Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 76, Number 1, 2008

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X)

EDITORIAL STAFF

PHILIP F NOTARIANNI, Editor ALLAN KENT POWELL, Managing Editor CRAIG FULLER, Associate Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS

LEE ANN KREUTZER, Salt Lake City, 2009

STANFORD J LAYTON, Salt Lake City, 2009 ROBERT E. PARSON, Benson, 2010 W PAUL REEVE, Salt Lake City, 2008 JOHN SILLITO, Ogden, 2010

NANCY J TANIGUCHI, Merced, Califor nia, 2008 GARY TOPPING, Salt Lake City, 2008 RONALD G WATT, West Valley City, 2010 COLLEEN WHITLEY, Salt Lake City, 2009

Utah Histor ical Quar terly was established in 1928 to publish ar ticles, documents, and reviews contr ibuting to knowledge of Utah histor y The Quar terly is published four times a year by the Utah State Histor ical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-3500 for member ship and publications infor mation. Member s of the Society receive the Quar terly, and Cur rents, the quar terly newsletter, upon payment of the annual dues: individual, $25; institution, $25; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or older), $20; sustaining, $35; patron, $50; business, $100.

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2 IN THIS ISSUE

4

A Lion in the Path: Genesis of the Utah War, 1857-1858

By David L. Bigler

22

38

And The War Came: James Buchanan, the Utah Expedition, and the Decision to Inter vene

By William P MacKinnon

The Utah War : A Photog raphic Essay of Some of Its Impor tant Histor ic Sites

By John Eldredge

66

Sam Houston and the Utah War By Michael Scott Van Wagenen

79 The Spencer-Pike Affair By Richard W. Sadler

94 BOOK REVIEWS

Reid L. Neilson and Ronald W Walker, eds. Reflections of a Mor mon Histor ian: Leonard J. Ar r ington on the New Mor mon Histor y Reviewed by Charles S. Peterson Jennifer Nez Denetdale Rec laiming Diné Histor y: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita Reviewed by Rober t S. McPherson

Matthew C. Godfrey. Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mor mon Churc h, the Federal Gover nment, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921

Reviewed by Michael Christensen

Don Gale. Bags to Ric hes: The Stor y of I.J. Wagner Reviewed by Eileen Hallet Stone

Patr icia F Cowley and Parker M. Nielson. Thunder Over Zion: The Life of Chief Judge Willis W. Ritter Reviewed by Kenneth L. Cannon II

On e h u n d re d a n d f i f t y ye a r s a g o a f e d e r a l a r my o f n e a r l y t wo t h o u s a n d s o l d i e r s u n d e r t h e c o m m a n d o f C o l A l b e r t S i d n ey Johnston huddled in their makeshift quar ter s at Camp Scott near the r uins of For t Br idger in southwester n Wyoming to wait out the bitter winter and prepare to march into the Salt Lake Valley later in the spr ing of 1858. Meanwhile, Mor mon spies kept watch on the soldier s from the heights of Br idger Butte a few miles west of Camp Scott while the ter r itor ial militia continued preparation of defense for tifications in Echo C a nyo n a n d e l s ew h e re a l o n g t h e t r a i l i n a n t i c i p a t i o n o f b a t t l e w i t h t h e federal troops when they moved into the Mor mon stronghold.

The year 1857 had been an eventful and difficult year for Utah and the nation. The fight over whether Kansas would be a “free” or “slave” state g e n e r a t e d n a t i o n a l a t t e n t i o n t o “ B l e e d i n g K a n s a s , ” a p ro l og u e t o w h a t became a full-scale Civil War in 1861. At the same time the United States Supreme Cour t increased tensions in the landmark decision in the Dred Scott case, when it decreed that all Afr ican Amer icans were not citizens and t h a t t h e s a n c t i t y o f p ro p e r t y r i g h t s g u a r a n t e e d b y t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s Constitution included the human proper ty of slaveholder s. As Kenneth M. Stampp wrote in his classic study of the United States on the eve of civil war, Amer ica in 1857: A Nation on the Br ink, “1857 was probably the year when the Nor th and South reached the political point of no retur n—when it became well nigh impossible to head off a violent resolution of the differences between them.”

Tensions were no less severe in Utah as newly elected president James Buchanan acted in the spr ing of 1857 to replace Br igham Young as ter r itorial gover nor with Alfred E. Cumming. Unconvinced that Mor mons would accept the new gover nor, Buchanan directed the United States Ar my to provide a substantial and suitable escor t for the newly appointed gover nor and in so doing precipitated what has long been known as the Utah War. As the Utah-bound expedition made its way along the well-traveled OregonC a l i f o r n i a Tr a i l t owa r d U t a h , a p p rox i m a t e l y o n e h u n d r e d a n d t we n t y C a l i f o r n i a - b o u n d e m i g r a n t s w e r e k i l l e d b y M o r m o n s a t M o u n t a i n Meadows in southwester n Utah on September 11.

T h i s s p e c i a l i s s u e o f t h e U t a h H i s t o r i c a l Q u a r t e r ly e x a m i n e s t h e b a c kg round, issues, individuals, and consequences sur rounding the Utah War. Not only did the Nor th and the South stand on the br ink of civil war in 1857, but so did the East and West as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, political upheavals, and the Utah War exacerbated tensions and hostilities in Utah, Califor nia, and sur rounding ter r itor ies that were no less volatile than those of slaver y and states’ r ights in Kansas and the South.

ON THE COVER: James Buchanan during his term as President of the United States—1857 to 1861. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Our fir st two ar ticles offer differ ing, yet complementar y views on the causes of the Utah War. They address such questions as how the decision was reached to send a federal ar my to Utah, and what roles United States P r e s i d e n t J a m e s B u c h a n a n a n d M o r m o n l e a d e r a n d U t a h Te r r i t o r i a l Gover nor Br igham Young played in launching the impending conflict.

In an effor t to g ive a visual under standing of impor tant sites and events a s s o c i a t e d w i t h t h e U t a h Wa r, o u r t h i rd a r t i c l e i l l u s t r a t e s t h e l a n d m a r k s along the more than eleven hundred mile jour ney under taken by the federal ar my from For t Leavenwor th, Kansas to Camp Floyd, for ty miles southwest of Salt Lake City Less than a decade later, Civil War photog rapher s like Mathew Brady, would use the medium of photog raphy to convey the death and hor ror of war to a shocked Amer ica.

Our four th ar ticle, with its focus on Sam Houston, reminds us that statesmen of all generations have the r ight and duty to speak out on controver sial matter s and, as Sam Houston did with the Utah War, make their opinions and recommendations a par t of the public discussion.

Although the Utah War saw no actual battles and few deaths, our final ar ticle, in recounting the thir ty-year Spencer-Pike aff air, instr ucts us that the threat of violence was real and that hostilities and animosity took decades to ease and disappear

There is no doubt that the Utah War was a significant event in Utah and Amer ican histor y 1 In 1858 Abraham Lincoln said in reference to the United States and slaver y, “a house divided against its self cannot stand.” Just as the nation had to deal with the issue of slaver y to insure its continuation, so did the Ter r itor y of Utah have to come to an under standing and acceptance of its relationship with the rest of the nation. That process was accelerated, if not begun, with the Utah War

1 The Utah War is a popular topic in the Utah Histor ical Quar terly Nineteen ar ticles and jour nals have been published beg inning in 1941 with Richard Thomas Ackley’s “Across the Plains” in the July-October issue of Volume 9, and the 1858-1860 Jour nal of Alber t Tracy as the entire volume 13 in 1945. The other ar ticles include: “Mor mon Finance and the Utah War,” by Leonard J Ar r ington, July 1952; “A Ter r itor ial Militiaman in the Utah War : Jour nal of Newton Tuttle,” edited by Hamilton Gardner, October 1954; “Jour nals of the Leg islative Assembly, Ter r itor y of Utah Seventh Annual Session, 1857-1858,” by Everett L. Cooley, Apr il, July, and October 1956; “Charles A. Scott's Diar y of the Utah Expedition, 1857-1861,” edited by Rober t E. Stower s and John M. Ellis, October 1960; “The Buchanan Spoils System and the Utah Expedition: Career s of W M F Mag raw and John M. Hockaday,” by William P MacKinnon, Spr ing 1963; “ C a m p i n t h e S a g e b r u s h : C a m p F l oy d , U t a h , 1 8 5 8 - 1 8 6 1 , ” by T h o m a s G A l e x a n d e r a n d L e o n a rd J Ar r ington, Winter 1966; “The Cr isis at For t Limhi, 1858,” by David L. Bigler, Spr ing 1967; “For t Rawlins, Utah: A Question of Mission and Means,” by Stanford J Layton, Winter 1974; “The Gap in the Buchanan Revival: The Utah Expedition of , 1857-58,” by William P. MacKinnon, Winter 1977; “A Cr isis Aver ted? General Har ney and the Change in Command of The Utah Expedition,” by Wilford Hill Lecheminant, Winter 1983; “125 Year s of Conspiracy Theor ies: Or ig ins of The Utah Expedition, 1857-58,” by William P MacKinnon, Summer 1984; “Thomas L. Kane And The Utah War,” by Richard D Poll, Spr ing 1993; “The Nauvoo Leg ion and the Prevention of the Utah War,” by Brandon J Metcalf , Fall 2004; “‘Unquestionably Authentic and Cor rect in Ever y Detail’: Probing John I. Ginn and His Remarkable Utah War Stor y, ” by William P MacKinnon, Fall 2004; “‘I Have Given Myself to the Devil’: Thomas L. Kane and the Culture of Honor,” by Matthew Grow, Fall 2005.

Lion in the Path”: Genesis of the Utah War, 18571858

BY DAVID L. BIGLER

In December 1857, two Amer ican ar mies confronted each other in the snow on the high plains of today’s southwester n Wyoming At For t Br idger, some 1,800 officer s and men, including volunteer s, of the U.S Ar my’s Utah Expedition, roughly one fifth of the republic’s regular soldier s available for frontier duty, waited for spr ing to clear the way to advance on Salt Lake Valley. Between them and the Mor mon stronghold s t o o d t h e h o s t s o f l a t t e r - d ay I s r a e l , a l s o k n ow n a s t h e U t a h M i l i t i a , o r Nauvoo Leg ion, as many as four thousand strong, ready to stop them in the winding Echo Canyon cor r idor through the Wasatch Mountains. In Washington that month, the Secretar y of War John B Floyd said the gover nment could no longer avoid a collision with the Mor mon community “Their settlements lie in the g rand pathway which leads from our Atlantic States to the new and flour ishing communities g rowi n g u p u p o n o u r Pa c i f i c s e a b o a r d , ” F l oy d

Brigham Young—Utah’s first territorial governor serving from 1850-1857

David L. Bigler is an independent histor ian in Roseville, Califor nia. He is an honorar y life member of the Utah State Histor ical Society, a char ter member of Utah Wester ner s, and author of books and ar ticles on Mor mon histor y in the west, including Forgotten Kingdom: The Mor mon Theocracy in the Amer ican West, 18471890, and For t Limhi: The Mor mon Adventure in Oregon Ter r itory, 1855-1858 This paper was presented as the Utah Histor y Address at the Annual Meeting of the Utah State Histor ical Society, September 14, 2006, Salt Lake City, Utah.

“A

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

said. They stand as “a lion in the path,” he added, defying civil and militar y author ity and encourag ing the Indians to attack emig rant f amilies.1

The lion in the nation’s path was Br igham Young, Utah’s fir st gover nor And the g rand pathway he stood in the way of was the overland line of travel and communications between the nation’s easter n and wester n sections. Although replaced as ter r itor ial gover nor, he had declared mar tial law three months before to stop all travel without a per mit across an expanse of wester n Amer ica that reached from the Rocky Mountains of today’s central Colorado to the Sier ra Nevada, west of Reno. It was an act of defiance, if not war, that would affect Utah’s histor y for year s to come.

T h e i m m e d i a t e i m p a c t o f Yo u n g ’ s a c t i o n s f e l l o n C a l i f o r n i a T h e re a newly elected fifth gover nor voiced alar m that winter over the effect of the trails closure and “Mor mons and Indians” on immig ration. Gover nor John Weller said his people were “entitled to protection whilst traveling through Amer ican ter r itor y. ” To secure it, “The whole power of the federal gover nment should be invoked,” he said.2 As he spoke, volunteer militia companies we re f o r m i n g i n g o l d m i n i n g t ow n s a l o n g t h e S i e r r a N eva d a , re a d y t o march on Utah from the west.3

Noted histor ian David McCullough has said that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened. Histor y could have gone off in any number of different ways at any point along the way 4 But how could it come to this? To make the picture even more bizar re, both sides justified their actions by the U.S Constitution.

P r e s i d e n t Ja m e s B u c h a n a n i n M ay 1 8 5 7 a c t e d u n d e r h i s e xe c u t i ve author ity and power as commander in chief of Amer ica’s ar med forces. He ordered the U.S Ar my to escor t a new gover nor to Utah and ser ve as a posse comitatus in enabling appointed officials to enforce federal law in a t e r r i t o r y h e b e l i eve d t o b e i n a s t a t e o f o p e n re b e l l i o n B u t h i s a c t i o n touched off an ar med revolt.

“ G o d a l m i g h t y b e i n g my h e l p e r, t h ey c a n n o t c o m e h e re, ” B r i g h a m Young roared and declared mar tial law 5 The United States was breaking the Constitution, he said, and “we would now have to go for th & defend it & also the kingdom of God.”6 He believed God had inspired framer s of the C o n s t i t u t i o n t o c re a t e a l a n d o f re l i g i o u s f re e d o m w h e re H i s k i n g d o m would be set up in the Last Days as foretold by the Old Testament prophet Daniel Young and his people had established God’s Kingdom The U S Constitution was its founding document. They were its tr ue defender s, not cor r upt Washington politicians.

M e a n w h i l e, a N a u vo o L e g i o n l o o ko u t o n B r i d g e r B u t t e, eye i n g t h e

1 “Repor t of the Secretar y of War,” December 5, 1857, S Exec Doc 11 (35-1), 1858, Ser ial 920, 7, 8.

2 Gover nor John B Weller, Inaugural Address, Januar y 8, 1858, Califor nia State Librar y, Sacramento

3 “More Volunteer s for the Mor mon War,” San Francisco Evening Bulletin, Januar y 5, 1858, 5:74, 2/1.

4 David McCullough, “Knowing Histor y and Knowing Who We Are,” Impr imis, 34 (Apr il 2005), 4.

5 Br igham Young Remarks, September 13, 1857, in Deseret News, September 23, 1857, 228/1.

6 Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 10 vols. (Midvale, Utah: Signature Books, 1983), 5:78.

federal camp on Blacks Fork, may have thought that he had seen all this before. He was now engaged in the nation’s fir st civil war, but it was also the third Mor mon war within twenty year s. And the causes of all three— the 1838 Mor mon War in Missour i, the 1845-46 Mor mon War in Illinois, and now the one in Utah — had a f amiliar look. What could they have in common? The following quotes point to the answer :

T h e y i n s t i t u t e d a m o n g t h e m s e l ve s a g ove r n m e n t o f t h e i r ow n , independent of and in opposition to the gover nment of this state 7

The Mor mons openly denounced the gover nment of the United States as utterly cor r upt, and as about to pass away and to be replaced by the gover nment of God.8

Their hostility to the lawful gover nment of the countr y has at length become so violent that no officer bear ing a commission from the Chief Mag istrate of the Union can enter the Ter r itor y or remain there with safety.9

Who spoke those words? All were elected heads of state; each sent troops t o p u t d ow n a p e rc e ive d M o r m o n re b e l l i o n ; a n d t h ey u s e d t h e wo rd “ g ove r n m e n t ” f ive t i m e s i n t h re e s e n t e n c e s t o i d e n t i f y t h e p ro bl e m I n o rd e r o f m e n t i o n , t h ey we re L i l bu r n W. B og g s , g ove r n o r o f M i s s o u r i ; I l l i n o i s G ove r n o r T h o m a s F o r d ; a n d J a m e s B u c h a n a n , o u r f i f t e e n t h Amer ican president. What gover nment did they refer to?

W h e n t h e h e ave n s o p e n e d i n t h e e a r l y n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y a n d G o d spoke again to humankind as He did in the days of Moses, He reinstituted a s y s t e m o f r u l e, k n ow n a s a t h e o c r a c y, d e f i n e d a s d iv i n e r u l e t h ro u g h inspired spokesmen Theocratic r ule bestows many blessings No longer need one bear the anguish of uncer tainty and an endless quest to discover who he is, why she came to be at this point in time, and how one can be sure of self-awareness hereafter

With such blessed assurance, however, comes an unwelcome corollar y. For pr ior to the millennium, a theocracy, r uled from heaven above, cannot co-exist with a republic, gover ned by its people from ear th below, without civil warf are. Histor y has shown that the two gover ning systems are incompatible and cannot live together in peace Instead there will be a str uggle for supremacy until one compels the other either to bend or be gone.

Br igham Young knew of this incompatibility from exper ience by 1846

7

&C In Relation To The Disturbances With the Mor mons; And The Evidence Given Before The Hon. Austin A. King (Fayette, Mis: Office of the Boon’s Lick Democrat, 1841; published by order of the Missour i General Assembly), 9-10.

8 Thomas Ford, A History of Illinois from its Commencement as a State in 1818 to 1847, ed. Milo Milton Quaife, 2 vols , (Chicago: S C Gr iggs and Co , 1854; repr R R Donnelley & Sons, Lakeside Classics Edition, Lakeside Press, 1945-1946), 2:158-59.

