Utah/Crime and violence/Culture

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Did Utah foster a culture of violence in the 19th century?

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• Question: Was Utah was a hotbed of violence, murder, and lawlessness that can be attributed to Mormon doctrine and practices?
• Question: Did Brigham Young create a 'culture of violence' in 19th century Utah with his incendiary speeches?
• Question: Did Aaron DeWitt, an ex-Mormon in Utah, receive threats to his life from the Church?

Question: Was Utah was a hotbed of violence, murder, and lawlessness that can be attributed to Mormon doctrine and practices?

"Overattention to such activities obscures the fact that they were very rare compared to elsewhere in the West"

Critics charge that Utah was a hotbed of violence, murder, and lawlessness, and that this can be attributed to LDS doctrine and practices. This is not to say that there was not some violence in frontier Utah—of course there was, given the place and time. But, as one researcher noted:

the point here is not to claim that no vigilante crimes by angry Mormons protecting their interests ever occurred in territorial Utah. The point is that overattention to such activities obscures the fact that they were very rare compared to elsewhere in the West, where no concerted effort to undermine a popularly supported government was going on as in Utah [by the federal government versus the Mormons].

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Death to Seducers! Examples of Latter-day Saint-led Extralegal Justice in Historical Context"

Craig L. Foster,  Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, (2020)

Some people have suggested a strain of violence within nineteenth- century Latter-day Saint culture as violent as and perhaps more so than that of most Americans around them. Critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints point to a few well-known acts of extralegal violence as evidence of a culture of violence that permeated the early Church. But were these examples of violence really out of the norm of nineteenth-century American society? This article looks at examples of extralegal punishment for certain crimes, placing them and the examples of extralegal punishment in Utah within a greater historical and cultural context.

Click here to view the complete article

Question: Did Brigham Young create a 'culture of violence' in 19th century Utah with his incendiary speeches?

The available evidence shows that beyond a few well-publicized murders, Utah was a relatively murder- and violence-free community

Brigham Young is often accused of creating a 'culture of violence' with his incendiary speeches. That accusation would be hard to prove, given the comments below. He makes reference, in 1866, to a man who exhibited the garments to some non-members. Brigham's suggestions to the audience is interesting:

There is also a man down the street who tried to exhibit the endowments to a party who was here. You will see what becomes of that man. Do not touch him. He has forfeited every right and title to eternal life; but let him alone, and you will see by and by what will become of him. His heart will ache, and so will the heart of every apostate that fights against Zion; they will destroy themselves. It is a mistaken idea that God destroys people, or that the Saints wish to destroy them. It is not so.

This claim is generally based on taking anti-Mormon accounts uncritically, and relying on anecdotal evidence. Winnowed to its kernel," writes historian Thomas Alexander, "Bagley's argument [like Abanes' and most other critics in this vein] rests on the proposition that Mormon Utah was a society of officially sanctioned and publicly practiced violence." But, does the data reflect this? Alexander continues:

Statistics of murders for the nineteenth century are difficult to come by, as I learned with the help of Kathryn Daynes and Craig Foster. The available evidence shows, however, that beyond a few well-publicized murders, we have every right to believe that compared with surrounding territories, Utah was a relatively murder- and violence-free community. Historians regularly cite such murders as the Potter-Parrish homicides of 1857 and the killing of J. King Robinson and S. Newton Brassfield in 1866 as evidence of Utah's violent character. Instead of making generalizations from juicy anecdotes, historians ought to use statistical and comparative methodology to interpret these events.

Although we do not have good statistics on murders for the nineteenth century, we do have statistics on lynchings. Unfortunately, the series begins in 1882 rather than in 1847. Lynching is defined as the taking of life by mob action without legal sanction. It does not include such things as murders committed in robberies or other such violent acts, but it would include murders perpetrated for such reasons as blood atonement. These statistics reveal that during the late nineteenth century Utah was one of the least violent of the American West's nineteen states and territories. With 7 lynchings—one of an African American—between 1882 and 1903, Utah had a better record than all the other jurisdictions except Minnesota (6) and Nevada (5). Montana (85), Colorado (65), New Mexico (34), Arizona (28), and even Iowa (16) exhibited a great deal more violence….

