Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester Evacuation of New York How did the Evacuation of New York begin? Loyalists began an exodus from the Thirteen Colonies what happened when the Loyalists left the Thirteen Colonies? Carleton refused to deliver over the human property to the Americans at the time of the British evacuation.
How did the Americans respond to Carleton's refusal?
How did the Americans respond to Carleton's refusal during the Evacuation of New York?
In August 1783, Carleton was informed that Great Britain would grant the United States its independence. With his exit from New York imminent, Carleton asked to be relieved of his command. With this news, Loyalists began an exodus from the Thirteen Colonies and Carleton did his best to have them resettled outside the United States.  At a meeting with George Washington, among others, to arrange for the implementation of those parts of the Treaty of Paris relating to the evacuation of New York City, then commanded by Carleton and still occupied by the British Army, many Loyalists and former slaves, Carleton refused to deliver over the human property to the Americans at the time of the British evacuation. Instead, he proposed a registry so that "the owners might eventually be paid for the slaves who were entitled to their freedom by British Proclamation and promises."  Sir Guy noted that nothing could be changed in any Articles that were inconsistent with prior policies or National Honour. He added that the only mode was to pay for the Negroes, in which case justice was done to all, the former slaves and the owners. Carleton said that it would be a breach of faith not to honour the British policy of liberty to the Negro and declared that if removing them proved to be an infraction of the treaty, then compensation would have to be paid by the British government. To provide for such a contingency, he had a register kept of all Negroes who left, called the Book of Negroes, entering their names, ages, occupations, and names of their former masters. The Americans agreed to this, but as far as can be determined, the Crown never paid compensation. The British transported about 3,000 freedmen and other Loyalists to Nova Scotia for resettlement. As the colony struggled, some of the freedmen later chose in the early 1790s to go to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where the British set up a new colony, which included the Black Poor from London.  Washington disagreed with Sir Guy's actions and wrote: "...the measure is totally different from the letter and spirit of the Treaty but waiving the specialty of the point, leaving this decision to our respective Sovereigns I find it my duty to signify my readiness in conjunction with you to enter into agreements, or take any measures which may be deemed expedient to prevent the future carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American people."  On 28 November, the evacuation was finished, and Carleton returned to England. John Campbell of Strachur succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief, North America, although the post was then much reduced in scope. CANNOTANSWER
He added that the only mode was to pay for the Negroes, in which case justice was done to all, the former slaves and the owners.
Guy Carleton, 1st Baron Dorchester  (3 September 1724 – 10 November 1808), known between 1776 and 1786 as Sir Guy Carleton, was an Anglo-Irish soldier and administrator.  He twice served as Governor of the Province of Quebec, from 1768 to 1778, concurrently serving as Governor General of British North America in that time, and again from 1785 to 1795. The title Baron Dorchester was created on 21 August 1786.

He commanded British troops in the American War of Independence, first leading the defence of Quebec during the 1775 rebel invasion, and the 1776 counteroffensive that drove the rebels from the province. In 1782 and 1783, he led as the commander-in-chief of all British forces in North America. In this capacity he was notable for carrying out the Crown's promise of freedom to slaves who joined the British, and he oversaw the evacuation of British forces, Loyalists and more than 3,000 freedmen from New York City in 1783 to transport them to a British colony. Toward this end, Carleton assigned Samuel Birch to create the Book of Negroes.

The military and political career of his younger brother, Thomas Carleton, was interwoven with his own, and Thomas served under him in the Canadas.

Early career
Guy Carleton was born into an Ulster Protestant military family that had lived in Ulster in the north of the Kingdom of Ireland since the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, and was one of three brothers (the others being Thomas Carleton and William Carleton) who served in the British military. He was born and raised in Strabane in the west of County Tyrone, just across the River Foyle from Lifford in County Donegal. Guy also had a sister, Connolly Crawford. When he was fourteen his father, Christopher Carleton, died, and his mother, Catherine Carleton, then married Reverend Thomas Skelton. He received a limited education.

In 1742, at the age of seventeen, Carleton was commissioned as an ensign into the 25th Regiment of Foot, in which in 1745 he was promoted lieutenant. During this period he became a friend of James Wolfe; he may have served with Wolfe at the Battle of Culloden during the Jacobite rising of 1745. Two of his brothers, William and Thomas, also joined the British Army.

In 1740 the War of the Austrian Succession broke out in Europe. Despite British troops having been engaged on the European continent since 1742, it was not until 1747 that Carleton and his regiment were despatched to Flanders. They fought the French, but were unable to prevent the Fall of Bergen-op-Zoom, a major Dutch fortress, and the war was brought to a halt by an armistice. In 1748 the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle was signed and Carleton returned to Britain. He was frustrated to still only be a lieutenant, and believed his opportunities of advancement would be limited with the end of the war.

