History of Salt Lake City, Part 44

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

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Such was the significance of the Colfax visit to Utah ; and, though the con- templated " settlement of Utah affairs " by special legislation was interrupted by the assassination of President Lincoln, and further interrupted by the great con- troversy which took place between the leaders of Congress and President Andrew Johnson, the original design of legislation for Utah quickly came up again when Colfax was elected vice-president, when it further assumed quite a war aspect. As this first visit of Mr. Colfax and party is the beginning of a chain of events and circumstances which have an unbroken continuance from the rise of General Grant and Mr. Colfax to the control of the nation, and perchance may be con-

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tinued for the next quarter of a century, the narrative of this Colfax visit, and a digest of the salient points of the speeches and utterances of the party in public to the citizens, and in private conversations with the Mormon leaders, may be preserved as a unique and very suggestive chapter of Utah's history.

Along the journey from Atchison to San Francisco, the public was kept posted and alive with the movements and utterances of the Speaker and his com- panions, through the medium of the telegraph and Mr. Bowles' letters ; and, at every stage of the journey, the national importance of this visit to the great West was made the universal topic throughout the land.

Mr. Bowles in closing his letters from Denver announced : "Our week in Colorado is ended ; we are off this morning for the seven days' stage ride north and west along the base of the Rocky Mountains, and through them at Bridger's Pass, to Salt Lake City, where we expect to worship with Brigham Young in his Tabernacle on Sunday week."

In this same letter Mr. Bowles gives a description of Mr. Colfax's person, life, and public character, in which he said :

"Without being, in the ordinary sense, one of the greatest of our public men, he is certainly one of the most useful, reliable and valuable, and in any capacity, even the highest, he is sure to serve the country faithfully and well. He is one of the men to be tenaciously kept in public life, and I have no doubt he will be. Some people talk of him for president; Mr. Lincoln used to tell him he would be his successor ; but his own ambition is wisely tempered by the purpose to perform present duties well. He certainly makes friends more rapidly and holds them more closely than any public man I ever knew; wherever he goes, the women love him, and the men cordially respect him ; and he is sure to always be a personal favorite, even a pet, with the people."

In the very nature of things, the heralded visit of such a personage to the Rocky Mountain Zion created an uncommon interest here ; and the City Fathers hastened to meet him on the way with the following telegram :

"GREAT SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, June 7th, 1865.

"Hon. Schuyler Colfax and Traveling Companions, at Fort Bridger :

"Gentlemen :- The undersigned committee, appointed by the city council of Great Salt Lake, take pleasure in informing you that the city council have unanimously passed a resolution tendering to you the hospitalities of the city during your sojourn in our midst.

Being appointed to notify you of this resolution, we beg to add that a com- mittee of gentlemen have been also appointed by that body, to meet you before arrival in the city, and to conduct you to apartments prepared for your use.

"Not being fully acquainted with the names of the gentlemen in the party, we ask excuse for the omission, by extending a warm invitation to them all.

"We are, gentlemen, yours very respectfully. W. H. HOOPER, J. H. JONES, WILLIAM JENNINGS, T. B. H. STENHOUSE,

Committee."

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FORT BRIDGER, June 10.

"W. H. Hooper, Committee :- Our party accept. We leave here this morn- ing about ten o'clock and expect to reach Salt Lake City, on Sabbath morning about eight o'clock.

SCHUYLER COLFAX."

The committee appointed by the Mayor and city council, to receive Speaker Colfax and friends, met them as they descended the hill entering the city, about eight o'clock on Sunday morning. As the stage halted, Captain Hooper, the chairman of the committee, exchanged salutations with Mr. Colfax, and simulta- neously both parties descended from their carriages and shook hands. The chair- man of the committee then made a cordial address of welcome to Mr. Colfax and friends in the city's name, in which he said :

"In tendering you, and your traveling companions, Mr. Colfax, the hos- pitality of our mountain home, I do so with pride, that I am able to present to you a monumental evidence of what American people can do.

"Seventeen years ago, this people, the citizens of Utah, immigrated to these distant parts, and were the first to unfurl the flag of the United States, when they fixed their camp where the city now stands, and to-day we are surrounded with the solid comforts and with many of the luxuries of life.

