Among all the various figures in 19th century America who left controversial legacies, it is hard to find one as influential as Joseph Smith (1805-1844), the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Mormonism, and the Latter-Day Saint movement. Revered as a prophet on the level of Moses by some, reviled as a perpetrator of large-scale fraud by others, what everyone can agree on is that Joseph Smith founded a religious movement that played a crucial role in the settlement of the West, especially in Utah.

Smith’s dream of Zion would lead the way for the trials and the tribulations of the Mormons for the rest of the 19th century, including countless conflicts with local authorities and the US government. Smith himself would be a casualty of the clashing, murdered by a mob in 1844 after being imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois near the settlement of Nauvoo, which Smith had painstakingly tried to create as a commune for his people.

Among the most effective methods by which the Latter-Day Saints attained regional dominance was the flooding of specific areas with a like-minded population of fellow settlers and offspring, subsequently controlling the voting and government institutions through a weighty majority. Such an approach caused alarm in each region to which Mormon settlers emigrated; the church collective had already been evicted from New York and other areas for exercising the tactic. The practice of polygamy within the church may have been socially repugnant to Judaic and Christian denominations, but the schism between Mormonism and other American faiths lay deeper in the Restoration of the Priesthood. This core tenet of the church was based on a non-negotiable belief that Christ’s disciples died before they were able to pass on their master’s authority in the process of Apostolic Succession. Therefore, what came after, whether Catholic or Protestant, was based on an absence of authority, leaving the Mormon faith to stand alone as the “one true church.”

This theological separatism caused the Mormon community to live apart, except in the pursuit of converts. The church became increasingly perceived as “un-American,” and this set the scene for violent conflicts across the frontier over several decades as the Mormons sought to hold their territory and the federal government attempted to resolve thorny issues with them. The disputes leading to the Utah War related largely to the animosity between Mormon leader Brigham Young, who was also the governor of the Utah Territory, and a variety of appointed federal officials sent to Utah. Young and the Mormon leadership did not work well with federal officials, who they considered “Gentiles” (non-Mormons). Furthermore, Young was also in charge of relations with the native groups in the area and head of the state militia. Mormons tended to ignore federal policies they did not like and did not accord the officials much respect.

The Mormon response to the federal government and the Buchanan administration in 1857 and 1858 was shaped by the faith’s experience of previous conflicts, which had included an extermination order proclaimed by the governor of Missouri against Mormons, the murder of Smith, and a massacre of Mormon men and boys. As a result, when things came to a head in Utah, the Mormons were more willing to fight. At the time the Utah War broke out, there were more than 30,000 Mormons in the Utah Territory, by far the largest settler population on the trails between Missouri and California. California itself had experienced the Gold Rush in 1848-49 and had become a state in 1850, with a population of 200,000.