Okay so I just read that immediately prior to his death, Joseph Smoth was looking into relocating the Mormon Church to Texas but then once he was killed his successor decided Utah was a better option. So, what if Smith lives long enough to see Mormonism successfully relocated and centered in Texas in the 1840s or his successor simply decides to follow through with Smith's Texas plan?
WI: Texas is the Mormon Heartland
- Thread starter Sevarics
- Start date
This could so be TL worthy if this completely derailed annexation and led to a independent texas.
Here's a scenario: the Mormons end up in central Texas, but they end up being chased out by the settlers, so they flee to the western half of the territory. They eventually set up camp near Santa Fe, and, later, Albuquerque and eventually become the dominant group there. Later on, when Texas finally ends up being annexed by the U.S.(which may or may not come before a war with Mexico), the Americans discover the Mormon colonies in what was the northwest of the country. The Mormons are either forced to flee westward, or, perhaps by some miracle, they work out a deal with the U.S. government and they're allowed to stay put. New Mexico becomes a state sometime in the 1880s and has everything east of the Rio Grande, up to the 100th meridian, and everything between the 32nd and 37th parallels, and runs about 25% Mormon, with substantial populations also existing in Colorado, Nevada, Arizona,Kansas, and Utah.
The main issue I see is that given were people were settling in Texas the Mormons would be living in the west. This is due to both other settlers, politics, and the general reaction to mormons in established communities.
Now this may have an adverse effect on the LDS as the US government often reduced mormon territory, and was active in limiting any notion of Deseret which was a major goal for early church elders.
Add to this the influx of trade which occured thanks to where Salt lake city was located along the Oregon trail. This meant it was a logical stopping point for people headed west.
In Texas a religion can be maintained but it would lose the initial isolation allowing to improve the land, and the trading center which gave a stable economic source as the US continued to grow.
Now this may have an adverse effect on the LDS as the US government often reduced mormon territory, and was active in limiting any notion of Deseret which was a major goal for early church elders.
Add to this the influx of trade which occured thanks to where Salt lake city was located along the Oregon trail. This meant it was a logical stopping point for people headed west.
In Texas a religion can be maintained but it would lose the initial isolation allowing to improve the land, and the trading center which gave a stable economic source as the US continued to grow.
In the 1840s the Republic of Texas had about 70.000 people while there were about 30.000 Mormons. If all or most of the Mormons relocated to Texas they'd soon outnumber the other settlers so I wouldn't see them being chased out, especially since prior to his death Smith had gotten approval from Sam Houston to settle Mormons in Texas
If Texas and the mexican government reacts to Mormons the way the bulk of the US reacted to them the idea of outnumbering the Texans is not gonna be a major factor for long. The Mormons have an entire culture based around how much oppression they faced int he founding of the church.
Now said oppression is linked to marriage practices, religious doctrine, but also the political impact of tens of thousands of "radicals" appearing in a community. Nauvoo for example had 12-15,000 in 1844 making it almost the same population as the city of Chicago. However locals would not put up with such a place and a mixture of attacks, isolation, and economic blockade made the mormons have to flee the region.
Cause if we speak of the Mormons reaching Texas then it means it is when the church was fleeing persecution, and that Joesph Smith was in power. So this is either pre-June 1844 or the mob in the jail never kill Smith but chase him off. Now for Young it took almost a year to reach Utah, Texas may be mildly faster given routes at the time. However if we say they arrive in 1845 or 1846 this puts them in the center of Texas issues.
Likewise even in 1844 the LDS church was dealing with the fallout from the Kirtland Safety Society collapse. Which made non-Mormons view banks run by mormons as proto-ponzi schemes.
Then using OTL do we see the Utah War transplanted into Texas? Smith is either alive, or Young is in charge so the small cadre of Mormon settlers who hinted at forming an independent state will certainly be present.
Plus now I think of it with the Mormons in Texas there is a greater form of resentment linked to "popular soverignty" the go to notion to support slavery. Mormons used similar terms to defend plural marriage. I mean in 1856 the GOP openly said they wanted to end "polygamy and slavery."
So to me sending Mormons to a place where people were more then eager to fight supposed threats to their way of life, alongside under the control of Mexico would only end in hardship. Polygamy is a major hot button issue, and even under the cloak of religion it does nothing to defend the Mormon church. Salt Lake was in the middle of nowhere, and let settlers going to California and Oregon gain supplies and sell goods the Mormons demanded. It was a nexus point for a "alterantive" faith to take root and settle down.
