Bigler promises a new look at the Forgotten Kingdom by placing the history of Utah and Mormonism in the larger context of the story of the American Republic. He writes the book with a specific audience in mind: new arrivals in Mormon Country.

New arrivals would miss the second coming scheduled to happen sometime in the last half of the nineteenth century. Second comings were generally scheduled every generation and, so far, they have been missed. Brigham Young expected the coming of the Lord in his lifetime, and the Kingdom was to roll forth to world dominion and prevail over all the other kingdoms. Young left this world in late August, 1877. His successors continue the wait.

Let’s look back to a moment on the twenty-first of July, 1847 when two men struggled over the crest of a steep hill on the western slopes of the Wasatch Mountains. They saw glistening in the sunlight a broad open valley at the north end of the waters of the Great Salt Lake. The men pulled their hats from their heads and swung them around while they whooped for joy and jumped a foot or two in the air. In the days and years that followed, more and more people came to that very spot and reached it with a similar sense of joy.

“This is the place,” Young said. He had seen it with his spiritual eyes and never doubted he would recognize it when he saw it. He described it to his men so well that Elders Pratt and Snow recognized it immediately. The prophet, slowed by mountain fever, reached ‘the place’ on the twenty-fourth of July, now recognized and celebrated as Pioneer Day.

They had come from Mormon emigration camps on the banks of the Missouri River, opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa. This first group of one hundred forty-eight persons had been native to at least twenty states and seven foreign countries. Now, they were to broaden their horizons even further. They were to build the Kingdom of God.

They thought of themselves as Jewish. The first prophet had told them: “Ye are the children of Israel and of the seed of Abraham.” They thought their new leader, Brigham Young, was the mouthpiece of the Lord and obeyed him. They called non-Mormons gentiles using the term in a derogatory and insulting manner. Whenever possible, they turned and walked away, often, refusing to do business with non-Mormons.

They were the seed of Abraham in the last days and the kingdom they established would never be destroyed, so said the prophecy of Nebuchadnezzar. “And this kingdom would not be left to other people”, as had happened with the Kingdom in Nauvoo. “It will break into pieces and consume all kingdoms and it shall stand forever.” The Old Testament Daniel’s dream was now understood to be a prophecy pertaining to themselves. They would live their lives as though it were true.

In Utah, there were many Indians. There were the Utes, the Goshutes and the Paiutes to name a few. These Indians were, before the end of time, to become white and delightsome. They were to act as the Battleaxes of the Lord to slay the enemy in the grand battles leading to the end of time. In the northern settlements, the largest bands were the Shoshone and Bannocks. They, too, were the descendents of Joseph by the lineage of Jacob and, they, too, would be connected with the Mormons, who would take squaws, wash and dress them, teach them the English language, labor, and raise children with them. Such were the words of their prophet.

Young had much to say in regard to past wrongs, both real and imagined. He threatened many should be damned for the way they treated the Mormon people in the past and would be damned if they ever sent men to interfere with the Saints in the future. He swore to make every preparation and avenge the blood of the prophets and saints. Every male who climbed the stairs at the Nauvoo temple to take their endowments also swore to avenge the blood of the Prophets before they turned to take their trek west. They would carry these promises in their mind for decades to come. At times, promptings would occur.

The prophet taught God had safeguarded religious freedom in the New World, and He did it by inspiring the Constitution of the United States. Those who arrived first in the valley were ardent millennialists. These children of destiny held a deep sense of their role in the culmination of human history, There were two events of magnitude on the horizon. The first came about by the hands of a Mormon work crew who had gone to California with the Mormon Battalion and was composed of men hired by the U.S. Government to help with the Mexican war. When these men left duty, some stayed in California. A few men were hired by John Sutter and his partner, James Marshall, to build a sawmill on the south fork of the American River. Gold was found. Next, the find was announced. Many–from all walks of life–could not stay in one place. Farmers abandoned their fields due to the intensity of the call to “Go west! Go west! Go west!”

Less than two weeks later, the gold seekers were hitting the wagon trails hard when Mexico ceded to the United States virtually the entire Pacific Southwest. It was the second largest land acquisition in the United States and encompassed land later identified as Utah, Nevada, California, Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo settled the war with Mexico. The nation would now expand to the Pacific Ocean. There would be no isolation of the Saints. Changes would come slowly.

The Saints wanted to become a state. Sometimes, they wanted to become a territory. They required, and worked towards receiving, a flood of emigrants to produce within ten years a population large enough to merit the title of state. In the meantime, at the end of 1848, Brigham Young and his council approved a memorial to Congress for a territorial government based on the condition they would choose its officers. They would call their territory Deseret, in memory of the worker bee of the Book of Mormon.

Before they heard if the memorial was approved, the leaders of the church decided to create a new nation-state without the approval of congress. In March, 1849, a free and independent government was formed called the State of Deseret; another name for the Kingdom of God. On the twelfth of March, in the bowery where the Saints gathered for their meetings, Brigham Young was approved as governor of the territory and other officers were unanimously elected. Never was there a negative vote.

