B (36:49)
Wouldn't it be hilarious if like she starts off the year as the seminary teacher and they're like, wow, she is super detailed on these Doctrine Covenant sections. And then like, right as it got to where Fall Come, Follow me passed us up, you know, right as it got to like, it was like section 10 or something that, that they were like, wait, I feel like she's not quite as deep as she was putting the time in. Yeah, obviously she's probably a better teacher than we are. Well, Wendy, tell your husband we feel bad, but you know what, he can always look back on that severe beating that, that, you know, St Kilda put on Richmond and just think for better times. Because that, that back in March that there are people in Richmond that are still crying about that. That was, that was pretty bad. So thank you for the emails. I know that we say all the time, we get a whole ton of them. There are so many we'd love to respond to and we just don't have time. And even now we spend too much time with Christie's quarter to even do a lot. That's why we're doing like a 19 part series on the church and who's dead in hell, which sounds kind of like a gamble. You could do bets who's dead and in hell? I'll take odds on, you know, Martin Van Buren. So when last we left you, the Saints were trying to negotiate these very difficult politics, but they chose to vote for Zachary Taylor, the Whig candidate. And that factors very prominently in the remainder of these discussions. So the Saints believe that they are going to be able to leverage their conversations with these Whig leaders in order to have a territory established. Because, look, they learn from Thomas Kane that James Polk wasn't going to help them at all. Well, they've now voted for in Iowa, at least they supported the Whig candidate. And so they're hoping that Zachary Taylor is going to become the president who's going to actually reward them for their loyalty for serving? I mean, who is going to be more willing to reward the fact that the Saints are loyal Americans were serving in the Mormon Battalion. Then Zachary Taylor himself, the, the head of the army that invaded the. The Mexican Southwest, you know, the, The. The hero of Buena Vista. Now Zachary Taylor gets removed from his position. Well, Winfield Scott gets appointed overall command of the invasion of Mexico City, primarily because the Democrats didn't like the fact that Zachary Taylor was so successful. It was one of those, you know, hey, we want to win the war, but dang it, it's a Whig who's winning it. And so they kind of sideline him after he becomes so popular after the Battle of Buena Vista. Unfortunately for them, they choose Winfield Scott, who then captures Mexico City, also a Whig. So the problem for the Democrats was every general that they put up in the Mexican War who became a hero also was a member of the opposing party. And it became. It became an issue. I mean, I can only imagine that the ghost of FDR was thinking, why did I pick Eisenhower? You know, or at least Truman was. Was thinking that, like I should have said something. And because Eisenhower becomes this incredibly famous and popular general, D Day landings, and of course, wins the presidency United States for the Republicans. Well, when Zachary Taylor comes to office, the Saints are very hopeful that unlike Polk, who they've realized is a charlatan who, as we talked about last time that President Young said that he was certainly going to be damned for what he did to the Saints in trying to deceive them by calling the Mormon Battalion. They're hopeful that their military loyalty, their patriotism to this general, their willingness to vote for the Whig candidates in Iowa, that should be enough to secure for themselves good treatment from the Whig politicians generally, but also from Zachary Taylor. Zachary Taylor has a real problem when he becomes president, and that is arguments over slavery had been relatively primarily settled in the years following the Compromise of 1820, the Missouri Compromise. The reason why is the Missouri Compromise drew a line at the southern border of Missouri, right into Mexico, and said that all of the land from the Louisiana Purchase that was north of that line, which is essentially all of the upper Midwest states. It is Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas. It's all of those. That all of those would be free territories forever. And only the areas, only the territories south of that southern border of Missouri in this imaginary line Drawn straight into what was then Mexico, they could be open to slavery. Well, what that meant was the Missouri Compromise effect effectively eliminated the possibility of slavery expanding. I mean, sure, what is today Oklahoma and what is today Arkansas were included in that area, and they were open to slavery. So you could maybe get two, at the most, three more slave states out of it. But that was it. There was nowhere else to expand. So what that meant was the whole idea that slavery was going to continue to expand all over the North American continent, that it was going to slavery was going to have more political and economic power. It at least appeared to be over because America had run out of territory that slavery could expand into until the Mexican War. And that's the reason why, you know, you. It's almost something people make fun of, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ends the Mexican War. Because I've talked about what a big deal it is to both American history, but especially the Latter Day Saint history. Part of the reason why it's such a big deal is it expands by almost a third the territory of the United States. So you used to have nowhere that anyone could expand. Slavery couldn't expand because it had already been settled. And then overnight, you have all of the territory of California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, part of Colorado, Wyoming, and half of what is, no, not