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Utah/Crime and violence
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Contents
Was 19th century Utah a hotbed of violence, murder, and lawlessness?
Questions
Critics charge that Utah was a hotbed of violence, murder, and lawlessness, and that this can be attributed to LDS doctrine and practices.
To see citations to the critical sources for these claims, click here
Answer
This is not to say that there was not some violence in frontier Utah—of course there was, given the place and time. But, as one researcher noted:
- the point here is not to claim that no vigilante crimes by angry Mormons protecting their interests ever occurred in territorial Utah. The point is that overattention to such activities obscures the fact that they were very rare compared to elsewhere in the West, where no concerted effort to undermine a popularly supported government was going on as in Utah [by the federal government versus the Mormons].Cite error: Closing
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Contemporary observers that were not writing hostile anti-Mormon polemics recognized the truth of this as well:
- This portrayal goes counter to the accounts of contemporary observers and the understanding of historians who have investigated the matter of crime in nineteenth-century Utah. In fact, if anything distinguished Deseret from elsewhere in the West, it was its reputation for well-established and fair courts (administered by LDS bishops) and a remarkably low level of violence—vigilante, criminal, or otherwise.[1]
Legal historian D. Michael Stewart underscored this when he remarked, "extralegal violence was rare compared to that found in other frontier communities."[2]
Non-member Franklin Buck described the difference between southern Utah and his own town of Pioche, Nevada in 1871:
- In Pioche [Nevada] we have two courts, any number of sheriffs and police officers and a jail to force people to do what is right. There is a fight every day and a man killed about every week. About half the town is whisky shops and houses of ill fame. In these Mormon towns there are no courts, no prisons, no saloons, no bad women; but there is a large brick Church and they keep the Sabbath—a fine schoolhouse and all the children go to school. All difficulties between each other are settled by the Elders and the Bishop. Instead of every man trying to hang his neighbor, they all pull together. There is only one store on the co-operative plan and all own shares and it is really wonderful to see what fine towns and the wealth they have in this barren country. It shows what industry and economy will do when all work together....The Devil [i.e., the Mormons] is not as black as he is painted.[3]
Notes
- ↑ Eric A. Eliason, "Review of: Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847–1896," FARMS Review of Books 12/1 (2000): 95–112. off-site; citing Dale L. Morgan, The State of Deseret (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1987), 7—27.
- ↑ Eric A. Eliason, "Review of: Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847–1896," FARMS Review of Books 12/1 (2000): 95–112. off-site citing D. Michael Stewart, "The Legal History of Utah," in Utah History Encyclopedia, ed. Alan K. Powell (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994), 323.
- ↑ Franklin A. Buck, A Yankee Trader in the Gold Rush: The Letters of Franklin A. Buck, comp. Katherine A. White (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1930), 234–36; cited by W. Paul Reeve and Ardis E. Parshall, "review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows, by Will Bagley," Mormon Historical Studies (Spring 2003): 156.