Reconsidering Sterling Price

If Confederate General Sterling Price were made into a South Park character, this is what he would look like :-) You can make your own South Park character by going to: http://www.sp-studio.de/. It's kind of fun.

I have been doing some additional research on General Price for an article I'm going to send to BYU Studies. I had originally thought that he was just plain mean to the Mormons in Missouri in 1838 (he was the leader of the guards that Joseph Smith rebuked at the Richmond jail), but some new findings indicate that he may have actually tried to reconcile things between the Mormons and the Missouri citizens. He claimed that he had misunderstood the Mormon situation before he was given charge of the prisoners in Richmond and attended the subsequent court hearing. Hmmmm, I don't know what to think now. Joseph Smith did list "Colonel Sterling Price" as one of the Missouri persecutors in his 1839 redress petitions, and Parley P. Pratt talked about the grievances that Colonel Price allowed to be heaped upon the Mormon prisoners. Sterling Price is a definite historical enigma.

One interesting thing I found the other day was that at the battle of Lexington, Missouri in 1861, Sterling Price (commanding a Confederate Missouri regiment) encountered Robert Smith (commanding a Union Illinois regiment). Robert Smith had been the leader of the Carthage Greys back in 1844! So former Mormon persecutors were pitted against each other during the Civil War. Very interesting.