| True patriots? | Depends on who you ask. |
| Wasn't Smith planning an insurrection against the US government? |
"Their (Mormon) hostility to the lawful government of the country has at length become so violent that no officer bearing a commission from the Chief Magistrate of the Union can enter the territory or remain there with safety. . . . I accordingly ordered a detachment of the army to march for the City of Salt Lake - as a posse for the enforcement of the laws."
-- President James Buchanan's proclamation, Deseret News, June 16, 1858
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| Wasn't he prohibiting freedom of the press? | Well, he DID order destruction of one. |
| Who cares about the *sincere religionists* label? | Evidently MORMONs do - NOW wanting to be considered CHRISTIAN |
True patriots? Depends on who you ask.
Let’s ask someone who went through the temple in SLC for his “endowments” for the “Melchisedec priesthood” in 1854..
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“Man and woman, we were ranged around the place; Kimball in the same, and Brigham in the next room looking on; Parley Pratt officiating, and the fourth oath was administered. The allegory presumed that man, now in a fair and certain way to salvation, had a great temporal duty to perform, not an “abstract theory” of obedience, nor obedience in “abstract things”, but a great positive, present, immediate duty.
We were, therefore, SWORN TO CHERISH CONSTANT ENMITY AGAINST THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT for not avenging the death of Smith, or righting the persecutions of the Saints; TO DO ALL WE COULD TOWARD DESTROYING, TEARING DOWN, OR OVERTURNING THAT GOVERNMENT; to endeavor to baffle its designs and frustrate its intentions; to renounce all allegiance and refuse all submission.
If unable to do any thing ourselves toward the accomplishment of these objects, to teach it to our children from the nursery; impress it upon them from the death-bed; entail it upon them as a legacy. To make it the one leading idea and sacred duty of their lives; so that “the kingdom of God and his Christ” (the Mormon Church and its priesthood) “might subdue all other kingdoms and fill the whole earth.”
Curses the most frightful, penalties the most barbarous, were threatened and combined in the obligation either on failing to abide or in daring to reveal these covenants. A new sign, a new key-word, a new grip, and the second degree of Melchisedec priesthood was administered.”
(John Hyde, Mormonism: its leaders and designs 1857 P 97-98)