History of Salt Lake City, Part 45

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

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" And now, what has the government a right to demand of you? It is not that which Napoleon exacts from his officers in France,-which is allegiance to the constitution and fidelity to the emperor. Thank God, we have no emperor nor despot in this country, throned or unthroned. Here every man has the right, himself, to exercise his elective suffrage as he sees fit, none molesting him or mak- ing him afraid. And the duty of every American citizen is condensed in a single sentence, as I said to your committee yesterday,-not in allegiance to an em- peror, but allegiance to the constitution, obedience to the laws, and devotion to the Union. (Cheers.) When you live to that standard you have the right to demand protection ; and were you three times three thousand miles from the national capital, wherever the starry banner of the republic waves and a man stands under it, if his rights of life, liberty and property are assailed, and he has rendered this allegiance to his country, it is the duty of the government to reach out its arm, if it take a score of regiments, to protect and uphold him in his rights. (Cheers.)

" I rejoice that I came into your midst. I want to see the development of this great country promoted. I would now touch on a question which I could allude to at greater length-that is about mining-but I find that our views differ somewhat with the views of some whom you hold in great respect here, therefore I will not expand on this subject as in Colorado or Nevada. But I would say this, for the truth compels me to say it, that this great country is the granary of the world everybody acknowledges, at home and abroad. When five of the States in the North- west produce three hundred and fifty million bushels of grain per year -- when you can feed all your own land, and all the starving millions of other lands besides, with an ordinary crop, then you are indeed the granary of the world. But this country has a prouder boast than that-it is the treasury of the world. God has put the precious metals through and through these Rocky Mountains, and all these mountains in fact, and I only say to you that if you, yourselves, do not de- velop it, the rush and tide of population will come here and develop it and you cannot help it. (Cheers.) The tide of emigration from the old world, which even war with all its perils did not check, is going to pour over all these valleys and mountains, and they are going to extend the development of nature, and I will tell you if you do not want the gold they will come and take it themselves. 2

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(Cheers.) You are going to have this Territory increase in population, then there will not be much danger about this State matter.

" Now, with the bright stars looking down upon us here, as they do on our friends in distant States, I thank you for the kind attention with which you have listened to me; and while I hold the stand I ask you to join with me, if you will, in three hearty hurrahs for that Union which is so dear to our hearts, the very ark of our covenant, which may no unhallowed hand ever endanger in the centuries yet to come."

The assembled throng joined with the speaker and gave three hearty cheers, which were followed with three cheers "for Colfax."

Next came Lieutenant-Governor Bross of Illinois, editor of the Chicago Tribune, whose speech (given entire) is one of the most hearty, genuine tributes ever uttered or penned in honor of the early settlers of Utah :

"Fellow citizens: I have no doubt at all but that I could make a very good speech, if the Honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives of this great nation had not taken all the wind out of my sails, and left me nothing to say. (Laughter.) But it is just like him, for though he and I are neighbors, close neighbors, as he lives in the State of Indiana and I in the State of Illinois, yet that is the concession I am always obliged to make to the honorable gentleman. But I can only join my testimony to what the honorable Speaker has said, of my amazement at the development which I witness around me.

"To see what I have seen to day-your beautiful gardens ; where, less than twenty years ago, sage brush held undisturbed possession of the soil, now side by side, grow in luxuriance and tempting sweetness the peach, the apple and the strawberry, is a matter of astonishment to me beyond anything I ever saw before in my life. (Cheers.) And it shows to me, my fellow-citizens, because we are all citizens of this great and glorious republic, what industry and energy, guided by intelligence, can do for this broad land. (cheers.) I can look back over those wastes of sage brush, over which we have passed in our travel, and wherever there is a mountain current to water the soil, I see before me in this great city what can be realized on every acre of the broad plains between the Missouri and this beautiful valley. And I know that American energy and American enterprise will soon redeem large tracts of this land through which we have passed, and soon, instead of being a vast desert, it will bloom and blossom like the rose, as your city does to-day. (Hear, hear.)

