John D. Lee: Difference between revisions
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In March 1877, his legal appeals exhausted and pleas for clemency denied, Lee was taken to the Mountain Meadows to carry out his sentence. Lee conferred briefly with federal prosecutor Sumner Howard and the parties posed for photographs. | In March 1877, his legal appeals exhausted and pleas for clemency denied, Lee was taken to the Mountain Meadows to carry out his sentence. Lee conferred briefly with federal prosecutor Sumner Howard and the parties posed for photographs. | ||
Lee then made a speech to the assembled crowd. Then he seated himself on the edge of his coffin and urged his executioners in the firing squad to aim true. Shots rang out and Lee fell backwards into his coffin. | Lee then made a speech to the assembled crowd. Then he seated himself on the edge of his coffin and urged his executioners in the firing squad to aim true. Shots rang out and Lee fell backwards into his coffin. Observers agreed that John D. Lee had met his fate with courage. | ||
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Revision as of 21:11, 20 July 2011
John D. Lee's background and his involvement in and statements about the Mountain Meadows Massacre
John Doyle Lee
1812-1877
Biographical Sketch
Lee's Forebears
John Doyle Lee was born in southwestern Illinois. Lee's maternal grandfather, John Doyle, of Irish descent, was from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, who then moved to Davidson County, Tennessee, where Lee's mother was born. In the Revolutionary War, Doyle served under George Rogers Clark who captured Fort Vincennes from the British. The fort was a former French outpost on the middle Mississippi. Years later Doyle returned to the fort on the Mississippi, then renamed Kaskaskia, and settled there.
Regarding his paternal forebears, the Lees had been English gentry who migrated to tidewater Virginia. Many rose to prominence in colonial Virginia. But this was not true of John D. Lee's direct Lee line. Lee's grandfather lived his life in Washington County in southwest Virginia, that is, in the backcountry on the far frontier of eighteenth-century Virginia.
By the early 1800s, the Doyles along with Lee's future father, Ralph Lee, had moved to Kaskaskia, Illinois territory, on the far frontier. By 1811, Lee's mother, Sarah Elizabeth Doyle (1778-1815), was a thirty-one year old widow with one child, her husband having been killed over a disputed land claim. She married twenty-two-year-old Ralph Lee (1788-1860), a Lee from Virginia but decidedly down on his luck.
Lee's Early Years
John D. Lee was born in 1812 in Randolph County, Illinois. In 1815, Lee's mother died when he was barely three. For the next four years, Lee was raised by a French-speaking Negro nurse while his father sank into insolvency and alcoholism. By 1819, both Lee and his older sister were in the care of his mother's sister, Charlotte Doyle Conner, and her husband, James Conner. Lee's years with his aunt and uncle, however, were unhappy due to his uncle's drinking and his aunt's harsh discipline.
In these years, Lee learned the male values of the predominate Scots-Irish regional culture: independence, assertiveness, defense of honor and similar traits. At age sixteen, Lee ran away and soon found work as a mail carrier. Later he returned to the Conners to manage the farm. In the off season, he had three months of school. This was his only formal education but he did learn to read and write, a notable achievement on the frontier.
Service in the Black Hawk War
In 1832, at age nineteen, Lee and his uncle served in the local militia during the Black Hawk War. Following that, Lee moved upriver to St. Louis and followed various pursuits there and in eastern Missouri.
First Marriage
He worked hard and saved, but he also fought and gambled occasionally. His brief gambling depleted his savings and ended a budding romance with a young women taken in by his uncle. So Lee pursued a romance with another young woman and in 1833, the twenty-year-old Lee married nineteen-year-old Aggatha Ann Woolsey.
Lee's Conversion to Mormonism
In 1837, Lee and his wife Aggatha heard and accepted the message of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Reacting with enthusiasm, they joined the gathering of Mormons in northwestern Missouri.
Conflict in Missouri and Illinois
However, the large influx of Mormons into the region as well as cultural and religious differences lead to armed conflict between the original settlers and the Mormon newcomers. During the 1838 mass uprising, Lee joined in the conflict, identifying himself as a Danite.
In early 1839, following the Mormons' surrender and removal from western Missouri, Lee, his wife and his family joined the main Mormon body traveling northeast to the western frontier of Illinois. He was among the first to settle in the new Mormon settlement of Nauvoo on the banks of the Mississippi River.
He went on proselyting missions to Tennessee in 1839 and 1842-43. In the expanding community, Lee served at different times as clerk, recorder, librarian and wharf master in a variety of civic and religious organizations. He also served as a peace officer and a major in the Nauvoo Legion, the local militia.
