Brigham Young

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Brigham Young (born June 1, 1801 in Whitingham , Vermont , USA , † August 29, 1877 in Salt Lake City ) was the second President and Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ( Mormons ). He was also the first governor of the Utah Territory .

Life

Brigham Young (2nd from left) and his brothers (1866)

Brigham Young was a cabinet maker. In 1824 he married Miriam Works, who died in 1832. That same year he joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, founded in New York State in 1830. In 1834 he married his second wife, Mary Ann Angell.

On February 14, 1835, Brigham Young was ordained an apostle and a member of the first quorum of the Twelve Apostles . From 1839 to 1841 he served a successful mission in England.

After the violent death of the Church's founder and first prophet, Joseph Smith , in 1844, Young, who was then President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles , prevailed in the succession disputes that began. Young, who is now his followers as the second prophet, seer, and revelator was, led the majority of the members of the church from 1846 from the United States out into the then to Mexico belongs, but practically no one dominated area of the Rocky Mountains that is now Utah 's , and founded the city of Salt Lake City there . He managed to convince the majority of the members that he was the rightful successor to Joseph Smith.

In 1852 he published the doctrine of polygamy , which had hitherto only been practiced in secret by church leaders , had a corresponding revelation from Smith included in the book " Doctrine and Covenants ", and called on his followers to marry several women. When the territory fell to the United States, he was made territorial governor for practical reasons until the dispute over polygamy began to escalate.

He presided over the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as President and Prophet from 1847 until his death in 1877.

Brigham Young made a name for himself primarily as a colonizer in the western United States, and he is well known to this day for his numerous wives.

Brigham Young, the church leader

Monument to Brigham Young in Salt Lake City

Brigham Young learned the skills he needed as a church leader during difficult and turbulent times. He grew into a skilled organizer and was a powerful preacher who used very drastic language. This, sometimes bloodthirsty expression, understood by his followers as allegorical, gives his critics an opportunity to accuse him of actual calls to murder.

Following Joseph Smith

After the murder of Joseph Smith , Brigham Young assumed the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he believed that he was entitled to this office as well as that of the majority of its members. Church members who disagreed rallied around several leaders. Their movements, which remained in the Midwest, were absorbed into almost all of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , founded in 1860 under the leadership of Joseph Smith III, son of the founder of the religion.

Brigham Young led the Church as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles until 1847, when he reestablished the three-person First Presidency established under Smith, serving as president, prophet, seer, and revelator . In that office he was sustained at a general meeting on December 27, 1847 in Kanesville, Iowa.

Organizational expansion of the church

In Nauvoo and the surrounding area with around 20,000 church members, the church only had rudimentary structures. In Utah, Brigham Young then expanded the organization, and the structures created at that time have essentially survived to this day. He organized the Church into stakes, each of which comprised around 12 wards, but which then had significantly more members than they do today. In 1867 he reorganized the Relief Society and in 1875 created the Community Continuing Education Association as an organization for the youth. He began construction of the temple in Salt Lake City , and shortly before his death, on April 6, 1877, he dedicated the first new temple in St. George . Under his aegis, the tabernacle was built in Salt Lake City as a meeting place, primarily for Church general conferences .

Brigham Young, the colonizer

Under the leadership of Brigham Young, the Mormons colonized an inhospitable, almost deserted area in the Rocky Mountains, creating an important base on the way from the east coast to the west coast of the USA, which played a role for the first time in the California gold rush , around the prospectors to supply them with fresh pack animals and fresh vegetables and to offer them a place to regenerate.

A statue in Salt Lake City commemorating the Mormon pioneers

The exodus

Brigham Young's first assignment as "modern Moses" was the organization of the train from Nauvoo, Illinois to the Great Salt Flat from February 1846 to the summer of 1847. He organized mass production of covered wagons, preceded by a pioneering division of 147 people to get on the To build supply farms, bases and ferries around 2,000 km long, as well as to determine the best route with pasture grass and drinking water. Following the example of Moses, he organized the saints for the procession into companies that were again divided into smaller groups. He built Winter Quarters , today's Council Bluffs in Iowa , as a hibernation camp with log houses and grain cultivation .

