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Whatever happened to Fremont?
S2E11 · Abraham Lincoln and the Latter-day Saints Part 2
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Standard of Truth · Season 2 · Episode 11 · 1:00:21

Abraham Lincoln and the Latter-day Saints Part 2

When Brigham Young's brethren asked whether Utah should secede too, he said no: "We will keep our records clean."

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The question ·

With the table set on the Republican Party, how did Abraham Lincoln and the Latter-day Saints actually see each other going into and through the start of the Civil War?

Richard

Richard and Gerrit pick up the Lincoln series with what Lincoln and the Saints thought of each other before and during the first year of the Civil War. Gerrit explains why Illinois Whigs like Lincoln resented the Mormon bloc vote, how Stephen Douglas turned on the Saints, and how the 1860 election and Southern secession handed Republicans control of Congress. Most of the episode reads Wilford Woodruff's journal, which treats the war as God's judgment on the nation, calls the president "Abe Lincoln," and records the scandal of Governor John W. Dawson. Gerrit balances that with Brigham Young refusing to secede, Utah being denied statehood while Nevada was admitted, and the War Department raising an army to occupy a loyal Utah, setting up 1862 and the claims about Lincoln and the Book of Mormon in Part 3.

Who comes upAbraham LincolnWilford WoodruffBrigham YoungStephen A. DouglasJames BuchananBroughton HarrisHeber C. KimballMillard FillmoreAlfred CummingAlbert Sidney JohnstonJohn W. DawsonHenry Clay
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Whatever happened to Fremont?

Richard recaps last week's cliffhanger, and Gerrit wonders whether Lincoln ever became president.

