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34-705: In 1857 Joseph Morris , an English convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah , reported receiving revelations naming him the Seventh Angel from the Book of Revelation . He wrote to Brigham Young to seek recognition of his calling from the church. In 1860, Morris began to collect followers to a group that was commonly known as the Morrisites. In February 1861, John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff excommunicated him. On April 6, 1861, he organized

68-597: A Mormon missionary in London , England , but he declined the request and returned to Indiana in late 1829. Harding opened a law practice in Versailles, Indiana , in December 1829, and by 1830, was an active abolitionist. He began delivering anti-slavery speeches at gatherings near his home in southeast Indiana, which included active pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions. In the 1830s and 1840s, Harding's interest in

102-477: A U.S. Senator from Indiana). Harding spent idle time at his law office studying Roman and Greek classics, as well as William Shakespeare 's works. In the fall of 1828, Harding took a steamboat from Louisville, Kentucky , to New Orleans , Louisiana , partly to claim personal property of behalf of a client, but also to consider opportunities to establish a law practice in the South . Unable to find employment as

136-401: A bugle sounded to gather the congregation and read the revelation. When the group did not respond within thirty minutes, Burton ordered two warning shots fired "to speed up the decision." The second ball ricocheted off the ground and into the fort, killing two women and shattering the jaw of Mary Christoffersen. Some Morrisites returned the fire, killing the 19-year-old Jared Smith of the posse,

170-519: A few of the yet unpublished manuscripts of the Book of Mormon in the candlelight of Joseph Smith Sr.'s log home. Harding also recalled that he had been given the first sheet of the freshly-printed Book of Mormon title page, which he gave to a saint named Robert Campbell, who later donated it to the LDS Church at Salt Lake City. During his visit to Palmyra, Mormon leaders also asked Harding to become

204-536: A lawyer, he returned to Indiana in the spring of 1829, working his way back home as a clerk on the steamboat Belvedere along the Mississippi River . Harding became an abolitionist as a result of his eight-month trip to the South, where he witnessed first-hand the effects of the slave trade and the slave markets at New Orleans. Shortly after his return to Indiana in 1829, Harding left for an extended trip to

238-742: The Church of the Firstborn and called all of his followers to gather at Kington Fort, a 3-acre (12,000 m) fort on the Weber River which had been abandoned in 1858. By fall 1861, the group contained several hundred followers. Morris told his followers that the Second Coming was imminent and not to bother with planting crops. They may have trampled some of their crops into the ground as evidence of their faith. The group pooled available supplies and waited at Kington Fort. By spring 1862, food

272-685: The East , where he spent the summer in Palmyra, New York. During his visit, Harding was an overnight guest at the home of Joseph Smith Sr. who was the father of Joseph Smith Jr. , the founder of Mormonism , a religious movement of which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) is the largest denomination. Harding also met with several early Mormon leaders including Martin Harris and Oliver Cowdery . About twenty years after his service as

306-753: The Free Soil Party . In July 1848, while Harding attended the national Free-Soil convention in Buffalo, New York , the Free-Soil Party of Indiana was established at Indianapolis . Harding was among the speakers at the Free-Soil Party's second state convention in Indianapolis. Representing the 4th Congressional District, Harding was also one of eleven presidential electors on the Free-Soil ticket in 1852. In 1854, Harding aligned himself with

340-574: The Morrisite War . He also initially tried to appease the Mormon community but soon became critical of church leaders and the practice of plural marriage (polygamy). In his first message to the territorial legislature In December 1862, Harding defended an anti-polygamy act recently passed in the U.S. Congress and described his intention to challenge Mormon dominance in Utah. Harding's relations with

374-692: The People's Party , the predecessor to the Republican Party in Indiana, and was among the leaders who addressed a People's Party meeting on July 12, 1854, the day before the party was officially organized in the state. Harding joined the Republican Party because of its platform, which opposed polygamy , as well as the expansion of slavery. Harding promoted the Republican Party's platform in Indiana, and in 1860 became one of sixteen members of

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408-516: The Republican Party in Indiana in the 1850s. Stephen Selwyn Harding, the eldest son of David E. and Abigail Harding, was born in Palmyra, New York , on February 24, 1808. In 1820, the Harding family moved to Ripley County, Indiana , which was a frontier wilderness at that time. Although Stephen had only about nine months of formal school training, he was an avid reader. Harding studied law in

