History of Salt Lake City, Part 19

Author: Tullidge, Edward Wheelock
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Salt Lake City, Star printing company
Number of Pages: 1194

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CURTIS E. BOLTON, Deputy Clerk of said U. S. Supreme Court for Utah, in absence of W. J. Appleby, Clerk.

Hon. Jeremiah S. Black,

Attorney General of the United States, Washington, D. C."

But these documents furnished to the House alone give no sufficient expo- sition of causes, though there is seen much relation between the letters quoted and the action of the Government. For a thorough exposition commensurate with the aims and purposes of a true and impartial history, we must go to a general review of Utah affairs, not only as regards the Mormon community in their own conduct, but also the conduct of the people of the United States towards them, whether friendly or hostile, which exposition will show that the Utah question has long been intensely a national question.

Strange as the assertion may appear, the real beginning of the train of causes and circumstances which led to the " Utah War," and its many complications, was the continuation of Brigham Young by President Pierce in the governor- ship, in 1855. That is to say, the United States gave the chief cause of offence against itself, and afterwards, by construction, made the potent and thorough administration of Governor Young, and the submission of the community to Federal rule under him, to signify a condition of actual rebellion. That which in the Governor and people of any other Territory or State would have been esteemed by the nation as legitimate and admirable was, in Brigham Young and the Mormons, a present treason and a direct intent to overturn and supplant the national rule with a Mormon Theocracy. The case had entirely changed since Stansbury had said in his report to the Government, " I feel constrained to say, that in my opinion the appointment of the President of the Mormon Church, and the head of the Mormon community, in preference to any other person to the high office of Governor of the Territory, independent of its politicial bearings, with which I have nothing to do, was a measure dictated alike by justice and sound policy. This man has been their Moses. * He had been unanimously chosen as their highest civil magistrate, and even before his appointment by the President, he combined in his own person the triple char- acter of confidential adviser, temporal ruler, and prophet of God."

So far as Governor Young and the Mormons were concerned, this was also

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all true when he was re-appointed by President Pierce, and therein was the in - harmony which developed between Utah and the nation, resulting in the expe- dition. That which at first so eminently fitted Brigham Young for Governor of the colony which he led to these valleys, and multiplied substantially into a little State of the Union, now unfitted him in the eyes of the nation. To be the President of the Mormon Church and Governor of Utah Territory was made to signify the existence of a politicial Mormon Theocracy. The Mormon Moses, clothed with the mantle of Federal authority at the head of his people, appeared to the "Gentile" as an Israelitish rebeldom in the heart of the American re- public. Thus the wording of a Stansbury, a Gunnison and a Thomas L. Kane was substituted by the wording a Drummond and a Magraw, without any real change of subject, or substitution of some new and reversed cause. In his mas- terly treatise of the Mormons and their institutions Gunnison had said: "For those who desire facts in the history of humanity, on which to indulge in reflec- tion, is this offered. It were far easier to give a romantic sketch in lofty meta- phors, of the genesis and exodus of the empire-founding Saints-the subject is its own epic of heroism, whose embellishment is left to imaginative genius, and its philosophy to be deduced by the candid philanthropist." This treatise of Gunnison is the loftiest exposition of the Israelitish theocracy of the Mormons ever written by Gentile pen. As his wording shows, he has treated his historical subject as an "Israelitish epic " wrought in modern times. In view of this epic monument of their history which the hand of Gunnison essayed to rear for the Mormons, it is both astonishing and monstrous that Judge Drummond, in his resignation, should charge Brigham Young with the instigation of his murder by the Indians. Such an act is not within our comprehension of human atrocities and ingratitude, especially when applied to a leader of Brigham Young's cast and sagacity, whose every act marked his deliberate anticipation of a sufficient com- pensation to himself or his people. The cruel and cowardly murder of Gun- nison, by the order of Brigham Young, could not possibly have brought to him or his community such compensation ; for, next to Colonel Thomas L. Kane, Captain Stansbury and Lieutenant Gunnison had done Governor Young and the Mormon community more service than any other men in America.