9 James Buchanan, “A Proclamation,” House Exec Doc 2 (35-2), vol. 1, Ser ial 997, 69-72.

when he led his people west from Nauvoo toward the place that his predecessor had chosen before he was murdered in 1844. The Great Basin was a vast reg ion of inter ior drainage, outside the United States and hundreds of miles from the nearest outpost of r ule by its professed owner, the Republic of Mexico. In this empty and isolated area, Young would do again what had been done before in Missour i and Illinois.

In Missour i, land possession was volatile even before 1831, when the Almighty named Jackson County as Zion, and Independence, its frontier seat, a booming jumping off place on the Santa Fe Trail, the site of New Je r u s a l e m T h e p l a n o f Z i o n ’ s c i t y wa s a p i c t u r e o f m i l l e n n i a l o r d e r (theocratic gover nment) and communal economic pur pose. It resembled a beehive with a central square mile, or hive, of identical lots, where the working bees of Zion lived, and plots on the outskir ts for them to go out to and har vest. Ever ywhere else, people lived on the land they f ar med and were widely scattered outside smaller towns.

On paper, the planned urban center seems har mless, but a closer look reve a l s i t s c o n f ro n t a t i o n a l n a t u re. T h e C i t y o f Z i o n wa s e x c l u s ive, eve n hostile toward outsider s for whom it held no room. The collective ag r icult u r a l c o n c e p t wa s i n t i m i d a t i n g t o n e x t - d o o r f a r m f a m i l i e s , w h o s e l a n d spelled their sur vival. The command to “fill up the world” with cities of the same design bear s the compulsion of divine r ule to prevail over, rather than coexist with, its neighbor s.

A l l o f w h i c h m a t t e re d l i t t l e i n t h e s u m m e r o f 1 8 4 7 w h e n B r i g h a m Young laid out at the lowest easter n point of the Great Basin almost a tr ue c o py o f Z i o n ’ s C i t y, t o d ay ’ s S a l t L a ke C i t y, w h i c h b e c a m e a m o d e l f o r future Mor mon towns. Land belong ing to the Lord would not be bought o r s o l d , h e s a i d , bu t a s s i g n e d a s i n h e r i t a n c e s H av i n g b e g u n t h e t a s k t o establish God’s Kingdom as an ear thly dominion, Young headed back over the trail to wave on a parade of wagons and prepare to retur n the next year.

And while he was gone, the ear th moved Events took place so momentous they would change forever Young’s vision of God’s wester n Kingdom, as well as the destiny of the nation itself , in ways still beyond our power s to discer n Six months after Young’s 1847 company ar r ived in the Salt Lake Valley, two Mor mon Battalion veterans recorded the discover y of gold in Califor nia. A human tsunami was about to transfor m an isolated land into the Crossroads of the West And ten days later, an even more pivotal event occur red On Febr uar y 2, 1848, the United States acquired all or most of five present southwester n states, including Utah, plus par ts of two other s, under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the War with Mexico

One cannot over state the impact of these happenings on Utah histor y No longer were Zion’s working bees, with a lot in the city and a plot on the outskir ts, trespasser s on land claimed by Mexico Instead, at a stroke, they became squatter s on the public domain of the United States. To the features that made Zion’s City unwelcome in Missour i was added an even more controver sial one: the exclusive communitar ian design on divinely

held proper ty conflicted with both the land laws and policies of a republic that transfer red two-thirds of its public domain into pr ivate owner ship during the nineteenth centur y All it took for an outsider to acquire the r ight to buy 160 acres of the Lord’s domain was clearance of the Indian claim and an author ized sur vey. For federal sur veyor s, life in early Utah would be an adventure

Not yet ready to adopt a sovereign position, Mor mon leader s now f aced the need to reach an inter im accommodation with the nation they had just left. Why at fir st they decided to seek a ter r itor ial for m of gover nment, the least f avorable for establishing a sovereign realm, is unclear. On May 3, 1849, John Ber nhisel headed to Washington with a memor ial twenty-two feet long asking Cong ress to create a ter r itor y named Deseret. If the reg ion s t a ke d o u t by f ewe r t h a n t e n t h o u s a n d s e t t l e r s a p p e a re d e x t r ava g a n t ro u g h l y t w i c e t h e s i z e o f Te x a s i t re f l e c t e d t h e e x p e c t a t i o n o f f u t u re g rowth.

At the same time, Mor mon leader s created a “free and independent” state of the same name to stand until ter r itor ial status was g ranted This soon evolved into a memor ial for statehood. Two months after Ber nhisel left to request a ter r itor y, Almon W Babbitt took off to seek full entr y into the Union. Deseret now had conflicting petitions. It would take months to get order s from the Great Salt Lake Valley, so Apostle Wilford Woodr uff and John Ber nhisel in November 1849 went to Philadelphia to seek counsel from the f aith’s f aithful advocate, Thomas L. Kane.

Kane told them he had applied to President James Polk for a ter r itor ial g ove r n m e n t a t B r i g h a m Yo u n g ’ s re q u e s t , bu t t h a t Po l k h a d re f u s e d t o accept the condition that he would “appoint men from among your selves,” probably refer r ing to Young as gover nor At this, “I had to use my own discretion and I withdrew the Petition,” he said. “You must have officer s of yo u r s e l ve s , & n o t m i l i t a r y Po l i t i c i a n s w h o a re s t r u t t i n g a ro u n d i n yo u r midst usur ping Author ity over you, ” Kane told Apostle Woodr uff . “You are b e t t e r w i t h o u t a n y G ove r n m e n t f ro m t h e h a n d s o f C o n g r e s s t h a n a Ter r itor ial Gover nment.”10

Kane next revealed his own prophetic power s. Under a ter r itor y, “ cor r upt political men from Washington would control the land and Indian agencies,” he said, “and conflict with your own calculations.”11 Tr ue to his prediction, President James Buchanan in 1858 handed Cong ress over sixty letter s and repor ts over a six-year per iod to justify sending a militar y expedition to Utah. All but four were wr itten by officials from the two agencies Kane had put his finger on the U S Land Office and the Office of Indian Aff air s

In the end, it mattered little. Obsessed with slaver y, Cong ress created a t e r r i t o r y, t o o k away i t s s e a p o r t , a n d g ave i t a n u n wa n t e d n a m e, U t a h President Millard Fillmore signed the bill on September 9, 1850, and it

10 Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 3:515-16. 11 Ibid.

THE UTAH WAR, 1857-1858

could be said the Utah War star ted on that date One emig rant said he heard Br igham Young say, “If they send a gover nor here, he will be glad to black my boots for me ”12 Thanks to Kane’s influence, President Fillmore inadver tently handed the job of blacking Young’s boots to one of his wives. He named Young himself Utah’s fir st gover nor. Other presidential appointments over the next six year s were a mixed lot, but not noticeably different from those of other ter r itor ies. Perhaps the b e s t wa s F r a n k l i n P i e rc e ’ s c h o i c e a s U t a h ’ s s u r veyo r g e n e r a l F i f t y - t woyear-old David H. Bur r was nothing like the controver sial figure he would become. One of the nation’s leading mapmaker s, he had ser ved as car tog rapher for the U.S Post Office and official geolog ist of Cong ress. Over a long career, he had sur veyed and mapped most of the states and many cities and counties and published the fir st map of Nor th Amer ica incor porating the discover ies of Jedediah Smith.

But as Kane predicted, Bur r got no respect in Utah. Nor had he seen a n y t h i n g l i ke i t w h e n h e c a m e i n 1 8 5 5 Pa t t e r n e d a f t e r Z i o n ’ s C i t y, Mor mon settlements were twice the size federal law allowed for preemption entr y on occupied town sites, a half-section, 320 acres. Great Salt Lake City topped that limit by six times.13 The year before Bur r ar r ived, settler s began to consecrate their holdings to the church through tr ustee-in-tr ust Br igham Young.14 And Utah leg islator s ignored Indian r ights and g ranted by law canyons, water and timber resources, and herd g rounds to Mor mon leader s as if to convey owner ship But these oddities hardly compared to the hostility Bur r’s crews met in the field. According to his deputy, local settler s told native chiefs that “we were measur ing out the land” to claim it and “dr ive the Mor mons away and kill the Indians.”15 Bur r was seen as “an e n e my, a n d a n i n t r u d e r u p o n t h e i r r i g h t s . ” 16 I n t h e p a s t , h i s wo r k h a d opened the way for settler s elsewhere to own their land He could not under stand why they removed the mounds and posts that marked section and township cor ner s and hoped they would realize “how impor tant it is to them to per petuate these cor ner s ”17 When the day came, they would blame him for not setting them properly.

T h o m a s K a n e ’ s p ro p h e t i c p owe r s i n re l a t i o n t o l a n d ow n e r s h i p a l s o proved tr ue when it came to the U.S. Office of Indian Aff air s. In the house divided that was Utah, the federal agency’s aim was to keep peace on the

12 David L. Bigler, ed., A Winter with the Mor mons: The 1852 Letters of Jotham Goodell (Salt Lake City: The Tanner Tr ust Fund, J Willard Mar r iott Librar y, Univer sity of Utah, 2001), 50.

13 See “An Act for the relief of the citizens of towns upon the lands of the United States, under cer tain circumstances,” The Public Statutes at Large of the United States,Vol 5, 453-58.

14 Repor t of the Commissioner, General Land Office, House Exec. Doc. 1 (34-3), 1856, Ser ial 893, 210-11.

15 C.L. Craig to David H. Bur r, August 1, 1856, “The Utah Expedition,” House Exec Doc 71 (35-1), 1858, Ser ial 956, 115-16.

16 Ibid., David H. Bur r to Thomas A. Hendr icks, June 11, 1857, 120.

17 Annual Repor t of Sur veyor General of Utah, September 30, 1856, House Exec Doc 1 (34-3), 1856, Ser ial 893, 543.

frontier The mission of God’s Kingdom, on the other hand, was to teach the Indians, or Lamanites, the gospel of their foref ather s and become par tner s with them in building New Jer usalem on the Amer ican continent A p p o i n t m e n t o f B r i g h a m Yo u n g a s e x - o f f i c i o s u p e r i n t e n d e n t o f I n d i a n Aff air s placed the Mor mon leader in charge of conflicting objectives. It is not sur pr ising that Young, to the alar m of U.S Indian agents, f avored one at the cost of the other. Nor would it have mattered, except when Z i o n wa s re d e e m e d , s a i d t h e p ro p h e t M i c a h i n wo rd s re p e a t e d i n T h e Book of Mor mon, the “remnant of Jacob,” or Lamanites, would be among unrepentant Gentiles “as a young lion among the flocks of sheep, who, if he go through, both treadeth down and teareth in pieces ”18 People on the f ro n t i e r c o u l d f i g u re o u t t h a t t h e “ re m n a n t o f Ja c o b ” re f e r re d t o t h e Indians, while the flocks of sheep this young lion would go through, tearing people to bits, if they did not repent, probably meant them. So it was that Mor mon over tures to the tr ibes on the Missour i frontier had been a source of r umor, misunder standing and conflict.

The same fear can be seen in Secretar y of War Floyd’s 1857 repor t, as well as in Califor nia Gover nor Weller’s inaugural address soon after The call of hundreds of Indian missionar ies to tr ibes west of the Mississippi River, star ting in 1855, set off alar m bells in Washington, D. C., and across the We s t A n d t r u e t o K a n e ’ s p re d i c t i o n , m o s t o f t h e d o c u m e n t s B u c h a n a n handed Cong ress to justify his order ing a U.S. Ar my expedition to Utah came from the Office of Indian Aff air s.

Aware of such fear s, Br igham Young at times seemed to encourage them. “O what a pity they could not foresee the evil they were br ing ing on themselves, by dr iving this people into the midst of the savages of the plains,” he said in August 1857.19 Even then, he was sending word to the tr ibes that “they must be our fr iends and stick to us, for if our enemies kill us off , they will surely be cut off by the same par ties,” refer r ing to the U.S. Ar my.20 W h e t h e r a c re a t u re o f f e d e r a l i m a g i n a t i o n o r re a l , t h e l i o n t h e Wa r Depar tment saw in the nation’s path in 1857 was an alliance of Mor mons and Indians, Ephraim and Manasseh in the Mor mon theolog ical parlance. Lending credence to such fear s had been attacks on small emig rant par ties the summer before on the Califor nia Trail along the Humboldt River on the line of today’s I-80 and a hor r ific atrocity at Mountain Meadows in souther n Utah.

Thomas Kane did not spell out a third source of fr iction between the Great Basin theocracy and the Amer ican republic, but clearly refer red to it when he said, “You do not want two gover nments with you.”21 In a theocratic system, God’s will render s obsolete the imperfect human covenants

18 Micah 5:8; The Book of Mor mon, 3 Nephi 21:12.

19 Br igham Young Remarks, August 2, 1857, in Deseret News, August 9, 1857, 188/1-4.

20 Daniel H. Wells to William H. Dame, August, 13, 1857, William R. Palmer Collection, File 8, Box 87, Special Collections, Sher ratt Librar y, Souther n Utah Univer sity, Cedar City

21 Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 3:515.

THE UTAH WAR, 1857-1858

on which social order depends, such as the r ule of law

In Illinois, Nauvoo’s municipal council took advantage of a liberal city char ter to create an exclusive cour t system for people who lived under h i g h e r l aw. I l l i n o i s G ove r n o r T h o m a s Fo rd s a i d t h ey c re a t e d c o u r t s t o execute laws of their own making “with but little dependence upon the constitutional judiciar y ”22 Utah leg islator s did the same To shor t circuit the t e r r i t o r y ’ s d i s t r i c t c o u r t s u n d e r j u d g e s a p p o i n t e d by t h e p re s i d e n t , t h ey created county level probate cour ts and vested them with or ig inal civil and cr iminal jur isdiction, power s not meant by Cong ress, to establish an exclusive judiciar y. They fur ther banned common law and legal precedent.23

Such practices had caused violent opposition in Illinois, but stir red little c o m p l a i n t i n U t a h b e c a u s e i t s p e o p l e a c c e p t e d i t a s p a r t o f t h e i r f a i t h . Passing emig rants were not so acquiescent The fir st book copyr ighted in Califor nia was an 1851 collection of emig rant g r ievances at random ar rests, fines, punishment, and lawsuits. They called on Cong ress to institute militar y r ule in Utah 24 And distr ict judges bombarded Washington with protests at being str ipped of their function. Of eight appointed from 1850 to 1856, five fled out of fear or fr ustration, two died, and one was not reappointed

By 1855, it had become clear to Mor mon leader s that God’s Kingdom could not live under ter r itor ial r ule and fulfill its destiny as foretold by the Prophet Daniel 25 They now opened the most deter mined bid for entr y into the Union, pr ior to the Civil War, when they would declare Deseret a state unilaterally Repeatedly they had asked Cong ress for per mission to hold a constitutional convention as the fir st step in the statehood process, but federal lawmaker s had ignored their request. This time they would g ive Cong ress a choice: Take us as a self-gover ning state or leave us alone Descr ibing ter r itor ial r ule as an “odious, tyrannical, and absurd system of colonial gover nment,” Young in December 1855 called on Utah lawmaker s to hold a convention to adopt a state constitution.26 The delegates who assembled from across the ter r itor y in March 1856 had been elected unanimously under a marked ballot system that disallowed the oppor tunity to vote in secret. Another car r yover from Nauvoo, such voting practices had caused “bitter hatred and unrelenting hostility” in Illinois, as the Quincy Whig editor had predicted.27

22 Thomas Ford, A History of Illinois, 2: 66.

23 For similar ities between Utah’s early probate cour ts and the county cour ts that evolved in New Mexico, see Howard R. Lamar, “Political Patter ns in New Mexico and Utah Ter r itor ies, 1850-1890,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 28 (October 1960): 363-87.

24 See Nelson Slater, Fruits of Mor monism or A Fair and Candid Statement of Facts Illustrative of Mor mon Pr inciples, Mor mon Policy and Mor mon Character, by More than For ty Eye-Witnesses (Coloma, CA: Har mon & Spr ings, 1851).

25 See Daniel 2:44.

26 Br igham Young, “Gover nor’s Message,” December 11, 1855, in Deseret News, December 19, 1855.

27 Sylvester M. Bar tlett, Quincy Whig, Januar y 22, 1842, repr in John E. Hallwas and Roger D Launius, eds., Cultures in Conflict: A Documentary History of the Mor mon War in Illinois (Logan: Utah State Univer sity Press, 1995), 83-84.

Completed in eleven days was the constitution of a new state named Deseret that equaled in size, if not yet population, the sweep of Br igham Young’s vision. Its border s enclosed an area exceeded only by today’s states o f A l a s k a a n d Te x a s . A n a l l e g e d c e n s u s c o u n t e d n e a r l y e i g h t y t h o u s a n d i n h a b i t a n t s , o r a b o u t t w i c e t h e t r u e nu m b e r, n o t c o u n t i n g I n d i a n s , a n exaggeration Young would later elevate to nearly a hundred thousand. In h i g h s p i r i t s , h e i n f o r m e d Jo h n B e r n h i s e l o f t h e s e p r e l i m i n a r i e s a n d

dispatched Apostle George A. Smith to work with the Utah cong ressional delegate and Apostle John Taylor, editor of The Mor mon in New York, in winning the approval of Cong ress for the new constitution, which would be tantamount to statehood.

