Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith

In Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith, Thomas G. Alexander delivers a new study of the second prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as well as an account of Young's leadership of the Mormon migration and settlement in the Intermountain West. A part of the Oklahoma University Press's Western Biography series, the collection employs the genre of biography to illuminate the history of the American West. Written by leading scholars for a general audience, the series excludes notes. The Western Biography series has included a wide range of figures, from Annie Oakley, Billy the Kid, and Calamity Jane, to Red Cloud, César Chávez, and J. Robert Oppenheimer. This particular volume features twenty-eight illustrations, and each chapter begins and ends with a summary. Alexander concentrates on Brigham Young's religious, political, and civic administration of the Latter-day Saints in Utah. He wants to recognize Young's “successes as a missionary, family man, businessman, church leader, and colonizer” while grappling with the horrific, violent, and controversial moments in Young's leadership (xv).An emeritus professor of western American history at Brigham Young University and former director of the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Alexander studied and taught Utah history for forty years and has published extensively on the history of Utah and of the Latter-day Saints. For the latter part of his career, he turned to environmental history and trained in land surveying. In the preface, Alexander shares that he is a believing member of the LDS Church, but that while both his scholarly training and his religious background “influenced” his writing, his goal has been to write “as diligently as possible, an honest biography” that takes into account the troubling as well as celebratory aspects of Young's leadership (xv).The book opens with three maps: a survey of Salt Lake County and Settlement, 1847–1855, a map of Young's visits to the Mormon colonies scattered across Utah, and a map of the Mormon settlements in the Intermountain West and the dates the colonies were settled. These maps signal the critical role of land, topography, and the environment in Alexander's account of Young: the maps of Salt Lake and the colonies show the physical expansion of the Latter-day Saints in Utah, and the map of Young's travels among the Saints’ settlements demonstrates the relational nature of Young's leadership. He did not lead from afar but visited the scattered Utah colonies and other Mormon communities regularly until his health prevented travel in his later years. Given the attention the Utes, Navajo, and Paiutes tribes receive in the biography, the book would have also benefited from a map of Native American ancestral tribal lands and reservations in the Utah Territory.The first three chapters move swiftly through the salient details of Young's early life, from his birth in 1801 and his family's “precarious balance between deprivation and starvation” to his embrace of the teachings of the Book of Mormon and his experience of spiritual gifts (4). Alexander establishes how religion, from Young's earliest years, played a central role in his life. In these opening chapters, we find out about Young's struggles and love for reading but discover little of his personality.Alexander then traces Young's ascendency into leadership through his visit and then subsequent move in 1833 to the village of Kirtland, Ohio, where Joseph Smith had headquartered the burgeoning church on the banks of the Chagrin River. Arriving in Kirtland, Young experienced additional spiritual gifts with his new coreligionists, and those shared moments deepened his commitment to the new faith. He quickly rose in the esteem of church leaders, especially Joseph Smith, and became part of Smith's inner circle and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. An enthusiastic spokesperson for the church, Young led missions to bring the message of the Latter-day Saints to the East Coast of the United States, as well as to Canada and England. His efforts and the work of other missionaries brought thousands of new members to the church. Many of these new converts eventually migrated to Nauvoo and, later, Utah and the Pacific Coast to join Mormon enclaves. Young followed Smith to Missouri and then to Illinois, where the violent persecution of the Latter-day Saints was a constant presence. After the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith and the subsequent power struggle, Young led the Mormons’ migration west to establish new colonies in the Utah Territory.The heart of Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith traces two threads of history simultaneously. First, Alexander explores the contributions Young made to establishing and nurturing the Utah Mormon colonies and Salt Lake City through his efforts to build canals, regulate commerce, construct educational institutions, and entice the transcontinental railroad to locate nearby. The second story rests on Alexander's desire to investigate Young's involvement in several horrific encounters