Praying with One Eye Open: Mormons and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Appalachian Georgia

In 1878, Elder Joseph Standing traveled into the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, seeking converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter—day Saints. Sixteen months later, he was dead, murdered by a group of twelve men. The church refused to bury the missionary in Georgia soil; instead, he was laid to rest in Salt Lake City beneath a monument that declared, “There is no law in Georgia for the Mormons.” Most accounts of this event have linked Standing’s murder to the virulent ninete...