A friend pointed me to this discussion, where R. Crocket once again builds a scarecrow and tears it apart. When he says I said something, I'd encourage smart folks to take a look at what I actually say:
Will's essential theme was that Brigham Young knew about the massacre before it happened and actually ordered it. In that regard, he disagreed with Juanita Brooks who concluded that Brigham Young didn't know about it in advance.
"Blood of the Prophets" shows BY's role in creating the social conditions Ms. Brooks said the massacre was possible--and new material, including sending Indians after wagon trains on the southern route. It discusses the political motives Young had to want such an incident and what resulted from this traitorous federal official's conduct. It also quotes Juanita Brooks as saying in 1968 she had “come to feel that Brigham Young was directly responsible for this tragedy.” John D. Lee, she believed, would make it to heaven before Brigham Young
Crocket:
There were a number of subsidiary themes which interested me as a legal matter. For instance, both Brooks and Bagley concluded that a deal had been made with the U.S. Attorney to let Brigham Young and others off the hook for prosecution in return for scapegoating Lee. That particular claim was rather fascinating and took some space in my review, as I pointed out that a deal to thwart justice without a presidential pardon would have been illegal. Indeed, I found in the National Archives correspondence which neither Bagley nor Brooks had which showed another ten years of trying to pin Brigham Young to the crime.
Not true. I reviewed the same NARA material, though I cited the easier-to-access published version in Dwyer's "The Gentile Comes to Utah," 105-11. But for some reason, neither Crockett nor Turley seemed interested in the quote I found interesting:
Two weeks later Howard reversed course in a letter to Attorney General Taft. He claimed he had provoked Utah’s non-Mormons to lull the suspicions of the Saints. Now Howard hoped to arrest Haight, Higbee, and Stewart, but he apparently still believed he did not have enough evidence to convict their commanding officer, William Dame. Lee’s conviction was “working its intended results,” and he would “arrest the others, who are nearer to the ‘seat of power’ than Lee ever was, thus gradually work our way to the core of the rottenness.”
I was telling a big story and didn't have the vast real estate FARMS gave to Yoeman Crockett. But I summarized post-trial history as concisely and honestly as I could:
Circumstances suggest that the Mormons had corrupted Howard, but he may simply having been an honest public servant trying to make the best of an impossible situation. In this case the best was perhaps the conviction of a single man. Howard continued to support legislation to limit the power of Mormon theocracy and stressed "the great importance of following the conviction of Lee with that of others equally guilty." He asked for funds to hire a special detective to track down the fugitives, complaining that every move the federal marshals made was watched and noted. Taft appointed William Stokes to investigate, but these efforts came to naught.
I'm not so sure about Sumner Howard's honesty these days. Last fall, with David L. Bigler, I published "Innocent Blood: Essential Narratives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre" (Norman: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2008). It contains evidence that Howard received a bribe of at least $20,000 to protect Brigham Young, but I'd guess it was closer to $25,000. "Innocent Blood," by the way, contains both sides of the coverup story, including BY's explanations of his conduct and the later Penrose defense, which the LDS church recently spent millions and millions of dollars to rehabilitate.
The Lee trail account in BOTP ends:
Even Crockett, I suspect, agrees that is true. Maybe he can review "Innocent Blood" for FARMS: he doesn't seem to know anything about Western history except that the Mountain Meadows massacre was solely the work of a few very very very bad men in southern Utah.The federal government would never bring another prosecution for the murders at Mountain Meadows.
Will Bagley