In 1751 he joined the 1st Foot Guards and in 1752 was promoted to captain. His career received a major boost when he was chosen, at the suggestion of Wolfe, to act as a guide to The 3rd Duke of Richmond during a tour of the battlefields of the recent war. Richmond would become an influential patron to Carleton.

Seven Years' War

Germany

In 1757, Guy Carleton was made a lieutenant colonel and served as part of the Army of Observation made up of German troops designed to protect Hanover from French invasion. The army was forced to retreat following the Battle of Hastenbeck and eventually concluded the Convention of Klosterzeven, taking them out of the war. After the convention was signed, Carleton returned to Britain. In 1758 he was made the lieutenant colonel of the newly formed 72nd Regiment of Foot. James Wolfe selected Carleton as his aide in the 1758 attack on Louisburg. King George II declined to make this appointment, possibly because of negative comments he made about the soldiers of Hanover during his service on the Continent.

For some time he was unable to gain active position, until he was sent back to Germany to serve as an aide-de-camp to Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick.

Canada

In December 1758 Wolfe, now a major general, was given command of the upcoming campaign against the city of Quebec, and selected Carleton as his quarter-master general. King George refused to make this appointment also until Lord Ligonier talked to the king about the matter and the king changed his mind. When Lieutenant-Colonel Carleton arrived in Halifax he assumed command of six hundred grenadiers. He was with the British forces when they arrived at Quebec in June 1759. Carleton was responsible for the provisioning of the army and also acting as an engineer supervising the placement of cannon. Carleton received a head wound during the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and he returned to England after the battle in October 1759.

France and Havana

On 29 March 1761, as the lieutenant colonel of the 72nd Regiment of Foot he took part in the attack on Belle Île, an island off the coast of the northern part of the Bay of Biscay,  off the coast of France. Carleton led an attack on the French, but was seriously wounded and prevented from taking any further part in the fighting. After four weeks of fighting, the British gained complete control of the island.

He was made colonel in 1762 and took part in the British expedition against Cuba, which also included Richard Montgomery, who went on to oppose him in 1775. On 22 July, he was wounded leading an attack on a Spanish outpost.

In 1764 he transferred to the 93rd Regiment of Foot.

Governor of Quebec

On 7 April 1766, Carleton was named acting Lieutenant Governor and Administrator of Quebec with James Murray officially in charge. He arrived in Quebec on 22 September 1766. As Carleton had no experience in public affairs and came from a politically insignificant family, his appointment is unusual and was possibly a surprise to him. One connection may have been due to the Duke of Richmond, who in 1766 been made Secretary of State for the North American colonies. Fourteen years earlier, Carleton had tutored the Duke. The Duke was the colonel of the 72nd Regiment of Foot, while Carleton was its lieutenant colonel. He appointed Carleton as commander-in-chief of all troops stationed in Quebec.

The government consisted of a Governor, a council, and an assembly.  The governor could veto any action of the council, but London had also given Carleton instructions that all of his actions required the approval of the council. Most officials of the province at this time did not receive a salary and received their income through fees they charged for their services. Carleton tried to replace this system with one in which the officials received a regular salary, but this position was never supported in London.  When Carleton renounced his own fees, Murray was furious.

After Murray resigned his position, Carleton was appointed Captain General and Governor-in-Chief on 12 April 1768. Carleton took the oath of office on 1 November 1768. On 9 August 1770 he sailed for England for what he thought was a few months' consultation on issues related to the integration of Quebec into the British system. During his absence, Hector Theophilus de Cramahé, the lieutenant governor, ran the provincial government, with the aid of the first chief justice, William Hey, and the Attorney-General, Francis Maseres. The British merchants of Quebec, many of whom had become disaffected to the colonial administration under Murray, were, at least initially, of good will. The merchants would later be agent for e.g. the Quebec Act of 1774 (14 Geo. III, c.83) and finally the partition of the two Canadas in the Constitutional Act of 1791 (31 Geo. III, c.31).

Marriage and family
On 22 May 1772, at the age of nearly 48, Carleton married Lady Maria Howard, daughter of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Effingham. They had issue nine sons and two daughters. His elder brothers having predeceased him, and himself dying two years before his father, third son Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Carleton was father of Arthur, 2nd Baron Dorchester; Christopher's younger brother, the sixth son, Lieutenant-Colonel George Carleton, was father of Guy, the 3rd Baron. The title was extinct at the 3rd Baron's death in 1897, but it was revived when his daughter, Henrietta, was created Baroness Dorchester; the title was extinct at the death of her son, Dudley, 2nd Baron, in 1963.

Later career
Carleton was promoted to major general on 25 May 1772. While he was in London, the Parliament passed the Quebec Act of 1774, based upon his recommendations. It determined how the province was to be administered and was part of a continuing effort to respect some French traditions while ensuring rights of citizens as understood by the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Carleton and Maria returned to Quebec on 18 September 1774, where he began implementing the provisions of the act. While the clergy and the seigneurs (landowners) were happy with provisions favorable to them, British merchants and migrants from the Thirteen Colonies objected to a number of the provisions, which they thought were pro-Catholic. They argued that only English-speaking Protestants should be able to vote or hold public office. Many of the habitants were unhappy with the provisions reinstating the tithe in support of the Catholic Church, as well as seigneurial obligations, such as the corvée (a labor requirement).

