DiscussMormonism.com

The very friend to whom you communicated your misgivings as to the Prophet and his mission might be one of those who would come forth at night with fire and sword to exact a terrible reparation. Hence every man feared his neighbor, and none spoke of things which were nearest his heart.

I am watching you. Do you know that I have my threads strung all through the Territory, that I may know what individuals do?

Kishkumen wrote:I found a wonderful piece by Will Bagley on religious violence in Deseret at MormonThink. It is well worth checking out, and I think shows the distant roots of the milder forms of Mormon social and ecclesiastical violence we still see today in shunning, disowning, and excommunication.

The link is to a .pdf file.

http://mormonthink.com/backup/conandoylewasright.pdf

The revival (Reformation) quickly degenerated from a religious revival into a political inquisition as "Ward Teachers" provided some of the "threads" the authorities used to pry into the most intimate details of their followers' lives.

Elder Charles Derry wrote:This object was manifest when we saw the anxiety of the inquisitors to know in what light we regarded President Young. Woe betide the man who dared to express a doubt as to his claim to divine calling as prophet or president of the church of Christ. He was a marked man. If he was a laboring man he would lose his employment. If a business man his trade would fall off, and these were the least evils he might expect. I was in a meeting called by Lorenzo Farr and others of this inquisition, when every man was called upon to covenant that he would not hear any speak disrespectfully of President Young. And they were told it was their duty to knock such a man down. They were further told that no man would be permitted to leave the Territory, and if they attempted to leave, they must leave their property and their wives and children behind them. I leave to commons sense to judge how far such men, who were stripped of all that was dear to them, would be permitted to go.

Elder Charles Derry wrote:Brigham's minions were always ready to complete their fiendish work, I think it was 1857 or 1858, that Henry Jarvis and his wife were waylaid in one of the streets of Salt Lake City one night on their returning home from a visit, by a hand of these cutthroats and stripped of their clothing and their bodies were besmeared with human excrement, and their mouths filled with the same. This man Jarvis was an Englishman, and had spent many years of labor in the mission field in England; but after emigrating to Salt Lake Valley his eyes had become open as to the true status of things. In the bitterness of his disappointment he had given vent to his feelings in words not complimentary to the authorities in Utah, and at the crook of Brigham Young's finger, the Danites visited this filthy, degrading, and fiendish vengeance upon the poor man and his wife.

A Scottish convert wrote:Is it holiness to say that the end justifies the means, and that the big men are the only judges of right and wrong, as is always done? Is it holy to have plenty and see your brethren bordering on starvation and not help them, on the hard-hearted plea that it is good to try their faith in this way, as is sometimes? To have everyone a spy upon another, not for the purpose of preventing him from over-reaching his brother, but that he might not breathe even to a friend of his crushed hopes, which might in time by accumulation get up such a revolution that would hurl the chiefs and prophets from their thrones, and show the poor and honest fanatics how they have been imposed upon? To break up letters at the Post-office, so that they might know all your communications with the outer world, and make it all but impossible to leave the territory if you were dissatisfied?

Wallace Stegner wrote:More and more I come to a condition of astonishment at the parallelism in methods between Utah in the early days and any totalitarian state today. The whole thing is there--private army, secret police, encirclement myth, territorial dynamism, self-sufficiency, chosen people, absolute dictatorship operating through party rule, group psychology, esoteric symbols, sacred and distinguishing uniforms (garments), New Order and all.

DrW wrote:Informative and entertaining article with plenty of references. One wonders why this piece is not more widely known and referred to by critics.