Writings of John D. Lee, 2nd ed.
Samuel Nyal Henrie (ed.)
Paperback, 6 x 9 in, 438 pages, Engravings, Bibliography
Fenestra Books, February 2002
ISBN: 1587360810 (paperback)
ISBN: 1587360829 (hardcover)
Description
This is a major collection of historical documents by John D.
Lee and his contemporaries, written in the 1870s, some published
here for the first time. It includes Lee's Life (autobiography),
Confession (Mountain Meadows Massacre), Arrest, Trial Excerpts and
Imprisonment, Poems and Letters, Last Words to his families,
Execution, and ongoing efforts toward reconciliation.
John Doyle Lee lived a life of heroic proportions. He was a
leader of uncommon energy and courage in a movement that helped
shape the western United States. Brigham Young is reported to have
said that Lee was the most competent frontiersman and settler that
he had ever known. On a human scale, Lee was considered by most of
those who knew him to be an intelligent, kind and even
tender-hearted man who shared his food, shelter, knowledge and
respect with everyone who needed it. He was a friend and teacher to
the Indian tribes. He was a polygamist who married nineteen wives
and fathered sixty-five children. But Lee's life ended in tragedy,
as he took the blame for one of the most infamous atrocities of
frontier history, The Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. Hounded
into exile in the remote Grand Canyon and Navajo Country, he built
and operated Lee's Ferry and Lee's Lonely Dell, now an historic
monument. Eventually, he was arrested, imprisoned and brought to
trial in federal courts twice, convicted, and executed by firing
squad on the very site of the Massacre, on March 23, 1877.
A witness to both inspiring and degrading events, John D. Lee
recorded irreplaceable history in his Journals and other writings
throughout his life. This book contains important Lee writings that
have not been published in full since 1891, as well as supporting
historical documents, some of which have not been published
previously.
About the editor
For the editor and compiler, Samuel Nyal Henrie, Jr.,
publication of this volume fulfills a lifelong ambition to see John
D. Lee's own composed writings made available to all those who
share an intense interest in Frontier Biography, the History of
Settlement of the West, and Americana. He holds a doctorate from
the University of California at Berkeley, and is Professor Emeritus
in the Humanities at Prescott College.
Excerpt
As a duty to myself, my family, and mankind at large, I propose
to give a full and true statement of all that I know and all that I
did in that unfortunate affair, which has cursed my existence, and
made me a wanderer from place to place for the last nineteen years,
and which is known to the world as the Mountain Meadows Massacre. I
have no vindictive feeling against any one; no enemies to punish by
this statement; and no friends to shield by keeping back, or longer
keeping secret, any of the facts connected with the Massacre..
I believe that I must tell all that I do know, and tell
everything just as the same transpired. I shall tell the truth and
permit the public to judge who is most to blame for the crime that
I am accused of committing. I did not act alone; I had many to
assist me at the Mountain Meadows. I believe that most of those who
were connected with the Massacre, and took part in the lamentable
transaction that has blackened the character of all who were aiders
or abettors in the same, were acting under the impression that they
were performing a religious duty. I know all were acting under the
orders and by the command of their Church leaders; and I firmly
believe that the most of those who took part in the proceedings,
considered it a religious duty to unquestioningly obey the orders
which they had received. That they acted from a sense of duty to
the Mormon Church, never doubted. Believing that those with me
acted from a sense of religious duty on that occasion, I have
faithfully kept the secret of their guilt, and remained silent and
true to the oath of secrecy which we took on the bloody field, for
many long and bitter years. I have never betrayed those who acted
with me and participated in the crime for which I am convicted, and
for which I am to suffer death.
My attorneys, especially Wells Spicer and Wm. W. Bishop, have
long tried, but tried in vain, to induce me to tell all I knew of
the massacre and the causes which led to it. I have heretofore
refused to tell the tale. Until the last few days I had intended to
die, if die I must, without giving one word to the public
concerning those who joined willingly, or unwillingly, in the work
of destruction at Mountain Meadows.
To hesitate longer, or to die in silence, would be unjust and
cowardly. I will not keep the secret any longer as my own, but will
tell all I know. At the earnest request of a few remaining friends,
and by the advice of Mr. Bishop, my counsel, who has defended me
thus far with all his ability, notwithstanding my want of money
with which to pay even his expenses while attending to my case, I
have concluded to write facts as I know them to exist. I cannot go
before the Judge of the quick and the dead with out first revealing
all that I know, as to what was done, who ordered me to do what I
did do, and the motives that led to the commission of that
unnatural and bloody deed.
