When the Mormons Rebelled Against America

Summary

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American History Hit

Episode: When the Mormons Rebelled Against America

Host: Don Wildman
Guest: Prof. Peter Coviello (University of Illinois, author of Make Yourselves Gods)
Release Date: April 13, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Don Wildman and historian Prof. Peter Coviello explore the so-called Mormon Rebellion in mid-19th century America. The discussion uncovers the foundational beliefs, persecution, migration, and eventual confrontation between Mormon settlers in Utah and the U.S. federal government—culminating in what became known as the Utah War and its aftermath. The episode also addresses the theological and social underpinnings of Mormonism, the fraught dynamic with Native Americans, and how the legacy of this rebellion shaped both the Mormon experience and the broader American narrative.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of Mormonism and Persecution (04:42–13:37)

• Founding by Joseph Smith (1830):
  • Smith’s vision after finding “golden plates” in upstate New York leads to the Book of Mormon and the origins of a new, controversial faith.
  • Coviello: “Mormonism is founded by Joseph Smith when he happens upon the golden plates in western New York State, undergoes a spiritual transformation. These plates contain a religious history of this ancient American religion.” [04:42]
• Unique Theological Claims:
  • Humanity is seen as capable of becoming divine; God is embodied and akin to a sibling to humankind.
  • Coviello paraphrasing Smith: “God is not only this, not this, like, radically other, occasionally malevolent figure. God is rather a sibling human.” [07:04]
• Persecution and Westward Migration:
  • Driven out of numerous states due to charges of heresy, polygamy, and “perversity.”
  • Extermination Order:
    • Illinois Governor Lilburn Boggs ordered Mormons to be “exterminated or driven from the state.” [07:36]
  • Formation of Nauvoo, a semi-autonomous city-state—an oasis and a flashpoint for further controversy.
• Polygamy:
  • Emerges as key teaching under Smith; kept secret due to its inflammatory nature.
  • Polygamy set Mormons at odds with mainstream American values and became central to why they were targeted.
  • Notable framing: “Polygamy really is a major issue for Americans... when the wider US found out about polygamy in the 1850s, they were horrified.” (Wildman, [12:47])

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2. Migration to Utah and Creation of “Deseret” (17:30–22:05)

• Brigham Young Leads the Saints West:
  • Following Smith’s assassination, Young leads the group to Utah (then Mexican territory).
  • The area is chosen for its remoteness—a “saving distance” from American society and its upheavals.
• State of Deseret:
  • An attempted Mormon theocracy, invoking biblical and American pioneer motifs.
  • “Deseret” comes from the Book of Mormon and means “honeybee,” symbolizing industriousness and self-reliance.
  • Coviello: “And Deseret translates... by honeybee, like those brought by the original Jaredites from Jerusalem.” [21:09]
• After Mexican-American War:
  • Utah becomes U.S. territory with federal oversight, intensifying conflict over who governs.

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3. The Utah War ("Mormon Rebellion") and The Federal Standoff (22:18–33:37)

• Nature of the Rebellion:

  • More a standoff over sovereignty than outright war, as Mormons strive for autonomy but face growing federal encroachment over issues like polygamy and governance.
  • Coviello: “What the Mormons want is… the protected, if limited sovereignty of statehood… what they have is a territory, which is much, much more disputed.” [22:18]

• Buchanan Sends in the Army:

  • President Buchanan dispatches nearly a third of the U.S. Army to Utah (c. 2,500–3,000 troops).
  • “Brigham Young is in open rebellion against The United States of America… Buchanan is fighting a war of extermination.” (Coviello paraphrasing both sides, [24:23])

• Mormon Resistance:

  • Rather than pitched battles, Mormons engage in scorched earth tactics, evacuation, and harassment of federal supply lines.

• The Mountain Meadows Massacre (1857):

  • Mormon militia (Nauvoo Legion) and Paiute allies massacre over 120 emigrant settlers traveling through Utah.
  • Attempts made to cover up by blaming Native Americans.
  • Lasting effect on Mormon reputation: “A cover up was attempted trying to shift the blame to Native Americans nearby. It has the effect of damaging the Mormon moral standing even further.” (Wildman, [27:34])

• Resolution:

  • U.S. Army enters Salt Lake City unopposed; negotiated settlement, with Brigham Young accepting federal authority.
  • Press dubs the episode “Buchanan’s Blunder.”

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4. Brigham Young’s Legacy (29:45–32:25)

• Young as Organizer:
  • Contrasted with Joseph Smith’s charismatic, theological bent, Young is pragmatic—a colonizer and systematizer:
  • “Brigham Young is an organizer… he distributes authority carefully. And that makes him very shrewd.” (Coviello, [30:30])
• Consolidation of Mormon Society:
  • Under Young, the church becomes more patriarchal, systematized, and creates widespread settlements across the West as a buffer against federal incursion.
• Aftermath of the Rebellion:
  • Young made territorial governor, but full reconciliation with America is decades away, tied to the fate of Mormon practices—especially polygamy.