And it is scarcely less astonishing and monstrous that Drummond in his resig- nation should charge Governor Young and the Mormons with the poisoning of Associate Justice Shaver, and the tomahawking on the plains of Secretary Babbitt, seeing that Judge Shaver, was mourned by Salt Lake City, and his funeral sermon preached by its Mayor, just as the untimely fate of Gunnison was mourned in the message of Governor Young to the Legislature, and his memory thus honorably preserved on the official tablet of Utah's early history; while Secretary Babbitt was himself a Mormon, the chief politician of the community, the man whom the citizens chose and sent to Congress as their Delegate, when they set up the Provisional State of Deseret. Monstrous, however, as these charges of the mur- der of Government officials at the order of Governor Young must appear in any just exposition of the times of 1856-7, they were sent to the House of Repre- sentatives as among the chief causes of the Utah Expedition; yet it is worthy of note that there is an air of protest to the Drummond document in the presenta-

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tion of the Attorney General. It is probable that, had the Hon. Jeremiah S. Black been the Executive, as well as the Judicial head of the Administration at this juncture, he would have viewed Utah and her affairs very much as Daniel Webster had done before, when Brocchus, Brandebury, Harris, Day and Ferris deserted three departments of the newly created Territory, and sought the inva- sion which was accomplished in 1857. Indeed. the sequel does actually show that the Attorney General, after the Proclamation of Pardon, by his constitu- tional decision prevented the re-opening of difficulties, and perhaps an actual war, between General Johnson and his troops on the one side, and Governor Cum- ming and the Utah militia on the other, which decision restored the Territory to the exact place where it stood, under Governor Brigham Young.

The true historical exposition, then, is that Utah was not in rebellion when the expedition was projected ; and that the cause of all the offence on the Mormon side was simply that which the community has given from the beginning-in Ohio, in Missouri, in Illinois, in Utah. They were seeking to build up the Kingdom of God upon the earth; and Brigham Young, their Prophet and Pres- ident of their Church, was also now, for the second time, Governor of Utah, in virtue of his being the great colonizer and founder of the Territory. "The strange and interesting people " were just as admirable when Drummond and Magraw wrote their communications to the Government, making the community hideous and instigating a war erusade against them, as they were when Stansbury reported them to the nation as the most wonderful colony of modern times, wor- -thy of acceptance into the Union as a model state. But, as observed, a change had come over the vision ; and the presence of the Mormon community, in 1857, had become as intolerable to the majority of the people of the United States as they had been to Missouri and Illinois. The spirit and temper which had pos- sessed those States which had driven the Mormons from their borders, now pos- sessed the whole of the United States. That little colony of religious exiles which had planted itself in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847, and, lifting rev- erently the Stars and Stripes on foreign soil, claimed it for the nation in that na- tion's own august name, had grown by their wonderful emigrations into a hun- dred colonies ; but for this very reason, of their marvelous growth and organism, the people of the States east and west desired to rid themselves of the Mormons altogether ; and, if needs be, to drive them with guns and bayonets from Ameri- ican soil. Senators and Representatives saw clearly that if the Mormons were allowed to remain within the American domains, they must inevitably become a State of the Union, and in the end play, perhaps, a controling part in party pol- itics and the national destiny. This had been illustrated in Illinois, where they had held the balance of power between the Democrats and the Whigs. Their colonies were now fast spreading over this western country ; they would settle territory which would come within the political boundaries of half a dozen States, in which they would cast their potent united vote ; they would, by continued im- igrations and rapid increase of offspring by their polygamy, which had offspring for its aim, multiply into a million of United States citizens within the century, whose united political power would be really formidable. Such were the antici- pations and talk about Mormon Utah in those times in the newspapers of the

