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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Facinating Tidbits, May 13, 2009
This review is from: Brigham Young, the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Latter-Day Saint Investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre: Arrington Lecture No. Twelve (Arrington Lecture Series) (Paperback)
Short as it is, this work is neither boring nor apologetic. It reveals a moment by moment account of Brigham Young coming to terms with the horror of what has occurred 400 miles south of him--and the years it takes him to process this new knowledge. He is not painted as a simpleton, but neither is he painted as a Saint (in the catholic sense), he is presented as the hard-headed leader of the LDS people that he always was, trying to feel around for just what the hell happened. He had just begun his preparations for the trench/guerrilla warfare that would become the "Utah War" (and made some very big, probably ill-advised, threats in the process) when the news of what was happening in the Mountain Meadows crossed his desk, and he was livid, because he had not yet called Marshall Law--wagon trains were still considered civilian and needed to be left alone (all this on p.4). He sent word for them to be allowed to pass, but as everyone knows, it arrived too late. He got word of what happened within two weeks--pretty fast in those days--and even though they were already blaming the Indians he got so sick he had to go home (p.6). He knew he wasn't getting the whole story. Well, the Utah War did its thing and he couldn't send anyone down to investigate until the following spring (still pretty fast), when he sent two of his right-hand men; Apostles. The rest of the pages of the booklet outline twenty years of Young and his subordinates trying to do five different investigations into what happened, and being hemmed in by members who don't want to testify, leadership who believe it is against God's Will to go against a Mormon, and government officials who alternately want to just arrest everybody or make the whole thing go away. Particularly between 1861 (His "vengeance" quote) and 1870, Young is shown going from believing the Indian story to being shocked when he discovers how much John D. Lee, Issac Haight, Nephi Johnson, and William Stewart (among others) had been keeping from him. At least three of the men are known to have been excommunicated when Young discovered their crimes, although only Lee is ever officially prosecuted by the government for the massacre. The book shows that this was, in many ways, due to the government's refusal to cooperate with Young, not vice-versa, as many claim. It is an excellent read.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Whose work is in question?, October 22, 2008
This review is from: Brigham Young, the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Latter-Day Saint Investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre: Arrington Lecture No. Twelve (Arrington Lecture Series) (Paperback)
I wish potential readers could be led to this review by Will Bagley before they read his other works. Then they would understand the bias and vitriol that Bagley brings to any topic related to Mormonism.
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13 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Talk About a Conspiracy Theory, November 8, 2007
This review is from: Brigham Young, the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Latter-Day Saint Investigation of the Mountain Meadows Massacre: Arrington Lecture No. Twelve (Arrington Lecture Series) (Paperback)
This is truly sad. Tom Alexander is one of Utah's great historians, and yet he never compares what Brigham Young said with what Brigham Young did. Blaming the federal investigators who laid their careers on the line to prevent a miscarriage of justice is shameful. Unlike William Dame and Isaac Haight, two mass murderers Brigham Young protected 20 years, Alexander never even threatens to "put the saddle on the right horse." The best experts on this subject said fifty years ago: As is the case of many other dark, malevolent deeds, the true facts of the tragedy were at first suppressed and later deliberately falsified, distorted, and confused. Though some important details [xiv] relating to the initiation, planning, and actual execution of the massacre still remain obscure, the evidence shows clearly enough that a number of authorities of the Mormon Church in southern Utah were directly responsible for the tragedy and authorized or perhaps even planned its most revolting features. The Mormon leaders in Salt Lake, moreover, not only failed to bring the murderers to justice but for nearly twenty years effectively used their authority and influence to prevent the federal officers from arresting the offenders. It is obvious, moreover, that Brigham Young and his highest advisers were fully informed of the massacre soon after it occurred and knew to what degree each participant was accountable for its initiation and execution. To deny that Young had at least full ex post facto knowledge of the appalling business of the massacre is to deny the supreme and minute control that he habitually exercised over all the affairs of church and state in Utah, and to take the naïve position that a man who kept himself as fully and completely informed on all matters that went on in the "Kingdom of the Saints" as absolute authority and human ingenuity made possible would choose to remain complacently ignorant of an incident that threatened to bring stark ruin to the whole Mormon dream of spiritual and temporal sovereignty in the State of Deseret. Brigham Young was not a credulous simpleton: he was not duped or hoodwinked: he was not misinformed. He knew the true story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, about which the most damning reports were soon published in the hostile Gentile world and widely circulated even among the Mormons themselves, as well as any man in Utah; and he knew the names of the individual Mormons, whether prominent or obscure, who participated in the wholesale atrocities. Robert Glass Cleland and Juanita Brooks, eds., A Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries of John D. Lee 1848-1876, 2 vols. (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1955. Reprinted Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983, xiii-xiv. Forget all that. Distinguished Professor Alexander reveals that Brigham Young was indeed "a credulous simpleton." Will Bagley
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