with Native Americans, the federal government, and White settlers. The chapters “Trek, Settlement, Starvation, and Persistence,” “Conflict in the Kingdom,” and “The Black Hawk War” tell the story of the Mormons’ settlement on Native American ancestral lands and the resulting violence. The Saints’ colonies not only took Utes’ land, but they also disrupted Native Americans’ established economic structures. Mormon “occupation of Indian lands,” Alexander explains, “often resulted in bloody conflicts even with Native American converts” to Mormonism (85).Alexander sorts through the evidence to better understand Young's mixed record with the Utes and other tribal leaders. At times Young pursued peace, while in other instances he urged the “extermination of recalcitrant Utes in Utah Valley” who refused to fall in line with his vision of a Mormon world and the imprisonment of Native leaders (xvi). Alexander also argues that weather played a role in these interactions. Harsh winters, poor growing seasons, and drought led to food shortages, which in turn fueled already tense relationships the Saints had with the Utes and other tribes. When Young ordered nonviolent responses, some Saints acted on their own against the Utes, ignoring Young's orders not to retaliate when cattle were rustled, or food was taken to feed starving families. Alexander argues Young moved to a pacifist position as he grew older.The chapters “War and Peace” and “Investigation” cast a critical gaze on the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where 120 members of a wagon train headed to California were murdered. Here again, Alexander returns to the evidence and the arguments of the primary sources and other scholars to determine Young's connection to the murders. Not only were the Mormons threatened with violence from non-Mormons, vigilantes, and federal troops, they also suffered internal conflict over leadership. Further, many of the Utah settlers came from the embattled and persecuted communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. They brought with them an abiding suspicion of the federal government and other settlers after the persecution they suffered.Two chapters, “Sermons” and “Family Life and Polygamy,” break from the book's chronological structure and provide insight into Young as a person and his relationships. Young preached thousands of sermons over the forty-two years he led the Latter-day Saints. Through those sermons, transcribed by followers, Alexander shows us how Young used language, doctrines, and stories to keep the Mormons together and build community even while contradicting himself at times. Alexander highlights shifts in Young's thinking, such as his views on the priesthood and his decision to exclude African American Mormons from the priesthood and temple ordinances. The chapter on family life considers Young's adoption of polygamy and its outcomes. These chapters also dissect how Young organized his home life with his wives and children and how he dealt with the women who left or divorced him. However, because the focus is on Young's leadership, women in this narrative often remain one-dimensional, with a couple of exceptions.For the general reader and nonspecialist, Brigham Young and the Expansion of the Mormon Faith introduces the early history of the Latter-day Saints and the Utah settlements and the complicated story of Brigham Young's leadership. The monograph offers an overview of the historiography and the primary scholarly debates about Brigham Young and several of the tragic episodes that took place under his guidance of the church. Alexander acknowledges the work of previous biographers and highlights their scholarship as he sorts through the evidence to tell his story. When historians have disagreed on their reading of the sources, Alexander describes their arguments and tells us his own interpretation of the evidence.“Biography is a profoundly personal genre of historical scholarship,” historian Barbara Ransby explains in the introduction to her book Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. She points to the challenges of biography, writing: “We ask questions about lives that the subjects themselves may never have asked outright and certainly did not consciously answer. Answers are always elusive. We search for them by carefully reading and interpreting the fragmented messages left behind.”1 In this well-written book, Alexander's interest in Young feels personal. He admires Young for his accomplishments and contributions to the Latter-day Saints, and he wants to understand the Latter-day Saints’ involvement in the tragedies of their early years in Utah. What did Young know, and when? Did Young instigate or encourage the violence knowingly? Why did Young marry more than any other Mormon leader? Did his preaching on blood atonement stoke violence? What do we make of Young's contradictions? Sorting through the primary and secondary literature, Alexander attempts to answer these questions and understand how Young, as a leader, navigated the early days of the Utah colonies, even as violence and tragedy happened under his watch.

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