The Gap in the Buchanan Revival: The Utah Expedition of 1857-58

The Gap in the Buchanan Revival: The Utah Expedition of 1857-58

BY WILLIAM P. MACKINNON

PENNSYLVANIANS WITH AN interest in President James Buchanan's administration are probably surprised by but pleased with the Buchanan revival now underway. Within the past several years, a number of related works—some of them major studies—have appeared. They include The Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Guide to the Mircrofilm Edition of the James Buchanan Papers, an explanatory pamphlet to accompany the release of sixty microfilm reels of Buchanan materials; John Updike's play, Buchanan Dying; and Elbert B. Smith's The Presidency of James Buchanan. In addition, biographical studies are now appearing on Buchanan's cabinet officers, including John E. Simpson's Howell Cobb, the Politics of Ambition, which deals with Buchanan's secretary of the treasury, and John M. Belohlavek's "The Politics of Scandal: A Reassessment of John B. Floyd as Secretary of War, 1857- 1861."

Despite this revival, westerners and those interested in Utah's history will be disappointed to learn that all of this work virtually ignores Buchanan's Mormon policy and his massive military intervention in Utah Territory during 1857—58 with one-third of the federal army. Lost in the process is the chance to reexamine the origins of Buchanan's earliest and forceful reactions to federal-local disputes—those in Utah Territory —and to use them as a basis for assessing his handling of simultaneous civil disorders in Kansas Territory and a subsequent secession crisis in South Carolina.

Guide, for example, barely mentions Mormon matters, despite the Utah Expedition's place as the country's most substantial military and financial undertaking during the period between the Mexican and Civil wars. In the process, Guide, an otherwise fine research aid, compounds the earlier lapses committed by Irving J. Sloan in his 1968 edition of Jatnes Buchanan 1791-1868, Chronology—Documents—Bibliographical Aids. Guide's incompleteness is unfortunate, for the Buchanan papers that it is intended to describe do include letters bearing on the Utah Expedition from such key figures as Thomas L. Kane, W. M. F. Magraw, Gov. Alfred Gumming, and Generals William S. Harney and Persifor F. Smith.

Similarly, the focus of Buchanan Dying, a work described by the dust jacket as "a play meant to be read," is 1868 and the former president's deathbed at Wheatland rather than 1857 and his military adventures in Utah. Through three acts, a series of flashbacks and a parade of visitors involving nearly fifty characters—some resembling Dickens's Ghost of Christmas Past—Updike confronts Buchanan with the personal and political shortcomings of his life. One can only assume that Brigham Young would have been amused by Buchanan's repeated, on-stage use of a bedpan—a prop employed at Updike's direction for reasons as yet unclear.

Yet, if this scenario is heavily laced with commentaries on what have come to be regarded historically as Buchanan's weaknesses—indecision, avarice, superficiality, vacillation, and opportunism—Updike attempts to add a measure of perspective and understanding for his protagonist by means of an eighty-page afterw r ord, a sympathetic section that serves the dual function of textual notes and bibliography. Having set out to analyze his native Pennsylvania's only president, Updike's afterword concludes that "All in all, I did not find in these general histories [consulted] confirmation that Buchanan was 'the worst President in the history of the country.' This conclusion, in turn, drove National Review's critic, D. Keith Mano, to the acerbic judgment that ". . . John Updike, out of kindness or acedia, has very little to say. And no one writing in America says it better."

With respect to Utah or Mormon affairs, Buchanan Dying offers only a few brief comments and virtually no insights. The first reference appears in act 1 and involves an innocuous allusion to "the Mormon [Great Salt] lake" during the dying president's prattlings to his housekeeper. The second comment occurs during a flashback in act 2 in which Buchanan, newly inaugurated, promises his niece that his administration will "bring the ruttish Mormons to heel." There then follow two brief references to the Utah Expedition within the context of Secretary John B. Floyd's subsequent financial mismanagement of the War Department. Updike's treatment of the subject is completed with Mrs. Howell Cobb's flattering observation, "Look at the wonderful way you bullied Brigham Young," and Harriet Lane's offer to read to her uncle about "the Mountain Meadow massacre committed by the Mormons," a proposal that Buchanan declines in favor of an account of John Brown's raid on Hamper's Ferry.

