that execution should be done by the shedding of blood instead of by hanging," but only "according to the laws of the land." Rumors of blood atonement enforcement by Utah-era Danites Many of these rumors were centered around a group called the Danites. The Danites were a fraternal organization founded by a group of Latter-day Saints in June 1838, at Far West in Caldwell County, Missouri. The Danites operated as a vigilante group and took a central role in the events of the Mormon War. Although the organization ceased to formally exist in Missouri, the name "Danites" may have been used in both Nauvoo and Utah. It is not certain whether the Danites continued to exist as a formal organization in Utah . During the 1860s and 1870s, there were widespread rumors that Brigham Young had a Danite organization that was enforcing the blood atonement doctrine. Evidence of this, however, never rose above the level of rumor . Responding to this, Brigham Young stated on April 7, 1867: Is there war in our religion? No; neither war nor bloodshed. Yet our enemies cry out "bloodshed," and "oh, what dreadful men these Mormons are, and those Danites! how they slay and kill!" Such is all nonsense and folly in the extreme. The wicked slay the wicked, and they will lay it on the Saints. Disaffected Mormon Fanny Stenhouse, a Godbeite dissenter and prominent critic of Brigham Young, described the Danites as "Avenging Angels" who murdered disaffected Mormons and blamed their disappearance on Indians. Ann Eliza Young, an ex-wife of Brigham Young and author of the exposé Wife No. 19, also described the Danites as still being organized after reaching Utah, and murdering dissenters and church enemies. While their claims remain controversial among Mormon historians, their writing does indicate that the concept of Danites remained in currency as late as the 1870s. Thomas Coleman murder In 1866, Thomas Coleman (or Colburn), former slave, who was in good standing as a member of the LDS Church, was murdered. As Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn has documented, Coleman was apparently secretly courting a white Mormon woman, contrary to both territorial law and contemporaneous Mormon teachings regarding people of African descent. At one of their clandestine meetings behind the old Arsenal (on what is now Capitol Hill in Salt Lake) on December 11, Coleman was discovered by "friends" of the woman. The group of vigilantes