Question on Civil War & Utah

[PHO127]

I spent a couple of months in Utah during the Winter Olympics. While I was there I learned quite a bit about the Mormons and their settling of Utah but very little was said about involvement in the Civil War. There is a very large section of the main cemetery devoted to Civil War soldiers. Can any one tell me about Utah and the Civil War?

[Andy]

Don?t have any stats or the like, just a family story. After the war was over Great Grandpa John who had been part of the Grand Army of the Republic went to Utah. He had met a man who he became friends with who was a Mormon from Utah. The guy lost a leg and was in the hospital for quite a while.
With the war over, my ancestor helped the legless guy get back to Utah. Once there old John saw there were a few guys with lots of lonely wives and thought it would be only friendly to help with the loneliness. Once they got a posse together he left and went back to Maine.
In the 1860s Utah wanted to obtain statehood. The territory government was run by the church and it?s leaders no doubt would have felt they would get points for sending lots of men to fight for the Union. Lots of cemeteries seem like the predictable result.

Stay healthy,
Andy

[usmcsgt65]

Utah did not send any organized units to the war (for either side). Individuals could go the Mormon leadership was not that friendly with the United States (North or South). Right after the Mexican-American War, there was the Mormon War. Mormons wanted to be left alone, but the USA wanted them to follow what everybody else was doing. Utah becomes a state in 1890, after the made a state law that outlawed plura-marrigages, and the USA agreed that Brigham Young would be the 1st governor. The Civil War had nothing to do with statehood. Utah was always a free territory.