Thomas G. Alexander on Brigham Young (Season 1, Ep. 2 - Part 2)

**Brad Westwood** (0:05)
Hi, this is Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian for the Utah Dept. of Heritage and Arts. My speaker today is Dr. Tom Alexander, Professor of History, retired emeritus from BYU, author of 27 books now, incredible amount of work, including histories related to Salt Lake City.
The official centennial history for Utah, the 100th anniversary was written by Tom. A good deal of thought and scholarship has gone into the writings of Dr. Alexander. It's my pleasure to have him here today. Hello, Tom.

**Tom Alexander** (0:42)
Hi, good to be here.

**Brad Westwood** (0:44)
So in the previous session, we were talking about the 1850s for Brigham Young, a tough time for him. And we wanted to sort out just how things happened that relate to the Utah Expedition of 1857

**Tom Alexander** (0:59)
Well, you remember, I spoke about the various letters and complaints that were sent back to Washington. President Buchanan, shortly after he was inaugurated in March of 1857, decided that the Latter-day Saints were in what he called substantial rebellion against the authority of the United States.
Judge Drummond had suggested in one of his letters that an army would be necessary to put down this rebellion. Buchanan apparently agreed with him, and so he mustered in one-third of the whole United States army to come out to Utah and to escort a new group of officials, to Utah. Some of them got along very well with the Mormons, others did not. But the problem was Brigham Young hated armies. He'd had the experience with armies in Missouri and in Illinois. He didn't participate in the Mormon Missouri War, but he had to suffer the consequences of that, because he was in charge of leading the Latter-day Saint refugees east from the far west area in Missouri into Illinois.
His wife, Mary Ann Angel Young, said that you could mark the passage of those people from Missouri to Illinois by the blood on their footprints on the ground. It was extremely difficult for him. He faced the same thing in Illinois. Governor Ford had promised to protect Joseph and Hiram Smith. He didn't do that. There were informal militias there that fought against the Mormons, and drove them out. It was a militia unit that killed Joseph and Hiram Smith. Brigham Young saw the problems, the conflicts that took place in 1854, 55 with Steptoe's soldiers. Even though Steptoe himself wasn't involved in them, the soldiers were.
A number of soldiers who were in the army coming to Utah said that their intention was to kill the Mormons, including General Johnston's adjutant.
It was for Brigham Young something that was virtually intolerable. Now what he did was illegal. There's no question about that. Sending troops out to burn the wagon trains was certainly illegal.

**Brad Westwood** (4:13)
That really started the conflict, did it not? When Brigham Young actually had these, going out and destroying the trains of material, I mean, that was an act of war on the federal government.

**Tom Alexander** (4:29)
It was an act of war on the part of the Latter-day Saints. And I would date the rebellion from that activity. Usually, we date the rebellion of the South and not from the resolutions that were passed in the various state legislatures, but from the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. And I think the same thing is true of the Utah War.
Well, fortunately, the army didn't get into Utah in 1857 They had to stop at Fort Bridger.
Brigham Young was preparing for them, but they could easily have gotten into Utah. They didn't have to come down Echo Canyon. They could have gone north around the Bear River, Soda Springs, and come in with very little difficulty because that's not a narrow defile the way Echo Canyon is.

**Brad Westwood** (5:37)
Let me ask you about, I was on the trail of Echo Canyon actually related to the Transcontinental Railroad, which of course is the same route. But I was looking at the defenses and the topography and how it was to be used. What stunned me as I read some accounts there on site was.
The Mormon militia was told, you're going to do everything you can to stop, burn, prevent, but if necessary, shoot, kill.

**Tom Alexander** (6:11)
Yes.

**Brad Westwood** (6:11)
Had that in a counterfactual way, Tom, if that had happened, wow, what an interesting event.

**Tom Alexander** (6:17)
Well, it would have been open warfare and the United States Army certainly could have defeated the Latter-day Saints. They could have flanked them through the Bear River route. It would have been horrible and a number of the officers were willing to kill Latter-day Saints. They thought that was the best thing that they could do for the United States.