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Intro Welcome to the Standard of Truth Podcast, hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, where we explore the early days of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and gain rare historical insights into how a young farm boy was able to establish a new church and grow it by way of visions, manifestations and miracles.
Gerrit Hi, welcome to another episode of the Standard of Truth podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat, and I'm joined by my friend, Professor Richard LeDuc.
Richard Hi, Gerrit. In the last podcast, we left you with quite the cliffhanger, talking about the 1856 Republican militia.
Gerrit As much as 19th century history could ever be considered a cliffhanger.
Richard So whatever happened with John C. Freeman?
Gerrit So what do you, did Lincoln ever become president? I don't even know, I mean.
Richard We talked a bit about kind of setting the table for a little bit about what the Republican party, what their platform was, especially as it related to Latter-day Saints and some of the problems that that would cause to help to provide some context now to have a discussion about President Lincoln.
Gerrit Yeah, and again, Lincoln's from Illinois. So he actually would have dealt with, he would have dealt with issues surrounding Latter-day Saints back in the 1840s when Latter-day Saints are being persecuted and driven from Illinois. Now it's important to note that Lincoln is a Whig back then. And Whig politicians generally were antagonistic towards Latter-day Saints in Illinois because the Latter-day Saints voted as a block for the Democrats. And so that's the reason why when Joseph declares his candidacy for the presidency that it is Whigs in Illinois that are the most upset. Because for a time they thought the Mormons were going to support Henry Clay, the Whig candidate, and Lincoln's hero, you know. But that doesn't happen. And so when Joseph Smith declares himself to be an independent candidate, well, that means all the potential Whig votes they needed from the Mormons, they weren't going to get any more.
Gerrit And so now the Democrats were going to win the state again, which of course they did. But we don't really have anything from Lincoln during that time. While someone might say, well, hey, he never said anything negative about Mormons during that time. That's usually kind of a different standard than we use when we're trying to find something bad about another politician that we don't like, right? I mean, the reality is, there are multiple attacks on Latter-day Saints from Whigs in the state house, things like that, in the public press. And there's certainly no words from Abraham Lincoln saying, hey, no, don't do that. You can only assume that he, along with other Whigs in the state, see Latter-day Saints as a problem. Now, this issue is going to, it's gonna return when Lincoln is then running for the Senate, essentially 10 years later.
Gerrit And well, 12, but then the question is, what do you do about the Mormons who are out in Utah territory? Because the Buchanan has sent his army out there, and Lincoln does not, you know, so by this time, the Democratic Party, and including Stephen Douglas, have laid into Mormonism and a polygamy in general and called all the Mormons rebels. I mean, this is when the Johnston's army is marching into Salt Lake City and the Saints are burying the temple foundations. That's all part of what's going on here with James Buchanan sending the troops out. James Buchanan, a Democratic president, Stephen Douglas, Democratic senator, wanting to be. And so he lays into, Stephen Douglas, you know, who knew the Latter-day Saints very well, in fact, was a supporter of Latter-day Saints in Illinois when the Saints were there.
Gerrit He is going to turn on the Saints in no uncertain terms. He is going to refer to them as a black cancer sore, a loathsome ulcer that needs to be cut out of the body politic. That, you know, not the way you want to be described, you know, not at least on your, you know, on your Facebook profile. And so, really from 1857 and 58 on, the Latter-day Saints have really lost any political friends that they've had. The Republicans aren't friends with them because the Republicans hate polygamy as well as slavery. And the Democrats, you know, are so desperate to not be associated with Mormons that they've sent an army out to occupy Utah. And Democratic politicians are continually speaking out against Mormons in Utah. So in the context of those debates, Lincoln is going to reference Latter-day Saints and polygamy, but not positively.
Gerrit He is going to essentially argue that, you know, the idea of popular sovereignty. So Douglas was pushing a very, kind of a nuanced way of getting around the slavery question in the territories. Rather than have the territories, having the federal government determine whether or not, you know, New Mexico territory would have slaves or not, or Utah territory would have slaves or not. Instead, the territories themselves at some point, and I think it was generally thought at the point of admission as a state, they would decide whether or not they would be slavery, on slave states or free states, on the basis of what he termed popular sovereignty, meaning the people would choose. That would, Douglas thought, and so did others, eliminate these arguments in Congress about slavery because are you gonna take away people's right in New Mexico to decide whether or not they want slavery?
Gerrit Now, of course, anti-slavery activists were totally opposed to the idea of popular sovereignty. I don't care if you want to vote for slavery. That doesn't make slavery legal just because you want to vote for it. That doesn't matter to me that you want to vote for it. In some ways, anti-slavery activists would have a very hard-line stance on something like this, the way that someone who's pro-life today might have positions on outlawing abortion in that same regard. You wouldn't win very many arguments with someone who's pro-life by saying, well, yeah, but the majority of people voted to make it legal, to make abortion legal. The pro-life advocate would say, I don't care if everyone votes to make it legal. It's wrong, and so it should be illegal whether or not people want it. I mean, the argument of majority rules is the general thing that people follow, especially in a democracy.
Gerrit But then there are people on both sides of many different issues who often make the argument, it doesn't matter if most people want this. It's still morally wrong. Even if most people want it, it's morally wrong. So it should be legal anyway. And so you don't certainly don't get any pro-Latter-day Saint statements coming out of Lincoln in those years prior. Now what happens in 1860? Things really start to devolve. The Republican Party unites behind Abraham Lincoln. They initially tried to put up William Seward. Seward was deemed to be too radical, and so Abraham Lincoln becomes this kind of compromised candidate who's opposed to slavery, but hasn't argued that slavery needed to be abolished everywhere. The Democrats, for their part, they are coming face to face with something that they've never had to face before, and that is if all of the Northern states were united in voting for a single candidate that was opposed to the expansion of slavery like Lincoln, it didn't matter who the South voted for.
Gerrit The reality was the North had such a population advantage over the South that if all of the Northern states voted for a presidential candidate, that candidate was going to win even if all of the Southern states voted against that candidate. Now, that had never happened before because the Democratic Party was this powerful large party, and it was especially powerful in very populous states like Pennsylvania and New York. So when James Buchanan won, yes, he ran against a Republican challenger, John C. Fremont, whom you were on pins and needles. He did not win. But, you know, Buchanan carried multiple Northern states because the Democratic Party was a national party. The Republican Party, only a sectional one. It only had support in the North. But the great fear of Democrats, or at least slave-holding Democrats, was what happens if those Republicans are ever able to unify to the point where all of the free states are lined up against all of the slave states?
