M O R M O N FINANCE A N D T H E U T A H W A R BY LEONARD J. ARRINGTON*
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I N N I N G the printing press to finance a war is generally considered to be inflationary and fraught with danger. Economists (with notable exceptions) regard this method of raising money with such horror that it is usually left unmentioned in the lexicon of economic policy. Yet the experience of territorial Utah in printing currency to finance Mormon defense efforts during the Utah W a r of 1857-58 furnishes evidence that running the printing press need not be inflationary nor dangerous. The organization which supervised this unique experiment in regional emergency finance was the Deseret Currency Association—a creation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The story of the Deseret Currency Association, which was organized in January, 1858, under the direction of Brigham Young, is one of the most interesting chapters in the monetary history of the Intermountain West. In the first year of its operations, this association issued almost $100,000 worth of currency in denominations ranging from one dollar to one hundred dollars, and might have issued much more if the United States marshal for the Territory of Utah had not damaged its plates and jailed the Church engraver on a counterfeiting charge. The immediate reason for the establishment of the Deseret Currency Association was the need for a local circulating medium and credit institution after President James Buchanan dispatched to Utah some five thousand crack federal troops under the command of General Albert Sidney Johnston in July, 1857. News of the approach of Johnston's Army came to Mormon Church authorities on July 24, 1857, while they were celebrating the tenth anniversary of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. This "invasion" stirred Mormon officials to immediate preparations for the defense of their theocratic commonwealth. Mobilization of the territorial militia (known as the Nauvoo
'Leonard J. Arrington, associate professor of economics at Utah State Agricultural College, Logan, Utah, recently completed his doctorate at the University of North Carolina with a dissertation entitled, "Mormon Economic Policies and Their Implementation on the Western Frontier, 1847-1900."
