Utah War
The Utah War, also known as the Utah Expedition, the Utah Campaign, Buchanan's Blunder, the Mormon War, or the Mormon Rebellion, was an armed confrontation between the armed forces of the US government and the Mormon settlers in the Utah Territory. The confrontation lasted from May 1857 to July 1858. The conflict primarily involved Mormon settlers and federal troops, escalating from tensions over governance and autonomy within the territory. There were several casualties, predominantly non-Mormon civilians. Although the war featured no significant military battles, it included the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where Mormon militia members disarmed and murdered about 120 settlers traveling to California.
The resolution of the Utah War came through negotiations that permitted federal troops to enter Utah Territory in exchange for a pardon granted to the Mormon settlers for any potential acts of rebellion. This settlement significantly reduced the tensions and allowed for the re-establishment of federal authority over the territory while largely preserving Mormon interests and autonomy. At the same time the conflict was widely seen as a disaster for President Buchanan, who many felt botched the situation, and it became known as "Buchanan's Blunder" in later years. Many believe the war along with Buchanan's failings contributed to the rising tensions that would lead to the Civil War in 1861.
Overview
In 1857–1858, President James Buchanan sent U.S. forces to the Utah Territory in what became known as the Utah Expedition. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons or Latter-day Saints, fearful that the large U.S. military force had been sent to annihilate them and having faced persecution in other areas, made preparations for defense. Though bloodshed was to be avoided, and the U.S. government also hoped that its purpose might be attained without the loss of life, both sides prepared for war. The Mormons manufactured or repaired firearms, prepared war scythes, and burnished and sharpened long-unused sabers.Rather than engaging the Army directly, the Mormon strategy was one of hindering and weakening them. Daniel H. Wells, Lieutenant-General of the Nauvoo Legion, instructed Major Joseph Taylor:
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.
The Mormons blocked the army's entrance into the Salt Lake Valley, and weakened the U.S. Army by hindering their receiving of provisions.
The confrontation between the Mormon militia, called the Nauvoo Legion, and the U.S. Army involved some destruction of property and a few brief skirmishes in what is today southwestern Wyoming, but no battles occurred between the contending military forces.
At the height of the tensions, on September 11, 1857, at least 120 California-bound settlers from Arkansas, Missouri and other states, including unarmed men, women, and children, were killed in remote southwestern Utah by a group of local Mormon militia. The Mormon militia responsible for the massacre first claimed that the migrants were killed by Natives but it was proven otherwise. This event was later called the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and the motives behind the incident remain unclear.
The Aiken Massacre took place the following month. In October 1857, Mormons arrested six Californians traveling through Utah and charged them with being spies for the U.S. Army. They were released but were later murdered and robbed of their stock and $25,000.
Other incidents of violence have also been linked to the Utah War, including a Native American attack on the Mormon mission of Fort Lemhi in eastern Oregon Territory, modern-day Idaho. They killed two Mormons and wounded several others. Mormon historian Brigham Madsen notes, "he responsibility for the lay mainly with the Bannock." David Bigler concludes that the raid was probably caused by members of the Utah Expedition who were trying to replenish their stores of livestock that had been stolen by Mormon raiders.
Taking all incidents into account, William MacKinnon estimated that approximately 150 people died as a direct result of the year-long Utah War, including the 120 migrants killed at Mountain Meadows. He points out that this was close to the number of people killed during the seven-year contemporaneous struggle in "Bleeding Kansas".
In the end, negotiations between the United States and the Latter-day Saints resulted in a full pardon for the Latter-day Saints, the transfer of Utah's governorship from church president Brigham Young to non-Mormon Alfred Cumming, and the peaceful entrance of the U.S. Army into Utah.
Background
Exodus to the Utah Territory
Mormons began settling in what is now Utah in the summer of 1847. Mormon pioneers began leaving the United States for Utah after a series of severe conflicts with neighboring communities in Missouri and Illinois resulted, in 1844, in the death of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement.Brigham Young and other LDS Church leaders believed that the isolation of Utah would secure the rights of Mormons and would ensure the free practice of their religion. Although the United States had gained control of the settled parts of Alta California and Nuevo México in 1846 in the early stages of the Mexican–American War, legal transfer of the Mexican Cession to the U.S. came only with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ending the war in 1848. LDS Church leaders understood that they were not "leaving the political orbit of the United States", nor did they want to. When gold was discovered in California in 1848 at Sutter's Mill, which sparked the famous California Gold Rush, thousands of migrants began moving west on trails that passed directly through territory settled by Mormon pioneers. Although the migrants brought opportunities for trade, they also ended the Mormons' short-lived isolation.