Gerrit Well, the problem is there's a heck of a lot more people in those free states than there are in the slave states, which means electorally, the South can't beat the North in a North versus South election. The South always had to rely on the national nature of the Democratic Party to win states in the North, and that prevented the North from having kind of a stranglehold on elections. With Lincoln's election in 1860, he's able to win nearly every Northern state, and certainly he's able to win every free state. He's able to win every free state. And when I say Northern and Southern, some of the states that don't actually succeed in the Civil War, like Missouri, Lincoln doesn't win Missouri, but, Stephen Douglas does, but Missouri is a slave state. So Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, all of those states go for Lincoln in the election of 1860.
Gerrit The South, not only was it behind the eight ball when it came to electoral votes, is this become the most boring podcast ever?
Richard As soon as we get to townships, then we'll know we've crossed the Mendoza line.
Gerrit Well, but I did mention electoral votes. I feel like-
Richard We're close. We're butting up against it, but we're not quite there yet.
Gerrit But we're not quite there. Okay, so-
Richard I'll let you know. I'll ring a bell.
Gerrit I don't even see you holding a bell. You need to have a bell.
Richard I'm gonna go get one.
Gerrit Okay, get the bell quickly.
Richard Theater of the mind. I'm now holding a bell.
Gerrit He's holding a bell. You can't see it. Is the bell even there? I think Descartes said that, but.
Richard Okay, now, okay, now.
Gerrit Now we got you. So the point being that the Democratic Party was super fractured and the only national Democratic politician, so one who ran for the deep south, the very pro-slavery platform, was a man by the name of John C. Breckenridge. He's able to carry all of the deep south states. You have Stephen Douglas, who's the only one running on kind of this national Democratic platform. And what it means is he gets a lot of votes in every state, but isn't able to win hardly any of them. And so he has quite a few popular votes, given how scattered the election is, but he only wins a couple of states. There's a party that's essentially centered in Virginia called the Constitutional Union Party, which is a breakaway of Democrats. Again, arguing that we shouldn't even talk about slavery anymore, slavery's in the Constitution.
Gerrit Let's just leave things the way we are. We're not gonna be pro-slavery, we're not gonna be anti-slavery. We're just gonna not talk about it anymore, and things will be fine. At any rate, Lincoln's going to win the election. Now he's gonna have under 40% of the popular vote when he wins election, but he's gonna win the electoral election. And shortly thereafter, Southern states in protest are going to secede from the Union, claiming that they joined the Union as a voluntary thing and that they can now leave the Union voluntarily. Well, how do Latter-day Saints respond to this? If you haven't listened to it yet, we encourage you to go back to our podcast on Section 87 of the Doctrine and Covenants, because that's really going to set the tone for how many Latter-day Saints see this. And that is that the Civil War is the judgments of God that were prophesied upon the nation by Joseph Smith, that he received a revelation that because of the slavery issue, that there was going to be a terrible, horrific Civil War.
Gerrit And further, if you're a Latter-day Saint, the sense that the nation is under the condemnation of God is even more realized by the fact that the Latter-day Saints witnessed the murder of their prophets as well as many other Latter-day Saints. Joseph and Hyrum are murdered, but then the Latter-day Saints beyond that are driven out of the country. And they're thinking of those words in the Book of Mormon, right, that when you cast the righteous out from among you, the judgments of gods will surely come. I mean, that is how they see what's going on. So as they start to get news in to Salt Lake about these different states seceding and that there's a claim that they'll actually fight, while much of the nation is waiting on bated breath to see what happens next, very few people think it's actually going to lead to actual armed conflict. Americans aren't really going to kill other Americans. There's a reason why rich people from the DC area go out to watch the Battle of Bull Run when the war actually starts, because they think it's going to be a spectacle.
Gerrit They don't have any idea that this is going to be the beginning of a war that's going to terminate in the deaths of many souls, as Joseph said. So, Latter-day Saints have a kind of fatalism as they get the news, because unlike the rest of the nation, they believe it is going to be a terrible conflict, because Joseph Smith said that it was. And they believe that it really is the judgment of God that's coming upon people. Latter-day Saints, when Lincoln has elected, I mean, as uncomfortable as it would be for a Latter-day Saint today to read about it, because they love Abraham Lincoln. And look, let me just tell you my bias as a historian. I would have also voted for Abraham Lincoln to be the number one. I mean, Abraham Lincoln is an amazing person, an amazing president. And he really is the greatest president in American history for that reason. So it's really hard for a modern Latter-day Saint to come to terms with the fact that your spiritual forebears did not think the same thing about Abraham Lincoln.
Gerrit But if you want to understand why they thought it, that's part of what these podcasts are trying to help you understand. They have a very good reason to have a problem with Abraham Lincoln because he is the head of a party that has been aggressively trying to destroy what they see as part of their religion. And so some of the responses that you get from Latter-day Saints, we can get from Wilford Woodruff's journal. He follows the events as he gets news. And you can tell that they are not terribly positive. So for instance, in May of 1860, before the secession crisis has hit, they haven't had the November election yet, but they are talking about the Homestead Act, which part of which we just read, the justification for, and Woodruff is going to note that in his journal. He's going to talk about how the Homestead Bill was killed in the Senate.
Gerrit Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was nominated by the Republican Convention for President and Hamill Hamlin of Maine for Vice President. So they're noting this. But notice he cares that the Homestead Bill was killed because they know the Homestead Bill, at least its authors are saying, guess what one of the best parts about this is? It can destroy Mormonism. Well, if you're on the other side of that, you're probably not going to think it's the greatest thing if it passes. At any rate, he's going to follow the election pretty closely. And when it appears that things are flying apart after Abraham Lincoln was elected, this is what he says to start off January of 1861. This is the commencement of another new year and a very important year. Joseph Smith the prophet said whoever lived to see 1860 would live to see the foundation laid for some of the most awful bloody wars. And whoever lived to see those figures come together in 1866 would live to see a day when the earth would be deluged in blood in many places.
Gerrit And there would be awful distress and calamity and that it would be a vexation to hear the report of it. We may prepare ourselves for an awful time in the United States. The handwriting has been seen upon the wall and our nation's doom is doomed to destruction. The United States will be visited this year with much affliction, more so than they ever have been since they were a free government and it will increase yearly until they are destroyed. Now that is not a... How do you really feel Wilfred Woodruff? I mean, remember, again, if you go back to our podcast we did on Doctrine and Coven, Section 87, the reason why that revelation is so incredible is how predictive it is of how horrible the destruction of the Civil War is going to be. Even in January of 1861, you have these states that have seceded from the Union. No shots have been fired yet. The majority of people in the United States don't believe that it's actually going to be an open conflict.
Gerrit And you get an understanding of that by just how few troops are called up by Abraham Lincoln. Seventy-five thousand troops for a period of three months after the firing on Fort Sumter. You're eventually going to have millions of men serve under Union arms. And seventy-five thousand seems ridiculous because it's seven times the size of the standing army of the United States at the time, but it wasn't even close to being enough. And so Wilford Woodruff here is relating, I think, what many Latter-day Saints believe, that as they saw those states seceding and they saw the nation headed to civil war, many people thought that it wasn't going to actually end an armed conflict, that it was actually going to be just, you know, a little bit of temper tantrum and everything's going to go back to normal. Maybe one big battle and that would decide everything. And instead, Woodruff thinks, no, this is, this is going to be catastrophic.