442-570: The Harding home in Milan, Indiana , was used as a station on the Underground Railroad . Even though his views on slavery were not popular in some of the areas where he spoke in Indiana, Harding continued to deliver anti-slavery speeches. Harding, a subscriber to several anti-slavery journals, was well-informed on the issue. In 1844, he predicted in a speech he gave at Versailles, Indiana, that twenty years later slavery would not exist in

476-648: The Indiana Republican Party's state central committee. At the recommendation of Indiana politicians Schuyler Colfax and George Washington Julian , Abraham Lincoln appointed Harding governor of the Utah Territory in 1862. The U.S. Senate confirmed the appointment without a dissenting vote on March 31, 1862. Harding began his overland journey west in May and arrived at Salt Lake City to assume his new duties on July 7, 1862. His tenure at

510-607: The Mormons further declined after he approved of efforts to limit the jurisdiction of the Mormon-controlled probate courts and to transfer control of the militia to the territorial governor. In March 1863, after a mass meeting was held in Salt Lake City to discuss the issue, territorial citizens petitioned President Lincoln to remove Harding from office, but instead of recalling him, Lincoln appointed Harding to

544-652: The United States. Harding, a member of the Whig Party , left the party in 1840 to join the Liberty Party . He was nominated as the Liberty Party's candidate for lieutenant governor of Indiana in 1842 and 1846, but lost both races. In 1844, Harding served as a presidential elector of the Liberty Party's candidate, James G. Birney. After the Liberty Party had dissolved by 1848, Harding joined

578-441: The anti-slavery issue continued to increase and as he became a leader in the abolition movement in Indiana. Harding, who believed that slavery was unconstitutional, had anti-slavery views similar to other moderate abolitionists such as Salmon P. Chase , William Jay , Joshua Reed Giddings , and James G. Birney ; unlike those of radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison . Indiana historian Jacob Piatt Dunn Jr. reports that

612-402: The community pool. Soon afterward, three departing members (William Jones, one of Morris's first converts, John Jensen, and Lars C. Geertsen) vowed revenge after what they perceived as an unfair reckoning, and they seized a load of wheat en route from Kington to Kaysville for milling. The Morrisites sent a group of men after them, and the group soon captured the three and the wheat. The church held

646-526: The conviction. The Morrisites scattered across the west, but many of them ended up in Deer Lodge County, Montana . A house of worship used by the Morrisites in Racetrack, Montana , still stands though in some disrepair ( 46°17′19″N 112°44′57″W  /  46.2885°N 112.7493°W  / 46.2885; -112.7493 ). Seven years later, Robert T. Burton was tried and acquitted for

680-467: The fort, 30 miles (48 km) north. Robert T. Burton , as deputy marshal, led the posse, which gathered strength along the way and was somewhere between 500 and a 1000 strong when it reached the settlement on June 13. By then, the Morrisites had barricaded themselves in the fort. The posse positioned itself on bluffs southwest of the fort, with contingents on the flats to the east and the west. They situated cannons on two small ridges looking directly into

714-443: The fort, which in order to accommodate the hundreds of followers was really a makeshift enclosure. A militia from Ogden positioned itself to the north. Burton sent a message via a Morrisite herd-boy requesting the group's surrender within thirty minutes. As soon as he received the message, Morris left his associates and soon returned with a new revelation, promising his people that the posse would be destroyed. He and his counselors had

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748-605: The governor of the Utah Territory , the aging Harding wrote a letter in 1882 that is quoted in The Prophet of Palmyra , an anti-Mormon book, describing his recollection that as a boy, he had seen young Smith Jr. fishing in the same Palmyra mill pond that he has also frequented in his youth. Harding also reported that Martin Harris occasionally visited his parents when the Harding family was living near Palmyra before their migration to Indiana. In addition, nearly sixty years earlier, in 1829, he and Harris listened as Cowdery read from

782-407: The judgeship at Denver . In 1865 Harding returned to Indiana, where he practiced law until his retirement in 1881. Earlier in his political career, Harding helped organize the Liberty Party in Indiana and was the party's candidate for lieutenant governor of Indiana in 1843 and 1846, but lost both races. Harding subsequently became a member of the Free Soil Party in 1848 and was an early member of