Buchanan's choice of reading material speaks volumes with respect to Updike's own interests, for if Buchanan Dying disappointingly treats Mormon affairs as a matter of occasional, incidental dialogue rather than as a key policy area, the responsibility rests as much with Updike's choice of research sources as with his own craft. Notwithstanding the National Observer's complaint that Updike's afterword reviews "every turgid scholarly book, essay, and article on Buchanan, falling back on pedantry as a sportswriter falls back on statistics," the fact of the matter is that Up dike's bibliography is not exhaustive, having missed basic analyses of Buchanan's western policies such as Norman F. Furniss's 1960 study, The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859. At the heart of this gap, in turn, is Updike's excessive reliance upon Professor Philip S. Klein's 1962 biography, President James Buchanan, a fine study but one preoccupied with Buchanan's Pennsylvania, European, and Washington affairs to the exclusion of all but a meager eight paragraphs devoted to the Utah Expedition. Interestingly, it was Klein who developed most of the biographical material in Guide.

For similar reasons, i.e., an overreliance on Klein, Professor Smith's The Presidency of James Buchanan, the latest entry in the Buchanan revival, provides only the barest account of the Utah Expedition and no insights. Smith, in fact, stretches Klein's eight-paragraph treatment of the subject to only nine paragraphs of his own, suggesting in a chapter entitled "Lamb, Lion, or Fox?" that dispatch of the Utah Expedition was one of "several occasions as president ... [in which] he indicated a firm and immediate willingness to threaten force or send men into battle." Although Smith hints at a relationship between Buchanan's Mcrmon policy and his subsequent handling of secession in South Carolina, he never develops the parallel. Like Updike, it appears that Smith was unaware of Furniss's key study.

Recently published material dealing with Buchanan's cabinet officers is equally disappointing in terms of its focus on western military affairs. Despite a chapter entitled "Buchanan's Lieutenant" dealing with the crises of 1857-58, Simpson's Howell Cobb: The Politics of Ambition mentions neither Mormons nor Utah. This lapse is incomprehensible in view of Simpson's characterization of Cobb as "principal patronage and policy counsel to the President. . . . Second only to the President in power and prestige. . . ." and one's realization that the Utah Expedition cost an estimated $14 to $40 million at a time when the national debt, administered by Cobb's Treasury Department, rose from $25 to $65 million. It is difficult to believe that Cobb did not play a key role in Buchanan's initial decision to intervene in Utah as well as in the subsequent deliberations on financing the movement of one-third of the army west in the midst of a major economic depression.

John M. Belohlavek sheds somewhat more light on the subject but nonetheless basically misses a similar opportunity with his article "The Politics of Scandal: A Reassessment of John B. Floyd as Secretary of War, 1857-61." Recognizing that "historians have generally held the Buchanan administration in low esteem and that Floyd has helped it reach this nadir," Belohlavek notes that "the Secretary was forced to face a major crisis in 1857 in Utah with apparently little cabinet assistance." However, other than to note that Secretary Floyd supported Buchanan and "emerged as the most vigorous exponent of forceful suppression of the Mormons . . . ," Belohlavek confines his analysis of the origins and resolution of this "major crisis" to two brief paragraphs and the appallingly simplistic conclusion that "by June, 1858, the Utah issue was resolved by a small show of military force and the diplomacy of two commissioners." With some sympathy for Floyd, Belohlavek does devote substantial attention to long-standing accusations that he mismanaged the financing of the Utah Expedition and subsequently channelled federal arms to Southern arsenals where they were vulnerable to capture by secessionists. In the process, however, Belohlavek has ignored the related and equally damaging charges that Floyd, a Virginian, engaged in a secessionist plot with Cobb of Georgia and Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson of Mississippi to use the Utah Expedition as a means of bankrupting the federal government and scattering its regiments in the West.

