History of Salt Lake City, Part 54

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

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" Ye American Statesmen, will you allow this demon to run riot in the land,

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and while you are speculating about a little political capital to be made out of Utah, allow your nation to be emasculated and destroyed ? Is it not humiliating that these enormities should exist in your midst, and you, as statesmen, as legis- lators, as municipal and town authorities, as clergymen, reformers and philanthro- pists, acknowledge yourselves powerless to stop these damning crimes that are gnawing at the very vitals of the most magnificent nation on the earth ? We can teach you a lesson on this matter, polygamists as we are. You acknowledge one wife and her children ; what of your other associations unacknowledged ? We acknowledge and maintain all of our wives and all of our children ; we don't keep a few only, and turn the others out as outcasts, to be provided for by orphan asylums, or turned as vagabonds on the street to help increase the fearfully growing evil. Our actions are all honest, open and above board. We have no gambling hells, no drunkenness, no infanticide, no houses of assignation, no prostitutes. Our wives are not afraid of intrigues and debauchery ; nor are our wives and daughters corrupted by designing and unprincipled villains. We believe in the chastity and virtue of women, and maintain them. There is not, to-day, in the wide world, a place where female honor, virtue and chastity, are so well protected as in Utah. Would you have us, I am sure you would not, on reflection, reverse the order of God, and exchange the sobriety, the chastity, the virtue and honor of our institutions, for yours, that are so debasing, dishonorable, corrupting, de- faming aud destructive ? We have fled from these things, and with great trouble and care have purged ourselves from your evils, do not try to legislate them upon us nor seek to engulf us in your damning vices.

" You may say it is not against your purity that we contend ; but against po- lygamy, which we consider a crying evil. Be it so. Why then, if your system is so much better, does it not bring forth better fruits! Polygamy, it would seem, is the parent of chastity, honor and virtue; Monogamy the author of vice, dis- honor and corruption. But you would argue these evils are not our religion ; we that are virtuous, are as much opposed to vice and corruption as you are. Then why don't you control it ? We can and do. You have your Christian as- sociations, your Young Men's associations, your Magdalen and Temperance asso- ciations all of which are praiseworthy. Your cities and towns are full of churches, and you swarm with male and female lecturers, and ministers of all denominations. You have your press, your National and State Legislatures, your police, your mu- nicipal and town authorities, your courts, your prisons, your armies, all under the direction of Christian monogamists. You are a nation of Christians. Why are these things not stopped ? You possess the moral, the religious, the civil and military power but you don't accomplish it. Is it too much to say 'take the beam out of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to remove the mote that is in thy brother's.'

" Respectfully, etc., " JOHN TAYLOR."

It is not necessary to give Mr. Colfax's reply to Apostle Taylor, as his points are all reviewed in the following rejoinder :

" Mr. Colfax has replied to my article by another, published in the New York Independent, December 2nd, headed ' The Mormon Question.'

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" I have always been taught to reverence men in authority. My religion has not lessened the force of that precept. I am sorry to be under the necessity of differing from the honorable gentleman who stands second in authority in the greatest and freest nation in the world. My motto has always been and now is : Honor to whom honor is due; yet, while I feel bound to pay homage to a man of his talent and position I cannot but realize that 'all men are now free and equal,' and that I live in a land where the press, thought and speech are free. If it had been a personal difference I should have had no controversy with Mr. Colfax, and the honorable gentleman, I am sure, will excuse me for standing up in the defense of what I know to be a traduced and injured people. I would not accuse the gentleman of misrepresentation. I cannot help knowing, however, that he is misinformed in relation to most of his historical details ; and justice to an outraged community, as well as truth, requires that such statements should be met and the truth vindicated. I cannot but think that in refusing the proffered hospitality of our city which, of course, he had a perfect right to do, he threw himself among a class of men that were, perhaps, not very reliable in histor- ical data.

"I am not surprised at his apparent prejudices ; I can account for his anti- pathies, but cannot permit Mr. Colfax, even ignorantly, to traduce my friends without defense. He states that ' the demand of the people of Utah Territory for immediate admission into the Union, as a State, made at their recent confer- ence meeting and to be presented by their delegate at the approaching session of Congress, compels the nation to meet face to face, a question which it has appar- ently endeavored to ignore.'

