Troubles of Biographers: Y is for Youngness Approach to Young

Along with the question, What constitutes a biography? comes the question, Who should tell the story of another person?

This issue has arisen in several previous biographies on this list: Is the best biographer someone in the same profession? A fan? A detractor?

Trouble: Is a biography told by an insider a biography or is it a testimony/eulogy?

As a Mormon (of which term I am not ashamed), I found Kingdom of Nauvoo by "outsider" Benjamin Park more enlightening than "insider" Richard Bushman's biography of Joseph Smith. Bushman is a decent writer and historian. But I was disappointed by the biography's lack of diversified research and by the limited perspective. 

Kingdom, on the other hand, is a marvel. Despite--or perhaps because of--the confusions of the time period, the book presents a Joseph Smith that I ended up respecting more, despite his numerous and very human mistakes. Kingdom is extremely well-researched and well-balanced. Instead of righteous victims versus evil detractors, the book presents a complex picture of encounters, which picture nevertheless remains fair to the leader in question. It demonstrates a mastery of material and human nature.

I don't recommend the book to someone looking for a seamless, perfect history of the church. Or, for that matter, someone looking for a seamless, imperfect history of the church. I find both approaches unsatisfying, not to mention boring. 

For "Y," I tackled the biography of another Mormon leader by another "outsider": 

Biography: Turner, John G. Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet. Belknap, 2012. 

Turner likewise presents a complex yet balanced portrait. If anything, the book is more gentle with Mormonism and Brigham than Kingdom yet doesn't hold back from presenting stark realities. Turner earned my appreciation early on by stating, in Chapter 1, "We should begin by remembering that [Young] was a nineteenth-century man and avoid any tortured attempt to make him palatable for a twenty-first-century audience, Mormon or otherwise" (5). 

More impressively, one gets the impression quite quickly that Turner rather likes Young and is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt--to criticize him, yes, but to also praise him when appropriate. In fact, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet confirms what I encountered in Kingdom: 

By the time Joseph Smith reached Nauvoo, he had come to thoroughly and entirely trust Brigham Young more than any other male of his acquaintance (other than possibly Hyrum, who was more like a second-self), to feel for Young the marvelous quote from Lincoln about Grant: "My trust in him is marrow deep."

Brigham Young was a forceful, opinionated man, but his was the kind of force that isn't cowed by dedication to another male's leadership--at least, not in this case. He was without pause or question loyal to Joseph Smith. By the time he led the apostles to England as head of the Quorum, he was able--through energy, humor, and managerial skills--to keep them on-track, loyal to each other, and loyal to Joseph Smith. And to do so in a way that doesn't come across as coercive. He would return to Nauvoo to learn of polygamy. He never looked back. 

Even more than Park, Turner illustrates the logical progression of Mormon doctrines from sealing to polygamy. Whatever the motives of Joseph Smith and the Twelve, polygamy created lines of support in a time when poverty and starvation for most people lurked one bad harvest away. The amassed, criss-crossing resources that the twenty-first century takes for granted simply didn't exist. Religious communities of various kinds were one protection. 

Neither Park nor Turner disguise, however, that polygamy caused fractures within the Mormon community. Both deal directly with the incendiary nature of reports brought by "disaffected" members and nearby citizens. It was an active, strident, conflicting, confusing, and dangerous time, which puts the lie to images of the past as less crazy and turbulent than our own era.    

Whatever the downsides of polygamy, Turner's book makes clear that the temple ceremonies and sealings before the saints left Nauvoo created multiple networks, a way to "achieve earthly harmony while creating the expanded family structures they expected to persist for eternity" (162). Young was sealed to multiple wives, some with current husbands, some without; some of the marriages were consummated; some were not. He was also sealed to Joseph Smith's widows as well as to multiple adult adopted children, including in-laws, wives-to-be and husbands of those wives. An effort to create a community bound not just by common beliefs or by economic need but by heavenly ordinances was at work. 

Without praise or censure, Turner presents this effort within its context. He later does the same in his thorough, fair, and remarkably insightful handling of Young's many wives. Many women importuned Young for the privilege of a sealing--for any number of reasons: he was willing to grant divorces to women in unhappy situations; they were honestly attracted to him; they were honestly attracted to the family situation; some of them appear to have assumed marriage to Young would entail a wealthy lifestyle (however, pioneer life is pioneer life, and Young himself worked quite hard--he expected his family to do the same); and they may have been attracted to the authority and power of certain wives, such as Young's first wife--"President-ess" and "Mother Young"--and later wife, Eliza R. Snow. Some were true believers in the theological principle. Some of them became disaffected. Many stayed.

