The link for Janiece's book is in the description, it's an absolutely fascinating read. Despite the heavy subject, I hope you found this interesting and, eventually, faith-affirming. Don't forget to subscribe!
Really enjoyed this. Janice's insights into this topic are great, and I especially appreciate her testimony of accepting and dealing with hard things. History is always a challenge. We lack context and perspective to fully understand, ("understanding is a three-edged sword; your side, my side and the truth that lies between."). But even with imperfect understanding, there's so much we can learn, even from the hard things.
According to Richard Turley’s book my Great, Great Grandfather, Calvin Pendleton a counselor in the Cedar City Stake Presidency tried to dissuade the militia from attacking the wagon train and advised the Baker-Fancher party to turn back. Ultimately a terrible atrocity.
Even the great Patriarch Jacob wrestled with an angel. Thanks for helping me with the wrestle of trying to understand this horrific event in Utah history.
Two curious points; one, how would Hans Mill massacre played into this, and two, were the Mormons were not in the United States at the time of this event.
Hawn's Mill doesn't typically bleed over into this story as much as the recent murder of Parley P Pratt in Arkansas. Some may try to connect the dots, but I personally don't see it. It was 19 years before. Charles A Hopkins, considered one of the oldest at the massacre was 28 at the time of Hawns Mill, and 47 at Mountain Meadows. I don't even believe he was a convert by 28 but I may be mistaken. Isaac Haight would have been 25 when Hawns Mill occurred. Needless to say, that probably wasn't top of mind at the time. Mountain Meadows occurred in September 1857, the Mexican American war was 1846-1848, so the territory was within the boundaries of the US at the time of the massacre, which is why Johnston's Army was there and was able to install Alfred Cumming as governor in April of 1858 just a few months after Mountain Meadows.
The persecution that preceded tis event is what caused it. Even reasonable people lash out under such extreme abuse. The unreasonable took it too far. Don't judge the LDS church by it's worst actors. Your worst actions are not who you are and should not solely define you.
@@jacobmayberry1126 what was the false narrative? That Danites burned and stole from the Gentiles? That they killed immigrants on their way to California? That they created a fake bank?
No new info here. Local Mormon leaders planned and directed the massacre. There were extenuating circumstances, altho most So. Utah citizens did not and would not have participated had they known of the plans. John D Lee was involved and was allowed by the other participants to take sole blame. BY was not directly involved altho he helped to set a political and religious tone one might characterize as Danite. MMM is a lesson in overzealousness and warlike mentality-- a mindset that typefies Utah politics today.
I’m 27 min in, so forgive me if this comes up later; but is there any truth to the wagon trains coming out of Missouri? If so; then this really would have been a perfect storm. Early saints preparing to protect themselves against a federal government, that as far as the saints are concerned, might be coming to eradicate them. Tensions are at a peak; and here comes pioneers from the state that was tied in n with so much death and destruction.
Yes the Fancher group spoke of going to California and bringing back people to annihilate the saints. They were obviously mad that the saints weren't selling grain to them. And these saints had already been through so much in Missouri. Also my FLDS neighbors insist that D.Lee was told to fall back in the coffin when the firing occurred and he was taken away alive in the coffin. He lived out the rest of his days in hiding like Butch Cassidy did.
