Criticism of Mormonism/Books/One Nation Under Gods/Chapter 11

Response to claims made in "Chapter 11: Bloody Brigham"


Claims made in "Chapter 10: A New Beginning"
A FAIR Analysis of:
One Nation Under Gods
A work by author: Richard Abanes
 Claims made in "Chapter 12: Wars and Rumors of Wars"
To this day Mormons revere Young's destroying angels as well as the Danites.
—One Nation Under Gods, p. 252.
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225 epigraph, 553-558n1 (PB)

Claim
  • A lengthy letter is printed in its entirety in the endnotes. The author says that the letter from Aaron DeWitt was written to his sister Elizabeth Durrant on January 31, 1875 and slipped into a time capsule. The letter talks about murder and plunder in Utah.

Response
  • Aaron Dewitt letter
  • Even a hostile historian cited by Ed Decker grants that the majority of DeWitt's letter "is the standard 19th Century Gentile charge against the Mormons— largely dismissed in light of later scholarship—and Dewitt's repetition of the horrors of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the murder of the Morrisites lend nothing to the historical record except (and it is a major exception) that a pioneer settler of Logan believed them...." (emphasis added).

226, n5

Claim
  • Did Latter-day Saints believe that "America's doom" was sealed the day Joseph died?

Response

227, 558n13

Claim
  • Did Broughton D. Harris find that census results for the State of Deseret were "false and exaggerated?"

Response

227-228

Claim
  • did Broughton D. Harris, Lemuel G. Brandebury and Justice Perry Brocchus and other federal officials flee Utah because they feared for their lives?

Response

228, 559n16-18

Claim
  • David H. Burr reported that "Mr. Troskolowski," had been "assulted and severely beaten by three men under the direction of one Hickman, a noted member of the so-called 'Danite Band."
  • Was the beating order by LDS leaders because Troskolowski was attempting to ensure that twelve-year-old Emma Wheat escaped a planned marriage to a polygamist?

Response
  • The author here references Hirshon's book, which received the 1970 Mormon History Association award for "worst book." [1]
 [needs work]

231

Claim
  • Was the "Mormon reformation" a period of subjugation and brutal acts of violence designed to purge the Church?

Response

232, 559n32

Claim
  • Who were Brigham Young's "Destroying Angels?"
  • Were Porter Rockwell and 'Wild' Bill Hickman the most notorious of these "Destroying Angels?"

Response
  •  Misrepresentation of source: The cited pages of Hilton's work only describes Hickman as a military leader during the Utah War receiving instruction from Brigham, and a letter he wrote to Brigham denying an accusation. It says nothing about being one of "Brigham's enforcers."
  • The author's only other source is Jerald and Sandra Tanner. They rely heavily on Hickman's Brigham's Destroying Angel.
  • Utah/Crime and violence
  • Loaded and prejudicial language

232, 559n33

Claim
  • Did Brigham often make favorable comments about his "Destroying Angels?"
  • Brigham said: "We have the meanest devils on the earth in our midst, and we intend to keep them, for we have use for them; and if the Devil does not look sharp, we will cheat him out of them at the last, for they will reform and go to heaven with us."

Response

233, n36-39

Claim
  • Brigham taught "blood atonement."

Response

233-234, 560n40

Claim
  • Jedediah Grant preached about "Blood Atonement"

Response

233, 560n37

Claim
  • Did Brigham use the term "cutting off" from the earth as a "euphemism for killing?"

Response

234, 560n43

Claim
  • Did Jedediah Grant create a list of "highly intrusive" questions so that he could probe members' personal lives?

Response

234-235, 560n45-46

Claim
  • Did Brigham encourage murder out of "love" in order to save people's souls?

Response

235, 560n47

Claim
  • Did Heber C. Kimball claim that the apostles killed Judas?

Response

235, 560-561n50

Claim
  • Did Utah has a long list of crimes that were worthy of death?

Response

235

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "Blood began to flow profusely in Utah not long after the reformation was launched."

Response

236, n52

Claim
  • After "relating a dream wherein he had slit the throats of two men 'from ear to ear' with a bowie knife" Brigham said: "I say, rather than that apostates should flourish here, I will unsheath my bowie knife, and conquer or die...Now, you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will be put on the line, and righteousness to the plummet."

Response

236-237, 563n53 (HB)

Claim
  • "Apostates certainly were viewed as the worst of sinners, although every reprobate received the same penalty. As Brigham instructed his flock: 'If any miserable scoundrels come here, cut their throats.'" (HB)
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  • "Apostates certainly were viewed as the worst sinners, although every reprobate, risked similar justice. Young once said: "It was asked this morning how we could obtain redress for our wrongs; I will tell you how it could be done, we could take the same law they have taken...and if any miserable scoundrels come here, cut their throats." (PB)


Response


237, 561n54 (PB)

Claim
  • Did Brigham not care what the U.S. thought about "killing evil doers?"

What do you suppose they would say in old Massachusetts….What would they say in old Connecticut?"" They would raise a universal howl of, 'how wicked the Mormons are; they are killing the evil doers who are among them; why I hear that they kill the wicked away up yonder in Utah.'...What do I care for the wrath of man? No more than I do for the chickens that run in my dooryard.


Response

  • Consider the full title of Brigham's discourse:FAITH—PRACTICAL RELIGION—CHASTISEMENT—NECESSITY OF DEVILS. The "necessity of devils" relates to the subject discussed here.