Although we lack a thorough comparative study of murders in Utah and other western areas, the available statistical information contradicts Bagley's [and the other critics'] impression of Utah society. The best evidence we have at this time is that Bagley is wrong when he insists that "what made Utah's violence unique in the West was that it occurred in a settled, well-organized community whose leaders publicly sanctioned doctrines of vengeance and ritual murder." In fact, barring further evidence to the contrary, the best evidence we have at this point is that Utah was one of the least violent jurisdictions in the western United States.

Contemporary observers that were not writing hostile anti-Mormon polemics recognized the truth of this as well

This portrayal goes counter to the accounts of contemporary observers and the understanding of historians who have investigated the matter of crime in nineteenth-century Utah. In fact, if anything distinguished Deseret from elsewhere in the West, it was its reputation for well-established and fair courts (administered by LDS bishops) and a remarkably low level of violence—vigilante, criminal, or otherwise.

Legal historian D. Michael Stewart underscored this when he remarked, "extralegal violence was rare compared to that found in other frontier communities."

Non-member Franklin Buck described the difference between southern Utah and his own town of Pioche, Nevada in 1871:

In Pioche [Nevada] we have two courts, any number of sheriffs and police officers and a jail to force people to do what is right. There is a fight every day and a man killed about every week. About half the town is whisky shops and houses of ill fame. In these Mormon towns there are no courts, no prisons, no saloons, no bad women; but there is a large brick Church and they keep the Sabbath—a fine schoolhouse and all the children go to school. All difficulties between each other are settled by the Elders and the Bishop. Instead of every man trying to hang his neighbor, they all pull together. There is only one store on the co-operative plan and all own shares and it is really wonderful to see what fine towns and the wealth they have in this barren country. It shows what industry and economy will do when all work together....The Devil [i.e., the Mormons] is not as black as he is painted.

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Death to Seducers! Examples of Latter-day Saint-led Extralegal Justice in Historical Context"

Craig L. Foster,  Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, (2020)

Some people have suggested a strain of violence within nineteenth- century Latter-day Saint culture as violent as and perhaps more so than that of most Americans around them. Critics of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints point to a few well-known acts of extralegal violence as evidence of a culture of violence that permeated the early Church. But were these examples of violence really out of the norm of nineteenth-century American society? This article looks at examples of extralegal punishment for certain crimes, placing them and the examples of extralegal punishment in Utah within a greater historical and cultural context.

Click here to view the complete article

Question: Did Aaron DeWitt, an ex-Mormon in Utah, receive threats to his life from the Church?

DeWitt may have sincerely believed he was at risk, but we must not turn his suspicion (or even paranoia) into historical fact without further evidence

The violent "Utah theocracy" portrayed by critics of Mormonism seems strangely impotent in his case—probably because it is fictitious. DeWitt can show us that at least some apostate Mormons believed the omnipresent anti-Mormon propaganda regarding Utah, but it provides little evidence to substantiate those claims: even when its author claims to be someone who was at risk of that same Mormon violence and intimidation.

DeWitt was a lapsed Mormon, known for a letter to his sister in a time capsule, as well as journals and poems.

Avoiding material helpful to the Church

D. Michael Quinn writes that:

Two years later [in 1875] LDS apostate Aaron DeWitt was a principal witness in the murder trial of Thomas E. Ricks, Cache Valley’s sheriff and high priest quorum president. Accused of murdering a horse thief in his custody as sheriff, Ricks was acquitted. Upon his return to Logan, DeWitt said that ‘the local Mormon leaders had threatened his life,’ and one account even claimed that ‘the [high] council decided to take his life, and appointed a time, but one of them proved traitor and went and told him [DeWitt], so he was on guard and thus saved his life.’