Fortunately, we also now have Harold D. Langley's edition of To Utah with the Dragoons to provide a piece of what has heretofore been missing from the current Buchanan revival—an insider's account (albeit a low level one) of the Utah Expedition. Specifically, the book consists of twenty-five letters written by "Utah," an anonymous dragoon private, to the editor of the Philadelphia Daily Evening Bulletin during the period May 1858-May 1859. The first eighteen letters cover "Utah's" march from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, to Camp Floyd, Utah, a journey during which he served in a company recruited in the Philadelphia area to reinforce the Second Regiment of Dragoons. The balance of the material deals with "Utah's" experiences in Los Angeles and the mining regions of Arizona, an adventure that followed his wounding and premature disability discharge from the army. From the letters' internal evidence, we know that "Utah" was young (early twenties), was probably born in Europe, and had worked as the printer of a rural Pennsylvania newspaper before his enlistment. In the final chapter of the book, Langley leads the reader through a fascinating, first-rate and exhaustive examination of the Second Dragoons' medical, personnel, and payroll records in an attempt to determine "Utah's" identity, a process that yields Pvt. Henry W. Fisher as a likely but not certain candidate.

While lauding Langley's scholarship, Professor Walter Rundell, Jr. of the University of Maryland has concluded that "... this book provides the specialist in Western history with little new information . . . ," an assessment that overlooks "Utah's" rather unusual political and personal perspective. Admittedly, to the the extent that "Utah" deals with the physical features of Independence and Chimney rocks, South Pass and a variety of rivers west of Fort Leavenworth, he covers a subject that has become ail-too familiar in such narratives. However, it should be noted that these letters do represent one of the relatively few enlisted accounts of a campaign already top heavy with the diaries of Buchanan's company commanders. Perhaps even more important, "Utah" also provides the perspective of a vocal, unabashed Fremont Republican ordered on a two-thousand-mile march by a Democratic administration. "Utah's" political bias becomes even more interesting with the realization that his letters were intended for publication and that his medium, the Bulletin, was based in President Buchanan's own home state.

Whereas other participants such as Captains Jesse A. Gove, John W. Phelps, and Albert Tracy have unwittingly projected glimpses of either limitless ambition or temperamental conflicts with their own troops and superiors, Private "Utah" provides speculation as to the basic purpose of the expedition (a Democratic ploy to divert attention from either an attack on Mexico's northern states or the concentration of federal troops in "bleeding" Kansas), while simultaneously ventilating contempt for the "poltroonery" of his West Point officers. Perhaps because of his political bias, "Utah" is unable to resist reporting that some of his associates "insinuate that the old man [Buchanan], having lived so long without getting a wife, is envious of Brother Brigham's success among the ladies, and takes this [military] mode of venting his rage."

Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of "Utah's" letters is the extent to which they reflect his willingness to alter basic prejudices with the impact of direct experience. For example, "Utah" had enlisted in the spring of 1858 in the belief that, as he wrote from Fort Leavenworth, "the cause of morality demands the extermination of this nest of [Mormon] adulterers . . . the only missionaries that can make headway with them are such as wield the sabre and bear the musket." How ever, within five months, personal contact with Mormon emigrants, bishops, and Brigham Young himself had convinced him that ". . . Uncle Sam has not a more faithful, loyal, liberty-loving people within his proud domains than they. . . ," Similarly, what began as contempt and loathing for the Plains Indians develops through "Utah's" letters into admiration and the belief that the tribes were being brutalized by the army, a position to which he held even after sustaining a crippling wound in an Indian skirmish.

Despite "Utah's" entertaining and valuable barracks-level assessment of Buchanan's western military strategy, there is still an enormous gap in our understanding of this aspect of his administration. By virtually ignoring President Buchanan's prosecution of this significant campaign, Updike, Smith, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Simpson, and Belohlavek have deprived us of another opportunity to assess the extent to which, if at all, Buchanan committed nearly one-third of the United Stales Army to Utah in order to: (a) enrich commercial friends of his administration, including the freighting firm of Russell, Majors & Waddell; (b) divert national attention from the corrosive slavery dispute in Kansas; or (c) assign federal troops to western posts remote from any potential Southern secession movement.

