Ammoron's Preposterous Letter

Ammoron’s letter to Moroni recorded in Alma 54:16-24 is an intriguing one to me.  As readers we have the whole story behind what he is talking about, and so we can see through his lies and pretended sincerity.  We don’t always have that luxury as we listen to the politicians today, so I think there is some benefit in analyzing what he said and why what his reasoning is so absurd.  

                His first argument about the reason for their war was this: “For behold, your fathers did wrong their brethren, insomuch that they did rob them of their right to the government when it rightly belonged unto them.” Really?  First of all, that’s all that he could come up with?  The same old argument for waging war that the Lamanites have been passing down as justification for generations?  Not only that, but the supposed “wrong” done by Moroni’s brethren was more than 500 years previous.  Even if Nephi had really “wronged” Laman and Lemuel, how in the world does an event that happened that many centuries previous give any justification for the Lamanites to come in and try to slaughter the Nephites? It doesn’t, of course.  It would be like Great Britain declaring war on France today because of grievances in the 100 Years War that ended in 1453.  Lastly, any argument about “rights” to government is pretty shallow coming from a man whose brother stole the throne of the Lamanites through deceit and murder. 

A related jab that Ammoron attempted to make at the Nephites and an implicit reason for his conflict was that he was a descendant of Zoram whom, he said to Moroni, “your fathers pressed and brought out of Jerusalem.”  Not only was this a pretty weak argument because he was still trying to use an event that happened hundreds of years previous to justify their hatred of the Nephites, but he also got the story wrong or at least missed the key details.  Despite Ammoron’s attempt to paint the story as if Zoram had been forced to come with them and had his agency stolen, Zoram was made a “free man” among the Nephites, married, and from what we can tell lived as freely as the rest of the group.  Zoram also was “a true friend” to Nephi, an indication that he did not regret having accepted to come even if he was forced to make a life-changing choice on the spot (2 Nephi 1:30). 

Another preposterous argument that Ammoron made in his letter was that he was seeking to “avenge [Amalickiah’s] blood” after Teancum had killed him, and that’s at least partly why he was continuing to wage the war against the Nephites.  First of all, this was a war that Amalickiah had started and was causing the death of thousands of people—why should he be exempt from that same fate?  Teancum didn’t slay him unprovoked; he slayed him in hopes that he would be able to save thousands of lives from death in future battles.  And, more importantly, it’s quite ironic that Ammoron would argue that there was some injustice in the fact that Amalickiah had been killed.  This was the man who had secretly killed both Lehonti and the king of the Lamanites in an attempt to take over control of the Lamanites.  Surely there was injustice in those first two killings, but Amalickiah got exactly what was coming to him.

Most of the time as we listen to leaders good and bad across the world today, though, we don’t have all of the details to analyze the arguments like we do here in this story.  I guess that points to the need for us to have the spirit of discernment to know when what is presented to us is actually pure “fraud” as Moroni knew of Ammoron’s arguments (Alma 55:1).