Chapter 18 - A Redeclaration of War

Chapter 18 - A Redeclaration of War

BY THE SPRING OF 1904 it was time for Senator Thomas Kearns to make an important decision — whether to seek reelection or to retire from the Senate at the end of his four-year term. On the basis of his record his position appeared to be favorable. He had played the leading role in blocking an unpopular lease of Uintah Indian Reservation mineral rights to private interests and opening the lands to settlement. He had succeeded in raising Fort Douglas to the status of a regimental post. He had won several political prestige fights over federal appointments, the most notable being the transfer of a tri-state internal revenue office from Helena, Mont., to Salt Lake City and the appointment of his candidate, E. H. Callister, to the position of collector. He had been prominently identified with conservation and irrigation programs of the Roosevelt administration. He had won recognition as one of the Senate's best informed members on mining law and mineral legislation. He had been publicly praised by President Theodore Roosevelt as a trustworthy and able representative of his political party and the people of Utah. He had survived a campaign of ridicule stemming from his lack of formal education and was now being attacked on more substantial grounds.

Under an unwritten political understanding then accepted by both national political parties in Utah, the seat he was occupying was to be filled by a non-Mormon, particularly if the Senate seated Reed Smoot.

A major negative factor was a festering split in the Republican Party at home which was clearly undermining his influence. Another was the disposition of Congress to do nothing about Utah-sponsored legislation pending a decision on the seating of Smoot.

But these, and many other factors, were inconsequential by comparison with the overriding question on which the decision was almost certain to turn — what was the attitude of the leadership of the Mormon Church toward a Kearns candidacy for reelection?

With the election of United States senators a function of the State Legislature, it was impossible in Utah for anyone objectionable to the church to be elected to that position. Everyone in the state, except political illiterates, knew that to be true, although many pretended not to know it. The best available evidence indicates that Senator Kearns received an answer on his status with the new church leadership in March, 1904, when President Joseph F. Smith came to Washington to testify in the Smoot hearings.

President Smith himself was the source of the information that Senator Kearns did seek and was given an answer to the question, but he made that information public through the voice of B. H. Roberts, the eminent Mormon historian. At a public meeting in Provo on March 14, 1905, Roberts stated categorically that Senator Kearns did pose the question to the church president and added he was making the charge "with the full knowledge" of President Smith and "with his approval." He was, in short, speaking for Smith. Relating the incident, Roberts wrote: "Senator Kearns was told when making the solicitation, both when making it directly by himself and indirectly through another, that the president, Joseph F. Smith, 'was not in politics.'"

It can fairly be assumed that Senator Kearns did not accept the phrase "not in politics" as the total message conveyed by the answer. He, in all probability, interpreted it as notification that he was not an acceptable candidate to the head of the church and then and there reached a tentative decision at least not to embark upon a contest which offered no hope of victory. He did not publicly announce this decision until September 11. And during the intervening six months the Democratic Herald, Goodwin's Weekly, Truth, the Deseret News and the state and regional press published many columns of speculation on why he would or would not run for reelection. His tactical setbacks and defeats were proclaimed and analyzed in detail; his record was scrutinized, mostly in a critical way; and his political ambitions for the future were anticipated with an unrestrained freedom of opinion which characterized political news and editorial writing of that period. It made interesting reading at the time, but for historical purposes it can be dismissed as irrelevant.

One of the greatest subjects of speculation about Senator Kearns was his relationship with Smoot. The picture created by the collective outpourings of the political writers was that Smoot withdrew in 1900 at the direction of President Lorenzo Snow to insure the election of Kearns; that Kearns and Smoot then formed an alliance to control the Republican Party and elect Smoot to the next Senate vacancy; that there was a falling out between the two; that Kearns opposed Smoot in 1902 and that the latter gained control of the party when he won the seat; that Kearns instigated the contest over the seating of Smoot; that Kearns had the power to prolong the contest or terminate it at any time.

All of this, which has over the years gained a considerable degree of historical acceptance, could have been true. But this version contains enough contradictions to suggest that at least a good part of it was fancy rather than fact. If it were true that Kearns was working to keep Smoot out of the Senate, and that he had the power to turn the investigation on and off at will, surely he would have had the power to prevent Smoot's seating. If the obviously politically self-serving newspaper articles are dismissed as such, there remains considerable evidence to support a version substantially as follows:

The opposition to the election of a high official of the Mormon Church to the Senate emanated not just from anti-Mormons in Utah but from leaders, including United States presidents, of both political parties. They did not want to revive a conflict in Utah which had annoyed presidents and political administrations for almost half a century. Thus, in 1895, President Grover Cleveland intervened in opposition to the election of Apostle Moses Thatcher to the Senate. The church, which had some very good reasons for courting the goodwill of the administration (one being the recovery of its confiscated property), responded by censuring the Thatcher candidacy and adopting a political rule requiring church officials to obtain permission from their superiors to run for political office.

