USA > Utah > History of Utah > Part 24
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General Kearney had reached California some time before, but with only a few men, having disbanded most of his force on being informed en route that California was already in the possession of the United States. Colonel John C. Fremont, who with sixty men was exploring west of the Sierras when the war broke out, had ral- lied the American settlers of Sacramento Valley-a few hundred strong-and with the co-operation of Commodores Sloat and Stock- ton, all but subdued the country before Kearney came. A few skirmishes then took place, and the conquest was complete. The war in California being virtually over before Colonel Cooke's command
* These four women were Mrs. Melissa Burton Coray, wife of Sergeant Coray ; Mrs. Captain Davis, Mrs. Captain Hunter (who died in California) and Mrs. Ebenezer Brown.
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could reach the coast, the Mormon Battalion did not take part in any engagement. Fort-building and garrison service were about all that was required of them. Nevertheless they did much work as mechanics and laborers. They performed their duties in such a man- ner as to elicit the commendation of their military superiors, and win the sincere esteem of the native Californians .* Fremont and some of his men were their foes.+ But General Kearney, Governor Mason and others in authority spoke in high praise of the patience, subor- dination and general good conduct of the Mormon soldiers.į '
Prior to Kearney's arrival Colonel Fremont-authorized, it is said, by Commodore Stockton-had made himself military governor of California. As such he refused to recognize Kearney's author- ity. Thereupon the latter, backed by Colonel Cooke and the Mormon Battalion-the principal force then at his command-had Fremont arrested for insubordination and taken to Washington, where he was court-martialed.
While some of these events were taking place on the Pacific coast, other scenes of a military character were being enacted on the distant shores of the Mississippi. After the departure of the Mormon leaders from Nauvoo in February, 1846, the exodus of their people
* Says Henry G. Boyle, one of the Battalion: " I think I whitewashed all San Diego. We did their blacksmithing, put up a bakery, made and repaired carts, and, in fine, did all we could to benefit ourselves as well as the citizens. We never had any trouble with the Californians or Indians, nor they with us. The citizens became so attached to us that before our term of service expired they got up a petition to the Governor to use his influ- ence to keep us in the service. The petition was signed by every citizen in the town."
+ Fremont was son-in-law to Senator Benton of Missouri.
į Governor R. B. Mason, General Kearney's successor as military commandant of California, in his report to the Adjutant-General September 18th, 1847, wrote : " Of the services of the Battalion, of their patience, subordination and general good conduct you have already heard, and I take great pleasure in adding that as a body of men they have religiously respected the rights and feelings of this conquered people, and not a syllable of complaint has reached my ear of a single insult offered or outrage done by a Mormon volunteer. So high an opinion did I entertain of the Battalion and of their special fitness for the duties now performed by the garrisons in this country, that I made strenuous efforts to engage their services for another year."
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continued without cessation. The Saints were anxious that their enemies should have no ground upon which to base an accusation of bad faith, and no excuse for committing further outrages upon them. Major W. B. Warren, who with a small force of militia remained in Hancock County to preserve order, and doubtless to help on the exodus, thus reported to the Quincy Whig on May 20th: " The Mor- mons are leaving the city with all possible dispatch. During the week four hundred teams have crossed at three points, or about 1,350 souls. The demonstrations made by the Mormon population are unequivocal. They are leaving the State, and preparing to leave, with every means God and nature have placed in their hands. This ought to be satisfactory." The Warsaw Signal, the anti-Mormon organ, published similar reports from Major Warren.
