Carthage Summary and Analysis

Ms. Brodie theorizes, again with little or no source support, that there was a change in the hatred toward the Saints that had not been there in Missouri. She declared that neighboring citizens "resented [the Mormon's] self-righteousness, their unwillingness to mingle with the world, their intense consciousness of superior destiny" (p. 380). Yet, this was not the final cause of volatile hatred, in her opinion. She declared that the hatred was rooted in political power, because of their numbers, and that the neighbors feared being crushed by the shear numbers of incoming converts who needed homes and land. She avowed that theocracy in Nauvoo was "malignant tyranny . . . Spreading as swiftly and dangerously as a Mississippi flood and that might eventually engulf the very government of the United States" (p. 380). According to her analysis, this led her to state that the Illinois anti-Mormon...