Philip Rubenstein
Go West Young Man, Part 2: The Mormon Trail
Philip Rubenstein - Go West Young Man, Part 2: The Mormon Trail
- Hello everyone, I’m sure there’s others I’ve excluded from that. Hello, welcome. Welcome to part two of “An Exploration of America’s Expansion Westward.” And I have to say right at the start, I mean one of the real pleasures and joys of preparing for a lockdown talk sometimes is that you get the opportunity to delve deep into a subject you really didn’t know very much about before. And it’s part of the reason why I was really keen to look at the Mormon trail and the history of the church. And it’s part of the story of the settling of the West, but it’s also an extraordinary tale in its own right. And it’s a tale of religion, of persecution, of polygamy, and of charismatic leadership. And we’re going to be looking at all of those things in the next hour. I’m sure that those of you who were raised in the US will know a lot more about this subject than the rest of us do. For those who live outside of the US and weren’t brought up in the US education system, if you are like me, Mormon history is probably something of a blank page in your mind. So that’s my mission I think in the next hour, which is to fill that page with words and pictures. And before we get started proper, I just would like just to say a quick word about the use of language over the course of the next hour.
So Mormons tend not to use the word Mormon to describe themselves, although some do, and it was kind of reclaimed by the church some years ago. Officially they’re, right, wait for it, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, okay? Or for short, you know, it’s the LDS church. Sometimes they might even call themselves the Saints. So for the avoidance of using terminology that I’m not going to be able to get my mouth round never mind my head, I’m going to use the terms Mormons and also Saints, and I’ll just use them interchangeably. And we’ll also just use the term Gentiles, which is a term that’s familiar to those of us who are Jewish. And it’s also used by Mormons when they refer to non-Mormons, or at least it certainly was in the 19th century. So I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. And now let’s get going. The story of Mormonism, well, the story begins in the early part of the 19th century. So this is an image of an Awakening in an area of kind of west central New York State, which was known at the time as the Burned-Over District.
This is a period, the beginning of the 19th century, this is a period of great religious fervour. And it’s a time when there’s a great exodus from New England to Upstate New York. I was just talking to Hannah just before we started, and she’s from Vermont and she was saying that she knows the name Joseph Smith locally because there’s a memorial to him because it’s where the Smith family came from. And it certainly is, it’s where the Smith family came from. It’s where the Young family came from. And they leave Vermont in search, well, I suppose you could say in search of an awakening. And they, like many, many other very poor families, they’re drawn to this area which has got now a kind of a reputation for this wave of urgent, dramatic preaching, which sets fire to the whole of the state metaphorically, such that it becomes known as the Burned-Over District. That’s where it gets its name from. And it’s a time when, William talked about this a couple of weeks ago when he was talking about religion in the US, it’s a time when people are desperate to escape what they see as the narrow confines of Puritanism and Puritan morality. And they’re willing to entertain all kinds of weird and wonderful new creeds.
For example, there’s one preacher called Joseph Dilk and he proclaims himself the Messiah, and he promises to found a new holy city in Philadelphia. And there’s another prophet who likewise, he promises he’s going to save the world and he’s going to do it by walking the streets of New York with a sword and a seven-foot ruler. Don’t ask about the ruler, go figure. I mean, I’ve got no idea. And forgive me, I didn’t check. So perhaps we shouldn’t think it unusual or untoward that a young man by the name of Joseph Smith would one day announce that he’s had a visitation from the Angel Moroni. So here he is in a lithograph from a number of years later, of the great visitation. So this is how it starts. Smith is, he’s age 24, and he claims to the world that when he was young, this angel called Moroni visited him and told him that it was he, Joseph Smith, who was the prophet of the Lord, and his destiny was to redeem the world. And he instructs him to dig into a nearby mountainside. So of course, Smith obliges, he digs into the mountainside, and good Lord, he uncovers a pair of golden plates.
And the stories on these plates were written, he says, by Moroni’s father, who’s a man called Mormon. So that’s where the name comes from, it’s Moroni’s father. And they describe how Jesus after His resurrection decides He’s going to visit America. Yes, He lands in America and He preaches in America. The plates we’re told were written in ancient Egyptian characters. And the miracle is that even though Joseph was uneducated, with God’s help, he was able to translate the plates himself. And he’s written them into a kind of a quasi-Biblical English. And thus, the first edition of the Book of Mormon was published in 1830. Well, he starts out with a handful of followers. It’s mainly family and a few friends who are helping him and bankrolling him. But he starts to peddle the book around the countryside, and he’s very energetic and he calls his new faith the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. It’s very clear that Joseph Smith is, has a talent. He’s tremendously energetic and he’s a charismatic public speaker, and he’s entertaining. You have to be entertaining to hold the audience in those days. And by the end of 1830, in a very short order of time, he’s managed to turn this small band of followers into several hundred.