816-476: The men prisoner in a small cabin, to be "tried by the Lord when he came." Geertsen soon escaped, but the other men's wives petitioned the territorial government for assistance. Word reached John F. Kinney , Who had been appointed two years earlier by James Buchanan as chief justice of the Utah Territory , that the Morrisites were illegally holding prisoners. On May 24, he issued a writ of habeas corpus commanding

850-950: The murder of Isabella Bowman, one of the women killed after the siege. A monument commemorating the Morrisite War was erected in South Weber, Utah, by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, Sons of Utah Pioneers, and AllBuild Construction and Landscaping. Joseph Morris (Latter Day Saints) Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 553291839 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 05:47:31 GMT Stephen Selwyn Harding Stephen Selwyn Harding (February 24, 1808 – February 12, 1891)

884-611: The office of William R. Morris in Brookville, Indiana , and became licensed to practice law on March 17, 1828, at the age of twenty. Harding opened a law office in Richmond, Indiana , but he remained there for only six months. As a young and inexperienced lawyer, as well as a newcomer to Richmond, he faced stiff competition from several prominent lawyers in the area that included U.S. Senator James Noble (who later became governor of Indiana ) and Oliver H. Smith (who later became

918-461: The only government casualty of the war. Heavy rains prevented much action the next day, June 14. Historians differ as to what initiated the events of June 15, but at some point, Burton rode into the fort with a small contingent. Details of what followed are also unclear, but Morris may have made a statement to his followers and approached Burton in what was interpreted as a threatening manner. Burton shot and killed him, and two women were also killed in

952-621: The post of U.S. consul at Valparaíso, Chile . Harding resigned the position as territorial governor in fall of 1863, intending to accept the diplomatic post, but due to his wife's ill health and other domestic reasons, he had to resign the appointment on the eve of his departure to Chile. Lincoln appointed Harding to serve as Chief Justice of the Colorado Territory's Supreme Court in July 1863, and remained in that position until May 1865. One of his responsibilities as Chief Justice

986-479: The prisoners' release. U.S. Marshal Judson Stoddard brought the writ to Kington Fort and read it to the Morrisite leaders, who refused to receive it. After the Morrisites dishonored a similar writ three weeks later, Chief Justice Kinney asked the acting governor to activate the territorial militia as a posse comitatus to arrest the Morrisite leaders. On June 12 a 200-man armed posse departed Salt Lake City for

1020-491: The resulting melee. Morris's counsellor John Banks was mortally wounded. Burton took ninety men prisoner and marched them back to Salt Lake City the next morning to stand trial before Judge Kinney. Seven of the Morrisites were convicted of second-degree murder in March 1863, and another 66 were convicted of resistance. However, Stephen S. Harding , the new federally-appointed territorial governor, pardoned them all three days after

1054-406: The territorial governor was marked by conflicts with Mormon politicians, especially with Brigham Young , the former territorial governor and head of the LDS Church, and the territory's Mormon residents. Harding was unable to enforce federal law in the territory due to the conflicts with the Mormons. Soon after he took office he issued a blanket pardon for all Morrisites convicted in connection with

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1088-545: Was an American politician, lawyer, anti-slavery leader and ardent abolitionist in Indiana who served as governor of the Utah Territory (1862–1863) and as chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court (1863–1865). Because Harding proved to be unpopular with the territory's Mormon leaders and citizens, he remained at Salt Lake City for less than a year before President Abraham Lincoln appointed him to

1122-575: Was scarce and some members were becoming discontented. Morris repeatedly designated certain days for the Second Coming, only to have those days pass uneventfully. Each time that happened, a handful of members would recover their possessions from the community pool and leave the congregation. With the steady outflux of members, the question of property entitlement became contentious. Those who stayed behind felt those who left were taking better stock and other items than they had initially contributed to

1156-567: Was to serve as a committee member responsible for certifying the results of ballots cast in 1865 to request that Colorado be admitted as a state in the Union. Believing that the results had been altered in favor of statehood, Harding refused to approve the results. Harding left Colorado in 1865 and resumed his private law practice in Indiana. He retired from practicing law in 1881 due to blindness . Stephen Harding married Avoline Sprout of Chautauqua County, New York , on October 31, 1830. They were

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