Following distinguished Civil War service that took one of his legs and rendered an arm useless, General George R. Maxwell was sent to Utah Territory and charged first as Register of Land, then as U.S. marshal with bringing the Mormons into compliance with federal law. John Gary Maxwell s biography of General Maxwell (no relation) both celebrates an unsung war hero and presents the history of the longest episode of civil disobedience in U.S. history from the point of view of this young, non-Mormon who lived through it.
With the onset of the Civil War, Maxwell volunteered for the First...
Following distinguished Civil War service that took one of his legs and rendered an arm useless, General George R. Maxwell was sent to Utah Territory ...
In 1832 Joseph Smith, Jr., the Mormons' first prophet, foretold of a great war beginning in South Carolina. In the combatants' mutual destruction, God's purposes would be served, and Mormon men would rise to form a geographical, political, and theocratic "Kingdom of God" to encompass the earth. Three decades later, when Smith's prophecy failed with the end of the American Civil War, the United States left torn but intact, the Mormons' perspective on the conflict--and their inactivity in it--required palliative revision. In The Civil War Years in Utah, the first full account of the...
In 1832 Joseph Smith, Jr., the Mormons' first prophet, foretold of a great war beginning in South Carolina. In the combatants' mutual destruction, God...