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5. Suppression of Polygamy and Integration into America (34:45–43:19)

• Postwar Federal Legal Assaults:
  • Series of Congressional acts (Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act 1862, Edmunds Act 1882, Edmunds-Tucker Act 1887) relentlessly criminalize polygamy and seize Mormon assets.
  • Coviello: “A series of acts… that criminalize polygamy… and make all but impossible the continued existence of the Mormons… inside the federal fold.” [35:04]
• Path to Statehood:
  • Under massive pressure and facing dissolution, the LDS Church president Wilford Woodruff issues the 1890 Manifesto ending plural marriage:
    • “The federal government threatened to murder everyone. And that had a pretty normalizing effect...” (Coviello, [39:35])
    • Woodruff’s letter (1889): “We are now, politically speaking, the dependent or ward of the United States… In a state capacity, we should be freed from such dependency.” [39:35]
• Statehood Achieved:
  • Utah admitted as a state in 1896.
  • Mormons transition from “peculiar people” to patriotic symbols—a deep irony given their earlier opposition.

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6. The Mormon-Native American Relationship (41:28–43:27)

• Complex, Fraught Identifications:
  • Mormons see themselves as both religious exiles and colonial empire-builders.
  • Sometimes positioned as allies of Native tribes, sometimes as participants in displacement or violence.
  • Coviello: “They had been better than the federal government, but of course that's a tremendously low bar… It's hard to over describe the fraughtness of Mormon native relation in the west in the 19th century.” [42:13–43:19]

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7. Legacy and Modern Resonance (43:27–47:08)

• Religious Schism and Assimilation:
  • Mainstream Mormons renounce polygamy for statehood, but fundamentalist offshoots persist.
  • Transition from a “counter-Protestant” faith resisting the U.S. to one hailed (by Harold Bloom) as “the American religion.”
• Lasting Ironies:
  • Wildman: “Huge patriotism... If there’s ever a place I think as patriotic, it’s the state of Utah. You know, it’s the Mormons. The irony is unbelievable.” [45:19]
• Ongoing Tensions:
  • Some Mormons see the end of plural marriage as a betrayal; fundamentalist fringe continues today.
  • The arc from rebellion and near annihilation to integration and even emblematic “American-ness” is presented as both unique and instructive about national identity and religious freedom.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Mormon Theology:
  • “God is rather a sibling human. A person that you are the God. And persons are different in degree, but not in kind.” — Jack Myers paraphrased by Coviello, [07:04]
• On Persecution:
  • “The Mormons... cannot be blamed for thinking of themselves as persecuted and as persons that the state and elements of the state are free to murder.” — Coviello, [11:41]
• On Interactions with Federal Authority:
  • “Brigham Young will say, Buchanan is fighting a war of extermination. And in a certain way, both of them are correct. They're both of them pretty near on to right.” — Coviello, [24:50]
• On Statehood:
  • “We are now, politically speaking, the dependent or ward of the United States. But in a state capacity, we should be freed from such dependency.” — Quoting Woodruff’s letter, [39:35]
• On Americanization:
  • “A people who really were willing to stake their lives on their opposition to the imperial United States become like avatars of good citizenship.” — Coviello, [45:15]
• On Irony:
  • “It’s nice not have a third of the federal government ringing your city.” — Coviello, [47:05]

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Suggested Timestamps for Important Segments

• Origins, Theology, Persecution: 04:42–13:37
• Migration to Utah, Deseret: 17:30–22:05
• Utah War Standoff: 22:18–33:37
• Brigham Young’s Leadership: 29:45–32:25
• Suppression of Polygamy — Legal Campaign: 34:45–39:35
• Utah Statehood and Assimilation: 43:27–47:08

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a nuanced account of how Mormonism’s foundational distinctiveness, theological radicalism, and early persecution led to a dramatic confrontation with the United States—both a literal and symbolic “rebellion” that ultimately resolved through adaptation, compromise, and transformation. The conversation shines in tying together issues of faith, governance, American identity, and the complex entanglement with other marginalized groups. For history enthusiasts or those exploring the intersection of religion and American expansion, this is essential listening.

Transcript

[Don Wildman]

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[Tim Spengler]

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[Jack Myers]

I'm Jack Myers.

[Tim Spengler]

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[Jack Myers]

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[Jack Myers]

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[Peter Coviello]

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[Don Wildman]

First, it's clouds of dust, thin, far away. Then on the horizon, a line takes shape. Wagons, uniforms, cavalry.

[Peter Coviello]

An army with a mission.

[Don Wildman]

The United States is coming. In Salt Lake City, Brigham Young gives the order. No pitched battles, no glorious stand. Scorch the grass, empty the outposts, scatter the herds. This army must march into a void. Better to destroy Zion than to surrender it. This is no rebellion of the standard variety. More Like a noose tightening on these troops, begging the question, whose land is this? Those who came to build a kingdom or the nation they left behind now marching to claim it as theirs. The Mormon Rebellion is about to begin. I'm Don Wildman, and this is American History Hit. To help tell us more about this important event, we welcome Professor Peter Coviello of the University of Illinois. His book Make Yourselves Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism was a finalist for the John Whitmer Historical Association Award for Best History. Hello, Peter.

[Peter Coviello]

Welcome back. Nice to see you again, Don.

[Jack Myers]

It's a pleasure to see you. Thank you for having me.

[Peter Coviello]

You were last with us in 2023. Another world ago. 300 episodes ago.

[Jack Myers]

Another World Ago.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. Check the archives for episode 86, Mormons and the Founding of Salt Lake City, in which we discussed, Peter and I, the origins and Western migrations of those people called Mormons through the 1830s and 40s. Today we dive more into the 1850s. After the establishment of Utah as a territory of the United States, all a consequence of the victorious Mexican American War, adherents to this highly controversial religion have now set up shop in Utah. That's what we're going to be talking about today. Three years is a long time ago, Peter. I'm a bit rusty. Let's briefly review those origins, shall we?

