Volume 4 down, 2 left

I finished volume 4 of a Comprehensive History of the Church. Mom had mentioned interest in the books. You can see from this link that it's pretty cheap to get the set.

This book mostly covered the period of time from 1851-1857, though it covered a few things later than this, as well. A large portion was devoted to the Utah War, which I knew almost nothing about. It turns out that false reports from bad federal officials built up public resentment against the church to the point where the president, Buchanan, felt that it was politically smart to send an army to Utah without telling anyone in Utah or many of the people in the army the purpose of the army going to Utah. It turned out to be a really bad idea. The church felt that it was largely an army sent to destroy their religion and opposed it as such. While there were no casualties from fighting between the two forces, a number of deaths were attributed to the situation created by the "war". This was also the time period during which the Mountain Meadows Massacre took place. It was all pretty interesting and I'm excited to continue with volume 5 and then 6.