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Utah was a slave state from 1850 until 1863 (when Lincoln outlawed slavery in all U.S. states and territories). A number of Mormons, including at least one Mormon apostle, owned black slaves during this time.

Brigham Young also said that a white man who married a Negro woman should be "killed on the spot" along with their children, and that was God's Law and would always be so.

Slaves were bought and sold in Utah Territory with the approval of Brigham Young. "By 1850 there were approximately sixty blacks residing in the Utah Territory. The majority were slaves living in Salt Lake, Davis, and Utah counties."

Brigham Young on Slavery Interviewed by Horace Greeley for NY Tribune article Aug 20, 1859:

H. G.-What is the position of your church with respect to slavery?

B. Y.-We consider it of divine institution, and not to be abolished until the curse pronounced on Ham shall have been removed from his descendants.

H. G.-Are any slaves now held in this territory?

B. Y.-There are.

H. G.-Do your territorial laws uphold slavery?

B. Y.-Those laws are printed-you can read for yourself. If slaves are brought here by those who owned them in the states, we do not favor their escape from the service of those owners.

More from the Mormon newspaper Messenger and Advocate:

"Where can be the common sense of any wishing to see the slaves of the south set at liberty,... Such a thing could not take place without corrupting all civil and wholesome society, of both the north and the south! Let the BLACKS of the south be free, and our community is overrun with paupers, and a reckless mass of human beings, uncultivated, untaught and unaccustomed to provide for themselves the necessaries of life- endangering the chastity of every female who might by chance be found in our streets-our prisons filled with convicts, and the HANG-MAN WEARIED with executing the functions of his office! This must unavoidably be the case, every rational man must admit, who has ever travelled in the slave states, or we must open our houses unfold our arms, and bid these DEGRADED AND DEGRADING sons of Canaan, a hear[t]y welcome and a free admittance to all we possess! A society of this nature, to us, is so intolerably DEGRADING, that the bare reflection causes our feelings to recoil, and our hearts to revolt....the project of EMANSIPATION IS DESTRUCTIVE TO OUR GOVERNMENT, and the notion of amalgamation is devilish!- And insensible to feeling must be the heart, and low indeed must be the mind, that would consent for a moment, to see his fair daughter, his sister, or perhaps, his bosom companion, in the embrace of a NEGRO!...
(Messenger and Advocate, Vol. 2, pp. 299-301)
Brigham Young states that slavery is a divine institution:

"Ham will continue to be servant of servants, as the Lord decreed, until the curse is removed. WILL THE PRESENT STRUGGLE FREE THE SLAVE? NO; but they are now wasting away the black race by thousands.... "Treat the slaves kindly and let them live, for HAM MUST BE THE SERVANT OF SERVANTS UNTIL THE CURSE IS REMOVED. Can you destroy the decrees of the Almighty? YOU CANNOT. Yet our Christian brethren think that they are going to overthrow the sentence of the Almighty upon the seed of Ham. THEY CANNOT DO THAT, though they may kill them by thousands and tens of thousands."
(Millennial Star, Vol. 25, page 787; also published in Journal of Discourses, Vol. 10, page 250)


YES...I think Mormons should know their history, and Mormon youth too! Because the Church is hiding it from them.

You write: "Brigham Young states that slavery is a divine institution"

Well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bible_and_slavery

OK, and so he was not infallible... meaning: the curse was eventually lifted. So what?

He was acting not out of revenge, but out of faith.

Besides...


Why are you singling out the Mormons of the 19th Century?


This is a complex issue. And as horrible as we all agree it is, slavery (back then), was fueled by economic prerogatives. In fact, Africans enslaved their own kind and sold them. And those who bought the African Slaves (back then) did not necessarily do so because they were Africans. They could have been ... Chinese ... or ... French ... for all we know!

Slavery was a fact of life... and its existence (to begin with) harks back to reincarnation: for all we know, those who purchased African Slaves might have reincarnated as African Slaves themselves in the USA where they had to be subjected to horrific treatment by "slave owners" who COULD and SHOULD have treated them kindly. But they didn't.

And you call yourself a Daheshist: You of all people should know that (according to Daheshist Thinking) "we" punish ourselves. In other words, every one of is linked to higher and lower dimensions via our Spiritual Fluids. Every good action, causes a Spiritual Fluid to rise towards the lofty realms. And the opposite is true. And when our Spiritual Fluids are sent to the lower realms, they want to punish us by sending us "vibes" ... thus "tempting" us to do the wrong thing... why? So that we fall... and send more "Spiritual Fluids" down their way.

In essence, WE punish ourselves. Again, I am reminding you of what you should already know.

So, and back to our scenario: The Slave Owners were given an opportunity to treat their slaves as "employees" who had (let's say) "infinite debt" (I know I am a SLAVE to my Credit Card company... ). But, they messed up. They failed the test.

Who suffered in this case?