[Jack Myers]

Well, no one's more rusty than I, but we'll try. Yeah, let's do it.

[Peter Coviello]

We'll be quick about this. 1830 Mormonism is founded by Joseph Smith when he happens upon the golden plates in western New York State, undergoes a spiritual transformation. These plates contain a religious history of this ancient American religion. Take us through that and the bullet

[Jack Myers]

points of this subject very, very, very quickly. He writes the Book of Mormon in upstate New York and gathers around him a bunch of detractors, but also a lot of followers. Over the course of the decade, Mormons migrate west. Joseph Smith is intensely charismatic and also intensely theologically imaginative. So he writes the Book of Mormon, but he keeps writing it, keeps thinking, and he keeps proselytizing. And as he does so, the faith gathers to itself more adherents and a more vehement kind of detractor.

[Peter Coviello]

It's really the ultimate Protestant religion in that it's correcting what's wrong with Protestantism, isn't it?

[Jack Myers]

He's. Well, I mean, it depends on who you ask, right? They understand themselves as a vigorously counter Protestantism. That is to say, like the whole point of Mormonism or not the whole point, but a big point of Mormonism is millennia of Religion has conspired to get you to believe that God is different from you, that the world is fallen. In fact, this is incorrect. Christianity itself is an apostasy. Why? Because God is a brethren human. And you yourself in the mortal world are living in an unfallen body, and you yourself are speeding toward divinization. Because God wants everything that's best about human life, embodiment, joy, friendship, love. To be eternalized.

[Peter Coviello]

Wow.

[Jack Myers]

And to be yours, eternity. So, yeah, that's the.

[Peter Coviello]

You've already left me behind. I mean, Joseph Smith made a declaration that humans, more than following God, could become divine, themselves one with him of God.

[Jack Myers]

Exactly.

[Peter Coviello]

That's where the title of your book comes from, right?

[Jack Myers]

Yes. Make yourselves gods. Make yourselves gods. He. I mean, you can see the. The gorgeousness of the vision. He is willing to imagine a far more expansively loving kind of God, certainly than any Calvinist God. God is not only this, not this, like, radically other, occasionally malevolent figure. God is rather a sibling human.

[Peter Coviello]

Gotcha.

[Jack Myers]

A person that. That. That you are the God. And persons are different in degree, but not in kind.

[Peter Coviello]

Oh, wow. No wonder it's controversial. This would really, really ruffle the feathers of a lot of Puritans. This is why the Mormons have to increasingly migrate west, as we covered on our previous episode. They are being persecuted, they are being pushed away from communities they are in. Terrible things happen to them.

[Jack Myers]

Yes.

[Peter Coviello]

The growth of Mormonism led to earlier believers facing this persecution by moving onward.

[Jack Myers]

Yes.

[Peter Coviello]

From 1833, the Mormons were repeatedly forced out of towns. They moved into Illinois, where you are by 1838. Things have become so tense that Governor Lilburn Boggs in that state said Mormons must now be treated as enemies. They must be just exterminated or driven from the state. Boy, it gets intense. And by 1839, they have extermination order. Yeah. They have created something called Nauvoo.

[Jack Myers]

Nauvoo. Nauvoo. It's on the edge of Illinois. Yeah, it's a river town on the edge of Illinois, which is their sort of own town. And that's where, like, the grandest theological speculation that. That Smith will produce really happens. It's a scene of, like, super intense theological foment. It's where Smith comes to the revelation that one of the key components of exaltation, of the idea that humans can exalt themselves into gods, is polygamy, is plural, patriarchal marriage. And there's a lot, a lot, a lot of different ways of reading that. Is it a restoration of Old Testament beliefs? Is it a hyper patriarchalization of a. Of a world that's becoming more industrial and more gender equitable in the 19th century? Those. You can make those things stick. For me in my reading of Mormonism, it's really just an essential part of what Smith understands as the theology of Mormonism. That is to say the world is unfallen, we live in these, in unfallen bodies. And it's incredibly hard to believe that you need a discipline of practice that for him is plural marriage. Anyway, he has that revelation. They don't publicize it for a while, not surprisingly, because it makes people furious. But of course, already scandal surrounds them. They're accused of many things, but particularly being accused of, like being perverts, people whose pretend devotions have led them into perversity. And that accusation, of course allows people like Lil Burn Boggs to say what we should probably do is exterminate.

[Peter Coviello]

I mean, it's really deep. What does the Latter Day Saint refer to? What is that? The name of the movement?

[Jack Myers]

Saints of the World is like we are in a state of revelation in the present tense.

[Peter Coviello]

Okay.

[Jack Myers]

That revelation didn't end in the days of the Bible. It exists now. I see in the present tense. God speaks as much in the present tense. Now, of course, like that particular version of counter Protestant devotion has other analogues. Like the Mormons don't have to look around them very far to see what it looks like to be a kind of belief, practice askance, that of normative American Protestantism. That's how native peoples were persecuted explicitly as heathens, as people whose backwards counterproducts and beliefs made them again fit for extermination. So the Mormons feel this, like very complex identification with native peoples who appear in the Book of Mormon as Lamanites and stuff like that. So it's a super fraught identification because they also want to identify as, you know, white people with all the powers of empire belonging to them as well. So they take all that with them into the West.

