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The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God. By Michael Scott Van Wagenen. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002. Pp. xvii, 117. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $18.95)
In the spring of 1844, the Republic of Texas, an infant nation, and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (generally called the Mormon Church), an equally young spiritual movement, both had highly uncertain futures. Texas faced a huge public debt and the constant threat of invasion by Mexico; the Mormons faced increasing hostility from their neighbors around Nauvoo, Illinois. According to Michael Scott Van Wagenen, these insecurities led the Mormons and Sam Houston, Texas's president, to discuss an agreement by which the Republic would sell the land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande to the church. The Mormons were then to build a secure "Kingdom of God" south of the Nueces that would act as a buffer state to protect Texas from invasion by Mexico. This proposal never came to fruition, however, because in June 1844 a...