But the 1856 dr ive for sovereignty through statehood proved ill timed. Deseret’s delegates found no interest in Washington even to consider the bid. The new Republican Par ty had won control of Cong ress on a platfor m t o a b o l i s h s l ave r y a n d p o l y g a my. I f t h i s f e e d b a c k wa s n o t b a d e n o u g h , Ber nhisel’s repor t cleared Young’s mind of any illusions Washington looked w i t h f avo r o n h i m o r h i s d e s i re f o r s t a t e h o o d . T h e U t a h d e l e g a t e t o l d Gover nor Young “an effor t was being made to procure your removal from office ”28

Young got the bad news on August 28 and from that day forward his position was one of defiance toward the national gover nment. “Let them r ip and let them roll while the devil pops them through, for tr uly their time is shor t,” he exploded to Taylor, Smith and Ber nhisel.29 “As the Lord lives, we are bound to become a sovereign State in the Union, or an independent nation by our selves,” he told his follower s. From the beg inning, God’s Kingdom had been “ a ter ror to all nations,” he said, but it would “revolutionize the world and br ing all under subjection to the law of God, who is our law g iver ”30

L e s s t h a n t h re e we e k s a f t e r l e a r n i n g D e s e re t ’ s s ove re i g n t y a s p i r a t i o n s were dead on ar r ival, Young in a dramatic f ashion made it apparent the time had come to throw off Washington’s yoke On September 14, he ignited a flaming revival to cleanse Israel and present before the Lord a godly people wor thy of divine f avor in an imminent showdown with the U n i t e d S t a t e s , w h i c h h e f o re s aw. K n ow n a s t h e “ re f o r m a t i o n , ” i t c a l l e d member s to confess their sins and be rebaptized, clean up their lives and homes, and flush federal officials, apostates, Gentile merchants, and other manifestations of cor r uption out of the body of Israel. For sinner s and the r ighteous alike, it was a fearful time

In December, the Nephi bishop attended leg islative sessions at Great Salt

28

John Ber nhisel to Br igham Young, July 17, 1856, CR1234/1, Box 60, Folder 20 (Reel 71), Church Histor y Librar y, Family and Church Histor y Depar tment, The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-day Saints. Hereafter the LDS Church Histor y Librar y

29 Br igham Young to George A. Smith, John Ber nhisel and John Taylor, August 30, 1856, CR1234/1, Letterbook 3, 18-24, LDS Church Histor y Librar y The author is indebted to Ardis Par shall for this item.

30 Br igham Young Remarks, August 31, 1856, in Deseret News, September 17, 1856, 219/-4, 220/1-3.

THE UTAH WAR, 1857-1858

A detail of soldiers at Camp Scott bringing in a supply of wood during the winter of 1857-1858.

L a ke C i t y a n d s i g n a l e d t h e p u r p o s e o f t h e s p i r i t u a l c o n f l a g r a t i o n . “ T h e f i re o f G o d i s bur ning here,” he told the leader s of his settlement. “Prepare your selves to stand by me when Israil is to be cleansed,” he said, “for this has got to be done that the Gentile bands may be Broken.” The move to sovereignty also anticipated a possible militar y confrontation. “The Saints in Car son & Sanber nidino are called to Come Home Come Home Come Home,” he wrote As early as December 1856, these outlying colonies were called back to defend Zion.31

As the refor mation’s voice of Leviticus, Young chose Jedediah Morgan Grant. At age for ty-two, his second counselor stood over six feet, car r ied n o t a n e x t r a o u n c e o n h i s l a n k y b o n e s , a n d l o o ke d a l i t t l e l i ke yo u n g Abraham Lincoln. He loved his wives, all six of them, and was kindly by nature. But what made Grant exceptional was the fire that bur ned in his belly at the sight of uncleanliness, per sonal or spir itual, in God’s people. He wa s a h e l l - f i re p re a c h e r w h o f r i g h t e n e d t h e c o n g re g a t i o n i n t o a r i g h t standing before God, and when he spoke of the shedding of human blood for the remission of cer tain sins, it “made the Har ts of many tremble,” said Apostle Wilford Woodr uff in an obser vation well below the tr uth.32

As other leader s tur ned to the handcar t cr isis on the Wyoming plains, Grant wore himself out preaching in unheated halls and rebaptizing in cold mountain water s Suddenly this “troubler of Israel” was str uck silent by t y p h o i d a n d p n e u m o n i a , p ro b a b l y b ro u g h t o n by e x h a u s t i o n , b u t h i s passing on December 1,1856, only gave the refor mation new life as other leader s took up the torch he had laid down.33

31 Jacob G Bigler to John Pyper, David Webb, and counselor s, December 23, 1856, Record of the Nephi Mass Quor um of Seventies, 1857-1858, MSS SC 3244, Harold B Lee Librar y, Br igham Young Univer sity

32 Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 4:451.

33 1Kings 18:17.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Dur ing ter r itor ial leg islative sessions on December 23 at Great Salt Lake City, “the House was filled with the spir it of God almost to the consuming of our flesh,” Apostle Wilford Woodr uff said 34 The lawmaker s resolved a week later to for sake their sins and be rebaptized. They did not say whether such sins included breaking into the offices of Judge George P Stiles the night before and pretending to destroy distr ict cour t records Some dismissed it as a prank. If so, it was one joke that had f ar-reaching consequences. The apparent destr uction of federal cour t records was a pr imar y reason President James Buchanan acted to restore federal law in the ter r itor y. Overcome by relig ious zeal, the lawmaker s also drew up memor ials to President-elect Buchanan to justify the nullification of federal law. Accusing for mer presidents of sending officials, who “threaten us with death and destr uction,” they swore to “resist any attempt of Gover nment Officials to set at naught our Ter r itor ial laws, or to impose upon us those which are inapplicable and of r ight not in force in this Ter r itor y.”35 The doctr ine of nullification had led South Carolina a quar ter-centur y before to the br ink of civil war.36

Like the 1856 statehood bid, the memor ial and resolutions were ill timed a s we l l a s c o n f ro n t a t i o n a l Jo h n B e r n h i s e l d e l ive re d t h e m t o P re s i d e n t Buchanan two weeks after his inauguration in March 1857. He refer red them to Inter ior Secretar y Jacob Thompson, who called them “a declaration of war. ” The cabinet member rebuked Ber nhisel and said he did not know how the memor ials would str ike the president, but that they made a ver y “unf avorable impression on his mind.”37

M e a n w h i l e, f r i g h t e n e d a n d u p s e t by t h e a p p a re n t d e s t r u c t i o n o f h i s c o u r t r e c o r d s , Ju d g e G e o r g e P. S t i l e s s a t i s f i e d t h e m o b ’ s i n t e n t i o n i n ransacking his office

He became the last of five distr ict justices, appointed by Presidents Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce, who abandoned their posts in Utah from 1851 to 1857.38 He was also the last of Pierce’s three judicial appointees, who took to their heels and left justice entirely in the hands of the probate cour ts, which meant Br igham Young.

The fir st to flee had been John F. Kinney, who presided over the 1855 Gunnison murder tr ial and saw the Mor mon jur y nullify his instr uctions.

34 Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 4:520.

35 “Memor ial & Resolutions to the President of the United States, concer ning cer tain Officer s of the Te r r i t o r y o f U t a h a n d M e m o r i a l t o t h e P re s i d e n t o f t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s , ” 1 8 5 6 - 5 8 , M e m o r i a l s a n d Resolutions, General Assembly, Utah Ter r itor y, 1852-59, MIC 3150, Reel 3, Utah State Archives. Utah lawmaker s apparently based the power to nullify federal laws on Sec 17, “An Act to establish a Ter r itor ial Gover nment for Utah,” in Statutes at Large of the United States,Vol. 9, 458.

36 Civil war was nar rowly aver ted in 1832 when South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union if the U.S gover nment tr ied to collect federal tar iff duties in the state President Andrew Jackson’s threat to send troops to enforce the U.S law eventually nullified John C Calhoun’s nullification doctr ine, which held that states had the power to declare federal laws null and void.

37 John Ber nhisel to Br igham Young, Apr il 2, 1857, CR1234/1, Box 61, Folder 1 (Reel 71), LDS Church Histor y Librar y

38 The other s were Per r y Brocchus, Lemuel G Brandebur y, John F Kinney, and William W Dr ummond. Leonidas Shaver and Lazar us Reid died, and Zer ubbabel Snow was not reappointed.

THE UTAH WAR, 1857-1858

He drew the wrath of Utah lawmaker s by opposing leg islation to outlaw common law jur isdiction. They retaliated by assigning him to preside over a new distr ict in Car son Valley, five hundred miles west of Great Salt Lake C i t y, i n h a b i t e d “ by I n d i a n s , & d e s t i t u t e o f t h e n e c e s s a r y c o m f o r t s , ” t h e judge protested. For this “insult to me and my f amily,” he took off on Apr il 21, 1856, and went home to West Point, Iowa, where he came down with bilious fever.39

The last to come and next to go was William W Dr ummond, who fully measured up to Utah opinion of outside judges. He left his wife in Illinois and came to Utah with a Chicago prostitute on his ar m and at times at his side in cour t After the lecherous judge told a Fillmore g rand jur y that Utah lawmaker s had no power to bestow or ig inal civil and cr iminal jur isd i c t i o n o n p ro b a t e c o u r t s , h e f o u n d h i m s e l f i n d i c t e d by t h e M i l l a r d C o u n t y g r a n d j u r y a n d a r re s t e d u n d e r a wa r r a n t i s s u e d by t h e p ro b a t e judge at Fillmore. It was a charade, like the bur ning of Judge Stiles’ cour t records, but it scared the judge, who took off with his lady fr iend in May 1856. He would be heard from again.

In the meantime, the cleansing fires of the refor mation roared into 1857. In late Januar y, David H. Bur r looked up from his maps and saw ter r itor ial officer s, Hosea Stout, James Cummings and Alexander McRae standing before him They showed him a copy of his letter to the General Land Office months before and asked if he had wr itten it. He said yes. They then told the sur veyor “the countr y was their s, that they would not per mit this interference with their r ights, and this wr iting letter s about them would be put a stop to.” Bur r saw no reason for their visit except to intimidate him, he told the General Land Office Commissioner Thomas A. Hendr icks.40

The sur veyor began to fear for his safety. “For the last three months my fr iends have considered my life in danger,” he said, but he thought threats made against him and disaffected Mor mons were idle menaces until he h e a r d i n M a r c h 1 8 5 7 t h a t t h r e e m e n h a d b e e n k i l l e d a t S p r i n g v i l l e A s s a i l a n t s f ro m t h e t ow n h a d a m b u s h e d W i l l i a m Pa r r i s h a n d h i s s o n , Beason, as they tr ied to get away. Bur r said, “They were shot, their throats cut, and their bowels r ipped open. ” Killed in the dark by mistake was their guide, Gardner G. “Duff ” Potter, the Judas who led them into the ambush. Ever yone in town knew who did it, but no effor t was made to ar rest or punish them. 41

39 John F Kinney to Jeremiah Black, undated, U.S Attor ney General, Records relating to the appointment of Federal judges, attor neys, and mar shals for the Ter r itor y and State of Utah, 1853-1901, PAM 14082 and MIC A 527-540, Utah State Histor ical Society Kinney complained, but lear ned his lesson Again appointed chief justice in 1860, he did Young’s bidding and found himself elected, almost unanimously, as Utah delegate to Cong ress.

40 David H Bur r to Thomas A Hendr icks, Febr uar y 5, 1857, “The Utah Expedition,” House Exec Doc 71, 118-20.

41 For the stor y of the Par r ish-Potter murder s, see Polly Aird, “’You Nasty Apostates, Clear Out’: Reasons for Disaffection in the Late 1850s,” Jour nal of Mor mon History 30 (Fall 2004): 129-207.

Now thoroughly fr ightened, David Bur r told the General Land Office “ t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s C o u r t s h ave b e e n b ro ke n u p a n d d r ive n f ro m t h e Ter r itor y. ” The f act was, he said, “these people repudiate the author ity of the United States in this countr y and are in open rebellion against the general gover nm e n t ” 4 2 T h e f e a r a n d d e s p e r a t i o n i n t h e s e i t a l i c i z e d wo rd s m ove d a n Amer ican president to take immediate action.

Bur r ’ s cr y of alar m reached Washington soon after the inflammator y resignation of Judge William W Dr ummond, who wrote it almost a year after he and his mistress had taken off Among other things, he charged that supreme cour t records had been destroyed “by order of the Church,” that Indians had murdered Captain John W Gunnison in 1853 under Mor mon order s and direction, and his predecessor, Judge Leonidas Shaver, “ came to his death by dr inking poisoned liquors.”43 The absconded judge offered no evidence or witnesses to suppor t these accusations and his estimate of Utah’s population as a hundred thousand, about twice the actual number, was overblown

Even so, the ter r itor y’s top general made the most of the manpower he had as he pushed preparations for the anticipated militar y confrontation with the United States. On Apr il 1, Lieutenant General Daniel H. Wells announced the militia’s reorganization into companies of ten, fifty, and one hundred to patter n it after the hosts of ancient Israel. All able-bodied men from eighteen to for ty-five were ordered to sign up for militar y duty. 44 Wells also divided Utah into thir teen militar y distr icts and appointed an officer to enroll recr uits in each of them.

As they began to march, spr ing opened the trails and allowed Bur r, Judge George P. Stiles, Mar shal Peter K. Dotson, and other s to flee. “Nearly all the gentile and apostate Scurf in this community left for the United States,” Hosea Stout said. “The fire of the Refor mation is bur ning many out who flee from the Ter r itor y afraid of their lives,” he went on, adding the proverb, “The wicked flee when no man pur sue[s].”45

But, as he said, not all the “scurf ” had flown. Perhaps less wicked than the rest or braver, U.S Indian Agent Garland Hur t, known to the Ute tr ibe as “the Amer ican,” holed up on the Ute Indian training f ar m he had establ i s h e d o n t h e S p a n i s h Fo r k R ive r, b e l ow t h e t ow n o f t h e s a m e n a m e. Before going to his sanctuar y, he set a trap for Utah’s Super intendent of I n d i a n A f f a i r s I n a c o n f i d e n t i a l l e t t e r p o s t e d by p r iva t e h a n d s h e t o l d George Manypenny in Washington, D. C. that Br igham Young was gathering Indian goods for an “explor ing expedition through the Ter r itor ies of Oregon, Washington, and perhaps Br itish Columbia.”46

42 David H. Bur r to Thomas A. Hendr icks, March 28, 1857, “The Utah Expedition,” House Exec. Doc. 71, 118-20.

43 Ibid., William H. Dr ummond to Jeremiah Black, March 30, 1857, 212-14.

44 For the new organization, see Deseret News, Apr il 1, 1857.

45 Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mor mon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout: 1844-1861, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Press, 1982), Apr il 15, 1857.

46 Garland Hur t to George Manypenny, March 30, 1857, Letter s Received, Office of Indian Aff air s, Utah Super intendency, microfilm, Utah State Histor ical Society.

Br igham Young’s nor ther n expedition in the spr ing of 1857 was the longest of his career in the west. Hur t suspected that it was no pleasure junket, but he could not have known its pur pose had to do with a possible confrontation with the United States. Young announced the jour ney less than a week after four half-star ved r ider s, whose trail could be followed by the blood from their hor ses’ legs, reached Salt Lake City in late Febr uar y after a hazardous mid-winter jour ney of nearly four hundred miles from For t Limhi, the Nor ther n Indian Mission on the Salmon River 47 T h e n ew s a n d m a p t h ey d e l ive re d we re r ive t i n g . I n O c t o b e r 1 8 5 6 , Young had ordered Indian missionar y Pleasant Green Taylor to contact the Hudson’s Bay agent in Bitter root Valley and investigate the purchase of For t H a l l o n t h e S n a ke R ive r, ove r l o o k i n g t h e O re g o n Tr a i l . T h e f o l l ow i n g month, Taylor and For t Limhi companions Benjamin F Cummings and Ebenezer Robinson crossed the Continental Divide by present-day Lemhi Pass on the 1805 Lewis and Clark trail, and rode nor th to the g reat valley of the bitter root, now in southwester n Montana.48

Young’s agents from the Great Basin were stunned by the magnificence of the Flathead Indian homeland, guarded on three sides by high mountain ranges. They were especially impressed by its ag r icultural potential. The valley was not only r ichly fer tile, but a thousand feet below Salt Lake Valley in elevation Streams of water r ushed from ever y side and timber resources appeared endless. One of the agents, Nauvoo Leg ion Major Benjamin F. Cummings, lear ned that emig rants ar r iving by steamboats on the Missour i River could be transpor ted from For t Benton over a new wagon road to the Bitter root Valley.

“When considered with Mor monism,” Cummings and his companions “could not help thinking that some day Bitter-Root valley, as well as other p o r t i o n s o f t h e c o u n t r y ove r e a s t o f t h e m o u n t a i n s wo u l d b e c o m e t h e abode of the saints.”49

Br igham Young apparently thought so, too He announced he would go nor th to For t Limhi, then in Oregon Ter r itor y, now in Idaho, and made public the names of a large number of the ter r itor y ’ s leading militar y, settlement and relig ious leaders to go with him Later, with his prayer circle, he heard Cummings’ jour nal read aloud and studied his map. “The pr ice of freight will come down when settlements are made in the Land,” Young said 50

On Apr il 24, Young led a line of wagons, car r iages and animals over a mile long, nor th from Great Salt Lake City. The parade included 115 men, twenty-two women and five boys and numbered all three member s of the

47

48 Lemhi is a misspelling of Limhi, a Book of Mor mon name

49 Benjamin Franklin Cummings, Autobiog raphy and Jour nals, November 16-19, 1856, Harold B Lee Librar y, Br igham Young Univer sity

50 Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 5:26.