[Peter Coviello]

The whole thing that we're not going to get into, but it's really about returning to the homeland for this movement because in their minds there have been previous tribes of, I guess white Europeans essentially have been here before they weren't Europeans. But this is like a very interesting cyclical story that's returning them essentially to a Garden of Eden. And so this makes North America and America that much more special when they consider this. And this was all what was written down on the plates that Joseph Smith creates the Book of Mormon. Out of Nauvoo was a very significant settlement. Largest. One of the largest cities in Illinois at the time. Had a militia, the Novu Nauvoo.

[Jack Myers]

Yeah. Legion.

[Peter Coviello]

Foreshadowing what's to come. A temple which has been rebuilt even today. A chartered city government. They were very serious about this. But then Joseph Smith is killed in 1844 in a mob.

[Jack Myers]

Yes. He's assassinated in a prison. You can still go. Carthage, Illinois. And the Mormons are not wrong. This is anticipating where we're going. In the 1850s, the Mormons surely cannot be blamed for thinking of themselves as persecuted and as persons that the state and elements of the state are free to murder. They had executed Joseph Smith. There'd been a massacre at Haun's Mill. Been the extermination order. So some historians will refer to the Mormons persecution complex. And I understand where that comes from, but they have some real data to go on in the 19th century, you know.

[Peter Coviello]

Sure. Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

The state itself had expressed a great willingness to massacre the Mormons.

[Peter Coviello]

Right.

[Jack Myers]

To the degree that they're even remotely identified with native peoples as fellow exiles from an imperial America. They also understand what extermination looks like. They also can see their own fates written out in the fate of native peoples.

[Peter Coviello]

So obviously there's talk among them of a homeland, and this would be where we're heading when we come back after a break. But before we get there, I just want to underscore the fact that polygamy really is a major issue for Americans at that time. And people still talk about it, still gives everybody the heebie jeebies. But back then, we're talking about a time of greater religion and, you know, established religions that really mix up with the politics, just as they do today. Of course. But back then, it was a big deal. When the wider US found out about polygamy in the 1850s, they were horrified. Mormons became a huge debating point in the 1956 presidential election of James Buchanan.

[Jack Myers]

They did.

[Peter Coviello]

Major, major point. So after the break, we'll come back and talk about how those tensions reach their peak in Utah.

[Don Wildman]

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[Peter Coviello]

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[Peter Coviello]

Welcome back. We're discussing the Mormon religion with Professor Peter Coviello. So we've established, Peter, some of the Mormon beliefs and why tensions began growing between them and eventually the federal government. First, the state government of Illinois, of course, was really on them. Events to keep in mind as we get further into Utah. 1847, Brigham Young, who is a lieutenant of Joseph Smith, takes over after Joseph Smith's assassination. And they head west. They go by way of Missouri, of course, like everybody does. Important to keep in mind at this point, 1847, where they will end up. Utah is still part of Mexican territory. The Mexican American War hasn't been fought yet. That's an 1848-49 kind of time. The land becomes US territory after we win that war. And the Treaty of Hidalgo gives us that massive amount of land in the West. Congress creates the Utah Territory as part of the Compromise of 1850. All right, so that sets the stage for all of what we're about to talk about.

[Jack Myers]

Yes. The fraught 1850s.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. By this time, as you have completely explained to us, there is good reason why these Mormons should be circling their wagons. And they are, they are very worried about what's coming next. Was Utah in their crosshairs or that area in the crosshairs that far west as they made their migration?

[Jack Myers]

Not necessarily. It was, you know, this is the place they, they found a place that looked habitable and looked like it could hold the Saints, the population of Mormons. But it was also at what for Brigham Young particularly was at like a saving distance from the eastern United States and its increasingly apocalyptic tensions. Of course, we're in the run up to slavery.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

And it also helped to foment the dream of a nation apart from the United States, the fallen and doomed United States, which is again, you can, it's very easy to read the Book of Mormon as prophesying the fall of the Americans whom the Mormons will call the Gentiles. And it's very easy to think that the native people will have a role in that destruction too.

[Peter Coviello]

Wouldn't it be cool to do a PhD thesis on apocalyptic thinking historically throughout all of American history? Because, boy, that's a big part of the mid 19th century. I mean, you've got the Mormons, you've got the. The whole south is thinking about themselves as apart from. And that's a very religious world down there. It's just gotta be boiled into the. Into the fat of America, isn't it?

[Jack Myers]

Yeah. Eschatology is a really, really tempting option at all. At all points, Don. I also appreciate that we're having this conversation on whatever day. Today is April 7th under the tweeted threat of the annihilation of an entire civilization. Like, eschatologies don't really go away. And eschatology is a real, real part of the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is like, strangely, the account of a. Of a righteous people, the Nephites who are annihilated. It's the, like, remaining account of a people who backslide and are fallen, and so God sees fit to them being annihilated. The Mormons are read out into that a fate of backsliding America. How do they know they're backsliding? Because they've so persecuted us, because they have so cast out their most righteous people, the Mormons, the Saints. We've been cast out into the west that for us, prophesied. And this. Now I just sound like Brigham Young in the 1850s. This prophesies the doom of the nation. I would say that repeatedly.

[Peter Coviello]

It was named the state of Deseret. Am I getting that pronunciation correct?

[Jack Myers]

I believe you are correct.