"I have always been a western man, though living down east. I have always felt that the West was soon to be the centre of wealth and power to this great nation. When but a boy I studied its geography ; when I grew to manhood, I studied its resources; now I am here to witness with my own eyes what American enterprise can do in the centre of the continent. And representing as I do, the great State of Illinois, that State that can furnish food for the nation, and that city that sits as a queen at the head of Lake Michigan, ready with open arms to grasp the wealth of this North-west, and to pour back her wealth upon it, I feel here to-night, as if I had an interest in you, and in the progress and development of this Territory and every other Territory between the lakes and the Pacific. And whatever I can do, as editor of what is recognized as one of the chief newspapers in the city of

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Chicago, to advance the interests of this North-west, you may calculate I shall do for your benefit. (Cheers.)

"Among those things which I shall advocate is the necessity of the further development and the pushing forward of those great lines of communication which are to make us neighbors; and then, instead of rolling along in one of Mr. Holladay's fine coaches, for fine they certainly are, with our good friend Otis, I expect to have him by the hand, and taking our seat in the cars, come to Salt Lake City to eat strawberries with you in the short space of three days. (Cheers.)

"I have seen a stage coach and the men who drive these stages across these great plains and mountains, and I wish to add my tribute of respect not only to Ben Holladay, but to the humblest stage driver between here and the Missouri. (Cheers.) They are brave men all, noble men all, everywhere in these stations. Passing along from one to the other, we found intelligence and that which charmed us ; and from my position here before you to-night, you can see I must have fared very well, and in Salt Lake City they have not starved me. (Laughter.) I can say, from my experience here, I have tested the capacity of man's system to contain strawberries and I find it large, but it did not equal the capacity of our friend's strawberry bed."

" My fellow citizens, let me here repeat that in this excursion we have found a great many things to interest us. I have made a great many discoveries which I intend to send down home for the benefit of those who shall come here in the stage coach, for that is an institution I have learned to value. I reverence the stage coach ; there is no such place to sleep in as the stage coach when running over the rocks and through chuck-holes. A man can sleep in a stage coach, and four hour's sleep there is worth a whole night's sleep in a bed. I have engaged of our good friend Otis one of his stage coaches, and I intend to have it sent right down to Chicago, and have some of Gates' machinery to work it, and I shall sleep in it the rest of my life. (Laughter.)

" I say, therefore, go on developing this valley as you have done. Build your canal from Utah Lake, cut your canal the other side of Jordan ; they say it is a hard road to travel, but I have not found it so. Cut your canals and water this whole land, that it may bud and blossom and bring forth abundantly. I have seen here such an evidence of wealth, cultivation and progress as would surprise any man, let him come from where he will ; even if he be a western man, it will surprise him.

" So far as the railroad is concerned, and my friend Colfax has run the en- gine pretty well, I want to say to you, that we here, connected with the newspa- pers back east, I and my associates of the quill, will do all that we can do; we will concentrate our energies for the accomplishment of that great enterprise, to push it through to the Pacific-we will do all we can for you, we will do all we can to lessen the expense, the vast expense, of drawing your goods all the way from the Missouri to Salt Lake City. You want the railroad-you want it for its intelligence ; you want it from the fact that it mixes up a people and enlightens them, and gives them broader and more liberal views. It will place within your reach here many of the facilities and conveniences of life, now enjoyed by other sections of the nation. I say, my fellow citizens, let us all feel, in the great work of developing this continent, that each one must do his share.

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"I will say here, and ever hereafter, that, so far as you citizens of Utah are concerned, you have done your full share in developing the resources of this Ter- ritory. (Cheers.) If seventeen years, that is the exact time you have been here, has accomplished what it has, what will not the seventeen years to come accom- plish, or a quarter or half a century, for this magnificent valley? You will have these hills swarming with the denizens of New York and Chicago-gentlemen coming to spend the summer angling on the lakes, and to see what wonders you have developed among the mountains, as we are doing in our stay during the week. To-morrow we go down to Salt Lake, to enjoy ourselves the best possible. And when we go home, we will tell the people what we have seen. We are accustomed to tell the truth. The newspaper is not what it once was. We hold this, that the truth in a newspaper is as essential to its success, as is the truth in social life, (cheers) and that nothing but the truth, plainly told, will tell on the interests of this Territory and of this great Northwest, and so far as I am concerned I will tell nothing but the truth about you. (Cheers. )

