Joseph Morris: and the Saga of the Morrisites Revisited

Preface

Preface Nineteenth-century America witnessed a great revival of interest, at times fervent, in Christ’s Second Advent. Although the Christian movement had been built on millennial eschatology, many Christian sects developed a wide variety of specific expectations about the nature, time, and place of the Second Advent. Dozens, if not hundreds, of sects announced their own particular version of that great event. The premillennialists believed that Christ would appear prior to the time that a perfect society existed, while the postmillennialists preached that a perfect society must be established before the Second Coming. Thousands tried to set their lives in order so that they might personally share in the rapture. Some abandoned their professions, some gave all their possessions to the poor, and still others gave up friends and family to travel great distances and join the millennial throng. Among the most colorful and enduring of the nineteenth-century millennial sects was the Mormon church. Mormons expected to build a great temple in the City of Zion as a fitting abode for the resurrected Jesus, but their abrupt expulsion from Missouri and Illinois removed them from the designated land of Zion and placed the seeming imminence of the Second Advent into the indefinite future. Their expulsion and migration to the Rocky Mountains disillusioned many adherents, who refused to take the long and problematic journey under the leadership of Brigham Young. They either joined with other dissidents who stayed behind and developed their own version of Mormonism or simply dropped out of the Mormon movement entirely. In 1857, ten years after the first Mormons came into the Great Salt Lake Valley, Joseph Morris began writing a series of letters to Brigham Young announcing his own prophetic calling and proposing that Young retain the presidency of the church, but relinquish the role of prophet, seer, and revelator to God’s true prophet, Morris himself. Extensive quotations from Morris’s letters to Brigham Young are included in this volume. They are essential to gaining greater insight into the mind of Morris as well as to helping us understand the rather one-sided exchange. This work chronicles the life and death of Joseph Morris and traces the movement he initiated from its inception in 1857 to its ultimate demise x Preface nearly one hundred years later. Although Joseph Morris was originally a devout Mormon, his premillennialist views, fertile imagination, and penchant for claiming to communicate frequently with supernatural beings soon placed him at odds with local and regional Mormon leaders and eventually with Brigham Young himself. Although the Morrisites were victimized on many occasions, they often contributed to their own victimization. They not only fell victim to the pervasive religious fanaticism in Utah Territory during the latter half of the nineteenth century but were victimized by both Mormon and Morrisite leaders. One might conclude that they were also victimized by the federal government, which appeared to be more interested in protecting the interests of outsiders than those of either Mormons or Mormon dissidents. Yet, in all fairness we must remember that the Mormon-Morrisite conflict occurred while the Civil War was going badly for the Union, and the federal government had few resources that could be spared. Furthermore, the Mormons were still struggling to develop their own unique place in the American religious scene, and three decades of severe persecution had rendered them intolerant of either outside interference or internal dissent. Besides, religious extremism was not unusual at that time, either in Utah territory or in most places throughout the United States. In that sense, the story of the Morrisites illustrates the profound truth that a people, to a great extent, are victims of the preoccupations of their entire culture. Perhaps we may learn something from the nineteenth-century preoccupation with religion that will help us better understand twentieth -century social problems. The first edition of this book was published in 1981. A second, slightly enlarged edition was published in 1988. Since that time, some additional sources related to the Morrisites have come to my attention, and some of that material is incorporated in this third edition. These materials include a photograph of Joseph Morris which I had not previously seen and a copy of the handwritten “Life History of George Morris,” brother of Joseph Morris. These are presented courtesy of LaRee Hill Pehrson of Magna, Utah, greatgranddaughter of George Morris. In addition, Val Holley, of Washington, D.C., sent me a copy of a letter written by a participant in the Morrisite...