Episode 145: Runaway Officials

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:03)
Hey, Bryan, have you checked the headlines lately?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:07)
I have made a personal decision. For the rest of 2025, I will not be checking the headlines. Thank you very much.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:14)
When have we ever talked about current issues, Bryan? I don't mean 2025 I mean, when was the last time you checked the Deseret News headlines?

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:22)
Uh.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:23)
In 1860

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:25)
I mean, I'm more of an 1850s person.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:27)
Hey, that's my line. Well, how about this from the Deseret News, 1860? Quote, murder after murder has been committed with impunity within the precincts of great Salt Lake City. Tell such occurrences do not seemingly attract much attention.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:44)
Sounds like they needed an apartheid lever to come efficiency up the place. What's that? Oh, oh, we're not doing that.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:50)
No, no, no.

**Bryan Buchanan** (0:51)
Today, we're exploring one of the darkest and most violent chapters in Mormon history, the era of the Runaway Officials in Utah territory. It's a story that reads more like a mafia crime drama than a religious history.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:02)
What we're going to share today paints a disturbing picture of how power was wielded in early Utah through intimidation, violence, and a sophisticated system of control that probably would make a mobster proud. Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:20)
And this is Bryan Buchanan.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:21)
Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Bryan Buchanan** (1:49)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day. Saddle up.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:54)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts, and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:02)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast. The documents we're going to discuss reveal a pattern of systemic harassment, threats, outright violence against federal officials who dared to challenge Brigham Young's theocratic control of Utah territory.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:37)
But Lindsay, Mormons in Utah were not a violent people. Showing him that way does harm. Let's start with what might be the most shocking case, the story of Governor John W. Dawson in 1861

**Bryan Buchanan** (2:51)
Most shocking, huh? Drummond says, hold my sarsaparilla.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:53)
You shush. Dawson holds the record for shortest-serving territorial governor, a record of just three weeks. But what happened in those three weeks, and especially what happened after, tells us everything about how power really worked in territorial Utah.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:08)
And all this happens in the context of the growing civil war. And remember, Brigham, Heber and Company are actively cheering on the war, like in the rooting for the dissolution of the United States kind of way. They hadn't protected Joseph Smith, and now the whole country was really going to pay, really.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:26)
The fighting mosquitoes fight song was probably all about taking down the US government.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:31)
There was a lot of vengeance, vengeance, rah rah rah. That was the chorus probably. Yeah, so the whole Mormons as these uber patriotic Americans, that trope is like a good half century away still. Sorry, I was just trying to get us to the Reed Smith hearings faster.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:44)
Of course you were.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:45)
Anyway, Governor John Woodruff Dawson. Yeah, yeah, Woodruff?

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (3:53)
Oh, nothing.

**Bryan Buchanan** (3:56)
I really, these are the kind of stupid questions I have when we do these episodes. What did the W stand for? It looks like it was just a W. That's so boring. Anyways, Governor Dawson, he arrives as a third governor of Utah Territory with some high hopes. He's part of this whole slate of Lincoln appointed guys. They are notably, one, all non-Mormons, and two, not even from Utah. Lincoln would claim it was an honest mistake.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:19)
Even John Wilkes Booth is shaking his head.

**Bryan Buchanan** (4:21)
Our boy, John Wilford Dawson, was a respected Indiana lawyer and a newspaper editor. But he makes one fatal mistake. He challenged Brigham Young on taxes.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (4:31)
Don't ever come at the Mormons and their money. Come on, guys. Specifically, Dawson called on Mormons to pay nearly $27,000 in federal taxes to help fight the Civil War. Brigham Young's response from the pulpit was characteristically blunt. He declared he would, quote, see them in hell before I raise an army for them. Young went further, saying that anyone who had been a newspaper editor for 15 years must be a jackass. His word's not mine. And the environment Dawson stepped into was one in which Brigham, quote, expressed with some warmth that he had no disposition to respond to the calls of the government that had so lately shown their bitter hostilities against us. Funny that he was, like, super pissed that the army had acted by, quote, burning the remnants of their arms rather than we should possess them. I mean, it's a fair point. Armies sent in to subdue a group usually just let them have all their guns at the end. Right? Is that how that works?