The Mormon migration arriving in Texas, a vast place, would likely go to an empty part of the state, most of it, and avoid conflict that way (i.e. if you live in Denmark, Southern Italians or Ukrainians rarely walk or ride up en masse to throw yo out.) Arriving in the Republic of Texas with President Sam Houston's blessing and providing realistically another 3-5,000 potential well-armed militia (many with repeating rifles designed and built by pioneer Mormon father of John Browning) and a very high ratio of women (always needed on the frontier with Mormon polygamy more of a response to vastly more single women joining it than men) I don't think the conflict would be unusually bloody like it was in Illinois and Missouri.
I don't think it would change the overall OTL that much other than Utah being far more slowly settled, like Nevada OTL for the same reasons.
Texas would get a jump in both population growth and developing more cities and towns as well as industry rather than ranches and cotton that encouraged sparse small service centers. Many of the Mormon's young women had come from New England and English textile mills, hundreds of them, so establishing large scale cotton cloth manufacturing in the 1840's-1850's drawing on East Texas and Mississippi cotton production could be a significant butterfly for Texas, New England, and Birmingham-Lancashire. Manufacturing textile machinery coupled with the steam engine development boom going on nearby for Mississippi riverboats might shift part of the industrial revolution to Texas and further grow Galveston as the biggest city, trading seaport, and financial center.
It'd be a very interesting timeline.
I don't think it would change the overall OTL that much other than Utah being far more slowly settled, like Nevada OTL for the same reasons.
Texas would get a jump in both population growth and developing more cities and towns as well as industry rather than ranches and cotton that encouraged sparse small service centers. Many of the Mormon's young women had come from New England and English textile mills, hundreds of them, so establishing large scale cotton cloth manufacturing in the 1840's-1850's drawing on East Texas and Mississippi cotton production could be a significant butterfly for Texas, New England, and Birmingham-Lancashire. Manufacturing textile machinery coupled with the steam engine development boom going on nearby for Mississippi riverboats might shift part of the industrial revolution to Texas and further grow Galveston as the biggest city, trading seaport, and financial center.
It'd be a very interesting timeline.
Well, you may want to check up on Lyman Wight, an early Apostle of the Latter-Day Saint movement who founded a colony of Mormons in Texas on the orders of Joseph Smith, Jr. himself. After the succession crisis following Joseph Smith, Jr.'s death, Wight refused several invitations from Brigham Young to join his branch of the saints in Utah Territory, citing the fact that he had obtained orders from the prophet to go to Texas, and in Texas he was going to stay.
TFSmith121
Banned
I think you all are actually overlooking who controlled West Texas from
I think you all are actually overlooking who controlled West Texas from the 1840s to the 1860s...
It was not Sam Houston et al.
Or even Mirabeau Lamar.
If the LDS deal with them as well as Pilgrim Predestinarian Baptist Church did, Zion will fall about as quickly as Fort Parker did...
Something to consider - until the Parkers ran into the Comanche, the Americans (going back to the Seventeenth Century, in fact) had never dealt with:
a) Mounted tribal peoples;
b) the prairie west of the treeline;
c) any of the North American deserts.
No easy woods-water-rifles triangle makes settlement difficult; trying to do it in the face of light cavalry who are as good on horseback as the Mongols back in the day is pretty close to impossible.
There's a reason the Texas frontier actually rolled east during the Civil War...and oddly enough, Coffee Jack Hays, who had figured out how to fight the Comanche as early as the 1840 Great Raid, was not around; he was loyal and living in California...
Best,
I think you all are actually overlooking who controlled West Texas from the 1840s to the 1860s...
It was not Sam Houston et al.
Or even Mirabeau Lamar.
If the LDS deal with them as well as Pilgrim Predestinarian Baptist Church did, Zion will fall about as quickly as Fort Parker did...
Something to consider - until the Parkers ran into the Comanche, the Americans (going back to the Seventeenth Century, in fact) had never dealt with:
a) Mounted tribal peoples;
b) the prairie west of the treeline;
c) any of the North American deserts.
No easy woods-water-rifles triangle makes settlement difficult; trying to do it in the face of light cavalry who are as good on horseback as the Mongols back in the day is pretty close to impossible.
There's a reason the Texas frontier actually rolled east during the Civil War...and oddly enough, Coffee Jack Hays, who had figured out how to fight the Comanche as early as the 1840 Great Raid, was not around; he was loyal and living in California...
Best,
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