Jedediah M. Grant was, observed a New York Times reporter, “a tall, thin, repulsive looking man, of acute, vigorous intellect, a thorough-paced scoundrel and the most essential blackguard in the pulpit.”1 Mormon apostate Fanny Stenhouse said he was “an enthusiast of the wildest kind; a man without education or mental discipline of any description.”2 Even more recently, competent scholars such as Norman Furniss, though more somber in their judgment, have viewed Jedediah Grant in similar terms. Furniss called Grant “a fearless, brawling, and loose-tongued fighter,” a man that had an “excitable nature” and was “uncontrollable.”3
Conversely, Mormon apologists have found little about Jedediah that was undesirable. Andrew Jenson admitted that Grant was possessed by burning zeal but maintained that it was a zeal that was always governed by “God-given intelligence.”4 Orson F. Whitney [84] observed that he was a righteous crusader, an individual who was inspired in his course of action.5 B. H. Roberts, while conceding that Grant made some extreme utterances, did little to tarnish Jedediah’s image.6
Current Mormon scholars have found Grant to be an enigma. While researchers have done much to arrive at balanced judgments and dismiss much of the sensationalism surrounding Jedediah’s contemporaries such as Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, little has been done with Grant. This is due mainly to a lack of primary source material on his life. Grant’s prevailing image probably makes some people reluctant to research him further. His coarse invective, his threatening rhetoric, together with a seeming lack of information which would exhibit more positive aspects of character, have made him appear to be a one-dimensional fanatic. Jedediah Morgan Grant, the driving force behind the Reformation, has seemed irrational and unstable.
Recent research has revised former assessments of Grant.7 The frenzied sermons and fervent warnings are still there, of course, but there were calmer times too. Somewhat balancing his seemingly [85] irresponsible statements on blood atonement are tightly knit sermons on theology and well-argued apologetical tracts. It has been learned that underneath that calloused veneer was a man of some sensitivity, one who was especially affected by cruelty to children and animals. Far from being an embarrassment, Jedediah was more human than most had supposed.
Jedediah Morgan Grant was born in 1815 in Broome County, New York, the fourth son and sixth child of Joshua and Athalia Grant. His father was a shingle maker, and Jedediah, along with other family members, participated in this enterprise. Along the way he was able to gain a basic education. Like many other families the Grant family was anxious to find a more fertile and promising land base and therefore moved to Erie, Pennsylvania. While there in March 1833, they were taught about and baptized into the Mormon faith by Elders John F. Boynton and Evan M. Greene. Jedediah’s entire family eventually became converted to the Church and in that same year moved to Chagrin, Ohio, five miles from Mormon headquarters at Kirtland.
In Ohio Jedediah was to have experiences that would bind his future with that of the Latter-day Saints. Shortly after their arrival in 1833, Jedediah’s sister Caroline married William Smith, the brother of the Prophet Joseph. Some six months later Jedediah accompanied the Prophet, along with about two hundred others, to Missouri where they hoped to redeem Mormon lands. While the accompanying hardships and failure to redeem Zion caused many of the Saints to weaken and apostatize, they also served to provide a type of fellowshipping experience which would forever connect individuals like [86] Grant with the cause of Mormonism. In 1835, nineteen-year-old Jedediah served a proselyting mission to the state of New York. In 1836, Grant returned to Ohio where he witnessed the supernatural manifestations that accompanied the dedication of the Kirtland Temple.
Firmly convinced that God was directing the destiny of the Latter-day Saints, Grant spent the better part of the next ten years in the mission field. He longed to spread the gospel “until its sacred influence shall be felt by all, and the knowledge of God cover the earth as the waters do the sea.”8 Grant initially traveled eastward where he taught the gospel in New York and New Jersey, but he eventually ended up in North Carolina.
