Possibly correct, if you limit the "LDS church as an organization" to Brigham Young and the supreme leadership in SLC. Even there, they used rhetoric in the weeks before the massacre that can easily be interpreted as a call to do exactly what the Mormons in SW Utah did.
Those who committed the massacre were not "renegades," although the Church turned J.D. Lee into one after the massacre as a scapegoat. It was performed by the local militia in their formed groups, amd was organized by the local authorities, who combined religious and secular authority.
Indeed, the Mormon leadership at the time did what they could to prevent it. Those who think that Brigham Young condoned or ordered the massacre are wide of the mark.
Nope. "Mormon leadership," in any reasonable sense of the term, would include the local authorities in SW Utah, who not only did not attempt to prevent, but were actually the ones who organized and perpetrated it.
BY probably tried to stop it at the last moment. Given his rhetoric in the preceding weeks, this may have been a case of chickening out, or he may have indeed had a change of heart, but too late. In any case, he certainly shares some responsibility for creating the climate of fear and vengeance that led up to the massacre.
There are extenuating circumstances which may serve to -explain- why the perpetrators committed this act, and these circumstances may be explored to some profit; but they should not be used to -excuse- the act.
Thanks for saying this. I have had some discussions with Mormons who attempt to excuse the massacre as self-defense. I'm glad you're not among them.
It is also only fair to point out that similar extenuating circumstances explain much of the hostility to Mormon in MO and IL that led to their persecution and expulsion, but these extenuating circumstances should similarly not be used to excuse the persecution.
The Church should have worked harder to punish the perpetrators. I think this failed responsibility was an impetus behind the construction of the memorial at Church expense a few years ago.
I think a reasonable person would conclude that the Church, for many decades after the MMM, was involved in a conspiracy to obstruct justice and cover up the atrocity. Why exactly they did so is not and probably never will be clear, as the coverup and destruction of evidence was largely successful, but a not unreasonable conclusion is that "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" would have been damaging, possibly fatal, to the church and its leadership.
All that said, what I've learned about the movie "September Dawn" has convinced me that it is essentially a hit piece on Mormonism.
MMM was the most horrifying atrocity ever to take place on American soil, and was worse in some ways than any of the Nazi atrocities such as Lidice. I think it is odd that such a movie hasn't been made before. After all, we've had something like a dozen movies about the "shootout at the OK corral," which had something like five people killed, all of them armed.
~”MMM was the most horrifying atrocity ever to take place on American soil, and was worse in some ways than any of the Nazi atrocities such as Lidice.”~
The rest of your post is fairly reasonable, though I disagree. This sentence is undiluted histrionics and places your ability to discuss the topic rationally in severe doubt.
A pretty reasonable analysis. Except this last line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres
1838 Haun's Mill massacre 17 Missouri, USA Mormon men and boys are killed by over 200 militia.
1852 Bridge Gulch massacre c.150 to 300 Hayfork, California, USA A posse from Weaverville attacks an undefended Wintu village.
1857 Mountain Meadows massacre 120 Utah, USA A wagon train of farming families from Arkansas is killed by Mormon militia.
1864 Sand Creek massacre c.150 Colorado Territory, USA United States Cavalry troops attack an undefended Cheyenne/Arapaho village.
January 1923 Rosewood massacre 26-150 Rosewood, Florida, USA This African-American town is burned and residents are killed by white mobs.
1782 Gnadenhutten massacre 96 Gnadenhutten, Ohio, USA Pennsylvanian militia execute Christian Lenape non-combatants, mostly women and children.