[Peter Coviello]

Okay. And Deseret translates, I guess, probably loosely into by honeybee, like those brought by the original Jaredites from Jerusalem. I mentioned before that we've been here before according to the Mormons, and that was an early tribe. Yeah. The Book of Mormon says these guys, the Jaredites, quite literally after a guy named Jared, were here before and they had brought with them honeybees, which had, I guess, propagated and become, you know,

[Jack Myers]

spread around the North America and a symbol of industriousness.

[Peter Coviello]

Yes, exactly. Good for them.

[Jack Myers]

And indomitability. Yeah, right.

[Peter Coviello]

And little tiny cubicles where they feel very comfortable, I guess. But a year later, Utah becomes a US territory in 1850, as I mentioned, because of the Mexican American War victory. At that point, federal oversight in the area begins. That's got to be a, you know, Ominous note for the. For the Mormons.

[Jack Myers]

Very fraught. Very fraught.

[Peter Coviello]

Trouble is brewing. The Mormon rebellion that we're really talking about in this is not a war in a traditional sense. It's more of a. Of an ongoing standoff over sovereignty. Right.

[Jack Myers]

That's donuts. Perfectly said. That's exactly right. Who. And of course, what the Mormons want is the. What they will eventually get once they renounce polygamy at the end of the century, which is the protected, if limited sovereignty of statehood. Because, of course, statehood grants you all kinds of. Of sovereign powers, as we know, and the Civil War had litigated in blood what exactly the extent of those sovereign powers were. They don't have that. What they have is a territory which is much, much more disputed. Though, of course, what the Mormons have going for them is they're many thousands of miles away, east coast and the outposts of the federal government. And so that allows Brigham to maneuver rather more widely than he would have if he was in, say, Pennsylvania or Ohio. And the detractors of the Mormons call what's being created there a theocratic state or a theodemocracy. The Mormons think that they are practicing what on the east coast they like to call religious freedom. Of course, there's a lot of contestation over what gets to count as religion. That's now. And the Mormons on polygamy and on the way that polygamy made them like they were called all sorts of things in 1930. Mohammedans was a very favorite one. They were always being accused of being secretly Indian fomenting rebellions with the Indians. Right. So they understand themselves to be in possession of religious freedom.

[Peter Coviello]

Right.

[Jack Myers]

And I understand polygamy to be a part of that religious freedom. The federal government does not understand it that way. These are some of the interior tensions that are really roiling across the 1850s, which is, as you say, already a semi apocalyptic time because of the fight about slavery that is brewing and becoming more and more apocalyptic.

[Peter Coviello]

US President James Buchanan sends federal troops over to Utah to install a new government. He sends almost one third. Yeah. Of the entire army is sent out there. This is a very important and pressing

[Jack Myers]

issue, which is an amazing. Like that, that very. I remember when I was reading that I was like, Avnol sends like, I don't know, 2,500, 3,000 troops or something like that. But like, that's like a third of the standing army goes to Utah. And what Buchanan will say in Washington D.C. is that Brigham Young is in open rebellion against The United States of America. And Brigham Young will say, Buchanan is fighting a war of extermination.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jack Myers]

And Watts, a war of exter. And in a certain way, both of them are correct. They're both of them pretty near on to. Right. So it looks very much like that's gonna happen. The Mountain Meadows Massacre happens, which inflames things gravely. So, yeah.

[Peter Coviello]

In anticipation of this arrival, the Mormons prepare for defense. Their evacuation of Mormon settlements. They kind of practice a scorched earth policy of burning out grassy areas so there's nowhere for these horses to graze. They will target US Supply lines. And as mentioned before, there's no major pitched battles here. It's just kind of an ongoing practice of, let's starve these guys out so they'll turn around and go home. There is heavy duty bloodshed. In one event. It's called the Mountain Meadows massacre. 1857, members of a Mormon militia known as the Nauvoo Legion and local participants kill dozens of emigrants passing through Utah. This is a really hairy thing, isn't it?

[Jack Myers]

Tremendously so. Tremendously so. It's. There's much contestation in the historiography. Did Young. So he certainly. The rhetoric and discourse around the area was definitely coming from Young, and it was definitely bloody in intent. Whether or not he authorized the actual attack on all of the emigrants is a different question. He will not be tried, but a different Mormon will be. They are in league with some Paiutes in the area. They clumsily attempt to blame it on the Paiutes. Oh, we didn't kill these immigrants. It was an Indian massacre that's exposed in the next year. So, of course, the Mormons think of emigrants as passageways for the state to get at them, and so they mistrust them violently. And when they murder these people, the state is like, okay, these are now. This is a party of people in bloody rebellion.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. There was a great series on this sort of miniseries last year on, I think it was Netflix, where it's called American Primeval. I mean, they at least cast this in an insanely violent tone. It was really heavy duty. And that's.

[Jack Myers]

I mean, again, you say it just right. There's an eschatological edge to the period. And Brigham is not shy about saying, the federal agents who've come here and maligned our civilization should have been hung in the streets. He just says things like that. You know what I mean?

[Peter Coviello]

Right.

[Jack Myers]

And so Buchanan is not exactly wrong. On the other hand, he did send a third of the federal army out presumably to destroy a religious sect in the West.

[Peter Coviello]

Right.

[Jack Myers]

For. For erotic practices that they didn't really believing in back East.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. At least 120 people are killed in this situation. A cover up was attempted trying to shift the blame to Native Americans nearby. It has the effect of damaging the Mormon moral standing even further. Right. This does no good for their reputation in America.