"While I bid you welcome, sir, we think of the many services you have rendered us, and of the great good we have derived therefrom, for we are sensible that no man has done more to establish postal facilities on the great overland route to the Pacific. No people can appreciate those services more sensibly than the citizens of Utah, for we have often passed many months in the year without any communication whatever with our parent government. You, sir, were one of the first to stretch forth your hand to remedy this evil, and now instead of waiting months for news from the East, we receive it almost daily, by means of this ser- vice ; and thousands are blessed in the benefits of that great measure you have so faithfully advocated.

"The great enterprise of establishing the telegraph wire across the continent, from which we have derived hourly communication with our sister States and Territories, is truly a great blessing, and to no one I am sure, Mr. Colfax, is the country indebted more than to yourself, for its erection. The active support which you gave the measure, contributed much to the establishment of the line, a medium through which time and space are nearly annihilated.

"We take pride in introducing you to our city, in calling your attention to the improvements with which it is surrounded, as well as those of our settlements, reaching five hundred miles north and south and two hundred miles east and west. We take pleasure as well as pride, in alluding to our mills, woollen, cotton and paper factories, orchards, vineyards and fields of cotton and grain, and to every branch of our home industry introduced to multiply among ourselves, from the facilities which our country offers, every means of social and national comfort and independence. We present you these as the result of our industry and of our perseverance, against almost insurmountable obstacles.

" To you editorial gentlemen, who not only govern, but in a sense manufac-

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ture, public opinion, we offer a hearty welcome. We had the pleasure, some years ago, of a visit from Mr. Greeley, of the Tribune, who spent some time in our midst, and I can say with truth that in him we have always found a gentle- man ready and willing at all times to lend his influence in the cause of human progress. In conclusion, gentlemen, I again say, welcome."

Mr. Colfax made a fitting reply to the " welcome," and the guests and com- mittee were then formally introduced to each other. Mr. R. Campbell, city re- corder, read the resolutions passed by the city council, tendering to Speaker Colfax and party the hospitalities of the city, after which the guests stepped into the carriages provided by the committee and were escorted by them into the city.

Letter VIII. in Bowles' Book-"Across the Continent"-gives a graphic touch of the feelings and views of the Colfax party on their entrance into the Mormon Zion, amid the hearty welcomes of our citizens, both Mormon and Gentile. It is his first letter to the Springfield Republican from Great Salt Lake City, and is dated June 14, 1865 :

" Leaving Fort Bridger for our last day's ride hither," wrote the pen of the Colfax party, " we leave the first Pacific slopes and table lands of the Rocky Mountains, drained to the south for the Colorado River, and to the north for the Columbia, and go over the rim of the basin of the Great Salt Lake, and enter that continent within a continent, with its own miniature salt sea, and its inde- pendent chain of mountains, and distinct river courses ; marked wonderfully by Nature, and marked now as wonderfully in the history of civilization by its peo- ple, their social and religious organization, and their material development. This is Utah-these the Mormons. I do not marvel that they think they are a chosen people ; that they have been blessed of God, not only in the selection of their home, which consists of the richest region, in all the elements of a State, between the Mississippi Valley and the Pacific Shore, but in the great success that has at- tended their labors, and developed here the most independent and self-sustaining industry that the western half of our continent witnesses. Surely great worldly wisdom has presided over their settlement and organization; there have been tact and statesmanship in their leaders ; there have been industry, frugality and integrity in the people ; or one could not witness such varied triumphs of industry and in- * X genuity and endurance as here present themselves.

" Early 'sun-up' brought us to the last station, kept by a Mormon bishop with four wives, who gave us bitters and breakfast-the latter with green peas and strawberries-and then, leaving number one at his home, went on with us to the city for parochial visits to the other three, who are located at convenient distances around the Territory.

