Part 71 (1/2)
swore that there had been treachery and we had bribed Congress.”*
* The Mormons do not always conceal the influences they employ to control legislation in which they are interested. Thus Tullidge, referring to the men of whom their Cooperative Inst.i.tution buys goods, says: ”But Z. C. M. I. has not only a commercial significance in the history of our city, but also a political one. It has long been the temporal bulwark around the Mormon community. Results which have been seen in Utah affairs, preservative of the Mormon power and people, unaccountable to 'the outsider' except on the now stale supposition that 'the Mormon Church has purchased Congress,' may be better traced to the silent but potent influence of Z. C. M. I. among the ruling business men of America, just as John Sharp's position as one of the directors of U.
P. R---r,--a compeer among such men as Charles Francis Adams, Jay Gould and Sidney Dillon--gives him a voice in Utah affairs among the railroad rulers of America.”--”History of Salt Lake City;” p. 734.
In the election of 1872 the Mormons dropped Hooper, who had long served them as Delegate at Was.h.i.+ngton, and sent in his place George Q. Cannon, an Englishman by birth and a polygamist. But Mormon influence in Was.h.i.+ngton was now to receive a severe check. On June 23, 1874, the President approved an act introduced by Mr. Poland of Vermont, and known as the Poland Bill,* which had important results. It took from the probate courts in Utah all civil, chancery, and criminal jurisdiction; made the common law in force; provided that the United States attorney should prosecute all criminal cases arising in the United States courts in the territory; that the United States marshal should serve and execute all processes and writs of the supreme and district courts, and that the clerk of the district court in each district and the judge of probate of the county should prepare the jury lists, each containing two hundred names, from which the United States marshal should draw the grand and pet.i.t juries for the term. It further provided that, when a woman filed a bill to declare void a marriage because of a previous marriage, the court could grant alimony; and that, in any prosecution for adultery, bigamy, or polygamy, a juror could be challenged if he practised polygamy or believed in its righteousness.
* Chap. 469, 1st Session, 43d Congress.
The suit for divorce brought by Young's wife ”No. 19,”--Ann Eliza Young--in January, 1873, attracted attention all over the country. Her bill charged neglect, cruel treatment, and desertion, set forth that Young had property worth $8,000,000 and an income of not less than $40,000 a year, and asked for an allowance of $1000 a month while the suit was pending, $6000 for preliminary counsel fees, and $14,000 more when the final decree was made, and that she be awarded $200,000 for her support. Young in his reply surprised even his Mormon friends.
After setting forth his legal marriage in Ohio, stating that he and the plaintiff were members of a church which held the doctrine that ”members thereto might rightfully enter into plural marriages,” and admitting such a marriage in this case, he continued: ”But defendant denies that he and the said plaintiff intermarried in any other or different sense or manner than that above mentioned or set forth. Defendant further alleges that the said complainant was then informed by the defendant, and then and there well knew that, by reason of said marriage, in the manner aforesaid, she could not have and need not expect the society or personal attention of this defendant as in the ordinary relation between husband and wife.” He further declared that his property did not exceed $600,000 in value, and his income $6000 a month.
Judge McKean, on February 25, 1875, ordered Young to pay Ann Eliza $3000 for counsel fees and $500 a month alimony pendente lite, and, when he failed to obey, sentenced him to pay a fine of $25 and to one day's imprisonment. Young was driven to his own residence by the deputy marshal for dinner, and, after taking what clothing he required, was conducted to the penitentiary, where he was locked up in a cell for a short time, and then placed in a room in the warden's office for the night.
Judge McKean was accused of inconsistency in granting alimony, because, in so doing, he had to give legal sanction to Ann Eliza's marriage to Brigham while the latter's legal wife was living. Judge McKean's successor, Judge D. P. Loew, refused to imprison Young, taking the ground that there had been no valid marriage. Loew's successor, Judge Boreman, ordered Young imprisoned until the amount due was paid, but he was left at his house in custody of the marshal. Boreman's successor, Judge White, freed Young on the ground that Boreman's order was void.
White's successor, Judge Schaeffer, in 1876 reduced the alimony to $100 per month, and, in default of payment, certain of Young's property was sold at auction and rents were ordered seized to make up the deficiency.
The divorce case came to trial in April, 1877, when Judge Schaeffer decreed that the polygamous marriage was void, annulled all orders for alimony, and a.s.sessed the costs against the defendant.
