William P. MacKinnon

WILLIAM P. MACKINNON {[email protected]} is an independent historian residing in Montecito, Santa Barbara County, California. He is a Fellow and Honorary Life Member of the Utah State Historical Society and, during 2010–11 was president of the Mormon History Association. Since 1987, MacKinnon has been a frequent contributor to Dialogue through articles, essays, and book reviews. He is now completing the second volume of his documentary history of the Utah War, At Sword’s Point, for the University of Oklahoma Press’s Arthur H. Clark imprint. During 1962–68 MacKinnon served in squadrons of the U.S. Air Force and New York Air National Guard, a distant cousin, if not collateral descendant, of Illinois’s Nauvoo Legion.

Articles

Brigham Young as Pastor: Compassion and Mercy During the Utah War, 1857–1858

Will I run from the sheep? No. Will I forsake the flock? No. . . . I want you to understand that if I am your earthly shepherd you must follow me, or else we shall be…

Move Over, Fortune “500” | John Heinerman and Anson Shupe, The Mormon Corporate Empire

When it comes to explaining economic matters, Americans have difficulty resisting conspiracy theories and are even more fascinated with their second cousin, the expose. Small wonder, then, that in a single week last July Fortune…

Loose in the Stacks: A Half-Century with the Utah War and Its Legacy

With the Utah War’s sesquicentennial commemoration now underway, it is appropriate to reexamine that campaign’s origins, conduct, significance, and historiography. This article’s purpose is to stimulate such probing. I hope to do so through the story of my own research and conclusions about the war over the past half-century—one-third of the period since President James Buchanan and Governor Brigham Young came into armed conflict during 1857-58.

“Who’s in Charge Here?”: Utah Expedition Command Ambiguity

Many Utahns may call the Utah War of 1857-58 “Johnston’s Army,” but the U.S. Army and most historians surely do not. It seems to me that this shorthand label for the war trivializes, personalizes, and localizes it, much as the term “Seward’s Folly” was used to deride the secretary of state’s 1867 push to purchase Alaska. By focusing on Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston—or at least on his name—this label’s users have, in effect, taken his Utah War leadership for granted.” They should not . . .

Letters to the Editor

Ross C. Anderson, A Call for Compassion
John-Charles Duffy, Clarifying My Own Stance
Cheryl L. Bruno, Asherah Alert
Kevin L. Barney, Kevin Barney Responds
William P. MacKinnon, Rest of the Story

Road Trip: The Strange Travels of Mark Sanford and Brigham Young

In the backwash from the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, scandals at virtually all levels of government have plagued the American political landscape. Governors have been especially prominent in the media-intensive cavalcade of investigations, confessions, promises of redemption, and resignations. Illinois faces the prospect of having consecutive governors occupying the state penitentiary simultaneously. In New York, peccadillos atop the executive branch have come with such stunning rapidity that as many as six people may end up serving as the Empire State’s governor and lieutenant governor in less than two years.

Pomp, Circumstance, and Controversy | Richard E. Bennett, Susan Easton Black, and Donald Q. Cannon, The Nauvoo Legion in Illinois: A History of the Mormon Militia, 1841–1846

From its gorgeous dust jacket to its prosaic index, this valuable book provides narrative history, data compilations, and unexploited documents shedding light on one of the most unusual, controversial organizations of antebellum American military his tory, the short-lived Nauvoo Legion of Hancock County, Illinois. In the process, the authors add to our understanding of the violent forces that led to the 1844 assassinations of Joseph and Hyrum Smith as well as the subsequent westbound Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, then one of the largest cities in Illinois.