1) The so-called rumors in Cedar City that she glossed over are more likely rationalizations of Mormons after the fact to justify what they did. The Baker Fancher party was largely women and children that had traversed nearly the entire state of Utah up to this point. They knew they were in a hostile environment (as they knew that they could not trade with locals) and likely wouldn't be causing trouble. They also knew they were outnumbered and were convinced to surrender all their weapons a mere days later. To give historical credence to the idea that the party was rabblerousing and causing trouble is victim blaming at its finest. 2) Janiece said, ‘Word matter,’ but it doesn’t sound like she buys her own premise entirely. She seems to give church leaders a pass on rhetoric for being solely rhetoric but seems to almost forget entirely that words are being sent in letter form and messenger form. The choice of the messenger is a conscious decision, whether it’s a Brigham Young letter, or a George A Smith, because the recipient eg Haight or the people Janiece suspects Brigham sent away will internalize their own perspectives while reading a letter. Brigham Young knew this, just as Pauline epistles have different tones for different audiences. 3) I place blame at the feet of Brigham Young, not because of Mountain Meadows, but because of two things that happened after the fact: a. Brigham Young took part in the cover up, and witnesses were brought in to lie about John D. Lee’s involvement to make him the scapegoat when Brigham Young could have stopped it. b. Less than a month later, on October 6th a similar incident called the Aiken Party Massacre took place in the same manner. The church found no need to send out a bulletin to all local leaders to stop the violence, instead they hid the massacres, stole their wears, cattle, and money, and covered it up. We can talk about preventative measures until we’re blue in the face and give the church a pass for Mountain Meadows, but Aiken? Aiken is evidence that the church didn’t care at all about what had happened and were not interested in prevention. 4) Councils. The councils all voted to go along with the massacre. Only one man from Kannarraville, openly questioned what was to be done. Saying councils are important, kinda misses so much about what has been said about Mountain Meadows from the psychological standpoint, namely group think and obedience to authority. In Mountain Meadows, the councils were rubber stamps, just as local congregations rubber stamp all their ecclesiastical leaders. 5) It is not possible to conclusively determine that it Brigham Young didn’t order it. Brigham had George A Smith all over Southern Utah preaching sermons with violent rhetoric. It is not implausible to think that George A Smith put the so-called bee in Isaac Haight’s bonnet. I am more convinced by Will Bagley’s analysis on what Brigham Young said at the memorial set up by Johnston’s Army, that revenge was his, and he had taken a little. 6) Her characterization of John D. Lee’s reporting to Brigham seems far-fetched. For starters, he went with Charles A Hopkins, an older man at the time that convinced John D Lee to go along with the massacre and actually ended up as a clubber of women and children. Hopkins reason for going a long with it was because he believing in doing what was right and letting the consequence follow. He would not have lied to Brigham about what happened unless he was told that Brigham needed plausible deniability. Furthermore we know that Joseph Fielding Smith as church historian had evidence that he hid from historians showing that the church knew what was going on and was content to cover it up. 7) Her characterization of John D. Lee not taking it like a man seems cruel to me. John D. Lee barely put up a defense at trial, he didn’t want Brigham deposed at all and wouldn’t allow his defense attorney the ability to push blame on others more responsible than he was. He was a true believer and considered himself an adopted and sealed son of Brigham Young, sometimes signing his name as John Doyle Lee Young. He loved Brigham and he felt that the feelings were mutual and that Brigham wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to him just as he stood trial and protected Brigham. But Lee learned he was a patsy for Brigham and the church, someone that Brigham brought into his good graces and used him as a bargaining chip when the time came. Which was always Brigham’s MO. Brigham wanted the Martin and Willie Handcart companies to not wait, because he needed cannon fodder for Johnston’s Army. When the time came to save them or his cigars and liquor at Ft. Bridger, Brigham didn’t hesitate to save his accoutrements. And when he tried to blame Willard Richards and John Taylor for sending the handcarts too late, Taylor responded in a letter, ‘I wouldn’t sacrifice lives for groceries.’ John D. Lee was no coward, despite being the only fall guy for the incident. 8) The narrative does not completely change between 1875 and 1876. Reading John D. Lee’s autobiography which he wrote after his conviction and before his execution, he gets brutally honest in a confessions on a deathbed manner, that he was angry with Brigham for what transpired. It is not invented out of whole cloth. 9) Having been to the site and seen what is written on the plaque at the church owned memorial, it’s as if the church wants you to think that a wagon train went to sleep and died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the night. There is no mention who is responsible, there is no mention of how it happened. Just simply that over 100 innocent people died on the site. The church should donate the site to either the survivors of the US government as a national monument of some sort, because they aren’t being fully transparent. They call it a tragedy but don’t really apologize. They say Mormons were involved, but they don’t say that the radicalization of ideas they created like blood atonement, and obedience to the prophet had any bearing on why those men did what they did. The church needs to fully step away from this history and try to craft their own narrative. There is a history here that is invaluable. For Americans we all need the unvarnished history of how a religious sect left the United States as alienated sexual deviants over time became one of the most patriotic groups in the country. The benefits would help us to better understand how to inoculate ourselves from things like radical Islam, xenophobia, MAGA, and other fundamental and radical ideologies.
So you're more convinced by Will Bagley's extremely conspiratorial argument that Brigham ordered the massacre even though every single one of Brigham's biographers disagrees with this along with any other respected historian that has covered the massacre?