In late 1774, the First Continental Congress sent letters to Montreal denouncing the Quebec Act for promoting Catholicism by allowing Catholics to hold civil service positions and reinstating the tithe. John Brown, an agent for the Boston Committee of Correspondence, arrived in Montreal in early 1775 as part of an effort to persuade citizens to send delegates to the Second Continental Congress, scheduled to meet in May 1775.  Carleton, while aware of this activity, did nothing to prevent it, beyond discouraging publication of the Congressional letter in the province's only newspaper.

American War of Independence

Defence of Canada

Carleton received notice of the start of the rebellion in May 1775, soon followed by the news of the rebel capture of Fort Ticonderoga and Fort Crown Point, and the raid on Fort Saint-Jean. As he had previously sent two of his regiments to Boston, he had only about 800 regular soldiers left in Quebec. His attempts to raise a militia met with limited success at first, as neither the ethnic French nor the English residents were willing to join. Area Natives were willing to fight on the British side, and the Crown wanted them to do so, but Carleton turned their offer down because he feared the Natives attacking non-combatants. For the same reason, he limited Guy Johnson and his Iroquois allies, who had come to Quebec from New York, to operating only in Quebec.

During the summer of 1775, Carleton directed the preparation of provincial defences, which were focused on Fort Saint-Jean. In September, the Continental Army began its invasion and besieged the fort. When it fell in November, Carleton was forced to flee from Montreal to Quebec City, escaping capture by disguising himself as a commoner.

In December 1775 he directed the city's defences in the Battle of Quebec and the ensuing siege, which was broken by the arrival of British troops in May 1776 under command of John Burgoyne, who was appointed second-in-command. Carleton's younger brother Thomas was part of the relief effort.

Guy Carleton launched a counteroffensive against the rebels, which included repelling an attempted attack on Trois-Rivières. In June 1776, he was appointed a Knight Companion of the Bath. He was promoted to the rank of a general for America only on 26 March 1776.

The next month Carleton commanded British naval forces on the Richelieu River, culminating in the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain in October 1776 against a rebel fleet led by General Benedict Arnold.  The British, with a significantly superior fleet, won a decisive victory, destroying or capturing most of the rebel fleet, but the delay prevented Carleton from continuing on to capture Fort Ticonderoga that year. His brother Thomas and nephew Christopher both served on his staff during the campaign. The morning following the battle, a small island in Lake Champlain was named Carleton's Prize, perhaps to Carleton's embarrassment at the time.

He was promoted to lieutenant general on 6 September 1777. In 1777, command of the major northern expedition to divide the rebel colonies was given to General Burgoyne. Upset that he had not been given its command, Carleton asked to be recalled. He was replaced as governor and military commander of Quebec in 1778 by Frederick Haldimand, and returned to England. In 1780 he was appointed by Prime Minister Lord North to a commission investigating public finances. This post he held until 1782, when General Sir Henry Clinton was recalled in the aftermath of the 1781 surrender at Yorktown. Carleton was appointed to replace Clinton as Commander-in-Chief, America, in May 1782. His headquarters in New York City were located at Number One Broadway.

Evacuation of New York

In August 1783, Carleton was informed that Great Britain would grant the United States its independence. With his exit from New York imminent, Carleton asked to be relieved of his command. With this news, Loyalists began an exodus from the Thirteen Colonies and Carleton did his best to have them resettled outside the United States.

At a meeting with George Washington, among others, to arrange for the implementation of those parts of the Treaty of Paris relating to the evacuation of New York City, then commanded by Carleton and still occupied by the British Army, many Loyalists and former slaves, Carleton refused to deliver over the human property to the Americans at the time of the British evacuation. Instead, he proposed a registry so that "the owners might eventually be paid for the slaves who were entitled to their freedom by British Proclamation and promises."

Sir Guy noted that nothing could be changed in any Articles that were inconsistent with prior policies or National Honour. He added that the only mode was to pay for the Negroes, in which case justice was done to all, the former slaves and the owners. Carleton said that it would be a breach of faith not to honour the British policy of liberty to the Negro and declared that if removing them proved to be an infraction of the treaty, then compensation would have to be paid by the British government. To provide for such a contingency, he had a register kept of all Negroes who left, called the Book of Negroes, entering their names, ages, occupations, and names of their former masters. The Americans agreed to this, but as far as can be determined, the Crown never paid compensation. The British transported about 3,000 freedmen and other Loyalists to Nova Scotia for resettlement. As the colony struggled, some of the freedmen later chose in the early 1790s to go to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where the British set up a new colony, which included the Black Poor from London.