" Is there anything remarkable in a Territory applying for admission into the Union ? How have other States entered the Union since the admission of the first thirteen ? Were they not all Territories in their turn, and generally ap- plied to Congress for, and obtained admission ? Why should Utah be an excep- tion? She has from time to time, as a constitutional requisition, presented a petition with a constitution containing a republican form of government. Since her application California, Nevada, Kansas, Minnessota, Oregon and Nebraska have been admitted. And why should Congress, as Mr. Colfax says : 'endeavor to ignore Utah?' And why should it be so difficult a question to meet ' face to face ?' Has it become so very difficult for Congress to do right ? What is the matter ? Some remarkable conversation was had between Brigham Young and Senator Trumbull. Now, as I did not happen to hear this conversation, I cannot say what it was. One thing, however, I do know, that I have seen hundreds of distinguished gentlemen call on President Young and they have been uniformly better treated than has been reciprocated. But something was said about United States officers. I am sorry to say that many United States officers have so de- ported themselves that they have not been much above par with us. They may indeed be satraps and require homage and obeisance ; but we have yet to learn to bow the knee. Brigham Young does not generally speak even to a United States Senator with honeyed words and measured sentences; but as an ingenious and hon- est man. But we are told that ' the recent expulsion of prominent members of his Church for doubting his infallibility proves that he regards his power as equal to any emergency and has a will equal to his power.'

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" I am sorry to have to say that Mr. Colfax is mistaken here. No person was ever dismissed from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for disbe- lieving in the infallibility of President Young. I do not believe he is infallible, for one ; and have so taught publicly. I am in the Church yet. Neither have I ever heard President Young make any such pretensions. Mr. Colfax is a good politician, but he makes sad blunders in polemics. He makes a magnificent Speaker and President of the Senate; I am afraid, however, that as a preacher he would not be so successful. The honorable gentleman now proceeds to divide his subject and commences .

"'I. THEIR FERTILIZING OF THE DESERT .- For this they claim great credit, and I would not detract an iota from all they are legitimately entitled to. It was a desert when they first emigrated thither. They have made large portions of it fruitful and productive, and their chief city is beautiful in location and at- tractive in its gardens and shrubbery. But the solution of it all is in one word- water. What seemed to the eye a desert became fruitful when irrigated, and the mountains, whose crests are clothed in perpetual snow, furnished, in the unfailing supplies of their ravines, the necessary fertilizer.'

': Water ! Mirabile dictu !! Here I must help Mr. C. out. This wonder- ful little water nymph, after playing with the clouds on our mountain tops, frolick- ing with the snow and rain in our rugged gorges for generations, coquetting with the sun and dancing to the sheen of the moon, about the time the 'Mormons' came here took upon herself to perform a great iniracle, and descending to the valley with a wave of her magic wand and the mysterious words, " hickory, dic- cory, dock,' cities and streets were laid out, crystal waters flowed in ten thousand rippling streams, fruit trees and shrubbery sprang up, gardens and orchards abounded, cottages and mansions were organized, fruits, flowers and grain in all their elysian glory appeared and the desert blossomed as the rose; and this little frolicking elf, so long confined to the mountains and water courses proved herself far more powerful than Cinderella or Aladdin. Oh! Jealousy, thou green-eyed monster ! Can no station in life be protected from the shimmer of thy glamour ! Must our talented and honorable Vice-President be subjected to thy juandiced touch ? But to be serious, did water tunnel through our mountains, construct dams, canals and ditches, lay out our cities and towns, import and plant choice fruit-trees, shrubs and flowers, cultivate the land and cover it with the cattle on a thousand hills, erect churches, schoolhouses and factories, and transform a howling wilderness into a fruitful field and garden ? If so, why does not the Green River the Snake River, Bear River, Colorado, the Platte and other rivers perform the same prodigies ? Unfortunately for Mr. Colfax, it was Mormon polygamists who did it. The Erie, the Welland, the Pennsylvania and Suez canals are only water. What if a stranger on gazing upon the statuary in Washington and our magnifi- cent Capitol, and after rubbing his eyes were to exclaim, 'Eureka ! It is only rock and mortar and wood.' This discoverer would announce that instead of the development of art, intelligence, industry and enterprise, its component parts were simply stone, mortar and wood. Mr. Colfax has discovered that our improve- ments are attributable to water. We next come to another division and quote their persecutions :

