“I stand by my original post suggesting to ansel12 that there is two sides to this story and that some balance would be required to come to a full understanding of the events in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, and Utah. You readily admit that the history you are giving is one sided and by definition incomplete. I really don’t see what your beef with me is.”
I’ll accept the above statement. My beef with everyone on the Mormon side is I’m expected to provide sources on both sides, while they invariably reject outright anything produced by ex-Mormons or Gentiles. That is a suckers game I won’t play.
But having made my point, in the future I’ll throw in a little bit more of the other side for balance, as I did with the Parley Pratt opus (though it raises the big racism issue, it is an apologist piece).
Two sides:
[In my best WWF intro voice] In this corner, we have dozens of well-armed Mormon militia flanked by Paiute Indians. In the challenged corner, we have at least 18 4 & under kids (17 survived); several other dozen minors; dozens of more women; and the rest father-dads...not all well-armed at all.
Is that what you mean by two sides?
Can you tell me what a wagon train from Arkansas has anything to do with Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and Utah? Can you tell me how these folks were in any way threatening like the folks in Ohio, Missouri or Illinois that you elude to?
The ONLY WAY that you (& others who keep referencing TOTALLY SEPARATE incidents in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois) can keep trying to get away with this "two sides" friction fiction is to assume that somehow these Arkansas Gentiles were linked up as part of the grand persecuting conspiracy that also involved locals in three other communities (Kirtland, Jackson/Zion, and Nauvoo).
I've got news for you: There was no grand Gentile conspiracy on the part of settlers in Kirtland, Jackson/Zion, and Nauvoo.
That is pure friction fiction. Folks back in the 1830s and 1840s were quite isolated one from another, for one thing. You keep wanting to reduce this to "two sides" when in fact, it was a "multiple cube" kind of thing. Roll the dice when #1 comes up, that represents the Kirtland folks. #2=Jackson/Zion area folks. #3=Nauvoo folks. #4=Arkansas Wagon Train. #5=LDS folks who initiated violence in Missouri. #6=LDS who were victimized in more than one place. In other words, it's not a two-sided die; it's at least six sided...
Finally, major problems for LDS did not kick into high gear in Nauvoo until Smith & his cohorts brazenly broke the law & engaged in trespassing & vandalism. Someone who is mayor of the city & in control of a militia group & is running for U.S. president--all earmarks of most of Smith's "Nauvoo experience"--hardly made him a minority picked-on voice during his time there.
As for Missouri, there was two-way blood letting initiated by both sides (with LDS getting the worst of it both initially and in the final blow). But I'm not sure if it was all that more significant than what we've heard in history about the Hatfields and the McCoys going at it re: an ongoing feud.
Basically, where I would say that LDS have a legitimate beef about Missouri was the overall treatment they rec'd from the state leaders there. After violence opened up there, the state leaders should have done more to offer local LDS protection. But again, these state leaders were not in cahoots with anyone from Ohio or Illinois. (So stop reducing this thing to "two sides" as if everything was a conspiracy...interesting that much of all you read on "September Dawn" threads is the supposed "conspiracy" of a release date to coincide with Mitt's run.