Gerrit And it's going to be catastrophic because the prophets said that it was going to be catastrophic. And because the nation has to be punished by God for what they've done to the saints in killing Joseph and Hyrum. So he's going to go on. They're like an ox going to the slaughter. I should say, you know, you note the biblical imagery he's using there, right? That when he says the handwriting is on the wall, that's Nebuchadnezzar, right? What are you seeing there? They're not going to have a Babylonian empire in the near future, right? They're like an ox going to the slaughter. They know not the day of their visitation. The judgments of God await them because of their wickedness. And while we are looking for the judgments of God to rest upon the United States and great Babylon at large, let us turn our eyes towards Zion in these valleys of the mountains and ask what state are the people in? Are they righteous in keeping the commandments of God and preparing themselves for the great things of God which await them?
Gerrit Or are they lying and stealing and swearing and mingling with the drunken? Yes, many of those who are calling themselves saints are doing these things, and they have great need to repent before the Lord, or they will be damned and the judgments of God will rest upon them. So that's from Wilford Woodruff's Journal in January of 1861, when the states have seceded, but we don't yet know what the end of that secession is going to be. As more and more news comes in, what I should say is that at that point, only South Carolina had seceded. The others had threatened to secede, and there's a whole bunch that are gonna secede over the course of January and February. March 4th, 1861. This day, Abel Lincoln is inaugurated. It's very interesting. I think as a means of kind of showing their derision towards Abraham Lincoln, they often call him in their journals Abel Lincoln.
Gerrit Or, you know, like the Southerners called him Abe Lincoln all the time, much the same way that many. It's an interesting aspect in 19th century culture that if you want to dishonor someone, you called them by their nickname. It's very, it's weird. I mean, I think most people today, you know, I mean, they...
Richard What's the term of endearment that I call you by your shorter version of your name?
Gerrit Yeah, if your name's Alexander and someone calls you Alex, it's not because they're trying to, hey, Alex, you know, they're not trying to like be, you know, treat you badly, but certainly that seems to be the case. Everyone we've talked about, everyone who calls Joseph Smith Joe Smith, it's always an attack on him. At any rate, so Abel Lincoln is inaugurated as President of the United States or whatever, or the portion of which is left. He then is going to say March 5th, so the next day he's going to say, Abel Lincoln arrived in Washington. The breach between the North and South is growing wider every day. And then we get to April 1861, April 26, 1861. He says, the Confederate States are raising some 75,000 men as also the Northern States. The North and South are going to war in earnest. So you see this as it's unfolding.
Gerrit I mean, you'd be able to read something like this among many Americans as they're trying to watch in the newspapers what's unfolding in the nation, just waiting on every news report. He goes on to talk about how there is such resistance in places like Maryland. I heard it read at President Young's, the Pony Express that arrived at eight o'clock. It was very interesting. The Massachusetts troops were attacked by citizens of Baltimore, three soldiers killed, 11 citizens. Civil war has commenced. There is many railroad bridges that have been burned to stop the Northern Army from gathering at Washington, and much excitement prevails throughout the whole country. Governor Cummings and Mr. Bell was in when the message was read and the governor looked sober. Governor Cummings is himself from the South and is actually going to leave as a part of the secession, as different people head back to their respective areas. Here's April 28th, 1861 from Wolford Woodruff.
Gerrit The Corman's Wealth Meet and the Historian's Office. To bless the missionaries, President Young said that he'd prayed for both parties in the States that they might both prevail. He said if Virginia and Maryland should join together, they would soon take Washington. The South are better prepared and much faster than the North are. Lincoln has taken a course to rather keep the North back, but the curse of God will be upon the nation and they will have enough of it. The rulers possess no power in the land. They have persecuted the saints of God and the rulers would do nothing for us, but all they could against us. And they will now get their pay for it. And speaking of Governor Cummings, President Young said he had done us good. He had stood between us and the army, but the Lord had made him do it. But he was united with the army until Colonel Cain visited him. When he first came here, he was not going to the army. He's talking about the army that's occupying Utah, Johnston's army. Governor Cummings kind of ran interference for them. The question was asked, what would we do if the president sent Secretary Harris here as governor? Now, this is a pretty loaded question.
Gerrit You've probably played worst case scenario situations with people, maybe with your kids or with your friends. I know Richard's worst case scenario was, what if you made me be a part of this podcast? And then, well, there you go.
Richard Here we are.
Gerrit So worst case scenarios happen. Why are they saying that? Well, Secretary Harris, when Utah Territory was organized, Broughton Harris, his name is Broughton.
Richard That's a tremendous first name.
Gerrit It is a great name. He was the epitome of a political appointee to a federal territory. He was very young, newly married, had no experience at all in politics or law at all. But he was appointed the Secretary of the Territory, which is essentially like your Secretary of State. You don't even have any idea who your Secretary of State is right now. Many states don't even have them anymore. I don't mean nationally. But probably you don't know who that is either. I mean, the reality is in the 19th century, Secretary of the Territory was a very, very powerful and prominent position. And like I said today, you wouldn't know who your Secretary of State is unless it's like maybe it's your grandma or something. You're like, oh, no, she's secretary. Yeah, so then you'd know. But as the Secretary of the Territory, he has a, he has a pretty rough experience. He and his wife come out and they're very excited to be a part of this.
Gerrit He's in charge of dispersing the funds, right? Both for the legislature and to build the Capitol building. So he's the one who brings the money with him to do the buildings. Well, they arrive and, you know, they're greeted by people even before they get down to the valley, who are bringing them like cakes and fruits and things. And so it seems, well, this is very, very nice. Things seem to be going pretty well. And then they're invited to Heber C. Kimball's house to a party, essentially, to get, I get to know you, right? And Mrs. Harris, you know, meets Mrs. Kimball, and then meets Mrs. Kimball, and then meets Mrs. Kimball, and then...
Richard Same, the same woman? It's a different woman. Interesting.
Gerrit Yeah, he meets, the Harris's meet several Mrs. Kimball's at Heber C. Kimball's party. And the shock, I mean, you can only imagine, although they're from New England, you can only imagine the, you know, the placing the hand to the top of the head, and like, my dear me, and you know, and so she tells her husband, essentially from that point on, I want nothing to do with this place. You'll never take me to another social event again. I will never be so embarrassed as to meet, you know, more than one wife of a man. So yeah, didn't go out as well as it could have. At any rate, Harris becomes just ardently antagonistic to the Latter-day Saints. And one of the things he does is he refuses to give money to the legislature that he was supposed to bring out. So the legislature has given money by the federal government. Okay, these are your operating expenses.
