July 31, 1864---"I propose to do nothing about them."

JULY 31, 1864:                   

Under the direction of Confederate Chief Surgeon Isaiah H. White, the inmate hospital at Andersonville P.O.W. Camp (Fort Sumter) is enlarged to accommodate 1,400 patients. This improves conditions almost not at all. The men are living in 700 tents, there are few permanent structures, and the food is a thin gruel (when it is available at all). 6,315 of the 30,000 prisoners are sick with scurvy, gangrene, and dysentery, along with 517 of the 2,700 Confederates on post.

 

Brigham Young, the leader of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) gives a fiery sermon castigating all non-Mormon gentiles and criticizing the form of government of the United States as being “an ursurpation of the government of the Son of God.”

Young loathes the United States. Presidents Fillmore, Pierce and Buchanan had all dispatched troops to subdue Mormon hostility toward gentiles. Buchanan, in one of his few assertive acts as President, forcibly removed Young as Governor of the Utah Territory, citing the Establishment Clause.

Young likewise dislikes the Confederacy which he sees as “godless” --- but he refuses to aid the Union.  During the Civil War, a Mormon cavalry troop based in Salt Lake City, “The Nauvoo Legion” made up of 100 young men sides with the Union until Young threatens them with banishment. They quickly disband. Only a very few banished Mormons actually fight in the Civil War, and as might be expected, they fight on both sides.

When asked what he is going to do about the Mormons, who have begun harassing transcontinental settlers who wander into their realm of Deseret, President Lincoln answers sagely, “As they are the least of my problems right now I propose to do nothing about them.”