mormonism

Mormonism emerged from the religious ferment from families of Puritan descent who lived a long the Erie Canal. The founder of the Mormon church was Joseph Smith wrote a story called, The Book of Mormon, which told how God singled him out to receive a special revelation of divine truth. He began to see himself as a prophet and organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He advocated practices that were central to individual success in the age of capitalist markets and factories. His main goal was to have a church-directed society that would inspire moral perfection. His major problem was being able to secure a permanent home for his religious movement, due to a lot of persecution from anti-Mormons. He decided to leave New York and move west where he settled in Nauvoo, Illinois which bloomed and became the largest utopian community with 300,000 inhabitants. However, tensions began to rise and Joseph Smith began to abide or agree to any law he did not approve of, and began to go over board by asking congress to declare himself a candidate for president of the US. Smith began to express to his followers about a revelation he had received that justified polygamy, which was the the practice of a man having more than one wife at one time.which outraged local Christians. Smith was later arrested for treason, and an anti-Mormon mob stormed the prison and murdered Joseph Smith.
A follower Brigham Young, felt the need to leave from these religious tension and leave the United States and settled in Salt Lake City, Utah. When the US acquired Mexico's northern territory, they settled with Brigham Young and gave him a much smaller Utah territory that he asked for in 1850 and named him territorial governor. ***Mormons had finally succeeded where other social experiments and utopian communities had failed. With the idea of private ownership of property and encouraging individualist economic enterprise, they became prosperous contributors to the new market society.***