Finding Meaning in Mountain Meadows Massacre

I just heard about a movie being made in the setting of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Not surprisingly, they chose the more sensational route and based the events on allegations that the church leadership was behind it. If we can make it an exposé of how horrible those Mormons really are, we'll get more buzz, right? :-P

I don't intend to become an apologist, it looks like that work could be a full-time job just to fight off all the internet trolls, not to mention all the historical research needed to answer legitimate points. I just want to record my thoughts, some of which may very well be off-base.

There seem to be a lot of people who are brought up to hate the Mormons because of this incident. We perhaps do the same thing in demonizing those who persecuted our ancestors in (for example) Haun's Mill, but we certainly don't carry that hate over to today, Hatfield-and-McCoy-style, do we? I hope not...

Was the church responsible for the murders at Mountain Meadows? Why doesn't the church issue an apology?
Depends on what you mean by "the church." Clearly there were Mormons involved, including leaders. Does that mean "the church" was responsible? There were Muslims involved in the World Trade Center bombs, including leaders, but most people seem to be stepping over themselves to emphasize that the Muslim religion itself was not responsible for it. Brigham Young's orders were to let them pass. I don't see how people can say that he really did mean for them to execute everyone.

But wasn't Brigham Young's reaction a little unfeeling?
As I understand, he was violently ill when he found out. (Anyone have any documentation on this?) But I think most people are talking about the confiscation of wagon train's property and trying to charge their relatives for taking care of the surviving children. Um, well, maybe a little unfeeling, but that's a far cry from calling him an accessory to murder. (Besides, it is kinda expensive to raise children, and the church was still in a great deal of debt at this time. Perhaps the church should have swallowed the debt in this case, but he was faced with the dilemma of the commandment to get out of debt (DC 104:78-81).)

How can you say that such horrible actions were justified?
This usually comes after a well-meaning Mormon chimes in and says "you need to understand the mindset of the Mormons at this time," followed by some listing of the grievances and persecution they suffered. (Often this is followed by someone explaining that the Mormons deserved what they got for repeatedly breaking the law. This is completely beside the point, but it has been addressed elsewhere. Not to mention it flies in the face of the formal apologies issued over the last few years by the states of Illinois and Missouri.) If someone is listing the grievances, he is probably trying to counter the dehumanizing effect of such a chilling, one-sided story, not to justify their actions. This is probably little comfort to those who were personally affected by the incident. But by no means are such arguments meant to be attempts to justify their actions, only to explain them.

Again, to draw on the parallel that our enemies are so hasty to make with the World Trade Center attacks, we seem to trip over ourselves in an attempt to discover what motivated the terrorists and often coming to some conclusion about "American imperialism," but no reasonable person reads that as an exoneration of the terrorists' actions.

Why was only one person ever brought to justice?
Why indeed? I think it's a legitimate question, but it should be directed at the judicial system and not at the church. After all, everyone complains about how the church should keep its influence out of the government. Now everyone complains that the church should have done the government's duty? And no, the church was not manipulating the government. The massacre took place in 1857. The "Utah War" was taking place in 1857-1858, which in part seems to have been about unfair judges, who at the time were political appointees by Washington, not elected officials. The judges afterwards were also political appointees, some of which were clearly not pro-Mormon. You'd think one would think one of them would chomp at the bit to get his hands on a case like this. (Maybe I've got my timing off on this. In any case, there was clearly a great deal of misunderstanding about exactly what happened that continues to this day.) One comment I saw was "well, what about blood atonement?" That's a whole other subject that I know little about. I'll let the professionals handle that one.

FAIR also has a discussion about the attempts to bring the perpetrators to justice, including the idea that some judges were trying hard to tie the murders to the church, to no avail and effectively hindering the investigation.