Washington disagreed with Sir Guy's actions and wrote: "…the measure is totally different from the letter and spirit of the Treaty but waiving the specialty of the point, leaving this decision to our respective Sovereigns I find it my duty to signify my readiness in conjunction with you to enter into agreements, or take any measures which may be deemed expedient to prevent the future carrying away any Negroes or other property of the American people."

On 28 November the evacuation was finished, and on 5 December Carleton departed from Staten Island to return to England. John Campbell of Strachur succeeded him as Commander-in-Chief, North America, although the post was then much reduced in scope.

Post-war years and death 
Upon his return to England, Carleton recommended the creation of a position of Governor General of all the provinces in British North America. Instead he was appointed "Governor-in-chief", with simultaneous appointments as governor of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and St. John's Island (present-day Prince Edward Island). He arrived in Quebec on 23 October 1786. His position as Governor-in-chief was mostly ignored. He found quickly that his authority in any of the provinces other than Quebec was effective only while he was present in person.

He was raised to the Peerage of Great Britain in August 1786 as The 1st Baron Dorchester, Baron of Dorchester in the County of Oxford.

The Constitutional Act of 1791 split the large territory of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada, corresponding roughly to areas settled by ethnic British and ethnic French, respectively. Sir Alured Clarke was named as the lieutenant governor of Lower Canada and John Graves Simcoe the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada. In August 1791 Carleton left for Britain and on 7 February 1792 took his seat in the House of Lords. He left for Canada again on 18 August 1793 to resume his duties there. His replacement, Robert Prescott, arrived in May 1796. On 9 July 1796 Carleton sailed from Canada to Britain, never to return.

In retirement Lord Dorchester, as he was now, lived mostly at Greywell Hill, adjoining Nately Scures, in Hampshire. After about 1805 he moved to Stubbings House at Burchett's Green, near Maidenhead, in Berkshire. On 10 November 1808, he died suddenly at Stubbings. He was buried in the parish church of St Swithun's, Nately Scures.

Honours and legacy

He was honoured by numerous places and educational institutions named for him:
 , a Canadian Forces Naval Reserve Division in Ottawa
 Carleton University in Ottawa
 Dorchester Avenue in Ottawa
 The Carleton, Halifax, Nova Scotia
 Carleton, Nova Scotia
 Carleton Village, Nova Scotia
 Dorchester Road in Niagara Falls, Canada
 Dorchester Boulevard, a major thoroughfare in Montreal since renamed René Lévesque Boulevard
 Dorchester Square in downtown Montreal
 Dorchester Island and the parish and town of Dorchester, all of New Brunswick
 Carleton Street, in:
 Carlton Street in Downtown Toronto is indirectly named for Carleton via Ann Wood for her brother Guy Carleton Wood of Cornwall, Ontario
 Saint John, New Brunswick
 Yarmouth, Nova Scotia
 Fredericton, New Brunswick
 St. Andrews, New Brunswick
 Moosomin, Saskatchewan
 Rue Dorchester, a thoroughfare in Quebec City.
 Old Carleton County Court House, Upper Woodstock, New Brunswick
 Carleton Place, a town in Eastern Ontario
 Carleton County, New Brunswick
 Carleton County, Ontario, that became the Region of Ottawa-Carleton, and then the City of Ottawa with amalgamation in 2001.
 Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec, a town on the North Shore of Baie de Chaleurs.
 Guysborough County, Nova Scotia (Guys' borough)
 Guy's Restaurant, in his birthplace of Strabane, is also named after Carleton. The restaurant was formerly known as the Carleton Club.
 Lord Dorchester High School in Dorchester, Ontario
 Sir Guy Carleton Secondary School in Ottawa
 Sir Guy Carleton Elementary School in Vancouver, British Columbia.

 Carleton is mentioned in a Fort Saint-Jean plaque erected in 1926 by Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada at the Royal Military College Saint-Jean. "Constructed in 1743 by M. de Léry under orders from Governor la Galissonnière. This post was for all the military expeditions towards Lake Champlain. On 31 August 1760, Commandant de Roquemaure had it blown up in accordance with orders from the Governor de Vaudreuil in order to prevent its falling into the hands of the English. Rebuilt by Governor Carleton, in 1773. During the same year, under the command of Major Charles Preston of the 26th Regiment, it withstood a 45-day siege by the American troops commanded by General Montgomery."
 Carleton Island, part of the Thousand Islands, is near the Royal Military College of Canada. The Governor of Upper Canada, John Graves Simcoe, named Wolfe island in General James Wolfe's honour in 1792. The surrounding islands bear the names of Wolfe's generals: Howe, Carleton, Amherst and Gage (now Simcoe). The island was ceded to the Americans in 1794 as part of Jay's Treaty.
 Via Rail Canada has a Manor sleeping car named after Sir Guy Carleton in his honour and there is a plaque inside the railcar explaining his exploits.
 The first railroad in Canada, the Champlain and St. Lawrence Railroad had its first locomotive (a 0-2-0) named "Dorchester".
 Carleton Point, a short-lived Loyalist settlement on Great Abaco Island, Bahamas, was named for him
 The Dorchester Review magazine (est. 2011 at Ottawa) is named in his honour.
 Before 1790s Niagara Falls, Ontario was once called Mount Dorchester in honour of Carleton.

