As Jeff implies, there were, of course, some positives, not the least of which was the chain of events by which Utah’s society was leavened by the departure of some U.S. Army soldiers from the service (by discharge or desertion), their decision to remain in Utah, and their subsequent integration into Utah society by marrying into LDS families, as in the case of Jeff’s ancestor, one of Governor Huntsman’s, and the great-grandfather of Mitt Romney, who deserted from the Fourth U.S. Artillery at Fort Bridger in October 1857 and subsequently became bodyguard, driver, nurse, and pallbearer for Presidents John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff as well as the adopted son of George Q. Cannon, one of the most influential LDS leaders of the 19th century and a member of the FP. Researchers Audrey Godfrey, Joan Nay, and Val Holley, who live in such widespread locations as Utah and Washington, D.C., are working on many other cases of such soldiers/veterans who “stayed” (as well as Mormon women who “left”).

Aside from these individual stories — which include an impact in their formative years on such Nauvoo Legionnairs as Researcher’s Linton and Sutton ancestor (#12)– there were societal impacts, some of which were positive. The Utah War, in effect, unleashed a series of economic, geographical, religious, political, and even literary forces that took decades to run their course. In some cases, these forces are still at work. Most obvious is the fact that the Utah War changed Utah and Mormonism forever, so if one considers the present tone of the religion and the state to be a positive, both came about through a chain of events for which the Utah War was a powerful influence. The Utah War started the beginning of Utah’s emergence from the deliberate isolation that B.Y. had sought in trekking to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. In the immediate wake of the Utah War, Brigham Young was no longer governor, the LDS/non-Mormon ratio changed permanently, alternative newspapers sprang up alongside the “Deseret News,” etc. Partly — but certainly not wholly — becauuse of the war oommunications links were forged that were not in place in 1857. At that time the telegraph line from the east ended at Boonville, MO; in October 1861 it went transcontinental by the joining of eastern and western wires in Salt Lake City, thereby putting out of business an enterprise that had been started in 1860 by civilian veterans of the Utah War — the Pony Express. Ditto to a lesser extent for the transcontinental railroad. You know where that was completed. Surely the work done by Mormons to complete the western end of the Union Pacific R.R. through the canyons of southwestern Wyoming and northeastern Utah had something to do with the skills learned in the Utah War by such leading forces as Cols. Chauncey West and Lorin Farr. Col. Albert Sidney Johnston was responsible for a quantum jump in road/trail development after 1858, including the route through Provo Canyon to Fort Bridger, that from Camp Floyd to Carson Valley (explored by Capt. Simpson and Mormon guide Geo. Washington Bean), and between Camp Floyd and what is now west-central Colorado (explored by Col. Loring and the Regiment of U.S. Riflemen during their return to NM from Camp Floyd). Because of the Utah War, Brigham Young and UT “sat out” the Civil War, which prompted Lincoln to send in a brigade of California Volunteers under Gen. Connor, who, in turn, stimulated the search for minerals in UT in a way that B.Y. had not done. A very long linkage of events, but should we credit the Utah War with beginning a chain of events that produced the origins of UT’s mining booms, including the discovery of copper in Bingham Canyon? Mebbe.

Then there’s the Utah War’s influence on Russian Tsar Alexander II’s December 1857 decision to begin negotiations to sell Alaska to the U.S. because of fear of a mass Mormon exodus to Russian America from the Salt Lake Valley ahead of the Utah Expedition’s entrance into the Salt Lake Valley. Ditto re the June 1858 decision of the British Govt. to form the crown colony of British Columbia.

Well, that’s a start on Jeff Taylor’s question. For more read my “Epilogue to the Utah War: Impact and Legacy” in “Journal of Mormon History” (Spring 2003).

I went to work for Bro. Eldredge, and worked for him until the Fall of 1857. Then I went out to guard Uncle Sam against Johnson’s Army, who were sent out to annihilate the Mormons, but they found it to be a blessing by them leaving food and things they could use.

And from his daughter:

My father, Samuel Linton and my Uncle Peter Sutton went to Echo Canyon to guard against Johnson’s Army. They naturally spoke of their sisters, so I concluded that father became acquainted with mother, Ellen Sutton, as they were married in April, 1858.

Like Jeff Taylor mentioned about his ancestors in comment 11, that’s another positive result of the war.

Has there ever been an analysis of the positive impacts Johnson’s Army may have had in the long term? I realize that this sounds like a “back-handed” approach to history, but many remarkable important developments in culture and civilization have grown out of otherwise regrettable events.

From a personal perspective, one of the ancestors from the “Mormon” side of my family tree was a German immigrant who became a soldier in Johnson’s Army and stayed in Utah to marry a young pioneer immigrant from England. I guess I owe something to Buchannan and Johnson after all.