Don’s closest associate in the Department of History at Ogden’s Weber State University was Jerome (Jerry) Bernstein. Jerry’s wife was a writer and editor who helped her husband. Sometimes the manuscript was on the back burner to other projects, but little by little there was progress. In 1988, the manuscript was handed over for word-processing.

Jerry had begun to feel weakness in his limbs so he went to the doctor. He learned he had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Whenever possible, he continued to work on the manuscript until it was ready for a publisher. In January, 1990, Jerry also died. Work on the manuscript continued. The team, which included Gene Sessions, felt free to revise for clarity and accuracy, but no attempt was made to update the text. Thirty years have passed. I feel there are other books with updates. I like Don Moorman’s writing style and the details embedded in the information he shares.

Don starts his book right in the middle of things (en media res). Twenty-five hundred uniformed troops are on their way to Mormon Country in the Utah Great Basin wilderness. The Saints had trekked to Utah in numerous trains from a variety of sites.

The first groups left Illinois in fear of their lives, during February, while still grieving the loss of their first prophet. This exodus continued until September, 1846. Over the next decade, others followed, many from England, Wales, Scandinavian Countries, Germany, and other places. The influx of people into Utah was continual, and the outflow was gold seekers and other argonauts (people who set off on a daring quest) who were merely passing through. The many trails (Oregon, California, and Mormon) that crossed the prairies from Missouri to California were heavily traveled. Now, the calvary and their horses, along with mules, oxen, wagons, and foot soldiers, would add their mark.

What brought the relations between the federal government and the Saints to a breaking point was misinformation, differences of opinion, and misunderstandings.

There was also disinformation–false information deliberately spread. Don Moorman says the bitter impasse was rooted in the Mormon religion and the premium it placed on loyalty and obedience. While true, the people had a dream of establishing a Utopian settlement apart from the mainstream of national society. They went westward in search of a new promised homeland and landed in Utah. The trek west to the valley in the mountains was a journey, but also a rite of passage, the final, devoted, enduring act that brought one into the Kingdom of God.

Brigham Young was bold. After the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, all Mexican territory north of the Gila River, including the Great Basin, was ceded to the federal government. While congress was undecided about what to do with this land, Brigham Young gave notice that the Saints claimed the entire intermountain country as their own.

Young exercised absolute power over his kingdom. Church leaders, a small fraction of the population, controlled all the major sources of wealth: its virgin forests, grazing land, and real estate. Mercantile traffic was allowed to fall under the control of non-Mormons, who the Saints liked to call gentiles in a critical or disrespectful manner. In truth, most Mormons were gentiles, although they liked to think of themselves as remnants of Jacob and thereby Jewish. Brigham Young, on their trek west, was their modern-day Moses.

In 1850, congress refused to ratify the constitution of the new State of Deseret as well as the vast areas Brigham claimed. The State of Deseret became Utah territory and much of its western corridor leading to California became Nevada. Mormon territory was named after the local Indians, much to the dismay of the Saints. Worse still was the realization the power to appoint territorial officials rested solely with the president of the United States. President Fillmore named Brigham Young as Governor and Superintendent of Indian Affairs. The remaining federal positions were divided between the Mormons and the non-Mormons.

The Saints were suspicious of federal power. Their experiences in Missouri and Illinois left them wary. Federal officials were named. At first, things were amicable, but quickly degenerated into dispute. The officials were not men of outstanding ability and discretion and, after stirring up the pot, they left the territory enraged and carried both misinformation and disinformation to the president of the United States.

During the summer of 1851, Justice Perry Brocchus entered the territory. As the weeks and months passed, he sent a series of mischief-making letters to President Fillmore. At a semi-annual Church Conference, Brocchus took the stand and launched a blistering attack against polygamy. He boldly reproved the leaders and accused the ladies of immorality.

Brigham Young denounced the speech as an unmitigated piece of arrogance and demanded an apology. The judge turned from the prophet and stormed out of the meeting. Not long afterward, he left the territory. Other government officeholders followed.

