DiscussMormonism.com

I'm reading the book Zion in the courts - a legal history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints 1830-1900 by Edown Brown Firmage and Richard Collin Mangrum. This book made me laugh too many times at what Church leaders tried to pull. Every page just makes me shake my head and say what are these guys thinking . It also made me realize that these Congressman and Justices writing in the 1800's were brilliant and a hundred times smarter than me. One thing I just read about was how the law started to catch up with LDS leaders. The book said that most of the men that practiced polygamy were bishops, stake presidents on up to the president of the church and it's apostles. Which are the ones that had tithing supporting a house of six woman and one man. Here's one regarding Lorenzo:

"Indeed, a polygamist might have contact with only one wife and still be convicted of cohoabitiation, if that one wife is not his legally recognized wife. Lorenzo Snow, for example, had married nine women over a thirty-year period, the last ten years before he was indicted for cohabitation. Two had died. In compliance, so he thought, with the law, the seventy-two year-old Snow had established his six older wives in six separate households and refrained from almost all contact with them. He lived soley with his youngest wife, who still had infant children to raise. Neverless, he was convicted or cohabitation. The Mormons could not win whatever they did, for Snow's efforts to comply with the law by separating himself from his wives scandalized the Utah Supreme Court, which unheld his convictions (United States v. Snow P. 9:501 [Utah 1886]: "as for his passion for one wife became satiated and dulled by indulgence and gratification, and his lust was again kindled by the appearance of a younger and fresher, or possibly more attractive, woman, he would marry again, until his marriages have been repeated nine times: The court purported to find Snow's case to be "one of the most aggravated cases and worst examples of polygamy".


So far in this book I have learned that in the early church Joseph Smith, Brigham Young etc tried to create a separate government from the United States, but that didn't blatently violate the U.S constitution. At the end of Nauvoo, Joseph had basically declared martial law. anyone could be stopped and questioned in Nauvoo. All warrants issued from outside had to be brought before Joseph and he would decide if a citizen of Nauvoo could be taken by a local Marshall. He had armed people at posts and commanded a huge private army.

The Church used current statutes of the state or territory to right rules that promoted what the priesthood directed for the saints. It became a chess game for fifty years. Congress and Presidents all viewed Polygamy as immoral and tried to stop it. They didn't like one man living in a house with multiple wives. The church and polygamy won many court battles even U.S supreme court battles which just caused congress and the President to counter it and tweak it with more legislation. In the end the result of promoting polygamy would hurt too many children and wives and some would say it was done at the selfishness of the men that promoted it.

thestyleguy wrote:So far in this book I have learned that in the early church Joseph Smith, Brigham Young etc tried to create a separate government from the United States, but that didn't blatently violate the U.S constitution. At the end of Nauvoo, Joseph had basically declared martial law. anyone could be stopped and questioned in Nauvoo. All warrants issued from outside had to be brought before Joseph and he would decide if a citizen of Nauvoo could be taken by a local Marshall. He had armed people at posts and commanded a huge private army.

My impression is that this action more than anything inflamed the mobs who ended up killing Joseph Smith. The Nauvoo Charter was set up so that the Mayor and City Council had judicial rights, and as you correctly said, the mayor and council had veto rights on warrants, etc. This made the people in surrounding towns believe that Joseph had set himself above the law and that criminals were using Nauvoo as a safe haven from prosecution. The destruction of the Expositor cemented the idea of Joseph as despot, spurring the mobs to kill him. Now, do not suppose I condone the actions of the mob. I don't. What they did was despicable. It is just interesting to note that it really wasn't polygamy or religious "weirdness" that led to the fateful day at Carthage.

Runtu wrote:

thestyleguy wrote:So far in this book I have learned that in the early church Joseph Smith, Brigham Young etc tried to create a separate government from the United States, but that didn't blatently violate the U.S constitution. At the end of Nauvoo, Joseph had basically declared martial law. anyone could be stopped and questioned in Nauvoo. All warrants issued from outside had to be brought before Joseph and he would decide if a citizen of Nauvoo could be taken by a local Marshall. He had armed people at posts and commanded a huge private army.

My impression is that this action more than anything inflamed the mobs who ended up killing Joseph Smith. The Nauvoo Charter was set up so that the Mayor and City Council had judicial rights, and as you correctly said, the mayor and council had veto rights on warrants, etc. This made the people in surrounding towns believe that Joseph had set himself above the law and that criminals were using Nauvoo as a safe haven from prosecution. The destruction of the Expositor cemented the idea of Joseph as despot, spurring the mobs to kill him. Now, do not suppose I condone the actions of the mob. I don't. What they did was despicable. It is just interesting to note that it really wasn't polygamy or religious "weirdness" that led to the fateful day at Carthage.

