Brigham Young: American Moses

The name Brigham Young conjures up many images of the unsettled West. He was one of the greatest religious colonizers of the nineteenth century. The reason is the overall fact that he was so successful. Much of the Eastern images dealt mainly with his polygamous relationships. This unfortunately overlooks his major contributions as founder of over 300 settlements in the West's Great Basin. He gathered the beleaguered Mormons, from Missouri, Illinois and the World, home to the Rocky Mountains. Leonard Arrington, late LDS Church Historian, has compiled a fairly objective account of his life. From Brigham's early conversion to Mormonism through the migration to the Salt Lake Valley to his settling the Utah range, here is a history of a very interesting man. As LDS President, Prophet , Territory Governor and Indian Agent, Brigham displayed a very practical and pragmatic philosophy. Arrington show us a man that truly was faithful to Joseph Smith. Not only did he preach and read scripture but he practiced what he preached. This was no better emphasized than on Sunday October 5, 1856 when he stood and delivery the opening address of the semiannual general conference. He said "I will now give this people the subject and the text for the Elders who may speak today and during the conference. It is this....Many of our brethren and sisters are on the Plains (Wyoming snows) with handcarts, and probably many are now seven hundred miles from this place. They must be brought here, we must send assistance to them. The text will be to get them here!..I will tell you all that your faith, religion and profession of religion will not save one soul of you in the celestial kingdom of our God unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people on the Plains and attend strictly to those things which we call temporal..." The effects of this speech were that during the conference 27 young men and 16 mule teams were out on the trail to start the rescue. Throughout his life Brigham emphasized that the spiritual and temporal were inclusive entities that needed daily careful maintenance. Arrington emphasized that not all the programs that Brigham Young started were successful but that indirectly they lead to a cohesive ethnic society. He had many verbal wars with Washington over statehood, judges and the slow money to cover Indian affairs. Arrington doesn't shy away from the Mountain Meadows Massacre and Brigham's desire to settle this affair or with his confrontations with apostle Orson Pratt. The one area that I wish Arrington would have covered more was the Mormon War or Buchanan's Blunder, but overall I felt he covered Brigham Young well. Anyone interested in the settling of the West needs to include Brigham Young in that study. Well worth recommending and adding to the history shelf.

The book captures the energy of this man as Brigham always said,"I will die in the harness" and he did.An amazing true tale of how he was able to rise as leader of the Mormons after Joseph Smith's death.He was able to organize with the help of others the grand migration to the Salt Lake despite persecution from the U.S. government as well as infighting within his own ranks.The image i most remember is when in the last year of his life a Mormon who had "fallen out" with Brigham cursed the old gentleman as he passed by in his wagon. Brigham sat back in his seat,uttered not a word but tightened his lips.Probably he was thinking,"Buddy if you knew even the 1/2 of it you'd curse me even louder"!!As Frank Perdue asserted,"it takes a tough man to make a tender chicken",the same for a religion.No apologies here just alot of facts.still though sometimes energy can land a person in alot of trouble.If young's life were publicly laid bare by today's standards he would probably have more than one's share of problems.But as well documented in this book you would have to be aware of events in America and in England and Europe during this period.The Great Awakening was a period of religious ferverency like no other since.Mormons were just one small group that came from this period. But with leadership like Smith and Young they emerged from the 1830's intact and growing.Also the young United States was on the verge of Civil War,the Mormons being nonslave owning and settling almost in the heart of "Bleeding Kansas". Brigham Young just had that charismatic personality that made people listen and ones who didn't he had the cruelty to prevent them from becoming a disruption. Characters like young gave the Mormons a big "jump start"which is what a small group needs to survive.No need to comment whether he had 70 wives or 54 since more than 1 automatically would put you as a polygamist.That door officialy closed in 1890 never to be reopened and from reading this book,Young himself would have been capable of changing with the times.The major emphasis of the book seems to be on the Wagon Exodus of the Mormons from Illinois and Missouri,hence the title Brigham Young,American Moses.The Mormons were persecuted by the then shaky American government as were the Jews in Egypt.Since alot of the Mormon settlers were displaced industrial workers and farmers from old world European countries,one would have to wonder if the major motive for conversion to Mormonism was economic.A chance to start a new life with a guarantee of land and credit for the immigrant.A larger than life figurehead like Young,offered the mormons a rallying point,who could at times turn a "blind eye" to both large and small indiscretions necessary to gain an advantageous foothold in Utah.Young also could bring in the government and private contracts so many of his shortcomings were overlooked as well.Then you have about 4 or 5 "pretenders to the throne" to be dealt with and you have a balancing act only a real