Gerrit Well, he refuses to give them the money for the operating expenses. He also refuses to certify that their elections are legal. Why? Well, because he says that the census that they took in 1850, because you have to take a census to know how you're going to divide up the house and the territorial legislature. He claims that it's illegal because it wasn't done on the proper federal census forms that Harris was himself bringing out to the territory. Now Harris arrived at the territory almost a year late. So Brigham Young, ever the practical person, who was the governor, made the executive decision, well, we're just going to create our own forms and do the census because we still need to elect people. Well, Harris saw his authority mocked, greatly, greatly mocked. And so he claimed that all of the elected officers in Utah were illegally serving because they hadn't really been elected because there hadn't really been a census that he'd been able to put his little stamp on to say that it was the real census.
Gerrit As you might imagine, this leads to problems. So Harris is going to, he's going to be one of the runaway officials from Utah in 1851. He's going to leave the post. He's going to demand that Brigham Young be removed as governor, claim all kinds of attacks on the Mormons because of the fact that they're practicing plural marriage. And in fact, this is when Millard Fillmore becomes a real hero of the Latter-day Saints. If you've ever wondered why we have a city called Fillmore, Millard Fillmore not only appointed Brigham Young as governor, and so that got him all kinds of accolades among Latter-day Saints. Millard Fillmore refuses to just bend to the will of these federal appointees that he appointed. He investigates their claims, sees that there's nothing to them, and then orders them all to go back to their post or to have all their money forfeited that they were supposed to be paid. So these guys publish all kinds of, and just utterly antagonistic stuff in the paper. So that's what they do after that to try to regain their honor because they're essentially, you know, disgraced federal officials.
Gerrit So when someone asks Brigham Young in the heat of secession, when you have all these states leaving, and think of where the Latter-day Saints are at this point. The party that is campaigning on destroying either them or at the very least part of their religion, that party is now in control of what's left of the government. Before the election of 1860, there were so many Democrats in Congress that even if you had a Republican president, it wouldn't really matter. They wouldn't be able to pass anything. Remember, they kept trying to pass the Homestead Act and other anti-polygamy acts, and they could never pass them in the Senate because they could never get a majority in the Senate to get them passed. But the Democratic Party was very, very heavily based in the South. And so as each of those states seceded, suddenly the Republicans have this supermajority in the House and Senate in 1861 and 62, because all of the Democratic congressmen and senators are no longer there because they've taken their states out of the Union.
Gerrit Now, there still are many Democrats in the North, and there's still an opposition there. It's not like Lincoln has one party, and he actually has to struggle for his re-election, even though it's just the Northern states. But the opposition to the anti-Mormon bills that had been baked into the Democrats' opposition to the Republicans, it's not there anymore. And so that's going to change the dynamics of the federal government. So if you're Wilfred Woodruff in 1861, the party that has made anti-Mormonism part of their platform is now in power. And that's something that you have to think about as they react. And so the questions asked Brigham Young, what if they send Broughton Harris back here to be our governor when Governor Cummings leaves? And that is essentially, it's the worst case scenario. It's them saying they could send anybody here to be our governor. What if they send some anti-Mormon like Broughton Harris to be our governor, who they all hated?
Gerrit The question was asked, what would we do if President sent Secretary Harris here as governor? Would we not also secede? I mean, for many of the men here talking to Brigham Young, the quorum of the 12, we have limits. We've got a lot of grievances too, and if they're gonna send that man here, then we'll secede. President Young said, no, we will keep our records clean. We shall want to compare our records by and by, and we want to show that on our part, we were right all the time. He goes on to say that if they were to send Harris, then they could find other ways to kind of hound him out of the territory, essentially like they did last time. I mean, he was pretty odious to him before, and he was so disgusted by Mormons that he left his post. So that's a way of getting around it. He continues though and says, yet if we submit to such mean things put upon us by the government, we shall get our reward and they will get theirs. It is better for us to submit to those things that are unpleasant than for us to do wrong.
Gerrit And for all the oppressions they put upon us, God will bring them into judgment. You even see Brigham Young's response here is, okay, so then they send the most odious governor we could ever have out. Well, we don't do something wrong because of that. We continue to do what's right and then expect that at some point, God will reward them for their actions. So it's honestly a fairly inspiring response that he gives as he rejects the idea of seceding, even if worse came to worse. Wilford Woodruff will record some more harsh feelings about the war. And again, many of these harsh feelings come from a place of persecution to Wilford Woodruff isn't theoretical. Persecution to all the Latter-day Saints isn't theoretical. They didn't theoretically get driven from Jackson County or bury people outside of Nauvoo. They didn't theoretically have a thousand people die in the winter quarters in Iowa area because they were forced out as early as they were.
Gerrit This is something that they feel and they feel pretty powerfully. And their last interactions with the federal government before the Civil War were not good ones. You had the government claiming that the black cancer sore of Mormonism was infecting the nation and had to be cut out, and an army was sent out, and that's when they buried the temple. So this is not a time of a kind of kumbaya between the United States and the federal government. In fact, there is a lot of animosity because they see the federal government not just as unwilling to do something about all their persecutions and all the property that they've had stolen and all the murders that have been committed. Now the government is actually a participant in those things. And that takes it to a whole other level of criticism. May 1st, 1861. This is Wilford Woodruff again talking about the news. The news is all very warlike all throughout the country. Both North and South are gathering large armies and preparing for war.
Gerrit The banks and rich men throughout the whole country were consecrating their millions of dollars to sustain the war. How does Wilford Woodruff see this? The nation has persecuted the saints of God and made them consecrate their all and flee from place to place to save their lives. And now it is their turn. The Lord has said he would vex the nation and he will surely do it. Civil war has begun in earnest and will go until the will of God is done. All they have sought to bring upon us will come to pass on them. So now that's just after the beginning of the war, the actual firing on Fort Sumter. And you can see where Wilford Woodruff is at. He sees this as the judgments of God. Now I want to jump forward to December of 1861. Now the dates are going to start to matter a little bit as we examine this question of Lincoln's interaction with the Latter-day Saints, because there are federal officials who arrive in December of 1861 that Wilford Woodruff is none too pleased with.
Gerrit He says, Abe Lincoln, notice the Abe, has sent these men here to prepare the way for an army. An order has been sent to California to raise an army to come to Utah. I pray daily that the Lord will take away the reins of government of the wicked rulers and put it into the hands of wise, good men. I will see the day when those wicked rulers are wiped out. The governor quoted my sayings about the Constitution. I do and always have support of the Constitution, but I am not in league with such cursed scoundrels as Abe Lincoln and his minions. They have sought our destruction from the beginning, and Abe Lincoln has ordered an army to this territory from California, and that order passed over on these wires. A senator from California said in Washington a short time since that the Mormons was in their way and they must be removed. The feelings of Abe Lincoln is that he can and tried to destroy the Mormons and could not. Now I will try my hand at it.