" Finally we came out upon the plateau-or ' bench,' as they call it here- that overlooks the valley of the Jordan, the valley alike of Utah Lake and the Great Salt Lake, and the valley of the intermediate Great Salt Lake City. It is a scene of rare natural beauty. To the right upon the plateau lay Camp Douglas, the home of the soldiers and a village in itself; holding guard over the town and within easy cannon range of tabernacle and tithing-house ; right beneath, in an angle of the plain-which stretched south to Utah Lake and west to the Salt

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Lake-"and Jordan rolled between"-was the city, regularly and handsomely laid out, with many fine buildings, and filled with thick gardens of trees and flowers, that gave it a fairy-land aspect ; beyond and across, the plain spread out five to ten miles in width, with scattered farm-houses and herds of cattle; below, it was lost in the dim distance ; above, it gave way, twenty miles off, to the line of light that marked the beginning of the Sait Lake-the whole flat as a plain, and sparkling with river and irrigating canals, overlooked on both sides by hills that mounted to the snow line, and from which flowed the fatness of water and soil that makes this once desert valley blossom under the hand of industry with every variety of verdure, every product of almost every clime.

"No internal city of the Continent lies in such a field of beauty, unites such rich and rare elements of nature's formation, holds such guarantees of greatness, material and social, in the good time coming of our Pacific development. I met all along the plains and over the mountains, the feeling that Salt Lake was to be the central city of this West ; I found the map, with Montana, Idaho, and Ore- gon on the north, Dakota and Colorado on the east, Nevada and California on the west, Arizona on the south, and a near connection with the sea by the Colo- rado River in the latter direction, suggested the same ; I recognized it in the Sab- bath picture of its location and possessions ; I am convinced of it as I see more and more of its opportunities, its developed industries and its unimproved pos- sessions.

" Mr. Colfax's reception in Utah was excessive if not oppressive. There was an element of rivalry between Mormon and Gentile in it, adding earnestness and energy to enthusiasm and hospitality. First a troop cometh, with band of music, and marched us slowly and dustily through their Camp Douglas. Then, escaping thus, our coach was waylaid, as it went down the hill, by the Mormon authorities of the city. They ordered us to dismount ; we were individually introduced to each of twenty of them ; we received a long speech; we made a long.one- standing in the hot sand with a sun of forty thousand lens power concentrated upon us, tired and dirty with a week's coach ride : was it wonder that the mildest tempers rebelled ? Transferred to other carriages, our hosts drove us through the city to the hotel; and then-bless their Mormon hearts-they took us at once to a hot sulphur bath, that nature liberally offers just on the confines of the city, and there we washed out all remembrance of the morning suffering and all the accu- mulated grime and fatigue of the journey, and came out baptized in freshness and self-respect. Clean clothes, dinner, the Mormon Tabernacle in the afternoon, and a Congregational (Gentile) meeting and sermon in the evening, were the proceedings of our first day in Utah.

"Since and still continuing, Mr. Colfax and his friends have been the recip- ients of a generous and thougthful hospitality. They are the guests of the city ; but the military authorities and citizens vie together as well to please their visitors and make them pleased with Utah and its people. The Mormons are eager to prove their loyalty to the government, their sympathy with its bereavement, their joy in its final triumph-which their silence or their slants and sneers heretofore had certainly put in some doubt-and they leave nothing unsaid or undone now, towards Mr. Colfax as the representative of that government, or towards the pub-

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lic, to give assurance of their right mindedness. Also they wish us to know that they are not monsters and murderers, but men of intelligence, virtue, good man- ners and fine tastes. They put their polygamy on high moral grounds ; and for the rest, anyhow, are not willing to be thought otherwise than our peers. And certainly we do find here a great deal of true and good human nature and social culture ; a great deal of business intelligence and activity ; a great deal of gen- erous hospitality-besides most excellent strawberries and green peas, and the most promising orchards of apricots, peaches, plums and apples that these eyes ever beheld anywhere."

Passing from Mr. Bowles' gushing description of the entrance of the Colfax party to the Mormon Zion, we come to the grand serenade and welcome given to them, on the Monday evening, by the citizens generally.