In 1900, President McKinley advised Smoot to withdraw his candidacy for the Senate. Church President Snow might well have had some good reasons for courting the goodwill of that national administration. The known facts are that Smoot did withdraw and that President Snow did assist Kearns in his campaign for the seat. There is also convincing evidence that Kearns had, by his willingness to lead and finance a campaign to shift the state to the Republican column, ingratiated himself with national Republican leaders. As previously suggested, it is quite possible that Snow accepted Kearns as a suitable candidate at the behest of national Republican leaders rather than because Kearns had entered into some negotiations for the purchase of Saltair from the church — a deal that was not consummated.

In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt, motivated by the same considerations as Cleveland and McKinley, advised the Republican Legislature not to elect Apostle Smoot to the Senate. In this instance, Joseph F. Smith had presumably given Smoot permission to seek the office under the rule adopted after the Thatcher incident, and Smoot chose not to accept the advice of Roosevelt. When confronted by an accomplished fact rather than the prospect of something which might be damaging to the Republican Party, Roosevelt changed his stance and assisted Smoot, at least with respect to those senators who inquired as to the presidential position.

The most intriguing unanswered question about Senator Kearns' senatorial career was why he decided to deliver the extraordinary speech he did deliver from the Senate floor four days before the expiration of his term, March 4,1905. Events leading up to and possibly influencing his decision to deliver the speech, which amounted to a call for reactivation of the "irrepressible conflict" after a lull of almost fifteen years, undoubtedly included the Smoot hearing and its disclosures and his contacts with President Joseph F. Smith. That a definite decision to deliver such a speech, and to break with the Republican Party at the state level, had not been reached by July 1, 1904, is indicated in an announcement of a change in the management of The Tribune on that date. The substance of the announcement was that Perry S. Heath, who had held the position of publisher and general manager since the Kearns-Keith purchase of the newspaper, had resigned because of commitments in the East and would be immediately replaced by Joseph Lippman. The announcement closed with this paragraph:

The new management will issue The Tribune as a straightforward, uncompromising Republican newspaper, endeavoring to win all Republicans to the harmonious and united action which will insure to the party in this most important campaign . . . the decisive triumph which the policies and record of the Republican Party have so richly earned.

Certainly, there was no hint here as to what was to come.

In August the Republican state convention met and nominated a state ticket which included John C. Cutler, a businessman, for governor and Joseph Howell of Cache County for representative in Congress. The press seemed to be in rare agreement that the convention was dominated by the Smoot forces. The Democrats met in September and nominated a ticket headed by James H. Moyle for governor and Orlando W. Powers for representative in Congress. The Socialists also nominated a ticket which carried one surprising candidate — C. C. Goodwin for justice of the Supreme Court.

The first tangible signal of the disruptive political storm which was brewing was sent up on September 7. At a meeting in Auerbach Hall the "American Party of Utah" was organized. The featured speaker was Senator Fred T. Dubois, the old Mormon fighter from Idaho, and the keynote of his speech was that a new party in Utah was necessary to protect the political rights of the citizens from destruction at the hands of leaders of the Mormon Church.

News reports of this and subsequent meetings provided no indication that Kearns was involved, directly at least, in the formation of the new party. Among the state committee members were P. L. Williams, Willard F. Snyder and P. J. Daly. Others playing a prominent role in the organization of the party included Frank J. Cannon and Edward B. Critchlow. The party's nominee for governor was William M. Ferry, a business associate of the Silver King group, and for representative in Congress, Ogden Hiles.

Before the American Party nominated its ticket, the Republican State Committee met and passed a resolution renouncing The Tribune as its organ. The Tribune declined to be "read out" of the party and on September 16 announced that it was still a Republican newspaper which supported the national ticket but would not support a "State ticket nominated by the Mormon Church of Utah masquerading under the guise of Republicanism."

