On their overland emigrations from the towns on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to the Mormon settlements in Utah, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints followed what came to be known as the Mormon Trail. The first, shortest, and most briefly used segment of the trail ran from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Winter Quarters, Nebraska (near present-day Omaha). In winter 1845-46 the Mormon Community in Nauvoo, under the leadership of Brigham Young, faced the rising hostility of the surrounding countryside. Young had hoped to arrange a truce that would allow the church to emigrate in spring 1846, but armed mobs surrounding the city refused to give him such respite. Instead, as early as late autumn 1845, they began raids on outlying Mormon settlements and soon near the city of Nauvoo itself. Young now directed that the emigrations begin immediately, and in the middle of winter, carefully organized groups of Mormon families crossed the ice on the frozen Mississippi and moved across the Territory of Iowa toward the West.
Advance parties, designated “pioneers,” marked the trail, built log cabins for shelter, established a mail service, dug wells, and even planted fields of corn to be harvested by later bands of Mormons. By October 1847 some 12,000 Mormons had reached Winter Quarters, near Omaha on the Missouri River. Winter Quarters was a temporary resting place, but the onset of winter demanded the rapid organization of the community and preparations for the changing season. Work parties built shelter, while others fanned out into the countryside to purchase supplies of food. In spite of the energetic preparations, the winter season was a difficult one. Some 600 Mormons died from exposure and disease.
Even as he struggled to provide for the Mormon encampment in the face of winter, Young and his counselors were planning the emigration to the West. Building on their successful experience in crossing Iowa, he designated pioneers to mark the route and provide support. He then divided the entire Mormon community into bands of tens, fifties, and hundreds, each group with a designated leader. The chain of command ran up to Young himself. He also issued instructions for driving the wagons, managing the livestock, and maintaining security in camping at night. The Sabbath was to be strictly observed, and in the tradition of looking to the future, Young directed that records of the overland journey to the West be kept and carefully preserved.
In April 1847, the “Pioneer Band” of 148 persons set out from Winter Quarters. The well-marked and well-used Oregon Trail followed the south bank of the Platte River, but Young did not follow this trail, probably concluding that any parties encountered would be hostile to the Mormons. Instead, he established a new route along
The north bank of the Platte that would become known as the Mormon Trail. The advance party reached Fort Laramie in early June, then followed the Oregon Trail for some 400 miles to Fort Bridger. At this point, Young and his party left the Oregon Trail and struck across the Wasatch Range into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. It was at the entrance to the valley that Young called his party together and announced the site as the future gathering of Zion.
Young now returned east to make preparations for the emigration of the main body of the church to the valley. Using the revised Mormon Trail and supported by the planning of church leaders and the work of the pioneers, the church gradually moved west. Some 1,600 members arrived in 1847, and another 2,500 in 1848. The costs proved daunting, even with the funds acquired from enlisting the Mormon Battalion, a military unit organized by Brigham Young, for the Mexican-American War. In order to economize, Mormon leaders introduced a plan under which emigrants would push handcarts across the plains to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. The first of the handcart companies departed from Coralville, Iowa, in spring 1856, and over five years, almost 3,000 emigrants pushed or pulled handcarts to the valley. The handcart expeditions were arduous and risky. Two of the first five companies departing in 1856 failed to reach the crest of the mountains before the first major snowfall, and numerous
Mormons lost their lives. Eventually the church dispatched supply wagons to accompany the handcart companies. This expedition of the handcart companies was one of the most remarkable stories of the overland migration across the plains.
The Mormon Trail remained in use through the 1860s, although the numbers using it declined steadily. With the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 and its extension into Salt Lake City, railroad travel became the standard means of transportation to the Mormon settlements in Utah. Over its life, approximately 70,000 Mormons followed the trail. It was an important chapter in overland travel to the West.
Further reading: Wallace Stegner, The Gathering Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail (Salt Lake City: Westwater Press, 1964).
Mormon War (1857-1858)
The Mormon War was a conflict between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the federal government that led to the invasion and occupation of Utah Territory by the U. S. Army. The war had its origins in 25 years of continuing hostility between the Mormon Church and its neighbors and eventually American society as a whole. These ongoing clashes led to Mormon emigrations from Kirtland, Ohio, to western Missouri; from western Missouri to Nauvoo, Illinois; and, finally, from Nauvoo to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in Utah.