Well the irony is that Joseph and the other Church Leaders sought these rights specifically to avoid another Missouri.

The Nehor wrote:Well the irony is that Joseph and the other Church Leaders sought these rights specifically to avoid another Missouri.

Yes, that is ironic. Tragic irony, you might say.

Runtu wrote:

The Nehor wrote:Well the irony is that Joseph and the other Church Leaders sought these rights specifically to avoid another Missouri.

Yes, that is ironic. Tragic irony, you might say.

The main problem we had was making our attempt at Zion appear glorious and terrible when we didn't have the righteousness to actually build Zion so that we actually were glorious and terrible. Though I think the mobs focussed on the terrible aspect.

The Nehor wrote:

Runtu wrote:

The Nehor wrote:Well the irony is that Joseph and the other Church Leaders sought these rights specifically to avoid another Missouri.

Yes, that is ironic. Tragic irony, you might say.

The main problem we had was making our attempt at Zion appear glorious and terrible when we didn't have the righteousness to actually build Zion so that we actually were glorious and terrible. Though I think the mobs focussed on the terrible aspect.

I think the main problem was hubris.

Runtu wrote:

The Nehor wrote:

Runtu wrote:

The Nehor wrote:Well the irony is that Joseph and the other Church Leaders sought these rights specifically to avoid another Missouri.

Yes, that is ironic. Tragic irony, you might say.

The main problem we had was making our attempt at Zion appear glorious and terrible when we didn't have the righteousness to actually build Zion so that we actually were glorious and terrible. Though I think the mobs focussed on the terrible aspect.

I think the main problem was hubris.

Like I said, a serious lack of righteousness. As President Benson said the central feature of pride is emnity.

One thing about this book is you learn that they didn't like lawyer, they didn't like gentile law, but had their own law which can be dangerous and usally time tell's it is dangerous. One thing that was interesting in early Utah was that if a member of the Church filed suit against another member in a U.S Court the Church would hold a court and excommunicate the person that filed the suit.

With regards to missouri. No one forced the saints to create the danites; no one forced the saints to ambush missouri state troops at crooked river (LDS Historian Stephen C. Lesuer has Joseph organizing and leading the ambush); no one forced the saints to burn down Davies County and bring the goods from the homes to the Bishop storehouse; They had Caldwell County created for them to keep the peace but they thought all the area was there's and God and his angels were on the their side.

thestyleguy wrote:One thing about this book is you learn that they didn't like lawyer, they didn't like gentile law, but had their own law which can be dangerous and usally time tell's it is dangerous. One thing that was interesting in early Utah was that if a member of the Church filed suit against another member in a U.S Court the Church would hold a court and excommunicate the person that filed the suit.

With regards to missouri. No one forced the saints to create the danites; no one forced the saints to ambush missouri state troops at crooked river (LDS Historian Stephen C. Lesuer has Joseph organizing and leading the ambush); no one forced the saints to burn down Davies County and bring the goods from the homes to the Bishop storehouse; They had Caldwell County created for them to keep the peace but they thought all the area was there's and God and his angels were on the their side.

Somehow we never heard about that stuff in Sunday School. The thing about the Battle of Crooked River is that they attacked a state militia unit; that's what precipitated the extermination order. It wasn't that Boggs was an anti-Mormon bigot.

thestyleguy wrote:One thing about this book is you learn that they didn't like lawyer, they didn't like gentile law, but had their own law which can be dangerous and usally time tell's it is dangerous. One thing that was interesting in early Utah was that if a member of the Church filed suit against another member in a U.S Court the Church would hold a court and excommunicate the person that filed the suit.

With regards to missouri. No one forced the saints to create the danites; no one forced the saints to ambush missouri state troops at crooked river (LDS Historian Stephen C. Lesuer has Joseph organizing and leading the ambush); no one forced the saints to burn down Davies County and bring the goods from the homes to the Bishop storehouse; They had Caldwell County created for them to keep the peace but they thought all the area was there's and God and his angels were on the their side.

Missouri has enough blame for everyone involved. I'm a believer in the teaching that when there are battles and wars both sides screwed up. Zion is invincible. According to our scriptures Zion either has it's enemys' hearts softened so they won't fight or God fights their battles without them. We were not Zion. Too many LDS blame the Missourians for what happened. In the D&C while the Lord allows the people to seek redress legally it also tells the Saints that they screwed up and that is why it was all allowed to happen to them. Individuals on both sides are guilty of what happened and I don't want to diminish that but it's in canonized scripture that if the Saints had done what they were supposed to do the Lamanites...I mean Missourians would have no power over them.