The Mormon Battalion

B. H. Roberts

Jul 2015 · Latter-day Strengths

About this ebook

On July 16, 1846 some 543 latter-day saints volunteered to enlist to aid the U.S. campaign against Mexico.  This group of saints was known as the Mormon Battalion, and earned a place in the history of the West.  During its 2,000 mile march its men cleared a wagon road from Santa Fe to San Diego and helped secure California as United States territory. Members of the Battalion helped preserve a feeble peace in southern California before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended hostilities.

They established a wagon road between the Gila and the Rio Grande, which influenced the U.S. government to make the Gadsden Purchase. They opened wagon roads that linked California with Salt Lake City via Carson and Cajon passes.

A former member of the Battalion was arguably given credit for the discovery of gold in California, while others eventually participated in the gold rush and helped stimulate economic development in the Great Basin.

These former LDS soldiers ultimately received favorable recognition both from their military commanders and from other non-Mormons for their industriousness and loyalty.  And through it all, never fought a battle. 

About the author

Brigham Henry Roberts was born in 1857 in Wolverhampton, England, of itinerant and soon separated parents. His convert mother immigrated to Zion when he was five years old, leaving him in the care of foster parents. When he was ten he too reached Utah, having walked nearly all the way across the plains.  Once in Utah he moved from one mining camp to another, remaining illiterate until his mid-teens. His only formal schooling was one year at the University of Deseret, but added considerable self-education and became one of the most articulate and eloquent orators and writers in the Church’s history.

Roberts edited and published the seven-volume 4,500 page “documentary” History of the Church also known as History of Joseph Smith. Later Roberts authored and published the 3,400-page six-volume history of the first century of the Church, known as A Comprehensive History of the Church.  In addition he authored the three-volume New Witnesses for God, which he regarded as “the fullest treatise on the Book of Mormon yet published.” This, he said in retrospect, was his “finest work.” He authored, in addition, more than fifty tracts, articles, and pamphlets revolving around the Book of Mormon, its origins, its content, its meaning, its purposes, and its power as a sacred document.

Robert’s multi-volume work made B. H. Roberts the foremost Latter-day Saint historian of the first century of the Church’s existence.

Roberts became a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1888 at the age of 31.  He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1898 but was not allowed to take his seat because of the controversy over his involvement in polygamy.

Beyond the age of 60 he was a chaplain in America and France for Utah Soldiers serving in World War I during 1917-1918.