This is a fascinating read (in my opinion) about when The Government of The United States escheated The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/136/1/


I find it particularly interesting that...

"Congress had passed an organic act for establishing a government in the Territory of Utah on the 9th of September, 1850, 9 Stat. 453, but the territorial government was not organized until after the passage of the church charter as above stated. After its organization, the territorial legislature, on two different occasions, passed confirmatory acts which had the effect of validating said charter."

They basically agreed to be governed by The United States and the Mormon leadership directed its people to break the law with regards to polygamy.

I hadn't known how brazen LDS Corp was but then this part of Mormon History hasn't changed at all!

I didn't know this either and I'm a Brigham Young descendent!

"After the establishment of the Utah Territory, the Latter-day Saints did not relinquish the idea of a "State of Deseret". From 1862 to 1870, a group of Mormon elders under Young's leadership met as a shadow government after each session of the territorial legislature to ratify the new laws under the name of the "state of Deseret"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Deseret

Brigham didn't play his cards well. The mormons had it in the bag to own all the great basin. The mormons were the first farmer settlers to Nevada, to the rich Carson Valley. They had their farms and it was right at the cusp of the discovery of the great Commstock load of Virginia city 1857. But Brigham just couldn't quite make up his mind. Sometimes he wanted to send pioneers to farm and also dig for gold then he was calling all mormons home and then sending them back. They finally gave up abandoned everything and now Nevada is something else than what it could have been.

The same goes for Colorado. It was uncharted territory no one quite knew what was there except that the Ute Indians were violent and would kill anyone they saw. But the mountain valleys of Colorado are the prettiest lands around. And were up for the taking up until the 1880s. And gold was and still is everywhere hidden away.

Wyoming was another disaster, Brigham had all of Laramie county in the bag but he annoyed everyone out there by burning fort Bridger and stealing stuff that wasn't his. So the folks carved that chunk out of Utah. And of course cut off everything else.

Sorry I meant Sweetwater county not Laramie.

Like a thief in a blighted land. He was more Mafioso than Modern Moses.

Deseret could not have become independent.

The state sat right on some very busy transportation routes and the Feds were never far away. Recall the context of Mountain Meadows. BY was terrified of the US army, tried to unify the Mormons and the Indians, then capitulated rather than take on the Union. From four to nine years later that army proved its mettle against the Confederacy. After that war, Washington turned its attention again to Utah.

It took the Mormons a year or two from their removal to Utah to realize that independence would not work due to the overwhelming power of the US government in the east and its satellite cities in the West. From that date on, the question was how much Utah could persuade Washington to give.

BY was not in a strong position relative to the US government.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> BY was not in a strong position relative to the US
> government.

The strange thing is he wasn't without supporters.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_War#Consequences

anono this week Wrote:
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> Brigham didn't play his cards well. The mormons
> had it in the bag to own all the great basin. The
> mormons were the first farmer settlers to Nevada,
> to the rich Carson Valley. They had their farms
> and it was right at the cusp of the discovery of
> the great Commstock load of Virginia city 1857.
> But Brigham just couldn't quite make up his mind.
> Sometimes he wanted to send pioneers to farm and
> also dig for gold then he was calling all mormons
> home and then sending them back. They finally gave
> up abandoned everything and now Nevada is
> something else than what it could have been.
>
> The same goes for Colorado. It was uncharted
> territory no one quite knew what was there except
> that the Ute Indians were violent and would kill
> anyone they saw. But the mountain valleys of
> Colorado are the prettiest lands around. And were
> up for the taking up until the 1880s. And gold was
> and still is everywhere hidden away.
>
> Wyoming was another disaster, Brigham had all of
> Laramie county in the bag but he annoyed everyone
> out there by burning fort Bridger and stealing
> stuff that wasn't his. So the folks carved that
> chunk out of Utah. And of course cut off
> everything else.

You have to remember the government is usually bought and paid for by robber barons. The robber barons wanted to mine Utah and they wanted to break the grip the Mormons had politically so they used their money and influence in Washington DC to go after the Mormon for polygamy.

Things might have been different if Brigham Young threw in with the robber barons but Brigham wanted a theocracy and he wanted to be the man.

Lot's of angles to read in this and at the end of the day there are no saints on either side. It's all about money and power.

Brigham's strategy was to bring so many converts into his empire they would be so established nobody could dig them out. When he found the British and Scandinavians were gullible suckers he found the cheapest ways of bringing them west. This is where the handcarts come in and of course that ended up in the biggest transportation disaster until 9/11 happened. Oddly enough the church celebrates the Willie handcart fiasco.

But Brigham bringing in a large amount of British and Scandinavian converts worked. Also having the country bogged down in a civil war bought Brigham time. He managed to hold ground and then the church managed to hold ground. It had to get rid of polygamy in the temporal sense and it had financial problems that cash tithing fixed.

The church is a survivor mainly because the church had such high numbers of members in the intermountain west and no competing population large enough to break them up. Brigham died a rich man. Briggie did ok. Wilford Woodruff saved the church from the government with the manifesto and Lorenzo Snow saved the church with cash tithing. Later N Eldon Tanner got the church out of debt and made it the big corporation it is today.

If Brigham Young had been truly inspired he wouldn't have stopped in Utah but continued to California and settled the San Francisco Bay Area. The Mormons would have been in the right place at the right time, just before the gold rush.