Lewis War ren Shur tliff , “Life and Travels of Lewis War ren Shur tliff , ” from a handwr itten transcr iption by Constance Miller Flygare in July 1926, Idaho State Histor ical Society The four were Thomas S Smith, Lewis W Shur tliff , Pleasant Green Taylor and Laconias Bar nard.

f aith’s r uling tr iumvirate, the Fir st Presidency of Br igham Young, Heber C Kimball and Daniel H. Wells, and other top relig ious, militar y and settlem e n t l e a d e r s E s p e c i a l l y n o t e wo r t hy wa s t h e p r e s e n c e o f U t e C h i e f Arapeen and his wife, Wispit. He could be counted on to recommend his hosts to nor ther n native leader s.

Over the next thir ty-three days, Utah’s super intendent of Indian Aff air s met with Indians of Oregon Ter r itor y outside his legal jur isdiction and gave them “many presents of blankets.” He inspected the Lewis and Clark Trail that led from For t Limhi to the water s of the Missour i River and an emerg ing wagon trace to Bitter root Valley. He also selected a location on the Salmon River’s east fork, now Lemhi River, for a second for t to expand t h e c o l o n y n e a r S a l m o n , I d a h o. “ T h e p r e s i d e n t f e l t we l l t owa r d t h e brethren in this place and said the settlements must go nor th instead of south,” William Dame said.51

Young did what he set out to do, “rest the mind and wear y the body,” he told his follower s on the eve of his fifty-sixth bir thday, five days after he retur ned on May 26. “I have renewed my strength, renewed the vigor of my body and mind.”52 He would need the entire strength of his mind and muscle to meet the danger s gather ing on the cour se he had char ted. Two days before, Apostle George A. Smith and John Ber nhisel had ar r ived from t h e e a s t t o re p o r t t h a t “ a l l h e l l i s b o i l i n g ove r a g a i n s t u s , ” s a i d A p o s t l e Woodr uff . 53

It was hardly an over statement. While Young was in Oregon Ter r itor y, President Buchanan confir med r umor s in the east as early as mid-Apr il and ordered troops to Utah On May 28, Lieutenant General Winfield Scott issued order s for not less than 2,500 men to make up the expedition. He ordered its commander, Brevet Br igadier General William S. Har ney, and the expedition was to act as a posse comitatus in aiding a new gover nor and federal officer s to enforce the law in a ter r itor y considered to be in a state of rebellion.54 He was not to attack “any body of citizens whatever, except on such requisition or summons, or in sheer self-defence ”55

On July 24, 1857, the tenth anniver sar y of his ar r ival in Salt Lake Valley with the fir st pioneer company, Br igham Young announced publicly an Amer ican ar my was on its way. The news shocked a people emotionally stressed by the Refor mation and murder of Apostle Parley P Pratt. Excited and fearful, they filled the bower y on Sunday, two days later, and anxiously waited to hear Young tell what it meant for them and their f amilies.

Br igham Young began in a way he rarely, if ever, did He opened his

51 William H. Dame Jour nal, May 18, 1857, Harold B Lee Librar y, Br igham Young Univer sity

52

Br igham Young Remarks, May 31,1857, in Deseret News, June 10, 1857, 107/1-3.

53 Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 5:53-54.

54 A posse comitatus is a force representative of all citizens to enforce the law under the leg itimate author ity of a political jur isdiction.

55 George W. Lay to William S.Har ney, June 29, 1857, “The Utah Expedition,” House Exec. Doc. 71, 79.

THE UTAH WAR, 1857-1858

B i b l e a n d r e a d a l o u d : “ I n the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed; and the kingd o m s h a l l n o t b e l e f t t o o t h e r p e o p l e , b u t i t s h a l l b r e a k i n p i e c e s a n d c o ns u m e a l l t h e s e k i n g d o m s , and it shall stand for ever.”56 T h e y h a d e s t a b l i s h e d t h e kingdom Daniel envisioned in the Last Days, he told his p e o p l e. I t wo u l d n eve r b e d e s t roye d , a n d “ t h a t i s my t e s t i m o n y ” 5 7 T h e r e w a s nothing to fear.

A s A m e r i c a n t r o o p s n e a re d U t a h , Yo u n g o n S e p t e m b e r 6 swo re that if the nation sent an overwhelming force in 1858, he would lay the ter r itor y in waste a n d f l e e i n t o t h e m o u n t a i n s . “ B r o t h e r [ T h o m a s ] S m i t h i s p re s i d i n g a t [ Fo r t ] L i m h i [ o n ] S a l m o n R ive r, ” h e reminded his tr usted associates, “Now do we not want a station about half way from here say near For t Hall?” he asked. “He said that the nor th is the place for us & not the South,” Apostle Woodr uff said.58

Two days later, a U.S. Ar my envoy inter r upted such contingency planning. As a lieutenant, Stewar t Van Vliet had led the charge that won the day at Monter rey dur ing the War with Mexico, but he was better known as a peacemaker, who had established cordial relations with many Mor mons he had hired while ser ving as quar ter master at For t Kear ny on the Oregon Trail. This was the reason General Har ney chose the quar ter master, now a captain, to go ahead of his command and ar range forage and supplies for his expedition and find a suitable place for an ar my post.”59 To avoid a collis i o n , h e b i vo u a c ke d h i s d r a g o o n e s c o r t o n H a m s F o r k , n e a r p r e s e n t G r a n g e r, Wyo m i n g , a n d t r ave l e d i n t o t h e G re a t S a l t L a ke Va l l ey w i t h Nathaniel V. Jones and Br yant Str ingham, who were retur ning from the abandoned Mor mon mail station at Deer Creek. He met that night with Br igham Young who gave his fellow Ver mont native a cordial reception.

Over the next six days, the officer exercised all of his known diplomatic

56 Daniel 2:27-49.

57 Br igham Young Remarks, July 26, 1857, in Deseret News, August 5, 1857.

58 Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 5:90.

59 Alfred Pleasanton to Van Vliet, 28 July 1857, House Exec Doc 2 (35-1), II, Ser ial 943, 27-28.

Alfred Cumming, Utah’s Second Territorial Governor from 1857 to 1861.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Commander of the Utah Expedition from 1857 to 1861.

Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate Army and was killed at the Battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862.

skills He had seen General Har ney ’ s order s, he told his M o r m o n h o s t s , a n d t h e y held no intimation that U S t r o o p s “ w o u l d o r c o u l d molest or interfere with the people of Utah.” He assured t h e m t h e g o v e r n m e n t ’ s i n t e n t i o n s “ w e r e o f t h e m o s t p a c i f i c n a t u r e . ” F u r t h e r, h e h a d s e e n U t a h ’ s n ew g ove r n o r, A l f re d C u m m i n g , a n d wa s convinced he had no order s “to interfere with the Mor mons as a relig ious people ”60 At the same time, Van Vliet war ned “plainly and frankly“ of the consequences of their present cour se.61

It was all to no avail. He was told “with the g reatest hospitality and kindness ” that the “troops now on the march for Utah should not enter the Great Salt Lake valley.” The officer left six days later convinced the Utah Expedition would meet ar med resistance 62 On his way east, he met its new commander at the South Platte River crossing and gave him this word. Colonel Alber t Sidney Johnston, Second U.S. Cavalr y, had left his reg iment in Texas in the hands of its capable second in command, Lieutenant Colonel Rober t E. Lee. Van Vliet later told Secretar y of War Floyd that Br igham Yo u n g h a d s a i d i f C u m m i n g e n t e re d U t a h “ h e wo u l d p l a c e h i m i n h i s car r iage and send him back.”63

The day after the officer left the Great Salt Lake Valley, Young did what he meant to do all along. Knowing that President Buchanan had appointed a new gover nor in keeping with the law—that his own appointment had expired three year s before and he could claim the office only until replaced —and that U.S. soldier s were ordered to respect the r ights of all citizens, act only in self-defense, and ser ve only to assist federal officer s in upholding the law—he declared mar tial law on September 15, 1857.

60 Stewar t Van Vliet to John B Floyd, November 20, 1857, “Repor t on the Utah Expedition,” Sen. Ex. Docs. (35-1), v 3, n. 11, Ser ial 920, 37-38.

61 Ibid., Stewar t Van Vliet to Alfred Pleasanton, September 29, 1857, 25-27.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid., Stewar t Van Vliet to John B Floyd, November 20, 1857, 38.

Albert Sidney Johnston

THE UTAH WAR, 1857-1858

“We are invaded by a hostile force, who are evidently assailing us to accomplish our over throw and destr uction,” he proclaimed. He prohibited ar med forces of ever y kind from enter ing the ter r itor y and ordered the Nauvoo Leg ion to repel an imag ined invasion. But his proclamation’s most dangerous provision was that “no per son shall be allowed to pass or repass into or through or from the Ter r itor y without a per mit.”64

It has been said that Young told Mor mon troops just to bur n g rass, but shed no blood But the Utah War was no game Nauvoo Leg ion officer s had order s to attack Amer ican soldier s if they pushed beyond For t Br idger or attempted to enter the Salt Lake Valley from the nor th.65 And when Br igham Young stopped all travel and communications “into or through or from” an area of the Amer ican West large enough to enclose New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, he all but cut the nation in half and made bloodshed cer tain, if the lion in its path did not move off or back down.

In a blessing for both sides, Br igham Young chose the path of peace and allowed time to resolve the differences between the Amer ican republic and its theocratic ter r itor y, which it did over the next thir ty year s.

Today, the 1857-58 Utah War is largely forgotten, even in Utah. It should not be. For not only was it what Daniel Boor stin called Amer ica’s fir st civil wa r, bu t i t wa s a l s o a d r a m a t i c c h a p t e r i n t h e h i s t o r y o f U t a h a n d t h e n a t i o n , f i l l e d w i t h e p i s o d e s o f s a c r i f i c e f o r f a i t h , h e ro i c r i d e s , d e s p e r a t e winter marches, courage and commitment on both sides, and an Indian raid on the Mor mon Indian Mission in Oregon that would affect the cour se of histor y in Utah.66

This unique conflict also holds many impor tant lessons for our nation today To benefit from them, the stor y of the Utah War must be a f aithful account of its causes and outcome. As we obser ve its sesquicentennial, the telling of Amer ica’s fir st civil war should respect the motives and judgment of the men and women on both sides, who waged it, and be as f air, and as balanced and, above all, as honest, as flawed histor ians can make it

64

Proclamation of Gover nor Young, “The Utah Expedition,” House Exec Doc 71, 34-35.

65 See Daniel H. Wells to Lot Smith, October 17, 1857, Lot Smith Collection, Univer sity of Ar izona Librar y, Tucson, and the Daniel Wells repor ts, LDS Church Histor y Librar y

66 For the full stor y of this conflict, see William P MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point: A Documentary History of the Utah War, 1857-1858, Par t 1 (for thcoming by Ar thur H. Clark, Nor man, OK).

By WILLIAM P. MACKINNON

“

N o o n e h a s a r i g h t t o g r a d e a P r e s i d e n t n o t e v e n p o o r J a m e s Buchanan—who has not sat in his chair, examined the mail and infor mation that came across his desk, and lear ned why he made decisions.”

– President John F. Kennedy to Professor David Herber t Donald, Februar y 1962.

And the War Came: James Buchanan, The Utah Expedition, and the Decision to Inter vene

This ar ticle’s title spr ings from the text of Abraham Lincoln’s extraordinar y second inaugural address and its recapitulation of the C i v i l Wa r ’ s o r i g i n s . I n 1 8 5 7 , L i n c o l n ’ s p r e d e c e s s o r J a m e s Buchanan had delivered an inaugural address oblivious to the f act that the countr y then teetered on the br ink of a precur sor to Lincoln’s conflict the Utah War. Significantly Buchanan’s inaugural speech mentioned neither Utah nor Mor mons It cer tainly did not deal with either B r i g h a m Yo u n g o r p o l y g a m y. 1 O n t h e m o r n i n g t h a t P r e s i d e n t - e l e c t Buchanan took office, President Franklin Pierce met for the last time with h i s c a b i n e t . P i e rc e re a d a l o u d a l e t t e r s u m m a r i z i n g t h e c h a l l e n g e s a n d accomplishments of their four year s together. Missing also from this unpublished valedictor y was any reference to matter s Mor mon, although two year s earlier Pierce had tr ied unsuccessfully to replace Br igham Young as U t a h ’ s g ove r n o r a n i m p o r t a n t b i t o f u n f i n i s h e d b u s i n e s s 2 S o a s t h e administrations changed on March 4, 1857, Utah was not an issue of frontrank impor tance for Amer ica’s most senior political leader s Instead, they were preoccupied with the slaver y issue, violence in Kansas, and preser vation of the Union.

I f , o n i n a u g u r a t i o n d ay, P re s i d e n t s P i e rc e a n d B u c h a n a n i g n o re d t h e Mor mons, they reciprocated. On March 4, 1857, the Deseret News made no mention of the change in national administrations, although it did pr int the t e x t o f G ove r n o r Yo u n g ’ s p ro c l a m a t i o n a n n o u n c i n g a n e l e c t i o n f o r t h e Nauvoo Leg ion’s new commanding general. The News was not to mention Buchanan by name for another three months.3

Five days after the inauguration, the president g ranted an inter view to Utah’s delegate in Cong ress, John M. Ber nhisel. The delegate descr ibed this session to Gov. Br igham Young a s “ p l e a s a n t , ” a n d n o t e d , “ T h e P r e s i d e n t appeared free from prejudice himself . ” Young was optimistic, having wr itten to Thomas L. Kane two months earlier that “We are satisf i e d w i t h t h e a p p o i n t m e n t o f B u c h a n a n a s f u t u r e P r e s i d e n t , we b e l i e ve h e w i l l b e a f r i e n d t o t h e g o o d , t h a t F i l l m o re wa s o u r

James Buchanan’s Cabinet. Proceeding clockwise from the president’s left are Secretaries

John B. Floyd (War), Lewis Cass (State), Howell Cobb (Treasury), Joseph Holt (Postmaster General), Isaac Toucey (Navy), Jeremiah S. Black (Attorney General) and Jacob Thompson (Interior).

Copyr ight 2007, William P MacKinnon. The author has adapted this ar ticle from At Sword’s Point, his docu m e n t a r y h i s t o r y o f t h e U t a h Wa r ( f o r t h c o m i n g f ro m T h e A r t h u r H C l a r k C o , a n i m p r i n t o f t h e Univer sity of Oklahoma Press), as well as from a paper of similar title presented at Mor mon Histor y Association annual conference, Salt Lake City, May 25, 2007 The author thanks Professor s David H Miller, Cameron Univer sity, and Thomas G Alexander, Br igham Young Univer sity, for their generosity in shar ing documents, Ardis E. Par shall for her research and administrative help, and Patr icia H. MacKinnon for her per sonal and editor ial suppor t.

1 James Buchanan, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1857, John Bassett Moore, ed , The Works of James Buc hanan, Compr ising His Speec hes, State Papers, and Pr ivate Cor respondence 12 vols. (New York: Antiquar ian Press Ltd., 1960), 10:105-13.

2 Franklin Pierce, Letter to Cabinet, March 4, 1857, J. Pier pont Morgan Librar y, New York.

3 “Proclamation,” Deseret News, March 4, 1857, and “The Inauguration,” June 10, 1857.

fr iend, but Buchanan will not be a whit behind.”4

Why and how, then, did the Utah War come about? What catapulted “the Mor mon problem” from a relatively low pr ior ity as Buchanan took office into a bur ning national issue less than three months later? When did the Buchanan administration decide to replace Young and to inter vene in Utah with a large ar my escor t? The answer s are difficult, g iven the mythology and conspiracy theor ies that have encr usted Buchanan’s decision making There was no diar ist to help later generations plumb the depths of Ja m e s B u c h a n a n ’ s m i n d o f t h e t y p e w h o r e c o r d e d d e c i s i o n s by b o t h Pierce’s and Lincoln’s cabinets, but the Utah War’s sesquicentennial provides motivation to probe again the murky matter of that conflict’s or ig ins. This time we are able to do so through the discover y of revealing documents heretofore unexploited by histor ians.

Perhaps the best foundation for such an examination is the proposition that the Utah War was not the result of a single cr itical incident that welled up shortly after Buchanan’s inauguration It was rather the result of a complex chain of inter related incidents, issues, and forces set in motion a few years after the 1847 Mor mon ar r ival in the Salt Lake Valley If the Utah War did not end abruptly on June 26, 1858, when Albert Sidney Johnston marched through Salt Lake City, it surely did not just star t spontaneously on May 28, 1857, when Lt Gen Winfield Scott issued orders to organize the Utah Expedition 5

In many respects, the Utah War was a conflict in the making for nearly ten ye a r s I t wa s a l o n g , t u mu l t u o u s p e r i o d d u r i n g w h i c h M o r m o n - f e d e r a l r e l a t i o n s a l r e a d y p o o r i n O h i o, M i s s o u r i a n d I l l i n o i s p ro g r e s s i ve l y deter iorated in Utah beg inning in 1849. By March 1857 there were cor rosive disputes involving ever y aspect of the federal-Mor mon interf ace The conflicts involved a wide range of secular issues: the quality of mail ser vice, the evenhandedness of cr iminal justice, land sur veys and ownership, the treatment of emig rants crossing Utah, the behavior of U.S. troops, responsibility for the 1853 Gunnison massacre, Indian relations and alleg iances, Gover nor Young’s sometimes volcanic anti-federal rhetor ic, his handling of ter r itor ial finances and cong ressional appropr iations, and even the accuracy of Utah’s census Above all else, there were severe disputes over the competence as well as character of Utah’s federal appointees. There were perceptions of Mor mon disloyalty to the federal gover nment and a related independence thr ust all inter twined with the f ailure of Mor mon effor ts to gain cong ressional sanction for a State of Deseret in 1849, 1852, and 1856.

