Assault on Salt Lake Via Bear Valley
"On October 6 [1857], Alexander called a council of war . . . [T]he men debated the best strategy to pursue. they could retreat to the Wind River Mountains, about…
Russell, Majors & Waddell’s Complaint to Congress
"When in 1860 members of the firm Russell, Majors & Waddell came to meditate on their experience in the Mormon War, they were to consider themselves victims of their own…
Mormon Attacks on the Army’s Supply Trains
"On October 4 a small band of Mounted Mormons led by Major Lot Smith bypassed the Tenth Infantry and fell upon two of [Russell, Majors & Waddell's supply] trains camped…
Van Vliet’s Mission
"After the first elements of the [Utah] expedition had left Fort Leavenworth in July the Adjutant General's office ordered [General William] Harney to send 'a discreet staff officer' to the…
Supply Trains for the Utah Expedition
"[Acting commander Col. Edmund Alexander] was concerned for the column's supply trains, which at this point spread across the Plains west of [Fort Laramie], some of them beyond his protection.…
Commencement of the Utah War
"[T]he Mormon War began formally on the 18th of July [1857] with the departure of the Tenth Infantry Regiment from Fort Leavenworth. A day later Phelps' battery of four six-pounders…
Government’s Strategy Toward Utah
"The Government's strategy was to put a Gentile in Utah's executive office and to support him against a possible Mormon insurrection by a strong detachment of men, acting as posse…
Mormon’s Motivations for Unruly Activities
"If Gentiles in the 1850s found abundant reasons for antagonism toward the Church, the Mormons also had strong motivation for unruly activities. In their early history they had been treated…
Easterners’ View of Mormons
"If some causes of the Mormon War are only dimly visible today, the part played by eastern public opinion is not. throughout the 1850s, hostility toward the Latter-day Saints had…
Purported Causes of the Utah War
"It is difficult one hundred years after the war to evaluate some of the other factors which were said to have shared in its origin. Partisan controversy had become so…
Magraw’s Philippic Against the Mormons
"When Buchanan requested his cabinet officers to gather correspondence justifying his policy toward Utah, the Secretary old State, old Lewis Cass, could locate only one document in his files, but…
Causes of the Utah War
"On January 27, 1858, the House of Representatives requested President Buchanan to furnish it with information concerning the war in Utah. At the moment the expedition which had been sent…
The Great Platte River Road
Merrill J. Mattes, The Great Platte River Road: The Covered Wagon Mainline via Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie (1960) From the description: The Great Platte River Road through Nebraska and Wyoming…
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June 9, 2020
Utah Gets News of Coming War
"On July 24, 1857, the Saints held their annual celebration of Pioneers' Day at the head of Big Cottonwood Canyon, some twenty-five miles southeast of Salt Lake City and 10,000…
Mormons and the Federal Judges
"Although after 1854 the Mormons reckoned on the hostility of two if their federal judges [W. W. Drummond and George P. Stiles], they accepted the third, John F. Kinney, as…