Fire and Sword: A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri, 1836-39
by Leland Homer Gentry and Todd M. Compton has just been released from Greg Kofford Books.Compton has revised and updated Leland Gentry's 1965 PhD. dissertation A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri from 1836 to 1839. During the last forty-five years a flood of primary sources has been made available. Compton has made use of this new material to create this new work.
Compton is one of the more gifted Mormon historians who is producing work today.
In his award winning book, In Sacred Loneliness, Compton wrote biographies of each of the known plural wives of founding Mormon Prophet, Joseph Smith. He then co-edited Helen Mar Kimball's diary in A Widow's Tale: The 1884-1896 Diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Currently Compton is working on a biography of Mormon explorer and early settler to southern Utah, Jacob Hamblin.Todd Compton writes about Fire and Sword:
The Mormon experience in Missouri was a fascinating, tragic, gripping, sometimes violent story, providing important background for much of subsequent Mormon history. It shows both Mormon and non-Mormon at their heroic best and at their violent, militaristic worst. In the case of non-Mormons, for instance, we find both Doniphan's heroic stand against the illegal execution of Mormon leaders, and the brutal Extermination Order and Haun's Mill Massacre. In the case of the Mormons, we find both their communitarian idealism and industry, their heroism in the face of an "Extermination Order" as they left Missouri, and their excesses when "raiding" Daviess County as Danites.
This story shows many Mormons as innocent victims and others acting with misguided rashness. It is a story of the American frontier, where legal niceties were often ignored and quick vigilante justice took the place of trial by jury. It illustrates why the Mormons could become entirely disillusioned with the legal system in western America, which would help give rise to the determined theocratic ethics by which they lived throughout the rest of the century.
This story shows many Mormons as innocent victims and others acting with misguided rashness. It is a story of the American frontier, where legal niceties were often ignored and quick vigilante justice took the place of trial by jury. It illustrates why the Mormons could become entirely disillusioned with the legal system in western America, which would help give rise to the determined theocratic ethics by which they lived throughout the rest of the century.
The book is available from Benchmark Books in Salt Lake and Confetti Antiques and Books in Utah county.
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