By the time the main body of the church, under its leader Brigham Young, arrived in Utah in 1847, public distaste for the church had transformed to violent hostility. The original Mormon prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr., had been assassinated by a mob in Carthage, Illinois, in 1844. Attacks on Mormons and their property had forced them to move from Nauvoo to the West. The primary causes of the hostility were Mormon growth and prosperity, ingroup loyalty and identification at the expense of outsiders, and issues of local and state politics. To these issues were added stories of peculiar Mormon religious rituals and, beginning in 1842, rumors of polygamy among Mormon leaders. These continuing conflicts forced Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, and the church to flee west to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.
Once arrived in the valley, Young organized the landscape and the community to serve the needs of the church. When the U. S. Congress organized Utah Territory as a part of the Compromise of 1850, Young was appointed governor of the territory; this recognized that the residents of the territory were predominantly Mormon in character. Along with a governor, the Northwest Ordinance, still the organic law for organizing new territories, provided for three judges to be appointed. The judges would form the supreme court of the territory, and the judges and the governor would draft a code of law for the new territory. In company with Young as governor, the president appointed three non-Mormon judges from the East. It would prove to be an awkward mix.
Suspicion of and antagonism toward Mormons experienced a strong revival in 1852 with the public announcement that polygamy, long practiced in secret, was indeed a fundamental belief of the church. To Mormons, polygamy was a holy doctrine, commanded by the Lord through the words of Joseph Smith. To non-Mormons, polygamy was the ultimate proof of the immorality of the church and its leaders, whose real purpose in its promulgation was lust and lawlessness. Certainly adherence to the doctrine of polygamy laid the basis for the revival of conflict that would continue for a half-century.
When the newly appointed federal judges arrived in Utah Territory, they found a large church community organized as a theocracy, with church leaders in control of the natural resources (land and water) of the territory, dominant in political life, and influential in issues of law. Residents were obedient to church doctrine and leaders at every level. Young saw the judges as meddlesome outsiders, distant from and perhaps even hostile to the Mormon community. The judges saw themselves as representatives of the authority of the national government, whose presence was alternately ignored or circumvented. Young and the church leaders actively schemed to bypass the federal courts and handle cases in local courts, where the influence of the church was paramount.
The judges complained to Washington that the authority of the federal government was being undermined and even contravened by the church. As anti-Mormon sentiment rose with the public outcry over polygamy, politicians and parties moved to condemn the Saints. The Republican Party platform of 1856 singled out for condemnation “those twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery.” The Democratic Party won the election, but the administration of President James Buchanan faced an unending series of insoluble problems associated with sectionalism and slavery. Mormon behavior in the Utah Territory became one of the few issues on which anything like a national consensus could be found. In 1857, Buchanan issued a proclamation accusing the Mormons of rebellion against the constituted authority of the U. S. government. In order to put down this rebellion, the president sent a military expedition to reestablish the American government’s authority.
News of the dispatch of an armed expedition heightened the suspicion and hostility of the church and its leaders against non-Mormons. The arrival of an armed expedition produced bombastic rhetoric from church pulpits: Mormons were being subjected to another in a series of persecutions, and the community must defend itself. As war fever swept across the territory, Young and church leaders organized for a spirited armed defense. Soon, however, Young decided in favor of a more passive response. The church leadership went into hiding, and bands of volunteers raided the supply wagons of the advancing federal army. The Mormons burned Fort Bridger, fearing that the outpost would be of assistance to the troops. They also set fire to the grasslands, intent on denying the federal troops the use of forage for livestock.
In late June 1858, the invading army passed through a largely deserted Salt Lake City. It established Camp Floyd some 40 miles away. The two sides now settled down to maintaining a continuing federal presence, while various individuals tried to draft some kind of truce between the two sides. An accommodation of sorts was eventually reached, but armed forces continued to occupy portions of Utah Territory. After much initial suspicion and even hostility, the opposing parties began communicating, and federal officers started buying supplies from Mormon farmers. The federal troops and the Mormon community never entirely accepted one another, but they did meet on a regular basis for mutual benefit. The occupation of Utah as a permanent feature of life in the territory came to an end with the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65). The elements of the army withdrew.
By this time, Young had been removed as governor of Utah Territory, but discord over authority in Utah Territory continued. In 1862, during the civil conflict over the future of the Union, the government dispatched another armed force to Utah to observe the activities of the church and its leaders. The second expedition was withdrawn later that year, but the conflict between the church and the nation would continue for another 30 years, ending only when the church issued a revised doctrine that outlawed polygamy and Utah was admitted to the Union in 1896.