It was during Grant’s mission to the Southern states that he acquired a reputation of being an excellent speaker and debater.9 Mary G. Judd, Grant’s sympathetic biographer, claims that he became “an adroit scriptorian and keen logician.”10 Whatever his competence, there arose a bundle of stories from his Southern missionary experience attesting to Jedediah’s oratorical abilities. Perhaps the most well-known incident was recounted by Theodore Lewis. It seems that Grant once stated that he never really prepared a talk. In view of his seemingly organized and calculating sermons, this [87] statement was doubted by some, and it was proposed to test its veracity by assigning Grant his text just before he was to give his next speech. Jedediah’s next scheduled oration happened to be at Jeffersonville, North Carolina. The meeting was no sooner opened when a clerk stepped forward and gave the paper that was to contain the assigned text to Grant. To Grant’s surprise the paper was blank. Obviously it was an attempt to befuddle the young Mormon. Jedediah, however, maintained his composure and launched on a remorselessly logical critique of sectarian religion. According to tradition, John Floyd (who later became United States Secretary of War) was so impressed with Grant’s sermon that he convinced the congregation to take up a collection to ensure that the Mormon preacher no longer had to preach in such tattered apparel.11
While this story has likely been embellished through the years, it is probably true that Grant was a persuasive orator. Certainly he exhibited, if in embryonic form, characteristics on his mission which when more fully developed would enable him to carry out effectively his role as Brigham’s sledgehammer. He liked to debate, and he enjoyed speaking before large groups. He seemed happiest when engaged in a battle against an enemy, and he probably received satisfaction from his ability to move people to observable emotional heights.
Jedediah left the South in 1842 and rejoined the main body of Mormons at Nauvoo. Here his rising stature was evidenced by his [88] position on the stand with other Mormon leaders and his subsequent assignment to direct the branch at Philadelphia. Initially his major responsibility in Pennsylvania was to collect funds for the construction of the temple in Nauvoo, but after the Prophet’s death in June 1844, Grant found himself spending most of his time trying to keep peace among the factionalized Saints. In an effort to convince others that the Twelve were the logical successors to their martyred Prophet, Grant published a polemical work against Sidney Rigdon, then a leading aspirant for the prophetic mantle.12 Brigham Young was understandably pleased with Jedediah’s efforts.13
Grant, his wife Caroline, and a newly born daughter named Caddie left the East and returned to Nauvoo in the fall of 1845. There the Saints were hurriedly making preparations to leave the city and journey westward. Grant and his wife were among those who received their endowments prior to leaving the beleaguered city. Some ten days earlier he had been ordained to the First Council of Seventy. It is obvious by this time that Brigham Young held Grant’s leadership abilities in high esteem. In addition to his responsibilities associated with his calling as a seventy, Grant was appointed a captain over the Fourteenth Hundred (pioneer companies were divided into groups of one hundred). When the Mormons wintered in Nebraska, [89] Grant became part of the municipal council and became an ambassador to the Indians in the area. Some weeks later the Twelve sent Jedediah eastward again, this time to confer with members of the Polk administration concerning the welfare of the Saints.14 For several weeks, Grant worked with Thomas Kane, a long-time Mormon sympathizer to procure federal permission for the Saints to stay on Indian land.
Grant returned to the Mormon settlements in June 1847, and within weeks was leading his group westward to the Great Basin. During the trek his second child, Margaret, who was born during his last trip to the East, died near Independence Rock.15 Tragedy was compounded when Caroline died near the present site of Evanston, Wyoming.16 Though he was heartbroken, Grant’s faith never wavered. He had cast his lot with Mormonism, and he would remain inextricably connected with its destiny. Later Jedediah received spiritual confirmation that his wife and daughter were in paradise.17
Once in the valley, Jedediah became involved with a multitude of tasks. He had the responsibility of raising daughter Caddie, along with preaching duties. Often Grant accompanied the First Presidency on their travels. In February 1849, Grant married Susan Noble, a seventeen-year-old who had helped care for his family on the trek [90] westward.18 Shortly afterward he married Rosetta Robinson, thus becoming a polygamist like many other Mormon leaders.19 Jedediah was active in politics and was also appointed brigadier general in the Nauvoo Legion.
These duties were shelved temporarily when Grant left for St. Louis in 1849 to coordinate the Perpetual Emigrating Fund. One year later he was home again and heavily involved in local affairs. Jedediah took an active role in organizing the government and at age thirty-four was appointed mayor.20 In addition to his political responsibilities Grant traveled and preached as a General Authority. It was a busy time. It could be no other way with Grant.