As the Major says, this ought to have been satisfactory, but it was not. Men who were not sated at having imbrued their hands in blood to gratify political and religious animosities, are hard to satisfy. There was too good plundering at Nauvoo to permit the Mormons to dispose of their property and depart in peace, as they desired. Major Warren's reports, confirmed by events that were taking place daily, should have convinced reasonable men that the Mormons were in earnest in their exodus. But if convinced, the anti-Mormons failed to act upon their convictions. On the contrary, they continued to assert the falsehood that the Mormons did not intend to leave the State, and even raised troops at Carthage to march against Nauvoo. Governor Ford in his writings refers to these early settlers of Han- cock County as " hard cases."* No fair-minded person, cognizant of the facts, will dispute the correctness of his estimate. A meeting between the leaders of the military mob and a committee of "new citizens" of Nauvoo-persons who had purchased Mormon properties and moved into the city-averted, but only for a little season, the threatened assault.
* The Governor's comment is as follows : "I had a good opportunity to know the early settlers of Hancock County, and to my certain knowledge the carly settlers, with some honorable exceptions, were, in popular language, hard cases."
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In July a party of Mormons from Nauvoo, ignoring a mobocratic edict ordering all of their faith to remain in the city except when leav- ing for the west, went into the country near a place called Pontoosuc, to help some of their brethren harvest a field of grain. While there they were set upon by a larger party of anti-Mormons, severely whipped and driven away. The last act in the drama of Mormonism in Illinois was thus begun. Several persons were arrested for this assault and taken to Nauvoo. The anti-Mormons retaliated by taking several of the Saints prisoners and holding them as hostages. The men held at Nauvoo, regaining their liberty, sued out writs against their captors for false imprisonment, which writs were placed in the hands of a deputy sheriff, one John Carlin of Carthage, to serve. Meeting some difficulty in executing these processes, he called out the posse comitatus, and having raised two regiments of troops started for Nauvoo.
Governor Ford, being apprised of this movement, ordered Major John R. Parker to muster a force of volunteers and defend the city. Parker and Carlin were thus placed in direct antagonism. Each styled the other's force "a mob." A treaty of peace between Major Parker and Colonel Singleton-in immediate command of the posse- being rejected by the Colonel's men as too favorable to the Mormons, Singleton in disgust resigned, and Carlin appointed Colonel Brock- man in his stead. Governor Ford describes Brockman as "a Camp- bellite preacher, nominally belonging to the Democratic party, a large, awkward, uncouth, ignorant, semi-barbarian, ambitious of officer, and bent upon acquiring notoriety." On assuming command, Brockman and his "regulators"-as the posse was styled-advanced upon Nauvoo, and on the 10th of September began to bombard the town.
The citizens, though such as bore arms were greatly outnum- bered by the attacking force, banded together for defense, and hastily fortifying the approaches to the city, returned the enemy's fire with spirit. Having no artillery, while Brockman's force was well supplied with cannon, they converted some old steam-boat
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shafts into guns, and placing them in position compelled the enemy to retire.
Major Parker for some reason had left Nauvoo, and Colonel Johnson was now in command of the citizen force, which numbered about four hundred men. Brockman is conceded by anti-Mormon estimates to have had twice that many. The main stay of the defense was a select body of riflemen called the "Spartan Band," of which William Anderson and Alexander McRae were first and second captains.
On the 12th of September occurred the battle of Nauvoo, a spirited action of an hour and a quarter's duration, between Brockman's force, which now renewed the attack with fury, and the overmatched but gallant defenders of the city. Colonel Johnson having fallen sick, Lieutenant-Colonel William E. Cutler directed the defense, with Daniel H. Wells as his aide. During the fight, which resulted in another repulse for the "regulators," Captain Anderson, his son Augustus and Isaac Morris were killed, and several others of the defenders wounded. On his side Brockman reported none killed, but twelve wounded. The siege lasted for several days. Finally, through the mediation of a citizen's committee from Quincy, a treaty was agreed upon between the forces militant. This treaty was as follows:
1. The City of Nauvoo will surrender. The force of Colonel Brockman to enter and take possession of the city tomorrow, the 17th of September, at 3 o'clock p. m.