From this point on The Tribune waded into the campaign with its old-time zeal and disregard for diplomatic niceties. Frank J. Cannon was writing the editorials, and the style of some of the articles offered under news headlines, suggested that he was composing some of these. On November 2, for example, a "strictly confidential" letter was directed to Editor Penrose of the Deseret News under the headlines: "Church Cinch for Smootler." "Mormon Democrats in Front Line." "Bishop Winkler Counsels Them According to Brother Spry's Boast." The letter:

Mormonton, Utah, Oct. 31 — Dear Brother Penrose [Apostle and Editor of the Deseret News) — This brings us back to the days when the Lord redeemed the children of Israel from bondage and sent them to the promised land in Utah. Everything is coming our way and the gentile enemies of the kingdom are on the run like the devil beating tanbark. I feel to rejoice with exceeding great joy. The Mormons are taking to political counsel like a hen takes to grasshoppers. All they want to know is what Brother Smith and Brother Smoot wish them to do and they will do it, if it knocks all the harmony out of the quorum. .

The Tribune did support the national Republican ticket, but it devoted much more space to attacking the Republican state and county tickets and to supporting the American Party tickets. In its editorials and political forecasts, The Tribune indicated it did not expect an American Party victory at the state level but it did reflect high hopes of a victory in Salt Lake County. Those hopes collapsed on election day. The first venture of the new political party was a fiasco all down the line. The vote for governor reflects the pattern - Cutler, the Republican, 62,446; Moyle, the Democrat, who was once again a victim of wrong timing, 38,047; Ferry, the American, 7,959; and Kaufman, the Socialist, 4,892.

The judgment of American Party backers as to the Salt Lake political climate was not so bad as the 1904 election returns made it appear. For the new party, or revived Liberal Party, later won three successive Salt Lake City municipal elections and controlled the city government from 1905 to 1911.

When the Republican Legislature, elected in 1904, met in early 1905 it selected George Sutherland to succeed Kearns for a full six-year Senate term. It was a Smoot victory, politically speaking. To The Tribune it could more accurately be termed a victory for President Joseph F. Smith. As a Protestant, Sutherland qualified (even though his background was Mormon) under the informal understanding that a Mormon and a non-Mormon should occupy the Senate seats.

Thus the stage was set at home for Kearns' farewell address in the Senate. The speech was a masterful distillation of what The Tribune had been saying from the time of its founding until after the "Manifesto" and the abandonment of the ecclesiastical political system. It was also a recapitulation of disclosures arising from the Smoot investigation. But its impact was heightened by the fact that it was delivered not during the heat of a campaign, when speeches were rightly discounted by the public but after the political rewards had been distributed. For this reason it was a far more ominous threat to the normalization of Utah politics than were the bitter words of the campaign.

Gaining the Senate floor to speak on a joint resolution introduced by Senator Dubois of Idaho to propose constitutional amendments for the prohibition and punishment of polygamous marriages and plural cohabitation, Senator Kearns began:

Mr. President, I will not permit this occasion to pass without saying what it seems to me should be said by a Senator, under these circumstances, before leaving public life. Something is due to the State which had honored me; something is due to the record which I have endeavored to maintain honorably before the world; and something, by way of information, is due to the Senate and the country...

He then launched into a recapitulation of Utah's history leading up to statehood and a description of conditions, as he saw them, then existing in the state. He frankly conceded that the power he was denouncing had helped him to the Senate seat:

I say to you, my fellow senators, that this place of power is infinitely more magnificent than I dreamed when I first thought of occupying a seat here. But were it thrice as great as I now know it to be, and were I back in that old time of struggle in Utah, when I was seeking for this honor, I would not permit the volunteered friendship of President Snow to bestow upon me, even as an innocent recipient, one atom of the church monarch's favor. . . .

Near the close of the long speech which, it can be presumed, nobody found dull, Senator Kearns provided the following propositions in summary:

Outside of religion the Mormons as a community are ruled by a special privileged class, constituting what I call the church monarchy. This monarchy pledged the country that there would be no more violations of law and no more defiance of the sentiment of the United States regarding polygamy and the plural marriage relation. This monarchy pledged the United States that it would refrain from controlling its subjects in secular affairs.Every member of this monarchy is responsible for the system of government and for the acts of the monarchy, since (as shown in the cases of deposed apostles, Moses Thatcher, and others) the man who is not in accord with the system is dropped from the ruling class.

This monarchy sets up a regal social order within this Republic. This monarchy monopolizes the business of one commonwealth and is rapidly reaching into others. This monarchy takes practically all the surplus product of the toil of its subjects for its own purpose, and makes no account to anyone on earth of its immense secret fund. This monarchy rules all politics in Utah, and is rapidly extending its dominion into other states and territories. This monarchy permits its favorites to enter into polygamy and to maintain polygamous relations, and it protects them from prosecution by its political power. Lately no effort has been made to punish any of these people by the local law. On the contrary, the ruling monarch [President Joseph F. Smith] has continued to grow in power, wealth and importance. . . .

The senator concluded:

It is the duty of this great body — the Senate of the United States — to serve notice on this church and his apostles that they must live within the law; that the nation is supreme; that the institutions of this country must prevail throughout this land; and that the compact upon which statehood was granted must be preserved inviolate. . . .

Senator Kearns, by his own testimony, regarded the speech as fulfillment of a public obligation. Historian Roberts viewed it as "a revengeful effort to destroy what he could not use to his own advantage." The Deseret News described the speech as "his [Kearns] dying wail." The Democratic Herald, always alert to capitalize .on Republican squabbles, concluded that the real target of the speech was Senator Smoot. Goodwin'sWeekly coupled an attack on Kearns personally with the judgment that the speech expressed a "clear idea of existing methods in Utah." The Tribune editorialized: ". . . until Senator Thomas Kearns stood in the Senate . . . and told all, there had never been made an instant and complete picture of the awful situation in this state. ... It was a scene to thrill all humanity who witnessed it and to mark a chapter in history which will awaken profound emotions in all who read it. . . ,"

The Ogden Standard, published by William Glasmann, said editorially:

The most ardent admirers ... of the distinguished Utahn never suspected, until yesterday, that he [Kearns] was a great orator entitled to rank with Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, Henry Clay and other silver-tongued orators of the "Golden Age' of the Republic, or that he was able to fully eclipse all modern senators by the elegance of his diction, the never-ending succession of his periods and the fiery pathos of his invective.

Kearns was not a polished writer or speaker and there was a widespread public suspicion that this speech was written by someone else and much speculation as to who the author might be. B. H. Roberts attributed it to Frank J. Cannon, who was The Tribune's chief editorial writer at the time and who remained in that post through the ensuing several years. Commenting on the speech Roberts wrote:

Here it should be said that the speech of Senator Kearns was not his in fact, either in its conception or its polished composition. For bad as its revealments are, and in the main false, it is constructed by a devilish cunning, and made up of polished sentences and moving tropes—a literary style of which Senator Kearns, being ignorant and untrained in such matters, was utterly incapable. The speech was only his because he adopted it, accepted it from the brain and hand of another, and read it in the Senate house. The speech was generally believed to be in conception and composition the work of ex-Senator Frank J. Cannon.

Because of Roberts' unconcealed aversion to Cannon, whom he described as brilliant and cunning but lacking in character, it might be suspected that he attributed the speech to Cannon because he wanted it that way. But the evidence does support Roberts' conclusion that Cannon was the writer. It sounded like Cannon's style. Cannon was writing editorials of similar content for The Tribune and he was the person Kearns would likely turn to for help in preparing such an address. Goodwin or Fred Lockley might have written it; but Goodwin was an antagonist of Kearns at the time and Lockley had disappeared from the Utah scene.

Thus, Roberts' attribution of the speech to Cannon appears to have been valid. His seeming assumption that Kearns was incapable of authorship is open to question. While Kearns obviously was not a polished speaker or writer, he had a native and unpolished ability to get to the point and communicate it. On the basis of his overall record of achievement, there is reason to believe that he knew what he wanted to say; that he had his own reasons for saying it; and that he called upon an expert to help him say it effectively, a practice that was not then, and is not now, uncommon among persons of prominence in politics and other fields.

In calling upon Cannon to compose his senatorial "swan song," Kearns could deliver it with assurance that it would reflect professional skill. For Cannon had few if any peers in Utah in the art of persuasive and polished speaking or writing. While Cannon's Tribune editorials during the next few years strongly suggested that he was personally in accord with the contents of the speech he had written for Kearns, this was not necessarily so, for Cannon could attack or defend a cause with impressive skill. This ability was exemplified by an incident which occurred during this period. His brother, Hugh J. Cannon, was serving a mission in England and had the responsibility of editing the Millennial Star, official publication of the Mormon Church in Europe. He wanted to publish some articles dealing with certain aspects of Mormon theology and decided that the person best qualified to write them was his brother, Frank J. Cannon. Although aware of the fact that Frank was no longer in the church fold, he wrote a letter suggesting that his brother write the projected articles. Frank promptly complied with the request. The articles so impressed Hugh that, in a letter of thanks, he asked: "How can you, having lost the faith, write such convincing and moving articles in defense of the faith?"

Frank J.'s reply was brief and to the point: "I wrote them for you, not me."