Part 58 (1/2)
The second letter, marked ”personal,” went into these matters much more in detail. It declared that the tax levied by Young on non-Mormons who sold goods in Salt Lake City was a liquor tax, creditable to Mormon temperance principles. Had the President consulted the report of the debate on Babbitt's admission as a Delegate, he would have discovered that this was falsehood number one. The charges against Young while in Illinois, including counterfeiting, Kane swept aside as ”a mere rehash of old libels,” and he cited the Battalion as an ill.u.s.tration of Mormon patriotism. The extent to which he could go in falsifying in Young's behalf is ill.u.s.trated, however, most pointedly in what he had to say regarding the charge of polygamy: ”The remaining charge connects itself with that unmixed outrage, the spiritual wife story; which was fastened on the Mormons by a poor ribald scamp whom, though the sole surviving brother and representative of their Jo. Smith, they were literally forced to excommunicate for licentiousness, and who therefore revenged himself by editing confessions and disclosures of savor to please the public that peruses novels in yellow paper covers.”* In regard to William Smith, the fact was that he opposed polygamy both before and after his expulsion from the church. Kane's stay among the Mormons on the Missouri must have acquainted him with the practically open practice of polygamy at that time. His entire correspondence with Fillmore stamps him as a man whose word could be accepted on no subject. It would have been well if President Buchanan had availed himself of the existence of these letters. Fillmore stated in later years that at that time neither he nor the Senate knew that polygamy was an accepted Mormon doctrine.
* For correspondence in full, see Millennial Star, Vol. XIII, pp.
341-344.
Young took the oath of office as governor in February, 1851. The non-Mormon federal officers arrived in June and July following, and with them came Babbitt, bringing $20,000 which had been appropriated by Congress for a state-house, and J. M. Bernhisel, the first territorial Delegate to Congress, with a library purchased by him in the East for which Congress had provided. The arrival of the Gentile officers gave a speedy opportunity to test the temper of the church in regard to any interference with, or even discussion of, their ”peculiar” inst.i.tutions or Young's authority.
Their first welcome was cordial, with b.a.l.l.s and dinners at the Bath House at the Hot Springs at which, for their special benefit, says a local historian, was served ”champagne wine from the grocery,” with home-brewed porter and ale for the rest. When Judge Brocchus reached Salt Lake City, his two non-Mormon a.s.sociates had been there long enough to form an opinion of the Mormon population and of the aims of the leading church officers. They soon concluded that ”no man else could govern them against Brigham Young's influence, without a military force,”* and they heard many expressions, public and private, indicating the contempt in which the federal government was held. The anniversary of the arrival of the pioneers, July 24, was always celebrated with much ceremony, and that year the princ.i.p.al addresses were made by ”General”
D. H. Wells and Brigham Young. Some of the new officers occupied seats on the platform. Wells attacked the government for ”requiring” the Battalion to enlist. Young paid especial attention to President Taylor, who had recently died, and whose course toward the Mormons did not please them, closing this part of his remarks with the declaration, ”but Zachary Taylor is dead and in h.e.l.l, and I am glad of it,” adding, ”and I prophesy in the name of Jesus Christ, by the power of the priesthood that's upon me, that any President of the United States who lifts his finger against this people, shall die an untimely death, and go to h.e.l.l.”
* Report of the three officers to President Fillmore, Ex. Doc.
No. 25, 1st Session, 32d Congress.
Judge Brocchus had been commissioned by the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument a.s.sociation to ask the people of the territory for a block of stone for that structure, and, on signifying a desire to make known his commission, he was invited to do so at the General Conference to be held on September 7 and 8. The judge thought that, with the life of Was.h.i.+ngton as a text, he could read these people a lesson on their duty toward the government, and could correct some of the impressions under which they rested. The idea itself only showed how little he understood anything pertaining to Mormonism.
There was no newspaper in Salt Lake City in that time, and for a report of the judge's address and of Brigham Young's reply, we must rely on the report of the three federal officers to President Fillmore, on a letter from Judge Brocchus printed in the East, and on three letters on the subject addressed to the New York Herald (one of which that journal printed, and all of which the author published in a pamphlet ent.i.tled ”The Truth for the Mormons”,) by J. M. Grant, first mayor of Salt Lake City, major general of the Legion, and Speaker of the house in the Deseret legislature.