2. The arms to be delivered to the Quincy Committee, to be returned on the cross- ing of the river.
3. The Quincy Committee pledge themselves to use their influence for the protection of persons and property from all violence ; and the officers of the camp and the men pledge themselves to protect all persons and property from violence.
4. The sick and helpless to be protected and treated with humanity.
5. The Mormon population of the city to leave the State, or disperse, as soon as they can cross the river.
6. Five men, including the trustees of the Church, and five clerks, with their fam- ilies (William Pickett* not one of the number) to be permitted to remain in the city for the disposition of property, free from all molestation and personal violence.
* Pickett's offense consisted in taking from one of the mob party- Major McCalla -a gun stolen from one of the Mormons who had been whipped and robbed at Pontoosuc.
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7. Hostilities to cease immediately, and ten men of the Quincy Committee to enter the city in the execution of their duty as soon as they think proper.
We, the undersigned, subscribe to, ratify and confirm the foregoing articles of accom- modation, treaty and agreement, the day and year first above written.
Signed by : Almon W. Babbitt, Joseph L. Heywood, John S. Fullmer, Trustees in Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ; Andrew Johnson, Chairman of the Committee of Quincy; Thomas S. Brockman, commanding posse ; John Carlin, Special Constable.
The terms of the treaty were outrageously violated by Brock- man and his regulators, as soon as they found themselves in full possession of the city. "A grim and unawed tyrant," says Ford of the mob leader; "a self-constituted and irresponsible power," he styles the so-called posse, who, now that Nauvoo was prostrate at their feet, proceeded to work their will upon the helpless inhab- itants. Mormons and non-Mormons, all who had defended the city or otherwise incurred the displeasure of the lawless horde, were treated with every indignity. Some of the "new citizens" were mockingly baptized in the river in the name of Brockman and other leaders of the mob, and then driven out of town. Houses were plundered, and the aged and infirm abused and threatened. Finally, all the Mormons, such as had not already fled, were forced from their homes at the point of the bayonet, and thrown, men, women and children, sick, dying and shelterless, upon the western shore of the Mississippi. And this-shades of the patriots !- while their brethren of the Mormon Battalion were marching to fight their country's battles on the plains of Mexico.
Colonel Thomas L. Kane, who was now returning east from his visit to the Mormon camps on the Missouri, touched at Nauvoo just after this final expulsion. What he saw there he graphically and eloquently told in a lecture delivered a few years later before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. An extract from his lecture is here inserted :
A few years ago, ascending the Upper Mississippi, in the autumn, when its waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of the rapids. My road lay through the half-breed tract, a fine section of Iowa which the unsettled state of its land- titles had appropriated as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves, and other outlaws. I had
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left my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the lower fall, to hire a carriage, and to contend for some fragment of a dirty meal with the swarming flies, the only scavengers of the locality. From this place to where the deep waters of the river return, my eye wcaried to see everywhere sordid vagabonds and idle settlers ; and a country marred, without being improved, by their careless hands.
I was descending the last hill-side upon my journey, when a landscape in delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half-encircled by the bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning sun; its bright new dwellings, set in cool, green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome-shaped hill which was crowned by a noble marble edifice whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city appeared to cover several miles ; and beyond it, in the back-ground, there rolled off a fair country, chequered by the careful lines of fruitful husbandry. The unmistakeable marks of industry, enterprise and educated wealth everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most striking beauty.
It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a skiff, and rowing across the river, landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked and saw no one. I could hear no one move, though the quiet everywhere was such that I heard the flies buzz, and the water-ripples break against the shallow of the beach. I walked through the solitary streets. The town lay as in a dream, under some deadening spell of loneliness, from which I almost feared to wake it; for plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing up in the paved ways; rains had not entirely washed away the prints of dusty footsteps.
Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty workshops, ropewalks and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his work-bench and shav- ings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh- chopped lightwood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold ; but his coal heap, and ladling pool, and crooked water-horn were all there as if he had just gone off for a holiday. No work people anywhere looked to know my errand. If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket-latch after me, to pull the marigolds, heart's-ease and lady slippers, and draw a drink with the water-sodden water bucket and its noisy chain, or knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and sun- flowers, hunting over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples; no one called out to mc from any open window, or dog sprang forward to bark an alarm. I could have supposed the people hidden in their houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearths, and had to tread a-tip- toe, as if walking down the aisle of a country church, to avoid rousing irreverent echoes from the naked floors.
On the outskirts of the town was the city graveyard ; but there was no record of plague there ; nor did it in anywise differ much from other Protestant American cemeter- ies. Some of the mounds were not long sodded ; some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent, and their black inscriptions glossy in the mason's hardly dried letter- ink. Beyond the graveyards, out in the fields, I saw on a spot hard by where the fruited boughs of a young orchard had been roughly torn down, the still smouldering remains of a barbecue fire, that had been constructed of rails from the fencing round it. It was the
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latest sign of life there. Fields upon fields of heavy headed yellow grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was at hand to take in their rich harvest. As far as the eye could reach, they stretched away-they sleeping, too, in the hazy air of autumn.
Only two portions of the city seemed to suggest the import of this mysterious soli- tude. On the southern suburb, the houses looking out upon the country showed, by their splintered woodwork, and walls battered to the foundation, that they had lately been the mark of a destructive cannonade. And in and around the splendid temple which had been the chief object of my admiration, armed men were barracked, surrounded by their stacks of musketry and pieces of heavy ordnance. These challenged me to render an account of myself, and why I had had the temerity to cross the water without a written permit from a leader of their band.
Though these men were generally more or less under the influence of ardent spirits, after I had explained myself as a passing stranger, they seemed anxious to gain my good opinion. They told the story of the dead city ; that it had been a notable manufacturing and commercial mart, sheltering over 20,000 persons ; that they had waged war with its inhabitants for several years, and been finally successful only a few days before my visit, in an action brought in front of the ruined suburb, after which they had driven them forth at the point of the sword. The defence, they said, was obstinate, but gave way on the third day's bombardment. They boasted greatly of their prowess, especially in this battle as they called it ; but I discovered that they were not of one mind as to certain of the exploits that had distinguished it; one of which, as I remember, was, that they had slain a father and his son, a boy of fifteen, not long residents of the fated city, whom they admitted had borne a character without reproach.
They also conducted me inside the massive sculptured walls of the curious temple, in which they said the banished inhabitants were accustomed to celebrate the mystic rites of an unhallowed worship. They particularly pointed out to me certain features of the building, which having been the peculiar objects of a former superstitious regard, thay had, as a matter of duty, sedulously defiled and defaced. The reputed sites of certain shrines they had thus particularly noticed; and various sheltered chambers, in one of which was a deep well, constructed, they believed, with a dreadful design. Besides these, they led me to see a large and deep chiseled marble vase or basin, supported by twelve oxen, also of marble, and of the size of life, of which they told some romantic stories. They said the deluded persons, most of whom were emigrants from a great distance, believed their deity countenanced their reception here of a baptism of regeneration, as proxies for whomsoever they held in warm affection in the countries from which they had come. That here parents went into the water for their spouses, and young persons for their lov- ers. That thus the great vase came to be for them associated with all dear and distant memories, and was, therefore, the object of all others in the building to which they attached the greatest degree of idolatrous affection. On this account the victors had so diligently desecrated it, as to render the apartment in which it was contained too noisome to abide in.
They permitted me also to ascend into the steeple to see where it had been lightning- struck on the Sabbath before, and to look out east and south, on wasted farms like those I
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had seen near the city, extending till they were lost in the distance. There, in the face of the pure day, close by the scar of divine wrath left by the thunderbolt, were fragments of food, cruises of liquor, and broken drinking vessels, with a brass drum and a steamboat signal-bell, of which I afterwards learned with pain.
