That was precisely my point. The perps have hidden behind the conviction and execution of Lee for far too long. It's time for the truth. You're a military man, right? Did you know Lee had two commanding officers on that field that day, and was following orders. Why was he the one who was scape-goated?
That was precisely my point. The perps have hidden behind the conviction and execution of Lee for far too long. It's time for the truth. You're a military man, right? Did you know Lee had two commanding officers on that field that day, and was following orders. Why was he the one who was scape-goated?
There is no doubt that Lee should have had ample company standing next to him when the firing squad fired their volley.
It should be pointed out, however, that the perps are no longer hiding as they are all dead. Whether all the perps other than Lee are being discreetly swept under the rug to this very day is another matter.
While I do believe in individual responsibility rather than collective guilt, trying to hide historical facts is the moral equivalent of being an accessory after the fact.
I have no religious or family connection with this historical event so I am trying to analyze it as a neutral third party without an ax to grind. For the moment, until I learn other information, I am inclined to view it as the moral responsibility of the Cedar City Mormon community and not the moral responsibility of the entire Mormon community of the time.
After the massacre, there was a belief on the non-Mormon side that it had been the work of Indians and it took a while for the investigative mechanism to get moving.
The remote location, local resistance to talk and the Civil War all resulted in delayed indictments.
Even when indicted, some perps escaped prosecution by flight.
The Government chose not to prosecute some cases for reasons unclear to me. Maybe the reason was that jury bias would preclude conviction in any but the most heinous cases.
Even after Lee's prosecutions began, the fact that the initial 1875 trial jury was composed of eight Mormons and four non-Mormons most certainly affected the outcome which was a hung jury.
In Lee's 1876 trial, the jury was all Mormon and yet, even that particular all-Mormon jury convicted Lee.
Why did Lee stand out as a man that even an all-Mormon jury thought needed killing in spite of their natural tendency to give a fellow Mormon the benefit of the doubt?
Maybe it was because of the especially heinous episode of the teenaged sisters Rachel and Ruth Dunlap and what Lee did to them in spite of pleadings for mercy by the Paiute chief.