And among the earliest of the converts is one Brigham Young and his family. So from these very small beginnings, I mean, you might, and you might think kind of somewhat fanciful beginnings, Smith’s church starts to develop remarkably rapidly. And if you’re wondering well, how can that be? Because it doesn’t seem to really be built on anything very solid, bear in mind the times and the circumstances. Most of the early converts, including Brigham Young, they’re barely literate, but they’ve all come from New England. So having had that kind of Puritan background and the Puritan upbringing, they all have a very deep respect for anything that seems to take on the authority of scripture. And Smith is smart. He doesn’t say the Book of Mormon is a replacement for the Bible. He says it’s a companion piece to the Bible. The revelation that he shares with his community is that when Jesus died and after the resurrection, that’s when the trouble begins. There was a great evil throughout the world, a great apostasy, and this apostasy affected the church. But all is well now because divine authority has at last been restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. Well, this is also a time, and again, this attests to Joseph Smith’s smarts.
This is also a time that while Americans are proud of their new country, they’ve also got something of an inferiority complex because America lacks the great history and the great achievements of the Old World of Europe. So you can imagine what a comfort it is to be told that Jesus came to America. And also to hear Joseph preach that the Garden of Eden was in fact located in America. In fact, to be precise, the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson County, Missouri. Well, I could spend the next 10 minutes delving into the finer points of Mormon theology but quite honestly, I’d rather play a song. This is Elder Price from the show “Book of Mormon”. And he’s just come through a terrible crisis of faith. And the way he’s resolved his crisis is by doubling down on all of his beliefs.
Video clip plays.
Here he is. ♪ Ever since I was a child I tried to be the best ♪ ♪ So what happened ♪ ♪ My family and friends all said I was blessed ♪ ♪ So what happened ♪ ♪ It was supposed to be all so exciting ♪ ♪ To be teaching of Christ ‘cross the sea ♪ ♪ But I allowed my faith to be shaken ♪ ♪ Oh what’s the matter with me ♪ ♪ I’ve always longed to help the needy ♪ ♪ To do the things I never dared ♪ ♪ This was the time for me to step up ♪ ♪ So then why was I so scared ♪ ♪ A warlord who shoots people in the face ♪ ♪ What’s so scary about that ♪ ♪ I must trust that my Lord is mightier ♪ ♪ And always has my back ♪ ♪ Now I must be completely devout ♪ ♪ I can’t have even one shred of doubt ♪ ♪ I believe ♪ ♪ That the Lord God created the universe ♪ ♪ I believe ♪ ♪ That He sent His only Son to die for my sins ♪ ♪ And I believe ♪ ♪ That ancient Jews built boats and sailed to America ♪ ♪ I am a Mormon ♪ ♪ And a Mormon just believes ♪
- Well, what can I say? Every religion has its foundation myths, and they’re all based around miracles. So you can argue that this one is no different to any others. Let’s get back to Joseph Smith. What kind of person is he? Well, we’ve already seen that he’s charismatic, he’s dynamic, he’s a mesmerising preacher. And as you can see from this portrait, he’s also good looking, which never does any harm. He’s a man of great inventiveness. He seems to have a talent for letting, for just making sure things never get dull, for just, you know, for just always kind of keeping them spiced up. He shares this kind of constant flow of divine revelations. He’s forever creating these new bodies of government and privilege. He’s got his own 12 Apostles. He creates the Lords of the Lion, the Lions of the Lord, the Council of the 50. And he even invents his own Praetorian Guard who are called the Sons of Dan or the Danites, and we’ll see more of them a little bit later. But behind it all, he’s also something of an autocrat. He starts slowly to build real power by organising the Saints to buy land and set up cooperative business ventures. Now these Mormon communities start to become financially very successful. And Smith ensures that everything, including dealings with the Gentiles, are all rooted exclusively through the church.
So Mormon settlements, they start to kind of look and feel a bit like a company town. And if you are willing to submit to the church’s authority, well, you could do very well. And of course they get a reputation and this starts to attract more converts and more people, more members are encouraged to join the new church. What else do we know about Joseph Smith? Well, it turns out he’s something of a chancer. In 1837, he establishes a Mormon bank with virtually no capital, and he issues large quantities of bank notes, which turn out to be practically worthless. A year later, surprise, surprise, he has to flee in the dead of night to escape his creditors. He’s also kind of not very scrupulous when it comes to politics. He’s quite happy to get his hands fairly dirty, and this was a dirty time in US politics, of course, the mid-19th century. While other individual men and women jealously guard their vote as their rights as citizens, Smith is more than happy to use his power in the church to marshal his followers into a block vote, a powerful block vote, and to sell that vote to the most attractive bidder.
