Feasibility of an Independent Mormon Nation

Again very interesting points.

I think though the important thing to remember is the distrust Moromonism was held by the Brits (the whole multiple wives things really freaked us out!). Unless the USA remains por-salvery then the UK will back the USA. My personal view is if the USA stays pro-slave then the empire would be neutral between the two.

The best hope for Morom survival is not British intervention (or Spanish or whoever) but the USA not expanding to the West. NOw THERE is a challenge!

Alratan said:
If the US is significantly less powerful (as required for this scenario anyway), then US-British relations could be far worse, as keeping the US down requires long term intervention. If the US were to remain strongly pro-slavery, say, if it was lacking New England and the north east states inland from there, then the jugement might be made closer.

The enemy in question could also be the Spanish/Mexicans. If the British take and hold New Orleans they will be contending with them over Florida and the Texas borders, and if they hold the West coast down to the 42nd (as is likely if they have New Orleans), then they will be needing forces in that theatre, which is a long way from Britain before the canal.

The third option is, as I mention above, a weaker US and a weak Mexico, in which case the Mormons may be able to sit in a Deserat equivilent in northern California between a Kingdom of Columbia stretching down to the 42nd parallel along the Rockies and a Mexican southern California, being a rather distasteful backwater that no-one with the ability to do so cares to spend the money to expunge.

They would need a following wind in any case, and would probably need to do a lot of unpleasant things (exterminating the men of the local natives and forcibly incorporating their women, and the like), but given their birth rate, if they could hold on in relative obscurity for 30 or 40 years, and then discover the gold when they had the population to exploit it, they might be able to do OK.
 
The US not expanding to the West is much less of a challange than you'd think- there were alot of opponents to Manifest Destiny, including Abraham Lincoln.
 

Straha

Banned
If you don't want the US owning the west coast have it go dingo during the whole perido when oregon was an issue. With the precedent of being beaten by the brits the US wouldn't attempt anything against mexico so texas remains independent.
 
Accually the Mornoms had very good relations with the surrounding tribes, till the Mormans tried to pin the Pine Meadow Massacare [???] on the Indians.

The Mormans areforced out of Nauvoo, earilier. theu help Texas in 1838, and recives the Salt lakeValley Basin in Fee Sovergn during the Treaty.

Following the ACW the fed Government starts giving away land to the Railroads, till Deseret reminds them, that the US doesn't own the land.

Deseret point out that it's soverignty is written into a treaty that the US has accepted for 30 years.

?Does the US go to war as a blantant Land Grab? ?and how would Europe react?
 
US goes for blatant land grab in the middle of no where, no on Europe knows about it untill its all over. Ah the Americans massacred another minor group of people who got in their way... hardly front page news. A few military attaches might observe the various tactics used by both sides (which might prove some help to the British when they take on the Boers for example) but are generally apathetic to their plight.

At most a few socialists, anarchists etc might write about the evils of expanding empires/states but people in power rate the destruction of a deviant sect akin to the plight of the natives. An evil, but they would probably do exactly the same if they were in the American shoes. Actually theres probably a good chunk of people who seriously consider the Mormons as an evil abhorrent group and so their elimination entirely justified.

As for stopping the US expanding west.. the only way to do that is have a viable state to the west which can oppose their expansion. Moving west may be opposed from the top, but with growing population and effectively free land, people are going to inevitably head west regardless of whether they are supported or not.

Obviously it would be slower without government support, but people on the ground won't draw some invisible line and refuse to cross it if it serves their interests to do otherwise. The only way would be granting some swathe of land as a native reservation and refusing to intervene militarilly if the natives massacre any settlers who stray into that zone. But thats never going to be politically viable. By the ACW the US is far too powerful to be stopped by some small non-industrialised state.
 
If you have the timeline not diverge until the Mormons are established in Utah, then I would go with the most likely scenario being CSA victory in the ACW, possibly with Texas staying independent. If Texas were to somehow grab up the Arizona and New Mexico territories, (possibly as part of a conflict that starts over Oklahoma), then you wouldn't have Utah land-locked by the USA anymore, and Deseret might establish a good relationship with Texas.