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country, as may be seen by consulting their files of 1855-6-7. . The New York Herald in one of its leaders declared seriously, and with some admiration withal, that the Mormons held " the whip handle" over the United States, Fillmore and Pierce had given it into the hands of Brigham Young. With Brigham, Governor, Utah was always right, and the United States always wrong. Such was the in- ference, and the reason clearly because such men as Brocchus, Ferris and Drum- mond were the representatives of the United States, as versus Brigham Young the Governor of Utah and President of the Mormon Church. And the New York Herald was verily right. It was just the difference in the officials who represented the United States versus Mormondom, and the governor who repre- sented the United States to the glory and political destiny of the Utah which he had founded. Let alone for another decade, and what would this man, Brigham Young, and his Utah amount to in our national affairs ?- he as Governor, exercis- ing almost absolute authority in the name of the United States, in consequence of the potency of his own character, in consequence of the impotency of those sent against him to overbalance him, and in consequence of the constitutional rights of the people of Utah, as citizens of the United States, who earnestly and loyally supported his lawful and potent administration of Federal authority over the Territory; and, furthermore, in consequence of the fact that nearly all the other Federal officials, except the Mormon branch. first measured arms with the great Mormon Governor, and then deserted their posts, leaving the sole govern- ment of the Territory almost entirely in his hands. Invariably it was the anti- Mormon branch of the administration that commenced hostilities. They con- stituted themselves as missionaries delegated to put down Mormon rule in Utah, and this they did even when not a score of Gentiles were in the Territory, thus tantalizing the entire community and opposing the legitimate administration of the Governor. The opposing Judges were the most conspicuous, as also very potent, they usually forming a majority of the judicial branch of the Territorial administration antagonistic not only to Mormon rule, but to Mormon citizenship,' as subsequent issues have shown. The Indian agents, on their part, though sub- ordinate to Governor Young as Superintendent of Indian Affairs, aimed to frus- trate his Indian policy, sought to stir up the Indians under his superintendency against him and the Mormons, spied upon his actions, and like spies made in- sidious and hostile reports against him as their chief, not only impeaching him, but recommending to the Government not to pay his accounts for expenditure in the Indian wars of the Territory,

Every time this " irrepressible conflict" between Governor Young and the anti-Mormon branch was manifested to the Government and the nation, result- ing as it always did in the discomfiture and generally in the resignation of the antagonists of the Governor, the administration at Washington was both perplexed and provoked, and the country thrown into a state of excitement, and exasperated anger over Utah, and the Mormons. It was evident to the nation that this conflict and anomalous condition in the affairs of one of the Territories could not be per- mitted to continue another decade, and the demand for the removal of Brigham Young from the Governorship, and the appointment of a Gentile Governor in his place was very generally made by the country as the only solution to the Utah

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difficulty. This President Franklin Pierce had sought to accomplish in the ap- pointment of Colonel Steptoe, at the expiration of Governor Young's first term ; but the declining and the petition which Steptoe and his officers headed, recom- mending the re appointment of Governor Young forced the action of the Presi- dent and Brigham into a second term of office. The re-appointment was prob- ably quite in accord with President Pierce's own mind, but he soon found that the sentiment of the country was decidedly against it, and that a Gentile Gov- ernor was in popular demand, and that too for the very purpose of putting down Mormondom. Indeed the expressive epithet " Mormondom " was coined to fit the case, used first in the New York Herald and made to signify, in this connec- tion, that the Mormon Church should be tolerated with all other Churches, but that the " Mormon theocracy " must be invaded and overthrown. This was first proposed to be accomplished by a Gentile Governor, supported by a new corps of Federal officers in accord with him, but later on as the irrepressible conflict grew, and the rage for an anti-Mormon crusade became general, the overthrow of politicial Mormondom was given to a United States army, sent to depose Brig- ham Young as a rebel Governor and to set another in his place.

President Pierce was charged with a political mistake in the continuation of Brigham Young, from the exception taken to his act both by political friends and politicial enemies, but the administration of Pierce was drawing to a close and it did not choose to inaugurate any new measures, which seeming indif- ference on the part of the Government only stirred up the opponents of Brigham Young to greater exertions, and every measure was adopted to secure some decided action. President Pierce, in disgust over this dissatisfaction of political friends and political foes, declared that he would make no more appoint- ments for the Governorship of Utah as long as he held office, and thus Governor Young remained a colossus on his pedestal, on which anti-Mormon rage spent itself in vain, so far as disturbing the condition of affairs in Utah, but an action was worked up in the States against Utah and the Mormons scarcely less virulent in its animus than that which prevailed in the Republican party against slavery and the South.

