Chapter 4 - End of a Dynasty

Chapter 4 - End of a Dynasty

THE PREEMINENT news event of the decade that Lockley, Prescott and Hamilton published in The Salt Lake Tribune was the death of Brigham Young on August 29, 1877. As editors, they fumbled the big story initially but quickly recovered and gave it the attention it deserved.

In the issue of August 28, The Tribune reported that the prophet had been stricken with a serious illness. The article speculated that the illness might have been caused by the shock of survey taken by his "minions" and reported to him at a priesthood meeting the previous evening. This survey, the article continued, showed that the prophet's power was slipping; that of some 30,000 residents in the center stake, less than 8,000 could be classed as faithful followers. "Brigham," the article concluded, "could not believe it. He said the report was inaccurate, and he therefore refused to accept it, directing the bishops to have their teachers do their work over and bring the figures up to a respectable showing."

It should be noted here that Tribune reports of events within the church, which probably were supplied by disgruntled Mormon participants, were sometimes proved to be wildly inaccurate by subsequent disclosures.

In the issue appearing on the morning of August 29, The Tribune reported that the prophet's bowel derangement had taken so serious a turn as to threaten a speedy death and, ghoulishly, devoted the remainder of a full column editorial to speculation on possible successors. From time to time The Tribune editors, in a sarcastic vein, would point out that they were not endowed with the gift of prophecy. On this occasion they refrained from making a precise prediction. However they did categorically affirm that for years it had been Young's ambition to found a "prophetic dynasty" and that he had laid careful plans to ensure the succession of his son, Brigham. The editorial expressed doubt that this would happen, because of the unpopularity of the son, and paid the paper's disrespects to several other possible prospects and concluded:

But whomsoever may be the winning man, there will be widespread dissension in the Mormon ranks and no other leader can hope to possess the influence that Brigham Young has possessed. The death of the Mormon chieftain will not be apt to cause the instant dissolution of the decaying ecclesiastical edifice but it will give it a terrible shock.

In the issue of August 30, 1877, The Tribune announced the death of the great colonizer and church leader in a news story of less than a column on an inside page. In the same issue there appeared a much longer editorial article renewing, in summarized form, attacks that The Tribune had been pouring out upon the prophet during the prior five years. The bitter spirit of conflict, the editors seemed to be saying, was not going to be softened by death alone. Yet they did, in some paragraphs of the article, concede that the church leader was an extraordinary character and a great, if not a laudable, man. The article continued:

It is an easy matter to criticize the manner in which he has performed his great work, and to depreciate his personal qualities. As we have said above, he was illiterate and has made a frequent boast that he never saw the inside of a school house. His habit of mind was singularly illogical and his public addresses are the greatest farrago of nonsense that ever was put in print. He prided himself on being a great financier, and yet all his commercial speculations have been conspicuous failures. He was a blarophant, and pretended to be in daily intercourse with the Almighty, and yet he was groveling in his ideas, and the system of religion he formulated was well nigh Satanic. Yet with this grossness, this illiteracy, this entire ignorance of the art of government, he has succeeded, during an entire generation, in holding absolute sway over a hundred thousand followers, in directing their confidence and affections as to stand to them a very Deity. His death is regarded as the fall of a great man in Israel, and thousands mourn his loss as a personal bereavement. Yet we believe that the most graceful act of his life has been his death. . . . ... If the death of Brigham Young shall be supplemented this fall by an act of Congress giving the people of Utah a free ballot and an amended jury law, the extirpation of priestly tyranny will be complete and Utah will be Americanized and politically and socially redeemed.

The day before the funeral The Tribune, assuming the role of fallible prognosticator if not infallible prophet, told its readers that it had been intimated that among the instructions left by Brigham Young to be read on that occasion was one elevating First Counsellor John W. Young (a son) to the "prophetic throne."

The article continued:

Brigham's ambition to found a dynasty has long been known, and during his long rule the Mormon Church has become so completely centered in himself . . . that he would not hesitate or question his right to dispose of it by heritage as if it were his own personal estate. That this will be distasteful to the congregation of Saints, there is no room for doubt. . . .