Sur rounding and compounding these bitterly contested federal-ter r itor ial issues were a ser ies of even more volatile relig ious matter s: plural mar r iage,

4 John M. Ber nhisel to Br igham Young, March 17, 1857, and Br igham Young, Letter to Thomas Kane, Januar y 31, 1857, both in Family and Church Histor y Depar tment, The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latterday Saints. Hereafter LDS Church Histor y Librar y

5 William P MacKinnon, “Epilogue to the Utah War : Impact and Legacy,” Jour nal of Mor mon History 29 (Fall 2003):186-248.

William Miller Finney Magraw, disgruntled anti-Mormon former mail contractor mistakenly identified as a catalyst for the Utah War who died in Baltimore in 1864 at age forty-six.

t h e d o c t r i n e o f b l o o d a t o n em e n t , a n d m o s t i m p o r t a n tly Br igham Young’s vision of U t a h a s a t h e o c r a t i c k i n g d o m ( a n t i c i p a t i n g t h e S e c o n d Coming of Chr ist) rather than a s a c o n v e n t i o n a l t e r r i t o r i a l wa rd o f C o n g re s s f u n c t i o n i n g t h ro u g h re p u bl i c a n p r i n c i p l e s of gover nment.6 Small wonder that dur ing 1854-55 President P i e r c e w o r k e d a c t i v e l y b u t i n e f f e c t u a l l y t o re p l a c e Yo u n g as gover nor. Nor is it sur pr ising that by the summer of 1856, when the new Republican Par ty adopted an anti-polygamy campaign platfor m plank, a violent str uggle o f s o m e s o r t m i g h t p o s s i b l y u n f o l d T h a t summer Utah’s Mor mon U.S. mar shal, Joseph L . H e y w o o d , e v e n d r e a m t o f o n e w h i l e ro o m i n g w i t h A p o s t l e G e o r g e A S m i t h i n Washington. In Mar shal Heywood’s dream, the fighting was to be led by B r i g h a m Yo u n g ’ s s e c o n d c o u n s e l o r J e d e d i a h M G r a n t 7 E ve n w h i l e c o m p l a i n i n g a b o u t t h e i n e f f i c i e n c e s o f W. M . F. M a g r aw ’ s m o n t h l y m a i l ser vice between Salt Lake City and the east, Mor mon leader Erastus Snow commented, “If the Mor mon boys r ise in the mountains and conquer the world, the f ather s in Washington will know nothing of it until it is all over with.”8

S i n c e e a r l y i n t h e t we n t i e t h c e n t u r y, t h e a c c e p t e d t h e o r y o f m a ny histor ians has been that the catalyst for the Utah War—the match in this powder keg—was the impact on the new Buchanan administration of three letter s wr itten by some of Br igham Young’s har shest cr itics: W.M.F. Mag raw, a disg r untled for mer mail contractor ; Thomas S Twiss, an alar med U S

6 In addition to David L. Bigler’s ar ticle in this issue of Utah Histor ical Quar terly, the most recent and complete discussion of this long list of pre-1857 secular and relig ious points of conflict appear s in four other works by Bigler : Forgotten Kingdom: The Mor mon Theocracy in the Amer ican West, 1847-1896 (Spokane: Ar thur H. Clark Co., 1998), 1-199; A Winter with the Mor mons: The 1852 Letters of Jotham Goodell (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Tanner Tr ust, 2001), 1-19; “Sources of Conflict: Mor mons and Their Neighbor s, 1830-90,” lecture delivered to the Salt Lake Theolog ical Seminar y, July 25, 2003, photocopy in my possession; and “Theocracy Ver sus Republic: ‘The Ir repressible Conflict,’” paper delivered at the Mor mon Histor y Association annual conference, May 2006, Casper, Wyoming. See also MacKinnon, “Loose in the Stacks: A Half-Centur y with the Utah War and Its Legacy,” Dialogue: A Jour nal of Mor mon Thought 40 (Spr ing 2007): 53-54.

7 Diar y of Joseph L Heywood, entr y for July 31, 1856, <http://contentsm lib byu edu/Diar ies/image/4269.pdf> accessed Apr il 16, 2007.

8 Erastus Snow to Or son Spencer, October 1, 1855, “Letter from Prest. E. Snow,” St. Louis Luminary, November 10, 1855.

SEABRIGHT’S “THE OLD PIKE’

Indian agent; and W W Dr ummond, the venomous, debauched associate justice of the Utah supreme cour t.9 However this theor y does not hold under closer examination.

A l t h o u g h M a g r aw ’ s l e t t e r o f O c t o b e r 3 , 1 8 5 6 , wa s w r i t t e n t o t h e president of the United States, the recipient was President Pierce, not thenpr ivate-citizen James Buchanan. Inflammator y as Mag raw’s letter was, there i s n o i n d i c a t i o n t h a t B u c h a n a n e l e c t e d N ove m b e r 4 , 1 8 5 6 wa s eve n aware of it until Januar y 1858 when it surf aced from State Depar tment files.10 Twiss’s letter, dated July 13, 1857, and cr itical of Mor mon encroachm e n t o n S i o u x l a n d s , d i d n o t re a c h t h e U. S. C o m m i s s i o n e r o f I n d i a n Aff air s until well after the Utah Expedition had been decided on and the troops were on the march. Thomas S. Twiss was an eccentr ic for mer West Po i n t e r a c l a s s m a t e o f A l b e r t S i d n ey Jo h n s t o n w h o h a d re s i g n e d h i s ar my commission, moved west, mar r ied bigamously into a Sioux band and set up his agency in the abandoned Mor mon mail station at Deer Creek, Nebraska Ter r itor y Histor ians of the Plains tr ibes and Indian relations of the per iod have viewed Twiss alter nately as a br illiant advocate for Indian r ights and a manipulative freebooter par tial to his Sioux in-laws. General Har ney, a problem for the ar my in his own r ight, believed Twiss to be a hopeless liability in his pur suit of the tr ibes and urged Secretar y of War F l oy d a n d P re s i d e n t B u c h a n a n t o re m ove h i m 1 1 B e c a u s e o f l o n g a n d g r a p h i c d e s c r i p t i o n s e l s ew h e re, Ju d g e D r u m m o n d ’ s c h a r a c t e r n e e d s n o c o m m e n t h e re H i s vo l c a n i c l e t t e r o f re s i g n a t i o n , w r i t t e n t o A t t o r n ey General Jeremiah S. Black and dated at New Orleans on March 30, 1857, was indeed a bombshell when it received national press distr ibution in early Apr il. But the impact of Dr ummond’s resignation letter on cabinet decision-making has been overblown in the absence of an under standing of what had preceded it by several weeks.

The real catalyst for the change in the administration’s pr ior ities and its decisions about Utah was not Dr ummond’s incendiar y resignation letter a n d t h e u n t i m e l y l e t t e r s f ro m M a g r aw a n d Tw i s s R a t h e r i t wa s t h e substance and rhetor ic in three other sets of mater ial received quietly but in rapid succession in Washington dur ing the third week of March 1857—

9 A classic case for the significance of these three letter s appear s in Leland Harg rave Creer, Utah and the Nation (Seattle: Univer sity of Washington Press, 1929), 117-26. For the match/powder keg metaphor, I am indebted to Leo V Gordon and Richard Vetterli, Powderkeg (Novato, CA: Lyford Books, 1991), a novel about the Utah War An even earlier use of this metaphor appear s in Rober t Richmond, “Some Wester n Editor s View the Mor mon War, 1857-1858,” Trail Guide 8 (March 1963): 3. For an analysis of these three documents, see William P MacKinnon, “The Buchanan Spoils System and the Utah Expedition: Career s of W.M.F Mag raw and John M. Hockaday,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 31 (Spr ing 1963): 127-50.

10 This letter had been filed with State Depar tment records because in 1856 Secretar y of State William L. Marcy bore administrative responsibility for most ter r itor ial aff air s. Even as astute a researcher as Dale L. Morgan mistakenly assumed that Buchanan was the “Mr President” to whom Mag raw wrote a month before the election of 1856 Morgan, research notes on Buchanan and Utah Expedition, Madeline R McQuown Collection, Mar r iott Librar y, Univer sity of Utah, Salt Lake City

11 William S Har ney to John B Floyd, August 8, 1857, Records, Office of the Adjt Gen , Letter s Received (Record Group 94), National Archives.

weeks before the awareness in early Apr il of Dr ummond’s resignation and accompanying accusations. This mater ial largely unpublished combined with the cumulative impact of nearly ten year s of unremitting tension and the anti-polygamy backwash from the 1856 presidential campaign, motivated Buchanan’s cabinet to make two related decisions by early Apr il: replace Br igham Young as gover nor, and provide his as-yet-unidentified successor with a large ar my escor t of undeter mined size. The die was cast, then, long before the late May cabinet meetings accepted by many histor ians as the cr itical decision-making date. To assess the dynamics of how Buchanan’s cabinet worked dur ing this impor tant per iod, one needs to under stand the cumulative pr ivate-public impact of all of this mater ial as early as March and its sequencing.

In summar y, the fir st of these three sets of mater ial consisted of two m e m o r i a l s a n d a c c o m p a ny i n g re s o l u t i o n s a d o p t e d by U t a h ’ s l e g i s l a t ive assembly on Januar y 6, 1857. These documents—created with input from Br igham Young dealt with the all-impor tant matter of federal appointments. With the pending change in administrations the leg islative assembly had acted to demand that any new appointees for Utah would either be L a t t e r - d ay S a i n t s o r a t l e a s t s y m p a t i c o n o n - M o r m o n s U p o n a d o p t i o n , t h e s e re m a r k a bl y ve r b o s e d o c u m e n t s we re s e n t f ro m S a l t L a ke C i t y t o c o n g r e s s i o n a l d e l e g a t e J o h n M B e r n h i s e l v i a t h e S a l t L a k e - S a n Ber nardino-Panama mail.12 This mater ial ar r ived in Washington on March 1 7 s i mu l t a n e o u s l y w i t h p u bl i c a t i o n o f a h a r s h , a n t i - M o r m o n N e w Yo r k Herald editor ial that argued: “The Utah Mor mon excrescence call[s] for immediate and decisive action. That inf amous beast, that impudent and bluster ing imposter, Br igham Young, and his abominable pack of saintly o f f i c i a l s , s h o u l d b e k i c ke d o u t w i t h o u t d e l ay a n d w i t h o u t c e re m o ny. ” 13 Ironically, this editor ial was the work of the Herald’s dr iving force, James Gordon Bennett, a man whom Joseph Smith had commissioned a br igadier general in the Nauvoo Leg ion dur ing the early 1840s.

Because of the relevance of the Utah memor ials to the appointments p ro c e s s t h e n p re o c c u py i n g t h e n ew a d m i n i s t r a t i o n , B e r n h i s e l p ro m p t l y presented them in per son to Buchanan on March 18. He did so at a time w h e n B u c h a n a n wa s e x h a u s t e d by t h e d e m a n d s o f f i l l i n g t h e f e d e r a l patronage as well as by his own ser ious gastrointestinal illness. Unwittingly B e r n h i s e l e n t e r e d a s c e n e t h a t w a s a n u n s e e m l y s c r a m b l e f o r U t a h positions, especially the gover nor’s chair It was a bizar re g roup of applicants

12

“Memor ial and Resolutions to the President of the United States, Concer ning Cer tain Officer s of the Ter r itor y of Utah” and “Memor ial to the President of the United States,” by the Utah Ter r itor y Leg islative Assembly, Januar y 6, 1857, holog raph copies retained in Utah State Archives, Salt Lake City A rough draft with editor ial emendations is in the Br igham Young Collection, LDS Church Histor y Librar y W A. Hickman was recommended by the leg islative assembly to be appointed U.S attor ney for Utah. In view of Hickman’s reputation as “notor ious” and his later status as a self-confessed killer, it is interesting to consider the leg islature’s recommendation.

13

“Mr Buchanan’s Administration and Our Foreign and Domestic Aff air s, ” New York Herald, March 17, 1857.

John F. Kinney was appointed

Utah Territory Chief Justice in 1854. He recommended replacing Brigham Young as Utah Territorial Governor and dispatching a military expedition to Utah to support his successor

that included James Arlington Bennet, an eccentr ic Nauvoo Leg ion major general tur ned B ro o k l y n c e m e t e r y d eve l o pe r. 1 4 A c c o r d i n g l y t h e b e l e aguered president chose not to e x a m i n e t h e s e d o c u m e n t s i n B e r n h i s e l ’ s p re s e n c e I n s t e a d he urged Utah’s cong ressional d e l e g a t e t o d e l i ve r t h e m t o one of his chief cabinet officer s, Secretar y of the Inter ior Jacob Thompson. Ber nhisel did so later that same day

W h e n B e r n h i s e l c a l l e d a g a i n o n Thompson the next day, March 19, he found to his hor ror that the provocative language of one of the documents had alar med the secretar y (and presumably the cabinet) to a point that both memor ials were inter preted to be a d e f a c t o M o r m o n d e c l a r a t i o n o f wa r W h e n B r i g h a m Yo u n g a n d o t h e r Mor mon leader s lear ned of this f ateful Ber nhisel-Thompson confrontation months later from Ber nhisel, they immediately viewed this meeting and their petitions as the catalyst for the Utah War. Contr ibuting to the obscur i t y o f t h e s e p e t i t i o n s wa s t h e f a c t t h a t i n M a rc h 1 8 5 7 T h o m p s o n h a d war ned Ber nhisel against publishing their text. The implication was that B u c h a n a n v i ewe d t h e m a s p o l i t i c a l l y vo l a t i l e, t h e s t u f f f ro m w h i c h a n u n c o n t ro l l a bl e n a t i o n a l a n t i - M o r m o n f u ro r c o u l d s p r i n g E ve n t h o u g h Br igham Young wanted to publish these petitions, he and Ber nhisel acquie s c e d i n T h o m p s o n ’ s d e m a n d f o r s e c re c y A n d s o, eve n i n U t a h , p u bl i c descr iptions of the offending documents were cr yptic, incomplete, indirect, a n d s o o n f o r g o t t e n . 1 5 I n t h e f e d e r a l g ove r n m e n t , t h e re wa s n o p u bl i c discussion, although word of the documents’ receipt by the administration dr ibbled into a few low-profile newspaper s without other notice until fir st

14 Ardis E. Par shall, “Br igham Young’s Suppor t of Buchanan Proved Ironic as Utah War Unfolded,” Salt Lake Tr ibune, March 25, 2007. For a discussion of the three Bennet[t]s whom Joseph Smith had commissioned as Leg ion generals and their colorful Utah War involvements, see MacKinnon, “Epilogue to the Utah War,” 213. See also Lyndon W Cook, “James Arlington Bennet and the Mor mons, ” BYU Studies 19 (1979): 247-49.

15 John M. Ber nhisel, Letter to Br igham Young, Apr il 2, 1857, Br igham Young Collection, LDS Church Histor y Librar y Neither Ber nhisel nor the Buchanan administration ever submitted these documents to Cong ress, disregarding nor mal procedure and even the House of Representatives’ subsequent special yearend demand that Buchanan produce all mater ials shedding light on the extent to which Utah was in a state of rebellion. This treatment was in marked contrast to the wide and immediate publicity g iven to the even more inflammator y memor ial adopted by the Utah leg islative assembly a year later on Januar y 6, 1858, and sent to the U.S. House of Representatives. A federal g rand jur y sitting at Camp Scott retur ned an indictment of treason against ever y man who signed the 1858 memor ial.

AND THE WAR CAME

the Deseret News and then the New York Herald published an incomplete ver sion of the memor ials on October 7 and December 15, 1857.

W h a t m a y we l l h a ve s t i m u l a t e d T h o m p s o n ’ s f a t e f u l c o m m e n t s t o d e l e g a t e B e r n h i s e l wa s t h e s e c o n d b a t c h o f U t a h m a t e r i a l s re c e ive d i n Washington that week: a letter from Judge Dr ummond to an unidentified cabinet officer—presumably Attor ney General Black—that appeared in the capital on the same day as the Ber nhisel-Thompson meeting. Dr ummond h a d p ro b a bl y w r i t t e n t h i s l e t t e r b e f o re b o a rd i n g s h i p i n C a l i f o r n i a a n d before his resignation letter wr itten on March 30 from New Orleans. After reciting a list of what he considered to be Mor mon abuses, Dr ummond g rew prescr iptive: “Let all, then, take hold and cr ush out one of the most treasonable organizations in Amer ica.”16

Stunned by Thompson’s unanticipated reaction to the Utah petitions, if n o t D r u m m o n d ’ s C a l i f o r n i a l e t t e r, B e r n h i s e l m a d e w h a t s e e m s t o h ave been both a strange and f ateful decision. Instead of swing ing into action to moderate the administration’s alar med reaction, Ber nhisel withdrew from the fray, left Washington, and travelled to Pennsylvania to visit relatives. He then wrote a discourag ing repor t to Br igham Young on Apr il 2, and took his seat on the early May Salt Lake-bound mail stage from Independence, Missour i. His unfor tunate depar ture from the capital created a vacuum in Mor mon representation at the ver y time when it was most needed.17

The day after Thompson infor med Ber nhisel of the cabinet’s explosive reaction, another shoe dropped in Washington—this time in the for m of two letter s wr itten to Jeremiah Black, the U.S. Attor ney General, by Utah’s chief justice, John F Kinney The judge was then in Washington on leave of absence His letter s constituted the third wave of Utah-related mater ials received by the administration that week.