I should say, by the way, that the funds he obtains from these actions, they go into the church. They don’t, they never go into Joseph Smith’s pocket. So Smith’s faith is genuine. I think it’s genuine, and he seems to truly believe. I mean, he’s a devout person, but he also, he’s got this tremendous belief in himself. He believes in the visitations from the angel. He believes in the gold plates, and he really believes that he’s God’s own prophet. But his later discovery towards the end of his life of a tract called the Book of Abraham, which is supposedly he says written by the patriarch Abraham himself. Well, that falls into a different category. It’s written on genuine papyrus. And it turns out that Smith bought the papyrus from a travelling mummy exhibition. And he so-called translated it himself. But many years later, after his death, when this Egyptian script was now decipherable, guess what? The Book of Abraham turns out to be a bog-standard funerary text. In other words, giving advice to the newly deceased about how to survive in the afterlife.
So there is something of the Elmer Gantry in Joseph Smith. For those of you who remember, Elmer Gantry is the, it’s the 1960 movie of the same name, which is all about a hard-drinking, fast-talking travelling salesman with a charismatic personality who infuses biblical passages and fervour into all of his pitches, delivering salvation and collecting cash. Here’s the trailer for the movie where you’ll see Jean Simmons plays Sister Sharon and Jean Simmons is always playing Sister something. Arthur Kennedy is the sceptical journalist. And Elmer Gantry is played by the inimitable Burt Lancaster.
Video clip plays.
[Narrator] Elmer Gantry is coming.
Elmer Gantry is an all-American boy. He’s interested in money, sex and religion.
Who is this Elmer Gantry, and what do you really know about him? His background, his reputation, and what does he want? Money, my job, you, what?
Bill.
In 1917, Mr. Gantry was expelled from a theological seminary in Kansas for seducing a Miss Lula Banes, the deacon’s daughter, in the church where he had that day delivered a Christmas sermon.
What the hell is the big idea?
Elmer, honey.
You really think I want to sit still for a shakedown?
Baby, how could I put this piece on you?
The old game, huh?
Who’s going to take the word of a five buck hooker against Elmer Gantry? I only wanted to see you for.
For what?
Well, for.
For what?
What do you think will get you into God’s own glorious Heaven? This ace of spades? Your bank book? Or this pledge to be a good Christian?
I’d like to tear those holy wings off you, make a real woman out of you. I’d show you what Heaven’s like. No golden stairways or harp music or silvery clouds, just ecstasy, coming and going. Sin, sin, sin. You’re all sinners. You’re all doomed to perdition.
What is a revival? Is it a church? Is it a religion? Or is it a circus sideshow complete with freaks, magic, and rabble rousing?
Well, what did Elmer say at the start of the clip? Money, sex and religion. And this brings us to the most contentious of all beliefs and practises of the early Saints, which is the practise of polygamy. Now I have to say, in a, in preparing for today, I read around quite a bit and I read a surprising amount of material that sought to rationalise polygamy. Some of it was claiming that well, you have to understand it was a product of its time. It was an understandable reaction against the old Puritan morality, which had become just intolerable to many. Or one of the rationalisations is well, you know, it was a way of building up numbers very quickly in the Mormon church by producing lots of Mormon babies. And you know, you also look at kind of some of the language that’s used by some Mormon apologists. And they use terms, they don’t say, they don’t use the word polygamy, they use terms like plural marriage. You know which is, it’s like a way of saying well, if you know, if marriage is a good thing, then plural marriage, well that must be even better. I have to say I don’t buy any of it.
And of course it’s not like it goes both ways. You know, that men could take many wives and women could also take many husbands, you know? No, you know, polygamy was a one-way deal. It was for men only. So I’m just going to offer my own, and let me say personal analysis, of polygamy in the early Mormon church, which is that in my estimation, it develops through three phases, the personal phase, the economic phase and the political phase. And these three phases, they happen one after the other, but they’re not distinct from each other. They’re like a kind of a layered cake with one neatly fitting on top of the other. So phase one is the personal phase. And by personal, I mean initially personal to Joseph Smith and then to other men. The evidence is that Smith was a serial womaniser.
He could have hidden his impulses, which is of course what some charismatics later did. But as the founder of a new religion, he had the simpler option of just simply putting them out there and universalizing and legitimising. So by permitting polygamy, he’s legitimising his own sexual desires. And when you look at Smith’s own life, I mean the word polygamy, it’s kind of a misnomer. Some of his wives, so-called wives, were already married to other men. And he also had a habit of preying on teenage girls. One of his wives was a 14-year-old girl called Helen Kimball. So he marries a 14-year-old when he himself is 37. And he tells her that marrying him will secure her eternal salvation. We’ve heard all that before. Interestingly, polygamy is not accepted by, universally by the community. And when it was announced by Joseph Smith, it was something of a divisive issue within the community itself. Some of the Saints thought it was wrong, just plain wrong. A lot of them were very uneasy about it. And some of them denounced Smith as a false prophet, and they criticised him in a Mormon newspaper. And of course as befits an autocrat, Smith responds in kind by destroying their printing press.