"Now, passing over the things in which we differ, leaving time and circum- stances to bring us together, let me say that I believe in the great principles that our Creator has established. I believe that the principles of commerce, the prin- ciples of our holy religion, will in the end fuse mankind together and make us all love each other as brothers. (Cheers.) I believe in a higher civilization, in a higher Christianity, being developed in the progress of human events, and such as shall make all men feel that all men are brothers. (Cheers.)

Now, my fellow-citizens, wishing you all prosperity and happiness, and thanking you for your kind reception which you have given to us individually, I bid you good evening."

Mr. Albert D. Richardson, of the New York Tribune, closed the speeches of the evening in a strain congenial to that of his companions.

" I am impressed," he said, " with gratification and pleas- ure at your kind reception and warm and pleasant hospitalities, with wonder at the natural beauties of your surroundings, and at the artificial beauties which your skill and perseverance have given to your young and flourishing city. To me they are full of material for thought, full of suggestiveness.

" The last four years have taught us and the world a great lesson-the lesson that any community, that any section of States under this government which at- tempts to resist the laws, will be ground to dust, under the authority of the Amer- ican people. The next four years will teach a lesson, equally impressive, that peace hath her victories no less renowned than war.

" There is to be a tide of migration towards the West, such as the world has never seen before-there is to be a rapid development, such as the world has never seen before. There are boys here to night who are to see the great regions of the West, from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, teeming with the life of a hundred mil- lions of people. There are old men here to-night who will live to see the accom- plishment of that grandest of material enterprises-such a one as the world has never seen-the Pacific Railroad, to see people from New York and San Fran- cisco, London and China, stopping on the great plains to exchange greetings and newspapers, while their respective trains are stopping for breakfast.

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" It is only in the grand material develop.nent of the country-the building of cities and railroads, the commerce on the river, the establishment everywhere of farms, that the greatest pride of American development is to consist, but that, by and bye, when all these mingling and divers nationalities are blended into one, America is to give the world the best men, the highest average men, the most in- telligent men, of the purest integrity, of the most varied accomplishments, that the world has ever seen.

" But what is all this specially to you ? In my judgment it is a great deal- it is everything , because your location is in the very heart, the very focal point of the new States which are to spring up here. Here is the line of travel, here are the fields of settlement, here is the path of empire. Here is such a site for a city as no commercial metropolis in the whole world occupies. I am dazzled at the thought of the future which may be before it, and of the future which may be before your people.

"The government of the United States, I believe, will do its part to help you. The people of the United States, through their pioneer instinct to move westward, to plant theniselves, to build new regions, will help you. Will you do your part of the work? (Yes, yes.) It is with the profoundest interest that, during the few days that I have been in your Territory, I have been studying its features and its developments. I have been in many of ycur ranches, in your green fields, in many of your gardens, your residences, your business houses, and I have looked with wonder at the almost miracles you have performed in the few years you have been here. And I will tell you, gentlemen, what the development which I have seen means, what it means to me. When I think of the vast labor you had to perform, of this terrible journey from the river here, and when I see what you have done, I am full of wonder and admiration; they mean to me in- dustry; they mean to me integrity and justice in your dealings with each other. (Cheers.) Because I know enough of pioneer life, I know enough from practical- observation and experience of the difficulties that environ and constantly beset new communities, to know this could not have been done by an idle people, by a volatile people, by a people who do not deal fairly and justly among themselves and with each other.

"That to me is a grand augury for your future; if you display in the future the same industry you have displayed during these pioneer years, and then adjust yourselves, as you will be compelled to, to the wants, necessities, and associations of the great communities that will flow in here upon you, to become a part of yourselves; if you perform your duties, as I doubt not you will, to our common country, right here in this beautiful valley, in this great basin, is to be one of the richest and most populous portion of our nation.

