The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901 Part 71

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 Washington, and sent in his place George Q. Cannon, an Englishman by birth and a polygamist. But Mormon influence in Washington 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 leadership 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.

Both Hyde and Stenhouse, writing before Young's death, and as witnesses of the strength of his autocratic government, overestimated him. This is seen in the view they took of the effect of his death. Hyde declared that under any of the other contemporary leaders: Taylor, Kimball, Orson Hyde, or Pratt: "Mormonism will decline. Brigham is its tun; this is its daytime." Stenhouse a.s.serted that, "Theocracy will die out with Brigham's flickering flame of life; and, when he is laid in the tomb, many who are silent now will curse his memory for the cruel suffering that his ambition caused them to endure." But all such prophecies remain unfulfilled. Young's death caused no more revolution or change in the Mormon church than does the death of a Pope in the Church of Rome.

"Regret it who may," wrote a Salt Lake City correspondent less than three months after his burial, "the fact is visible to every intelligent person here that Mormonism has taken a new lease of life, and, instead of disintegration, there never was such unity among its people; and in the place of a rapidly dying consumptive, whose days were numbered, the body of the church is the picture of pristine health and vigor, with all the ambition and enthusiasm of a first love."** The new leadership has, grudgingly, traded polygamy for statehood; but the church power is as strong and despotic and unified to-day on the lines on which it is working as it was under Young, only exercising that power on the more civilized basis rendered necessary by closer connection with an outside civilization.

* "Mormonism," p.151.

** New York Times, November 23, 1877.

Young was a successful acc.u.mulator of property for his own use. A poor man when he set out from Nauvoo, his estate at his death was valued at between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000. This was a great acc.u.mulation for a pioneer who had settled in a wilderness, been burdened with a polygamous family of over twenty wives and fifty children, and the cares of a church denomination, without salary as a church officer. "I am the only person in the church," Young said to Greeley in 1859, "who has not a regular calling apart from the church service"; and he added, "We think a man who cannot make his living aside from the ministry of the church unsuited to that office. I am called rich, and consider myself worth $250,000; but no dollar of it ever was paid me by the church, nor for any service as a minister of the Everlasting Gospel." * Two years after his death a writer in the Salt Lake Tribune** a.s.serted that Young had secured in Utah from the t.i.thing $13,000,000, squandered about $9,000 on his family, and left the rest to be fought for by his heirs and a.s.signs.*** Notwithstanding the vast sums taken by him in t.i.thing for the alleged benefit of the poor, there was not in Salt Lake City, at the time of his death, a single hospital or "home" creditable to that settlement.

* "Overland Journey," p. 213.

** June 25, 1879.

*** "Having control of the t.i.thing, and possessing unlimited credit, he has added 'house to house and field to field,' while every one knew that he had no personal enterprises sufficient to enable him to meet anything like the current expenses of his numerous wives and children. As trustee in trust he renders no account of the funds that come into his hands, but tells the faithful that they are at perfect liberty to examine the books at any moment."--"Rocky Mountain Saints,"

p. 665.

The mere acquisition of his wealth no more ent.i.tled Young to be held up as a marvellous man of business than did Tweed's acc.u.mulations give him this distinction in New York. Beadle declares that "Brigham never made a success of any business he undertook except managing the Mormons,"

and cites among his business failures the non-success of every distant colony he planted, the Cottonwood Ca.n.a.l (whose mouth was ten feet higher than its source), his beet-sugar manufactory, and his Colorado Transportation Company (to bring goods for southern Utah up the Colorado River).*

* "Polygamy," p. 484.

The reports of Young's discourses in the Temple show that he was as determined in carrying out his own financial schemes as he was in enforcing orders pertaining to the church. Here is an almost humorous ill.u.s.tration of this. In urging the people one day to be more regular in paying their t.i.thing, he said they need not fear that he would make a bad use of their money, as he had plenty of his own, adding:--"I believe I will tell you how I get some of it. A great many of these elders in Israel, soon after courting these young ladies, and old ladies, and middle-aged ladies, and having them sealed to them, want to have a bill of divorce. I have told them from the beginning that sealing men and women for time and all eternity is one of the ordinances of the House of G.o.d, and that I never wanted a farthing for sealing them, nor for officiating in any of the ordinances of G.o.d's house. But when you ask for a bill of divorce, I intend that you shall pay for it. That keeps me in spending money, besides enabling me to give hundreds of dollars to the poor, and buy b.u.t.ter, eggs, and little notions for women and children, and otherwise use it where it does good. You may think this a singular feature of the Gospel, but I cannot exactly say that this is in the Gospel."*

* Deseret News, March 20, 1861. For such an openly jolly old hypocrite one can scarcely resist the feeling that he would like to pa.s.s around the hat.

We have seen how Young gave himself control of a valuable canyon. That was only the beginning of such acquisitions. The territorial legislature of Utah was continually making special grants to him. Among them may be mentioned the control of City Creek canyon (said to have been worth $10,000 a year) on payment of $500; of the waters of Mill Creek; exclusive right to Kansas Prairie as a herd-ground; the whole of Cache Valley for a herd-ground; Rush Valley for a herd-ground; rights to establish ferries; an appropriation of $2500 for an academy in Salt Lake City (which was not built), etc.*

* Here is the text of one of these acts: "Be it ordained by the General a.s.sembly of the State of Deseret that Brigham Young has the sole control of City Creek and canyon; and that he pay into the public treasury the sum of $500 therefore. Dec. 9, 1850."

Young's holdings of real estate were large, not only in Salt Lake City, but in almost every county in the territory.* Besides city lots and farm lands, he owned grist and saw mills, and he took care that his farms were well cultivated and that his mills made fine flour.**

* "For several years past the agent of the church, A. M. Musser, has been engaged in securing legal deeds for all the property the prophet claims, and by this he will be able to secure in his lifetime to his different families such property as will render them independent at his death. The building of the Pacific Railroad is said to have yielded him about a quarter of a million."--"Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 666.

** "His position secured him also many valuable presents. From a barrel of brandy down to an umbrella, Brigham receives courteously and remembers the donors with increased kindness. I saw one man make him a present of ten fine milch cows."--Hyde, "Mormonism," p. 165.

As trustee in trust for the church Young had control of all the church property and income, practically without responsibility or oversight.

Mrs. Waite (writing in 1866) said that attempts for many years by the General Conference to procure a balance sheet of receipts and expenditures had failed, and that the accounts in the t.i.thing office, such as they were, were kept by clerks who were the leading actors in the Salt Lake Theatre, owned by Young.* It was openly charged that, in 1852, Young "balanced his account" with the church by having the clerk credit him with the amount due by him, "for services rendered," and that, in 1867, he balanced his account again by crediting himself with $967,000. A committee appointed to investigate the accounts of Young after his death reported to the Conference of October, 1878, that "for the sole purpose of preserving it from the spoliation of the enemy," he "had transferred certain property from the possession of the church to his own individual possession," but that it had been transferred back again.

* "The Mormon Prophet," pp. 148-149,