The rise of the Republican party into power lifted Utah into a political sit- uation, which while it gave her no political advantages, such as her admission as a State, exposed her to danger and left her open to the assault of her enemies. In the framing of its first platform the Republican party raised her to a kindred as- sociation with the South and, in every campaign where John C. Fremont was the standard bearer of the party, there could be read

" The abolishment of slavery and polygamy; the twin relics of barbarism."

Undoubtedly General Fremont had much to do with the sharpening of this politicial directness that associated Utah and the South in the "irrepressible conflict," which the Republican party was inspiring in the country for the over- throw of the Democratic party, and which struck Utah with a military expedition before it struck the South. And though it would fall short of Fremont's dignity and national reputation to class him with Drummond, or to charge him with malice towards Utah, yet it should not be forgotten that there had existed a re-

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lation between him and the Mormons for many years, in which there was nascent much of the "irrepressible conflict" which he sought to infuse into the political contest of the nation against Mormon Utah. He was the son-in-law of Senator Thomas H. Benton, whom the Mormons at that time looked upon as the greatest political enemy they ever had, and there had been something of a rivalry between the Mormons and Fremont, relative to the possession of California. This had dated as far back as the lifetime of Joseph Smith, who, at the very moment when Fremont was designing the conquest of California with a volunteer army, had petitioned the President of the United States and Congress to allow him to occupy that Mexican province with a colony of a hundred thousand Mormons. Senator Douglass favored "General " Smith's project versus General Fremont's; and accompanied with Fremont's report on California, which had just been printed by the Senate, but not yet made public, the Senator from Illinois dis- patched his urgent advice to " General " Smith to at once start for the possession of the Pacific coast with his Mormon colony. It was undoubtedly a knowledge of the Mormon Prophet's design to possess California by his colony, as preferred by Douglass to the somewhat filibustering character of his son-in-law's proposed ex- pedition, that so strongly set Benton against this Mormon colonization in the west, the wonderful success of which the simple relation of the historical fact is proving to be the real cause, not only of the Utah Expedition, but also of all the special legislation in Congress to this day against " Mormon Utah." This at the last effort was very strikingly illustrated by General Cullom in his affirmation to the Senate, substantially to the effect that, if the successful Mormon colonization of the west was not stopped by some radical measure of Congress, the Mormons would control half a dozen States in the west, and thus give the balance of power in the national politics against the Republican party, which at its birth made proclamation of war against Mormondom. Now it is just in this political vein that the historian finds the real cause and animus of the Utah Expedition, and of all the action and special legislation against Mormon Utah to this day, and not in the charges of Magraw and Drummond, nor even polygamy, though the former furnished excuse for the Expedition, as the other does protest for special legislation.

In Missouri and Illinois, this political vein of the Mormon question was only locally defined. It was Senator Benton who first gave it a national significance, and now, upon the political banners of his son-in-law, it was proclaimed with mottoes classing Utah and polygamy with slavery and the South. This develop- ment of the history, gives interest and significance to a brief review of the case of Freniont and the Mormons, in the occupation of the Pacific Slope.

