Brigham Young

Personal Statement:

My name is Brigham Young. I was born to a farming family in Whitingham, Vermont on June 1st, 1801. My family was very poor and I was the ninth of eleven children. When I was three, my parents decided our family would be better off if we moved to upstate New York. I never received a formal education as I was busy helping my father with farming and other things, such as carpentry. When I was sixteen I left home to start my own career as a carpenter, painter, farmer, and general handyman. I married at age 23 and my wife and I moved to Mendon, New York where Joseph Smith was preparing the Book of Mormon for publication. Although I had just converted to Methodism in 1823, I was drawn toward Joseph Smith's religion of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormon religion drew me in so much that I ended up being baptized into the Mormon church in 1830. In 1833 after the death of my first wife, I decided to follow Joseph Smith and his followers to Kirtland, Ohio. After Smith was murdered in 1844, I helped move the Mormons to Utah, hoping that here we would find the freedom to worship our faith. I became the governor of Utah and I took over Smith's authority, becoming president of the Mormon Church and there I spent the rest of my life in service to the Mormon faith.

Issues:
Us Mormons suffered many issues and we were persecuted by many people. Our leader, Joseph Smith, was murdered because others views' towards our faith. We moved to Utah to find freedom to worship our faith but we experienced many other issues such as:

• persecution by many other religions,even those who believed in Christ like us
• anti-Mormon mobs (tried to hurt our believers)
• our church was not united enough
• those who were more educated than us looked down on our church
• alcoholism (huge problem, drinking only caused problems to families and families should be united)
• the "outsiders" (influenced our people in a negative way, therefore causing our church to not be united)
• assimilating to the Utah territory and learning how to live in the desert was very challenging at first
• not enough supporters, our Church was not big enough to support itself against the outsiders

No matter what issues our Church faced, we always remained strong. When we arrived to Utah, we started forming our very own "Garden of Eden", our perfect society just for Mormons. The Lord asked Joseph Smith to help him reform Christianity and all us Mormons would devote our lives for the Lord and we did everything possible to keep our Church alive and to spread our faith onto all the others who are not apart of our Church yet.

Solutions:

We found solutions to get rid of the all the flaws in our Church, letting us come closer to our goal of creating a perfect Mormon society, our very own "Garden of Eden". Here are our solutions:

• in order to avoid persecution by others and to avoid anti-Mormon mobs, we moved out to the vast desert of Utah in order to find a place where we could worship freely, without any judgement from others
• since our Church was not united enough, I expanded the roles and responsibilities of our believers in order to unite them. I developed a new government which I was the governor of and established laws that my people had to follow
• the only way to fix the problem that those who were more educated than us, was to become more educated than them. We established high education and made schools and colleges like the University of the Desert. Even now, the Brigham Young University exists named in my honor because of my influence towards education.
• to deal with the problem of alcohol that only lead to impurity in our society, we got rid off all alcoholic substances and things that could get people drunk to prevent the negative effects of alcohol
• we united against outsiders and we supported the doctrine of polygamy, or plural marriages, and this way we would marry in our community and not have to assimilate to others views while looking to start a family
• to deal with living in the desert, we found irrigation canals to get water and we gradually assimilated to this different life style
• to gain more supporters, we established Mormon communities in the neighboring areas of Arizona, Nevada, and Ohio. We also sent missionaries to places just as Canada to get the word of the Lord out and to spread our faith, which caused our Church to successfully grow

Us Mormons were successful in spreading our faith and dealing with our issues, besides the issue of the Federal Government. This so called "Mormon War" occurred when I fought the government by cutting off its troops supply line rather than fighting a battle. We also found a solution to this problem and by 1858, I reached a compromise with the government and we were allowed to practice our religion and building our community without interference. 

Relationship to Others:

Temperance: Us Mormons don't believe in the usage of alcohol. Alcohol only leads to drunkenness, which only leads to problems. Drunkenness causes problems with family and causes family fights, which we are against as family should be united. We are working to remove all the alcohol from our society along with anything that can intoxicate a man.
Abolition: Blacks must first become pure to be included in the Church. Blacks are not apart of the Church because the Lord doesn't want them to be a part of the Church until they achieve purity and in my eyes slavery should not be abolished as the blacks are impure.
Women's Rights: Us Mormons want our society to be perfect and we are working to create our own "Garden of Eden." The Bible Story of the Garden of Eden shows how the men comes first and the women comes second, meaning men are above women.
Education: We value high education and want the Mormons to be educated and to keep spreading our beliefs and faith, therefore we established the University of the Desert.
Utopian Communities: Us Mormons ourselves are trying to create our very own "Garden of Eden" and a perfect society where we can freely worship and we believe others should do so as well.

I could sit next to John Calhoun as we are both pro slavery, or Josephine Dodger who is against Women Suffrage. However I would not like to sit next to Susan B. Anthony as she is for women suffrage or Angelina Grimke as she is fighting for abolition and I believe that blacks should remain slaves.