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"The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State. [They are] in the attitude of an open and avowed defiance of the laws, and of having made war upon the people of this State. Their outrages are beyond all description." Governor L.W. Boggs, Missouri, 1838.The governor's noble genocidal efforts, however, were met with failure. The wily Mormons again evaded capture, escaping to the north and, eventually, slithering west to found what would quickly become the largest city west of the Missouri River: Great Salt Lake City. There, in that desert wasteland, amid tribes of degraded savages, the Mormons attempted to give birth to their own hedonistic country in 1848. At that time, the territory was under Mexican "control" and lay beyond the reach of the civilized world. The Mormons took shameful advantage of the opportunity. They raised an imposing army. They fully indulged in their vile lifestyle of polygamous sex orgies. They committed numerous human sacrifices in the guise of "blood atonement." They even printed their own currency. But, following the 1849 discovery of gold in California, the United States attempted to impose law and order upon the rebellious Mormons and their pious leader, Brigham Young. Young violently drove off every official sent into his self-made theocratic kingdom. He even went so far as to institute the Danites, an SS-like gang of thugs that committed infinite crimes and murders at the behest of Mormon leaders. However, in 1857, "Brother Brigham" went too far by proclaiming that "no person shall be allowed to pass or re-pass, into or through, or from [Utah] Territory." President Buchanan had finally had enough Mormon troublemaking. He sent an army of more than 3,000 troops to invade Salt Lake City. Continue to PAGE 3. |