UTAH NOT A FIELD OF BLOOD
You say, "I have read that which leads me to believe that under Brighamism"—as you slurringly remark—"Utah was for years a land of assassination and a field of blood," and then you ask me, "what of the Mountain Meadows massacre,—the destruction of the Aiken party; the dying confession of Bishop J. D. Lee; the Hickman butcheries; the Danties?"
Well, that which you have read counts for but little when the source is considered. Your case is most certainly desperate when you are forced to accept the statements of murderers.
It's a strange thing that you and many of your elders accept all the blood-curdling tales from Beadle, Stenhouse and other apostate sources when they happen to refer to Brigham Young and "Utah Mormons," and denounce the same sources when they refer to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Yet, I repeat, the same class of charges—in many respects identical—that you charge against Brigham Young, of murder, bloodshed, adultery, and even Danties, were first made by bitter enemies of the Church before the death of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and that just such falsehoods brought about the bitterness that resulted in his death.
You resort to sources that even the editor of your official paper denounces as "Idle and vicious stories gathered from the awful files of terrible tales told about the Mormons, by those at enmity with them."—Saints Herald 52:2.
If you desire to know the character of Christ do you accept the statements of the Roman guard at the sepulchre? the Jew with blood-stained hands who rejoices in his death? and the anti-Christian? Wherein then, is your consistency in asking me to accept the testimony of those whose hands are imbrued in blood, apostates and bitter enemies of my people?
Very well then, I return your question. What about them? Pray tell, what about the Mountain Meadows massacre? the Aiken party? the confessions of Lee? (by the way, the fact that you call him a "Bishop" proves the source of your information); what about Hickman and above all, the Danties?
When Alfred Henry Lewis, in Collier's Weekly of March 26, 1964, stated, "Brigham Young invented his destroying angels, placed himself at their head, and when a man rebelled had him murdered, if one fled the fold, he was pursued and slain," he repeated one of the most colossal falsehoods ever uttered. Nor is that the only falsehood in his article you are pleased to quote.
Brigham Young was not a man of blood. The "Mormon" people were not guilty of the Mountain Meadows massacre.[2] There was no destruction of an Aiken party. Hickman and Lee are not worth the mention; and the Danties! Had you not better read Church history of 1838? In Utah there never were destroying angels or Danties, except in the imagination of bitter anti-"Mormons" and I am satisfied that Mr. R. C. Evans knows that fact.