This is a cartoon, it’s a great cartoon. And this was published shortly after Brigham Young’s death, memorialising Brigham Young. And you can see all of his widows are weeping into their handkerchiefs. When Joseph Smith commands his acolyte, Brigham Young, to take extra wives, Brigham Young at first is, he’s horrified by the idea. And he says, “I long for death rather than having to take any other wives.” But you know what, he’s a good sport, Brigham Smith. He rises to the occasion and in the end, by the time he dies, he was allegedly husband to, wait for it, 56 women. One of those was an 18-year-old, a woman called Martha Brotherton. And allegedly he’d locked her in a room while he tried to marry her. And when she tried to tell people in the community what had happened to her, in all her distress, she’s denounced as a whore. So that is the personal phase. And overlaying that is the second phase, which is the economic phase. The taking of wives, of extra wives, as I say, it was never a majority practise among Mormons, but there were plenty who did, some because they were men, and why not? Some, because it was seen as a good Mormon thing to do. But others, for others, it just made good economic sense.
So if you are a poor Mormon farmer, it’s actually a lot cheaper to marry several wives than to hire male labourers. The function of these women in life becomes as household drudges and as farm hands. They get food and they get board, but they don’t get any wages. So we should call this what it was, which was a form of indentured labour. And the final phase is the political phase. This comes much later, when the Mormon community is elsewhere. And Brigham Young has understood by now that when your community is growing fast in numbers, the biggest risk is loss of control. And how do you maintain control? Well, one way you do it is you isolate them from Gentiles. And the fact is, polygamy makes the Saints different. It makes them the Other, it makes them reviled wherever they go. And Young sees the power of this, and he realises that what polygamy does is that effectively it cuts the Mormons off from the Gentiles and that renders them all the more dependent on each other and on him. So when you see all these layers, the personal, the economic, the political, it seems to me that this practise of so-called polygamy is indefensible any way you look at it.
So the 15 years between 1830 and 1845, they’re years of wandering for the Mormon communities. During this period, they grow very considerably in numbers and in prosperity, but not in acceptability. They move en masse from the Burned-Over District. And you can see Palmyra in New York is where many of them were living, in and around there. First they go to Kirtland in Ohio and they’re kicked out. Then they go to Independence in Jackson County, Missouri. And then finally they end up in Nauvoo in Illinois. And with each move it’s the same pattern. They settle, they become successful, they attract suspicion and envy and eventually hatred all from their Gentile neighbours. And finally, they’re run out of town. I mean, let’s take Kirtland for example, okay? Which is the second place that they end up in. They arrive in 1831, very, very successful. And they even start work on a Grand Temple. But before long, they’re outnumbering the Gentiles and envy starts to set in.
Smith sets up the bank, right? It’s the bank that I mentioned a little bit earlier and many non-Mormons put all their savings in. So you can see how this is going to end. In 1837, there’s a run on the bank. In fact, there’s a run on all the banks, the local banks because there’s an economic recession on. So I mean, that’s not Smith’s fault, but his bank collapses. And of course, with it, everyone’s money is lost and the Gentiles are furious and they drive the Mormons out of town. So they move to Missouri in 1837. So they’ve been in Kirtland for six years, and the word is out and the word follows them. So they encounter ferocious hostility from the locals. And interestingly, part of this has to do with their anti-slavery stance. So the Mormon church is not in favour of slavery and vocally not so, and given where Missouri is, that it’s not far from the South, the, there’s a rumour that goes around that Mormons want to free the slaves. So this attracts even more hostility. And the hostility turns violent very quickly. Mormon houses are burned down and people are tarred and feathered. I mean, it’s nasty stuff. And Smith decides to dispatch his Sons of Dan, his militia, and this seems to make it worse because by accident they attack an authorised Gentile militia in the belief that it was an anti-Mormon mob.
