By Michael Austin Michael Austin is co-editor of the Mormon Image in Literature series from Greg Kofford Books, which includes annotated reprints of 19th-century novels about Mormons including many of the works mentioned in this article such as The Doomed Dozen, The Bradys among the Mormons, and Eagle Plume: The White Avenger. Or …
Tag: Danites
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism–Part III
Continued from Part II In May 1842, Joseph Smith reassembled a cadre of bodyguards, selecting primarily those with experience as Danites in Missouri. Former Danites such as Dimick B. Huntington, Daniel Carn, and Albert P. Rockwood began serving as Nauvoo’s “Night Watch.”[i]Previously a Danite captain, Rockwood had already been serving as “commander of my [Smith’s] …
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism–Part II
Continued from Part I One 24 September 1835, notwithstanding the absence of an external threat, Joseph Smith organized militarily in Kirtland. He proposed “by the voice of the Spirit of the Lord” to raise another Mormon army “to live or die on our own lands, which we have purchased in Jackson County, Missouri.” His manuscript …
The Culture of Violence in Joseph Smith’s Mormonism–Part I
By D. Michael Quinn D. Michael Quinn is an independent scholar in Rancho Cucamonga, Southern California. His first ancestral Mormon mother, Lydia Bilyeu Workman, died in Nauvoo on 30 September 1845, just days after she was burned out of her farmhouse by mobs. Her five youngest children were aged six to eighteen. It is extremely …
Danites, Donut Holes, and Mao: Remaking Mormon Culture as Resistance
Danites, Donut Holes, and Mao: Remaking Mormon Culture as Resistance