Nothing further of great importance affecting the relations of the church with the federal government occurred during the rest of Young's life. Governor Woods incurred the animosity of the Mormons by a.s.serting his authority from time to time (”he intermeddled,” Bancroft says). In 1874 he was succeeded by S. B. Axtell of California, who showed such open sympathy with the Mormon view of his office as to incur the severest censure of the non-Mormon press. Axtell was displaced in the following year by G. B. Emery of Tennessee, who held office until the early part of 1880, when he was succeeded by Eli H. Murray.*
* Governor Murray showed no disposition to yield to Mormon authority. In his message in 1882 be referred pointedly, among other matters, to the t.i.thing, declaring that ”the poor man who earns a dollar by the sweat of his brow is ent.i.tled to that dollar,” and that ”any exaction or undue influence to dispossess him of any part of it, in any other manner than in payment of a legal obligation, is oppression,” and he granted a certificate of election as Delegate to Congress to Allan G.
Campbell, who received only 1350 votes to 18,568 for George Q. Cannon, holding that the latter was not a citizen. Governor Murray's resignation was accepted in March, 1886, and he was succeeded in the following May by Caleb W. West, who, in turn, was supplanted in May, 1889, by A. L.
Thomas, who was territorial governor when Utah was admitted as a state.
CHAPTER XXII. -- BRIGHAM YOUNG'S DEATH--HIS CHARACTER
Brigham Young died in Salt Lake City at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, August 29, 1877. He was attacked with acute cholera morbus on the evening of the 23rd, after delivering an address in the Council House, and it was followed by inflammation of the bowels. The body lay in state in the Tabernacle from Sat.u.r.day, September 1, until Sunday noon, when the funeral services were held. He was buried in a little plot on one of the main streets of Salt Lake City, not far from his place of residence.
The steps by which Young reached the position of head of the Mormon church, the character of his rule, and the means by which he maintained it have been set forth in the previous chapters of this work. In the ruler we have seen a man without education, but possessed of an iron will, courage to take advantage of unusual opportunities, and a thorough knowledge of his flock gained by a.s.sociation with them in all their wanderings. In his people we have seen a nucleus of fanatics, including some of Joseph Smith's fellow-plotters, constantly added to by new recruits, mostly poor and ignorant foreigners, who had been made to believe in Smith's Bible and ”revelations,” and been further lured to a change of residence by false pictures of the country they were going to, and the business opportunities that awaited them there. Having made a prominent tenet of the church the practice of polygamy, which Young certainly knew the federal government would not approve, he had an additional bond with which to unite the interests of his flock with his own, and thus to make them believe his approval as necessary to their personal safety as they believed it to be necessary to their salvation.
The command which Young exercised in these circ.u.mstances is not an ill.u.s.tration of any form of leaders.h.i.+p which can be held up to admiration. It is rather an exemplification of that tyranny in church and state which the world condemns whenever an example of it is afforded.
Young was the centre of responsibility for all the rebellion, nullification, and crime carried on under the authority of the church while he was its head. He never concealed his own power. He gloried in it, and declared it openly in and out of the Tabernacle. Authority of this kind cannot be divided. Whatever credit is due to Young for securing it, is legitimately his. But those who point to its acquisition as a sign of greatness, must accept for him, with it, responsibility for the crimes that were carried on under it.
The laudators of Young have found evidence of great executive ability in his management of the migration from Nauvoo to Utah. But, in the first place, this migration was compulsory; the Mormons were obliged to move.
In the second place its accomplishment was no more successful than the contemporary migrations to Oregon, and the loss of life in the camps on the Missouri River was greater than that incurred in the great rush across the plains to California; while the horrors of the hand-cart movement--a scheme of Young's own device--have never been equalled in Western travel. In Utah, circ.u.mstances greatly favored Young's success.
Had not gold been discovered when it was in California, the Mormon settlement would long have been like a dot in a desert, and its ability to support the stream Of immigrants attracted from Europe would have been problematic, since, in more than one summer, those already there had narrowly escaped starvation while depending on the agricultural resources of the valley.
J. Hyde, writing in 1857, said that Young ”by the native force and vigor of a strong mind” had taken from beneath the Mormon church system ”the monstrous stilts of a miserable superst.i.tion, and consolidated it into a compact scheme of the sternest fanaticism.”* In other words, he might have explained, instead of relying on such ”revelations” as served Smith, he refused to use artificial commands of G.o.d, and subst.i.tuted the commands of Young, teaching, and having his a.s.sociates teach, that obedience to the head of the church was obedience to the Supreme Power.