See also
 List of Governors General of Canada
 List of Lieutenant Governors of Quebec
 Commander-in-Chief, North America
 History of Quebec
 History of North America
 Constitutional history of Canada

References

Bibliography
 Billias, George Athan, Editor, George Washington's Opponents, William Marrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1969, 103–135.
 
 Nelson, Paul David. General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester: Soldier-Statesman of Early British Canada. Associated University Presses, 2000.
 Reynolds, Paul R., Guy Carleton, A Biography, 1980, 
 Wrong, George M. Canada and the American Revolution. New York, 1968.

External links

 St Swithun's Church, Nately Scures, England Plaque memorial for Guy Carleton, Gobernador de Quebec y Thomas Carleton Gobernador de New Brunswick

1724 births
1808 deaths
18th-century Anglo-Irish people
British Army generals
British military personnel of the French and Indian War
British Army personnel of the American Revolutionary War
Governors of British North America
Lieutenant Governors of the Province of Quebec (1763–1791)
Governors of the Province of Quebec (1763–1791)
Barons in the Peerage of Great Britain
Peers of Great Britain created by George III
Knights Companion of the Order of the Bath
People from Strabane
People from Hart District
People from Maidenhead
King's Own Scottish Borderers officers
78th Highlanders officers
Grenadier Guards officers
British Army personnel of the War of the Austrian Succession
Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)
Mario Luis Small is a sociologist and Quetelet Professor of Social Science at Columbia University. Small's research interests include urban poverty, inequality, personal networks, and qualitative and mixed methods. Small was previously a faculty member at Harvard University, University of Chicago, and Princeton University.

Biography 
Small was born in Cerro Viento, Panama. He earned a B.A. In 1996 from Carleton College and an M.A. and Ph.D from Harvard University. Small has received many awards for his writings. He is the only person to win the C. Wright Mills Best book Award twice for Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio in 2005 and Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life in 2010.

Books 
Small, Mario L. 2017. Someone To Talk To. New York: Oxford University Press.

Small, Mario L. 2009. Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life, New York: Oxford University Press

Small, Mario L. 2004. Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio, Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Contributions to sociology  
Small has published books and numerous articles on urban poverty, personal networks, and the relationship between qualitative and quantitative social science methods.

He has shown that poor neighborhoods in commonly-studied cities such as Chicago are not representative of ghettos everywhere, that how people understand and make sense of their neighborhood shapes how it affects them, and that local organizations in poor neighborhoods often broker connections to both people and organizations. Small has also demonstrated that people’s social capital—including how many people they know and how much they trust others—depends on the organizations in which they are embedded.

His work on methods has shown that many practices used to make qualitative research more scientific are ineffective.

Small has investigated why ghettos differ from city to city and how people decide whom to turn to when seeking support.

In his 2017 book Someone To Talk To Small explores whom Americans confide in. Existing theories and common sense suggest that people confide in their intimates, yet Small finds evidence that Americans often turn to people who are not close to them when discussing difficult topics. For example, many people respond to the  US General Social Survey (GSS) question 'what are the people with whom you discussed matters important to you?’ by naming their close friends and family. Yet Small suggests these people are not necessarily the ones with whom respondents actually discuss matters important to them. Rather, people often confide in those with whom they have "weak ties," as the need for understanding or empathy trumps their fear of misplaced trust. For example, people may find themselves confiding in acquaintances and even strangers unexpectedly, without having reflected on the consequences.

References 

Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Panamanian sociologists
Harvard University faculty
Harvard University alumni
Carleton College alumni
Princeton University faculty
University of Chicago faculty The pursuit of the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows massacre, which atrocity occurred September 11, 1857, had to await the conclusion of the American Civil War to begin in earnest.

Brigham Young's involvement

Evidence as to whether or not Brigham Young ordered the attack on the migrant column is conflicted.  Historians still debate the autonomy and precise roles of local Cedar City LDS church officials in ordering the massacre and Young's concealing of evidence in its aftermath. Young's use of inflammatory and violent language in response to the  Federal  expedition added to the tense atmosphere at the time of the attack. After the massacre, Young stated in public forums that God had taken vengeance on the Baker–Fancher party. It is unclear whether Young held this view because he believed this specific group posed an actual threat to colonists or were directly responsible for past crimes against Mormons. According to historian MacKinnon, "After the war, Buchanan implied that face-to-face communications with Brigham Young might have averted the Utah War, and Young argued that a north-south telegraph line in Utah could have prevented the Mountain Meadows Massacre."