Among the Mormons: The Passing of Joseph Smith and Rise of Brigham Young
In spring 1844, Lee traveled to Kentucky and campaigned for Mormon leader Joseph Smith in his presidential campaign bid. Following the murder of Smith, Lee transferred his full loyalty to the new Mormon leader, Brigham Young.
As the practice of polygamy became more widespread, Lee entered into many plural marriages in 1845-46. Another innovative practice was "adoption" under which Lee because an adopted son of Young. Lee also served as his guard and clerk.
Migration to Utah
In 1846, Lee joined the Mormon hegira into the west, traveling through the territories of Iowa and Nebraska. He and his famliy immigrated to Utah in 1848 and settled in northern Utah for a spell.
Moving to Southern Utah
Lee went on one of the earliest explorations of southern Utah and by 1851, he became one of its original colonizers. Lee was a presiding elder in his settlement, Fort Harmony, as well as a probate judge, legislator, and Indian farmer.
The much-married Lee continued taking additional wives so that by the end of the 1850s he had married seventeen wives. During the 1860s he married one additional wife for a total of eighteen. Seven of these wives bore him forty-six children. In later years, as his troubles from his connection with the massacre multiplied, all but three of his wives left him.
In the Iron Military District: Major John D. Lee of the 4th Battalion, New Harmony and environs
In June 1857, John D. Lee, 45, was a captain in the militia but was then promoted to major over the 4th Battalion in the 10th Regiment, also known as the Iron Military District.
Thursday, September 3
In early September 1857, by his own admission, Lee met with Isaac C. Haight around Thursday the 3rd to plan an attack on a passing Arkansas emigrant train.
Friday, September 4
On Friday, September 4, Lee relayed orders to his son-in-law Carl Shirts to incite local Indians to attack the train.
Lee made preparations for his role on Saturday and departed for Mountain Meadows sometime Sunday afternoon, September 6.
Monday, September 7
On Monday the 7th, the day of the first attack on the emigrant train, Lee was not only present at Mountain Meadows but he was so close to the gunfire that bullets grazed his shirt and hat. That afternoon, seeking reinforcements from the southern communities of Washington and Fort Clara, Lee headed south to find the militiamen from these settlements. He met them that evening between 10 and 16 miles south of Mountain Meadows.
Tuesday, September 8
He and the militia detachments from Santa Clara and Washington arrived at Mountain Meadows at mid-day on Tuesday the 8th. Lee remained there all during the week.
Wednesday, September 9
By mid-week, Lee was in despair for the success of the plan that Haight and he had originated. Lee could see that the Paiute Indians lacked what was necessary to overwhelm the emigrants in their wagon circle fortification. "We were in a sad fix!," Lee concluded.
Thursday, September 10
Sometime on Thursday, September 10, new orders arrived from Col. William Dame in Parowan and Lt. Col. Haight in Cedar City. The orders were sufficiently ambiguous to allow those at the Meadows some freedom of action in how they met the crisis. That evening, Lee and the senior personnel John Higbee, Philip Klingensmith, and other attended a militia council. It was there that they hatched the final plan and worked out the details for the attack. In Mormonism Unveiled, Lee maintains that he was the only one at the council who opposed the plan to kill the emigrants but the weight of the evidence strongly suggests otherwise.
Friday, September 11
On the day of the main massacre, Friday the 11th, Lee entered the emigrants' wagon circle where he delivered deceptive terms of surrender to them. As they emerged from the wagon circle in response to the offer of safely, Lee was at the head of the column of march with Sergeant Samuel McMurdie and Private Samuel Knight following in their wagons carrying arms, small children, and wounded adults. Trailing behind were the women and older children, followed at some distance by the emigrant men with the Iron County militia guard. At the agreed signal, the massacre commenced. Most accounts agree that it was over quickly. The evidence suggests that Lee was among those who killed the wounded traveling in the wagons at the head of the column.
Saturday, September 12
The day after the final massacre, Col. William Dame and Major Isaac Haight having arrived at the Meadows, Lee briefed them on the massacre.
The 1859 Investigation of the Massacre by Judge Cradlebaugh
Lee gave a variety of statements about the massacre. In 1859, federal officials interviewed Lee and they left relatively brief summaries of his statements. Based on information from anonymous militiamen, federal judge John Cradlebaugh issued an arrest warranty naming 38 Iron County militiamen, including Lee. He went into hiding until the investigation stalled.
Moving to the Seclusion of Lee's Ferry on the Colorado River
For years after the massacre, Brigham Young took no action against Lee. However in the early 1870s, Young excommunicated Lee following which Lee moved to the Arizona frontier and operated the ferry crossing on the Colorado River, one of the most isolated locales in America.