In 1849, the Mormons proposed that a large part of the territory that they inhabited be incorporated into the United States as the State of Deseret. Their primary concern was to be governed by men of their own choosing rather than "unsympathetic carpetbag appointees", who they believed would be sent from Washington, D.C. if their region were given territorial status, as was customary. They believed that only through a state run by church leadership could they maintain their religious freedom. The U.S. Congress created the Utah Territory as part of the Compromise of 1850. President Millard Fillmore selected Brigham Young, the LDS Church's president, as the first governor of the Territory. The Mormons were pleased by the appointment, but gradually the amicable relationship between Mormons and the federal government broke down.
Polygamy, popular sovereignty, and slavery
During this period, the leadership of the LDS Church supported polygamy, which Mormons called "plural marriage". An estimated 20% to 25% of Latter-day Saints were members of polygamous households, with the practice involving approximately one-third of Mormon women who reached marriageable age. The Mormons in territorial Utah viewed plural marriage as religious doctrine until 1890, when it was removed as an official practice of the church by Wilford Woodruff.However, the rest of American society rejected polygamy, and some commentators accused the Mormons of gross immorality. During the Presidential election of 1856 a key plank of the newly formed Republican Party's platform was a pledge "to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism: polygamy and slavery". The Republicans associated the Democratic principle of popular sovereignty with the party's acceptance of polygamy in Utah and turned this accusation into a formidable political weapon.
Popular sovereignty was the theoretical basis of the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. This concept was meant to remove the divisive issue of slavery in the Territories from the national debate, allowing local decision-making and forestalling armed conflict between the North and South. But during the campaign, the Republican Party denounced the theory as protecting polygamy. Such leading Democrats as Stephen A. Douglas, formerly an ally of the Latter-day Saints, began to denounce Mormonism in order to save the concept of popular sovereignty for issues related to slavery. The Democrats believed that American attitudes toward polygamy had the potential of derailing the compromise on slavery. For the Democrats, attacks on Mormonism had the dual purpose of disentangling polygamy from popular sovereignty and distracting the nation from the ongoing battles over slavery.
In March 1852, the Utah Territory passed Acts that legalized black slavery and Indian slavery.
Theodemocracy
Many east-coast politicians, such as U.S. President James Buchanan, were alarmed by the semi-theocratic dominance of the Utah Territory under Brigham Young. Young had been appointed territorial Governor by Millard Fillmore.In addition to popular election, many early LDS Church leaders received quasi-political administrative appointments at both the territorial and federal level that coincided with their ecclesiastical roles, including the powerful probate judges. In analogy to the federal procedure, these executive and judicial appointments were confirmed by the Territorial Legislature, which largely consisted of popularly elected Latter-day Saints. Additionally, LDS Church leaders counseled Latter-day Saints to use ecclesiastical arbitration to resolve disputes among church members before resorting to the more explicit legal system. Both President Buchanan and the U.S. Congress saw these acts as obstructing, if not subverting, the operation of legitimate institutions of the United States.
Numerous newspaper articles continued sensationalizing Mormon beliefs and exaggerated earlier accounts of conflicts with frontier settlers. These stories led many Americans to believe that Mormon leaders were petty tyrants and that Mormons were determined to create a Zionist, polygamous kingdom in the newly acquired territories.
Many felt that these sensationalized beliefs, along with early communitarian practices of the United Order, also violated the principles of republicanism as well as the philosophy of laissez-faire economics. James Strang, a rival to Brigham Young who also claimed succession to the leadership of the church after Joseph Smith's death, elevated these fears by proclaiming himself a king and resettling his followers on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, after the main body of the LDS Church had fled to Utah.
People also believed that Brigham Young maintained power through a paramilitary organization called the Danites. The Danites were formed by a group of Mormons in Missouri in 1838. Most scholars believe that following the end of the Mormon War in the winter of 1838, the unit was partially disbanded. Some believe that Mormon culture was inherently violent but and others conclude that Utah Territory was less violent than other contemporaneous societies. These factors contributed to the popular belief that Mormons "were oppressed by a religious tyranny and kept in submission only by some terroristic arm of the Church... no Danite band could have restrained the flight of freedom-loving men from a Territory possessed of many exits; yet a flood of emigrants poured into Utah each year, with only a trickle... ebbing back."