The forecast proved wrong, as did some others relating to the church leader's will.

On September 4, The Tribune editors, apparently more impressed with the importance of the event they were covering than when Young died, devoted fully one-half the front page and columns on inside pages to the funeral service. For a week or more thereafter the newspaper carried a veritable cascade of articles, editorials, and comments of correspondents on the life and death of the prophet and on such related subjects as the succession, the will and the condition of the church's fiscal and business affairs.

Scores of editorial comments from other papers around the country were reprinted by The Tribune along with its own appropriate or inappropriate (depending upon the point of view) observations.

The Utica (N.Y.) Herald commented that "The career of this man has been in one sense the most remarkable in American history."

The New York Post characterized him as a "master of men" and opened its editorial with these paragraphs:

The phrase which Dickens put into the mouths of all Americans as descriptive of pretty nearly every American of prominence, fairly belongs to Brigham Young. The most obvious reflection that his death suggests is that he was 'one of the most remarkable men in the country.' In one respect he was a vulgar cheat, of course. In his character he was essentially coarse and brutal, without refinement, without culture, without the finer instincts of men. He gave free rein to the worst passions of his own nature, and made the worst passions of other men his tools. Yet he was a man of almost unbelievable force of character of a certain kind.

The St. Louis Republican described him as "one of the most noted men of our times." But the Omaha Republican commented that: "The death of Brigham Young is a mere incident of the day, having no more national importance than the demise of any other prominent citizen."

The Omaha Herald editorial writer who had met Brigham Young personally, wrote that he had been struck with the man's frankness and candor, and impressed with the belief that he was "a terribly honest as well as a sincere man" and added: "That belief has not been changed by the clamor of his enemies."

The Indianapolis Sentinel rated him "a conspicuous figure in history" and the San Francisco Call referred to Brigham Young and the Mormons as that "extraordinary man and people."

Whether one regarded the departed church leader as a saint or a sinner, the Omaha Republican was certainly wide of the mark in dismissing his death as a mere incident of the day. In whatever category he might be placed, he was a giant-size and an extraordinary character.

What other citizen of Utah, before or since, could generate the outpouring of editorial comment that Brigham Young did, both in life and in death? What other citizen of any territory, or the states, could attract the qualified tributes that Brigham Young did from people who hated him?

He had, without doubt, stirred the imagination of a huge number of people in this country and Europe. His name had been given currency throughout the English reading world by such literary stars as Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and many others. Had television been in existence at the time, and had Brigham Young appeared as a guest, how many individuals of that era could have scored a higher audience rating?

Edward W. Tullidge, one of the schismatic elders who founded The Tribune, described Brigham Young in his history of Salt Lake City as "one of the greatest colonizers the world has seen in a thousand years." 6 This, of course, would not have impressed The Tribune owners of this period, as they undoubtedly regarded Tullidge as an excommunicant who never, in his heart, left the church and who was its militant apologist whenever it came under severe attack.

This is indicated in a Tribune response to an editorial in the Deseret News:

An anonymous writer in our Grandmother, whom we take to be Elder Tullidge, bears testimony to the high moral excellence of his late master, Brigham Young. The devout Elder grows indignant at the 'most outrageous and unwarrantable scandals' which have been heaped upon the memory of the defunct Prophet. He does not produce any of these charges and refute them; that would be too much like the Babylonian method of making an argument. He prefers to reason by induction. 'Can we glance over the fertile valley of Zion,' says the Elder in substance, 'rescued from the naked savage, the wolf, the jackal, the mountain lion and the wildcat, and believe that the man who brought about this change was the accomplice of assassins? Can we look at the thrifty farms, the smiling homes with the herds and flocks on every range, and believe that Brigham Young was not the father of this people and the friend of education?

This mode of reasoning resembles that adopted by a western pleader who had a petty larceny charge to defend. 'Gentlemen of the jury,' said he, 'do you believe that my client who lives in the great State of Kentucky, where the land is rich and the soils are fertile, would be guilty of so contemptible an act as stealing eleven small skeins of cotton?' 7

When the church failed to act in conformance with Tribune forecasts as to succession, and the authorities published in the Deseret News and Herald an epistle by the Twelve Apostles designating that body as the "presiding quorum and authority" of the church, The Tribune suspected that internal frictions were too strong to permit selection of a president at that time.