I n o n e o f h i s M a rc h 2 0 l e t t e r s , p re s u m a b l y h a n d - d e l ive re d , K i n n ey reviewed at length the condition of aff air s in Utah This document was remarkably like the resignation letter Dr ummond was then for mulating aboard ship in the Gulf of Mexico, and it urged Attor ney General Black to share Kinney’s views with the president and his cabinet just as Drummond’s Califor nia letter, received the day before, had asked Kinney did not wr ite spontaneously; Black had asked for his assessment of Utah affairs probably after reading Drummond’s Califor nia letter and after Ber nhisel had delivered the memor ials of Januar y 6 to Thompson on March 18 On March 20 Kinney not only recited examples of what he believed to be Br igham Young’s perver-

16 W W Dr ummond, Letter to unspecified cabinet officer, “Utah and Its Troubles , ” March 19, 1857 dispatch from Washington, New York Herald, March 20, 1857 The text of this letter cannot be located in gover nment files; our only awareness of it is through the excer pts repor ted by the Herald’ s Washington cor respondent

17 Ber nhisel’s Apr il 2, 1857, repor t to Br igham Young remains unpublished. He wrote it too late to be included in the Apr il mail to Salt Lake City, and so, ironically, this document traveled west in the same coach with Ber nhisel a month later The letter ar r ived at its destination on May 29, 1857, just after the gover nor’s retur n from a five-week trek to For t Limhi and the day following the release of General Scott’s circular initiating the Utah Expedition.

sion of Utah’s judicial system, he urged Young’s removal from office and the establishment of a one-reg iment U.S. Ar my gar r ison in the ter r itor y.18

The second letter that Kinney gave to Attor ney General Black on March 20 was a document transmitting an enclosed letter from Utah Sur veyor General David H Bur r Bur r was a long-time cr itic of Br igham Young’s h a n d l i n g o f s u c h d i s p u t e d f e d e r a l - t e r r i t o r i a l i s s u e s a s d i s p o s i t i o n o f t h e public lands and Indian aff air s. Sandwiched among his new litany of alleged Mor mon offenses was Bur r’s shocking assessment that, “The g reat danger to a [new] Gover nor would be assassination.” Notwithstanding his identific a t i o n o f t h i s r i s k , B u r r a r g u e d f o r s o m e t h i n g o t h e r t h a n a l a r g e a r my expedition to car r y out his recommendations: “To car r y out this plan the presence of a small Militar y force might be necessar y I do not suppose that their ser vices would be needed fur ther than to show the leader s of this people a deter mination to enforce the laws.”19

Deliver y of the Bur r letter meant that within two weeks of taking office James Buchanan and his cabinet had a collection of stunning new inputs on U t a h a f f a i r s f ro m t h e t e r r i t o r y ’ s t r u c u l e n t l e g i s l a t ive a s s e m bl y, i t s c h i e f justice, an associate supreme cour t justice, and the sur veyor-general. All of t h e s e d o c u m e n t s we r e s u p p r e s s e d a n d n e ve r s h a r e d w i t h C o n g r e s s , although the full cabinet was surely aware of them.

From the cabinet’s viewpoint, Kinney’s inputs must have car r ied substantial credibility at f ace value, as would those of “General” Bur r. Pr ior to his appointment to Utah’s bench in 1854, Kinney had been a justice on Iowa’s s u p re m e c o u r t . H i s e x p e r i e n c e i n U t a h wa s re l a t ive l y l o n g a n d re c e n t , credentials that Kinney believed qualified him to comment about the ter r itor y, as he phrased it, “advisedly ” Both the U.S Depar tment of State and the office of the U.S Attor ney General had files amassed dur ing President

18John F Kinney to Jeremiah S Black, March 20, 1857, photocopy of holog raph in my possession, together with the typed transcr iption, cour tesy of Professor David H. Miller, Cameron Univer sity This letter is marked “Confidential & Pr ivate” in a hand other than Kinney’s. The only known published reference (but not the text) to this impor tant document is a simple listing in the bibliog raphy for James F Varley, Br igham and the Br igadier, General Patr ic k Connor and His Califor nia Volunteers in Utah and along the Overland Trail (Tucson: Wester nlore Press, 1989), 309. Kinney’s relationship with the Mor mons was highly ambivalent over an extended per iod of time Star ting in 1855 Br igham Young accurately suspected the judge of joining other disaffected federal appointees in wr iting anti-Mor mon repor ts to Washington, behavior that Kinney vehemently denied while simultaneously cour ting Mor mon approbation. Howard Lamar refer s to Kinney dur ing this per iod as “busily playing the double game of cooperating with the Mor mons on the local level while bombarding Washington with secret str ictures against Young.” Howard Rober ts Lamar, The Far Southwest, 1846-1912: A Ter r itor ial History (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1966), 331; Michael W Homer, “The Federal Bench and Pr iesthood Author ity: The Rise and Fall of John Fitch Kinney’s Early Relationship with the Mor mons, ” Jour nal of Mor mon History 13 (1986-87): 89-108.

19 The undated David H. Bur r to Jeremiah Black letter may have been received by Kinney with the same batch of mail that ar r ived in Washington (via the Salt Lake-San Ber nardino-Panama route) yielding letter s for Black and Ber nhisel from Dr ummond and Utah’s leg islative assembly, respectively, on March 17 and 19. To date, the only notice of the Bur r to Black letter (transmitted on March 20, 1857 by Kinney) appear s in Thomas G Alexander, “Car petbagger s, Reprobates, and Liar s: Federal Judges and the Utah War,” unpublished paper for Mor mon Histor y Association’s annual conference, Salt Lake City, May 2007, 19 note 49. Bur r’s concer ns about threats to his safety and mail secur ity appear in David H. Bur r to Thomas A. Hendr icks, Febr uar y 5, and June 11, 1857, “The Utah Expedition,” House Ex. Doc 71 (35-1), Ser ial 956, 118-21; Bur r to Hendr icks, December 31, 1856, Utah State Histor ical Society, Salt Lake City

Pierce’s administration that bulged with “confidential” Kinney repor ts cr iticizing Br igham Young’s influence on Utah’s judicial and law enforcement systems. Probably unknown to the Buchanan cabinet in March 1857 was Kinney’s 1855 indictment in Salt Lake City’s probate cour t on gambling charges, his owner ship of a disreputable hotel frequented by young g irls and older men seeking companionship, and the extent to which he had boldly but unsuccessfully maneuvered for appointment as Utah’s gover nor two year s earlier David H. Bur r would have been even better known to the cabinet than Kinney Although Mor mon leader s would soon beg in an intense attack on Bur r’s character and professional perfor mance, in March he would have been known in Washington as a nationally f amous car tog rapher who had been employed by both the U.S House of Representatives and the State of New York.

Once Judge Dr ummond became the center of national attention in early Apr il 1857, he stoked his now-f amous anti-Mor mon vendetta through a ser ies of similar letter s. Some of these were wr itten in Apr il and May for public consumption by a nation unaware of his character flaws. In pr ivate Dr ummond also wrote to both Attor ney General Black and Sen. Stephen A. Douglas to threaten destr uction of the administration and the entire Democratic Par ty if they f ailed to act on Utah as he wanted. On Apr il 2— the day that he mailed his resignation from New Orleans Dr ummond had repor ted to a fr iend, “I have stir red the water s of the Saints and shall keep up the war in all time to come ... A new Gover nment and Militar y aid will be sent to Utah now mark it, and Br igham Young will star ve from under the appointments of the Federal Gover nment.... I may go to Utah as Gover nor. If so look out for a mer r y time. I will take it with militar y aid.”20 Later, unsure if Buchanan would indeed take action, Dr ummond wrote to Douglas ang r ily, “I think I will make open war on this Admin. on this dread question.... [I will] make it as hot as Judge Black and the President can well bear it ”21 It is now known that Dr ummond met with Black and perhaps the entire Buchanan cabinet. Such threats may have had a signific a n t i m p a c t o n S e n a t o r D o u g l a s ’ s d e c i s i o n t o i n c l u d e a n a t t a c k o n t h e Mor mons in his now f amous Spr ingfield speech a few weeks later on June 12. This was an address that stimulated a little-known rebuttal speech from a member of Douglas’s audience, lawyer Abraham Lincoln, and produced Mor mon enmity against Douglas lasting to this day.22

20 Quoted in Donald R. Moor man, with Gene A. Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mor mons: The Utah War (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Press, 1992; repr inted 2005), 12 and 284 note 23.

21 W W D r u m m o n d t o S t e p h e n A D o u g l a s , M ay 1 6 , 1 8 5 7 , S t e p h e n A D o u g l a s Pa p e r s , S p e c i a l

Collections Research Center, Univer sity of Chicago Librar y

22 Stephen A. Douglas, “Kansas, Utah, and the Dred Scott Decision,” Spr ingfield, Illinois, June 12, 1857, 11-15 (pamphlet in author’s possession). For a descr iption of this speech and its reception, see Rober t W Jo h a n n s e n , S t e p h e n A D o u g l a s ( N ew Yo r k : O x f o rd U n ive r s i t y P re s s , 1 9 7 3 ) , 5 6 6 - 7 5 Fo r t h e e n r a g e d Mor mon rebuttal to Douglas’s speech, see “Comments Upon the Remarks of Hon Stephen Ar nold Douglas,” Deseret News, September 2, 1857. These two Spr ingfield speeches of June 1857 likely provided the template for the Lincoln-Douglas debates that followed in 1858.

In the midst of all this tur moil, Thomas L Kane of Philadelphia, Br igham Young’s oldest and best-connected non-Mor mon fr iend, tr ied cover tly to lobby President Buchanan to retain Young as Utah’s gover nor.23 He did so on March 21 at Young’s urgent request, but a pessimistic Kane repor ted to Young later that month, “Mr Buchanan is a timerous man, as well as just now an ove r wo r ke d o n e. ” 2 4 A r m e d w i t h ve r y re c e n t i n p u t s f ro m D r u m m o n d , K i n n ey, a n d B u r r a s we l l a s p rovo c a t ive p e t i t i o n s f ro m S a l t L a ke C i t y, Buchanan rebuffed Kane’s request and would not even see him Here was a demoralizing slight which, along with a myr iad of personal and f amily problems, drove Kane to withdraw from Mor mon aff airs until the next f all.

Kane’s depar ture from the fray was a devastating blow to the Mor mon cause at just the wrong time As he retired to the mountains of wester n Pennsylvania, Kane wrote to Young: “We can place no reliance upon the President: he succumbs in more respects than one to outside pressure You can see from the paper s how clamorous it is for interference with Utah aff air s. Now Mr. Buchanan has not hear t enough to save his fr iends from being thrown over to stop the mouths of a pack of Yankee editor s.”25 This was a lobbying gap agg ravated by delegate Ber nhisel’s decision in Apr il to l e ave t h e a re n a o f M o r m o n - f e d e r a l c o n f l i c t s a n d B r i g h a m Yo u n g ’ s ow n incommunicado status dur ing the five weeks of his unauthor ized Apr il-May depar ture from Utah for the even more remote wilder ness of souther n Oregon Ter r itor y

By late May 1857 Dr ummond’s accusations were augmented by teleg raphic repor ts from Missour i sent to Washington by other retur ning federal officer s, nearly all of whom had fled Utah on Apr il 15. The fir st of these depar tees to reach the Atlantic Coast was John M Hockaday, U S a t t o r n ey f o r U t a h a s we l l a s a f o r m e r bu s i n e s s p a r t n e r o f l e t t e r - w r i t e r W.M.F. Mag raw. Hockaday met for hour s on Apr il 27 with the shadowy J a m e s C . Va n D y k e , J a m e s B u c h a n a n ’ s c l o s e s t p o l i t i c a l a d v i s o r i n P h i l a d e l p h i a A f t e r l e av i n g Va n D y ke, H o c k a d ay m ove d o n t o v i s i t , a n d presumably influence, Buchanan.26

A d d i n g t o t h e s e n s a t i o n a l i s m o f re p o r t s f ro m U t a h ’ s f l e e i n g f e d e r a l appointees was a ser ies of g raphic editor ial attacks on Dr ummond’s character and credibility in the LDS church’s Manhattan newspaper, The Mor mon These attacks reflected the no-holds-bar red style of its editor, Apostle John Tay l o r. T h ro u g h h i s d e p u t y e d i t o r, Wi l l i a m I . A p p l e by a f o r m e r N ew Je r s ey j u d g e Tay l o r l a u n c h e d a n i n t e n s ive i nve s t i g a t i o n a n d e x p o s é o f

23 T h o m a s L . K a n e t o Ja m e s B u c h a n a n , M a rc h 2 1 , 1 8 5 7 , K a n e C o l l e c t i o n , L . To m Pe r r y S p e c i a l Collections, Harold B Lee Librar y, Br igham Young Univer sity

24 Thomas L. Kane to Br igham Young, ca. March 1857, Thomas L. Kane Paper s, Stanford Univer sity Librar ies, Stanford, Califor nia.

25 Thomas L. Kane to Br igham Young, May 21, 1857, Yale Collection of Wester n Amer icana, Beinecke Librar y,Yale Univer sity, New Haven, Connecticut.

26 Hockaday’s visit to Philadelphia and the recommendation that he visit the president is descr ibed in James C. Van Dyke to James Buchanan, Apr il 27, 1857, The James Buchanan Paper s, The Histor ical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Dr ummond’s liber tine behavior in Illinois, Washington, and Utah Taylor and Appleby published the seamy results in a way that largely destroyed Dr ummond’s reputation. But they did so with the unintended consequence o f a l s o f u e l i n g p u b l i c f a s c i n a t i o n w i t h D r u m m o n d ’ s a c c u s a t i o n s o f Mor mon misconduct. This was explosive mater ial that had been requested by and provided to Kane and that he pr ivately transmitted to Attor ney General Black.27 It was an approach that kept the pot of Utah controver sy roiling rather than putting “the Mor mon problem” to rest, especially after Dr ummond became aware through leaks to him from the cabinet about K a n e ’ s e f f o r t s t o a d v i s e B u c h a n a n a n d B l a c k . W i t h t h i s r e a l i z a t i o n , D r u m m o n d p u bl i c l y c u d g e l e d K a n e t h ro u g h p s e u d o ny m o u s l e t t e r s t o newspaper editor s. This intimidating counterattack by Dr ummond, in tur n, also sapped a distracted Kane’s willingness to help the Mor mons at this cr itical juncture.28

A parallel Mor mon attack on Utah’s sur veyor general, David H Bur r, f o c u s e d o n p u b l i c a c c u s a t i o n s s o m e wa r r a n t e d t h a t h i s wo r k wa s r iddled with nepotism, incompetence, and cor r uption. These were charges t h a t s t a i n e d B u r r ’ s o t h e r w i s e s t e r l i n g re p u t a t i o n , b ro ke h i s h e a l t h , a n d prolonged ter r itor ial-federal finger-pointing well into 1859 and beyond.

It was now clear that the old Pierce strategy of benign neglect—continuation in office for Young through presidential inaction was no longer viable The incendiar y rhetor ic of the documents received pr ivately dur ing the third week of March destroyed any vestige of presidential confidence in Br igham Young. In March Buchanan began to offer Utah’s gover nor ship to multiple candidates, all of whom declined the post.

D r u m m o n d ’ s M a rc h - A p r i l a d v i c e h a d b e e n f o r a m i l i t a r y a s we l l a s political remedy, and Buchanan had received similar counsel for militar y a c t i o n p r i va t e l y i n l a t e M a r c h f ro m U t a h C h i e f Ju s t i c e K i n n e y a n d Sur veyor General Bur r. In late Apr il Buchanan also heard from Rober t Tyler, another close advisor in Philadelphia who was the son of for mer President John Tyler. He advised Buchanan to use the ar my in an antiMor mon “cr usade” to diver t public attention from the slaver y conflict in Kansas.29 The president made no response to such advice, but he created the appearance that he was fir st focusing on a political solution rather than

27 Thomas L. Kane to Jeremiah S Black, Apr il 27, 1857, Black Paper s, Manuscr ipt Division, Librar y of Cong ress.

28 “Verastus,” to Editor, May 24, 1857, pr inted as “Col. Thomas L. Kane on Mor monism,” New York D a i ly T i m e s , M ay 2 6 , 1 8 5 7 M u l t i p l e h i s t o r i a n s v i ew “ Ve r a s t u s ” a s t h e p e n n a m e a d o p t e d by W W Dr ummond.

29 Rober t Tyler to James Buchanan, Apr il 27, 1857, The James Buchanan Paper s, The Histor ical Society of Pennsylvania. For the text see also Philip G Auchampaugh, Rober t Tyler, Souther n Rights Champion 18471866: A Documentary Study Chiefly of Antebellum Politics (Duluth, MN.: Himan Stein, 1934), 180-81; David A. Williams, “President Buchanan Receives a Proposal for an Anti-Mor mon Cr usade, 1857,” Br igham Young University Studies 14 (Autumn 1973): 103-105. Williams’ judgment was: “The f act that it could be ser iously advanced by a son of a for mer president to the incumbent President in and of itself makes it a significant document in the political histor y of Mor monism in Amer ica.”

a r my i n t e r ve n t i o n N o n e t h e l e s s , c o n s i d e r a t i o n o f t h e m i l i t a r y o p t i o n indeed bubbled below the surf ace.