Young's belated message to Isaac C. Haight, acting commander of the Iron Brigade
On September 8, 1857, Capt. Stewart Van Vliet of the U.S. Army Quartermaster Corps arrived in Salt Lake City. Van Vliet's mission was to inform Young that the United States troops then approaching Utah did not intend to attack the Mormons, but intended to establish an army base near Salt Lake, and to request Young's cooperation in procuring supplies for the army. Young informed Van Vliet that he was skeptical that the army's intentions were peaceful, and that the Mormons intended to resist occupation.

On September 10, 1857, James Holt 
Haslam arrived in Salt Lake City, after experiencing long delays during his nearly 300 mile journey, to deliver a  message from the acting commander of the Iron Brigade, Isaac C. Haight to the Mormon leader Brigham Young.  The letter has yet to be found.

President Young's message of reply to Haight, dated September 10, read: "In regard to emigration trains passing through our settlements, we must not interfere with them until they are first notified to keep away. You must not meddle with them. The Indians we expect will do as they please but you should try and preserve good feelings with them. There are no other trains going south that I know of[.] [I]f those who are there will leave let them go in peace."

Yet, by the time the express rider delivered Young's letter to Haight, ordering that the emigrants not be harmed, the murders at Mountain Meadows had already taken place. According to trial testimony given later by express rider Haslam, when Haight read Young's words, he sobbed like a child and could manage only the words, "Too late, too late."

Historians debate the letter's contents. Brooks believes it shows  Young "did not order the massacre, and would have prevented it if he could." Bagley argues that the letter covertly gave other instructions.

Part played by Paiutes
A few days after the massacre, September 29, 1857, John D. Lee briefed Brigham Young on the massacre. According to Lee, more than one hundred and fifty "mob members" of Missouri and Illinois, with many cattle and horses, damned the Saints leaders, and poisoned not only a beef given to the Native Americans, but also a spring which killed both Saints and Native Americans. The Native Americans became enraged and after a long siege killed everyone and stripped the corpses of clothing. The Mormons spared eight to ten children. A second group, with a large cattle herd, would have suffered the same fate had not the Saints intervened and saved them. Wilford Woodruff recorded Lee's account as a "tale of blood."

In fact, seventeen children had survived. The names and ages are recorded in the Carleton report, available online. The Mormons sold the children among each other, as they did the material goods they stole from the emigrants. Carleton reported that immediately after the massacre John D. Lee, Haight, and Philip Smith [Klingonsmith] went to Salt Lake City to ask Brigham Young what should be done with the property. They offered Young the money they had taken from their victims, but he  would have nothing to do with it. Brigham gave Lee instructions to divide the cattle and cows among the poor, and left it to him to distribute it as he chose. John D. Lee ended up owning a fancy carriage that had been part of the column; the wagons, rifles and other valuables ended up with the Mormons, which the Paiute pointed out was proof that they had not perpetrated the massacre. Other emigrant property was auctioned in Cedar City, in the tithing office of the church, where the Mormons termed it, facetiously, in Carleton's view, "property taken at the siege of Sebastapol."

On September 30, 1857, Mormon Indian Agent George W. Armstrong sent a letter to Young from Provo with information of the massacre. In his account, the emigrants gave the Native Americans poisoned beef. After many Native Americans died, they "appeased their savage vengeance" by killing fifty-seven men and nine women. There was no mention of survivors.

Decades later, Young's son, 13 years old in 1857, said he was in the office during that meeting and that he remembered Lee blaming the massacre on the Native Americans. Some time after Lee's meeting with Young, Jacob Hamblin said he reported to Young and George A. Smith what he said Lee had related to Hamblin on his journey to Salt Lake. Brigham Young was mistaken when he later testified, under oath, that the meeting took place "some two of three months after the massacre". When Lee attempted to relate the details of the massacre, however, Young later testified he cut Lee off, stopping him from reciting further details.

Rumors of the massacre began to reach California in early October. John Aiken, a "gentile" who traveled with the mail carrier John Hurt through the killing field, reported to the Los Angeles Star that the unburied putrefied corpses of the women and children were more generally eaten than the men.

Confirmation of the massacre was received from the Mormon J. Ward Christian. Christian claimed that the emigrants had cheated the Native Americans who sold them wheat at Corn Creek, put strychnine in water holes and poisoned a dead ox. According to Christian, the party consisted of 130 to 135. All were killed by Native Americans with the exception of fifteen infant children, that have since been purchased with much difficulty by the Mormon interpreters.

And when Brigham Young sent his report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1858, he said the massacre was the work of Native Americans.