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" 'This is also one of their favorite themes. Constantly it is reiterated by their apostles and bishops, from week to week, and from year to year. It is discoursed about in their tabernacles and their ward and town churches. It is written about in their periodicals and papers. It is talked about with nearly every stranger that comes into their midst. They have been driven from place to place, they claim, solely on account of their religious belief. Their faith has subjected them to the wickedest persecution by unbelievers. They have been despoiled, they insist, of their property ; maltreated in their persons, buffeted and cast out, because they would not renounce their professions and their revelations.'

" This, sir, is all true ; does it falsify a truth to repeat it ? The Mormons make these statements and are always prepared to prove them. I referred to some of these things in my last ; Mr. Colfax has not disproved them. He now states, ' I do not attempt to decide that the charges against them are well founded.' Why then are they made ? Has it become so desirable to put down the Mormons that unfounded charges must be preferred against them ?

""' Their church was first established at Manchester, New York, in 1830, and their first removal was in 1831, to Kirtland, Ohio, which they declared was revealed to them as the site of their New Jerusalem.' (A mistake.) 'Thence their leaders went west to search a new location, which they found in Jackson County, Mo., and dedicated a site for another New Jerusalem there, and returned to Kirtland to remain for five years avowedly to make money ; ' (an error) 'a bank was estab- lished there by them ; large quantities of bills of doubtful value issued, and growing out of charges of fraudulent dealing, Smith and Rigdon were tarred and feathered.' This is a gross perversion, Smith and Rigdon were tarred and feathered in March, 1832, in Hiram, Portage County; the bank was organized December 2nd, 1836, in Kirtland.

" Mr. C. continues : 'And unjustifiable as such outrages are this one was based on alleged fraud and not on religious belief.' Allow me to state that this persecution was based on religious belief and not on fraud, and that this state- ment is a perversion, for the bank was not opened until several years after the tarring and feathering referred to. But did the bank fail? Yes, in 1837, about five years after, in the great financial crisis ; and so did most of the banks in the United States, in Canada, a great many in England, France and other parts of Europe. Is it so much more criminal for the Mormons to make a failure than others? Their bank was swallowed in the general financial maelstrom, and some time after the failure of the bank the bills were principally redeemed.

" 'They fled to Missouri, their followers joined them there, they were soon accused of plundering and burning habitations and with secret assassinations.' Was there no law in Missouri? The Missourians certainly did not lack either the will or the power to enforce it. Why were not these robbers, incendiaries, and assassins dealt with? Mr. C. continues: 'Nor do these charges against them rest on the testimony of those who had not been of their own faith ; in October, 1838, T. B. Marsh, ex-president of the twelve apostles of their church, and Orson Hyde, one of the apostles, made affidavits before an officer in Rav County, Mis- souri, in which Marsh swore and Hyde corroborated it.

