Status Updates From Brigham Young: American Moses

Brigham’s failures: sugar, wool, iron, lead

Brigham was a sassy diva who clapped back omfg 😭

Brigham Young was brilliant at rapidly spreading the colonization of Mormons in order to gain leverage over those persecuting them. When you are economically or financially dependent on someone else, you are literally giving them all the leverage and all the power if you become financially independent, they have no power. And you have freedom. Wonder if polygamy fits into here somewhere

Very interesting to learn and realize—the church is not a democracy

Emma & Brigham did not get along after Joseph died yikes. They fought over everything; what was Joseph’s or what was the church’s. Tbh just give the woman Joseph’s personal things like his uniform. Shes a grieving widow. I can see Brigham being un-generous in this. Alas, what a legal headache.

Brigham did not like the idea of a pledge of abstinence from anything like alcohol because he felt it took away his agency. He would much rather continually “choose” not to, rather than be “bound”—because it presented as a higher order of morality to do right without being forced to.

So it sounds like the original purpose of polygamy was to restore everything Abraham did in the Old Testament. And by logic, if a man’s wife dies and he remarries and has more kids, and then she dies, etc. he should be sealed to all of them in heaven. So therefore, they should be sealed here too because how is now different from later.

good heavens Brigham was kind of an absent father for a bit while he was in England jeez

“To Joseph Smith he wrote: “Almost without exception it is the poor that receive the gospel.” For these humble, teachable people, Brigham wrote, “simple testimony is enough.” - the purpose of trials often is to put us in a state we couldn’t be in if full of pride; humble and teachable, like a sponge that can absorb the gospel. hardening your heart turns it into a stone, which doesn’t absorb much at all