It is likely that by late March or early Apr il the notion of some sor t of ar my escor t for Young’s successor had gelled in the cabinet along with the decision to replace Young. Surely those men whom Buchanan approached about Utah’s gover norship in March raised the question of militar y suppor t For example, Rober t J. Walker had done so soon after the inauguration before ag reeing to become Kansas’s gover nor Through such negotiations, Walker had obtained from Buchanan a commitment that General Har ney and the Second U.S. Dragoons would be in Kansas to help him maintain order in that troubled ter r itor y It is even more likely that candidates for Utah’s gover norship also raised the matter of militar y backing with the president To this point, we know that Alfred Cumming’s eventual appointment to succeed Young was delayed until mid-July so that he could travel to For t Leavenwor th to review ar rangements for the Utah Expedition.

Precisely when and how the cabinet ar r ived at a fir m decision to inter vene militar ily is murky. The myster ious, abr upt Apr il 6 transfer of General Har ney from command of the Seminole War in Flor ida to Kansas for undisclosed reasons tr iggered rampant r umors Newspaper editors and ar my officers alike speculated that a campaign against the Mor mons was taking shape.30

In 1960, without citing evidence other than the speculation of contemporar y press accounts many of them wildly inaccurate histor ian Nor man F. Fur niss identified a cabinet meeting on or about May 20 as cr ucial Fur niss viewed that session as the one at which the administration decided upon militar y as well as political inter vention.31 More accurately, the basic decision had been made almost two months earlier, but the cabinet was ner vously tr ying to get comfor table with such a decision in pr ivate while Buchanan frantically sought someone willing to take Utah’s gover norship Among the imponderables being weighed by the administration dur ing this recr uitment w a s t h e a d v i c e o f K i n n e y a n d B u r r f o r a r e l a t i ve l y s m a l l f o r c e a n d Dr ummond’s conflicting demand for a f ar larger expedition On May 16 Dr ummond ranted to Douglas, “I have had an inter view with Atty. Gen. Black today on Utah, and find him as ignorant as a man can be Cannot for the life of him appreciate the power of the Mor mons. He says they will enforce the laws in Utah and intimates that 1,000 [militar y] men will do it.”32 At the end of May, a hulking, three hundred-pound Gen. Winfield Scott entered the fray. He did so ver y late in the game and without conviction. Among the impor tant but obscure documents created dur ing this cr ucial per iod was an extraordinar y memorandum that Scott wrote on May 26 from his self-exile in New York to Secretar y Floyd. In this document Scott

30 2d Lt. George Dashiell Bayard to Samuel J Bayard, Apr il 15, 1857, in Samuel J Bayard, Life of George Dashiell Bayard (New York: G.P Putnam’s, 1874), 114-17.

31 Nor man F Fur niss, The Mor mon Conflict 1850-1859 (New Haven:Yale Univer sity Press, 1960), 63.

32 W W Dr ummond to Stephen A Douglas, May 16, 1857, Douglas Paper s, Univer sity of Chicago Librar y

argued that a campaign in Utah would be ill-f ated unless postponed until the spr ing of 1858. He pleaded that if there was to be an expedition for Utah about four thousand troops were needed, but he conceded that he could make do with as few as twenty-five hundred.33 Such a force would h ave b e e n s eve r a l mu l t i p l e s b eyo n d w h a t K i n n ey a n d B u r r h a d e a r l i e r recommended It was more like the implied scope of the anti-Mor mon “cr usade” recommended on Apr il 27 by Rober t Tyler. Even though Scott had traveled to Washington by May 27 and undoubtedly hand delivered this paper to the War Depar tment, Floyd never acknowledged receiving it. Te n ye a r s l a t e r B u c h a n a n p o i n t e d l y d e n i e d eve n k n ow i n g o f t h e S c o t t memorandum, let alone rejecting its sound advice 34 Notwithstanding his counsel to Floyd for delay, on May 28, 1857, Scott announced to the ar my’s staff depar tments that there was to be a twenty-five hundred man Utah Expedition and tasked them with its immediate suppor t. What happened to unsettle General Scott’s world and over r ule his advice dur ing the two days between May 26 and 28, 1857, is one of the remaining myster ies sur rounding the Utah War’s or ig ins.

In his 1864 memoir s General Scott fur ther clouded the issue of why and h ow t h e B u c h a n a n c a b i n e t d e c i d e d t o l a u n c h t h e U t a h E x p e d i t i o n by introducing the notion of Secretar y of War Floyd’s 1857 behavior. Scott did so in the midst of the Civil War—a time when he and for mer President Buchanan were publicly jousting over their roles in the secession cr isis of 1860-61 and a time when it was well known that Floyd had gone south to become a Confederate br igadier general. With his 1864 comments, Scott g r a t u i t o u s l y a d d e d f u e l t o a U t a h Wa r c o n s p i r a c y t h e o r y t h a t B r i g h a m Young had helped to launch in August 1857—the notion that at the hear t of the Utah Expedition was the Buchanan administration’s cor r upt desire t o e n r i c h c o m m e r c i a l f r i e n d s s u c h a s t h e we s t e r n f r e i g h t i n g f i r m o f Russell, Major s and Waddell. General Scott wrote: The expedition set on foot by Mr. Secretar y Floyd, in 1857, against the Mor mons and Indians about Salt Lake was, beyond a doubt, to g ive occasion for large contracts and expenditures, that is, to open a wide field for frauds and peculation. This pur pose was n o t c o m p re h e n d e d n o r s c a rc e l y s u s p e c t e d i n , p e r h a p s , a ye a r ; bu t , o b s e r v i n g t h e desperate character s who frequented the Secretar y, some of whom had desks near him, suspicion was at length excited. Scott protested against the expedition on the general g round of inexpediency, and specially because the season was too late for the troops to reach their destination in comfor t or even in safety Par ticular f acts, obser ved by different officer s, if united, would prove the imputation.35

33 “Gar r ison for Salt-Lake City,” Brevet Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, Memorandum for Secretar y of War, May 26, 1857, Headquar ter s of the Ar my, Letter s Sent (Record Group 108), National Archives. The only published text of this remarkable memo appear s in M. Hamlin Cannon, “Winfield Scott and the Utah Expedition,” Military Affairs: Jour nal of the Amer ican Military Institute 5 (Fall 1941): 109-11.

34 James Buchanan, Mr Buc hanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion (New York: D Appleton & Co., 1866), 238-39.

35 Winfield Scott, Memoirs of Lieut.-General Scott, L.L.D., Wr itten by Himself 2 vols. (New York: Sheldon & Co., 1864), 2:604. Scott, like Buchanan, wrote his memoir s in the third per son.

For mer President Buchanan believed with justification that Scott’s accus a t i o n wa s g ro u n d l e s s , a l t h o u g h d e f e n d i n g F l oy d i n 1 8 6 4 wa s d i f f i c u l t because of his war time status as traitor Also complicating a dispassionate view of Floyd’s 1857 decisions was the f act that his subsequent ir regular ities in financing the Utah War had forced his resignation from the cabinet in December 1860.36 Within a few months of leaving office, Buchanan was so skeptical of Scott’s memoranda and letter s to newspaper s that he told one editor, “…[it]has been often said of the gallant general that when he abandons the sword for the pen, he makes sad work of it.”37 These yawning communication gaps between the most senior federal leader s were emblematic of conflict, indifference, and ineffectiveness atop the U.S. Ar my.38 Notwithstanding per iodic bouts of severe back pain, an inexper ienced but highly confident Secretar y Floyd intended to r un militar y aff air s dur ing the Buchanan administration unaided by Scott. General Scott, who had unilaterally removed ar my headquar ter s from Washington to New York dur ing the late 1840s in a fit of pique, lacked the inter per sonal skills and even physical presence to br idge the polite but real chasm d iv i d i n g h i m a n d F l oy d P re s i d e n t B u c h a n a n wa s t e m p e r a m e n t a l l y a n d exper ientially ill-equipped to under stand that these disconnects existed let alone deal with their consequences. For political reasons Buchanan and F l oy d t o o k a n o t h e r p r e c i o u s m o n t h a f t e r t h e l a t e M ay 2 8 r e l e a s e o f General Scott’s announcement of the Utah Expedition to name its commander and to draft his operational instr uctions. These order s—signed by a lieutenant colonel acting for Scott—declared Utah to be in a state of rebellion, something that the president himself neglected to say publicly until the next December and even then only in confusing f ashion. These were inter per sonal relationships, communication behavior s, and timing insensitivities disastrous for the way in which the Utah Expedition was to be organized and led.39

It is intr iguing but unnoticed that when the cr itical decisions on Utah were being made in the spr ing of 1857, James Buchanan, Br igham Young, Thomas L. Kane, General Scott, and Secretar y of War Floyd were all men with ser ious medical problems rang ing from the life-threatening to the myster ious. None of these key people were functioning at the top of their games. Even the Utah Expedition’s initial commander, General William S H a r n ey, h a d s e l f - c o n t ro l a n d e m o t i o n a l p ro bl e m s s o s eve re t h a t by t h e

36 William P MacKinnon, “125 Year s of Conspiracy Theor ies: Or ig ins of the Utah Expedition of 185758,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 52 (Summer 1984): 212-30.

37 James Buchanan to Gerard Hallock, June 29, 1861, cited in William H. Hallock, Life of Gerard Halloc k, Editor of the New York Jour nal of Commerce (1869 New York: Ar no Press, 1970, rep.), 242.

38 For a more complete discussion of these leader ship shor tf alls and the points covered in summar y f ashion in the balance of this ar ticle, see MacKinnon, “‘Lonely Bones’: Leader ship and Utah War Violence,” Jour nal of Mor mon History 33 (Spr ing 2007): 121-78.

39 See MacKinnon, “‘Who’s in Charge Here?’: Command Ambiguity and Cross Cur rents Atop the Utah Expedition,” unpublished paper, 55th Annual Utah State Histor y Conference, September 7, 2007, Salt Lake City

spr ing of 1857 the ar my had cour t-mar tialed him four times and a civilian c o u r t i n S t . L o u i s h a d t r i e d H a r n e y a f i f t h t i m e f o r t o r t u r i n g a n d bludgeoning to death a defenseless female slave The nature of Buchanan’s afflictions were so severe and communication lags so daunting that dur ing A u g u s t 1 8 5 7 B r i g h a m Yo u n g a n d G e n e r a l We l l s s p e c u l a t e d a m o n g s t themselves that the president might be dead 40 In ter ms of communication he was. Buchanan’s fir st public discussion of the Utah War in any for m came in a br ief five-parag raph commentar y in his December 8, 1857, fir st annual message to Cong ress, a silence stunning by its length and implications.41

Both James Buchanan and Br igham Young were highly capable leader s, but each was ill in the late winter of 1857 and lacked militar y exper ience They reacted ineffectively to the powerful social, political, and relig ious f o rc e s a f o o t by p l a c i n g l a r g e nu m b e r s o f a r m e d m e n i n m o t i o n u n d e r mu r k y, s o m e t i m e s c o n f l i c t i n g o rd e r s . T h e re s u l t s we re f a t e f u l a s we l l a s expensive in ter ms of blood and treasure. There were also devastating reputational consequences. This damage linger s to this day in unfor tunate ways on both Mor mon and federal sides of the conflict. The LDS church as an institution still g rapples with the stain of Mountain Meadows, the Utah War’s g reatest atrocity. Br igham Young’s per sonal reputation was tar nished by his three Utah War-related indictments for treason and murder and the execution for mass murder of his adopted son, John D Lee 42 For its par t t h e U. S. A r my s t i l l p r e f e r s t o f o r g e t t h e e m b a r r a s s m e n t o f t h e U t a h Expedition and its uncomfor table winter spent in the char red r uins of For t Br idger on half-rations. For James Buchanan the Utah War was, in many ways, the beg inning of the destr uction of his per sonal reputation, as he p re s i d e d i n e f f e c t ive l y ove r t h e n a t i o n ’ s s l i d e t owa rd d i s u n i o n Fe e l i n g s against Buchanan ran so high dur ing the Civil War that member s of his M a s o n i c l o d g e s t o o d g u a r d ove r h i s r e t i r e m e n t h o m e i n L a n c a s t e r, Pennsylvania. The damage to Buchanan’s reputation was so long-lasting that a m o n u m e n t t o h i m wa s n o t e re c t e d i n Wa s h i n g t o n u n t i l t h e 1 9 3 0 s , although his niece had covered the full expenses for such a tr ibute for ty year s earlier.

A n d t h e wa r c a m e f i r s t a s a n u n p re c e d e n t e d , a t ro c i o u s a r m e d c o nfrontation between Amer icans in Utah Ter r itor y and then as a monumental bloodbath in Virg inia.

40 Young and Wells quoted in entr y for August 2, 1857, Scott G Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 1833-1898 9 vols. (Midvale: Signature Books, 1983-1985), 5:71-2.

41 James Buchanan, “Fir st Annual Message,” December 8, 1857, Moore, ed., The Works of James Buc hanan, 10:151-54.

42 The texts for these three indictments are unpublished. They were quashed under unusual circumstances descr ibed in MacKinnon, “Epilogue to the Utah War,” 245 note 14; Edwin Brown Fir mage and Richard Collin Mang r um, Zion in the Cour ts: A Legal History of the Churc h of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Urbana: Univer sity of Illinois Press, 1988), 138, 144-47.

Trouble between Br igham Young, Utah Ter r itor ial Gover nor and Mor mon Church President, and other federal ter r itor ial officials began to brew in the early 1850s and by the spr ing of 1857 a resolution to the troubles was needed. Late in May 1857 Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott, General-in-Charge of the United States Ar my, issued order s to organize a force of up to 2,500 soldier s to march to Utah, secure law and order, and to escor t newly appointed ter r itor ial officials including the new ter r itor ial gover nor Alfred Cumming A c c o m p a ny i n g t h e a r my e x p e d i t i o n we re h u n d re d s o f s u p p l y wa g o n s

The Utah War :

By JOHN ELDREDGE

dr iven by civilian teamster s, livestock, and other camp follower s, reminding Mor mons of Moses and the Jews fleeing before the ar my of Pharaoh.

By July first elements of the militar y expedition had begun the long and difficult march from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Utah. That same month as B r i g h a m Yo u n g a n d s e ve r a l t h o u s a n d M o r m o n s h a d g a t h e r e d i n B i g

Cottonwood Canyon to celebrate their ar r ival to the Great Salt Lake Valley ten years earlier word was received and announced to those gathered that a militar y expedition was on the march to Utah on the well-used overland trail. As the U. S. Ar my approached Utah Gover nor Br igham Young issued a

A Photog raphic Essay of Some of Its Impor tant Histor ic Sites

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

proclamation forbidding all ar med forces from enter ing the ter r itor y The proclamation had no effect on the expedition’s commander, Colonel Alber t Sidney Johnston. However, weather and Mor mon resistance did. The expedition halted in November as winter snow and cold enveloped the mountains of southwest Wyoming, and because of the destr uction of much of the expedition’s supplies by the Mor mon militia. The expedition camped at the new Camp Scott near the destroyed for ts of Br

idger and Supply

In June, following negotiations between Br igham Young and Thomas L. Kane, the Utah Peace Commission, and other s, a pardon was issued by P r e s i d e n t J a m e s B u c h a n a n B r e ve t B r i g a d i e r G e n e r a l A l b e r t S i d n e y Johnston led the Utah Expedition into the Great Salt Lake Valley and a n e a r l y d e s e r t e d S a l t L a ke C i t y Wi t h i n a f ew d ay s , t h e e x p e d i t i o n wa s encamped at isolated Cedar Valley, located about for ty miles southwest of Salt Lake City There at the newly chr istened Camp Floyd the ar my, with the assistance of the Mor mons, built a sizeable militar y post. There they would remain until the fir ing on For t Sumter and the outbreak of the Civil War in Apr il 1861.

The photog raphic essay which follows highlights some of the significant l o c a t i o n s o n t h e l a s t s e g m e n t s o f t h e ove r l a n d t r a i l u s e d by t h e U t a h

Expedition from Devil’s Gate to the Great Salt Lake Valley.

John Eldredge is the author of The Utah War: A Guide to the Histor ic Sites South Pass to Salt Lake City (2007) and past president of the Utah Chapter, Oregon-Califor nia Trails Association.

PREVIOUS PAGE: Charles DeSilver’s 1857 Map

Alber t Browne, traveling with the Utah Expedition in 1857, wrote: “The route selected for the marc h was along the emigrant road across the Plains… It is, perhaps, the most remarkable natural road in the world. The hand of man could hardly add an improvement to the highway along whic h, from the Missour i to the Great Basin, Nature has presented not a single obstac le to the progress of the heaviest loaded teams.” — Atlantic Monthly (Boston) 3 (March 1859): 365.

BELOW: From South Pass the U S Ar my followed the well-traveled overland road to the Great Salt Lake Valley, ar r iving the last week of June 1858.

HAFEN AND HAFEN

Devil’s Gate, Wyoming

Col. Rober t T Bur ton of the Nauvoo Leg ion (Utah Militia) was ordered east from Salt Lake City to offer “aid and protection to the incoming trains of emigrants and to act as a cor ps of obser vation to lear n the strength and equipment of forces repor ted on the way to Utah…. There was no movement of the enemy from the time Col. Bur ton approac hed them at Devil’s Gate, on the Sweetwater that our officers were not speedily appr ised of. Scouts and spies were with them continually examining their camps, ar ms, equipment, etc., and repor ting to headquar ters.”

— The Contr ibutor 3 (March 1882): 179.

