Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath

by Richard E. Turley, Barbara Jones Brown

Overview

The long-awaited follow-up to the groundbreaking Massacre at Mountain Meadows

Published in 2008, Massacre at Mountain Meadows was a bombshell of a book, revealing the story of one of the grimmest episodes in Latter-day Saint history, when settlers in southwestern Utah slaughtered more than 100 members of a California-bound wagon train in 1857. In this much-anticipated sequel, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown examine the aftermath of this atrocity.

Vengeance Is Mine documents southern Utah leaders' attempts to cover up their crime by silencing witnesses and spreading lies. Investigations by both governmental and church bodies were stymied by stonewalling and political wrangling. While nine men were eventually indicted, five were captured and only one, John D. Lee, was executed.

The book examines the maneuvering of the defense and prosecution in Lee's two trials, the second ending in Lee's conviction. Turley and Brown explore the fraught relationship between Lee and church president Brigham Young, and assess what role, if any, Young played in the cover-up. And they trace the fates of the other perpetrators, including the harrowing end of Nephi Johnson, who screamed "Blood! Blood! Blood!" in his delirium as he was dying, more than sixty years after the massacre.

Turley and Brown also tell the story of the massacre's few survivors: seventeen children who witnessed the slaughter and eventually returned to Arkansas, where the ill-fated wagon train originated.

Vengeance Is Mine brings the hitherto untold story of this shameful episode in Mormon and Utah history to its dramatic conclusion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195397857
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2023
Pages:	520
Sales rank:	363,529
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Richard E. Turley Jr. was a long-time historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, and a co-author of Massacre at Mountain Meadows. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Historical Association's Herbert Feis Award and the Historic Preservation Medal from the Daughters of the American Revolution. Turley also represented relatives of the Mountain Meadows Massacre victims in their successful petition of the federal government to grant National Historic Landmark status for the atrocity site.

Barbara Jones Brown is the director of Signature Books Publishing and former executive director of the Mormon History Association. She also provided content editing for Massacre at Mountain Meadows. She holds an M.A. in American history from the University of Utah and a B.A. in journalism and English from Brigham Young University. While researching her genealogy after beginning work on Vengeance Is Mine, Brown discovered that, like the earlier Mountain Meadows Massacre historian, Juanita Brooks, she is a direct descendant of one of its perpetrators.

Table of Contents

1. The Angel of Peace Should Extend His Wings
2. Sermons Like Pitch Forks
3. Imposed Upon No More
4. Too Late
5. Forget Everything
6. The Sound of War
7. An Awful Tale of Blood
8. Indians Hostile to All Strangers
9. The Spirit of the Times
10. A Lion in the Path
11. Make the Mormons Pay
12. Fearful Calamities
13. Peacefully Submitting
14. The Moment Is Critical
15. Make All Inquiry
16. Join the Know Nothings
17. A Line of Policy
18. An Inquisition
19. Bring to Light the Perpetrators
20. Nothing But Evasive Replies
21. Make Diligent Inquiry
22. Approach of the Troops
23. Catching Is Before Hanging
24. Precious Legacies from the Departed Ones
25. Unwilling to Rest Under the Stigma
26. The Course Adopted Will Not Prove Successful
27. Vengeance is Mine
28. In the Midst of a Desolating War
29. Too Horrible to Contemplate
30. Cut Off
31. Boiling Conditions
32. Zeal O'erleaped Itself
33. The Time Has Come
34. Do You Plead Guilty
35. Open the Ball
36. Make a Clean Breast of It
37. A Lively Skirmish
38. The Curtain Has Fallen
39. Coerce Me to Make a Statement
40. Mr. Howard Gives Promise
41. The Responsibility Before You
42. Sufficient to Warrant a Verdict
43. The Demands of Justice
44. Allow the Law to Take Its Course
45. Under Sentence of Death
46. Failure to Arrest These Men
47. Haunted

