A Word About Tone
Occurring at the outset of the Utah War of 1857-1858, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was an appalling war-time atrocity. Regardless of whether we categorize it as war crime, religiously-motivated revenge, or mass killing arising from war hysteria and moral panic, it is, from any vantage point, a horrific and unjustified slaughter.
The fact that the wagon train was lured to its doom by deceptive promises of protection emphasizes the enormity of the crime while the fact that the large majority of the victims were women and children only increases our sense of outrage. Even the militiamen themselves came to see it as a catastrophe and some saw in hindsight how cowardly their cynical deception had been.
Yet at this site, as we portray the militiamen responsible for the massacre, every effort will be made to present their lives before and after the massacre in a neutral and dispassionate manner. After a century and a half the massacre is now history. Although many books, articles and websites still present the massacre with impassioned outrage, that passion frequently clouds judgment and detracts from the basic task of understanding the complexity of its origins and causes. Although we share with others a sense of its horrific enormity, the tone we strive for here is a dispassionate impartiality. Through this quiet, dispassionate approach we will be able to better comprehend how this frightful disaster occurred.
We leave it to you, the reader, to reach your own considered judgments about the origins, causes and conditions of the massacre. It is for you, the reader, to decide how to judge the men involved in this calamitous disaster. The burdensome task of reaching provisional or final judgments is left to you.
