Religious historian Janiece Johnson analyses how sensational media attention used the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to enflame public sentiment and provoke legal action against Latter-day Saints. This troubling episode in American religious history sheds light on the role of media and popular culture in provoking religious intolerance.
On September 11, 1857, a small band of Mormons led by John D. Lee massacred an emigrant train of men, women, and children heading west at Mountain Meadows, Utah. News of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, as it became known, sent shockwaves through the western frontier of the United States, reaching the nation's capital and eventually crossing the Atlantic. In the years prior to the massacre, Americans dubbed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the "Mormon problem" as it garnered national attention for its "unusual" theocracy and practice of polygamy. In the aftermath of the massacre, many Americans viewed Mormonism as a real religious and physical threat to white civilization. Putting the Mormon Church on trial for its crimes against American purity became more important than prosecuting those responsible for the slaughter.
Religious historian Janiece Johnson analyzes how sensational media attention used the story of the Mountain Meadows Massacre to enflame public sentiment and provoke legal action against Latter-day Saints. Ministers, novelists, entertainers, cartoonists, and federal officials followed suit, spreading anti-Mormon sentiment to collectively convict the Mormon religion itself. This troubling episode in American religious history sheds important light on the role of media and popular culture in provoking religious intolerance that continues to resonate in the present.
"A well-informed and detailed look into the way American culture and prejudice can prevent us from achieving justice. . . . Johnson's revelations provide a valuable lesson for any historian studying violence and popular memory, but this work will be especially useful for research and classes addressing Utah history, Mormon history, nineteenth-century politics and culture, and the history of law and the press."--Western Historical Quarterly
"Johnson's overarching achievement is showing that the actual degree of Mormon complicity matters much less than what Americans have come to believe about the event and how they have used it to further exclusionary aims. . . . [T]his book is a testament to scholarship that shows how groups use religious intolerance to define national and religious purity."--Reading Religion
"The Mountain Meadow Massacre is one of the most controversial events in Mormon history, and Janiece Johnson skillfully uses it as a tool to understand how Americans understood Mormonism in the second half of the nineteenth century."--Arkansas Historical Quarterly
"Johnson's analysis provides a useful framework for understanding the relationship between high-profile trials and media and popular cultural representations, making this book useful for legal studies and scholars of the American nineteenth-century and Mormon studies. . . . [A] welcome addition to LDS scholarship."--Journal of the American Academy of Religion
"[Convicting the Mormons] explores how [the Mountain Meadows Massacre] was mobilized in arguments about the church as a whole outside of Utah. . . . Johnson asks why it is that the massacre has secured for itself such a compelling place in American memory today, and her answers are more thorough than any other work to date."--Nova Religio
"An engaging account of the narrative people in the nineteenth century created about the Mountain Meadows Massacre and how this narrative both drew on and influenced people's perceptions of Mormons . . . . Anyone interested in Mormon history, nineteenth century U.S. history, and religious history, will find this book to be excellent reading."--The Civil War Monitor
Janiece Johnson is lecturer at Brigham Young University.
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