In 1850, Brigham Young was formally named to a four-year term as the first governor and superintendent of Indian affairs of Utah Territory. Most Mormons had little or no respect for doctors or their medicine, and they didn’t think much of lawyers or man-made laws. On the other hand, laws that would never make it through most states were passed in Utah: “No person employing counsel in any court of the Territory shall be compelled by process of law to pay the counsel for any services rendered” or “A lawyer was obliged by law to tell everything he knew.” No client privileges were granted in the Great Salt Lake.

Elections in Utah were open. Each elector provided himself with the names of people he wished to elect and the offices he would have them fill. He wrote these two pieces of information on his ballot, folded it neatly, and handed it to the judge of election. An identifying number was placed on it before placing it in the ballot box. Customarily, the candidate won all the votes in the election.

One year Dr. John Bernhisel, the delegate to congress, received one opposing vote from an uninformed resident who chose to elect the Mayor to that position. From 1847 to 1874, not one candidate chosen in advance by Mormon leaders failed to win the election. One must wonder, why have elections?

Non-Mormons often did not share the majority’s confidence in the political rulings of inspired men who professed to speak for God. To ensure legal supremacy, lawmakers created probate courts on the county level. Judges were appointed by the governor. At a later date, they were vested with both civil and criminal jurisdictions.

There were district courts which dispensed traditional justice under appointed judges, but these judges were usually outsiders. Furthermore, an act of territorial legislature “for the management of certain property” empowered probate judges to seize all property “left by any deceased or absconded person” and turn it over to the Perpetual Emigration Fund.

None of the land in Utah was considered by the Mormons to be privately or publicly owned. As the prophet was fond of saying, “…it all belongs to the Father in heaven.”

The Mormons feared the survey being drawn by Captain Howard Stansbury of the Corps of Topographical Engineers and his crew. They feared the men were in Utah for the purpose of dividing it up into townships and sections. Brigham Young was adamant when he told Stansbury: “We would never permit any survey of this country to be made.”

Stansbury explained how his survey would benefit the Mormon colonizers. Brigham ceded once he knew he could send Albert Carrington, a trusted elder and council member, to go as a part of Stansbury’s staff.

One interesting visitor that passed through Salt Lake City, a Jewish artist, Solomon Carvalho, noted that “nobody but Mormons can hold property in Salt Lake City. The moment anyone leaves or apostatizes they are obliged to abandon their property and are prevented from selling it.”

Control of creeks and canyons was given by law to trusted leaders. Brigham Young received all of City Creek Canyon with its water and timber. Territorial lawmakers made the corporate limits of their settlements large enough to enclose water resources and encompass all of the arable land in the area. Unwanted persons, non-Mormons or dissenters, found no way of owning land.

There was a way to keep Mormons in. In 1854, President Young reinstated the law of consecration, instructing all church members “to consecrate their properties by a deed which can not be broken,” to the trustee-in-trust of the church. Brigham Young closed his council with: “He that sinneth and repenteth not shall be cast out of the church and shall not receive again that which he has consecrated.”

Change does not always bring progress. So it seemed to be with the newly created Deseret Alphabet. It was unlike the English alphabet and yet the Saints spoke English. It consisted of thirty-eight characters to conform with the basic number of sounds in the alphabet. It was said to have its advantages. It demonstrated cultural exclusivism, and kept secrets from curious non-Mormons. The alphabet never received widespread acceptance and was eventually dropped.

Three non-Mormons were appointed to the territorial office. Twenty-four year-old Broughton Harris arrived in 1851 with the territorial seal and twenty-four thousand dollars in federal gold to meet the payroll. This young politician expected to oversee the census as required by law. Harris quickly found that Brigham Young had already apportioned the number of representatives by a census taken when Deseret had applied for Statehood. Harris was appalled when he saw the numbers he considered to be so false and exaggerated that a correct census would betray the fraud.

When Chief Justice Lemuel G. Brandebury arrived in June, he expected to swear-in a territorial governor, Brigham Young. But, Daniel Wells, chief justice of the state of Deseret, had completed the task months before when the news of Brigham’s appointment first reached Utah.

Associate Justice Perry Brocchus, the third non-Mormon appointee, also took umbrage with the Mormon prophet when he heard him scorn President Zachary Taylor who had died the previous summer. “…dead, and in Hell, and I’m glad of it,” Brigham had blustered. Brocchus was short of patience when it came to hostility to the federal government.

A few weeks later, Judge Brocchus, in a pedantic manner, attempted to correct the erroneous opinions some held toward the government. Brigham Young rose to his feet and called Brocchus “profoundly ignorant, or willfully wicked.”

Secretary Harris, having concluded the elections that year were illegal, refused to hand over the twenty-four thousand dollars in his custody. Young did what he could to seize the money but the move was blocked when Harris received an injunction from the Utah Supreme Court. Harris told Young he was taking the money with him. He was joined by Justices Brandebury and Brocchus, as well as U.S. Indian Agent Henry Day.

Harris returned the government’s money to the assistant U.S. Treasurer in St. Louis. He then went to Washington, D.C. where he and the two other justices that left Salt Lake with him reported to President Fillmore on the conditions in the Great Basin. They charged the Mormon leaders were disloyal to the national government, and in complete control of the opinions, the actions, the property, even the lives of the people. It would prove hard to find one who did not agree.