And Missouri’s governor responds by issuing, would you believe, an extermination order against all Mormons. So they have to leave immediately. Once again, they’re on the run and they’re looking for a place to stay. Finally, they moved to a small town in Illinois called Commerce. And Joseph Smith decides he’s going to rename the town and he renames it as Nauvoo, which is apparently, I didn’t know this, it’s a rare biblical word which means beautiful. You find the word apparently in Isaiah. Who knew? Once again, the Saints prosper and they buy up the best land. They open businesses and they, again, they start to build a Grand Temple. They put down roots. And you know, the church is very organised. You know, they’re building institutions. They take care of their own. And they have a code which ensures that they stay away from Gentiles. They abhor alcohol, smoking, gambling, which means that they never fraternise in all the places that Gentiles go socially, like bars and saloons. By 1844, Nauvoo is the largest city in the State of Illinois and the Mormon population has risen to 35,000. Amazing, big number in a very short time. Well, 35,000, you know, where does that come from? I mean, a lot of it is local converts and there’s also relatively healthy birth rate. But those numbers are going to be significantly swelled by Mormon converts who arrive from overseas.
This is the temple in Nauvoo that I mentioned, where the cornerstone was laid in 1841. But the most successful hunting ground for converts in those early years, and again I must say news to me, is England. And the first missionaries, the first Mormon missionaries land in Liverpool in 1837. And you can see on the left, there’s a page from the first European edition of the Book of Mormon, which is published in 1841. They preach, they make their way around England, and at first they recruit people in their tens, then in their hundreds, and then in their thousands. Brigham Young goes to England twice to, on a mission and to preach. And while he’s here, he dispatches an envoy to the young queen, Queen Victoria, and she grants the envoy an audience and she’s presented with a copy of the Book of Mormon. So as you can imagine, this is fantastic publicity for the tour. From 1840, English converts start to emigrate to America. They want to join their fellow members in the church. In part, it’s a spiritual mission, but they’re massively attracted by the idea of a community that looks after its own because for most of them, this is an opportunity to gain economic security for the first time in their lives.
For those of you from the UK, in fact, from everyone, here’s a little-known fact. Between 1840 and the turn of the century, over 50,000 converts from England and Wales are going to emigrate to join the main body of the Mormon church in the United States. Wow. So let’s go back now to Nauvoo. You’ll see from this slide, this is a spoiler as to what’s about to happen. Back in Nauvoo, in 1844, it’s all hotting up. Things are about to turn sour. This is the year that Smith announces that God has told him it’s okay to practise polygamy. So this is when it all comes out. He’d been polygamous until then, but this is when he goes public with it. And as I said, he’s opposed by a number of critics in the community. And he responds by destroying their printing press. Well, news of the announcement and Smith’s reaction leaks out to the wider community. Smith and his brother, Hyrum, are both arrested. And the Gentile community works itself up into a sense of absolute outrage that here all along they’ve been harbouring these evil polygamists in their midst.
So on the 27th of June, 1845, a mob of 200 Gentiles surround the jail where Smith and his brother are held, they attack and they kill the 39-year-old Joseph Smith and his brother. You can imagine after that it’s open season on the Saints. Mormons are regularly attacked and their homes are burned down. The Sons of Dan hit back, but they’re completely outnumbered, not only by the local Gentiles, but these are now joined by a bunch of thugs who come up from neighbouring Mississippi. And the state authorities, meanwhile, they decide to turn a blind eye and just let the whole thing happen. So Joseph Smith dead, his brother, who might have been a successor, dead. Someone is going to have to step up. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Brigham Young, one of Smith’s earliest converts and most loyal associates decides he’s the man to take charge of the situation. By the way, I have to, you know, it’s interesting, this phenomenon that you see in many successful religious movements and ideological movements. There’s a pattern of a founder followed by a builder. The founder is the leader who leads through prophecy, through vision, through charisma, and the leader and the builder is the one who leads through planning and organisation.
And you know, we see it time and again, you know, Abraham followed by Moses, Jesus followed by Paul. And in more recent times, Marx followed by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Anyway, that was just by way of an aside. The first thing that Brigham Young does is to make a cold assessment of the situation. He realises that for 15 years, the Mormons have just wandered from place to place across the Eastern states. And everywhere they’ve gone, it’s just been the same old pattern. They arrive, they’re successful, they’re different, they’re seen as clannish, so they’re resented, then they’re persecuted, and then finally they’re run out of town. And when Joseph Smith was alive, Young recalls that he’d made a promise when he was preaching that he was going to deliver the Mormons to what he called a white horse of safety. A place where they could settle in for the long term, a place where they could feel secure. Young felt it was time to make good on the promise. And so this next move was going to have to be something very different, something new, something that was way out West. So it’s now 1846 and the West has been opening up, of course.
The Oregon Trail is established and the California Trail is established. And it’s tempting to take either of those. Here they are. You can see the Oregon Trail up to the north is in the green, and the California Trail is in the yellow. But Young is, Young thinks long and hard about this. And he knows that neither of these are probably going to be very good options long term for the Mormons, 'cause what’s going to happen is that they’re going to be jostling for land with too many other migrants, and they’ll end up having to live beside them. And all the old troubles are all going to start repeating themselves. So he considers a number of alternatives and he chooses an unlikely place, Utah. Utah’s unlikely because it’s a tough place. It’s a place with only a small population for very good reason. A place that has a reputation for having hostile Native Americans. A place that’s still part of Mexico, it’s not part of the United States yet. A place with high, barren mountains and of course a Great Salt Lake. Some early explorers had warned that the region was unsuitable for agriculture and they point particularly to the lack of water, the lack of fresh water in the land.
