Robert S. Bliss: Day-by-Day Witness of Faith and Divine Providence on the Mormon Battalion March (1846–1847)

Robert S. Bliss served in Company B of the Mormon Battalion and kept one of the most complete and carefully maintained day-by-day journals of the entire march. His diary, covering August 1846 through January 1848, was later published in the Utah Historical Quarterly (Vol. 4, 1931) and is preserved in the Huntington Library and on microfilm at the Church History Library.

Bliss was not a dramatic narrator — he was a meticulous one. His journal's value lies precisely in its careful daily record: distances marched, weather conditions, the state of the men's health, what they ate, and, consistently, the spiritual practices that anchored the Battalion throughout. He recorded the regular prayer meetings, the administration to the sick, and the healings that accompanied those ordinances.

The broader Mormon Battalion record — corroborated across multiple journals of which Bliss's is one — describes men being healed by the laying on of hands when ordinary medicine (or the brutal interventions of the army surgeon, Dr. Sanderson) failed them. Bliss's journal situates these acts of faith within the daily rhythm of march life: not as isolated spectacular events, but as the ordinary spiritual discipline of a people who expected God to be present in their sufferings.

Bliss continued with the Battalion to California, was mustered out in July 1847, and subsequently made the return journey to Utah. His journal stands as one of the primary documentary witnesses of the Mormon Battalion's faith and endurance — a ground-level record of what Brigham Young promised before the march: that if the Saints kept God's commandments, they would be protected.