Not only does Turner tackle polygamy, he doesn't avoid the more unlikable and troubling of Young's qualities, including prejudice regarding African-Americans and Native Americans, authoritarianism, defensive blusters, and support of "blood atonement," which led to multiple acts of vigilantism.

Without dismissing the implications and long-term influence of these qualities, Turner places them in context, both the context of the nineteenth century and the context of Young's personality. Young continually comes across as a kind of Paul figure--without the cosmopolitanism or fundamental logic but similar in the sense of putting on paper and into speech anything that entered his head. As Turner writes, "Over the thirty years of his church presidency, Young said so many different things about women that with selective quotations from his discourses, one would turn him into either a misogynist or a proto-feminist. Neither portrait is accurate" (379, my emphasis). People are complicated.

For instance, without the range of experience and education, Young also evokes reminders of Winston Churchill in his willingness to try one thing and then another. He experimented, adapted, and changed his approaches over time from Wild West outlaw to Western politician.

Young was haunted throughout his presidency by the assassination of Joseph Smith. He would be no willing sacrifice--far from it! Not only was no group of thugs going to get to him, no group of Mormons was going to persuade him to change his course. Turner's use of "pugnacious" to describe Young is spot on. And it is accurate to argue that a number of tragedies, including the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the Utah War, were brought on or exacerbated by Young's bellicosity, although in the latter case, a full-on confrontation was averted. It would be inaccurate to portray Young as behaving outside his time period. 

Throughout the book, what struck me most forcibly, despite Young's bellicosity, was how thoroughly the Utah territory was bound up in American concerns from the beginning. Despite the claims--and to a degree, the legend--of Utah independence, Utah pioneers never dropped economic ties to the East coast, California, and to the very army they resisted. Young retained relationships not only with business interests on the other side of the Mississippi but with members loyal to Brigham Young (as he would have seen it) who remained there. The Federal government from day one made decisions about Mormon interests in terms of its own interests. Lincoln famously said to "let [Young] alone" since at the time, a stable overland route was more important than harassing the man who helped maintain that stable overland route.

Later, those priorities would change.

The book is subtitled Pioneer Prophet, and Turner is more than generous in his assessment of Young's leadership here--though he acknowledges that while an interesting idea, handcarts were ultimately abandoned.  

During Young's first trip west, Turner remarks on the "uneventful nature of the trek" and correctly commends this lack of drama (despite the love of members for harrowing stories): "Moving 148 people more than one thousand miles over hazardous terrain without death, hunger, or significant discord could not be taken for granted" (168).   

Towards the end of the book, Turner reiterates his point: "By the time the transcontinental railroad (completed in 1869) greatly eased the financial and logistical burden of gathering, Brigham Young had presided over the organized emigration and settlement of more people than anyone else in American history" (314).

Moreover, Young imbued all these endeavors with interest and joy. As Turner writes, "Young's Mormonism remained a faith of physicality, fellowship, and recreation alongside ritual and revelation, a faith that imbued farming, house-raising, and even dancing with sacred significance"(164).

Lion of the Lord

The passion that led Young to encourage "gathering" and to experiment with different ways to move people West, led Young to try out economic programs that would hopefully bring prosperity to the community. As a product of ancestors who settled Orderville, I was interested to read about the success of that particular experiment. It proved less successful elsewhere. In one sentence, Turner sums up the problem with any kind of communitarianism: 

"If Young did not trust others with his property, it is hardly surprising that many church members did not trust him with theirs" (400). 

"He was most inspiring as a leader," Turner adds, "when he shared in the sacrifices he demanded of others" (400). 

In sum, Turner believes that the sheer force of Young's personality held the Mormon community together for decades. After his death, that community rapidly evolved in other directions, as religions are wont to do. Yet Young's defense of community ideals and certain theological ideas lasted long after his death, including temple rituals.

Turner does not address whether that legacy is fading. A good biographer, he maintains his focus. And the biography is well-worth reading.

In conclusion, a biography by an "outsider" can produce great insights and a lack (thankfully) of protected "givens." However, disillusionment is as boring in its own way as panegyrics. It helps if the outsider biographer is both objective and generous.