@@jacobmayberry1126 Every single one of Brigham's biographers? Leonard Arrington punted completely on Mountain Meadows in his biography of Brigham, and his biography of Brigham is what he's best known for. Furthermore, Bagley's assessment isn't based on a conspiracy involving Brigham, but a direct quote from Brigham himself saying that he had taken a little revenge, misquoting the bible verse left by the soldiers. That's not the best evidence, but hardly conspiratorial. I'd also ask you to explain why on earth Brigham did not send word to cease violence before the Aiken Party Massacre? That was one of my bullet points. One cannot give Brigham a pass on preventative measures, because he was literally given a second chance on preventative measures and he failed. The Aiken Party Massacre is much more damning than Mountain Meadows in my opinion considering there was ample time to stop all violence. I can buy the idea that things got out of hand at Mountain Meadows, and I never actually said that Brigham ordered it. I don't think he was that dumb. More likely I think he fostered an environment for it to happen and/or Brigham would have behaved like a mob boss and said, 'it sure would be nice if that wagon train would just disappear'. But all that aside we do know that he did take part in a cover up, and he did nothing to stop the next massacre. We know both those things without a conspiracy theory suggested by Bagley. Care to comment on that? Or are ad hominem attacks against Bagley the best you got? My guess is that you've never heard of the Aiken Party.
@@landon4278 So I mention 4 of Brigham's biographies and you only attack one? lol. You need to look up the definition of an ad hominem homeboy. Pointing out that someone is outside the consensus is not an ad hominem.
@@landon4278 also, you clearly haven't read Turley and Brown's sequel "Vengeance is mine" if you think these points are actually good arguments. They answer all of your objections there.
@@forallthesaintspod and a bunch more too…and 4 books. She implies strongly that there is consensus on this point among historians, based on what I’ve read…there would be strong disagreement on that point even though she dismisses it as “impossible”🧐🤔
@@forallthesaintspod my point is, regardless of what she has “debunked” in her mind, other historians do not agree with her “debunking”, thus there is NO consensus. Will Bagley for example went to his grave “recently” believing that Brigham Young absolutely knew and even had good reason to believe he ordered it. Do I know, absolutely not, but there are lingering disputes on this very topic.
The link for Janiece's book is in the description, it's an absolutely fascinating read. Despite the heavy subject, I hope you found this interesting and, eventually, faith-affirming. Don't forget to subscribe!
This was so interesting and insightful. Thank you, Janiece and Ben.
Really enjoyed this. Janice's insights into this topic are great, and I especially appreciate her testimony of accepting and dealing with hard things. History is always a challenge. We lack context and perspective to fully understand, ("understanding is a three-edged sword; your side, my side and the truth that lies between."). But even with imperfect understanding, there's so much we can learn, even from the hard things.
Thanks Edwin, appreciate this. I am still considering the things I learned from Janiece’s faith. I loved her piece about finding safety in council.
Nonsense. Understanding is acknowledging the TRUTH, not trying to skew it with personal agendas.
According to Richard Turley’s book my Great, Great Grandfather, Calvin Pendleton a counselor in the Cedar City Stake Presidency tried to dissuade the militia from attacking the wagon train and advised the Baker-Fancher party to turn back. Ultimately a terrible atrocity.
Fascinating!
Even the great Patriarch Jacob wrestled with an angel. Thanks for helping me with the wrestle of trying to understand this horrific event in Utah history.
Really insightful interview on a topic not often covered - thanks! 😁
My ancestors from the Martin company were housed at John d lees house during mmm
Interesting. Did they record anything about it?
Two curious points; one, how would Hans Mill massacre played into this, and two, were the Mormons were not in the United States at the time of this event.
Utah became a state in 1890, well after the Massacre. At Hauns Mill, non-mormons massacred Mormons, so church members were wary of outsiders.
Hawn's Mill doesn't typically bleed over into this story as much as the recent murder of Parley P Pratt in Arkansas. Some may try to connect the dots, but I personally don't see it. It was 19 years before. Charles A Hopkins, considered one of the oldest at the massacre was 28 at the time of Hawns Mill, and 47 at Mountain Meadows. I don't even believe he was a convert by 28 but I may be mistaken. Isaac Haight would have been 25 when Hawns Mill occurred. Needless to say, that probably wasn't top of mind at the time.
Mountain Meadows occurred in September 1857, the Mexican American war was 1846-1848, so the territory was within the boundaries of the US at the time of the massacre, which is why Johnston's Army was there and was able to install Alfred Cumming as governor in April of 1858 just a few months after Mountain Meadows.
The persecution that preceded tis event is what caused it. Even reasonable people lash out under such extreme abuse. The unreasonable took it too far. Don't judge the LDS church by it's worst actors. Your worst actions are not who you are and should not solely define you.
How were they persecuted in Utah?
Definitely a fair take!
@@dr33776they had a ginormous army sent to them under a false narrative for starters.
@@jacobmayberry1126 what was the false narrative? That Danites burned and stole from the Gentiles? That they killed immigrants on their way to California? That they created a fake bank?