Paiute leaders maintain that Mormon accounts of Paiute initiation of the siege are untrue. Stoffle and Evans assert that Paiutes had no history of attacking wagon trains and no Native Americans were charged, prosecuted, or punished by federal officials as a result of the Mountain Meadows massacre. Tribal oral history accounts taken in 1980s and 1990s relate stories of Paiutes witnessing the attack from a distance rather than participating. There are some stories, which relate some Paiute were present, but did not initiate or participate in the killings. A corroborating oral history of Sybil Mariah Frink tells of witnessing the planning of the massacre at her home in Harmony. She contends she followed fourteen Mormons who had disguised themselves as Native Americans to the scene of the massacre. She makes no mention of any Native Americans participating in the attack. Authors Tom and Holt summarize the state of proof regarding the massacre:
The fact that so much evidence, including relevant pages from the journals of many settlers, has been lost or destroyed, testifies to many Native Americans and their sympathizers that much of the official history cannot be considered to be complete or truthful. However, there is certainly some evidence that Native Americans with base camps on the Muddy and Santa Clara Rivers were at least involved in the initial siege of the wagon train."

While Native American Paiutes were present, certainly during the initial attack and siege, historical reports of their numbers and the details of their participation are contradictory. However, Mormon witnesses of the event are unreliable, as Carleton demonstrates, and were attempting to shift the blame onto the Native Americans.

Eyewitness accounts from Mormons that implicate the Paiutes (at first entirely so and then only in part) are set against Paiute accounts that absolve them from participation in the actual massacre. Historian Bagley believes "the problem with trying to tell the story of Mountain Meadows—the sources are all fouled up. You've either got to rely on the testimony of the murderers or of the surviving children. And so what we know about the actual massacre is—could be challenged on almost any point. _ " However, as Carleton mentions in his 1857 report, even Hamblin, the Indian agent who blamed the Paiutes for the massacre, admitted to him that in 1856 the Paiute tribe had only three guns, suggesting that it was incredible for them to have acquired sufficient guns to inflict the number of gunshot wounds evident among the victims, most of whom were killed by gunfire, not, as Mormon witnesses claimed, largely by being hit in the head with stones.

Orchestration by militia
Although militia members put responsibility on the Natives, many non-Mormons began to suspect Mormon involvement and called for a federal investigation. Territorial U.S. Indian Agent Garland Hurt,  in the days following the massacre, sent a translator to investigate, who returned on September 23 with the report that Paiutes attacked the emigrants and after being repulsed three time the Mormons tricked the wagon train members into surrender and killed them all. On the September 27, Hurt, the last federal Agent in Utah Territory, escaped more than seventy five Mormons dragoons for the safety of the American Army with the help of members of the Ute tribe of Native Americans.

On Lee's journey to Salt Lake City to report the massacre, he passed Jacob Hamblin going the opposite direction, and according to Hamblin, Lee admitted killing emigrants, including adolescent children, and stated that he acted under orders from officials in Cedar City. Lee later denied making these admissions or breaking his oath of secrecy.

Young first heard about the massacre from second-hand reports, After Lee reached Salt Lake City, Lee met with Young on September 29, 1857, according to Lee, he told Young about Mormon involvement. Young, however, later testified that he cut Lee off when he started to describe the massacre, because he could not bear to hear the details. Lee, however, said he told Young of involvement by Mormons. Nevertheless, according to Jacob Hamblin, Hamblin heard a detailed description of the massacre and Mormon involvement from Lee and reported it to Young and George A. Smith soon after the massacre. Hamblin said he was told to keep quiet, but that "as soon as we can get a court of justice, we will ferret this thing out".

With regard to the new policy to unbridle Natives to steal cattle, roughly at the same time of the massacre Indian agent Hurt received word that militia leadership at Ogden had arranged for the Snake tribe to run off over 400 cattle that were being driven toward California.

Federal investigations in 1859

The Utah War interrupted further federal investigation and the LDS Church conducted no investigation of its own. Then in 1859, two years after the massacre, investigations were made by Hurt's superior, Jacob Forney, and also by U.S. Army Brevet Major James Henry Carleton. In Carleton's investigation, at Mountain Meadows he found women's hair tangled in sage brush and the bones of children still in their mothers' arms. Carleton later said it was "a sight which can never be forgotten." After gathering up the skulls and bones of those who had died, Carleton's troops buried them and erected a rock cairn.

Carleton's report of May 1859 included verbatim statements from Jacob Hamblin and a young Snake man, aged 17 or 18,  who lived with the Hamblins and went by the name of Albert Hamblin.  Both attempted to blame the local Paiute Indians, but Carleton analyzed the contradictions between the evidence he encountered and their statements to suggest that their accounts were false in several respects. Carleton tricked Albert Hamblin into revealing the identities of some of the Mormons present, by telling him that Jacob Hamblin had already informed Carleton that John D. Lee and other Mormons had been present. Albert then admitted that, apart from Lee, also present were the Mormons Prime Coleman, Amos Thornton, Richard Robinson, and "Brother" Dickinson from Pinto Creek. Speaking to Paiute Indian chiefs, Carleton was told by Chief "Jackson", head of the Santa Clara band, that a letter from Brigham Young had ordered the emigrants to be killed, and that 60 Mormons, painted and disguised as Indians, led by Bishop John D. Lee and Isaac C. Haight, had fulfilled this order. Another Paiute chief, Touche, then living on the Virgin River, told Carleton that a letter from Brigham Young to the same effect was brought down to his band by a young man named [Oliver B.] Huntington, an Indian interpreter living in Salt Lake City at the time of Carleton's report.