Gerrit Now, that is not what you would consider a super pro Abraham Lincoln sentiment.
Richard This is December of 1861.
Gerrit December of 1861 and why? Why the reaction? Because they have the Telegraph. They see that... So to give you a little bit of a timeline. Utah is declared to be an open rebellion in 1857. So before the Civil War, the Civil War starts in 1861. The states actually secede in 1860 and 1861. So late 1860, early 1861. But before that, Buchanan, basically to take people's minds off of the terrible job he was doing as a president. I mean, the economy was failing. The nation was coming apart at the seams over arguments about slavery. Well, what's the one thing to unify people? I know we all hate Mormons.
Richard Well, just think, if he hadn't done that, then he would have been last by all the historians.
Gerrit But he was last. So he sends the army out to Utah, and so after that, even though the army doesn't end up killing the saints, they occupy Utah territory, and they're there until the secession crisis. Well, as we talked about, one of the greatest ironies of all time is that Albert Sidney Johnston, who was sent out at the head of Johnston's army to put down this, the first rebellion that has ever occurred in the territories of the United States, according to President Buchanan. Well, he's going to leave his post when his home state secedes, and he will go back to the Confederate States of America and become the second highest ranking field officer in the Confederate States of America military. So the general who was sent out to put down the supposed insurrection of the Mormons will two years later himself be actually the head of the actual insurrection and actually begin killing Americans in an actual rebellion.
Gerrit Johnston is a pretty able commander. I'm sure he learned that in his Utah sojourn, but he is the one who nearly, he comes close to annihilating Ulysses S. Grant's army outside of Corinth at the Battle of Shiloh. He actually, he surprise attacks Grant's army, and Grant's army is nearly, nearly destroyed. But in the midst of the first day of that battle, Shiloh, Johnston gets wounded, and it's actually a mortal wound, and he will die. And in the aftermath of Johnston being wounded and passing, well, he doesn't die right away, but he's out of action. In the aftermath of that, Grant's able to kind of rally his forces, Johnston's generals below him, they don't have the same abilities, and the Battle of Shiloh becomes the earliest, bloodiest battle of the war in the early days of the war.
Gerrit But it's how Johnston's end is going to come. So literally four years after Johnston is putting down the supposed Mormon rebellion, he will actually die in open rebellion against his country at the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War. At any rate, you can see that once... So Johnston leaves, but so does his army. The army is recalled. All of the regular armies were called back to their various places. And even if they weren't, many of the officers were all resigning their commissions and going to go join up with... If I'm an officer from Virginia in the regular army, I'm going to resign my commission on the army, and I'm going to go back and join the Virginia military, and then later that becomes the Confederate States Army. So when they hear the wire, it come across the wire, that they're calling for troops to be stationed in Utah, and that wire comes across in late 1861.
Gerrit Wilford Woodruff's reaction is, oh, another occupying army. So they'd been occupied up until late 1860, and then for 1861, it was back to them just running the territory themselves. They had made no motions towards secession. You just heard Brigham Young in a Quorum of the Twelve meeting adamantly opposed to secession. When the transcontinental telegraph line is completed, the first message that Brigham Young sends across it is that Utah has not seceded, but remains firm in the laws of our once happy nation. So there's no indication or reason why there would need to be an army stationed in Utah. How odd is it to station an army in a place that's claiming that it's loyal to the Union? It seems odd. We need to raise an army. Where are we going to put it? The place you have to put it? Wisconsin. If we don't have it there, it's right there on the border of nothing.
Gerrit There's so many threats to all kinds of insurrection. We've got to put it there. I mean, I know I'm being a little tripe, but you need to think about this. In a time when the Union is desperately strapped for soldiers, they are trying to invade all of the South all at once, and that's a pretty big area. They are scrambling, scrambling to enlist as many troops as they possibly can. There are many battles in the Civil War that will be decided by the fact of having a couple hundred troops here or a couple hundred troops there. And nearly a thousand troops are going to be sent to occupy Utah. That is a stunning thing in the early days of the war, especially in 1861 and early 1862, when the war is not going well for the Union. They lose the Battle of Bull Run.
Gerrit They have not been successful in keeping the Confederacy from gaining legitimacy. And so the fact that what's next on the minds is, you know what else we need to do? We got to get an army occupying Utah. Oh, did they vote for secession? No, they didn't, but they're still Mormons. I mean, we don't have that discussion for the reason why, but it is a fact that the War Department is going to order this army to be raised in California for the purpose of occupying Utah. So you see how Wilford Woodruff feels about that. Now, we can fast forward a little bit. And we can see what he has to say about this. As he says a little bit more here, he's going to say, December, so this is December of 1861 still.
Gerrit The last day of 1861, which is past and gone, as born as reported to heaven of the deeds of all nations and men. This year has brought much of the fulfillment of the predictions of ancient history of ancient and modern prophets of God. I there declared as a prophetic historian that this year would be the most distressing year America ever saw, since they were an independent nation, and time has proven it so. Five states, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Florida seceded from the Union in January, the first month of the year. Texas seceded in February, then followed North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Virginia, and a part of Missouri have all seceded during 1861. South Carolina, of course, had already seceded. This has brought on a terrible war upon the nation. Both North and South have been rushed to arms until the North alone has over 600,000 men under arms, and the South are near the same number of men. This war has cost the Northern states some 500 million of dollars during the past year and many thousands of lives, and it's only the beginning of trouble.
Gerrit The close of 1862 will leave America with a debt upon her shoulders of one billion dollars, a debt as large as the debt of England. The state of Missouri, where the saints have received their persecutions, is now the great battlefield of the West. It is now man against man and neighbor against neighbor. They who have spoiled the saints are now being spoiled. Independence in Jackson County, Missouri is nearly destroyed. It is the case with many parts of the state. The Lord has taken peace from the earth, and the nations are still preparing for war. The Lord has pointed out the fate of this nation in the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. He has said that when they become right men in iniquity, they should be cut off. That day has come. Their cup of iniquity is full. The whole nation, rulers and people, are filled with corruption before God, and the President and Senate of the United States are sending men to Utah to rule over this people as a governor and judges who are so corrupt that they are a hiss and a byword and a stink in the nostrils of all the people in the streets.
Gerrit Now, that might sound a little extreme, but what had just happened? Well, he goes on to explain. So, a new governor had been appointed, John Dawson, and this is what Woodruff writes in his journal. John W. Dawson was sent by President Lincoln to Utah as their governor. He arrived in Great Salt Lake City on the 7th of December, delivered his message on the 10th of the Utah legislature, and immediately commenced a scene of debauchery and insulted women until the widow of Thomas Williams drove him out of her house with a fire shovel because of his vulgar abuse to her. And he has left the city for the East this day in a male stage, a disgraced, debauched libertine. He left because he could not hold up his head in the streets and look at the people in the face because of his crimes. These are the kinds of rulers the Gentiles send to rule over Israel. And Israel begins to feel that it's time to rise up and appoint her own governors, judges and rulers and trust in God for the result.