More officials came, but each returned to Washington with a confused tangle of contradictory statements and fragments of evidence charging the Saints with “lawlessness and seditious conduct.” Washington remained unconvinced.

In 1855, William Drummond was appointed to the territorial bench. No man expended more effort working for Brigham Young’s downfall. For the nation, Drummond demonstrated his good qualities, but, for the Saints, he was tactless and overbearing. He also had passions for liquor, harlots, and gambling. One of his major complaints against the Utah government had to do with the authority of probate courts, which had unlimited control over all matters relating to law enforcement in the territory. Drummond realized the prospect of breaking this judicial power was bleak. The Mormons refused to bring federal cases before the Drummond court. They accused the judge of adultery, which was a certainty, and claimed he was using the probate court issue as a pretext to rupture relations between Mormons and the federal government. He was using that, and much, much more.

Drummond planned a trip to Carson Valley to convene the territorial court at the western edge of his district. He continued to San Francisco where he launched his most severe attack against the Saints, filling the pages of newspapers with demands that they be brought up to the bar of judgment and condemned as traitors. He traveled to Los Angeles where he abandoned his mistress before continuing to New Orleans. He drew up his resignation by adding a catalog of events leading him to abandon his territorial judgeship. It was an extraordinary document aimed at drawing the immediate attention of newspapers. Drummond had a profound effect in determining the beginnings of the Utah War.

In his inaugural address, James Buchanan ignored the Mormon question, but later issued secret military orders directing General Winfield Scott to gather an army to march against the Mormons. It was no longer feasible to take a neutral stance about the Momron problem. Buchanan decided to settle the question by appointing, not only a new governor, but also a complete slate of non-Mormon officials who were to be escorted into the territory by the army.

Both Governor Cumming and General Johnston agreed that a fort near Salt Lake City invited disaster. Johnston, with members of his staff, and Garland Hurt, the Indian Agent, traveled westward to central Utah in search of a permanent camp. When they crossed the rolling terrain flanking the snow-capped Oquirrh Mountains, they headed south to Cedar Valley. In the central and northwestern parts of the flat plain, two Mormon farming communities were situated a short distance from each other, sustained by a few acres of agricultural land. Scattered livestock browsed on wild hay under the lazy summer sun. Cedar Valley suited the army’s needs.

Throughout the fall and early winter Camp Floyd moved rapidly towards completion, aided by Mormon laborers and mechanics who flocked to Cedar Valley to offer their services at three dollars a day. Men worked the native stone from nearby bluffs, which masons turned into walls for the stockade and arsenals. Others were recruited to haul black pine from the Oquirrh Mountains. A mix of rain and dust plagued both man and beast.

Mormon adobe makers worked around the clock to manufacture one-and-a-half million bricks. Brigham Young and Heber Kimball made a haul when they sold seventy thousand dollars worth of finished lumber used to roof the barracks.

Mexicans roofed the pueblo-styled structures with pine poles over which brush and dirt were thrown. Mormon hand craftsmen pounded the clay floors into a glossy hardness. Teamsters reshaped rough lumber for framing and army blacksmiths hammered wrought iron straps and hinges to bind timbers into doors and window shutters. Three hundred buildings were erected in an incredibly short time. Two months later, the fort was ready for occupancy.

Camp Floyd became an acknowledged symbol of federal authority in the Great Basin.The enlisted ranks were composed mainly of Irish and German enlistees, new to all that is American. The presence of numerous other nationalities, as well as a handful of blacks, made it seem like a foreign legion. During no other period in the army’s history were the ranks composed of soldiers with such varied ideologies.

Most frontier soldiers regarded heavy drinking as a balm for the dreariness and isolation of military life. Several beer halls were built at Camp Floyd. One day, there was a serious diminishing of spirits at the quartermaster’s storehouse that amounted to one hundred gallons of liquor for every seven hundred gallons stored. Leakage and evaporation could not account for it all. Conclusion: Some commissary sergeants rely on liquor to uplift their men’s sagging morale.