But other explorers had said well, you know what? In spite of the saltiness of the Great Salt Lake, the valleys have actually got sufficient fresh water streams and creeks to nourish a certain level of cultivation. For Brigham Young, it was the very harshness of Utah that made it so attractive, his white horse of safety. Some Mormons opposed Young when he said, “We are going to Utah.” And they thought he was mad. No one in their right mind wants to go to Utah. But Young replied, “If there is a place on this earth that nobody wants, that’s the place I’m looking for.” But before they could settle Utah, the Mormons would first have to get there. And the task was Herculean because how do you move thousands and thousands of people on foot and on waggons all at the same time over 1,500 miles of bad weather, frozen wastes and barren desert? And it was made worse, so much worse by the terrible timing because they weren’t masters of their own destiny.
They weren’t masters of their own timing. Normally you’d start this journey in early spring to benefit from the warmer weather. But once it becomes known that the Mormons are preparing to leave, the local Gentiles determined to make sure they don’t change their mind. So they force Mormons in Nauvoo to leave their homes carrying a few belongings and a few bits and pieces of furniture, and then they set fire to their homes while the family’s watching, and they do this time and time again. So there’s really no time to lose. And Young gives the order that they’re leaving much earlier than planned, which means starting out at the worst possible time, in early February, early February of 1846. The first two months are hideous. Young gives the order, they start to cross the Mississippi, but it’s not quite yet frozen over. And so several of the Mormon craft capsize in the water and everybody drowns. Snow, frost and blizzard mean that travelling conditions are just appalling.
They move west through Iowa, but they’re going at an absolute snail’s pace. And when the snow does stop, as it does a month later in March, it’s replaced by torrential rain. So now the ground isn’t frozen, it’s just deep, deep mud. And this slows progress to an absolute minimum. I mean, sometimes they’re doing less than a mile a day. And remember, you know, in order to do this journey in good time, you should be doing at least 10 to 13 miles a day. When summer comes at last, they’re plagued by black clouds of mosquitoes and some of them are killed by rattlesnake bites. So let’s be clear, this journey would almost certainly have failed and ended in complete disaster if it hadn’t have been for the extraordinary leadership of Brigham Young. By all accounts, Young was not what you would call a nice man. He was dour, he was pretty humourless, he was harsh, ruthless. For example, one evening so the story goes, he catches a group of Mormons who were dancing to music. It was one of the few small pleasures, one of the few small light moments you get on the trail. And he gives them a fearful dressing down because they’re enjoying themselves too much.
But what Brigham Young did have was the great skill of organisation and an indomitable will to succeed. For example, when food supplies run low as they do, he has to raise funds fast. And he does so any way he can. There’s all kinds of things he does. For example, you know, he even supplies 500 men to serve in the US Army in the war against Mexico, which is raging at the time. The Mormon Battalion, well, let’s just say they don’t distinguish themselves, but they do earn wages, which can be used to buy food and supplies for everyone else. Young realises by now there’s no way they’re going to get to Utah before 1847. So he orders everyone to stop and set up winter quarters on the banks of the Missouri River. He sets people to dig fields, sow crops, get jobs in local towns. This is how he keeps everyone alive and in relatively good health. And when winter’s over, they start again.
The '87 journey is slightly easier, but not much. I mean there are accidents, breakdowns, mouldy food, fever, lack of medical facilities, attacks from Native Indians, and many particularly suffer when they cross the Wyoming desert. The white, alkaline dust blinds eyes, corrodes skin, and in some cases it smothers lungs. But through it all, Brigham Young is encouraging to all Mormons. He’s teaching them how to manage a waggon train, how to feed a family, and how to defend themselves against attack. In August '87, in, sorry, in August, 1847, the main party of the Mormons finally crossed the divide through the mountains and they arrive at Salt Lake. They’ve done it. Brigham Young decides he’s going to call the region Deseret, which means in Mormonese or in words that are used in the Book of Mormon, where apparently this means the land of the honeybee. And over the next 10 years, Deseret fills up slowly and steadily with Mormons who’ve been summoned by their leader from all quarters, particularly coming from England and Wales. But having got there, the new arrivals find that life at Salt Lake is hard. The biggest single problem is water, or rather the lack of water. And the Great Basin will only yield crops if it’s extensively irrigated.
