mobs, taking of arms in self defense, indignant cries of "insurrection," followed by government action against the Saints. LeSueur's case against the Saints loses much effect if earlier Missouri events are properly considered - and they are not.

LeSueur's desire to implicate Joseph Smith with the misdeeds of some other Mormons, especially Sampson Avard's band of "Danites," also leads him to neglect major sources of evidence and to not even acknowledge the arguments raised in major works on this topic. The most significant LDS treatment of the topic at the time of LeSueur's work was that of LeLand Gentry, who provided significant and credible evidence that directly undercuts LeSueur's position. LeSueur speaks of many hours of discussion with Gentry in the foreword and acknowledges Gentry's work as being extremely valuable in the bibliographic essay, but never addresses the issues raised by Gentry. Thus, the reader is not allowed to even know that Gentry makes a case for two groups that were called "Danites", one being the legitimate community of Saints organized to perform various community tasks and later organized for self-defense against mob attacks, and the other being the small, secretive band led by the corrupt Sampson Avard. The latter group, the subversives within a larger legitimate group, is all we think of now when "Danites" is mentioned. Much of LeSueur's case is built on the assumption that all references to "Danites" are to a corrupt and secretive group, which LeSueur weakly argues was actually led by Joseph Smith and not by Sampson Avard.

If Joseph were really behind the corrupt Danites, who supposedly swore to support Joseph and maintain secrecy or be killed, then we must wonder how Avard was able to save his own skin so easily by testifying boldly against Joseph Smith when Avard was captured by authorities after the violence in Daviess County. He told his captors exactly what they wanted to hear, testified to support every point of the state's case against Joseph, and was able to go free by putting all the blame for the misdeeds of some Mormons on Joseph Smith, blaming him as the leader of the Danites and the perpetrator of violence. Joseph went to jail for months because of Avard. If what Avard said were true, he would have been killed for breaking the Danite oath - but Joseph's only action against Avard was excommunication. LeSueur sees Avard's testimony as largely credible and sees the mock hearing in Richmond as reasonably fair, in spite of the spirit of injustice that prevailed.

Contrary to LeSueur's allegations, Joseph opposed secretive bands like the Danites and did speak out against such groups, not just against Sampson Avard. His letter of March 25, 1839 from Liberty Jail clearly refutes one of LeSueur's arguments against Joseph. And Avard's own statements show ongoing opposition from Joseph, not support.