Quinn's citation for this claim reads as follows:

Ian Craig Breaden, ‘Poetry, Polity, and the Cache Valley Pioneer: Polemics in the Journal of Aaron DeWitt, 1869-96,’ Utah Historical Quarterly 61 (Fall 1993): 329, for circumstances of Ricks killing prisoner Elisha David Skeen, and 335 for quote.

Quinn requires the reader to search out the cited article to learn about the circumstances behind the death of the horse thief. If we may judge based upon Quinn's practice through his books on the "Mormon Hierarchy," if these details had painted the Church or its members in a bad light, he probably would have included them. Unsurprisingly, the circumstances are somewhat exculpatory, since the rustler had escaped from jail in Salt Lake, and was allegedly shot while trying to escape from the sheriff's custody:

The presence of cattle and other livestock, such as horses, attracted rustlers, and one of these, Elisha David Skeen, had become notorious within the Mormon communities along the Wasatch Front. Skeen came to Cache Valley in 1860 after escaping from the Utah County jail, which held him on charges of assault and challenging to duel. Thomas E. Ricks, the sheriff of Cache County, arrested Skeen in late June after the rustler had stolen several horses. Betraying "the Polity ruling the land where they stay," Ricks shot Skeen five times as the prisoner allegedly attempted to escape from the Cache jail. DeWitt heard the shots and ran to the scene in time to see Skeen die. [329]

Page 335, also cited by Quinn, describes the prosecution of Ricks as "overzealous," a detail which Quinn likewise requires the reader to learn through checking the original source:

In March 1875 Thomas E. Ricks came to trial in Salt Lake City for the shooting death of Elisha David Skeen in 1860. As one of the primary witnesses for the overzealous prosecution, Aaron DeWitt put his life in jeopardy by testifying against Ricks, who lived near DeWitt in Logan. Despite evidence that suggested Ricks's guilt, on March 23, 1875, the jury decided for his innocence, and by March 28 Ricks had returned to Logan and continued unquestioned in his duties as a member of the High Priests Quorum. DeWitt also returned to Logan and soon after claimed that the local Mormon leaders had threatened his life.

DeWitt's inconsistency

Despite DeWitt's claim to be at risk from the Mormons, he was not afraid to publicly oppose the Church and its policies even before the murder trial:

By 1872 DeWitt obviously believed he had given enough of his money and spirit to the LDS religion, felt ready to "live and live upright," and signed a petition against statehood for Utah, a petition that the Deseret News printed. With this his apostasy became open, and the following year DeWitt lent the use of his home and bakery (by now abandoned) which only six years previously he had lent to the Cache Stake quorum—to St. John's Episcopal Church, recently formed in Logan by Bishop Daniel S. Tuttle. [334]

And, despite DeWitt's fears, he had legal protection:

Despite DeWitt's suspicions of Mormon treachery, by 1874 his situation as a non-Mormon began to improve considerably. The Poland Act "transferred to federal officials the duties of the territorial attorney general and marshall; and gave federal judges considerable leeway in the selection of jurors. . . ." Congress had begun to fear the power that the Mormons had consolidated in Utah, and the passage of the Poland Act in response to that concern directly affected the life of Aaron DeWitt. Historian A. J. Simmonds wrote, "In practice [the Poland Act] meant that every potential jury would be chosen from a list that was one-half Gentile or Apostate and one-half Mormon. And on July 23, 1874, Aaron DeWitt was chosen as a Federal venireman in the first jury selection under the Poland Act."23 The gentile community of Cache suddenly found it had political power, power that continued to grow until 1896 and statehood