This chain of events would certainly fit with the aforementioned "less powerful USA" requirement. I'm actually using a chain of events like this as part of developing yet another Balkanized North America timeline. So the TL already has 2 of the 3 unofficial requirements for a balkanized NA timeline, which we all know are:

1) Victorious CSA
2) Independent Deseret
3) Airships

So I guess I'll have to merge some Zeppelin action in there, too. That should be interesting, since from the beginning I've been developing the TL with the purpose of setting up a few American Theatres of Operations in WWII.
 
Someone else comes in and clears out the mormons. 19th century mormonism was a genuinely odd religion withp olygamy and not the current version. That and the 19th century western world didn't have tolerance for "savages" and "deviants". Mormonism would be a historical footnote as deseret is burned to the ground.

That's a bigoted and ignorant view. The Mormons were more accepting of Native Americans than the USA.
 
Thread Necromancy to reply to the comments of a banned member? :rolleyes:

Several posts back from the latest post in the thread, at that.

There might be some reason to raise this thread from the dead, which is why I'm posting, but it seems there's not much more to say than has been said.
 

Zioneer

Banned
Well, as a Mormon, I think that an independent Nation of Deseret could survive. Just barely, but from most sources I've seen, an awful lot of people praised the Saints for their skill at agriculture, architecture, irrigation, and other such needed things.

So they had skill enough to barely survive. If needed, they could probably build up relations with other nations to get necessary supplies.

Perhaps if the splinter churches stayed with the main church, and relations with the Indians were better, there could be an independent Deseret. Perhaps not until the present day, but for a few decades, they could likely survive.
 

Lusitania

Donor
The issue is if the mormons stay in their current location and get complete surrounded by the United States, I do not think so but lets say that California becomes an independent state then it might have worked.

Lets say Texas goes the way it did but Mexico keeps Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico, California with its gold goes indenpendent and now the Mormons have some neighbours they can deal with and survive.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
That's a bigoted and ignorant view. The Mormons were more accepting of Native Americans than the USA.


Wait...

You pried open the coffin of a thread that had been dead since 2006 to sent a comment to a member who's been banned since September of 2006?

Don't do that!

Calbear in Mod mode.
 
The Mormons do have a chance:

If they stay in Utah then there rulers (US, Uber Mexico, California, whatnot) are busy with something else (World War, Civil War, ect) for a chance to become Indipendent

If they go somewhere else (California has always been interesting to me) and have more resoureces (All that gold) then they could possibly get there Indipendence by attracting International Aid


I once read somewhere that the Mormons actually were planning on going as far as they could (California) to set up their "promised land", but their leaders got tired of traveling and one day came out and said that they had reached their holy land. If the leaders had shown a little more restraint and gone on just a little farther, they would have made it to the west coast. How would a Mormon California look?
 
I once read somewhere that the Mormons actually were planning on going as far as they could (California) to set up their "promised land", but their leaders got tired of traveling and one day came out and said that they had reached their holy land. If the leaders had shown a little more restraint and gone on just a little farther, they would have made it to the west coast. How would a Mormon California look?

Like something begging to be overrun. Gold. Enough said.

Interesting influence on the state, though.
 

Zioneer

Banned
I once read somewhere that the Mormons actually were planning on going as far as they could (California) to set up their "promised land", but their leaders got tired of traveling and one day came out and said that they had reached their holy land. If the leaders had shown a little more restraint and gone on just a little farther, they would have made it to the west coast. How would a Mormon California look?

If I remember correctly, there were several church prophecies about the Mormons being "in the Rocky Mountains" or somesuch. And while of course they could be ignored, it seems that for a while they thought that only a Rocky Mountain state would be isolated enough to keep hostile groups away from the Mormons.

Plus, when gold was found anyway, the Mormons mostly stayed away from it (but not away from making a buck off of gold-seekers) and they'd probably do this in the ATL as well.
 
Feasibility? It honestly depends, but I'd think that if they had outside support from, say, the U.S. or Britain or somebody like that, then yes, it could perhaps survive alright{Hey, our old Aussie pal Jared managed to pull it off in DoD, didn't he? :D}
 
Well, I always thought it would be interesting to see a Mormon Filibuster somewhere in Latin America. Have the Mormons take over some place like Costa Rica. They could also gain more converts by being anti-slavery, attracting runaway slaves.
 
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