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6 The Gathering Storm Although the Mormon church record reports that the apostles Wilford Woodruff and John Taylor had counseled the Mormons living in South Weber to be tolerant of the Morrisites and had rebuked Brother Watts for his extreme verbal attack upon them, it is clear that hostility between the two factions was present from the beginning and grew in intensity as time passed. Perhaps the Mormon apostles felt they could afford to be tolerant when Morris’s avowed followers numbered fewer than a score and his influence was expected to rapidly diminish. But they might have spoken less softly if the extraordinary growth of the Morrisite church had been foreseen. Certainly the climate in Utah had never been friendly toward apostates, and Brigham Young himself had directed some intemperate words toward apostates only a few years before the appearance of the Morrisites. Shortly after plural marriage was officially sanctioned by the church in August 1852, Gladdon Bishop, a Mormon apostate, began an anti-polygamy crusade hoping to capitalize on the Mormons’ ambivalence toward that principal. By the spring of 1853, his followers, called “Gladdonites,” numbered several score and were fomenting considerable dissension among the Saints. In response to this disruption, Brigham Young delivered a scathing public rebuke in the Tabernacle on March 27. He declared: “I say rather than apostates should flourish here, I will unsheath my Bowie knife, and conquer or die. Now you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will be put to the line and righteousness to the plummet . . . . Let us call upon the Lord to assist us in this very good work.”1 Gladdon Bishop did not wait for these threats to be carried out. He fled from Utah never to return. Although the tone of this statement suggests that Brigham Young was prepared to personally lead an attack against apostates, Mark Forscutt believed Young could accomplish his objectives by threat and suggestion that others would carry out for him. Forscutt wrote: “The spirit of Brigham indicated the temper of the people. He pointed the finger; they went where 1 Brigham Young, “Joseph, a True Prophet—Apostates—Dream,” 27 March 1853, Journal of Discourses, 1:82–83. 80 Prelude to Battle he pointed. He spoke of unsheathing his knife, they unsheathed theirs. He threatened apostates, they murdered who he threatened.”2 It is hard to tell whether Brigham Young still endorsed such harsh sanctions against apostates a decade after the Gladdonite affair. But there can be no doubt that Forscutt was only echoing the sentiments of Joseph Morris and a large share of his fellow Morrisites who firmly believed that Young would stop at nothing to halt the growing disaffection from his ranks. At least one contemporary Mormon historian, Nels Anderson, has also agreed with this assessment . Anderson concludes that the Mormons did not disturb the Morrisites prior to mid-1861, because “the Army was in Utah and the Gentiles were in control. A few years earlier Morris might have fared as Gladdon Bishop.”3 Anderson’s assessment is certainly worth considering, for it was not until after the U.S. Army was withdrawn from Utah in July 1861 to participate in the Civil War that the Morrisites began to experience serious harassment from their Mormon neighbors. However, it should also be recognized that it was not until about that same time that the size of Morris’s following had grown large enough to upset the status quo in the Ogden area or to pose any real threat to the established power structure. Undoubtedly the influx of several hundred people with their herds of livestock requiring many acres of pasture must have severely upset the established grazing patterns in the vicinity of South Weber. It should hardly be surprising, then, to find that some of the earliest and most enduring disputes between the Morrisites and their Mormon neighbors involved livestock. Eardley reported: Among other property consecrated and turned over to the bishop were horses and mulch cows which were daily turned out on the range adjoining the camp, the cows being brought into camp in the evening. Unprincipled scoundrels on horseback, calling themselves saints, were in the habit of riding over the range, and when they saw these horses and cows, would steal them and take them away. These occurrences became so frequent that a watch was placed over them, and one of the thieves was caught in the nefarious business. With a desire to put a stop to this misappropriation of our property...

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