No new info here. Local Mormon leaders planned and directed the massacre. There were extenuating circumstances, altho most So. Utah citizens did not and would not have participated had they known of the plans. John D Lee was involved and was allowed by the other participants to take sole blame. BY was not directly involved altho he helped to set a political and religious tone one might characterize as Danite. MMM is a lesson in overzealousness and warlike mentality-- a mindset that typefies Utah politics today.
I’m 27 min in, so forgive me if this comes up later; but is there any truth to the wagon trains coming out of Missouri? If so; then this really would have been a perfect storm. Early saints preparing to protect themselves against a federal government, that as far as the saints are concerned, might be coming to eradicate them. Tensions are at a peak; and here comes pioneers from the state that was tied in n with so much death and destruction.
It’s a good question, I’m not sure of the answer! Edit: Janiece shared that they came from Arkansas
Yes the Fancher group spoke of going to California and bringing back people to annihilate the saints. They were obviously mad that the saints weren't selling grain to them. And these saints had already been through so much in Missouri. Also my FLDS neighbors insist that D.Lee was told to fall back in the coffin when the firing occurred and he was taken away alive in the coffin. He lived out the rest of his days in hiding like Butch Cassidy did.
1) The so-called rumors in Cedar City that she glossed over are more likely rationalizations of Mormons after the fact to justify what they did. The Baker Fancher party was largely women and children that had traversed nearly the entire state of Utah up to this point. They knew they were in a hostile environment (as they knew that they could not trade with locals) and likely wouldn't be causing trouble. They also knew they were outnumbered and were convinced to surrender all their weapons a mere days later. To give historical credence to the idea that the party was rabblerousing and causing trouble is victim blaming at its finest.
2) Janiece said, ‘Word matter,’ but it doesn’t sound like she buys her own premise entirely. She seems to give church leaders a pass on rhetoric for being solely rhetoric but seems to almost forget entirely that words are being sent in letter form and messenger form. The choice of the messenger is a conscious decision, whether it’s a Brigham Young letter, or a George A Smith, because the recipient eg Haight or the people Janiece suspects Brigham sent away will internalize their own perspectives while reading a letter. Brigham Young knew this, just as Pauline epistles have different tones for different audiences.
3) I place blame at the feet of Brigham Young, not because of Mountain Meadows, but because of two things that happened after the fact:
a. Brigham Young took part in the cover up, and witnesses were brought in to lie about John D. Lee’s involvement to make him the scapegoat when Brigham Young could have stopped it.
b. Less than a month later, on October 6th a similar incident called the Aiken Party Massacre took place in the same manner. The church found no need to send out a bulletin to all local leaders to stop the violence, instead they hid the massacres, stole their wears, cattle, and money, and covered it up. We can talk about preventative measures until we’re blue in the face and give the church a pass for Mountain Meadows, but Aiken? Aiken is evidence that the church didn’t care at all about what had happened and were not interested in prevention.
4) Councils. The councils all voted to go along with the massacre. Only one man from Kannarraville, openly questioned what was to be done. Saying councils are important, kinda misses so much about what has been said about Mountain Meadows from the psychological standpoint, namely group think and obedience to authority. In Mountain Meadows, the councils were rubber stamps, just as local congregations rubber stamp all their ecclesiastical leaders.
5) It is not possible to conclusively determine that it Brigham Young didn’t order it. Brigham had George A Smith all over Southern Utah preaching sermons with violent rhetoric. It is not implausible to think that George A Smith put the so-called bee in Isaac Haight’s bonnet. I am more convinced by Will Bagley’s analysis on what Brigham Young said at the memorial set up by Johnston’s Army, that revenge was his, and he had taken a little.
6) Her characterization of John D. Lee’s reporting to Brigham seems far-fetched. For starters, he went with Charles A Hopkins, an older man at the time that convinced John D Lee to go along with the massacre and actually ended up as a clubber of women and children. Hopkins reason for going a long with it was because he believing in doing what was right and letting the consequence follow. He would not have lied to Brigham about what happened unless he was told that Brigham needed plausible deniability. Furthermore we know that Joseph Fielding Smith as church historian had evidence that he hid from historians showing that the church knew what was going on and was content to cover it up.
