Professor Peter Coviello

I think that's right.

Though, what will be of real consequence for the Mormons, only one way to think about the

Civil War is as a clarifying contest over the extent and meaning of state sovereignty as opposed to federal sovereignty.

And of course, federal sovereignty wins, extremely wins with an enormous and unpredicted body count.

So on the one hand, the Mormons survived triumphantly.

They survived the federal incursion of 1857, 1858.

And

And they return to Salt Lake with a kind of triumphal look at us.

On the other hand, what happens between 1866 and 1888 and 1890?

A constant, constant, constant legal undermining of the conditions of existence of the Mormons, which is to say a series of acts, one after another, after another, after another, that criminalize polygamy.

that essentially make practicing the religion, practicing Prisley, seditious and make all but impossible the continued existence of the Mormons inside the federal fold.

Yeah, and that's... So the Mormons are populist and they have allies back East and they indeed have lobbyists and stuff like that.

And there's a great... I've forgotten the man's name, but there's a... Their lobbyist in DC says something like, you know, I've been doing this a long time and I've never seen anything like it.

Back when...

When there were states in the South determined to hold on to slavery, there were many thousands of people willing to support them.

Indeed, at the North, there were many thousands of people to support them.

You are a body of 3,000 or 4,000 people, and the 50 millions of the United States have decided polygamy will be exterminated.

And the word he uses is exterminated.

And what he doesn't have to say is, and if it's not, you will be.

Of course, incredible decimation of Native peoples in the West.