The nearest federal treasury was in either St. Louis or San Francisco. Soldiers were paid in the spring and in the fall. They always paid inflated prices for their wants and needs. On payday, sutlers accompanied the paymaster to collect his debt. The enlisted men’s indebtedness was not to exceed one-third of their monthly wage, but there were occasions where it climbed to fifty percent. Soldiers found themselves at the mercy of the idiosyncrasies of the market. They frequently complained prices continued to rise, but their pay remained the same.

In leaving the twenty page section entitled “Life at Camp Floyd”, I came to “One-eyed Jeffery: The Odyssey of Judge John Cradlebaugh”. In his time in Utah, the judge took his job seriously and attempted to bring to court Mormons who had committed crimes, even murders, over the past ten years. But it was a losing battle, not to Cradlebaugh’s discredit. He was hampered by a reluctant Mormon grand jury and the fact President Buchanan issued a proclamation of amnesty to the Mormons, delivered by Governor Cummings the day he entered the city. There would be no verdicts of guilty no matter what the crime. There was one exception. John D. Lee who was executed in 1877.

The last chapter of Moorman’s book has the intriguing title: The Economic Impact of the Utah War. There was no combat. The army was unwanted by the leaders of the Saints, but they provided economic advantages bringing a new era of prosperity. Military expenditures gave the territory unprecedented economic growth. The Saints charged the soldiers dearly for their needs, but it was the gentile merchants who did most to mold the new financial outlook for the Saints.

It is estimated the militia expenses absorbed twenty-five percent of the liquid capital of the Saints. Thousands of dollars were spent for the upkeep of the Mormon militia, also known as the Nauvoo Legion.

Brigham Young did an excellent job of preserving his financial success, often at the expense of the Saints. Historians often criticize him for sapping the strength of the fledgling economy. But then, Brigham is often blamed, even when the situations are not completely in his control. (I think Handcart Tragedy and Mountain Meadows Massacre.)

Once the military and civilian freight flooded Salt Lake as well as Camp Floyd, the territory’s economic prospects increased rapidly. Many of the gentile mercantile firms saw huge financial rewards. Brigham Young complained General Johnston was bringing dissension among the Saints by “a judicious distribution of federal gold.” Young did all he could to maintain high prices for domestic foodstuffs. All wards or settlements were advised to trade through officially recognized associations, committees, or agents. Casual day laborers and skilled craftsmen saw their monthly wages escalate from fifteen to fifty dollars payable in gold rather than in Church script or produce.

Young preached self-sufficiency, but crops remained in the field because farmers deserted their land for money at Camp Floyd.

The Saints’ deep sense of frugality gave way to heavy spending during the last months of 1858. One complained: “A fresh opening of a season’s stock by our merchants was quite sufficient to kill a whole years’ preaching on home manufacture.”

A year later, the Utah trade declined sharply, partly because the territorial market had been saturated and partly because of the increased number of merchants competing for the Salt Lake trade.

Years passed. Things changed. Restaurants, taverns, stores, and trading establishments closed their doors for want of paying customers. As business began its decline, entrepreneurs began their exodus from the territory.

In July of 1861, in preparation for the upcoming Civil War, Camp Floyd began to sell everything before abandoning the camp. It was a month-long sale and the prices were incredibly low. Those who had access to money or credit, such as Brigham Young and other leaders of the church, bought dozens of wagons loaded with goods for next to nothing. Brigham, still unhappy, complained: “How did it (the sale) make us rich? You got old iron, and that put a stop to the manufacture of iron here, You got rags they brought here to sell, and that put a stop to home manufacture.” His obsession with economic self-sufficiency consumed him throughout most of the 1860’s. Camp Floyd, in a few short years, changed forever the course and nature of the Mormon experience.