Further reading: Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Yo-ung: American Moses (New York: Knopf, 1985); Newall G. Bringhurst, Brigham Young and the Expanding American Frontier (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986); Sarah Barringer Gordon, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Morse, Samuel F. B. (1791-1872) inventor of the telegraph
Artist and inventor of the telegraph, Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on April 27, 1791, the eldest son of a Calvinist minister. He was educated at the elite Phillips Academy in Andover before attending Yale College. Morse proved an indifferent student, but while at Yale he displayed considerable artistic talent and painted miniature portraits. This brought him to the attention of noted artist Washington Allston, who convinced him to study at his studio in England. Morse quickly gained renown as a promising painter, winning several awards. However, he had less success following his return home in 1815 and subsequently returned to painting miniatures. Morse married Lucretia Walker in 1818, and eventually settled in New York City, where he helped establish the National Academy of the Arts of Design in 1826.
Morse endured a hardscrabble existence as a painter, talented but lacking sufficient patronage to thrive. Following the deaths of his wife, father, and mother in 1826-28, he spent some time in Europe. While returning home in 1829, he met inventor Charles Thomas Jackson, who convinced him of the practicality of sending messages with electrical impulses. This notion subsequently became the driving force in Morse’s life. He eventually found work as a painting and sculpture instructor at the fledgling University of the City of New York (later New York University), investing all of his spare time and money making electromagnetic signals a reality. At length he acquired two part-ners—Leonard Gale, a chemistry professor; and Alfred Vail, a talented mechanic—in 1837. Together, the three men came up with a viable scheme for sending signals over wire through a transmitter and a receiver. The mechanism employed a system of dots and dashes, combinations of which represented a number or letter, making it possible to decipher messages quickly. This eventually became known as the Morse Code.
Although Morse’s telegraph worked and had practical applications, it generated very little enthusiasm. He initially proferred it to the federal government in 1837, but they displayed no interest. Despite his acquisition of a government patent, the telegraph languished from lack of funding. It was not until 1844 that Congress appropriated $30,000 for Morse to lay down a 40-mile telegraph line between Washington, D. C., and Baltimore, Maryland. On May 24, 1844, Morse tapped out the cryptic message “What has God wrought?”—and a communications revolution began. In fact, the telegraph made an indelible impact on the course of subsequent American history. The device accompanied the railroad lines westward and, through instantaneous transmission of messages, conquered distance. For the first time a network of wires could connect even the remotest frontier settlement with large urban centers on the East Coast, promoting a greater sense of national unity. Telegraphs were also extensively employed
Samuel F. B. Morse (Hulton/Archive)
By both sides during the Civil War, proving useful for communications and intelligence work.
Morse founded the Magnetic Telegraph Company in 1845, although the company struggled and he ultimately merged with the Western Union Corporation in 1866. Within a few years, telegraphs were being employed throughout the world. Morse eventually retired to his home in Poughkeepsie, New York, to reap a fortune in licensing fees. He died on April 2, 1872, having ushered in the age of global communications.
Further reading: Lewis Coe, The Telegraph: A History of Morse’s Invention and Its Predecessors in the United States (Jefferson, N. C.: MacFarland, 1993); David P. Hochfelder, “Taming the Lightning: American Telegraphy as a Revolutionary Technology, 1832-1860” (unpublished Ph. D. dis., Case Western Reserve University, 1999); William Kloss, Samuel F B. Morse (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1988); Kenneth Silverman, Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003); Paul J. Staiti, Samuel F B. Morse (Cambridge, U. K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
—John C. Fredriksen
Mott, Lucretia (1793-1880) abolitionist, women's rights activist
Born January 3, 1793, into a Quaker family on Nantucket, Lucretia Coffin Mott was a lifelong activist for abolition and women’s rights. The daughter of Anna Folger and Thomas Coffin, Mott credited her childhood with the formation of her independent character. She was surrounded by strong female role models from an early age. Since most men on the island gained their livelihood from the sea, women frequently spent long periods of time alone, raising families and running businesses in the absence of their fathers, husbands, and brothers. “The exercise of women’s talents in this line,” Mott later wrote, “tended to develop their intellectual powers and strengthen them mentally and physically.”
