Brigham Young

Personal Statement

• Born on June 1, 1801 in the city of Whitingham, VT.
• Formal education was minimal, was apprenticed to be a carpenter, painter, and glazier.
• American leader in the LDS movement, president of the LDS church, and governor of the Utah territory. Led foundings of the precursors to the University of Utah and Brigham Young University.
• Built many temples around the United States, expanded Mormonism, and helped settle much of the American Midwest.

Issue(s)

• Brigham Young was involved in the issue on Mormonism, and to be more specific Mormon polygamy.
• Brigham Young was all for Mormon polygamy as he practiced the belief himself.
• The source of Young’s motivation was mostly religious as the issue had to do, well, with religion.
• Fought for the freedom of practicing Mormon religion and setting up their churches.
• Lack of purification of the Mormon church and religion (in his opinion).

Solution(s)

• Blacks in the Mormon religion were treated as equals until Brigham Young. He announced a priesthood ban which prohibited all men of black African descent from holding the priesthood. He did this to purify the Mormon religion as “ if the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so”( Brigham Young). He believed in this so he set out to ban all blacks to purify the religion.
• Brigham Young was successful in banning blacks from priesthood up until 1978(which obviously happened after he died). In 1978 the new president of the church, Spencer W. Kimball, allowed blacks to enter priesthood again. He did not want to change anyone’s point of view, just purify the Mormon church as he wanted it to be.
• As Brigham Young did live at a time where racism and slavery existed, no one really contradicted him or gave him any criticisms on his first issue of purifying the church. He just got away with what he wanted to do, and it lasted 130 years without anyone doing anything about it.
• He took charge of the Mormon exodus in Illinois in the wake of the Church’s expulsion from Missouri.

Relationship to others

• Brigham Young had a strong connection with the issue on education. As he believed that all ( Probably meant white men) should be educated he led foundings to two schools. One of which was the University of Utah, and the other, named after himself, Brigham Young University.
• I would like to sit with Joseph Smith, as he was the founder of Mormonism and we would most likely get along and have an engaging conversation. I would not like to sit with a Quaker, an example of which would be Angelina Grimke.

Sidenote

Brigham Young was a decent businessmen as he engaged in a variety of enterprises, some of which included transportation and manufacturing. By the time of his death, his personal fortune was calculated at $600,000 making him the most successful Utah businessman up to that time.

Joseph Smith

Personal Statement: I was born on December 23, 1805 in Sharon, Vermont. I was deprived of the benefit of formal education. I received limited instruction in reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. I founded the Latter Day Saint movement also known as Mormonism. Mormonism was an American made religion designed to spread its influence worldwide. I published the Book of Mormon at age 24 and attracted tens of thousands of followers during the Second Great Awakening. I also ran for president in 1844.

Issues: I was concerned with the issue of religion in my time. I reformed religion by creating Mormonism. I also was an abolitionist, believing that blacks are not inferior to whites. I welcomed everyone into my church, freemen as well as slaves. I proposed abolishing slavery during my presidential campaign in 1844. I am motivated on these issues by the word of God.

Solutions: Although I proposed abolitionist legislation, my solution to the religious crisis is individual moral reform through God and Mormonism. I was successful in this reform through spreading the word of Mormonism and turning it into a famous and recognized religion. I was able to change people’s opinions through my religion. However, I was not an entirely successful abolitionist since my proposed legislation did not go through. However, I did help by allowing slaves to be Mormons. I was criticized during my fight for reform for being a polygamist.

Relationship to Others:  I would feel comfortable sitting next to Brigham Young because he is a Mormon and my successor. I would also like to sit next to David Walker or Frederick Douglas because they were abolitionists who believed in equality. I would not feel comfortable sitting next to Mother Ann Lee and Angelina Grimke because they were Quakers.

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.