Conspiracy theories involving all three areas of motivation have been advanced by various observers since 1857, with enigmatic statements by the participants adding to the intrigue. For example, in a speech on July 26, 1857, Brigham Young commented that Buchanan "did not design to start men on the 15th of July to cross the plains to this point on foot. Russell & Co. will probably make from eight to ten hundred thousand dollars. . . ." : One of Young's daughters later expressed similar beliefs as did the Deseret News and, surprisingly, Buchanan's ranking military advisor. Kansas affairs also appear in a potentially new light when one considers Robert Tyler's advice to Buchanan that ". . . we can supersede the Negro-Mania with the almost universal excitement of an Anti-Mormon Crusade . . . the pipings of Abolitionists will hardly be heard amidst the thunders of the storm we shall raise." And finally, there is the cryptic comment by John B. Floyd to a Virginia secessionist audience in January 1861 after resigning his portfolio as Buchanan's secretary of war, that "I undertook so to dispose of the power in my hands, that when the terrific hour came you and all of you, and each

of you, should say, 'This man has done his duty!' None of these theories has been adequately explored. Missing also is the means of assessing the impact of massive Mormon resistance in 1857—and the attendant military standoff along Utah's eastern border—on Buchanan's appetite for dealing vigorously with South Carolina four years later.

At this point it is fair to consider the reasons for this significant, although perhaps not catastrophic, gap in the history of federal-Mormon relations. In brief, it appears that the national fascination with Lincoln and the Civil War, relatively little of which impacted militarily on Utah, has until recently served to divert attention from all but the conclusion of President Buchanan's administration. The principal exception—because of the slavery issue—has been Buchanan's handling of "bleeding" Kansas during 1857-58, although it has been and could still be argued, as discussed above, that military and political affairs in that territory were closely intertwined with the decision to intervene further west in Utah. Perhaps if Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston had not died at Shiloh in 1862, he rather than Lee might have emerged as the preeminent Confederate field commander, with command of the Utah Expedition recalled as his greatest prewar challenge.

Another, less obvious explanation for the expedition's relative obscurity lies in the phenomenon through which, as the LDS church has ceased to be a focus of controversy and hatred, the more sensational aspects of its past—the Utah Expedition among them—have receded from the national awareness. While welcome from a social and religious standpoint, this "benign neglect" or lowering of the church's historical profile has brought with it gaps in the understanding of Utah's early territorial period especially among eastern non-Mormons.

In 1976, for example, Morris K. Udall, a lapsed Mormon, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination without his family or religious affiliation becoming a major issue. This was a signficant indicator, in view of the fact that Udall is a great-grandson of John D. Lee, the Mormon militia officer convicted and executed for the 1857 Mountain Meadow Massacre, which was in turn the principal atrocity connected with the Utah Expedition. Similarly, when news of the Mylai atrocities surfaced in 1969, press attempts to place them in historical perspective failed to mention the role of Mormon militiamen in the Mountain Meadow slaughter but focused on the misconduct of federal volunteer or regular troops at Sand Creek, Colorado, in 1864; at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890; and throughout the Philippine Insurrection following the Spanish-American War. The complete absence of analysis as to the extent to which, if at all, the Mountain Meadow Massacre was relevant to or precedent for the Mylai incident is even more remarkable when one considers that several Latter-day Saints were among the troops at Mylai and that a Mormon served as chief defense counsel for Lt. William L. Calley, Jr.

Similarly, a national controversy continues to rage over the issue of unconditional amnesty for Vietnam offenders without any appreciation by press, Congress, or the advocates on both sides of the issue that President Buchanan terminated the Utah Expedition in 1858 with a blanket pardon for what was then considered to be Utah's rebellious population. 33 Other examples of an unawareness of Utah's history appear regularly in the national press.

Those with an interest in James Buchanan's Mormon policy and its impact on Utah may have to await the appearance of other investigators, for studies comprising the current Buchanan revival rely excessively on Professor Klein's fine but eastern-oriented studies and simply do not work the problem adequately from a western standpoint. What is badly needed is a thorough analysis, using Furniss's study as a foundation, of Buchanan's specific decision to intervene against what he considered to be Mormon secession in Utah, the related Cabinet deliberations, and the subsequent impact of both on Buchanan's handling of the Southern secession crisis.

For full citations and images please view this article on a website.