Between the 1950s and the 1990s no one was more important in advancing the cause of Mormon history than Leonard J. Arrington. Prolific personally, and encouraging of others, he is best known for a path-breaking book "Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900" (Harvard University Press, 1958), but "Brigham Young: American Moses" is a close second. This is a work of great maturity and sophistication. On rereading it twenty years after it was first published, it remains unsurpassed as a biographical treatment of this remarkable Mormon leader. In it Arrington tells the life story of Brigham Young, an early convert to Mormonism and the leader of the largest group of Mormonism to emerge from the split that took place within the church at the time of the assassination of Joseph Smith in 1844. As president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles Young had a powerful position from which to exert influence over the churc. At first he asserted leadership only as president of the Twelve, and was only ordained to the presidency in 1847. But it is what Young did afer the 1844 succession crisis in Mormonism that is most important. He realized that the Latter-day Saints had to depart the United States to enjoy their peculiar version of theocracy with esoteric temple rituals, plural marriage, and a millennial expectation of the destruction of all earthly governments and the establishment of a "Kingdom of God" on Earth. He led the Mormons to the Rocky Mountains, hence Arrington's characterization of him as the "American Moses," arriving in the Great Basin in 1847 and establishing Salt Lake City beside the lake from which it took its name. For a decade he aggressively expanded his Mormon kingdom in the mountains, but in 1857 he faced down a U.S. Army sent to bring the Mormons under control and he avoided all-out war only through negotiations that allowed both sides to live with the situation. Much married and with many children, Young lived another twenty years after that confrontation. He saw his church expand in numbers and influence, suffer under pressure to end the practice of plural marriage (which it would finally officially do in 1890), and to enjoy much easier transportation with the completion of the Transcontinental railroad in 1869. Young finally died in 1877. Arrington's biography is an example of "faithful history," a genre of Mormon history that is honest but also highly enthused with the ideas and ethos of the LDS faith. It is a book that most Mormons would be quite happy with, but one that does not whitewash difficult issues. For instance, Arrington deals with the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857 in which Mormons in southern Utah engaged in the killing of all of the adults in a wagon train bound for California. Some think Young was the mastermind of this horrific event, but Arrington demonstrates that he did not order\ it. He did help to cover it up, however, and Arrington acknowledges that it was "The most tragic even

This is certainly by far the best biography ever written on a very important figure in western American history. It is very well documented. Arrington does not skip the controversies, it is all layed out. I certainly came away with a greater understanding of Brigham Young. Leonard Arrington was the head of the Mormon churches hisorical department for years and had a great influence on many Mormon historians to write honest and concise history. My only criticism is sometimes Arrington overly discusses economics in Utah rather then other aspects of Brigham Youngs life. Overall though it is great!

This book is the summing-up of Leonard Arrington's great career as the father of the New Mormon History, that renaissance of candor during the '60's and '70's. He had full access to the massive church archives in Salt Lake by virtue of his appointment as Church Historian, something no other biographer of Brigham could get. He used this access, his training as one of America's finest historians, and his own moderate yet faithful temprament to produce the definitive book on Brigham--one that could satisfy the strictest canons of his profession and also could be faithful to his religious tradition. Arrington wrote with loving yet open eyes, and this book belongs on the shelf of everyone who enjoys Western Americana.