Immigration organizer in Deseret

The main motor for further immigration was the missionary work in the eastern United States and abroad, especially in Europe. Young organized the immigration by expanding the bases of the Exodus into permanent supply stations. He set up the “Perpetual Emigration Fund” to help poor converts from Europe to finance emigration to Utah. As a cost-effective alternative to the covered wagon, he introduced the handcart as a means of transport with which numerous families ventured from St. Louis across the plains of the Midwest. To facilitate immigration, Brigham Young also promoted the construction of the railroad by providing labor.

Settlement founder

In and around what is now Utah, Young had selected groups build settlements every day's journey. The settlements were not wild random structures, as is so often the case in the western United States, but rather planned according to the "plan of the city of Zion" as drawn up by Joseph Smith for Nauvoo. The settlements spread to the California border over the course of the first ten years. The distant outposts were abandoned in the course of the Utah War.

governor

Originally on the territory of Mexico, Utah came to the United States through the war of 1848 and became a territory with Brigham Young as governor.

Legal regulations

Brigham Young passed laws primarily to regulate immigration, land distribution and, what is particularly different from laws in other US states, a water law that the right of everyone to a water supply for drinking, to water the fields and to water cattle regulated. At that time, Utah was the only area of ​​the US where women had the right to vote to vote for local political mandataries (mayor, sheriff, etc.). At the same time, the new state structure was an absolute theocracy without greater rights of participation, since Young bundled both spiritual and political power in his hands. Without a doubt, the devotion of his supporters, who had to travel about two thousand kilometers from Salt Lake City from the extreme western border of the then USA, was one of the reasons for the success of the settlement.

The Utah War

Because of rumors of alleged secession efforts by the Mormons, US President James Buchanan sent the army in 1857 to forcibly depose Brigham Young as governor and replace him with Alfred Cumming . The resulting altercation is known as the Utah War . Young relied on scorched earth and guerrilla warfare tactics, which wearied and slowed the soldiers. However, a negotiated peace was reached during the winter months. The conflict marked the end of Brigham Young's governor in April 1858. Since that time, church and political leadership have not been in the same hands in Utah.

Infrastructure and economy

Young promoted the establishment of a healthy infrastructure with roads, schools, and water supplies. He founded the ZCMI, a trade cooperative, he imported a sugar factory, promoted the mining of coal and iron in southern Utah, had sericulture tried, etc. In school, he quickly ensured a comprehensive primary school system, founded the Brigham Young Academy in Provo and other secondary schools Schools. He sponsored the establishment of the Pony Express , the construction of a telegraph line and the railroad.

Brigham Young as a polygamist

Caricature about Young's death

Brigham Young's first wife died in 1832, and he later had other wives. The polygamy , the Young 1852 open taught, but previously lived in secret and practiced, will (if ever) mentioned in today's church official publications on Young often only very marginally. Depending on the source, Brigham Young is said to have 23 to 56 wives. It is not known how many of his wives Young was intimate with, but he had a total of 57 children of 16 women, 46 of whom reached adulthood. Many of his other "marriage seals" were purely religious and economic in nature. Many of them were elderly widows who received such a provider.

Racist Reforms

In contrast to Joseph Smith, who campaigned for the abolition of slavery and equality for blacks in church and society, Brigham Young enforced a racist ideology. In 1863 he said: “Shall I tell you the law of God regarding the African race? When the white man who belongs to the chosen offspring mixes his blood with the offspring of Cain , the punishment under the law of God is death on the spot. It will always be like that. ”From 1849 on Young's direction, black Mormons were excluded from the priesthood and from participating in rites. These rules remained in force until 1978.

literature

Web links

Commons : Brigham Young  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. " Brigham Young: Journal of Discourses , vol. 10, p. 110
predecessor Office successor
Joseph Smith President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
1847–1877 		John Taylor
personal data
SURNAME Young, Brigham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Second President and Prophet of Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ
DATE OF BIRTH June 1, 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Whitingham , Vermont
DATE OF DEATH August 29, 1877
Place of death Salt Lake City , Utah