Morrisite War
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| Morrisite War | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Morrisites | Utah Territory | ||||||
| Commanders | |||||||
| Joseph Morris | Robert T. Burton | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 200 - 500 Morrisite followers | 1,000 members of the territorial militia | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| Eight Morrisites (including at least four women) | One militia member | ||||||
The Morrisite War was a skirmish between a Latter Day Saint sect known as the "Morrisites" and the Utah territorial government.
Contents |
[edit] Morrisites
In 1857 Joseph Morris, an English convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah, reported receiving revelations naming him the Seventh Angel from the Book of Revelation. He wrote to Brigham Young, seeking recognition of his calling from the church.[1]
In 1860 Morris began to collect followers to a group that was commonly known as the Morrisites. In February 1861 John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff excommunicated him.[2] On April 6, 1861 he organized the Church of the Firstborn and called all of his followers to gather at Kingston (Kington) Fort, a three-acre fort on the Weber River which had been abandoned in 1858.[3] By Fall 1861, the group contained several hundred followers.
Morris told his followers that the Second Coming was imminent and not to bother with planting crops. They may have trampled some of their crops into the ground as evidence of their faith.[2] The group pooled available supplies and waited at Kingston Fort.
[edit] Dissension
By spring 1862, food was scarce and some members were becoming discontented. Morris repeatedly designated certain days for the Second Coming, only to have those days pass uneventfully.[4] Each time this happened, a handful of members would recover their possessions from the community pool and leave the congregation.
With the steady outflux of members, the question of property entitlement became contentious. Those who stayed behind felt those who left were taking better stock and other items than they had initially contributed to the community pool. Soon after three departing members — William Jones, one of Morris's first converts, John Jensen, and Louis C. Gurston — vowed revenge after what they perceived as an unfair reckoning, they seized a load of wheat en route from Kingston to Kaysville for milling. The Morrisites sent a group of men after them, and the group soon captured the three and the wheat. The church held the men prisoner in a small cabin, to be "tried by the Lord when he came."[1]
[edit] Government Involvement
Gurston soon escaped, but the other men's wives petitioned the territorial government for assistance. Word reached John F. Kinney, appointed two years earlier by James Buchanan as chief justice of the Territory of Utah,[5] that the Morrisites were illegally holding prisoners. On May 24 he issued a writ of habeas corpus commanding the prisoners' release. U.S. Marshall Judson Stoddard brought the writ to Kingston Fort and read it to the Morrisite leaders, who refused to receive it.
[edit] Kingston Fort Siege
After the Morrisites dishonored a similar writ three weeks later, Chief Justice Kinney asked the acting governor to activate the territorial militia as a posse comitatus to arrest the Morrisite leaders.[4] On June 12 a two hundred man armed posse departed Salt Lake City for the fort, 30 miles north.[2] Robert T. Burton, deputy U.S. Marshall, led the posse, which gathered strength along the way and was somewhere between five hundred[2] and a thousand[4] strong when it reached the settlement on June 13. By this time the Morrisites had barricaded themselves in the fort.
The posse positioned itself on bluffs southwest of the fort, with contingents on the flats to the east and the west. They situated cannons on two small ridges looking directly into the fort,[6] which in order to accommodate the hundreds of followers was really a makeshift enclosure. A militia from Ogden positioned itself to the north.
Burton sent a message via a Morrisite herdboy requesting the group's surrender within thirty minutes. As soon as he received the message, Morris left his associates and soon returned with a new revelation, promising his people the posse would be destroyed. He and his counselors had a bugle sounded to gather the congregation and read the revelation.
When the group did not respond within thirty minutes, Burton ordered two warning shots fired "to speed up the decision".[2] The second ball ricocheted off the ground and into the fort, killing two women and shattering the jaw of another. Some Morrisites returned the fire, killing 19-year-old Jared Smith of the posse, the only non-Morrisite casualty of the war.[7]
Heavy rains prevented much action the next day, June 14th. On June 15th, historians differ as to what initiated it,[1][4] but at some point Burton rode into the fort with a small contingent. Details of what followed are also unclear, but Morris may have made a statement to his followers and approached Burton in what was interpreted as a threatening manner.[1] Burton shot and killed him, and two women[2] were also killed in the resulting melee. Morris's counselor John Banks was mortally wounded. Burton took ninety men prisoner and marched them back to Salt Lake City the next morning to stand trial before Judge Kinney.
[edit] Aftermath
Seven of the Morrisites were convicted of second-degree murder in March 1863, and another 66 were convicted of resistance. However, Stephen S. Harding, the new federally-appointed territorial governor, pardoned them all[2] three days after the conviction. The Morrisites scattered across the west, but many of them ended up in Deer Lodge County, Montana.[1]
Seven years later, Robert T. Burton was tried and acquitted for the murder of Isabella Bowman, one of the women killed after the siege.[2]
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d e C. LeRoy Anderson Morrisite Collection. Marie Eccles-Caine Archive of Intermountain Americana. Utah State University Libraries: Special Collections and Archives. http://library.usu.edu/specol/manuscript/caine10.html. Accessed 9 May 2007.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "The Morrisites". Utah History Encyclopedia. http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/m/MORRISITES.html. Accessed 9 May 2007.
- ^ Malan, Ruth. "Three-day war focus of new monument". Standard-Examiner (Ogden, UT) November 2, 2006. Pluses Section.
- ^ a b c d Howard, G.M. "Men, Motives, and Misunderstandings: A New Look at the Morrisite War of 1862". Reprinted on http://www.gordonbanks.com/gordon/family/Morrisite.html. Accessed 10 May 2007.
- ^ "Kinney, John Fitch". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=K000225. Accessed May 9, 2007
- ^ One history (of Evan Jenkins, who was part of the possee, accessed from http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~archibald/ev-anlif.htm on 11 May 2007) reports there were three cannons in total, "of which the historical 'Old Sow' was one, and two smaller ones known as the 'Iron and Brass Cannons'. The Old Sow had been owned by the Nauvoo Legion." It is not known which cannon fired the ball that ended up in the fort.
- ^ Smith was engaged to be married to his childhood sweetheart, Ane Marie Dorthea Nelson. After Smith was killed his brother-in-law, Hugh Findlay, took her as a plural wife the next month and they raised their subsequent three children as Smith's. Ane died at age 29 in 1872.
[edit] References
- C. LeRoy Anderson, For Christ Will Come Tomorrow: The Saga of the Morrisites (1981).
