Now as regards the Mountain Meadows massacre, every Latter Day Saint
considers it on a parallel with the Haun’s Mill and the other massacres I have
named. Although many of the men in that company of emigrants were very insolent
and threatened what they would do when they got to California, and boasting of
the brutal deeds they were guilty of, in mobbing the Mormons in Mo. and Ill.,
it was no excuse for those who done the horrible deed.
No true Latter Day Saint would have imbrued his hands in their blood.
This was, and is now, the feelings of President B. Young, and all the
authorities of the Church, and every Latter Day Saint. I well remember when the
news reached us at Salt Lake, how every individual I conversed with condemned
it as a most barbarous and savage act. And those individuals who were suspected
of participating in the deed, were, and ever have been looked upon as murders,
and the guilty ones will have to atone for their act either in this life or the
next, “Well,” you may ask, “why were they not brought to justice at that time?”
You will remember that a hostile army were in our borders, for the avowed
purpose of annihilating the Mormons—in fact for the purpose of committing the
same like deed that was committed at the Mountain Meadows, and the whole
Territory were engaged in preparing to defend ourselves as best we could.
. . .
There is another thing that our enemies are making a great blow
about—that is Blood Atonement as they are pleased to call it. I would ask does
not the whole world believe in blood atonement, whether they be civilized or
uncivilized. Where is there a nation on the earth but what has incorporated in their
laws that the murderer must atone for the murder committed with his life. That
is what we believe, and as the scripture says, “He that sheddeth man’s blood by
man shall his blood be shed.” And furthermore we believe that there is no
forgiveness for a shedder of innocent blood in this world, neither the world to
come. No matter how much a priest may pray over them on the gallows—no matter
how much the culprit may profess to have received a forgiveness of his sin—no
matter how much he expected to soon be wafted into the presence of Jesus, he is
deceiving himself, he will wake up in hell having a clear consciousness of the
awful guilt resting upon him, and will learn that the blood of Christ makes no
atonement for his sin. That is what the Latter-Day Saints believe in regard to
blood atonement. What is there so dreadfully criminal in believing it. (Warren
Foote, Journal, c. 1879, in Saints, Stories, and Sources: Warren Foote, vol.
1 [Aspen Grove Books, 2016], 346, 347)
