Very, very impressed with the band of early followers getting new converts. The numbers are impressive for a time without mass media.

The "God's secret army" sub chapter is pretty freaking scary. It makes me think of Jim Jones telling everyone to drink the Kook-Aid.

You might want to read "The God Makers" by Ed Decker and Dave Hunt. I will discuss this in more detail in one of the later chapter threads.

Time for another personal commentary. In an attempt to achieve a peaceable settlement of the Mormon issue, Governor Boggs had agreed to allow the Mormons to settle in an area north of the Missouri River, an area which eventually became Caldwell County. It is here that the settlement of Far West was established.

Move forward some 70 years to the early part of the 20th centure. My mother grew up on a farm in Caldwell County, and feelings were still strongly anti-Mormon at this time, so strong that when my family moved to Salt Lake City, Mom warned us to watch out for the Mormons, saying, "They are evil."

In the mid-1970s, I was transferred to Kansas City. Mom came up to visit us, and we loaded everyone in our station wagon (does this date me or what?), and we drove to Caldwell County to visit the family homestead. On the way back, we stopped at Far West. At that time, the only thing there was the cornerstones fo the temple that was never build. (According to my Internet research, between then and now a pioneer village has been built on the site.

I guess we can tell why the Bosnians, Serbs and Croats were at each other's throats after 40+ years of peace!

the church wasted no time sending out missionaries to proselytize heavily.

sort of like encyclopedia salesmen, i had to just about physically throw one out of my house once

there was no dirty psychological technique the guy wouldn't try, luckily i'd been round the block a time or two so his "powers" of persuasion were coming up short.

so whether it's a set of reference books or a new religion..

..if people have a hunger and you work it skillfully apparently the con is not hard.

as one fellow observed

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

and from another scource

and evil men and impostors shall advance to the worse, leading astray and being led astray.

let them alone, guides they are -- blind of blind; and if blind may guide blind, both into a ditch shall fall.'

What they didn’t know is that except for a top layer of bright, shiny, silver fifty-cent coins, the boxes were filled with “sand, lead, old iron, stone and combustibles.”

a bit like Joseph and his new religion itself

Very interesting. I didn't know about all of the fighting. Wasn't this at about the same time that John Brown was attacking slave owners? Sounds like the Mid-West was pretty violent during the time period.

I thought I had already posted this, but don't see it....

US history is full of violence. Race riots, tax riots, Whiskey rebellions, etc. We just don't hear about it too much because it doesn't make the history books. One of the more interesting places to get info is the history of New Orleans. The museum in Jackson Square has many displays where they casually mention the race riots of 1824, 1826, 1829, 1834, etc (I am making up the years because I don't remember them exactly, but there are a lot of them!)