Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

INTRODUCTION

IN the middle decades of the nineteenth century, there arose in America a man destined to a career more strange and incredible than most romancers have dared to imagine for their heroes. That man was Brigham Young.

Born on a soil saturated with New England Puritanism, he became a follower and then a leader of the Mohammedanism of the West. Born in a community which held that Heaven had withdrawn from man, and which admitted no revelation less than eighteen centuries old, he was accepted by half a million people as the mouthpiece and representative of God. Born of a race in which monogamy has been the accustomed form of marriage since before the dawn of history, he is famous today as having been husband of a score of wives, and sire of half a hundred offspring.

Brigham Young was not one of those children of fortune who move with the current of the age, and draw greatness from the greatness of their country. Good fortune did not pass him by altogether, but neither did she embarrass him with favours. Brigham never came in contact with the real life of the nation, save to defy it, and flout it, and do his best to change it. He set up an Asiatic despotism on American soil. He maintained a Mohammedan marriage system in a Puritanical land. He built a theocracy in an age which already had witnessed the birth of Renan and Ingersoll. He took a broken and dispirited people, led them across a thousand miles of desert, and with them founded his kingdom in the fertile valley by an inland sea.

The man who could achieve these things, even with some aid from fortune, was a man of no common calibre. Without a day of military training, he became a very efficient general-in-chief to his people. Without an hour's reading of law, he made himself judge and lawgiver -- and in the main a just one -- for a whole community. Where his own knowledge was deficient, he had skill to use the ability of others; and to this day, the finances, the government, the merchandising, the architecture, the social life, and even the agriculture of the Mormon community bear the stamp put upon them by Brigham Young.

He matched his wits against the might of the United States government, and did not come off secondbest. He yielded in outward seeming to federal power; but in reality he was emperor of his little realm to the hour of his death, and his subjects never doubted his supremacy. He drove federal appointees in disgrace from his kingdom, and took their positions for himself and his favourites. No matter how overwhelming the power with which he was dealing, Brigham Young never was a suppliant. He stormed, bullied, lied, intrigued, finessed, cajoled; he never pleaded for mercy nor owned himself in need of mercy. He met chastisement with fresh provocation. Knowing polygamy to be the most offensive of his sins in the eyes of the nation, he lived openly with a score of wives, sent his most honoured polygamous apostle to Congress as a territorial delegate, and permitted his subordinate priests to debate with Christian clergymen on the divinity of plural marriage.

He has become a central figure of weird and distorted legends. He has been made the target of numberless invectives. He has been made the idol of a worshipping people. But never has he taken his place in calm, impartial history; never has the story of his life been told, save by some one more anxious to curse or to bless than to understand and set forth. In the hope of performing this belated service, of setting out in true perspective one of the most romantic and interesting characters of American history, this book is written.

Brigham Young and His Mormon Empire by Frank J. Cannon and George L. Knapp was published in 1913 and is offered here for whatever value the reader wishes to assign. It is not offered authoritatively on Brigham Young and his Mormon Church.

Cannon and Knapp offer little reference for many of their conclusions and make no excuses for their skimpy treatment and failure to apportion blame to the Mormons for the heinous massacre of men, women and children in Captain Charles Fancher's wagon train at Mountain Meadows, Utah, on September 11, 1857.

In fact the authors virtually ignore an earlier treatise on the Mountain Meadow Massacre by Josiah F. Gibbs, published ca. 1897 and re-released in 1910. Gibbs, a Mormon, pulled no punches in placing blame squarely on the shoulders of Brigham Young. Gibbs had carefully researched the record and included detailed appendages to support his conclusion.

In 2003 a new book, American Massacre: The Tragedy at Mountain Meadows, September 11, 1857, by Sally Denton, was released by Knopf. Denton researched the subject more thoroughly than anyone before and reached the same conclusion as Gibbs.... Brigham Young's teachings, policies, railings and warped credo inspired his followers to believe that Young had ordained the massacre.