The Mormon War

Bulletin: Grannie Annie came through her hip joint replacement surgery splendidly. A big thanks to all you prayer warriors and other good people who express well wishes. It is you that make this such a great place to live.

Along Interstate 80 last week, I was cruising at my normal 78 m.p.h. and a late-model Chrysler came whizzing past in the "fast" lane where he stayed until out of sight. The driver was a dark skinned gentleman headed west. In a few miles, yo, there sat the same car parked on the edge with the flashing lights of a state trooper parked close behind. The NSP officer, a white guy, was at the window "visiting" with the obviously speeding driver. Thoughts came to mind of recent news reports of white cops picking on black persons just because of their skin color. Somehow I have faith that such doesn't happen in Nebraska.

Later I stopped for fuel at a busy truck stop. For automobiles there was a large island of four gas pumps. Smack dab in the middle of one side was an expensive-looking convertible sitting empty, no operator in sight. I backed in in front and filled with my vehicle with gasoline. Every gas pump was busy except the two blocked by the convertible. Tank full I then drove around and parked with other empty vehicles and went inside to greet Grannie Annie. Eventually I noted a gentleman with distinctive mid-eastern features wiping the bugs off his convertible's headlights. Then he left. Inconsiderate, after all we were probably Christians and beneath the dignity of any follower of Mohamed. Just sayin'.

Near Kearney we stopped at one of the clean well-kept I-80 rest stops to exercise the surgery recovering Grannie. That rest stop was attended by a knowledgeable lady handing out flyers and advice to the traveling public. Nice touch. Relaxing a bit I wandered over to read the large historical plaque telling of the history of the place. In frontier days, the late 1850s what is now I-80 was a busy byway for teamsters freighting supplies to the U.S. Army during the Mormon War. This road was also the route that tens of thousands Latter-day Saints, many of them women pulling wooden two wheeled carts loaded with all their worldly goods, trekked from Missouri to a new home in the Great Salt Lake basin in the late 1840s. It was after the death of their founder Joseph Smith. They were leaving persecution from warring neighbors in Illinois and Missouri hoping for a new start in unoccupied territory.

Mormon War -- a bell in my memory went off. Yes, in 1857, President James Buchanan sent an expedition of several thousand soldiers to the Utah Territory to set up a post in Utah Territory.

Earlier Brigham Young had declared a State of Deseret and claimed a large portion of what is now modern Utah and Nevada along with parts of Colorado and Wyoming. They were also attempting to separate from the United States and declare themselves a separate country to be governed by the tenants of their religion.

For President Buchanan, such a move just wouldn't do and he sent the Army to prevent it from happening. Actually there were no great battles and the action was mostly a blustering standoff. Things were finally settled by defining the new territories of Utah and Nevada to be governed as republics as were all the other territories and states at that time. Among other requirements the Mormons were required to abandon their practice of plural marriage.

The war only lasted a year and shortly after the United States became embroiled in a much greater conflict, the Civil War.

So history tells us that we had a war to stamp out polygamy. Now our Supreme Court has stamped out of whole new cloth, a right of same-sex marriage. What is next? Will it be found that humans and animals can marry? Will humans be able to marry a robot? How about incestuous marriage? Will they bring back the right of plural marriage? Or maybe the goal will be to get rid of Christian marriage completely? I think that I don't want to go there.

Maybe it is time to start reemphasizing the history of our special nation in our schools. The millennial generation seems to have lost the understandings of what has made our nation exceptional. The historical happenings that made us one people proud to be called American. Our young need to be inculcated with patriotism and the teaching of Christianity. We need be one people again great and strong.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail