Mormons and the Grand Jury in Hancock County, 1839-1845

2018

Western Historical Quarterly, 2017

Mormon history is firmly rooted in, and a distinct product of, U.S. history. Yet, for much of the twentieth century, nineteenth-century United States historiography and nineteenth-century Mormon historiography have remained frustratingly apart. U.S. historians barely discussed the Mormons in their syntheses, while Mormon historians rarely cast their eyes beyond the narrow (albeit fascinating) confines of the early LDS Church and its adherents. In recent decades, scholars have done much to bring the two histories together, as topics such as Joseph Smith and the origins of Mormonism, polygamy, the Mormon Trail, and Mormon theories of government have all been placed in a wider American framework, yielding intriguing and fruitful results. Early Utah Territory, however, has stubbornly persisted in scholarly isolation. In many ways, this isolation makes sense, as Mormon leaders moved to the Great Basin to be isolated. Yet, as Brent Rogers, a documentary editor of the Joseph Smith Papers at the LDS Church History Library, demonstrates in his impressively researched new book Unpopular Sovereignty: Mormons and the Federal Management of Early Utah Territory, the drama of 1850s Utah was entangled with the drama of the 1850s United States. Rogers' wide-ranging study skillfully integrates the history of the antebellum United States with Mormon and Native-controlled Utah Territory, and definitively establishes that the 1857 Utah War was indeed a national event-one that informed the larger debate over popular sovereignty and slavery in the decade preceding the Civil War.

Nova Religio, 2018

Journal of Mormon History, 2015

is a licensed associate marriage and family therapist in Utah. His academic and professional specializations integrate the following disciplines: behavioral sciences, sociology, mental health treatment, peace and justice studies, and religious studies. He is particularly interested in the research and development of pragmatic therapeutic support for individuals/families affected by faith crises.

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BYU Studies Quarterly, 2001

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The period from the end of the seventeenth year of the reign of the judges to the beginning of the nineteenth year was a particularly unstable time in the history of the Nephite people. The amount of text Mormon devotes to it reveals the importance of this time period in their history. The crises that emerged during this time affected every Nephite, but they did not arise out of a vacuum. Instead, a number of prior social forces were at work and created an environment from which the tensions could find full form. This paper focuses on three primary forces: (1) the creation of a new political system (judgeship rather than kingship) and its relationship with the church, (2) the reemergence of political and social power among the Mulekite majority, and (3) the immigration of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies.