iness to contribute to the support of church enterprises. The cañons through the mountains which shut in the valley were the source of wood supply for the city, and their control was very valuable. Young brought this matter before the Conference of October 9, 1852, speaking on it at length, and finally putting his own view in the form of a resolution that the cañons be placed in the hands of individuals, who should make good roads through them, and obtain their pay by taking toll at the entrance. After getting the usual unanimous vote on his proposition, he said: "Let the Judges of the County of Great Salt Lake take due notice and govern themselves accordingly. . . This is my order for the Judges to take due notice of. It does not come from the Governor, but from the President of the church. You will not see any proclamation in the paper to this effect, but it is a mere declaration of the President of the Conference."1 The "declaration," of course, had all the effect of a law, and Young got one of the best cañons. ... Very early in his rule Young defined his views about the property rights of the Saints. "A man," he declared in the Tabernacle on June 5, 1853, "has no right with property which, according to the laws of the land, legally belongs to him, if he does not want to use it. . . . When we first came into the valley, the question was asked me if men would ever be allowed to come into this church, and remain in it, and hoard up their property. I say, no." 2 Another view of property rights was thus set forth in his discourse of December 5, 1853: "If an Elder has borrowed [a hundred or a thousand dollars from you], and you find he is going to apostatize, then you may tighten the screws on him. But if he is willing to preach the Gospel without purse or scrip, it is none of your business what he does with the money he has borrowed from you." 8 Addressing the people in the trying business year of 1856, when his own creditors were pushing him hard, Young said: "I wish to give you one text to preach upon, From this time henceforth do not fret thy gizzard.' I will pay you when I can and not before. Now I hope you will apostatize if you would rather do it." + Kimball, in giving Young's order to some seventy men, who had displeased him, to leave the territory, used these words: "When 1 Journal of Discourses, Vol. I, pp. 217, 218. 8 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 340. ▲ Ibid., Vol. III, p. 4. a man is appointed to take a mission, unless he has a just and honorable reason for not going, if he does not go he will be sev ered from the church. Why? Because you said you were willing to be passive, and, if you are not passive, that lump of clay must be cut off from the church and laid aside, and a lump put on that will be passive." 1 With this testimony of men inside the church may be placed that of Captain Howard Stansbury, of the United Stated Topographical Engineers, who arrived in the valley in August, 1849, under instructions from the government to make a survey of the lakes of that region. The Mormons thought that it was the intention of the government to divide the land into townships and sec tions, and to ignore their claim to title by occupation. In his official report, after mentioning his haste to disabuse Young's mind on this point, Captain Stansbury says, "I was induced to pursue this conciliatory course, not only in justice to the government, but also because I knew, from the peculiar organization of this singular community, that, unless the 'President' was fully satisfied that no evil was intended to his people, it would be useless for me to attempt to carry out my instructions." The choice between abject conciliation or open conflict was that which Brigham Young extended to nearly every federal officer who entered Utah during his reign. The Mormons of Utah started in to assert their independence of the government of the United States in every way. The rejec tion of the constitution of Deseret by Congress did not hinder the elected legislature from meeting and passing laws. The ninth chapter of the "ordinances," as they were called, passed by this legislature (on January 19, 1851) was a charter for Great Salt Lake City. This charter provided for the election of a mayor, four aldermen, nine councillors, and three judges, the first judges to be chosen viva voce, and their successors by the City Council. The appointment of eleven subordinate officers was placed in the Council's hands. The mayor and aldermen were to be the justices of the peace, with a right of appeal to the municipal court, consisting of the same persons sitting together, and from that to the probate court. The first mayor, aldermen, and councillors were appointed by the governor of the State of Deseret. Simila 1 Journal of Discourses, Vol. III, p. 242. charters were provided for Ogden, Provo City, and other settle ments. As soon as Salt Lake City was laid off into wards, Young had a Bishop placed over each of these, and, always under his direction, these Bishops practically controlled local affairs to the date of the city charter. Each Bishop came to be a magistrate of his ward,1 and under them in all the settlements all public work was carried on and all revenue collected. The High Council of ten is defined by Tullidge as "a quorum of judges, in equity for the people, at the head of which is the President of the state." These men did not hesitate to attempt a currency of their own. On the arrival of the Mormons in the valley, they first made their exchanges through barter. Paper currency was issued in 1849 and some years later. When gold dust from California appeared in 1849, some of it was coined in Salt Lake City by means of homemade dies and crucibles. The denominations were $2.50, $5, $10, and $20. Some of these coins, made without alloy, were stamped with a bee-hive and eagle on one side, and on the reverse with the motto, "Holiness to the Lord" in the so-called Deseret alphabet. This alphabet was invented after their arrival in Salt Lake Valley, to assist in separating the Mormons from the rest of the nation, its preparation having been intrusted to a committee of the board of regents in 1853. It contained thirty-two characters. A primer and two books of the Mormon Bible were printed in the new characters, the legislature in 1855 having voted $2500 to meet the expense; but the alphabet was never practically used, and no attempt is any longer made to remember it. Early in 1849 the High Council voted that the Kirtland bank-bills (of which a supply must have remained unissued) be put out on a par with gold, and in this they saw a fulfilment of the prophet's declaration that these notes would some day be as good as gold. Another early ordinance passed by the Deseret legislature incorporated "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," 1 Brigham Young testified in the Tabernacle as to the kind of justice that was meted out in the Bishops' courts. In his sermon of March 6, 1856, he said: "There are men here by the score who do not know their right hands from their left, so far as the principles of justice are concerned. Does our High Council? No, for they will let men throw dirt in their eyes until you cannot find the one hundred millionth part of an ounce of common sense in them. You may go to the Bishops' courts, and what are they? A set of old grannies. They cannot judge a case pending between two old women, to say nosing of a case between man and man.” —Journal of Discourses, Vol. III, p. 225. authorizing the appointment of a trustee in trust to hold and manage all the property of the church, which should be free from tax, and giving the church complete authority to make its own regulations, "provided, however, that each and every act or practice so established, or adopted for law or custom, shall relate to solemnities, sacraments, ceremonies, consecrations, endowments, tithing, marriages, fellowship, or the religious duties of man to his Maker, inasmuch as the doctrines, principles, practices, or performances support virtue and increase morality, and are not inconsistent with or repugnant to the constitution of the United States or of this State, and are founded on the revelations of the Lord." Thus early was the ground taken that the practice of polygamy was a constitutional right. Brigham Young was chosen as the trustee. The second ordinance passed by this legislature incorporated the University of the State of Deseret, at Salt Lake City, to be governed by a chancellor and twelve regents. The earliest non-Mormons to experience the effect of that absolute Mormon rule, the consequences of which the Missourians had feared, were the emigrants who passed through Salt Lake Valley on their way to California after the discovery of gold, or on their way to Oregon. The complaints of the Californians were set forth in a little book, written by one of them, Nelson Slater, and printed in Colona, California, in 1851, under the title, "Fruits of Mormonism." The general complaints were set forth briefly in a petition to Congress containing nearly two hundred and fifty signatures, dated Colona, June 1, 1851, which asked that the territorial government be abrogated, and a military government be established in its place. This petition charged that many emigrants had been murdered by the Mormons when there was a suspicion that they had taken part in the earlier persecutions; that when any members of the Mormon community, becoming dissatisfied, tried to leave, they were pursued and killed; that the Mormons levied a tax of two per cent on the property of emigrants who were compelled to pass a winter among them; that it was nearly impossible for emigrants to obtain justice in the Mormon courts; that the Mormons, high and low, openly expressed treasonable sentiments against the United States government; and that letters of emigrants mailed at Salt Lake City were opened, and in many instances destroyed. Mr. Slater's book furnishes the specifications of these general charges. CHAPTER VII THE "REFORMATION" YOUNG Soon had occasion to make practical use of the dictatorial power that he had assumed. The character which those members of the flock who had migrated from Missouri and Illinois had established among their neighbors in those states was not changed simply by their removal to a wilderness all by themselves. They had no longer the old excuse that their misdeeds were reprisals on persecuting enemies, but this did not save them from the temptation to exercise their natural propensities. Again we shall take only the highest Mormon testimony on this subject. One of the first sins for which Young openly reproved his congregation was profane swearing. He brought this matter pointedly to their attention in an address to the Conference of October 9, 1852, when he said: "You Elders of Israel will go into the cañons, and curse and swear - damn and curse your oxen, and swear by Him who created you. I am telling the truth. Yes, you rip and curse and swear as bad as any pirates ever did."1 Possibly the church authorities could have overlooked the swearing, but a matter which gave them more distress was the insecurity of property. This became so great an annoyance that Young spoke out plainly on the subject, and he did not attempt to place the responsibility outside of his own people. A few citations will illustrate this. In an address in the Tabernacle on June 5, 1853, noticing complaints about the stealing and rebranding of cattle, he said: "I will propose a plan to stop the stealing of cattle in coming time, and it is this let those who have cattle on hand join in a company, and fence in about fifty thousand acres of land, and so keep on fencing until all the vacant land is substantially enclosed. Some 1 Journal of Discourses, Vol. I, p. 211. |