Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Eliza Ann Haven Westover (1829-1923): The On-Going U.S. Civil War Not Resulting in a Worldwide War

While living in the St. George/Dixie mission in the 1860s while the U.S. Civil War was ongoing, Eliza Ann Haven Westover noted that:

 

There was barely time to pay attention to the happenings in the rest of the country, but it would hardly be avoided. We were at war with ourselves, although Utah was not yet a state we still we affected by the Civil War. Our Prophet Joseph had had a prophecy in 1832 that this unrest would come and tear the country apart. Some neighbors were for it, some were not. But many of us were familiar with the prophecy and felt a reverence that this too would result in blessing coming out of challenges. All were against slavery that was the one difference in this Dixie. This area was called Dixie because it had a climate similar to the Southern Dixie, and we grew cotton and sugar beets. We even grew mulberry trees for silk worms all without the use of slaves. (Kaylene Canfield, A Life Worthy of Imitation: Eliza Ann Haven Westover [2007], 31)

 

This shows that Latter-day Saints who believe that the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865) was a partial fulfillment of D&C 87. However, contra some critics (e.g., Trent Horn; Norman Geisler), it was not teaching that the Civil War itself would spread all over the world and be the beginning of a worldwide conflict.

 

For more on D&C 87 and related issues, see:

 

Resources on Joseph Smith’s Prophecies