At an early hour crowds of citizens assembled on Main Street, in front of the Salt Lake House. After dusk the assemblage grew immense, and anxious silence was enlivened by patriotic airs from the city brass band, under Captain Charles J. Thomas. On the appearance of the distinguished visitors on the balcony, es. corted by the city authorities, Mayor A. O. Smoot was unanimously called to the chair. Hon. John F. Kinney, the then delegate of Utah to Congress, made some prefatory remarks, introducing Speaker Colfax, who came forward and favored the gathered thousands with a speech, in the capacity of a social talk at times, and anon exalting into the realms of patriotism and eloquence. The points touching on our city and its people will form links in the chain of history. Speaker Colfax thus addressed the Mormon people :

" Fellow citizens of the Territory of Utah : Far removed as I am to-night from my home, I feel that I have a right to call every man that lives under the American flag in this wide-spread republic of ours, by the name of fellow citizen. I come before you this evening-introduced by your delegate in so complimen- tary a manner, fearing that you will be disappointed by the speech to which you have to listen. I rise to speak to you of the future of this great country of ours, rather than of the past, or of what has been done for it in the progress of this great republic.

" I was gratified when, on this long journey which my companions and my- self are taking, we were met at the gates of your city, and its hospitality tendered to us ; although I must confess I would far rather have come among you in a quiet way, travelling about, seeing your city and Territory, and making observa- tions, without subjecting your official dignitaries to the trouble and loss of time that our visit seems to have entailed upon them, but which they insist is a pleas- ure. Yet when they voluntarily, and unexpectedly to us, offered us officially this hospitality, we felt that it should be accepted as promptly as it was tendered. I accept it the more cordially because I know that every one of you who knows anything about me and my companions, is sure that, reared as we have been in a different school from what you have been, and worshipping on a different altar, we are regarded as gentiles ; yet, despite of all this, you have seen fit to request us to stop, on this journey to the Pacific, to receive the hospitalities which we have had lavished on us so boundlessly during the two days we have been in your midst. I rejoice that I came to you in a time like this, when the rainbow of

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peace spans our entire horizon from ocean to ocean, giving the assurance that the deluge of secession shall not again overwhelm this fair land of ours. (Cheers). I come to you rejoicing, and I was glad to hear from my old friend, Capt. Hooper, your former delegate to Congress, when he made his welcoming speech on Sab- bath morning in the suburbs of your city, that you too rejoiced in the triumph of this great republic of ours over the enemies who sought to bayonet the prostrate form of liberty, and to blot this great country from the map of the world. Thank God, who rules in the heavens, who determined that what he joined together on this continent, man should not put asunder ; the republic lives to-day, and will live in all the coming ages of the future. (Cheers). There may be stormy conflict and peril ; there may be a foreign war, but I trust not ; I am for peace instead of war, whenever war can be honorably avoided. I want no war with England or France. I want the development and mighty sweeping forward of our giant re- public, in its march of progress and power, to be, as it will be, the commanding nation of the world, when it shall lift its head like your Ensign Peak, yon tall clift that lifts its mighty form swelling over the valley, laughing at the rolling storm clouds around its base, while the eternal sunshine settles on its head. * * * *

"I came here to-night, my friends, to speak to you frankly about the object of our visit in your midst. I know it is supposed, it is almost a by-word, that we of the sterner sex have adopted, that the ladies, the other sex, are the most in- quisitive. Having a profound reverence for woman, for I believe that mother, wife, home and heaven are the four noblest words in the English language, I have never believed this to be true ; but from long experience and observation, am persuaded that our own sex is quite as inquisitive as the other. I can give you some proof of this : there has not been a single lady in Salt Lake City that has asked, 'what have you come out here for?' While there have been several gentlemen who have inquired, very respectfully, it is true, 'what was the object of your coming to Utah?' (Cheers and laughter.) Now I am going to tell you frankly all about it, so that your curiosity shall be entirely allayed.