In summer 1872, Lee gave an interview to correspondent John Hanson Beadle which Beadle published in 1873 in The Undeveloped West, or Five Years in the Territories. It was later republished in Beadle'sWestern Wilds, and the Men Who Redeem Them.
Lee is Indicted for Complicity in the Massacre
In 1874, Lee and eight other militiamen was indicted for complicity in the 1857 massacre. The five other principals or active participants were William H. Dame, Isaac Haight, John M. Higbee, Philip Klingensmith, and William Stewart.
Lee was arrested in Panguitch and detained without bail. William Dame, too, was also arrested. But Haight, Higbee, and Stewart went into hiding and successfully eluded capture for years.
Lee's First Trial in 1875 -- A Hung Jury
Early in 1875, Wells Spicer, one of Lee's defense attorneys, leaked a version of the massacre to the press. It was attributed to one of Lee's wives but undoubtedly it was the version of events that Lee was telling at the time. It bears similarities to the account Lee gave newspaperman J. H. Beadle in summer 1872.
By summer 1875, with fellow defendants Haight, John M. Higbee and William Stewart in hiding, federal prosecutors were prepared to take Lee to trial. Both sides negotiated over a possible plea bargain. In that context, Lee prepared another statement of the massacre.
Dissatisfied with the extent of the statement, the prosecutors withdrew the offer of a plea and elected to take Lee to trial. They granted immunity to former Mormon bishop Philip Klingensmith who testified against Lee as did other present and former Iron County militiamen. The 1875 trial ended in a hung jury.
Lee's Retrial in 1876 -- Conviction
But in his retrial in 1876, Lee was convicted of murder by an all-Mormon jury and sentenced by federal judge Jacob Boreman to death. Lee appealed his conviction and also sought clemency from the territorial governor of Utah. These bids were unsuccessful.
Lee Pens His Life Story
While under sentence of death, Lee wrote his life story including his so-called "Confessions," yet another account concerning the massacre. In hopes of leniency, Lee showed his "Confessions" to federal prosecutor Sumner Howard. But the prosecutor disabused Lee of the hope that his sentence would be commuted.
Lee then prepared a final statement of the massacre which he delivered to the prosecutor. This is the so-called Lee-Howard Statement.
Lee's Execution
In March 1877, his legal appeals exhausted and pleas for clemency denied, Lee was taken to the Mountain Meadows to carry out his sentence. Lee conferred briefly with federal prosecutor Sumner Howard and the parties posed for photographs.
Lee then made a speech to the assembled crowd. Then he seated himself on the edge of his coffin and urged his executioners in the firing squad to aim true. Shots rang out and Lee fell backwards into his coffin. Observers agreed that John D. Lee had met his fate with courage.
HIs body was taken to Panguitch where he was buried. He was survived by his three remaining wives and many dozens of children.
Lee's Autobiography Published Posthumously
Later in 1877, his life story was published posthumously as Mormonism Unveiled, or the Life and Confessions of John D. Lee. His final statement, the Lee-Howard statement, also received wide circulation after his death.
Following the publication of Juanita Brooks's The Mountain Meadows Massacre in the mid-twentieth century, Lee's membership in the Mormon Church was restored.
The Importance of Lee's Statements About the Massacre
There are inconsistencies among Lee's many statements and Lee was never fully forthcoming about his personal role in the massacre. Yet collectively these statements constitute the longest and most detailed account of the massacre, providing particulars not mentioned elsewhere. While they must be read with caution and cross-checked against each other and other sources, they are indispensable in understanding the massacre.
References
Many of the sources below contain multiple references to John D. Lee that are too numerous to list.
Affidavit of Philip Klingensmith, 1871, in Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, Appendix IV, 238-42; Brooks, John D. Lee: Zealot, Pioneer Builder, Scapegoat; Cleland and Brooks, A Mormon Chronicle: The Diaries of John D. Lee, 1848-1876; FamilySearch.org; Fielding, ed., The Tribune Reports of the Trials of John D. Lee; Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Church . . . , 317; Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; Lee Trial transcripts; Peterson, Utah's Black Hawk War, 191, 228, 289; Turley and Walker, Mountain Meadows Massacre: The Jenson and Morris Collections; Walker, et al, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, Appendix C.
External Links
See more on John D. Lee, see:
- http://mountainmeadowsmassacre.org/appendices/appendix-c-the-militiamen
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Lee
- http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/i_r/lee.htm
- http://www.geni.com/people/John-Lee/6000000000836147633
For John D. Lee's statements regarding the massacre found in Mormonism Unveiled, see:
For Mormonism Unveiled online, see:
- http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Lee%2C%20John%20Doyle%2C%201812-1877
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