Gerrit The American nation as a United States government is doomed to destruction and no power can save it. They have forfeited all right and title to redemption or salvation at the hand of the Lord or his saints. It is decreed that the measure which they have meted out unto the saints shall be meted unto them again. They are hastening unto their work of desolation, war, bloodshed and destruction. Woe, woe is their doom. The spirit of prophecy would cry, O Lord, hasten thy work. Let the wicked slay the wicked until the whole land is cleansed from corruption, sin, abomination and wickedness, which now reigns upon the face of the whole earth. May thy judgments continue to be poured out upon this land of North America until the blood of the prophets and saints is avenged before the Lord and thy words fulfilled upon the land of Joseph. Take away the scepter, rule and government from the wicked and corrupt, and give it into the hands of the just, even to the saints, that they may rule in righteousness before thee.
Gerrit Give thy oppressed people, Lord, the privilege of appointing their own governor, judges and rulers from this time forth, that thy kingdom may be established upon earth, and the poor rejoice in the holy one of Israel. So you see Woodrow's reaction, and of course, one of the things that would allow them to have their own governor and judges appointed, is they are petitioning continually to become a state in the United States. They've been a territory since 1850, and they are continually petitioning to become a state. They are rejected in all of their statehood petitions over and over and over again, both prior to Lincoln's presidency and all throughout his presidency. And this actually is going to become a real... There's going to be a real sense of hypocrisy here in part, because one of the reasons why Utah is told they can't become a state is their population isn't large enough. Well, in 1864, Nevada, which is actually cut out of Utah territory, is going to become a state, even though it has a far smaller population than Utah.
Gerrit So the whole thing simply becomes incredibly hypocritical, that Nevada was the portion of Utah territory that had been primarily settled by Gentiles, by miners that weren't Latter-day Saints. And so you have this relatively small population, but the government immediately grants their petition to become a state and separate from Utah territory. So all throughout the war, as I read one dispatch from Washington DC, from the Latter-day Saint representative there, I tell them that we are trying to get into the Union while others are trying to leave it. I mean, it's such an odd conversation that happens during the Civil War that Latter-day Saints are told that they're disloyal, and that's the reason why they can't join the Union, even though the actual demonstration of disloyalty is all of these states that have actually left the Union. It's a weird, weird thing, but it also demonstrates just how antagonistic towards Mormons the people of the United States and the government had become.
Gerrit We always think of that era as, oh, if it's free, you know, anti-slavery, then yes, the Union is going to accept that. But here's a case where the Union could have been bolstered by a free state. The Latter-day Saints have said that they would join as a free state. Now, there were slaves in Utah territory, but they would, not very many, but there were. But they had already said that they would join as a free state if they joined. And even though that's ostensibly the Republican Party's primary goal is creating states out of the Western territories that are free states and not slave states, when it came to Utah territory saying we would become a state, the response is, I don't think so, because we want you proper Americans. And proper Americans don't believe in a gold Bible or practice plural marriage. And so, hence the need to flood Utah with proper Christian settlers, not proper anti-slavery advocates, but proper Christian settlers.
Gerrit That's what needed to happen.
Richard I had just this last week, I was out in Oklahoma, and I was telling a story about an uncle of mine that converted from Judaism to Christianity, and the question that I was asked was, was it Christian Christian or Mormon Christian? That was this week.
Gerrit That's nice. And you had to inform them.
Richard I said Christian Christian, so he's fine.
Gerrit So then he was okay with it.
Richard No, absolutely fine.
Gerrit It's like, oh, well then he's going to heaven then.
Richard Yeah, that's correct.
Gerrit But did you tell him you're still Mormon Christian?
Richard I did. But it's one of those things where, you know, the person was doing it relatively tongue in cheek, but I mean, that's still kind of the...
Gerrit Well, so you get the feeling from Wilfred Woodruff's comments here that the reality is there's a lot of animosity by the end of 1861 towards the federal government, and they've really done nothing to mitigate that. They already had negative views of Abraham Lincoln to start with, and then they have to deal with the fact that he's now ordered an army to go occupy Utah. He has sent a governor to Utah who apparently attempts to, apparently makes lewd advances towards this woman who then hits him with a fire shovel apparently, which is good on her. I mean, that's pretty impressive. And then he flees the territory, and another governor has to be appointed. I mean, this is not a good track record if you happen to be the federal government, especially after Utah has already affirmed we are going to stay in the Union.
Gerrit It's almost like the Republican Party's rhetoric of anti-Mormonism trumped the realities on the ground. What are the realities? Well, we need every single person who's willing to fight for us, but not Mormons. I mean, like real Americans.
Richard And not just not Mormons, also not the army that's then sitting in Utah to guard the Mormons.
Gerrit We need every single person on the front lines, except for the thousand that we're going to leave in Utah to make sure that the Mormons don't secede, even though they said they're not going to secede. I mean, it's actually stunning. And again, by 1862, it's not a surprise that Latter-day Saints have a negative view towards the Union government and Abraham Lincoln, because he's the head of this party that's trying to destroy the Saints. And they haven't yet had anything to tell them otherwise. So all of that is kind of the background of where we're at going into 1862. And 1862 is this kind of pivotal year in relationship between the federal government and the Latter-day Saints. Though the order has come to raise troops to occupy Utah, they haven't actually been occupied yet, because they've got to raise the troops.
Gerrit And on top of that, while they've had the misstep with sending the governor who attempted to commit adultery, there hasn't been any provocative steps taken against the Latter-day Saints, although they do see that raising of the army, for what purpose are you sending the army here? Obviously, people usually raise armies for a reason, and it's not just to spend money on them. So what we are going to do in our next episode is examine the actual relationship between the Latter-day Saints and the federal government during that pivotal year of the Civil War, and especially examining the claims that are sometimes made of Abraham Lincoln's specific relationship with the Latter-day Saints, and for some have even claimed that Abraham Lincoln is even influenced by Latter-day Saint theology, that he reads the Book of Mormon, and that affects both him as a person and the way he treats the Latter-day Saints.
Gerrit There are many reasons why, historically, that's not as, it's not a very accurate argument for a lot of the reasons we laid out here, but in order to answer the questions of the people that have asked, we kind of had to lay a lot of groundwork because there's a lot going on. And now that you have that groundwork, in our next episode, we're going to examine some of those specific claims and events and respond to them. So thanks so much for joining us.
Intro Thank you for listening to the Standard of Truth podcast hosted by historian Dr. Gerrit Dirkmaat. If you know anybody that could benefit from the material in this episode, please share it with them. And for more resources, visit standardoftruth.com. Until next time.