"I will begin by telling you what we did not come for. In the first place, . we did not come here to steal any of your lands and possessions, not a bit of it. In the second place we did not come out here to make any remarkable fortune by the discovery of any gold or silver mines just yet. In the third place, we did not come out here to take the census of either sex among this people, and to this very hour I am in blissful ignorance as to whether the committee that met me in the suburbs of the city, are, like myself, without any wife, or whether they have been once or twice married, except your two delegates to Congress-they told me they only had a wife apiece. (Laughter. ) In the fourth place, we did not come out here to stir up strife of any character ; we came here to accept the hospitality of everybody here, of all sects, creeds and beliefs who are willing to receive us, and we have received it from all. Well, now, you see we could not have any ulterior design in coming here. -X- *

"Now, you who are pioneers far out here in the distant West, have many things that you have a right to ask of your government. I can scarcely realize, with this large assembly around me, that there is an almost boundless desert of

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1,200 miles between myself and the valley of the Mississippi. There are many things that you have a right to demand ; you have created, however, many things here for yourselves. No one could traverse your city without recognizing that you are a people of industry. No one could look at your beautiful gardens, which charmed as well as astonished me, for I did not dream of any such thing in the city of Salt Lake when I came here, without realizing that you, or many of you, are a people of taste. If anybody doubt that, I think that one of your officers on the hill, who turned us loose into his strawberries to day, realized that he had vis- itors of taste. (Cheers and laughter.) I regret yet that I left it; but I was full, and the truth is I was too full for utterance, therefore I cannot make much of a speech to night.

"In the first place, to speak seriously, coming out here as you had, so far from the old States, you had a right to demand postal communication. I heard something that surprised me, it must be an exaggeration of the truth-that at one time in your early settlement of this place, you were so far removed from postal communication, that you never heard of the nomination of President Pierce un- til he was elected and inaugurated as President. (A voice, 'that's so.') That was some six or eight months-that was a slow coach, and I don't see how any one who had been in the habit of reading a newspaper ever could get along at all ; he must have read the old ones over and over again.

" It happened to be my fortune in Congress to do a little towards increasing the postal facilities in the West ; not as much as I desired, but as much as I could obtain from Congress. And when it was proposed, to the astonishment of my fellow-members, that there should be a daily mail run across these pathless plains and mighty mountains, through the wilderness of the West to the Pacific, with the pathway lined with our enemies, the savages of the forest, and where the lux- uries and even the necessaries of life in some parts of the route are unknown, the project was not considered possible; and then, when in my position as chairman of the post office committee, I proposed that we should vote a million dollars a year to put the mail across the continent, members came to me and said, 'You will ruin yourself.' They thought it was monstrous-an unjust and extravagant expenditure. I said to them, though I knew little of the West then compared to what I have learned in a few weeks of this trip, I said, ' the people on the line of that route have a right to demand it at your hands, and in their behalf I demand it.' (Cheers.) Finally the bill was coaxed through, and you have a daily mail running through here, or it would run with almost the regularity of clockwork, were it not for the incursions of the savages.

" You had a right to this daily mail, and you have it. You had a right, also, to demand, as the eastern portion of this republic had, telegraphic commu- nication -- speeding the messages of life and death, of pleasure and of traffic; that the same way should be opened up by that frail wire, the conductor of Jove's thunderbolts, tamed down and harnessed for the use of man. And it fell to my fortune to ask it for you ; to ask a subsidy from the government in its aid. It was but hardly obtained ; yet now the grand result is achieved, who regrets it,-who would part with this bond of union and civilization ? There was another great interest you had a right to demand. Instead of the slov, toilsome and expensive manner in which you freight your goods and hardware to this distant Territory,

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you should have a speedy transit between the Missouri Valley and this intermoun- tain basin in which you live. Instead of paying two or three prices, -sometimes overrunning the cost of the article,-you should have a railroad communication, and California demands this. I said, as did many others in Congress, 'This is a great national enterprise ; we must bind the Atlantic and Pacific States together with bands of iron ; we must send the iron horse through all these valleys and mountains of the interior, and when thus interlaced together, we shall be a more compact and homogenous republic.' And the Pacific Railroad bill was passed. This great work of uniting three thousand miles, from shore to shore, is to be consummated ; and we hail the day of peace, because with peace we can do many things as a nation that we cannot do in war. This railroad is to be built-this company is to build it ; if they do not the government will. It shall be put through soon ; not toilsomely, slowly, as a far distant event, but as an event in the decade in which we live. x

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History of Salt Lake City, Part 44

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