Notes

Editorial Reviews

01/30/2023

Turley (In the Hands of the Lord), former assistant historian of the Church of Latter-day Saints, and Jones Brown, director of Signature Books, deliver a meticulous history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its decades-long consequences. In September 1857, members of the Latter-day Saint community of southern Utah killed more than 100 travelers en route from Arkansas to California, sparing only 17 children. Turley and Jones Brown tease out the tensions that incited the massacre—fears of federal invasion of the territory, general animosity between the Mormon community and the state—and recount the eventual murder trial of John D. Lee in 1874. Lee and others denied any involvement and blamed local Paiutes for the murders; meanwhile, federal authorities were hampered by a lack of funds. In the end, only Lee was convicted in a complicated series of trials that aimed to disenfranchise Mormons amid rising anti-polygamy sentiment. Though sometimes bogged down by dense, dry prose, the authors draw revelatory links between local effects of the massacre and national anxieties about religion and political volatility, giving readers a comprehensive, complex understanding of the era. This should become the definitive account of the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its fallout. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"This haunting, exhaustively-researched account stands as the definitive study of the long afterlife of the Mountain Meadows massacre." — Laurie Maffly-Kipp, Washington University in St. Louis

"Vengeance is Mine is a riveting account of how justice was pursued and evaded during an era of national transformation. With moving prose and a brisk narrative, Richard E. Turley Jr. and Barbara Jones Brown's tale reveals much about both nineteenth century Latter-day Saints as well as the American nation against whom they nearly waged war." — Benjamin E. Park, author of Kingdom of Nauvoo

"A harsh, painful story of the tragic aftermath of the Mountain Meadows Massacre reconstructed from a decades-long investigation of the sources, Vengeance Is Mine is an unflinching account of investigation, cover up, and suffering. Turley and Brown have made startling discoveries that put the story in a new light without relieving the perpetrators of guilt. A complex, enthralling historical narrative." — Richard Lyman Bushman, author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

"This impeccably researched and eloquent book tells a story about crime and punishment in a western territory in the years immediately before and after the Civil War. It is a story about the entanglement of local and national politics, about religious zeal and bigotry, and about barriers to achieving justice in a bitterly polarized society. It is a story for today." — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women's Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870

"In Vengeance Is Mine, Brown and Turley clarify and fill in the narrative spaces in the aftermath of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre. Using legal transcripts and other primary documents, they unravel the tale of how American Indians were blamed and then used to deflect attention from the principal orchestrators of unimaginable violence. This story reflects events in Mormon history while contextualizing religious and systemic racial attitudes of the nineteenth-century American West. This is a book not to miss." — P. Jane Hafen (Taos Pueblo), co-editor of Essays on American Indian and Mormon History

"[T]he authors draw revelatory links between local effects of the massacre and national anxieties about religion and political volatility, giving readers a comprehensive, complex understanding of the era." —Publishers Weekly

"[A] capable work of scholarly detection." —Kirkus Reviews

"Based upon years of extensive research, Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath is a masterpiece that examines not only the catalysts and culmination but also the consequences of one of the most infamous episodes of both Latter-day Saint and Western U.S. history-the Mountain Meadows Massacre...Learning the hard lessons of the past will help us make a better future for ourselves and others. To that end, I am pleased to highly recommend Vengeance is Mine. Who should read it? Everyone! If you are unsure whether you should buy it, do yourself a favor and do it. Read it, weep over it, wrestle with it, and I believe you will be a better person-one more genuine, merciful, tolerant, and thoughtful-by the end." — Sam Mitchell, Association of Mormon Letters

"Turley and Brown have accomplished a remarkable feat in capturing so much primary source material and delivering a highly readable text that has lessons for all of us. If you end up finding yourself weeping or not being able to sleep, then the authors have accomplished what they set out to do, making you feel for this senseless tragedy. Vengeance is Mine is worthy of our concentrated attention." — Kevin Folkman, Association of Mormon Letters