DeWitt remained in Cache Valley, and ran for election against a Mormon candidate in 1888. He was defeated, but it seems implausible that if the Mormon "Danites" wanted him dead, he would be able to live unmolested from 1872-1888. DeWitt alleges his danger and the risk to his life--yet, he lived for at least 16 years as a known apostate in Cache Valley without suffering harm. He reported no attempts on his life known to him, merely hearsay from "an account" (in Quinn's terminology) who claimed that "the council decided to take his life, and appointed a time, but one of them proved traitor and went and told him, so he was on his guard and thus saved his life" [335]. What Quinn does not tell us is that this report was from Reorganized Church (RLDS) Apostle W. H. Kelley, who certainly had reasons to portray the LDS in a negative light. Kelley also reported that DeWitt carried a revolver "to defend himself against his neighbors." However, the trial had been the following winter--it seems strange that a council able and willing to plot the murder of a man would be stymied by its victim simply being "on his guard" or carrying a revolver (which can hardly have been unusual in that time and place).

Why did DeWitt himself not give such an account in his journal, or before the courts once greater federal power was exerted in Utah? He wrote his sister and included all sorts of claims about Mormon abuses (e.g., the Mountain Meadows Massacre), but everything is second hand. He is a witness to none of it, and if ever there was a time to tell of his own brush with Mormon vigilante justice, this was it. He claimed that "if you did not behave and act the hypocrite, the bishop would send the Danites to use you up and send you across lots to that bright brimstone home we read about." And yet, despite his open disaffection, no bishop or Danites came for Aaron DeWitt.

DeWitt's whole claim (and that of the critics who use him to attack the Church) rests on an insistence that the Church controlled everything in Utah, and could break the law with impunity. How did he manage, simply by being vigilant, to elude such a powerful group for so long--even while a visible and vocal apostate? His continued existence with no first-hand account of a threat to his life is a powerful argument against his claim.

Even a hostile historian grants that most of DeWitt's claims are false

A.J. Simmonds is a historian hostile to the Church. But, as even he notes of DeWitt's letter to his sister:

The bulk of Dewitt's letter is the standard 19th Century Gentile charge against the Mormons— largely dismissed in light of later scholarship—and Dewitt's repetition of the horrors of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the murder of the Morrisites lend nothing to the historical record except (and it is a major exception) that a pioneer settler of Logan believed them and was moved by them, could accept those stories as basically true and act upon that acceptance—that those stories did not contain any incident that contradicted anything that in the ten years of pioneers between 1857 and 1867 he had learned of LDS Society, of individual Mormons, and of what they were capable either collectively or individually in "defense" of their faith. (emphasis added)

Simmonds (who participated in counter-cultist Ed Decker's Saints Alive Capstone Conference, and published in his anti-Mormon journal) is obviously straining to keep DeWitt's value for anti-Mormon polemic by arguing that these claims were found by DeWitt to be potentially "basically true" and "not contain[ing] any incident that contradicted anything that...he had learned of LDS society." But, Simmonds has already granted that most of these claims were false. Thus, DeWitt's credulity tells us something, but it tells us far more about DeWitt and the process of apostasy than it does the 19th century Mormon frontier.

DeWitt was anxious to condemn the Mormons, and yet he could add essentially nothing new--despite his "familiarity" with the Mormons and Mormon culture, he could add no first-hand account of new atrocities, or even second-hand ones. He had to rely on the same tired accounts that pepper 19th-century anti-Mormon propaganda—which even Simmonds has granted are largely without foundation.

Simmonds ignores that a rational assessment of such charges and claims against a former religious group is unlikely once one has become a confirmed apostate. Simmonds ignores that it was likely DeWitt's hostility to his former co-religionists that made these claims seem true, not their inherent plausibility or consistency with the evidence. DeWitt was also struggling (as apostates in all religious traditions do) to justify himself and his behavior to himself and his sister—he had to explain why he had joined the Church, why he had stayed for so long even though it was a deception, and why he had remained silent or inactive if all the horrors he reported of his former faith were true. His is a classic apostate exit narrative.

Simmonds himself, in his zeal to condemn the Church, likewise falls victim to the same shoddy reasoning.

Notes