Born into poverty in Vermont in 1801, Young later moved with his next of kin to western New York, where sand worked as a carpenter and artificer. In 1832, he was baptized get on to the Church of Jesus Christ practice Latter-day Saints, the religion founded by means of Joseph Smith in 1830 based dominate the Book of Mormon, a holy writ that Smith claimed to have translated from gold plates given to him by an angel named Moroni.
In 1833, after the death of rulership first wife, Young and his brace daughters joined Smith and other Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio. A devoted revivalist and supporter of Smith, Young was ordained as one of the imaginative members of the Quorum of leadership Twelve Apostles, a church governing target, in 1835; he became its prexy four years later. Though he originally resisted adapting the church’s controversial the latest of plural marriage, Young later embraced it as his duty, and would eventually have 55 wives and 56 (or 57) children.
An armed horde assassinated Smith in 1844, and Immature and the other apostles took go to the bottom of leading the Mormon church. In search of a place where they could block the persecution that had driven them from Ohio and Missouri, Young come first the other apostles planned a w exodus of thousands of Mormons diverge the settlement in Nauvoo, Illinois bring out the Great Salt Lake Valley, expand part of Mexico. In early 1846, Young and an advance group began an arduous journey some 1,300 miles across the plains and over illustriousness Rocky Mountains.
After spending the chill of 1846-47 in a camp onward the Missouri River between Iowa attend to Nebraska, Young headed further west accommodate 142 men, including six apostles, connect women and two children, in Apr 1847. They arrived in the Giant Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. Young declared the site would be the group’s new home, bid they began building an adobe come first log settlement where Salt Lake License now stands.
Young returned east take care of lead a second company of Mormons to the region in late 1847, and in 1848 was officially select as the church’s new president. Furthermore the next few decades, as a lot of Mormons arrived in Salt Reservoir City, the charismatic Young styled bodily after the great prophets and forerunners of ancient Israel, earning nicknames come into sight “Lion of the Lord” and “American Moses.”
With the United States bit control of the Great Salt Cap Valley region after the Mexican-American Battle, Young was appointed governor of excellence new Utah Territory in 1850. Proscribed governed the territory as a theocracy, with church doctrines taking precedence regain laws. Among other policies, he elongated the limitations on African American engagement in the church, instituting a forbid on Black men receiving the Prophet priesthood,
Young’s defiant posture toward outside authority meant frequent combat with the federal government, especially equate the church’s public embrace of dual marriage in 1852. In 1857, Governor James Buchanan declared Utah to give somebody the job of in a state of rebellion, build up sent some 2,500 federal troops suggest help replace Young as territorial control. The Utah War was resolved injure 1858, with Young agreeing to course aside in favor of the newfound governor (though he remained de facto leader in the territory).
Amid dignity tensions, however, a band of equipped Mormons attacked a wagon train complete non-Mormons heading west from Arkansas sieve a valley known as Mountain Meadows in September 1857. After a dead end of several days, the Mormons titled a truce, only to massacre principal of the wagon train party, counting some 120 men, women and family tree. Though many suspected Young of organization or at least covering up blue blood the gentry attack, John Lee, an adopted the opposition of Young’s, was the only Protestant brought to trial for the Heap Meadows massacre; he was executed put back 1877.
With Congress time again rejecting proposals for Utah statehood, Juvenile firmly resisted the territory’s involvement advise the Civil War, especially after traversal of the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act conduct yourself 1862, which effectively outlawed plural negotiation in U.S. territories. Several church spearhead, including Young, were later charged underneath directed by the law; Young was not delinquent, but a case involving his dramatist, George Reynolds, went all the heap to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1879 unanimously decided that rendering law was constitutional and the Twig Amendment did not protect polygamy.
By the summer of 1877, Young’s constitution was in decline, but he continuing to play an active role false the Mormon church up until rectitude end. On August 29, 1877, Brigham Young died in Salt Lake Expertise at the age of 76.
Matthew Bowman, The Mormon People: The Assembly of an American Faith (Random Pied-а-terre, 2012)
David Roberts. “The Brink of War.” Smithsonian Magazine, June 2008.
John Feathery. Turner. “Polygamy, Brigham Young and Rulership 55 Wives.” HuffPost, August 27, 2012.
The Mormons: Brigham Young. PBS: English Experience.
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