Destiny led the Mormon pioneers to the valleys of Utah. Destiny went with the Mormon battalion to California in the expedition of General S. W. Kearney, whose instructions from the Secretary of War were to " conquer " Cali- fornia, and set up a provisonal military government there in the name of the United States. California, however, was won by Fremont and his volunteers, and the United States flag was hoisted in the Bay of San Francisco by Commo- dore Stockton before the arrival of General Kearney. A battle or two, by the regular troops, under Kearney, completed the conquest. Had not the General

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been forestalled by Fremont, the Mormons would have been among his most re- liable soldiers in the conquest of that country. As it was, Kearney found the situation claimed by several rival governors. Fremont was the hero. Fremont was his great rival. The hero was in rebellion. He refused at first to resign to the military chief the government of the conquered Province. He might have even won the position from the rightful Governor on the strength of his claims as conqueror, supported by his popularity ; but at this crisis of affairs, Col. Phillip St. George Cooke arrived in California with his command-the Mormon bat- tallion. Their coming gave to Kearney the victory over his rival. He consulted with Colonel Cooke, who assured him that he could rely on his Mormon soldiers to a man. This decided the General. He resolved to force the issue and arrest his rival. This was consummated, and Fremont was carried to Washington for trial, under a Mormon guard. The famous case of Kearney and Fremont, forms quite a chapter of American history, but it is not so well known how conspicuous a part the Mormon soldiers played in the case.

The political banners of Fremont as a candidate for the Presidential chair, with their motto, " The abolishment of slavery and polygamy; the twin relics of barbarism," are scarcely more significant than the foregoing review, touching the personal case of himself and the Mormons.

After the rise of the Republican party, this political vein of the Mormon question grew so broad and rapidly in the political mind of the great parties, at this time struggling for the supremacy, that even Senator Douglass was over- whelmed with the necessity of taking up the conflict against the Mormons, whose united vote had sent him to the Senate, and towards whom, up to the present time, he had manifested not merely political gratitude, but even personal friendship.

In politics, Senator Douglas and the Mormons were in perfect accord. His " squatter-sovereignty" was their political creed, and while they sought his in- fluence at the seat of Government, he found in them the living exponents of the sovereignty doctrine to which he devoted his life. Just here, his advice to the Mormon Prophet, as reported by Orson Hyde may be repeated with much his- torical pertinence :

" We have this day [April 26] had a long conversation with Judge Douglass. He is ripe for Oregon and California. He said he would resign his seat in Con- gress, if he could command the force that Mr. Smith could, and would be on the march to that country in a month. 'In five years,' he said, ' a noble State might be formed, and then if they would not receive us into the Union, we would have a government of our own.'"

The Mormons had not gone to the extent of Senator Douglass' counsel. They had, indeed, built up what they considered a " noble State " of the Union and had repeatedly offered it to Congress for acceptance, which had been re- jected ; but they had not in consequence of this rejection "set up an indepen- dent government of their own," which fidelity to the nation doubtless Douglass approved seeing that the treaty had ceded this then Mexican Territory to the United States. There had been then no political change between Douglass and

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the Mormons. The case was simply that Douglass was at that time an aspirant for the Presidency of the United States, and this position he could only reach as the candidate of the State which had expelled the Mormons.

In the spring of 1856 Senator Douglass delivered a great speech at Spring- field, Illinois. It was the announcement of his platform before the assembling of the conventions that were to nominate the successor of President Pierce. In that speech the senator characterized Mormonism as " the loathsome ulcer of the body politic " and recommended the free use of the scalpel as the only remedy in the hands of the nation. But there were those in the States, such as Thomas L. Kane, who had given Douglass' name to President Filmore as surety for Gov- ernor Young, and Mr. Fred. Hudson, the great manager at the time of the New York Herald, who viewed the speech of the Senator from Illinois in its true light. Hudson's confidant, an assistant, on Utah affairs, noticing this passage in American politics of himself, wrote : " My first impulse was to notice the speech, but a careful examination of it rendered the expediency of such a course very doubtful. There were so many ' ifs,' and so often ' should it be,' that it was at last concluded to leave it alone, for the senator might, after all, have said what he did from the necessity of sailing with the popular tide against the Mormons, while, at the same time, he might in the Senate demand evidence of the crimi- inality of the Mormons before any action was taken against them."

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History of Salt Lake City, Part 19

Author: Tullidge, Edward Wheelock Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Salt Lake City, Star printing company Number of Pages: 1194

Author: Tullidge, Edward Wheelock
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Salt Lake City, Star printing company
Number of Pages: 1194