Jedediah’s immersion into local affairs was interrupted one last time with a call to go eastward in 1852 and help Elder Ezra Taft Benson supervise the Mormon migration of that year. The assignment was changed, however, when the “runaway” officials returned to Washington and issued allegations concerning rampant civil disorder in Utah Territory. Jedediah immediately left for Washington to help answer the charges of Brocchus and Harris.21 The mercurial Grant wanted to jump headlong into the fray, but he was stifled when Utah [91] delegate John Bernhisel preferred to take a cautious approach. Bernhisel advised Grant not even to make his presence known in the city. Frustrated, Grant left for Philadelphia to talk with Colonel Kane about the charges leveled at the Mormons. There he took upon himself the delicate task of telling Kane that the Mormons really were practicing polygamy. Some weeks later Grant wrote a series of three letters, the first of which was published in the New York Herald, defending the Saints against the charges leveled against them by the runaway officials. The letters, though long-winded and verbose and undoubtedly influenced by Colonel Kane, demonstrated that Grant was capable of systematic thinking.22
Arriving home in August, 1852, Grant found himself in a unique situation. At age thirty-seven he had run out of enemies to fight. Ever since his conversion to Mormonism Jedediah had been feuding with anyone who contested the Kingdom. He had successfully met the challenges of Baptists on his mission, Missourians on Zion’s Camp march, disgruntled Saints in Philadelphia, and vindictive federal officials in Washington. Understandably, then, when he returned home he focused his attention on the Mormon people. He became vexed at their inability to keep the commandments of God.
On March 12, 1854, Grant told the people what should be done with covenant breakers who were polluting the community’s atmosphere and making it difficult for God to fulfill his promises to his people. Using the Old Testament as his source, Jedediah talked longingly of [92] the time when the Saints would put to death those who transgressed the laws of God. “The more spirit of God I had,” remarked Grant, “the more I should strive to save your soul by spilling your blood, when you had committed sins that could not be remitted by baptism.”23
While Jedediah’s advocacy of blood atonement probably caused some stir among the Latter-day Saint community, it certainly did not affect Brigham Young’s estimation of him. One month later at April conference, Grant became a member of the First Presidency.24 At age thirty-eight Jedediah had risen to the highest quorum of the Church. Undoubtedly Brigham felt that Jedediah’s past performance had qualified him for such a position. He had always carried out Church assignments with unbending zeal, he had never been disloyal to his Church superiors (an important quality in Brigham’s eyes), and he had demonstrated an ability to organize both men and movements. In addition, Brigham probably felt Grant’s bold rhetoric was needed to stir up some needed reform.
Certainly Grant was capable of pumping new vitality into the Mormon community. He was a proven orator, a firebrand who had on numerous occasions stirred congregations’ emotions. With his call to the First Presidency, his sermons and comments would be regarded by many as ecclesiastical decrees. Interestingly, Jedediah, undoubtedly aware of the influence he wielded, chose to increase the frequency of his [93] criticisms. He lamented that Church members were not sufficiently unified nor obedient to bring about God’s eternal purposes. He urged the Saints to stop beating animals and people, to quit supporting the licensing of grog shops, and to remember why they had initially come to the valley.25 Jedediah wanted the people to “be fired up with the Holy Ghost” and to “live their religion that they may converse with angels.”26
It soon became apparent, however, that some Mormons lacked either the initiative or the discipline to live Grant’s brand of Mormonism. In a pointed address given in Provo in July 1855, Jedediah urged local leaders to trim off certain branches for they were “dead weights to the great wheel.”27 “I would like to see the work of reformation commence,” observed Grant, “and continue until every man had to walk to the line, then we should have something like union.”28 Shortly afterward in American Fork he reiterated his desire for a pruning in Israel.29
Grant, however, was too busy to provide an organizational base for his reform sentiment. The needs of the harvest season, political matters, and ecclesiastical and domestic responsibilities [94] consumed much of his time. In 1855 Jedediah married three additional wives, assumed a fair amount of the burden of administering endowments to the Saints, and was appointed director of the Deseret Theological Institute. As always, Jedediah was anxious to assume the forefront in any venture which would build the kingdom.
But this diversity of obligations changed in 1856, the year the Reformation began. It all started uneventfully enough as Grant’s energies were devoted to seeing that the crop devastation of the previous summer and severity of the following winter had not left the Saints with empty food bins. He still found time to criticize the Saints for their sluggardly ways, and he did on one occasion threaten both Gentiles and Saints that the time had come to “cleanse the inside of the platter,”30 but it was not until Brigham sent him to Kaysville in September that Jedediah’s impatience with the collective lethargy of his fellow Saints reached the breaking point.
In Kaysville, a small settlement in Davis County, Jedediah preached reform; Brigham Young had instructed him to do that, and he did it with chilling effect. But Grant went beyond Young’s general instructions and decided that the local Saints needed to renew their covenants through rebaptism. Little did he realize that in taking such a course of action he would be instigating a brief but controversial era of Mormon history.