"Vengeance Is Mine does what any sequel does best: expands what is presented in the first iteration, deepens the audience's understanding of what is being presented, and concludes threads considered in the first text. Vengeance Is Mine connects readers more to one of the main figures in the massacre-John D. Lee-expanding his narrative and outlining the effect his trial had on not only him and his family but on American politics, the treatment of Latter-day Saints, and the Church that nestled itself in the Salt Lake Valley. Because it is both a good standalone and an excellent sequel, I recommend readers taking either path when reading: taking up the first book; if they are interested in a deep dive into the massacre, or reading this text on its own, since it provides the same main points that the first book does." — Adam McLain , Association for Mormon Letters

"This is a book worth reading." — Amanda Ray , Association for Mormon Letters

"I would say that anyone connected to Latter-day Saint studies should have this book on their bookshelf by the end of the year-it is no exaggeration to say that all historical studies of the Mountain Meadows Massacre converge in Vengeance is Mine." — Greg Seppi, Association for Mormon Letters

"Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath is a stunning achievement… Brown and Turley's book is a phenomenal, breathtaking step toward communal learning." — Conor Hilton, Association for Mormon Letters

"I would say that anyone connected to Latter-day Saint studies should have this book on their bookshelf by the end of the year-it is no exaggeration to say that all historical studies of the Mountain Meadows Massacre converge in Vengeance is Mine." — Greg Seppi, Association for Mormon Letters

"Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath is a stunning achievement... Brown and Turley's book is a phenomenal, breathtaking step toward communal learning." — Conor Hilton, Association for Mormon Letters

"In addition to providing the definitive narrative of the legal wrangling that followed the massacre and their useful demolition of several myths, the great work Turley and Brown do here is their contextualization of the massacre's investigation in the politics of the nation and the Utah territory." — Matthew Bowman, Nova Religio vol 27.2

"This is a superb treatment of a massacre that has unfairly blackened the Latter-day Saints for more than a century. Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals." — Choice

"Turley and Brown have given us a well-researched, well-reasoned, and well-written text on a massacre that has unfairly blackened the entire Latterday Saint people for more than a century and three score years." — The Journal of Mormon History

"It must be stated that Turley and Brown completed in this book the kind of scholarship that could scarcely be dreamt of, let alone produced, even a generation ago. It is well done "hard history," and for Utah, it is a much-needed healing history." — Brad Westwood, Utah Historical Quarterly

From the Publisher

2023-02-23
A follow-up to the acclaimed 2008 historical true-crime book Massacre at Mountain Meadows.

In 1857 in Utah, a wagon train bound from Arkansas to California came under attack. It was not the only wagon train to suffer siege and murder, write historians Turley and Brown, but it was unusual in its brutal end, with more than 120 men, women, and children killed. “These assaults were motivated by political wrangling over federal and local rule and tensions between church and state that reached a deadly peak in 1857 but roiled Utah for decades,” write the authors. It has been long supposed that Brigham Young ordered the massacre, and many historians have further suggested that only Mormons disguised as Native Americans carried out the crime, even as contemporary Mormons blamed it on local Paiute Indians exclusively. Turley and Brown sift through a vast trove of documentary evidence to show that the massacre was the product of many hands, and while only Maj. John D. Lee was punished for it—killed by firing squad, fittingly enough, on the very site of the crime—many Mormon leaders deserved the same end. Complicating the crime were several factors, including the need for federal troops to pacify the restive frontier, troops unavailable during the Civil War, and the reluctance of officials to stir things up after the war was over. Interestingly, inquiries conducted by Mormons themselves helped solve some of the mysteries surrounding the events, even if Lee bore the brunt of the punishment and other guilty parties walked. The supposition on the part of federal authorities that the Mormons were reluctant to “punish their own murderers & high offenders” was only partly true. Turley and Brown turn in some interesting side notes, as well—e.g., that Russia parted with Alaska not just because of Seward’s cash offer, but also because they were afraid that Mormons would flee Utah and invade Russia’s American holdings.

While of interest mostly to specialist historians, this is a capable work of scholarly detection.

Kirkus Reviews