"' They have among them a company consisting of all that are true Mor-

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mons, called the Danites, who have taken an oath to support the heads of the church in all things, whether right or wrong. I have heard the Prophet say that he would yet tread down his enemies and walk over their dead bodies; that, if he was not let alone he would be a second Mohammed to this generation, and that he would make it one gore of blood from the Rocky Mountains to the At- lantic ocean.' I am sorry to say that Thomas B. Marsh did make that affidavit, and that Orson Hyde stated that he knew part of it and believed the other ; and it would be disingenuous in me to deny it; but it is not true that these things existed, for I was there and knew to the contrary ; and so did the people of Mis- sonri, and so did the Governor of Missouri. How do you account for their acts ? Only on the score of the weakness of our common humanity. We are living in troublous times, and all men's nerves are not proof against such shocks as we then had to endure. Mobs were surrounding us on every hand, burning our houses, murdering our people, destroying our crops, killing our cattle. About this time that horrible massacre at Haun's Mill took place, where men, women and children, were indiscriminately butchered, and their remains, for want of other sepulture, thrown into a well. Messages were coming in from all parts, of fire, devastation, blood and death. We threw up a few logs and fences for protection ; this, I suppose, is what Mr. Colfax calls, 'fortifying their towns and defying the officers of law.' If wagons and fences and a few house logs are fortifications, we were fortified ; and if the mob, whose hands were dripping with the blood of men, women and children, whom they had murdered in cold blood, were ' officers of the law ' then we are guilty of the charge. I cannot defend the acts of Thomas B. Marsh or Orson Hyde, although the latter had been laboring under a severe fever, and was at the time only just recovering, no more than I could defend the acts of Peter when he cursed and swore and denied Jesus ; nor the acts of Judas who betrayed Him; but, if Peter, after going out and ' weeping bitterly,' was restored, and was afterwards a chief apostle ; so did Orson Hyde repent sincerely and weep bitterly, and was restored and has since been to Palestine, Germany and other nations. Thomas B. Marsh returned a poor broken down man, and begged to live with us ; he got up before assembled thousands and stated : 'If you wish to see the effect of apostacy, look at me.' He was a poor wreck of a man, a helpless drivelling child, and he is since dead. A people are not to be judged by such acts as these. But the Governor of Missouri in his message says :

"' These people had violated the laws of the land by open and armed resistance to them ; they had instituted among themselves a government of their own, inde- pendent of, and in opposition to, the government of this State," (false); " they had, at an inclement season of the year, driven the inhabitants of an entire county from their homes, ravaging their crops and destroying their dwellings.'

" Now, if the Governor had reversed this statement it would have been true ; the falsity of it I stand prepared to prove anywhere. Mr. Governor it was your bull that gored our ox. We were robbed, pillaged and exiled, were you? Our men, women and children were murdered without redress; driven from their homes in an inclement season of the year, and died by hundreds, in the State of Illinois, in consequence of hardships and exposure.

" The legislature of Missouri, to cover their infamy, appropriated the munifi-

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cent sum of $2,000 to help the suffering Mormons. Their agent took a few mis- erable traps, the sweepings of an old store ; for the balance of the patrimony he sent into Davis County and killed our hogs, which we were then prevented from doing, and brought them to feed the poor Mormons as part of the legislative ap- propriation. This I saw. On this subject I could quote volumes. I will only say that when authenticated testimony was presented to Martin Van Buren, the President of the United States, he replied, 'Your cause is just ; but I can do nothing for you.'

" Mr. Colfax, in summing up, says, ' There is nothing in this as to their re- ligion.' Read the following :

" Tuesday, November 6th, 1838, General Clark made the following remarks to a number of men in Far West, Mo. :

" 'Gentlemen, you whose names are not attached to this list of names will now have the privilege of going to your fields and providing corn and wood for your families. Another article yet remains for you to comply with, that is, that you leave the State forthwith, and whatever may 'be your feelings concerning this, or whatever your innocence is nothing to me. The orders of the Governor to me were that you should be exterminated. I would advise you to scatter abroad and never again organize yourselves with bishops, presidents, etc., lest you excite the jealousies of the people.'

" Is not this persecution for religion ?

" Mr. Colfax next takes us to Nauvoo and says, 'In Nauvoo they remained until 1846; the disturbances which finally caused them to leave the city were not in consequence of their religious creed. Foster and Law, who had been Mor- mons, renounced the faith and established an anti-Mormon paper at Nauvoo called the Expositor. In May, 1844, the prophet and a party of his followers, on the publication of his first number, attacked the office, tore it down and destroyed the press.'