By August 1859, Jacob Forney, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah had retrieved the children from the Mormon families housing them and gathered them in preparation of transporting them to their relatives in Arkansas. He placed the children in the care of families in Santa Clara prior to transportation. Forney and Capt. Reuben Campbell (US Army) related that Lee sold the children to Mormon families in Cedar City, Harmony, and Painter Creek.  Sarah Francis Baker, who was three years old at the time of the massacre, later said, "They sold us from one family to another." As early as May 1859, Forney reported that none of the children had ever lived with the Native Americans, but had been transported by white men from the scene of the massacre to the house of Jacob Hamblin. In July 1859 he wrote of his refusal to pay claims by families who alleged they purchased the children from the Native Americans, stating he knew it was not true. Forney had seen to the gathering up the surviving children from local families after which they were united with extended family members in Arkansas and other states. Families received compensation for the children's care, including Jacob Hamblin; some protested that the amounts were insufficient—although Carleton's report criticized the conditions under which some of the children lived.

Forney concluded that the Paiutes did not act alone and the massacre would not have occurred without the white settlers, while Carleton's report to the U.S. Congress called the mass killings a "heinous crime", blaming both local and senior church leaders for the massacre.

A federal judge brought into the territory after the Utah War, Judge John Cradlebaugh, in March 1859 convened a grand jury in Provo, Utah concerning the massacre, but the jury declined any indictments.

1870s prosecutions of John D. Lee

Further investigations, cut short by the American Civil War in 1861, again proceeded in 1871 when prosecutors obtained the affidavit of militia member Phillip Klingensmith. Klingensmith had been a bishop and blacksmith from Cedar City; by the 1870s, however, he had left the church and moved to Nevada.

During the 1870s Lee, Dame, Philip Klingensmith and two others (Ellott Willden and George Adair, Jr.) were indicted and arrested while warrants were obtained to pursue the arrests of four others (Haight, Higbee,  William C. Stewart and Samuel Jukes) who had successfully gone into hiding. Klingensmith escaped prosecution by agreeing to testify. Brigham Young removed some participants including Haight and Lee from the LDS church in 1870. The U.S. posted bounties of $500 each for the capture of Haight, Higbee and Stewart while prosecutors chose not to pursue their cases against Dame, Willden and Adair.

Lee's first trial began on July 23, 1875 in Beaver, Utah before a jury of eight Mormons and four non-Mormons. The prosecution called five eye-witnesses: Philip Klingensmith, Joel White, Samuel Pollock, William Young, and James Pierce. Due to an illness, George A. Smith was not called as a witness, but provided deposition testimony denying any involvement in the massacre, as did Brigham Young, who said he could not travel because he was an invalid. The defense called Silas S. Smith, Jesse N. Smith, Elisha Hoops, and Philo T. Farnsworth, who were part of George A. Smith's party on August 25, 1857 when he camped near the Baker-Fancher party in Corn Creek. Each of them testified that they either saw, or suspected, that the Baker-Fancher party poisoned a spring and a dead ox, later eaten by Native Americans. The trial ended in a hung jury on August 5, 1875.

Lee's second trial began September 13, 1876, before an all-Mormon jury. The prosecution called Daniel Wells, Laban Morrill, Joel White, Samuel Knight, Samuel McMurdy, Nephi Johnson, and Jacob Hamblin. Lee also stipulated, against advice of counsel, that the prosecution be allowed to re-use the depositions of Young and Smith from the previous trial. Lee called no witnesses in his defense. This time, Lee was convicted.

At his sentencing, as required by Utah Territory statute, he was given the option of being hung, shot, or beheaded, and he chose to be shot. In 1877, before being executed by firing squad at Mountain Meadows (a fate Young believed just, but not a sufficient blood atonement, given the enormity of the crime, to get him into the celestial kingdom). Lee himself professed that he was a scapegoat for others involved.

Notes

References

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. Washington Post review and Letter to the editor in response to the review.
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; also included in Brooks (1991) Appendix XI.
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; also The Mormons (Documentary).
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Further reading

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External links 
 The Massacre Trials - UMKC's School of Law
 Jacob Forney and the Massacre
References/MASSACRE PERPETRATORS.pdf "Massacre Perpetrators at Mountain Meadows Massacre: September 7–11, 1857" – Mountain Meadows Monument Foundation website
United States Office of Indian Affairs Papers Relating to Charges Against Jacob Forney. Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Mountain Meadows Massacre