Dec. 2, 1857, during the crisis known as the Utah War, Wilford Woodruff wrote in his journal a long entry that described Brigham Young’s feelings on the conflict and on violence. Woodruff had been a close associate of Young since his April 1839 ordination as an apostle at the end of an earlier conflict known as the Missouri War.
For nearly two decades, he observed Young’s public words and actions and associated with him privately. Few men knew him better.
With 2,500 troops of the U.S. Army advancing toward Salt Lake City, Brigham Young had mobilized militia to confront the forward supply trains on the high plains of Wyoming. He promised the men that if faithful, they would suffer no harm. Their efforts slowed the army’s advance, and the deep snows of a harsh early winter ended it more than 100 miles short of their destination. As Young greeted men returning from the mountains that December, his “heart filled to overflowing with thanksgiving & praise to the God of Israel who had fulfilled his words.”
Facing cold and privation with inadequate food and shelter, the soldiers vowed to punish their adversaries in Salt Lake City when snow melted in the spring. According to Woodruff, despite the impending threat, Young was “calm & scerene as a Mays summers morning.” He had “testified unto the people in the name of God” that if united in faith, prayers and works, the Lord would hedge up the way of their enemy and “we should not be Called to shed their Blood neither should they have power to shed ours.” So it had been — and he believed still in that promise.
Woodruff called Young’s faith “that Blood would not be shed” a “principle,” one that he repeated throughout this exigency — even though there was every prospect that angry men would march against them when the snow melted. Young’s “principle” also survived the spring, and the “war” ended without violence.
Brigham Young always sought peace — even though his speaking style, which frequently featured exaggeration and hyperbole, contributed to a public perception that he accepted or even encouraged violence. Though his language was at times militant, his actions were not. He was never personally violent, and he always sought to avoid violence for his people — so much so that his declaration that it is better to “suffer wrong than do wrong” became a motto.
Although Brigham Young often used militant language purposely, he also sometimes released a threatening, intemperate outburst that was neither purposeful nor wise. As he once acknowledged, “I have only one unruly member of my body and that’s my tongue.”
But his verbal intemperance did not descend into physical violence. It was not in his nature. As he asserted in March 1848, when counseling the police in Winter Quarters against using violence, “I am a peacemaker ... I never struck a man in my life.” The police must do their duty without anger, he told them, and he characterized resorting to violence as descending to the level of dogs. He understood strong feelings, the impulse to strike out, but these must be kept under control. He too had strong feelings, and he had said “cut his infernal throat,” but he didn’t mean any such thing. Remember your own flaws, he counseled. As for himself, “I am not good enough yet to strike my bro(ther).”
More than a decade ago, LaJean Carruth, an expert in 19th-century Pitman shorthand, retrieved from a sheet of otherwise unreadable markings an October 1853 Brigham Young sermon that included some of the militant language and speaking style that helped create the public perception at odds with his real character. The sermon, at a time of conflict between the Saints and the Indians, contained both what LaJean termed “rather violent” language and Young’s admission that he could not and would not do what he sometimes called for. Indeed, his underlying theme in this message to the Saints at a time of trouble was patience and restraint even when wronged.
He denounced the impulse to kill Indians who had stolen livestock and goods. “Shame on you if you feel like killing” one who has stolen from you, he said. Though white men were taught that stealing was a crime, in native culture stealing and plunder brought status. “I am sorry you kill the natives because (they) know not what they are doing.” Going to war makes you less safe. They grieve for their dead just as do you, hindering a restoration of the confidence that existed between peoples before the outbreak. “Let’s slay them,” some propose to him, but “you might as well lay (a) knife at your throat and throat of this people and say let’s go right straight to hell and be damned.” Rather than fighting them, learn their language and teach them. The violence must stop, and those who engage in it will be cut off from the church.
Even as he spoke, Brigham Young recognized that at times his own rhetoric was a hindrance to his message, and he sought to clarify. He too had been angered by men who “lie swear ... steal your property and then turn around and join a mob to kill you.” Confronted with such men he had expressed what he felt: “slay him and let him go to the devil.” However, he does not “wish any such thing” but aims to frighten them, “to keep them away from us.”
Brigham explained that earlier in his life (a decade earlier in Nauvoo, as we shall see), he had vowed to protect life and property by violence if necessary. “I used to carry a bowie knife in my bosom and six shooter” to preserve law and order. He threatened that if accosted, he would “send that man to hell cross lots” if the Lord said it was right. But would he ever do it, he asked rhetorically? “No it is just as much I can do to whip one of my children and make them cry.”