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As much as 19th century history could ever be considered a cliffhanger.

GerritBanter

While someone might say, well, hey, he never said anything negative about Mormons during that time. That's usually kind of a different standard than we use when we're trying to find something bad about another politician that we don't like, right?

GerritInsight

As soon as we get to townships, then we'll know we've crossed the Mendoza line.

RichardBanter

Theater of the mind. I'm now holding a bell.

RichardBanter

So it's really hard for a modern Latter-day Saint to come to terms with the fact that your spiritual forebears did not think the same thing about Abraham Lincoln.

GerritInsight

I know Richard's worst case scenario was, what if you made me be a part of this podcast?

GerritBanter

So it's honestly a fairly inspiring response that he gives as he rejects the idea of seceding, even if worse came to worse.

GerritInsight

They didn't theoretically get driven from Jackson County or bury people outside of Nauvoo.

GerritInsight

The place you have to put it? Wisconsin. If we don't have it there, it's right there on the border of nothing.

GerritBanter

I said Christian Christian, so he's fine.

RichardBanter

More from this episode

Claim checkThings people say, and what the episode shows.

Claim check

What critics say, and what the episode found
Lincoln never said anything negative about Mormons in Illinois, so he must have been friendly to them.
Utah was disloyal during the Civil War, so it needed an occupying army.
Utah was kept out of the Union because its population was too small.
Take it to classReady to use in a lesson or a talk.

Take it to class

Ready to copy into a lesson or a text

Early Saints did not share our admiration for Lincoln; he led the party that campaigned against part of their religion, and they had real reasons to be wary.

Wilford Woodruff read the Civil War through D&C 87 and the murder of Joseph and Hyrum, and saw it as God's judgment on the nation.

Even facing the worst governor Washington could send, Brigham Young refused to secede: "We will keep our records clean."

Utah stayed loyal and asked to join the Union while other states left it, yet it was denied statehood while an army was raised to occupy it.

Banter binThe funniest moments in this episode.

Banter bin

The running jokes, for people who skip ahead
CliffhangersLast week's 1856 Republican cliffhanger, as much as 19th-century history can be one, and Gerrit wonders whether Lincoln ever became president (0:38, 0:48, 0:54).
TownshipsTownships mark the Mendoza line of boring, and Richard fetches an imaginary bell to ring when they cross it (11:16, 11:33).
Is anyone still awake?Gerrit stops mid-electoral-votes to ask if this is the most boring podcast ever (11:06).
Forced to do the podcastRichard's worst case scenario was being made part of this podcast, "Here we are" (26:16, 26:30).
A tremendous first nameRichard admires Broughton Harris's name (26:44).
Mrs. Kimball, and Mrs. Kimball...Mrs. Harris keeps meeting Mrs. Kimballs at Heber C. Kimball's party, and Richard asks if it's the same woman (27:49, 28:46).
The border of nothingGerrit's sarcastic case for stationing troops in Wisconsin, and in loyal Utah (44:08).
Christian ChristianAsked in Oklahoma whether his uncle's conversion was "Christian Christian or Mormon Christian" (54:55, 55:18).
The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown MailbagSend Gerrit and Richard your question.

The Phebe Draper Palmer Brown Mailbag

Your question could be next week’s episode
Questions from Litners drive a lot of episodes. Send yours. If it makes the show, Richard reads it on air.
Go deeperWhere to read more.

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Deep dives the episode points toward
Wilford Woodruff's Civil War journal entries from 1860 to 1861, read alongside D&C 87 (16:18).
Broughton Harris and the runaway officials of 1851, and why Fillmore, Utah is named for Millard Fillmore (30:59).
Albert Sidney Johnston's path from the Utah War to Shiloh (40:38).
Utah's repeated statehood petitions during the Civil War, and Nevada's admission in 1864 (51:23).
Governor John W. Dawson's short and scandalous term in December 1861 (49:21).
SOT Litner · S2E11.