Sellers Note: These books are used. We try to ensure that they are in reasonable condition. Some may have dust jackets, others may not and covers may vary depending on the edition. There may be notations, etc. by previous readers. All sales of used books are final.
Shipping Deal: For a shipping deal check out our shipping policy page.
Author: Brigham Young, Dean Jesse Editor
About Product:
Convinced that time would eventually assign him his rightful place in history, Brigham Young studiously ignored the malicious stories that were circulated about himself.
“I am often made aware,” he once wrote Jefferson Davis, “of the utter uselessness, and folly of seeking to vindicate my character from such foul aspersions as are occasionally raised against me; from the simple fact, that … when the vile slander is fairly refuted, and truth appears in the most incontestable manner, it is permitted to lie quietly upon the shelf to slumber the sleep of death.”1
The mountain of false reports made against Brigham Young have been tenaciously quarried and in many cases have served as the main source of information for the biographer. Consequently, the truth about Brigham Young is still largely “upon the shelf,” so to speak, because biographers have not sought an understanding of him in the right places.
“The letters of a person, especially of one whose business has been chiefly transacted by letters, form the only full and genuine journal of his life,” said Thomas Jefferson. Such is much of the case with Brigham Young. The voluminous correspondence that comprises a weighty part of the Brigham Young papers in the archives of the Church presents a view unsurpassed in its detail of his life. These letters vividly illuminate the character of the man who Samuel Eliot Morison has described as “among the most successful commonwealth builders of the English-speaking world.”
A select group of letters, chosen from among the countless papers of state and ecclesiastical importance, are those he wrote to members of his family. They reveal a dimension of his life, as husband and father, that has largely remained hidden from view in popular studies of him.