There’s no fresh water from Salt Lake, obviously, and there’s little rain in the region. Once again, it’s Brigham Young who comes to the rescue. His solution is counterintuitive. Remember, the American West at the time, it’s all about the individual and the rights of the individual. And the law says that if you own a piece of land, you’ve also got private ownership of any waterways on that land. Well, Young says we’re going to forget all of that. There’s going to be no private ownership rights here. All land and water, he says, is going to be owned by the church. It’s going to be owned centrally. It’ll be distributed on a fair basis based on need and on contribution. We’re going to irrigate the land and there’ll be a timetable for each farmer to collect water as they need it and based on the size of their plot. So there’s no need for argument, no need for battle. Everyone gets treated fairly and everyone gets what they need. This became one of the most successful cooperative projects ever undertaken in the history of the United States. And I must say, you know, it does feel quite un-American.
You know, almost dare I say it, communistic. Young had solved the problem, but he’d done more than that. He’d also built what he saw as a strategy of isolation. He says at one point, you know, we’re going to survive by isolation. This is what he preaches. “We shall need no commerce with the nations. I’m determined to cut every thread of this kind and live free and independent, untrammelled by any of their detestable customs and practises.” Brigham Young rules over Deseret for the next 30 years until his death in 1877. And over those 30 years, the population is going to grow to around 90,000. Young sends out missionaries to Europe, Latin America and the South Pacific. And he encourages a great ingathering of converts to settle in Deseret. Until the mid-1840s, they’ve been left to their own devices. But after the US triumphs over Mexico in 1848 in the Mexican-American War, now Deseret becomes a territory of the United States. So it’s a very different story. Brigham Young enters into a long series of tussles with Washington, D.C. I mean, there’s numerous disagreements with the federal government about all kinds of things, not least the continued practise of polygamy.
And there’s a lot of violence as well. Violence between the Mormons with the Gentiles who are passing through and with the US Army. And this culminates in 1857. President James Buchanan declares Utah territory officially to be in rebellion and he orders federal troops to Salt Lake City. The Mormons, of course, they fear a repeat of what happened to them in Missouri and in Illinois. So they prepare to defend themselves and there’s a certain amount of overreaction. The most disgraceful and shameful episode is the so-called Mountain Meadows massacre of September, 1857.
This is when a party of Mormon Sons of Dan who are commanded by one of Brigham Young’s closest henchmen, slaughter 120 Gentile men, women and children whose crime seems to be that they’re just passing through. Did Young know in advance? Did he sanction the massacre? We’ll probably never know, but little happened in Utah in those years without Brigham Young’s say so. In the end, you know, you can say that Young was a deeply unattractive character with a ruthless instinct for power, who often preached sermons that were naked incitements to violence. But you also have to say that without Brigham Young, it’s arguably the case that Mormonism would’ve just simply faded away in the same way that so many of those other 19th century religious revival movements faded away, and Mormonism would at best be a footnote in history today. So let’s bring the story up to date.
After Young’s death in 1877, a Mormon leadership comes under tremendous pressure to renounce polygamy. And finally in 1890, after a Supreme Court ruling goes against them, the LDS church decides finally it’s going to abandon polygamy. This opens up the pathway to statehood. And in January, 1896, so that’s already quite late, Utah is admitted to the Union as the 45th State. If we fast-forward to today, the LDS church can boast somewhere in the region of 6 million members in the United States, and you can see at the very bottom there’s the Great Salt Lake Temple, and 15 million allegedly are claimed across the whole world. And that includes, by the way, somewhere in the region of 180,000 members in the UK. And on the top there, you can see there’s the Mormon Church in London, in South Kensington, which is just close by to the V&A museum for those of you who are familiar with London. Well, under Brigham Young and his immediate successors, the LDS church had cultivated isolation as the surest path to salvation.
But now that Utah is in the Union, slowly, slowly, the Mormon church starts to integrate into mainstream society. And they do so from the start of the 20th century. And in the late '20s, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir starts to broadcast a weekly performance on national radio. And this becomes a massive PR asset to the Mormon Church at the time. Since then, the church has been very successful in its efforts to integrate. I mean, today it’s one of the fastest-growing churches in the world. And it’s also for its size, it’s one of the wealthiest. It’s a socially conservative church. Members abstain from alcohol, also tea and coffee, and its views on chastity, LGBT and abortion puts it on the whole on the political right. You can see in on this slide, on this montage, there are some of the more well-known Mormons. There’s Mitt Romney who’s at the bottom there, who was Republican nominee for US president.