7) Her characterization of John D. Lee not taking it like a man seems cruel to me. John D. Lee barely put up a defense at trial, he didn’t want Brigham deposed at all and wouldn’t allow his defense attorney the ability to push blame on others more responsible than he was. He was a true believer and considered himself an adopted and sealed son of Brigham Young, sometimes signing his name as John Doyle Lee Young. He loved Brigham and he felt that the feelings were mutual and that Brigham wouldn’t allow anything bad to happen to him just as he stood trial and protected Brigham. But Lee learned he was a patsy for Brigham and the church, someone that Brigham brought into his good graces and used him as a bargaining chip when the time came. Which was always Brigham’s MO. Brigham wanted the Martin and Willie Handcart companies to not wait, because he needed cannon fodder for Johnston’s Army. When the time came to save them or his cigars and liquor at Ft. Bridger, Brigham didn’t hesitate to save his accoutrements. And when he tried to blame Willard Richards and John Taylor for sending the handcarts too late, Taylor responded in a letter, ‘I wouldn’t sacrifice lives for groceries.’ John D. Lee was no coward, despite being the only fall guy for the incident.
8) The narrative does not completely change between 1875 and 1876. Reading John D. Lee’s autobiography which he wrote after his conviction and before his execution, he gets brutally honest in a confessions on a deathbed manner, that he was angry with Brigham for what transpired. It is not invented out of whole cloth.
9) Having been to the site and seen what is written on the plaque at the church owned memorial, it’s as if the church wants you to think that a wagon train went to sleep and died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the night. There is no mention who is responsible, there is no mention of how it happened. Just simply that over 100 innocent people died on the site. The church should donate the site to either the survivors of the US government as a national monument of some sort, because they aren’t being fully transparent. They call it a tragedy but don’t really apologize. They say Mormons were involved, but they don’t say that the radicalization of ideas they created like blood atonement, and obedience to the prophet had any bearing on why those men did what they did. The church needs to fully step away from this history and try to craft their own narrative. There is a history here that is invaluable. For Americans we all need the unvarnished history of how a religious sect left the United States as alienated sexual deviants over time became one of the most patriotic groups in the country. The benefits would help us to better understand how to inoculate ourselves from things like radical Islam, xenophobia, MAGA, and other fundamental and radical ideologies.
So you're more convinced by Will Bagley's extremely conspiratorial argument that Brigham ordered the massacre even though every single one of Brigham's biographers disagrees with this along with any other respected historian that has covered the massacre?
@@jacobmayberry1126 Every single one of Brigham's biographers? Leonard Arrington punted completely on Mountain Meadows in his biography of Brigham, and his biography of Brigham is what he's best known for. Furthermore, Bagley's assessment isn't based on a conspiracy involving Brigham, but a direct quote from Brigham himself saying that he had taken a little revenge, misquoting the bible verse left by the soldiers. That's not the best evidence, but hardly conspiratorial.
I'd also ask you to explain why on earth Brigham did not send word to cease violence before the Aiken Party Massacre? That was one of my bullet points. One cannot give Brigham a pass on preventative measures, because he was literally given a second chance on preventative measures and he failed. The Aiken Party Massacre is much more damning than Mountain Meadows in my opinion considering there was ample time to stop all violence. I can buy the idea that things got out of hand at Mountain Meadows, and I never actually said that Brigham ordered it. I don't think he was that dumb. More likely I think he fostered an environment for it to happen and/or Brigham would have behaved like a mob boss and said, 'it sure would be nice if that wagon train would just disappear'.
But all that aside we do know that he did take part in a cover up, and he did nothing to stop the next massacre. We know both those things without a conspiracy theory suggested by Bagley. Care to comment on that? Or are ad hominem attacks against Bagley the best you got? My guess is that you've never heard of the Aiken Party.
@@landon4278 So I mention 4 of Brigham's biographies and you only attack one? lol. You need to look up the definition of an ad hominem homeboy. Pointing out that someone is outside the consensus is not an ad hominem.
@@landon4278 also, you clearly haven't read Turley and Brown's sequel "Vengeance is mine" if you think these points are actually good arguments. They answer all of your objections there.
Nobody lifted a finger without ol’racist, misogynistic Brigham telling them what to do in Kingdom Brigham…
Sounds like you didn’t watch the episode!
@@forallthesaintspod “that narrative still exists today”…yes I did!!!
@@forallthesaintspod and a bunch more too…and 4 books. She implies strongly that there is consensus on this point among historians, based on what I’ve read…there would be strong disagreement on that point even though she dismisses it as “impossible”🧐🤔
@@pmp6444 Janiece quite swiftly debunked the conspiracies around Brigham’s involvement in the massacre.
@@forallthesaintspod my point is, regardless of what she has “debunked” in her mind, other historians do not agree with her “debunking”, thus there is NO consensus. Will Bagley for example went to his grave “recently” believing that Brigham Young absolutely knew and even had good reason to believe he ordered it. Do I know, absolutely not, but there are lingering disputes on this very topic.