Nauvoo provides a case study of how Brigham Young personally responded when faced with potential violence. For a time following the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith in 1844, the Saints in Nauvoo enjoyed peace — in part, because detractors feared retribution from the large and well-organized Latter-day Saint community. The Nauvoo Legion, an arm of the Illinois State Militia, was the largest military organization in the state, and in late 1844, Young received his commission to command the force. But even when threats of violence resurfaced in 1845, he never activated the Legion to move against enemies.
Young’s alternative was a form of peace through strength. Believing that adversaries would not come against them if they knew the Saints were prepared and willing to defend themselves, he instructed the Legion to drill on the parade ground so that the very noise of their training would be enough to deter them.
From the stand, he urged the Saints to be prepared. At the same time, he promised them that if they would turn to the Lord, they would be safe. In April 1845, he urged them to “be faithful to God and be united with one another; and learn to suffer wrong rather than do wrong, and by so doing we will triumph over all our enemies.” A month later, he promised them that if they were humble and faithful, they would not be driven or destroyed. Yes, have their firelocks at the ready, but more importantly, be “shod with the preparation of the gospel.” His message: We’ll attend to our own business, and if they leave us alone, we will harm no one.
At the same time, Young proclaimed loudly that the Saints had the right to defend themselves, as did he. From the time he took the helm in Nauvoo, he vowed to defend himself. “If an enemy comes to destroy me or my family I would send them to hell across lots.” Unlike Joseph and Hyrum, who had faith enough to go into the jails of their enemies and die for their religion, he said that he intended to live for his. Gratefully, his public declaration that he was prepared to kill in self-defense was never tested. However, sleeping in an Iowa encampment a year later, he dreamed that he shot someone in self-defense and was greatly relieved to wake up and discover it was only a dream.
Deeply, fundamentally, Brigham Young was a man of peace. If his tongue occasionally slipped, his actions did not, and for all his militant language, he abhorred bloodshed and prayed diligently and worked to avoid it. Not only did he abhor killing even in self-defense, he rebelled against the thought of presiding over violence even in defense of things most dear. From the time of Joseph’s murder, Brigham Young had vowed that they would finish the temple even if it must be as the ancients did in Jerusalem — a sword in one hand, a trowel in the other. Whatever the cost, the Saints must receive their endowments. But faced with the prospect of impending violence, he wavered.
Despite quiet and peace in Nauvoo and its environs, on Jan. 23 Young learned of an imminent threat of violence. Former Latter-day Saints sought to mobilize opposition to drive them from Nauvoo before the temple could be finished. He noted in his diary that former leader Wilson Law had “lectured [lectured] to the mob he told them that they must dr(i)ve the mormons from Nauvoo before the temple was don(e) or they never could.” In the words of a February letter to Wilford Woodruff, “Law is preaching about the country that they must remove the Mormons before they finish their Temple, (for) ‘if they dont all hell cant move them.’ So says reports.”
Wilson Law stirring up opposition increased the potential for bloodshed. Ironically, unknown to detractors, preparations were quietly underway to find a new home once the temple was finished, but leaving before the Saints received their long-awaited endowment was unthinkable. Brigham Young was prepared, even in the face of violence, to do his duty. However, he was willing to do anything the Lord would sanction to avoid bloodshed — even to abandon his beloved temple.
Deeply concerned about the possibility of violence, the day after noting the threat in his diary, he and two associates took the question to the Lord. As he wrote in his journal, “I inquaired of the Lord whether we should stay here and finish the templ(e) (even if it meant violence) the ansure was we should.” Before the Lord in the priesthood order of prayer, Young and his brethren received an answer. “The Lord was with us,” noted Heber C. Kimball in his diary.
From that moment there was no doubt. They would leave Nauvoo, but not until after the temple was finished. Whatever the cost, even bloodshed, they would finish it. Would the Lord stay the hands of enemies to prevent bloodshed? Would He strengthen the hand of the Saints to prevail if the enemy fell upon them while at their labor? They could not know. But Young now knew that even potential violence did not release them from their responsibility: the temple must be built as directed in the Jan. 19, 1841, revelation upon which Nauvoo was founded.
No blood was shed. At the May capstone ceremony, President Young announced that endowments would begin in December, a goal they met. Before they left Nauvoo less than 10 weeks later, more than 5,000 women and men received their temple blessings. When actual violence erupted around Nauvoo that fall, Young again urged the Saints to suffer wrong rather than do wrong, and he used the violence to publicly announce what they had already decided and were actively preparing for: In the spring, they would leave Nauvoo for the West.
Although Brigham Young sometimes roared like a lion, he always sought solutions short of violence. He left Nauvoo as he had entered it, a man of peace. Maintaining peace without bloodshed remained a priority in Utah through the turbulent 1850s and the rest of his life.