And at the top is Orrin Hatch, who was a Republican Senator for Utah for over 40 years. By the way, a great friend of Israel. Then at the bottom with the, with Capitol Hill in the background is Harry Reid, who is a Democrat. So it’s not only Republicans, and he was a Senate Majority Leader for many years. And from the world of entertainment, there’s Ryan Gosling brought up as a Mormon, but has, but doesn’t practise. In the bottom corner there’s Stephenie Meyer, who wrote the “Twilight” books. And of course, on top we have the Osmonds, Marie and Donny Osmond from '70s and '80s fame. So the church has integrated, but the old prejudice, it still lurks there. When Romney first stood, first ran for his presidential nomination, his Mormonism was very much held against him, particularly by the Evangelical right. And in a poll that was taken at the time, 50% of Evangelicals felt that Mormons weren’t proper Christians. And in the wider public, the suspicion still, it still lurks there. There’s a feeling still that Mormons are apart somehow, not quite like the rest of us. And hence the reason why they were such an easy target for satirical treatment in “The Book of Mormon”.
I have to admit, I have got a soft spot for the Saints, and I think it’s because I see a group of religious adherents who they followed a charismatic leader, they’re persecuted, they were rejected as a cult by the mainstream of their own religion. But they survive and they grow by cultivating self-reliance and building a wall around their own community. And I couldn’t help feel that it reminded me very much of another community who were perhaps a little closer to home, a community living in Stamford Hill, in Bnei Brak, in Williamsburg, in Antwerp. So I’m going to end with one of my favourite clips just by way of a lighter ending. This is from the movie “The Frisco Kid”, 1979 comedy. Gene Wilder plays the Hasidic rabbi who’s making the lonely, long journey from Poland to California. And this is the scene where he gets very excited because he’s out on the prairies, he thinks he’s on his own and suddenly he sees , people he thinks from his own Hasidic community. Here it is. Hello, . Hello, .
Video clip plays.
Dost thou speak English?
Dost thou speak.
So there you have it. I hope I haven’t offended anyone and I hope that those of you who didn’t know the story have like me have profited from it. And so now I think is a good time to just open up and just see what everyone says.
Q&A and Comments:
Shelly writes stories strange from the beginning in Protestantism like Judaism, an angel like Moroni wouldn’t have had a father.
Okay, Rose says sounds like our own Sabbatai Zevi who claimed to be the Messiah. Oh, there’s always one in every generation, or at least one.
David, I’m proud to say my cousin Josh Gad had the lead role on Broadway for “The Book of Mormon”.
Q: Arlene says I’ve read that Joseph Smith was a flimflam man. Any truth to that?
A: That means someone who sold potions to the gullible. Oh, I mean very much so. He absolutely was. And some of his followers were at the time as well. And you had to be, and it was a time when people believed in faith healing. And in fact, if you didn’t sell potions, you weren’t going to do very well in the religious revivalist market, so that’s absolutely right, Arlene.
Q: How did they convince women to convert to this religion after polygamy became doctrine?
A: Well, you know, it’s curious. I mean, you know, there were a lot of very respectable, upright New England women who did buy the whole thing and they were very grateful to be part of it. And you know, I think it’s just one of those things that often the victims don’t, don’t see themselves as victims.
Michael says that years ago I was employed by the Mormon Church to carry out repairs at their temple in Johannesburg. I was acceptable to them because I was Jewish, not a Gentile. My designs were sent to Salt Lake City for approval and we were interviewed by their chief engineer, who came to Joburg. There were no restrictions on the budget. How interesting, thank you Michael. Very interesting.
Q: And Howard asks am I using to broad a brush to suggest that Mormonism is not fundamentally that different from other religions?
A: Well, that I think is a really interesting question. I think one of the reasons why people laugh at Mormonism and they laugh at the foundation myth is because it was relatively recent. It wasn’t 2,000 years ago or 5,000 years ago, a time that can’t be fact-checked. So the Mormons have the, have an unfortunate piece of timing on their side, but all foundation myths are based on miracle. So, you know, was Joseph Smith for real? Was Joseph Smith a con artist? And quite frankly, if you’re a Mormon today and you believe in that lifestyle, to what extent does it matter? I mean, these are big questions in religion and I’m afraid it’s way, way above my own pay grade to be able to answer any of them.
So Rita says not offended at all. Okay, thank you Rita. Well that’s somewhat of a relief.
Barry says the Mormons came to Rhodesia and were very successful. Young people would go from house to house on Sundays and try to convert Christians to the Mormon religion. Okay, so that’s interesting, great.
And Rob, okay, now I was slightly dreading Rob because I know that Rob is a professor in, at the University of Utah. And so I was kind of slightly dreading the fact that he might be listening today, but turns out he is listening. Rob says I’ve lived in Salt Lake City for 45 years and that was a good summary of LDS history. So Rob, I have to tell you how relieved I am to see that.
So thank you very much and we’re going to end there, certainly for me on a high note. So thank you everyone very much for joining today and hope to see you soon, okay, bye-bye.