Brigham Young was obviously pleased with Grant’s efforts in Davis County. Eventually it was concluded that a system of rebaptism [95] and re-covenanting would be a worthwhile program for the entire Church membership to follow. Logically, Jedediah Grant was appointed to head it up. Joseph Young of the First Quorum of Seventy and later Apostles Wilford Woodruff and Franklin D. Richards became assistants.31
Grant’s role as appointed director amounted to delivering thunderbolt-like sermons at public meetings and regularly meeting with home missionaries, bishops, and teachers to instruct them in their responsibility. At all of these gatherings, public or private, Grant issued threats and warnings to recalcitrant Saints in an effort to remove their spiritual cobwebs.
Grant’s reform soon became an all-consuming passion, and according to most Mormon apologists, his overzealousness weakened his body, which eventually led to his death. Wilford Woodruff noted that Grant was last seen publicly on November 19. The next day he was taken sick, and he remained confined in his home until his death.32 He was administered to on numerous occasions, [96] but to no avail.33 On December 1, 1856, Grant died.34 In all probability he contracted typhoid fever and later pneumonia. Apostle Woodruff arrived at Grant’s house moments after his death and found his “wives and children weeping bitterly.” “As I gazed upon his clay tabernacle,” recorded Woodruff, “I felt to exclaim that a mighty man in Zion is laid low—A valiant man in Israel has fallen.”35
Grant’s death cast a pall of gloom over the Mormon commonwealth. A noble warrior had been lost. The reaction of David Stuart, a young Mormon missionary in California, to Jedediah’s demise was probably a typical one.
On December the first, I preached at Auburn, and felt grieved in spirit. I could not account for it, and that night I dreamed that I saw Jedediah Grant on the top of a high mountain tower driving off the enemies of souls single-handed. He was assailed on every hand by the legions of the Evil One; They assailed him with their teeth like mobbers who have surrounded their prey. I saw Elder Grant beat them back with superhuman power again, and again, until his strength failed him, and he fell overpowered, a martyr for righteousness.
After that dream I mourned in spirit for days feeling some great calamity had fallen on the Church, the same as I had when the Prophet and Patriarch were murdered in cold blood. Till the news finally came that Jedediah M. Grant was dead. I then told my companions, “He died a martyr, for he had [97] used every ounce of his vitality in defense of the truth.”36
Though Jedediah was dead, Mormon doctrine states that his labors would continue, if in a different sphere. The following verse, perhaps written by Bishop N. H. Felt, reflected the popular sentiment that Jedediah would continue to battle beyond the veil:
The Saints, the Saints, his only pride;
For them he lived, for them he died;
Their joys were his, their sorrows too;
He loved the Saints, they loved him too;
Unchanged in death with a Savior’s love,
He pleads their cause in the courts above.37
In those few short months before his death Jedediah M. Grant had as powerful an impact on the minds and spirits of Church members as any other Church leader. Despite his threatening rhetoric and intransigence, he was loved and respected by most Latter-day Saints. How odd it is, then, that later generations of Mormons have been vexed, if not embarrassed, by his behavior. A partial answer is that Jedediah’s contemporaries were aware of other dimensions of his character. They realized that he was not frothing all the time, that he gave speeches on a variety of topics, and that he had a special fondness for children.
Oddly enough, Grant sometimes did not like the people children grew up to be. He admitted that he “did not like old people so well [98] as some do,” but felt this deficiency was compensated for by his love for young people.38 Perhaps his most serious flaw was his inability to understand that many Saints, admittedly sluggardly in some aspects of gospel living, still had redeeming qualities. While acknowledging that Brigham had more mercy than he did, Jedediah did little to emulate his leader in this respect.39
It is probable, however, that Jedediah was unconcerned with either contemporary or future assessments of his character. Convinced that Latter-day Saints bore the responsibility of ushering in God’s kingdom, Grant felt it was his mission to criticize anyone or anything that was detrimental to obtaining that objective. “When you are right,” he told the Saints, “we will cease to chastize, . . . we will cease throwing the arrows of the Almighty through you.” “But until you do this,” Jedediah added, “we will hurl the darts of heaven upon you . . . and we will march against you in the strength of the God of Israel.” And Grant concluded, “We expect to triumph; and in the name of Jesus Christ, we do not mean to surrender to evil.”40
Even on his deathbed, Grant probably took solace in the fact that he never surrendered. Since his conversion to Mormonism in the 1830s, Grant’s life had been punctuated by a series of battles. Jedediah forayed against anyone or any force which hindered his course. He hungered for the millennium and demanded that others hunger also. The Reformation, the movement that became his monument, was but one manifestation of this desire. [99]