It was after nightfall when I was ready to cross the river on my return. The wind had freshened since the sunset, and the water beating roughly into my little boat, 1 hedged higher up the stream than the point I had left in the morning, and landed where a faint glimmering light invited me to steer.
There, among the dock and rushes, sheltered only by the darkness, without roof between them and sky, I came upon a crowd of several hundred human creatures, whom my movements roused from uneasy slumber upon the ground.
Passing these on my way to the light, I found it came from a tallow candle in a paper funnel shade, such as is used by street venders of apples and peanuts, and which, flaming and guttering away in the bleak air off the water, shone flickeringly on the emaciated features of a man in the last stage of a bilious remittent fever. They had done their best for him. Over his head was something like a tent, made of a sheet or two, and he rested on a partially ripped open old straw mattress, with a hair sofa cushion under his head for a pillow. His gaping jaw and glaring eye told how short a time he would monopolize these luxuries; though a seemingly bewildered and excited person, who might have been his wife, seemed to find hope in occasionally forcing him to swallow awkwardly sips of the tepid river water, from a burned and battered, bitter-smelling tin coffee-pot. Those who knew better had furnished the apothecary he needed; a toothless old bald-head, whose manner had the repulsive dullness of a man familiar with death scenes. He, so long as I remained, mumbled in his patient's ear a monotonous and mel- ancholy prayer, between the pauses of which I heard the hiccup and sobbing of two little girls who were sitting upon a piece of driftwood outside.
Dreadful, indeed, was the suffering of these forsaken beings, bowed and cramped by cold and sunburn, alternating as each weary day and night dragged on. They were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poor house, nor friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick ; they had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger- cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike, were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort those whom the sick shiver of fever was searching to the marrow.
These were Mormons in Lee County, Iowa, in the fourth week of the month of Sep- tember, in the year of our Lord 1846. The city-it was Nauvoo, Illinois. The Mormons were the owners of that city, and the smiling country around. And those who had stopped their plows, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles, and their workshop wheels ; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested bread- these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their temple, whose drunken riot insulted the ears of the dying.
I think it was as I turned from the wretched night watch of which I have spoken, that I first listened to the sounds of revel of a party of the guard within the city. Above
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the distant hum of the voices of many, occasionally rose distinct the loud oath-tainted exclamation, and the falsely intonated scrap of vulgar song; but lest this requiem should go unheeded, every now and then, when their boisterous orgies strove to attain a sort of ecstatic climax, a cruel spirit of insulting frolic carried some of them up into the high belfry of the Temple steeple, and there, with the wicked childishness of inebriates, they whooped, and shrieked, and beat the drum that I had seen, and rang, in charivaric unison, their loud-tongued steamboat bell.
There were, all told, not more than six hundred and forty persons who were thus lying upon the river flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its dependencies had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they ? They had last been seen, carrying in mournful train their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them ; and people asked with curiosity, what had been their fate- what their fortune.
Returning now to the Mormons on the Missouri. With the departure of the Battalion in the summer of 1846, went every pros- pect, for that season, of the pioneer journey to the Rocky Mountains. The "Camp of Israel" now prepared to go into winter quarters. Apostles Orson Hyde, Parley P. Pratt; John Taylor, Elder Franklin D. Richards and others had been sent to England, the first three to set in order the affairs of the British Mission, now greatly demor- alized through certain financial operations of Elder Reuben Hedlock and others. They had inaugurated a Joint Stock Company, the chief object of which was to assist in emigrating the Saints to America. Through mismanagement the scheme, originally a good one, had become a sad failure .* The residue of the Twelve-Ezra T. Benson now being one of their number-remained with their people in the wilderness. During the sojourn upon the Missouri, Alpheus Cutler and Bishop George Miller fell away from the Church, each being fol- lowed by a small faction, thenceforth known as Cutlerites and Millerites.
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