Judge Brocchus spoke for two hours. He began with expressions of sympathy for the sufferings of the Mormons in Missouri and Illinois, and then referred to the unfriendliness of the people toward the federal government, pointing out what he considered its injustice, and alluding pointedly to Brigham Young's remarks about President Taylor. He defended the President's memory, and told his audience that, ”if they could not offer a block of marble for the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument in a feeling of full fellows.h.i.+p with the people of the United States, as brethren and fellow citizens, they had better not offer it at all, but leave it unquarried in the bosom of its native mountain.” The officers' report to President Fillmore says that the address ”was entirely free from any allusions, even the most remote, to the peculiar religion of the community, or to any of their domestic or social customs.” Even if the Mormons had so construed it, the rebuke of their lack of patriotism would have aroused their resentment, and Bernhisel, in a letter to President Fillmore, characterized it as ”a wanton insult.”
But the judge did make, according to other reports, what was construed as an uncomplimentary reference to polygamy, and this stirred the church into a tumult of anger and indignation. According to Mormon accounts,*
the judge, addressing the ladies, said: ”I have a commission from the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument a.s.sociation, to ask of you a block of marble, as a test of your citizens.h.i.+p and loyalty to the government of the United States. But in order to do it acceptably you must become virtuous, and teach your daughters to become virtuous, or your offering had better remain in the bosom of your native mountains.”
* The report of what follows, including Young's address, is taken from Grant's pamphlet...
Mild as this language may seem, no Mormon audience, since the marrying of more wives than one had been sanctioned by the church, had ever listened to anything like it. To permit even this interference with their ”religious belief” was entirely foreign to Young's purpose, and he took the floor in a towering rage to reply. ”Are you a judge,” he asked, ”and can't even talk like a lawyer or a politician?” George Was.h.i.+ngton was first in war, but he was first in peace, too, and Young could handle a sword as well as Was.h.i.+ngton. ”But you [addressing the judge] standing there, white and shaking now at the howls which you have stirred up yourself--you are a coward.... Old General Taylor, what was he?* A mere soldier with regular army b.u.t.tons on; no better to go at the head of brave troops than a dozen I could pick out between here and Laramie.” He concluded thus:--
* In a discourse on June 19, 1853, Young said that he never heard of his alleged expression about General Taylor until Judge Brocchus made use of it, but he added: ”When he made the statement there, I surely bore testimony to the truth of it. But until then I do not know that it ever came into my mind whether Taylor was in h.e.l.l or not, any more than it did that any other wicked man was there,” etc.--Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, p. 185.
”What you have been afraid to intimate about our morals I will not stoop to notice, except to make my particular personal request to every brother and husband present not to give you back what such impudence deserves. You talk of things you have on hearsay since your coming among us. I'll talk of hearsay then--the hearsay that you are discontented, and will go home, because we cannot make it worth your while to stay.
What it would satisfy you to get out of us I think it would be hard to tell; but I am sure that it is more than you'll get. If you or any one else is such a baby-calf, we must sugar your soap to coax you to wash yourself of Sat.u.r.day nights. Go home to your mammy straight away, and the sooner the better.”
This was the language addressed by the governor of the territory and the head of the church, to one of the Supreme Court judges appointed by the President of the United States!
Young alluded to his reference to the judge's personal safety in a discourse on June 19, 1853, in which, speaking of the judge's remarks, he said: ”They [the Mormons] bore the insult like saints of G.o.d. It is true, as it was said in the report of these affairs, if I had crooked my little finger, he would have been used up, but I did not bend it. If I had, the sisters alone felt indignant enough to have chopped him in pieces.” A little later, in the same discourse, he added: ”Every man that comes to impose on this people, no matter by whom they are sent, or who they are that are sent, lay the axe at the root of the tree to kill themselves. I will do as I said I would last conference. Apostates, or men who never made any profession of religion, had better be careful how they come here, lest I should bend my little finger.”*
* Journal of Discourses, Vol. I, p. 187.
If the records of the Mormon church had included acts as well as words, how many times would we find that Young's little finger was bent to a purpose?