Brigham Young

Brigham Young was an American religious leader and politician born on June 1, 1801, in Whitingham, Vermont. Raised in upstate New York, he received little formal education, though his mother taught him to read and write. His father was a farmer, and Young learned practical trades early in life, working as a carpenter, glazier, painter, and later as a carpenter and joiner in Mendon, New York. That background gave him a direct, workmanlike cast of mind. He came of age in a strict Puritan-style Christian setting, used tobacco, did not drink alcohol, and once refused to sign a temperance pledge because, as he put it, “I want my liberty.”

Young first joined the Reformed Methodist Church in 1824 after studying the Bible, but by the time he moved to Mendon in 1828 he had become a Christian seeker, unconvinced that he had found a church with the true authority of Jesus Christ. In 1830 he was introduced to the Book of Mormon through a copy obtained by his brother Phineas Howe. He did not accept its claims at once. Missionaries of the Latter Day Saint movement came to Mendon in 1831, and Young was struck by their practice of spiritual gifts such as speaking in tongues and prophecy. After meeting Joseph Smith, he joined the Church of Christ on April 9, 1832, and was baptized by Eleazer Miller.

By 1835, Young had become a full-time leader in the church. He served briefly as a missionary, moved to Missouri in 1838, and, after Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs signed the Mormon Extermination Order, organized the migration of the Latter Day Saints from Missouri to Illinois. In Illinois, he became an inaugural member of the Council of Fifty. In 1844, while Young was traveling to gain support for Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign, Smith was killed by a mob. The killing led to the Illinois Mormon War and a succession crisis in the Latter Day Saint movement. After negotiating a ceasefire, Young was unanimously elected the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1847.

Young is best known for leading the Mormon exodus west from Nauvoo, Illinois, along the Mormon Trail to the Salt Lake Valley. Once in Utah, he founded Salt Lake City and established the State of Deseret. President Millard Fillmore appointed him the first governor of the Utah Territory in 1850, and he served from 1851 until his resignation in 1858. He also remained president of the LDS Church from 1847 until his death in 1877. In Utah, he ordered the construction of numerous temples, including the Salt Lake Temple, and sought to establish higher education institutions that later became the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.

His public life also included actions and teachings that remain central to any honest account of him. Young allowed polygamy, was himself a polygamist with 56 wives and 57 children, supported slavery and its expansion into Utah, and led efforts to legalize and regulate slavery in the 1852 Act in Relation to Service. He formalized the prohibition of black men attaining priesthood and directed the Mormon Reformation. During the Utah War, after President James Buchanan appointed a new territorial governor, Young declared martial law and re-activated the Nauvoo Legion. The conflict included the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which at least 120 members of the Baker-Fancher immigrant wagon train were killed by the Utah Territorial Militia, and the Aiken massacre, which was perpetrated on Young’s orders.

Young’s teachings are preserved in the 19 volumes of transcribed and edited sermons in the Journal of Discourses. His words are read because they come from a life lived at the center of religious migration, frontier settlement, territorial politics, and conflict in the American West. He spoke as a church president, governor, organizer, builder, and controversial ruler. That mix makes his record demanding to read, but hard to ignore.