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Criticism of Mormonism/Books/Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows/Use of sources/Alexander on reasons: Difference between revisions
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* Historian Thomas Alexander is claimed to have held the position that "the Indians made them do it" (i.e., commit the Mountain Meadows Massacre). | * Historian Thomas Alexander is claimed to have held the position that "the Indians made them do it" (i.e., commit the Mountain Meadows Massacre).<ref>{{CriticalWork:Bagley:Blood of the Prophets|pages=367}}</ref> | ||
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Revision as of 20:52, 2 April 2017
Did Thomas Alexander claim that "the Indians" were responsible for Mountain Meadows Massacre?
| A work by author: Will Bagley
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Questions
- Historian Thomas Alexander is claimed to have held the position that "the Indians made them do it" (i.e., commit the Mountain Meadows Massacre).[1]
Answer
The author is willing to distort the position of his historical colleague to score a rhetorical point, just as he selectively presents the evidence of the past to the same end.
Detailed Analysis
Responded Alexander to this claim:
- The massacre at Mountain Meadows remains one of the most heinous and least understood crimes in the history of the American West. How a militia unit of "God-fearing Christians" could have murdered more than 120 people in cold blood seems beyond comprehension. In a previous book, I attempted to understand the massacre by comparing it to "the massacres of Christian Armenians by Moslem Turks, of Jews by Christian Germans, and of Moslem Bosnians by Christian Serbs." I did not say, as Bagley flippantly claims I did, "the Indians made them do it" (367). On reflection, the massacre should reveal to each of us our vulnerability and our potential—however well hidden—for acts of unspeakable atrocity. [2]
Notes
- ↑ Will Bagley, Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows (University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 367.
- ↑ Thomas G. Alexander, "Review of Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows," Brigham Young University Studies 31 no. 1 (January 2003), 167–. off-site