Criticism of Mormonism/Books/American Massacre/Chapter 16

Chapter 15

A FAIR Analysis of: Criticism of Mormonism/Books A work by author: Sally Denton

Claims made in Chapter 16: "Mountain Meadows Aftermath"

Page	Claim	Response	Author's sources
237	Lee's biography, published by his lawyer after his death, claimed that the Church ordered the massacre.	Lee's self-serving effort to blame others for the massacre is not terribly persuasive in the absence of other corroborating evidence. There is a great deal of contemporaneous evidence which shows that it was local leaders who ordered the Massacre, not "the Church" or its general leaders such as Brigham Young. Brigham ordered the Massacre?	New York Herald, March 21, 1876. San Francisco Chronicle Salt Lake Daily Tribune Pioche Record, Pioche, Nevada.
238	Lee's book Mormonism Unveiled or Life & Confession of John D. Lee "has generally been determined valid and credible by later scholars of the event, though some have believed Bishop embellished it."	It is true that Lee's memoir is considered "valid and credible by later scholars" if by "later scholars" one means "hostile authors who wish to blame the Church as an institution and Brigham Young," such as Bagley, Krakauer, or Stenhouse. This is assuredly not true of the broader scholarly consensus.	Author's opinion.
238	Lee predicted that Brigham would die within six months of Lee's death if Lee were not guilty. Brigham died six months after Lee.	Double standard: Such a claim is dramatic, but irrelevant unless one grants prophetic gifts and powers to Lee.	Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 319.
293	The author claims special insight into the LDS psyche.	"Her suggestion that she is an insider to the Latter-day Saint psyche proves unconvincing because she makes mistakes that careful historians of Mormon Americana do not."[1]	[ATTENTION!]

Endnotes

1. [note]  Robert D. Crockett, "The Denton Debacle (Review of: American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 1857)," FARMS Review 16/1 (2004): 135–148. off-site