"I wish I could paint your coming horizon ; I wish I could cast the horoscope of your future ; but I think it cannot be many years before the new star of Utah will sail up our horizon to take her place among the other members of our Amer- ican constellation, (cheers) which we fondly hope, like the stars that light us to- night, shall 'haste not nor rest not, but shine on forever.'"'

NOTE-The foregoing speeches were reported by the able and faithful pen of the late David W. Evans, and revised by Mr. Colfax and his companions.

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CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE CITY FATHERS TAKE THE PARTY TO THE GREAT SALT LAKE. MEETING OF THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE AND THE FOUNDER OF UTAH. THE NATION DINES WITH THE CHURCH. THE PRESIDENT PREACHES IN THE TABERNACLE AT THE REQUEST OF THE SPEAKER, WHO IN TURN TREATS THE SAINTS WITHI HIS EULOGY ON LINCOLN. ADVICE TO THE FATHERS OF THE CHURCH TO ABOLISH POLYGAMY, BY A NEW REVELA- TION, IN EXCHANGE FOR A STATE. THE COLFAX CLOSET VIEWS. ADIEU TO THE MORMON ZION. DEATH OF GOVERNOR DOTY. A TALK ON POLYGAMY WITH THE CHAIRMAN ON TERRITORIES.

Next day Speaker Colfax, Gov. Bross, Messis. Bowles and Richardson, acco:n- panied by the city council and some of the leading merchants, drove over to the Great Salt Lake. "We have" wrote Mr. Bowles, "been taken on an excursion to the Great Salt Lake, bathed in its wonderful waters, on which you float like a cork, sailed on its surface, and picknicked by its shore,-if picnic can be without women for sentiment and to spread table cloth, and to be helped up and over rocks. Can you New Englanders fancy a stag picnic ? We have been turned loose in the big strawberry patch of one of the Saints, and we have had a peep into a moderate Mormon harem, but being introduced to two different women of the same name, one after another, was more than I could stand without blushing."

But the meeting of President Brigham Young and Speaker Colfax and party was the crowning circumstance of the visit.

The Speaker of the House stood upon his dignity. Esteeming himself a chief representative of the nation, he did not think it becoming his national im- portance to first call on Brigham Young. This was expressed, and President Young was fully informed of the mountain of etiquette that burdened the spirit of the honorable Speaker. There could be no doubt that he wished to see the Prophet. To have gone away without seeing him would have taken away half the relish of the visit. So Brigham (who was matchless when he undertook to play the character of simple native greatness) humored him, and went down from his "Lion House," in company with several apostles and leading men of the city, to call upon the nation in the person of Mr. Colfax. The circumstance is told by Mr. Bowles, but with an evident effort to poise the Speaker of the House well as the principal figure in his meeting with the Mormon Moses.

"In Mormon etiquette," he wrote, "President Brigham Young is called upon ; by Washington fashion the Speaker is called upon, and does not call; there was a question whether the distinguished resident and the distinguished visitor would meet; Mr. Colfax, as was meet under the situation of affairs here, made a point upon it, and gave notice he should not call; whereupon President Brigham yielded the question and graciously came to-day with a crowd of high dignitaries of the church, and made, not one of Emerson's prescribed ten minute calls, but a gen-

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erous, pleasant, gossipping sitting of two hours long. He is a very hale and hearty looking man, young for sixty-four, with a light grey eye, cold and un- certain, a mouth and chin betraying a great and determined will-handsome per- haps as to presence and features, but repellent in atmosphere and without magnet- ism. In conversation he is cool and quiet in manner but suggestive in expression; has strong and original ideas, but uses bad grammar. He was rather formal, but courteous, and at the last affected frankness and freedom, if he felt it not. To his followers, I observed he was master of that profound art of eastern politicians, which consists in putting the arm affectionately around them and tenderly en- quiring for health of selves and families; and when his eye did sparkle and his lips soften, it was with most cheering, though not warming effect-it was pleasant but did not melt you."

