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Epilogue

We'll find the place which God for us prepared,
Far away in the West,
Where none shall come to hurt or make afraid;
There the Saints will be blessed.1

This book deliberately ends in the predawn of Utah history and at the threshold of the great Mormon migrations that would see approximately 60,000 people come to Deseret, their new mountain Zion, between 1849 and the completion of the transcontinental railroad 20 years later. Like a tiny, swinging pedestrian bridge spanning the deep river gorge below, the Mormon Exodus of 1846-1848 was the tenuous, essential connecting link between a turbulent past in the East and a brighter future in the West. And it was a pathway laid at considerable sacrifice and breathtaking risk.

An essential fact to remember is that there was no practical certainty that their journey would be successful and that their new settlement would prosper. The stakes were enormous! Had they failed in their march, had they failed to discover in time a new place and a new Zion-and convinced the membership to follow suit-it is entirely possible that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would have broken up. As their leader put it:

If the Church is blown to the four winds and never gathered again, remember I have told you, how, when, and where to gather, and if you do not go now, remember and bear me witness in the day of judgment. When God tells a man what to do, he admits of no argument, and I want no arguments.2

The underlying theme of this entire study has been that the exodus of the Latter-day Saints was for the survival of the Church-Joseph Smith's grand enterprise, the message of Cumorah. Though patently obvious from a retrospective viewpoint, this imperative created drama, suspense, and a great deal of anxiety and trepidation. There was no survival, no future in their beloved "City of Joseph," and anyone anywhere close to the situation knew it. Mormonism was a despised, hunted, misunderstood, and maligned American religion, and America would have nothing to do with it. They had to either get out of Nauvoo or face extermination. Thus was born one of the great forced migrations in American history.

Surely there can be no doubt that this was an exodus in every sense of the word-a "going out," a "mass departure," a "going forth of many persons," a forced migration of an entire people, a church on the move. There is no parallel to it in all of American history. And although the migrations continued for years after the last date covered in this book, by August 1848 the essentials of their exodus had all been put into place-a mass following, a successful trek across the desert of America, and a new settlement.

At the outset of this study, it was argued that for the salvation of the Church at least seven things would have to happen. Obviously the first was to flee. And get out they did! Under the bold and daring leadership of Brigham Young, as adroit politically as he was careful spiritually, 12,000 Latter-day Saints made their way across Iowa and reached the Missouri River by the fall of 1846. And by the fall of 1848, some 4,200 of these had resettled in the Rocky Mountains; many more thousands were waiting their time to come. The dimension, coherency, and discipline of the migration, the going out as one, and the overall commitment of the people to make it succeed are a tribute to their faith and determination and a lasting salute to the leadership of Brigham Young and those others who assisted him. It was an exodus of necessity.