[Jack Myers]

Kind of though. I think that's right, though. It is also the case that polygamy outweighs everything. A violation. Yeah. Yeah. Polygamy was such a ready to handle way to dismiss any Mormon claim to dignity, sovereignty, peace, anything you wanted. And to do it as what happened in the 19th century. Frantically. In like, frantically racializing terms.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

Mohammedan. They're Indian. Like the followers are slave, like in their sycophancy to ecclesiastical leaders. So the Mormons are always being produced as dubiously white people.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

Like there's a great line in a Jack London story where the, you know, somebody says it's, well, can't get. Those are white. Oh, they ain't white. They're Mormons. And that's a real. That's of course in the 19th century. The Mormons are again not wrong to hear in that.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

The possibility of having become expendable life. They are not ignorant of what the federal government does to racialized life, to black populations, native populations. So they're not really wrong.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. This kind of wraps up in. In mid-1858, the US army ends up marching unopposed through to Salt Lake City and into it. It ends relatively quickly with a, with a negotiated peace. This was due, of course, because there was a lot going on back east. I mean, you know, there was a lot happening. This is, this is becomes a minor problem compared to what's boiling up real fast.

[Jack Myers]

That's very right.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. Buchanan is facing a lot of pressure at home to bring this crisis to an end. In the end, the whole affair, sending the army out, the whole bloodshed, everything was called Buchanan's blunder in the, in the press. He looks real bad. Buchanan was no, you know, he wasn't doing too well in many regards as a president. But this was certainly a stain on his character.

[Jack Myers]

Didn't help.

[Peter Coviello]

I want to circle back because we're about to talk about Brigham Young, you know, officially becoming the governor of Utah at this point. Tell me about this man. Who was Brigham Young and why did he step into the role?

[Jack Myers]

Yes. Well, Brigham Young in a certain way that I will both say and then invite you to mistrust slightly Brigham Young provides this excellent contrast to Joseph Smith, who was theologically minded, intensely charismatic, oratorically gifted and a graphomaniac. He just wrote and wrote and wrote with tremendous down home eloquence. Like a kind of, there's, there's a, there's a Whitmanian aspect to, to just. That's not Brigham Young. Brigham Young is an organizer.

[Peter Coviello]

Right.

[Jack Myers]

And he is called by many historians the great colonizer of the West. He is going to be the great systematizer. So where Joseph Smith has left behind this intense cosmology that's kind of under codified, he is going to turn it into a structure of leadership in which he sits at the top and he distributes authority carefully. And that makes him very shrewd. It's easy to think of him, I find in my own writing. I have to resist the urge, which I don't fully resist, to think of him as kind of a villain in as much as the theology of Mormonism is ungovernably multiple. Before Joseph Smith is murdered, polygamy is just for men. But is it just for men? Well, the women in the Female Relief Society had some other idea. And then Brigham systematize, systematizes. He patriarchalizes. An already patriarchal culture. He bans African American priesthood. He identifies with the racial state even as he disidentifies from the United States as such. He just thinks the Mormons deserve an imperial investiture. So he's that sort of complicated figure. He believes that the United States is doomed. He's also incredibly pragmatic and he wants to protect native peoples. That what you mentioned before about the Mormons fleeing Salt Lake, when people wonder why there are so many Mormon settlements out west, going all the way down to Mexico, all the way up the coast out to the west. It's in part because he thought the federal government is not going to slaughter all of us if we're scattered not just in Salt Lake, but in these outposts everywhere. That's a response to this sense of incursion and the sense of vulnerability that marks the landscape today.

[Peter Coviello]

Right. You know, well remember that the, the army comes in order to support the idea that they're going to install their own governor. The fight is for the Mormons to be led by their own. And that is what is negotiated because Brigham Young becomes the new governor of Utah. I guess it gets named later on territory. Yeah, the territory of Utah. Buchanan pardons the Mormons for their rebellion after they accept this US Federal authority. The leader of the Nauvoo, sort of the capper on the story is a guy named John Lee and his fate. He's the leader of the Nauvoo Legion. John Lee is the only one charged with murder after that Mountain Meadows massacre and was executed years later.

[Jack Myers]

Yep, 77 I think many years later.

[Peter Coviello]

Like even Brigham Young has, has given this guy up. The time has come when they will try John D. Lee and not the Mormon Church. And that's what we have always wanted. So at that point they have really secured their place in this place they call Deseret, but is going to be renamed Utah. And after this break coming up, we will come back and talk about after the rebellion concludes, how Mormonism in Utah eventually settles into American life.

[Tim Spengler]

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[Peter Coviello]

Okay, we're back discussing the Mormons after the violence of the rebellion ends. We're in still pre civil war really, aren't we, Peter? Which I imagine has really changed the whole calculus of this situation. 1861, when that begins, a lot that had to do with Utah in effect gets. Gets eclipsed by what's happening back east.