237, 562n55-56 (PB)

Claim
  • Did Brigham Young have a man named Alonzo Bowman killed simply for "innocently asking about LDS beliefs and the facts behind the Saints' troubles?"

Response
 [needs work]
  • The man's name is actually Walter Alonzo Clark Bowman
  • (from MADB): There is mention by Joseph Lee Robinson in his journal that Pres. Young had received "credible information" of "traders" and "several hundred spaniards collegeing with the indians to turn them against us" on April 20 1853. Brigham Young gave a proclamation to "take into custody all groups of spaniards or any suspicious characters" at that time. The account in the story takes place in the summer of 1853.
  • There are no primary sources to support this story. Mary Ettie V. Smith's narrative is highly suspect.
  • Loaded and prejudicial language
  • Danites in anti-Mormon polemic

238, 562n57-59

Claim
  • Did Orson Hyde order Jesse Hartly shot and killed, for the crime of "falling in love with, and marrying, a Mormon?"

Response
  •  Internal contradiction: On p. 238, the author claims apostates were forbidden to leave Utah, yet in this speech Brigham tells violent apostates to leave Utah. Which is it? Was Brigham forcing apostates out with threat of violence, or forbidding apostates from leaving?
  •  Misrepresentation of source: William "Wild Bill" Hickman would later say that his purported autobiography, Brigham's Destroying Angel, was "a lie from the wild boar story onward." [2] The story occurs on pages 29–30. In any case, the referenced pages say nothing about a murder of anyone, much less 'Jesse Hartly', who a text search does not reveal mentioned anywhere in the book.
  • In the endnotes, the author quotes Brigham's "bowie knife" comment once again.
  • Mary Ettie V. Smith is not a reliable source.

238, 562n60 (PB)

Claim
  • Were William Parrish and his son murdered as they attempted to leave Utah because leaving Utah was "forbidden?"

Response

238, 562n61

Claim
  • Aaron DeWitt said that escape from Utah was "virtually impossible."

Response

239, 563n63-64

Claim
  • Was Richard Yates was killed for the sin of "trading with government personnel?"

Response
  • William "Wild Bill" Hickman would later say that his purported autobiography, Brigham's Destroying Angel, was "a lie from the wild boar story onward." [3] The story occurs on pages 29–30. Aside from its implausibility, then, this reference has been denied by Hickman. [needs work]

241, 563n65-66

Claim
  • Were Henry Jones and his mother murdered by Nathaniel Case, Porter Rockwell and "other church officials?"

Response
  •  History unclear or in error: Case was the testator; he denied having anything to do with the murder.
  • Stout's journal mentions only that some people had castrated Henry Jones; it says nothing about murder of him or his mother.
  • Jones and his mother were accused of incest; Joseph Hancock was eventually found guilty of second degree murder.

242-243, n67-71

Claim
  • Were "innumerable crimes" committed because of the speeches of Brigham Young and other LDS leaders?

Response

244-245, 566n82 (HB) 564n82 (PB)

Claim
  • Did a prohibition of selling supplies to the Fancher party lead to the Mountain Meadows Massacre?

Response

245

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "[T]he emigrants could not have known that two of the sins worthy of blood atonement were condemning Joseph Smith and/or consenting to his death."

Response

245, 564n86 (PB)

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "The prophet...already had decided the fate of the Baker-Fancher party...at a secret meeting in Salt Lake City with several Indian chiefs."

Response

245, 564n87

Claim
  • Did Brigham promise the Indians that they could have all the cattle in the Fancher wagon-train "if they would do away with the entire company?"

Response

243-250

Claim
  • The book discusses the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Response

251, 565n103

Claim
  • When Brigham Young visited the Mountain Meadows site in 1860 and saw the monument, did he order it to be demolished?

Response

252, 565n109 (PB)

Claim
  • Was John D. Lee's "constant companion throughout his trial" was a Methodist minister, "even though Lee had been taught all his life that Christendom's ministers were satanically-inspired and corrupt?"

Response

252, 565n111 (PB)

Claim
  •  Author's quote: "To this day Mormons revere Young's destroying angels as well as the Danites."

Response

Notes


  1. ↑ "WORST BOOK: Stanley P. Hirshon, Lion of the Lord (New York: Knopf, 1969)." - Larry C. Porter (Executive Secretary-Treasurer, MHA), "Mormon History Association Awards," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 16 no. 3 (Autumn 1983), 127–128. Another reviewer wrote, "At least once a decade, it seems, someone publishes a book about the Latter-day Saints without taking the necessary "trouble" to adequately research the subject. Stanley Hirshon was judged guilty of this offense in 1969 and received from the Mormon History Association its "Worst Book" award for his volume on Brigham Young." – Kenneth H. Godfrey, "Not Trouble Enough, review of Trouble Enough: Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon by Ernest H. Taves," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 19 no. 3 (Fall 1986), 139.
  2. ↑ Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, A Book of Mormons (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1982), 123. See also Hope A. Hilton, "Wild Bill" Hickman and the Mormon Frontier (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1988), 127.
  3. ↑ Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, A Book of Mormons (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1982), 123. See also Hope A. Hilton, "Wild Bill" Hickman and the Mormon Frontier (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1988), 127.
  4. ↑ Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker, A Book of Mormons (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1982), 123. See also Hope A. Hilton, "Wild Bill" Hickman and the Mormon Frontier (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1988), 127.
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