But when at the October conference John Taylor was sustained as president of the twelve but not, as The Tribune interpreted it, president of the church, the editors greeted the result as a gain for the liberties of the people. In a lead editorial the newspaper said:

It is not probable that the supreme government of the Mormon Church has been constituted to suit The Tribune, but we are free to admit that we are well suited with it. A ruling theocracy is an affliction under any form, but there are degrees of wrong, and we prefer to take it in the mildest form obtainable. The dictatorship of Brigham is not to be reproduced, it was offensive to the whole country and irksome and oppressive to the members of the Church.

Twelve men are now the ruling power, and if one man gets too full of deviltry, his eleven compeers will be apt to tone him down. John Taylor is ostensibly at the head, but he holds divided power.

With the anti-Mormons' ogre, Brigham Young, removed from the scene, the aggressive, red-headed editor of The Tribune, Fred Lockley, no doubt felt some pressures from the more moderate elements of the community to ease off in the attacks on "Mormondom." It is reasonable to believe that some Tribune supporters who felt that the founding schismatic elders were too "soft" had by this time concluded that the "border ruffians" from Kansas were too abrasive.

In fact, such a reaction was intimated by Lockley in some of his editorials after Brigham Young's death. In the lead editorial of the issue of September 22, 1877, for example, the editor felt impelled to restate the newspaper's position under the heading "Our Position Defined."

Captain Codman [probably John Codman, author of Mormon Country] jocosely tells his friends that the only sober face he saw at Brigham Young's funeral was that of the red-headed editor of The Tribune. This leads to the inquiry why that individual should put on a solemn look: was he grieving at the Prophet's demise? The old salt's eyes twinkle at this (and here's where the laugh comes in); 'No,' he will reply, 'but he felt his occupation was gone; he was wondering where he would find staple for his future editorials.' For a joke, this is well enough, and if this editor had been keeping up a senseless tirade against the Mormon chief merely because it made his paper sell, the sally would have some relevancy. But our condemnation of the departed Prophet was based upon his arrogant assumption of irresponsible power, and his obstinate opposition to all progress and improvement. In this perfidious work he was sustained and assisted by all his subordinate priests, and the death of the chief obstructionist has not removed the evil we were combatting. Mormonism, as preached and practiced in Utah, deprives the people of sovereignty and elevates one individual or, on his removal, a privileged class to supreme power. This is anti-republican, and its evil consequences are shown in the enslavement of the minds and faculties of the people and the suppression of an active and healthy public sentiment. Thus our fight is directed not against any individual, however obnoxious may be his character, or however flagitious his conduct, but against the system which subverts the relations of society and places one man, or a certain number of men, at the base.

So The Tribune's shafts continued to fly, and a countershower came flying back from the Deseret News and Herald. The Tribune's targets were more widely dispersed, with the towering figure of Brigham Young gone, but this did not dilute the virulence of the journalistic controversy, which was but a reflection (though perhaps an exaggerated one) of the conflict in the whole fabric of the Salt Lake City community.

On one morning The Tribune would question the solvency of Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution; the next morning it would accuse the church-controlled government of taxing gentile homes twice as high as Mormon homes; of chasing gentiles out of a public park where a Mormon social was being held; of trying to stop mining, and drive gentiles out of the territory, by excessive taxation; of charging gentiles more than Mormons for goods they had to sell. Incoming newspapers and magazines were searched for articles attacking the church or its leaders and the most provocative reprinted in The Tribune. Sometimes outside articles favorable to the church would be reprinted, but these were invariably accompanied by The Tribune's corrections or an invitation for the writer to come to Salt Lake City and get the facts.

For the next few years Lockley devoted himself with unflagging zeal to demonstrating that the death of Brigham Young had not deprived him of an occupation. But by 1880 there began creeping into the newspaper signs that the "Border Ruffians" were tiring or running short of money. The stage was being set for another change in ownership and perhaps a change in editorial policy.