There were present at this interview, Speaker Colfax, Governor Bross, and Messrs Richardson and Bowles-the party of distinguished visitors ;- Presidents Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, Apostles John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, F. D. Richards, George Q. Cannon, Hons. John F. Kinney, J. M. Bernhisel, Wm. H. Hooper, Mayor Smoot, Marshal J. C. Little; Bishops Sharp and Hardy, Wm. Jennings, John W. Young, N. H. Felt, and George D. Watt, Esqrs.

The Colfax party made a trip to Rush Valley, and on their return to Salt Lake City, on Friday, June 16th, they were the guests of Hon. W. H. Hooper. Next day they visited President Young, and afterwards were the guests of Wm. Jennings, Esq., dining in company with Presidents Young and Kimball; Apostles George A. Smith and George Q. Cannon; Hons. J. F. Kinney and Wm. H. Hooper ; Col. Irish, Mayor Smoot, Marshal J. C. Little, and Charles H. Hapgood, John W. Young, J. F. Tracy, H. S. Rumfield and T. B. H. Stenhouse, Esqrs. Of this dinner Mr. Bowles wrote :

"In the early years of the Territory, there was terrible suffering for want of food ; many were reduced to roots of the field for sustenance; but now there ap- pears to be an abundance of the substantial necessaries of life, and as most of the population are cultivators of the soil, all or nearly all have plenty of food. And certainly, I have never seen more generously laden tables than have been spread before us at our hotel or at private houses. A dinner to our party this evening by a leading Mormon merchant, at which President Young and the principal members of his council were present, had as rich a variety of fish, meats and vegetables, pastry and fruit, as I ever saw on any private table in the east; and the quality and the cooking and the serving were unimpeachable. All the food too was native in Utah. The wives of our host waited on us most amicably, and the entertainment was, in every way, the best illustration of the practical benefits of plurality, that has yet been presented to us.

"Later in the evening we were presented to another, and perhaps the most wonderful, illustration of the reach of social and artificial life in this far off city of the Rocky Mountains. This was the Theatre, in which a special performance was improvised in honor of Speaker Colfax. The building is itself a rare triumph of art and enterprise. No eastern city of one hundred thousand inhabitants,- remember Salt Lake City has less than twenty thousand, -- possesses so fine a the-

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atrical structure. It ranks, alike in capacity and elegance of structure and finish, along with the opera houses and academies of music of Boston, New York, Phil- adelphia, Chicago and Cincinnati. In costumes and scenery it is furnished with equal richness and variety, and the performances themselves, though by amateurs, by merchants and mechanics, by wives and daughters of citizens would have done credit to a first class professional company. There was first a fine and elaborate drama, and then a spectacular farce, in both of which were introduced some ex- quisite dancing, and in one some good singing also. I have rarely seen a theat- rical entertainment more pleasing and satisfactory in all its details and appoint- ments. Yet the two principal characters were by a day laborer and a carpenter ; one of the leading parts was by a married daughter of Brigham Young, herself the mother of several children; and several other of his daughters took part in the ballet, which was most enchantingly rendered, and with great scenic effect. The house was full in all its parts, and the audience embraced all classes of society from the wives and daughters of President Young-a goodly array-and the fam- ilies of the rich merchants, to the families of the mechanics and farmers of the city and valley, and the soldiers from camp."

Next day being Sunday, the Colfax party attended the Tabernacle to hear President Young, who had been asked by Mr. Colfax " to preach upon the dis- tinctive Mormon doctrines."

" Brigham's preaching to-day," wrote Mr. Bowles, "was a very unsatisfactory performance. There was every incentive in him to do his best ; he had an im- mense audience spread out under the 'bowery' to the number of five or six thousand ; before him was Mr. Colfax, who asked him to preach upon the dis- tinctive Mormon doctrines ; around him were all his elders and bishops, in un- usual numbers ; and he was fresh from the exciting discussion of yesterday on the subject of polygamy." The writer continues and gives with great disgust the subject matter of Brigham's sermon, thus closing his review :

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History of Salt Lake City, Part 45

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