[Jack Myers]

I think that's right though. What will be of real consequence for the Mormons? Only one way to think about the Civil War is as a clarifying contest over the extent and meaning of state sovereignty as opposed to federal sovereignty. And of course, federal sovereignty wins extremely. It wins with an enormous and unpredicted body count. So on the one hand, the Mormons survive triumphantly. They survived the Federal Incursion of 1857, 1858, and they returned to Salt Lake with a kind of triumphal look at us. On the other hand, what happens between 1866 and 1888 and 1890? A constant, constant, constant legal undermining of the conditions of existence of the Mormons, which to say a series of acts, one after another after another after another that criminalize polygamy, that make essentially make practicing the religion practicing particularly seditious and make all but impossible the continued existence of the Mormons. Yeah, well, it's inside the federal fold.

[Peter Coviello]

It's legislated by no less than Congress. Several different acts repeatedly. Yeah. The Moral Anti Bigamy act passed in 1862 by Congress outlawed plural marriage in US all US territories. Also limited church property ownership. It kind of weakly enforced during the American Civil War. Then comes the Edmonds act in 1882. This is 20 years later, which officially disenfranchises polygamists, made unlawful cohabitation a crime which was easier to prosecute than polygamy. Polygamists had no voting. If you were going to be a polygamist, you'd have no voting. You could not hold office, you could not be in a jury. Sounds pretty good to me. Yeah. Three Edmonds is. The third one is the Edmonds Tucker Act. Eighteen. Five years later, 1887 dissolves the LDS Church as a legal entity, imposes federal control over Utah institutions. That had to be the big one, right?

[Jack Myers]

Yeah. And that's. No. So the Mormons are, are, are populous and they have allies back east and they indeed have lobbyists and stuff like that. And there's a great. I've forgotten the man's name, but there's a. Their lobbyist in DC says something like, you know, I've been doing this a long time and I've never seen anything like it. Back when, when there were states in the south determined to hold on to slavery, there were many thousands of people willing to support them. Indeed, at the north, there are many thousands of people to support them. You are a body of three or four thousand people. And the fifty millions of the United States have decided polygamy will be exterminated. And the word he uses is exterminated. And what he doesn't have to say is, and if it's not, you will be wow. Of course. Incredible decimation of native peoples in the West. Once again, I will say the pretext for a lot of that decimation was not land theft, it was religion. And a religion that deranged people sexually. The native peoples, they didn't live in coupled households. They didn't have houses. They needed to be disciplined into that. This is how the native ill fittedness for American life was again and again spoken. Which of course had great resonances for the Mormons. And the Mormons polygamousness.

[Peter Coviello]

Interesting.

[Jack Myers]

They knew what extermination looked like.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

Was very near them. And so this is the context in which at the end of the century, they. They end up renouncing polygamy as a condition to gain statehood for Utah and with it the protections and sovereignty that come with statehood.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. The screws had been tightened. 1887.

[Jack Myers]

So much.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah. By 1890, the LDS Church's president now understand, three years later, is the Edmunds Tucker Act. 1887, which prior to this I'd never heard of. That really does the legal job of. Of disincorporating, corporating this. This church seizing church assets, imposing federal control over territorial institutions, including schools and elections. I mean, big time, they come down with a hammer. It's in 1890 that the LDS Church kind of relents and their president, Wilford Woodruff, issues a manifesto that officially ended plural marriages. So if you ever wondered, well, what happened to that polygamy that was such a big deal in the 1800s for the Mormons, this is what happened. The federal government came down hard.

[Jack Myers]

The federal government threatened to murder everyone. And that had a pretty normalizing effect. I'll read you a little passage in a letter Woodruff wrote to, which is for me, incredibly revealing. He writes this letter in 1889 to a friend of his name, William Ekin. He says we are now, politically speaking, the dependent or ward of the United States, but in a state capacity, we should be freed from such dependency and would possess the powers and independence of a sovereign state, a dependent or ward. What's striking to me about that is that is exactly, as you know, that is exactly the language with which the state described the relation of native tribes through the federal government. They were wards.

[Peter Coviello]

Wow.

[Jack Myers]

And this is 1889. This is the time of Wounded Knee. Man like Woodruff is not wrong to think that while we are a dependent or ward of the state, we are fit to be murdered.

[Peter Coviello]

Interesting.

[Jack Myers]

We know what that looks like. So those are the stakes. Yeah, those are the stakes of renouncing polygamy, which is, of course, an enormous, hugely disruptive act. You've been told for however many years, however many decades, that this is an essential part of the theology of your religion, which you've been willing to stake your life on.

[Peter Coviello]

Interesting.

[Jack Myers]

And then it's renounced.

[Peter Coviello]

Yes.

[Jack Myers]

In the course of the 1890s.

[Peter Coviello]

I'm going to ask you a last question here about legacy, but before we answer this, I just want to emphasize what is such an interesting piece of learning for myself, I hope for listeners as well that the real unique aspect of the story, the theme of this is that the. That the Mormons really related to Native American tribes so much because of course, their history, that which is written in the golden plates, puts them here as essentially native tribes. They're just coming back to where their previous civilization was. In their mythology would be the word for me. But I guess their Book of Mormon states it.

[Jack Myers]

Their scripture.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah, their scripture. Sorry.

[Jack Myers]

A fantastic. And this is one of the things that I try to write about in my book. There's an environmental historian named Jared Farmer, I think writes very well. An intensely fraught identification with native people whose lands they, the Mormons feel they are entitled to, who they will attempt to colonize and biophilanthropize, one could say, but whom they also understand to be fellow refugees from an imperial America, but an imperial America that they also want to be a part of because they want to be imperialists. It makes for a fantastically fraught set of relations that stretches across the whole of the 19th century. The whole of the 19th century.