Well, it is the Former Slave Trafficker , now reincarnated as a Slave himself... and who was born in a situation were his "fate" is in the hands of (now) a Slave Owner (who, for all we know) could have been a slave himself...

Anyway, you get the picture... I hope....

Again, that's an example. For all we know, the person who reincarnated as a slave received a "Promotion"... in other words, his or her amalgam of "Spiritual Fluids" received permission to elevate themselves (in this subsequent reincarnation) as "Slaves"...

Oh, sure, it's easy to point and say "that's still horrible."

Well, of course it is. And many people point the finger at the Creator.

But who knows what truths lie behind this dimension and reasons behind why things are the way they are...

In any case, and back to your post:

EVERYBODY owned slaves in those days. Even the founding fathers of this great Nation!

Things take time to fix. And this issue of Slavery couldn't be fixed in one Century, or two ... or even 10 centuries. We had to wait until all the "players" came together and created a nation where, finally, Slavery would be deemed immoral.

Things take time. In the old Testament, do don't see "Turn the other cheek."

You know why? Because, already, "an eye for an eye" was a BIG STRETCH for the people of the day.

Slavery, despite how horrible it is, and like anything horrible that befalls a person living on Earth, doesn't just happen randomly. In other words, and if you factor-in reincarnation, there is a reason to everything.

Still, that does not preclude the need to try and change for the better.

But to look back and single out the Mormons and condemn what was (back then) even allowed in the Bible?

That is not right.

For your information: Doctor Dahesh wrote that the DUTY of a DAHESHIST is to leave people alone when it comes to their belief system. He even said that one should not even interfere with the person who (according to their culture and Mythology) worships the Stone.

What you are doing here is forcing your beliefs on others and are (in essence, and I hope you are a fan of Star Trek) violating the "Prime Directive."

It doesn't get much plainer than The First Presidency saying 'a direct commandment from The Lord' on no Priesthood. A short step to 'ownership' of these 'lesser beings'. Kind of like the comparison between grabbing another wife and buying another cow.

August 17, 1949

The attitude of the Church with reference to Negroes remains as it has always stood. It is not a matter of the declaration of a policy but of direct commandment from the Lord, on which is founded the doctrine of the Church from the days of its organization, to the effect that Negroes may become members of the Church but that they are not entitled to the priesthood at the present time. The prophets of the Lord have made several statements as to the operation of the principle. President Brigham Young said: “Why are so many of the inhabitants of the earth cursed with a skin of blackness? It comes in consequence of their fathers rejecting the power of the holy priesthood, and the law of God. They will go down to death. And when all the rest of the children have received their blessings in the holy priesthood, then that curse will be removed from the seed of Cain, and they will then come up and possess the priesthood, and receive all the blessings which we now are entitled to.”
President Wilford Woodruff made the following statement: “The day will come when all that race will be redeemed and possess all the blessings which we now have.”
The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind, namely, that the conduct of spirits in the premortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality and that while the details of this principle have not been made known, the mortality is a privilege that is given to those who maintain their first estate; and that the worth of the privilege is so great that spirits are willing to come to earth and take on bodies no matter what the handicap may be as to the kind of bodies they are to secure; and that among the handicaps, failure of the right to enjoy in mortality the blessings of the priesthood is a handicap which spirits are willing to assume in order that they might come to earth. Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the priesthood by the Negroes.
The First Presidency
---

“The position of the Church regarding the Negro may be understood when another doctrine of the Church is kept in mind; namely, that the conduct of spirits in the pre-mortal existence has some determining effect upon the conditions and circumstances under which these spirits take on mortality, and that while the details of the principle have not been made known, the principle itself indicates that the coming to this earth and taking on mortality is a privilege that is given to those who maintain their first estate; and that the worth of the principle is so great that spirits are willing to come to earth and take on bodies no matter what the handicap may be as to the kind of bodies they are to secure; and that among the handicaps, failure of the right to enjoy in mortality the blessings of the priesthood, is a handicap which spirits are willing to assume in order that they might come to earth. Under this principle there is no injustice whatsoever involved in this deprivation as to the holding of the Priesthood by Negroes” (Official statement of the First Presidency to BYU President Ernest L. Wilkinson, dated August 17, 1951, quoted in Hyrum L. Andrus, Doctrinal Commentary on the Pearl of Great Price, 1967, pp.406- 407).

This is how it was explained to me by the Office of the First Presidency:

*When a Living Prophet says Negroes are cursed Cainites, that IS the doctrine of the Church.

*When that Living Prophet dies, he becomes a Dead Prophet.

*When the next Living Prophet says Negroes are NOT cursed and NOT Cainites, and never have been, then THAT is the doctrine of the Church.

*If a Living Prophet says the Dead Prophets expressing their own opinions, and it was never Church Doctrine, then they were expressing their own opinions, and it was NEVER Church doctrine!

In other words, a "Living Prophet" is only infallible when he is alive. When he is dead, his doctrines can be changed and called "speculations".

Yes, that was how it was explained to me.