half, but a good portion of what is today Texas. All at once, all of that territory comes into the union. And the most important part of understanding this is that we think of that territory today as being, you know, California's got, like, way too many people there. If only, if only there were people living in California, it'd be a great place to go. Right? You know, why don't more people live in California? Because Californians live there. And that's not a shot on Californians. The point is, all of us would live in San Diego if we could all fit in San Diego. If we could afford to live there, we would live there. Right? So. And that goes all the way back to our Mormon battalion ancestors who got there and were like, you know, this place is pretty nice, but there were very, very, very few Americans living in any part of that Mexican session. Of that land taken from Mexico. The largest population area is actually the Latter Day Saints settlement that is blossoming in Salt Lake City between 1847 and 1849. Then, as you all know, gold is discovered in California and California's demographics are transformed Overnight. California is going to pass Utah in population and it's never going to look back overnight. Within roughly nine months, California is going to go from having a population of 7,000 people to a population of 100 and 150,000 people, it is just going to explode because of the Gold Rush. And so when Zachary Taylor becomes president, it is this very weird political time in which the Whigs don't want to see slavery expand. The Democratic Party is generally very pro slavery, and they very much want to see slavery expand. In fact, most of the soldiers who fight in the Mexican War, they came from Southern states. So, you know, they would say things in Congress like, let me get this straight, my brother who went to go fight with the Tennessee military in Mexico, that he can't now move to Arizona with his family and his slaves because he has slaves. So he's good enough to go fight and die for you, but he's not good enough to be able to take his property there after he wins the war. So there were huge arguments over this, and Utah is going to factor prominently in these arguments because the way that the US Constitution had established the creation of territories was that territories petitioned to become, you know, they, they petitioned to become a territory and they were controlled by the federal government. But if these places petitioned to become states, well, then once they were voted in as states, they weren't controlled by the federal government. So, I mean, Utah is a great example of this, Right? So when Utah Territory. This is a spoiler alert. When Utah Territory is established, it does get established. I know that some of you were, you know, thought that was hanging by the Gossamers thread. But when Utah Territory gets established, Brigham Young is, is going to be named the governor, which is incredible. But almost all of the other federal officers are not Latter Day Saints and they are not living in Utah. We touched on this a little bit last time. So territories were actually governed almost exclusively by the federal government because the federal government could appoint and remove all of the judges, all of the governors, anytime they wanted to ensure there was a territorial legislature that was elected by the people, but all of their laws could be vetoed by that governor or overturned by the territorial Supreme Court. So Taylor conceives of a plan. Now, I know, I know, this is super boring. I get it. I'm bored telling you this. Everybody listening is bored by this. But I'm telling you something that I guarantee you will not have heard in other places. Huh? The guarantee. Well, I mean, we probably have some, like, history professors listening. They hate listening. They don't want to listen. They're listening to see all the things I get wrong. But, and that is Zachary Taylor comes up with a plan, a secret Plan if the problem is all of these areas that are going to be created into territories from all these Mexican lands and the federal government controls those territories, which means we now have to have arguments about whether they are free or slave territories. What if we skipped the territorial stage altogether? What if out of the Mexican session, what we got from the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, what if we just formed two gigantic mega states, the state of New Mexico, that would be all of New Mexico and Arizona today, as well as probably part of what is today Texas and part of what is today Utah, Nevada, and then we created a mega state of California out of what is today California and also Nevada and Utah and Colorado and part of Wyoming and all of that was one gigantic state. This is the, the idea behind it. The federal government has a right to regulate slavery in the territories and that's what causes all of the argument. But if New Mexico, if, if mega New Mexico and mega California becomes states, well then there's no territories for the federal government to argue about slavery over because all of the states admit to this. Any state has the right to outlaw slavery inside of its own state. They just don't have the right to push that on anyone else. Right. So even in, even in Louisiana they're going to say, sure, you want to make slavery illegal in Illinois, you're welcome to it, but don't try to push that on me. Right. So it's a, it's a well established idea. States can choose to eliminate slavery. So Zachary Taylor, he, he has hundreds of slaves. He is a, owns a gigantic plantation in Louisiana. He is a slave owner, but he is first and foremost a nationalist. He wasn't just general of the army for kicks and giggles, he was an American nationalist. And he thought the idea of coming to a civil war over these territories taken from Mexico was preposterous. He especially believed that places like New Mexico and Arizona and whatever reports