I find Mormons to be truly remarkable people. We visited Salt Lake City recently, and headed out to the Great Salt Lake. Brigham Young wasn’t kidding about “land nobody wants!” There’s almost nothing there, except swarms of flies. (I have no idea what they eat in the middle of the desert. As an aside, my wife’s family apparently went through Utah on the way to Oregon in the wagon train days. They noped the f—k out of…
It doesn't hurt that the Salt Lake is sadly shrinking currently. So it's even worse than it probably was when they arrived.
This hot take is a little extreme but not too far from the truth. You'll only understand the depths to which the LDS church controls the state and enforces it's social and moral code if you've lived in Utah for an extended period as an outsider. It's pretty fucking weird. - Hard liquor only sold by State Liquor stores, where they digitally record your ID. Only open a few hours a day, and on certain days. Additional s…
Between Buchanan's questionable sexuality, and the Mormons and Slavery, it is little wonder the Civil War was not far away.
Pretty much every US president from about Fillmore through Andrew Johnson (with the notable and obvious exception of Abraham Lincoln) is widely regarded as being on the short list for worst US president. Admittedly every president in the pre-Civil War period was arguably dealt a pretty bad hand but none of them seriously tried to change course--and, of course, many of them wouldn't have been elected had they tried.
Extremely. The Mormons headed west after trying to impose a theocratic dictatorship in Nauvoo, IL. That didn't go well, and their insurrection was put down.
The article is an interesting take on the time period For one example, I think Porter Rockwell is less considered a lawman, and more of a hitman or enforcer. He's suspected of having a body count somewhere in the 150 range edit: It also completely leaves out the entire Mountain Meadows Massacre incident, where Mormons slaughtered around 120 men women and children in a wagon train headed to California in September of…
Porter Rockwell was dubbed the "Destroying Angel," but he was definitely a bona fide law man. But you're right that there is some evidence that he was also kind of the frontier version of a James Bond type secret service or special forces operative with a license to kill. And his boss was Brigham Young, who was a bit drunk on power. Mountain Meadows is absolutely a disgrace and a scandal that should (and does) taint…
It's an interesting aspect of studying history that you can watch time and peace turn a mass murder into a "disgrace" and "scandal" that "taints reputations" but is "understandable in context". Those may be fair and uncontroversial words with 150 years of remove, but would obviously not have gone over well nearer the time of massacre itself.
Wasn't this one of the primary reasons why majority of Mormons live south of Salt Lake? I swear Brigham Young ordered a scorched earth type thing on SLC and most relocated south.
Nah, there are plenty of cities with high LDS populations north of SLC. Bountiful, Centerville, Kaysville are like in the 80-90% ranges. It's when you get into Layton with Hill Air Force Base and Ogden where the population seems to dwindle. North of Ogden, you have Brigham City where the population again is very high.
Yeah no doubt about high percentages in northern utah (I'm originally from Ogden fwiw). Was mostly commenting that it would make sense if Young used this war as a means to migrate people to the true valley (Provo/Orem/etc). Those towns are easily 90%+ LDS. I vaguely remember learning about this in Utah history but it was not characterized in the same light.
Is this really "forgotten"? Forgotten by whom? I thought this was part of LDS mythology surrounding the settlement of the Utah territory and was fairly well known. I remember reading about the war in college, and it is definitely part of any history of Buchanan's presidency.
I'm 47 years old, decently educated, and can honestly say I'd never heard of this war and thought this was a great read. Granted, it's quite possible I was taught about this in some very dry history class in high school while I was barely paying attention to the teacher. But I think it's safe to say this isn't a war that comes up often in popular discourse of US history.
I agree with you. Though, I'd also ask, are you in the Utah region or outside? It's easy for us to lose sight of just how huge the U.S. is, and what might be "common history" in one area is obscure bar-trivia somewhere else. We've all heard of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and WWII and mostly know the broad strokes. I doubt the average person on the street could give you much info on The War of 1812, the Mexican American War, The First Barbary War, The Second Barbary War. Regarding local history, I grew up in Maine, so to me the Aroostook War might seem like common history, , and to my Filipina wife, the Philippine–American War might seem less than forgotten. I could forgive anyone on the street for knowing little or nothing about all these. Even the Korean War's nickname is "The Forgotten War".
I find Mormons to be truly remarkable people. We visited Salt Lake City recently, and headed out to the Great Salt Lake. Brigham Young wasn’t kidding about “land nobody wants!” There’s almost nothing there, except swarms of flies. (I have no idea what they eat in the middle of the desert. As an aside, my wife’s family apparently went through Utah on the way to Oregon in the wagon train days. They noped the f—k out of…
I live in Utah just North of SLC and I hear this every once in a while. The Wasatch Mountains here, to the East, are also pretty amazing. When I'm away I always miss these mountains. If you go West you hit the lake, which is low, muddy, stinky, and mostly dead and then there are the salt flats beyond. True, it's a desert, like much of the US, but the mountains are pretty amazing here. The best times to visit are Spring, Fall, or Winter. Hit this place in the heat of summer and you'll probably wonder why we're here (everything is dry). But it's nice in Spring and Fall and lots of people love the Winters.
The Mormons are fascinating for many reasons and highly skilled at building a certain kind of American community. One of the things they are best at is spinning their clean scrubbed version of history, which as with many groups has as many despicable acts as heroic ones. They were indeed quite persecuted on their flight across the continent, but that traumatic origin story doesn't justify to me some of the less attractive aspects of modern day LDS culture. Some interesting reading:
All this somewhat strained perfection does have a cost, however. Utah leads the nation in rates of anti-depressant use and several types of cosmetic surgery. [1]