" This is a mistake. The Expositor was an infamous sheet, containing vile and libelous attacks upon individuals, and the citizens generally, and would not have been allowed to exist in any other community a day. The people complained to the authorities about it; after mature deliberation the city council passed an or- dinance ordering its removal as a nuisance, and it was removed. In a conversa- tion with Governor Ford, on this subject, afterwards, when informed of the cir- cumstances, he said to me, ' I cannot blame you for destroying it, but I wish it had been done by a mob.' I told him that we preferred a legal course, and that Black- stone described a libellous press as a nuisance and liable to be removed ; that our city charter gave us the power to remove nuisances ; and that if it was supposed we had contravened the law, we were amenable for our acts and refused not an investigation. Mr. Colfax's history says, ' The authorities thereupon called out the militia to enforce the law, aud the Mormons armed themselves to resist it.' The facts were that armed mobs were organized in the neighborhood of Carthage and Warsaw. The Governor came to Carthage and sent a deputation to Joseph Smith, requesting him to send another to him, with authentic documents in rela- tion to the late difficulties. Dr. J. M. Bernhisel, our late delegate to Congress, and myself, were deputed as a committee to wait upon the Governor. His Ex-

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cellency thought it best (although we had had a hearing before) for us to have a rehearing on the press question. We called his attention to the unsettled state of the country, and the general mob spirit that prevailed ; and asked if we must bring a guard ; that we felt fully competent to protect ourselves, but were afraid it would create a collision. He said, ' We had better come entirely unarmed,' and pledged his faith and the faith of the State for our protection. We went un - armed to Carthage; trusting in the Governor's word. Owing to the unsettled state of affairs we entered into recognizances to appear at another time. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, for treason. They were re- manded to jail, and while there were murdered. Not ' by a party of mob,' as Mr. Colfax's history states, ' from Missouri,' but by men in Illinois, who, with black- ened faces, perpetrated the hellish deed ; they did not overpower the guard, as stated, the guard helped them in the performance of their fiendish act. I saw them for I was there at the time. I could a tale unfold that would implicate editors, officers, military and civil, ministers of the gospel, and other wolves in sheep's clothing.

" The following will show in part what our position was :

" 'A proclamation to the citizens of Hancock County : - Whereas, a mob of from one to two hundred men, under arms have gathered themselves together in the southwest part of Hancock County, and are at this time destroying the dwellings, and other buildings, stacks of grain and other property, of a portion of our citizens in the most inhuman manner, compelling the defenceless women ana children to leave their sick beds and exposing them to the rays of the parch- ing sun, there to lie and suffer without aid or assistance of a friendly hand, to min- ister to their wants, in their suffering condition. The rioters spare not the widow nor orphan, and while I am writing this proclamation, the smoke is arising to the clouds, and the flame is devouring four buildings which have just been set on fire by the rioters. Thousands of dollars worth of property has already been con- sumed, an entire settlement of about sixty or seventy families laid waste, the in habitants thereof are fired upon, narrowly escaping with their lives, and forced to flee before the ravages of the mob. Therefore I-command said rioters and other peace breakers to desist, forthwith, and I hereby call upon the law-abiding citizens, as a posse commitatus of Hancock County, to give their united aid in sup- pressing the rioters and maintaining the supremacy of the law.

J. B. BACKENSTOS, Sheriff of Hancock County, Ills.'

" Mr. Backenstos was not a Mormon.

" We set out in search of an asylum, in some far off wilderness, where we hoped we could enjoy religious liberty. Previous to our departure a committee composed of Stephen A. Douglass, Gen. John J. Harding, both members of Con - gress, the Attorney General of Illinois, Major Warren and others, met in my house, in Nauvoo, in conference with the Twelve, to consult about our departure. They were then presented the picture of devastation that would follow our exodus, and felt ashamed to have to acknowledge that State and United States authorities had to ask a persecuted and outraged people to leave their property, homes and fire- sides for their oppressors to enjoy ; not because we had not a good Constitution

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and liberal government, but because there was not virtue and power in the State and United States authorities to protect them in their rights. We made a treaty with them to leave ; after this treaty, when the strong men and the majority of the people had left, and there was nothing but old and infirm men, boys, women and children to battle with, like ravenous wolves, impatient for their prey, they vio- lated their treaty by making war upon them, and driving them houseless, home- less, and destitute across the Mississippi river.

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History of Salt Lake City, Part 54

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