The Mormon Expulsions in Frontier America: Exploring Regional and Cultural Influences In this session, Robert Briggs explores violence against the Mormons in the frontier settings of western Missouri and western Illinois. How similar was it to Lynch Law and Regulator-style violence once often found in rural settings where effective law enforcement and court systems were …
Speaker: Robert H. Briggs
PANEL. DEALING WITH FAMILY CRISIS IN 1886: THE DEATH OF CHARLEY WHITNEY AND THE MARRIAGE OF GEN WHITNEY
The diaries of Helen Mar Whitney contain many prosaic days. But they also include moments of high drama, starting with the grueling, beautifully described death of Helen’s husband by dropsy in 1884. When Charles Whitney, Helen’s teenage son, shot himself in 1886, Helen again recorded the event in detail in her journal, a harrowing few …
THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS AND OTHER MINORITIES IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICA: A POSTCOLONIAL APPROACH
The paper describes postcolonialism as a research approach and examines case studies of nineteenth-century dispossession and forfeiture of rights among Hispanics, Indians, and Blacks in America from a postcolonial perspective. A fourth case study examines dispossession and forfeiture of rights among the Mormons in the same era. Was nineteenth-century territorial Utah a “colonial site,” and …
THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE: A Look From the ‘Bottom Up’
presented by Robert H. Briggs
Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows
At the 2002 Mormon History Association conference, Richard Turley, director of the Church’s Family and Church History division, stunned attendees with the announcement that he and two other Church historians are producing a volume on the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Immediately, rumors circulated that the book was a response to several forthcoming publications on the massacre. …