On July 24, 1857, the Latter-day Saints learned – in the middle of the 10th Anniversary Celebration – that President Buchanan had ordered an Army to the Utah Territory. Though they did not know what the Army’s mission or the intent behind the expedition, they learned that the expedition was to be led by William Selby Harney – and the choice of Harney portended the very worst. In his council, Brigham Young called for a vote on a rather shocking proposal. He wrote in his journal, “It was carried unanimously that if Harney crossed the south pass the buzzards should pick his bones.”
But who was General Harney? Why was his appointment as commander so significant? Why did it provoke such outrage and desperation from Brigham Young and other Church leaders? We explore that and more on this episode of Adventures in Mormon History.
This episode discusses Harney's history in the Mexican American War, and his heroism during the Battle of Cerro Gordo, the eagerness with which he hanged the deserters and traitors of the Saint Patrick Battalion (or San Patricios), the ruthlessness he showed in the Ash Hollow Massacre, and the depravity with which he murdered the enslaved young woman, Hannah, in Saint Louis in 1835. By 1857, "Squaw Killer Harney" had become infamous. The Latter-day Saints reacted to word of his appointment with outrage and shock. They assumed that, under Harney, they would fare no better than the Saint Patrick deserters in the Mexican War, or the Lakota Sioux at Ash Hollow. They began making preparations for war.
This episode also includes a recorded rendition of the long-forgotten Latter-day Saint folk song, "Squaw Killer Harney is on the Way." I realized that it would, in the long run, be less embarrassing to record the song myself than to get someone who could actually sing.
To learn more about the start of the Utah War, please check out these (excellent!) sources:
William MacKinnon, At Sword's Point: A Documentary History of the Utah War (Vol. I and II) (2016). MacKinnon's work on the Utah War is nothing short of phenomenal. They are available on Google Books to anyone interested. Also, I drew on the Forward to Volume I written by Will Bagley.
Wilford Hill Lecheminant, A Crisis Averted? General Harney and the Change in Command of the Utah Expedition, 51 Utah Hist. Quarterly 1 (1983).
Thomas E. Cheney, Mormon Songs From the Rocky Mountains: A Compilation of Mormon Folksong (1968).
David L. Bigler, A Lion in the Path: Genesis of the Utah War, 1857-1858, 76 Utah Hist. Q. 1, 5 (Winter 2008), available at https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume76_2008_number1.
In this episode: Brigham Young, George A. Smith, William Selby Harney, Asa Calkin, Jefferson Davis, P. T. G. Beauregard, Mexican American War, Bloody Kansas, Ash Hollow Massacre, Logan Reives, Saint Patrick Battalion, San Patricio Battalion, Battle of Cerro Gordo, Utah Expedition, the Pig War of 1859.