In 1804 the Coffin family left Nantucket for Boston, where she attended a series of public and private schools. At the age of 14, she and a sister left home to attend a coeducational Quaker boarding school near Poughkeepsie, New York. The following year, Lucretia Coffin was asked to become an assistant teacher, and at 16 she joined the staff full-time. It was there that she became friends with another teacher, James Mott, whom she married on April 10, 1811.
Mott remembered the early years of her marriage as a time of considerable difficulty. The War OF 1812, her father’s death, and general economic uncertainty in the United States presented the couple with a number of financial challenges. To survive, the Motts taught, ran a school for a period of time, and operated a dry-goods business. They welcomed their first child into the world in 1812 and would go on to have five more before 1828. While deeply involved in the raising of her children, Mott confessed later in life that she always read books rather than apply herself to the “unnecessary stitching and ornamental work” that occupied many other women of her class.
At the age of 25, Mott began to take on a more active role within the Society of Friends, becoming a minister in 1821. Following a split in the society in 1827, the Motts became Hicksite Quakers. They believed in a liberal interpretation of the Bible and the power of each individual to understand God on their own terms. Throughout these years, Mott worked diligently on a variety of social issues. She was a devout believer in the TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT, campaigned on a variety of working-class concerns, and became an increasingly vocal participant in the ABOLITION MOVEMENT.
In 1833 Mott organized the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia. Early members of the society included Angelina Grimke and Sarah Grimke, sisters who would themselves go on to prominent careers as public abolitionists. In 1837, Mott helped to organize the AntiSlavery Convention of American Women. In 1838, two days after the annual convention had been held at Pennsylvania Hall, Philadelphia, the meeting rooms were burned by opponents of the abolition movement. The protestors tried to attack the Motts’ home later the same night.
In 1840 Mott traveled to London with her husband to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Despite attending as an elected delegate of the American Anti-Slavery SOCIETY, she was refused entry to the convention because she was a woman. Five other female delegates were also turned away. Mott noted in her diary that she and the other women were treated politely by the organizers of the convention. This did not, however, lessen her offense at having been turned away. Many prominent male delegates to the convention argued that having women in attendance would trivialize their cause and open them up to ridicule. Mott and her allies countered that the same arguments were used in the United States by those who believed black men and women should not attend public meetings.
This was not the first time that Mott had been confronted by prejudice toward her sex. Female teachers at the Quaker boarding school where she had finished her education earned only half the salary of their male colleagues. Later in life, she had established the Female-Anti Slavery Society of Philadelphia because women were initially prohibited from joining William Lloyd Garrison’s American Anti-Slavery Society. Mott had also been heckled and threatened for speaking in public and for daring to address mixed crowds, activities considered by many Americans to be improper.
These past experiences were compounded by the situation at the London convention. There Mott met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the wife of another American delegate, who expressed her sympathies and outrage at the turn of events. In conversation, the two women decided that legal and cultural inequalities suffered by women in the United States must end. They began to plan a convention at which women could meet one another, become educated, and adopt a course of activism to win the rights they had long been denied.
In 1848 the first women’s rights convention was held at Seneca Falls, New York. It was the product of Mott and Stanton’s 1840 conversations, their ensuing friendship, and the assistance of many other reform-minded women. The convention was the beginning of a longterm women’s rights movement in the United States. It was also the beginning of a new chapter in Mott’s life. For the remainder of her years, she worked tirelessly for women’s status and rights. In 1850, she published Discourses on Women, a pamphlet that argued there was nothing natural about woman’s subordination to man. Instead, argued Mott, the inequities women experienced were created by laws, customs, and a lack of education. All three things, she asserted, needed to be changed.
Throughout the 1850s, Mott lectured and attended women’s rights conventions across the United States. Still fiercely abolitionist, she and her husband also opened their home to enslaved men and women escaping the institution of slavery on the Underground Railroad. She remained a devout pacifist and was severely discomforted by the Civil War. Her religious beliefs condemned violence, but she hoped, like many others, that the conflict would bring slavery to a final end. Mott continued to be active in Quaker circles, and she preached regularly for the rest of her life. She died on November 11, 1880.
Further reading: Margaret Hope Bacon, Valiant Friend: The Life of Lucretia Mott (New York: Walker, 1980); Dana Greene, ed., Lucretia Mott: Her Complete Speeches and Sermons (New York: E. Mellon Press, 1980); Nancy Isen-berg, Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
—Catherine J. Denial
World History