[Peter Coviello]

Have they been uniquely good in their relations with Native tribes within? No.

[Jack Myers]

I mean, they had been better than the federal government, but of course that's a tremendously low bar. Yeah, you know, they were one of the major players in the West. Of course, in the west at the time, there's a lot of warfare between different tribes. Equestrian tribes like the apaches and the Utes have the upper hand. Particularly they are a route for slave trading. The Mormons are opposed to slave trading. That makes the Paiutes an ally of theirs. But ally is a strong word. The Paiutes are trying to survive. There are a lot of talk about the Ghost Dance. Remember the Ghost Dance?

[Peter Coviello]

Sure.

[Don Wildman]

Of course.

[Jack Myers]

In the 1880s, the federal government will repeatedly say the Mormons are behind all. Oh, wow, the Mormons.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

Because it has an eschatological and redemptive end. And they think that the Mormons are secret. Throughout the 19th century, the federal government kept saying the Mormons are secretly in league with the native people to murder the Americans. And in some ways they were, you know, again, in ways they were totally willing to also murder native people themselves to take land themselves. It's hard to over describe the fraughtness of Mormon native relation in the west in the 19th century.

[Peter Coviello]

Utah becomes a state in 1896. And that's late, you know, when you consider that California became one in 1850, so almost 40 years earlier. There's a difference between that. But that's because of all these things that had to be legislated and worked out and nailed down before we're going to give you the state that you're insisting on having. Before you do that, we're going to have to integrate you into the American way of life, which they do. How does the legacy of this rebellion. And now we have completely defined it as an ongoing, many faceted aspect of things. The idea of their desert kingdom. How does that all square now?

[Jack Myers]

That's a great question in certain ways. The first thing I'll say is I'm the. I'm ill equipped to answer it because my. My scholarly interest in the Mormons ends at literally the moment they renounce polygamy. That's the part of the Mormon trajectory that, that I. Most interesting, though, I think you can see from the Mormon side, it's not entirely unfair to say what had been a vigorously counter Protestantism, something that understood itself as improving what they would read as the apostasy of American Christianity, becomes in essence another subset of American Christianity, another kind of belief that seems more tolerable, that is better able to sit at the table of American para Christianities which simply had not been before. Renouncing polygamy. That, of course, makes the Mormons a different kind of player on the national stage. And it's a kind of a. If you're me, it's a striking transformation. Like a people who really were willing to stake their lives on their opposition to the imperial United States, become like avatars of good citizenship.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah.

[Jack Myers]

And Harold Bloom will call them the American religion. Yeah.

[Peter Coviello]

Huge patriotism. You know, if there's ever a place I think as patriotic, it's the state of Utah. You know, it's the Mormons. The irony is unbelievable.

[Jack Myers]

And what's also sort of puzzling is that the Mormons sort of stop living as though they live inside sacred time, but rather they treat the 19th century itself, the moment from 1830 to 1818 90, as their sacred history. But what that does, there are many effects of that. So there's lots of celebrations about the. The sacred history of the Mormons, but it installs statehood and national belonging as a kind of telos.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah, right.

[Jack Myers]

And all that you and I have been talking about today was. Well, that was really not inevitable. And in many respects it wasn't Desired.

[Peter Coviello]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jack Myers]

And it's almost like that was sacralization. Yeah.

[Peter Coviello]

Every religion has its. Its schism, you know, the division within it and then. And then the reunification of it. It seems like that's inevitable for all religions. For. For Mormonism, it's with the country itself. Right. That's the schism. And then when they reunite, it's a different kind of practice altogether.

[Jack Myers]

And of course, there are a lot of Mormons who do not accept the renunciation of. They think it is for cheap and worldly expedients. And that's where the f. LDS Fundamentalist Mormon Church comes from. And there's plenty of segments in still polygamous. Still polygamous west who understand themselves precisely as. As fundamentalists, as not having ceded the ground of what to them was essential to the theology. To the theology. To the lived theology of Mormonism.

[Peter Coviello]

Right.

[Jack Myers]

Which was given up, in their view, for the. The. The, you know, the cheap and expedient reason of statehood, which for Woodruff was like, well, that's going to save our lives.

[Peter Coviello]

Well, yeah.

[Jack Myers]

Keep us from being annihilated.

[Peter Coviello]

Nice to not have the federal government after you every day of your life.

[Jack Myers]

It's nice not have a third of the federal government ringing your city, although

[Peter Coviello]

those fundamentals don't have an opinion on the, you know, federal forces coming in any given day. Yeah, it's interesting.

[Jack Myers]

The ironies rebound and rebound and rebound across the 20th century.

[Peter Coviello]

Sure.

[Jack Myers]

Though others are better able to speak of that than I.

[Peter Coviello]

It's been a joy to talk to you. Peter Coviello is a professor of history at the University of Illinois, and we have been discussing his book, Make Yourselves Gods, Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism. What a fascinating book that is to get. Peter, is there a website that we should be looking at ways to keep track of you?

[Jack Myers]

I am the head of the English department at UIC in Chicago, and you can look. If you put in my name in Chicago, you'll find more than enough about me.

[Peter Coviello]

There'll be a line outside your office.

[Jack Myers]

But, Peter, thank you. What a pleasure. I appreciate it so much.

[Don Wildman]

Hey, thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays, all kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American history Hit with me. Don Wildman so grateful for your support.

[Jack Myers]

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