The Civil War and the Apocalypse Insights from The Millennial Sta

Authors

Megan McConnell

Keywords

Millennial Star, civil war, Joseph Smith, prophecy, emigration

Abstract

An editorial published in the Millennial Star on May 11, 1861, almost exactly one month after the start of the American Civil War, declared that the war that had broken out on the American continent was part of the “signs of the times” and that it “should be an incentive to diligence and faithfulness” to the European members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The war would be a calamity to a degree that had never before been seen on the Earth and one which the “nations of Europe cannot escape from.”1 The editor pronounced that the prophet Joseph Smith’s 1832 prophecy regarding the wars that will “shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina,” was being fulfilled and that there would be no safe haven for those seeking refuge except for in the Lord’s Kingdom in the Rocky Mountains of Utah.2 The following year, Latter-day Saint emigration from Europe surpassed the previous year’s numbers by 1,600 and a total of 3,589 Saints emigrated by ship to America.3

Recommended Citation

McConnell, Megan (2023) "The Civil War and the Apocalypse Insights from The Millennial Sta," The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing: Vol. 52: Iss. 1, Article 8.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/thetean/vol52/iss1/8