By Daniel J. Herman
5-7-12
Daniel J. Herman is professor of History at Central Washington University. He is author of Hunting and the American Imagination (2001) and Hell on the Range: A Story of Honor, Conscience, and the American West (2010). A sequel to the latter book, Rim Country Exodus: A Story of Conquest, Renewal, and Race in the Making, will be released by University of Arizona Press in October 2012. This article is a condensed version of a longer piece which appeared in the April edition of Common-place.

In 1886, Miles Park Romney, great-grandfather to Mitt Romney, found himself giving three cheers to the Mexican flag and delivering a patriotic oration on Benito Juarez, hero of Mexico during its struggle against French occupation. Romney—who had spent several years in Britain as an LDS missionary, had helped Brigham Young colonize southern Utah, then helped colonize Arizona in the early 1880s—had been uprooted yet again. Having fled Arizona to escape prosecution for illegal cohabitation, he now sought to establish Mexican refuges for his fellow polygamists.

Miles Romney’s flight—in fact his several flights—is old history. It is unlikely—despite the fears of Senator Orrin Hatch—that Democrats will use the “outlandish” deeds of long-dead Mormons to strike blows at Mitt in the presidential election. Yet the story of Miles Romney is far from irrelevant; it tells us much about modern Mormons and about Mitt Romney in particular.

From Isolation to Acceptance

When Miles Romney had helped colonize Arizona, Mormons still sought isolation from other Americans. Though Mormon leaders viewed the U.S. Constitution as something sacred, they prophesied that the U.S. would dissolve in a second civil war. Though they had given up on making their vast Western realm—“Deseret”—into a separate nation, they counseled Mormons to avoid interacting with outsiders. When Mormons quarreled with other Mormons, they were told to take their case to ecclesiastical courts. When Mormons sold land, they were told to sell to other Mormons. When Mormons bought manufactured goods, they bought them from a Mormon cooperative.

Mormon isolationism led Miles Romney to publish articles in his 1880s Arizona newspaper, The Orion Era, in undecipherable script, perhaps some version of the Mormon alphabet that Brigham Young sought to create. Though Mormon scripture inveighed against “secret combinations”—conspiracies and cabals—Mormons were drawn to secrecy. The “mission” to colonize remote parts of Arizona, and then Mexico, was part of that pattern.

More: http://hnn.us/articles/how-mormon-history-has-shaped-mitt-romney