he'd heard from Utah that they were such desolate, dry Nevada, horrible places. What are you going to move out there and grow cotton? It doesn't ever rain. And so part of his argument was we can't fight a civil war over these territories that are essentially worthless. Now, I apologize to everyone living in New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and Arizona, but that is exactly what Zachary Taylor thought about our, our states, that you can't actually even grow anything there. What, are you going to take slaves out there and have them pick cactus? What are you going to do? There's, there's nothing you could do. Now the reality is Zachary Taylor didn't realize that modern irrigation techniques would occur because Arizona is one of the world's leading producers of cotton now. Right. So it actually does grow cotton quite well, but thanks to modern irrigation techniques. But at the time, he couldn't have. He couldn't see that, and he couldn't be expected to see that. So this is Taylor's plan. He is going to send some emissaries there. Now, this is a secret plan. It's only, you know, this is research uncovered at the cabinet level with secret documents. Publicly, he's not saying anything about it because this is what he wants to have happen. He wants everyone in New Mexico to propose this giant state government. So the Congress then is in a position of trying to refuse the request of a state to join the United States, something that would be much less likely to happen. Similarly, he wants mega California to just send their constitution to the Congress to be ratified, and it includes all of those areas. So he sends these secret emissaries to try to try to effect this change. And the person who comes to Utah is a guy by the name of General John Wilson. Now, I gotta tell you, Wilson, well, he was from Missouri. So this is, if you're thinking of who could I have go negotiate with a bunch of Mormons living in the middle of. Of Utah. Oh, why are they living there? Well, they were driven out of the United States. Oh, really? Why? What happened? You know, Missouri and Illinois happened. Well, what better person to relate to them than someone from Missouri? But in actuality, Wilson, he's been appointed the Indian agent in California. But he has a secret mission. His secret mission is to go because, look, there are only two population centers in all of what is today California. There's Salt Lake, and then there's where all the miners have gone in both, you know, in California and the, you know, the Sacramento area and in Los Angeles. This is, you know, in the midst of the gold rush. And so there is a rapidly increasing population in California, but the other population center is Salt Lake. So Taylor wants to send Wilson to the Mormons to say, hey, I know you guys just left the country because you were so desperate to get away from these states that controlled you and then murdered you. What we want you to do is to agree to become another minority group in part of a larger state of this larger California scheme in order to save the Union. The plan is there won't be any more arguments over slavery because all of these, these two states will come in as free states and then we won't be able to argue it anymore. Well, I think that the cabinet that Taylor's cabinet thought the. The biggest sticking point in this plan is going to be the Mormons. They're not going to go join themselves to California when they are. Were desperate to get out of the country in the first place. But in fact, he, he gets there and he meets with Brigham Young and talks to him about this, that, that telling him that the. The Latter Day Saints were in a position to help save the Union. This is what, what John Wilson tells. He tells Brigham Young, this is what he writes back. He said, I found the Mormons with a constitution already made and enforced. I mean, he gets to Utah, yeah, they're already, they're ready for a state government of their own. I called on Brigham Young. He treated me with great cordiality, and I at once delivered him the message that you had directed me, that they. That they should receive from the administration the same and protection with all other good citizens, that they should not be molested by mobs or unlawful assemblies if the administration could by any means prevent it. So, I mean, very good that, you know, telling the, don't worry, we're not planning to kill you or let other people kill you. That's always a good way to start off with Latter Day Saints have been driven, you know, 1500 miles out of the country. But he then goes on to tell, those are the formalities, that he knew that the Latter Day Saints have been treated very poorly. And so he tells them about this plan. We need you to agree to become part of this larger California so that we can eliminate this problem. I boldly declared to them that I saw no way to avoid it but for the people east and west of the Sierra, the Sierra Nevadas, to form one state. And this, I told them, was the opinion of you. He's talking to President Taylor again and of your friends and that you and them greatly desired that to be affected. He. He said that, you know, this is what the president wants of you. This is what you need. You know, Brigham Young had just the previous Sunday said that it was not the people of the United States that had persecuted us, but sin that dwells within them that has done all the evil. The very days that we are experiencing now have been told you in the United States for the last 18 years. God Almighty will give the United States a pill that will puke them to death that is worse than lobelia, which is what you took in order to induce vomiting. I am prophet enough to prophesy the downfall of the government that has driven us out 18 years ago. I told them of it. Woe to the United States. I see them going to death and to destruction. So, you know, I mean, that could be taken several ways. It could go either way, right?