WILLIAM H. JACKSON PHOTOGRAPH, “SWEETWATER” (1870), JACKSON, W. H. # 288, USGS ARCHIVES

Pacific Springs

Looking west from Pacific Spr ings located a few miles west of South Pass, the Mor mon militia dur ing the night of September 25, 1857, encountered some of “Uncle’s troops.” Mor mon militiaman Hosea Stout recorded: “I expect an attac k will be made the first oppor tunity perhaps by stampeding their animals.” — On the Mor mon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout 2: 638. Capt. Jesse Gove of the 10th Inf antr y wrote of the Mor mon harassment near Pacific Spr ings: “This mor ning about 2 o’c loc k several shots were fired immediately behind my tent, and immediately the whole herd of mules stampeded with a ter r ific rush…. One man in H Co. … died of fr ight. He had the hear t disease, hence the sudden fr ight killed him…. Their [Mor mon militia] intention was to dr ive off the mules, nothing more.”

Jesse A. Gove, The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858, Letters of Capt Jesse A. Gove, 64. John I. Ginn, a civilian with the U. S. Ar my, recalled: “The mules ran about three miles, when their feet ceased to c latter on the hard, smooth road…. Then Col. Alexander ordered the buglers to sound the ‘stable call’ as loud as they could…. Directly they [the ar my mules] came dashing into camp in a bunc h, together with six additional animals wear ing saddles and br idles—the whole Mor mon mount.” — John I. Ginn, “Mor mon and Indian War s: The Mountain Meadows Massacre, and other tragedies and transactions incident to the Mor mon Rebellion of 1857” — Typescr ipt, Utah State Histor ical Society

JOHN ELDREDGE

PHOTOS BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Simpson Hollow

Simpson Hollow located near Big Sandy and Wyoming Highway 28. Mor mon militia under the command of Maj. Lot Smith set fire to a supply train. Upon hear ing of the success of Smith, Gen. Daniel Wells wrote Smith: “I am glad to hear so good an account of your success on your mission… Fur nish your men and as many others as you conveniently can with supplies of c lothing and food from any of the [wagon] trains when you have a good c hance… Remain in the rear of the enemy’s camp till you receive fur ther orders, not neglecting ever y oppor tunity to bur n their trains, stampede their stoc k, and keep them under ar ms by the night sur pr ises, so that they will be wor n out.” — Quoted in LeRoy R. and Ann W Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858, 231. Trail trace immediately to the left of the trail marker

Green River Crossing at Mountaineer’s Fort

Located near Wyoming Highway 372 and on the banks of the Green River. It was here that Richard Yates, a trader who had sold powder and a quantity of lead to the U S Ar my and was thought to be spying for the ar my, was taken pr isoner in late October 1857.Yates was also accused of trading liquor and other goods to the Indians on the Green River. Days later somewhere in Echo Canyon he was ordered killed. Bill Hickman later wrote of the deed: “I delivered General Wells some letters…and told him who I had along, and asked him what I should do with my pr isoner. He said: `He ought to be killed; but take him on; you will probably get an order when you get to Col. Jones’ camp.’” — Bill Hickman, Br igham’s Destroying Angel, 124. It was near here that the Mor mon militia bur ned fifty-one militar y supply wagons in early October

PHOTOS BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Camp Winfield on Ham’s Fork of the Sweetwater River, Wyoming

Located on U. S. Highway 30 near the junction with Wyoming Highway 374, looking southwest. Captain Jesse A. Gove remembered how effective the Mor mon spy and harassment campaign was. “It is astonishing to see how wonderfully the Mor mons have their express and spy-system perfected. Their object is to stampede our animals and cr ipple our movement in that way.” — Jesse A. Gove, The Utah Expedition, 67. While encamped near Camp Winfield, then commanding officer Col. Edmund Brooke Alexander received a letter from Gover nor and Super intendent of Indian Aff air s Utah Ter r itor y Br igham Young who wrote: “By vir tue of the author ity thus vested in me, I have issued, and forwarded you a copy of, my proc lamation forbidding the entrance of ar med forces into this Ter r itor y…I now fur ther direct that you retire for thwith from the Ter r itor y, by the same route you entered.” — Quoted in Hafen and Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858, 62.

Junction of Black’s and Ham’s Forks

Captain Stewar t Van Vliet, assistant quar ter master, was ordered to Salt Lake City ahead of the ar my to locate a suitable location for a for t near Salt Lake City, to secure supplies and building mater ial for a for t, and gather any useful infor mation useful to the general command.Van Vliet was accompanied by militar y escor t of thir ty-one officer s and soldier s as f ar as the junction of these two streams, where he left his escor t and traveled with two Mor mons to Salt Lake City. After spending time with Br igham Young, and visiting Rush Valley to locate a militar y post,Van Vliet retur ned to the forks of the two streams where he made his repor t in a letter to the Acting Assistant Adjutant General at For t Leavenwor th. He repor ted that the ar my would f ace resistance, that there would be a lack of forage and other needed supplies in the Salt Lake Valley.

Fort Supply

Located twelve miles southwest from For t Br idger, the Utah Ter r itor ial leg islature designated For t Supply the county seat for Green River County, Utah Ter r itor y in 1852. When word was received that the ar my was on the march, Br igham Young ordered For t Supply to be abandoned, bur nt, and crops destroyed or cached. Mor mon militiaman Jesse W. Crosby wrote: “I went to For t Supply with a small company to help take care of the crops and to make ready to bur n ever ything if found necessar y… We took out our wagons, horses, etc and at 12 o’c loc k noon set fire to the buildings at once, consisting of 100 or more good hewed houses, one saw mill, one gr ist mill, one threshing mac hine, and after going out of the for t, we did set fire to the stoc kade, grain stac ks, etc.” — On the Mor mon Frontier, 640, fn. 11. A repor ter for the New York Times saw what was left of Camp Scott: “On ar r iving at the spot [For t Supply] I realized for the first time in my life what I had imagined of the appearance of a sac ked, bur ned and abandoned village… There was a sense of desolation about those ruins of a recently beautiful settlement whic h was, to say the least, unpleasant.”

— New York Times, Januar y 21, 1858.

Fort Bridger

For t Br idger in 1857. Fur trapper and trader Jim Br idger established his trading post on Black’s Fork of the Green River in 1843. Along with his par tner Louis Vasquez, the two developed an impor tant trading post on the wester n emig rant trail. In 1855 Br igham Young purchased the for t from Vasquez and Br idger In October of 1857 as the ar my was advancing John Pulsipher a for mer resident at For t Br idger, repor ted that his brother Charles and other Mor mon militiamen, “are whipping them [U S Ar my] without killing a man having taken their stoc k bur ned their freight trains — & now have bur ned For t Supply & Br idger to save them from falling into their hands.”

— In Hafen and Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 205. Unable to be used as a winter encampment because of its small size, For t Br idger was used as a storage area. Col. Alber t Sidney Johnston established his winter encampment at Camp Scott two miles from the bur ned out for t.

Eckelsville

Located a few miles south of For t Br idger on the bend of Black’s Fork and near Camp Scott, Eckelsville, named for the newly appointed Utah Ter r itor y Chief Justice D Eckels, was a temporar y community of Sibley tents, dugouts, log cabins, and other makeshift str uctures. Here the new terr itor ial gover nor, Alfred Cumming, and his wife, Elizabeth, and other newly appointed ter r itor ial officials and civilians resided from November 1857 to Apr il 1858 when the town was abandoned. Elizabeth Cumming wrote to her sister, Anne, in December, descr ibing her accommodations in Eckelsville: “We live in five tents—One a dining room. Second a store room of trunks, boxes & so for th… Third a kitc hen… Four th—a sleeping tent for the young girl. Fifth—a double wall tent divided into parlour & bed c hamber—eight feet by 10 eac h….You can hardly imagine how cosy & comfor table it looks. I quite enjoy it.” Ray R. Canning and Beverly Beeton, eds., The Genteel Gentile: Letters of Elizabeth Cumming, 18571858 (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Librar y, 1977), 23.

Camp Scott

Since the Mor mon militia destroyed most of For t Br idger, the ar my of 1,400 officer s and men plus civilians established their winter quar ter s at Camp Scott, a shor t distance from For t Br idger Named for General-inChief of the entire U S Ar my, Major General Winfield Scott, Camp Scott ser ved as the temporar y seat of ter r itor ial gover nment. On November 21, 1857, Gover nor Cumming issued his proclamation to the people of Utah: “…the President appointed me to preside over the executive depar tment of this Ter r itor y… I will proceed at this point to make the preliminary ar rangements for the temporar y organization of the ter r itor ial gover nment….” — Hafen and Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 297. By late May Gover nor Cumming prepared to abandon Camp Scott and Ecklesville and transfer the seat of ter r itor ial gover nment back to Salt Lake City

SOCIETY

Bridger Butte (Outpost Butte)

Br idger Butte, located about four miles southwest of For t Br idger, provided Mor mon scouts an excellent location to spy on the activities of Johnston’s ar my at its winter encampment at Camp Scott and the nearby temporar y civilian town of Eckelsville Lot Smith later recalled that he was ordered “not to molest them if they wished to go into Winter Quar ters.” — Hafen and Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 245.

Outpost Butte

Below, view from the top of Outpost Butte looking toward Ft. Br idger

PHOTOS BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Pioneer Hollow Station

A number of temporar y express stations or outposts were established by the Mor mon militia between For t Br idger and Salt Lake City on or near the emig rant trail where express r ider s deliver ing repor ts and order s to and from Salt Lake City could recr uit their hor ses, rest, and eat. Pioneer Hollow Station located nor thwest of Piedmont, Wyoming, was such a station. Philo Dibble was under the command of Lot Smith in early October when Smith’s command set ablaze the ar my’s supply wagons. Utah militiaman Or son P. Ar nold was wounded at one of these harassment raids and as Smith remembered year s later, the “heavy ball passed through” Ar nold’s thigh, breaking the bone, and then struc k “Dibble in the side of the head, went through Samuel Bateman’s hat just missing his head…” — “The Utah War,” The Contr ibutor 4 (1883): 28. A month later Dibble at nearby Pioneer Hollow Station, inscr ibed his name and date for all to see.

PHOTO BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Yellow Creek Lookout Station

From the Lookout Station situated near the head of Echo Canyon on Yellow Creek and near the overland trail, Lt. Gen. Daniel H. Wells of the Utah militia ordered Capt. John R. Winder in late November 1857 to take a ten man detail to “the heights of Yellow Creek” and there “watc h the movements of the invaders…occasionally trail out towards For t Br idger, and look at our enemies from the high butte near that place.” Wells’ instructions were to “Remember that to you is entrusted for the time being the duty of standing between Israel and their foes, and as you would like to repose in peace and safety while others are on the watc htower, so now while in the perfor mance of this duty do you obser ve the same care, vigilance and activity, whic h you would desire of others when they come to take your place.” — Head Quar ter s Easter n Expedition, Camp Weber, December 4, 1857, in Edward W Tullidge, Histor y of Salt Lake City Par t I (Salt Lake City: Star Pr inting Co., 1886), 197-98.

Cache Cave

Cache Cave is located a few miles from the head of Echo Canyon and on the overland trail. For a few weeks in October 1857, Lt. Gen. Daniel H. Wells made Cache Cave his easter n command post. Later it ser ved as an impor tant express station for messenger s and spies of the Utah Militia. Date of photog raph is unknown. The individuals in the photog raph are the Ball f amily.

Echo Canyon Narrows

Echo Canyon, the only feasible route through the Wasatch Mountains to the Great Salt Lake Valley. Following the Mor mon acceptance of President Buchanan’s pardon, Johnston’s ar my followed the emig rant route to the valley by way of Echo Canyon. At var ious locations in Echo Canyon, the passage was ver y nar row between steep canyon walls as seen in this photog raph. At var ious locations the Mor mon militia constr ucted stone for tifications to prevent the advancement of Johnston’s ar my. In June 1858, Charles A. Scott, a soldier in the ar my recorded some of his obser vations about Echo Canyon: “[The] road ver y good, taken in consideration that the Cañon is not more than a hundred yards wide and in some places it is muc h nar rower. [T]he roc ks on the r ight hand side r ise in per pendicular c liffs of six or seven hundred feet in height, and an enemy posted on them could soon obstruct the passage by tumbling down loose roc ks…” — Rober t E. Stower s and John M. Ellis, eds. “Charles A. Scott’s Diar y of the Utah Expedition, 1857-1861,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 28 (Apr il 1960): 171.

COAL VILLE HISTOR Y MUSEUM, NA VEE VERNON

PHOTO BY JOHN ELDREDGE

A. J. RUSSELL, PHOTOGRAPHER

PHOTO BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Rock fortifications

The Mor mon militia constr ucted several stone for tifications atop Echo Canyon’s nor ther n walls from which to fire upon Johnston’s ar my. Hosea Stout wrote of these “for midable [locations] high [on] per pendicular ledges of roc k immediately over looking the road” where it was “decided to erect batter ies on the summit of the roc ky crags.” — On the Mor mon Frontier, 639. At var ious strateg ic locations, Mor mon militiamen constr ucted var ious types of for tifications including water filled ditches, one measur ing six feet wide and ten feet deep. At another location the Mor mon militia may have “mined” the road.

— The Atlantic Monthly 3 (Apr il 1859): 489.

PHOTO BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Echo Station

A wr iter for The Atlantic Monthly in 1859 descr ibed Echo Station as “huts” the Mor mon militia occupied and were “constructed by digging circular holes in the ground, over whic h were piled boughs in the same manner as the poles of an Indian lodge.” Many of the huts had chimneys built of sod and stones. Nearby was a protected glen to keep needed livestock The repor ter for the Atlantic Monthly estimated that there were as many as 150 huts that could accommodate as many as fifteen men each The Atlantic Monthly 3 (Apr il 1859): 488 In Apr il 1858 when Gover nor Alfred Cumming accompanied by a small Mor mon escor t made his fir st tr ip through Echo Canyon at night to the Salt Lake Valley to meet Br igham Young, numerous fires were lit along the trail at these posts to g ive the impression that hundreds of Mor mon militia were in the canyon Mor mon militiaman Lorenzo Brown wrote: “In the evening [we] went up to the batter ies to make fires & fire guns to salute the New Gover nor as he came past. The Camp was lighted conspicuously with a fire in eac h hut so that ever thing seemed alive with me The Gov seemed awe struc k ”

Lorenzo Brown Jour nal, Apr il 29, 1856 to Febr uar y 9, 1859, Typescr ipt, LDS Church Histor y Librar y

Weber Station

The Weber Station, located a “mile below the mouth of Ec ho [Canyon] and on the Weber bottom,” was one of several commissar y posts established between Yellow Creek and For t Wells at Big Mountain. At these posts member s of the Mor mon militia were re-supplied with food and equipment dur ing the winter campaign. For a br ief time Weber Station was headquar ter s for Lt. Gen. Daniel H. Wells, commander of the Mor mon militia’s easter n campaign.

Lost Creek Fortification Site

Lost Creek, a branch of the Weber River, looking downstream (south). At the point of the small knoll (middle of photog raph), a for tification was built to guard against the U. S. Ar my using Lost Creek to bypass Mor mon for tifications in Echo Canyon. According to Henr y Ballard, as many as “200 [men] moved 12 miles up Lost creek to gard [sic] the kanyon [sic] and build some Batter ies.” — Henr y Ballard Jour nal, Apr il 15, 1858, Utah State Histor ical Society

C. R. SA V AGE PHOTOGRAPHER, COPY IN POSSESSION OF JOHN ELDREDGE (ALSO BYU)

PHOTO BY JOHN ELDREDGE

PHOTO BY JOHN ELDREDGE

BELOW: Spring Creek Station

The main emig rant trail tur ned south from Henefer Valley and followed Main Creek Canyon. Spr ing Creek Station was one of a str ing of Mor mon militia stations where commissar ies were established and where both men and animals could recr uit.

RIGHT: Fort Wells and Eight Crossing Fortification in East Canyon

At Mor mon Flat, located on East Canyon Creek and the east side of Big Mountain and Little Emig ration Canyon, the Mor mon militia constr ucted two stone breast works (left bottom) to guard the impor tant overland trail up Little Emig ration Canyon and Big Mountain. A pr ivate in Johnston’s ar my, Charles Scott wrote in June 1858: “Star ted at six, the road good [along East Canyon Creek] for the first four miles. Came to two breast works of stone dignified with title of For t Wells…” — Rober t E. Stower s and John M. Ellis, eds., “Charles A. Scott’s Diar y of the Utah Expedition, 1857-1861,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 28 (Apr il 1960): 172.

PHOTOS BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Big Mountain

Looking west from the summit of Big Mountain In the f ar distance are the Great Salt Lake Valley and the Oquir rh Mountains In the dead of winter snow depths at the summit frequently reaches more than three feet, making travel by any wheeled vehicle impossible The U S Ar my found it extremely difficult to ascend and descent Big Mountain as did most who traveled by wagon. Captain Alber t Tracy wrote on June 25, 1858: “We got off as early as five in the mor ning, and after a long and toilsome ascent in the course of whic h we pass additional for tifications of the Mor mons, reac h at last the bald and roc k crest of ‘Big Mountain ’ The view from this point is little less than magnificent opening out between roc ky and snow-c lad peaks and r idges, to the ver itable valley of Salt Lake in the distance, with even a par tial glimpse of the lake itself, at the r ight…. So steep, so smooth, and so roc ky was this descent, that a mule or horse might scarcely keep his footing going down….” Capt Tracy and other s f aced additional hazard fur ther along, “we found, going down the far ther side of Big Mountain, suc h c louds and density of dust as well nigh brought us to an open suffocation. Neither was the condition of things improved by a drove of the Commissary’s cattle, whic h had preceded us, leaving in the air a mass of itself sufficient to our keenest fixation and misery.” “Jour nal of Captain Alber t Tracy, 1858-1860,” Utah Histor ical Quarterly 13 (1945): 25-26

Mountain Dell

Looking nor theast towards Little Dell Reser voir. Mountain Dell was the last camp for Johnston’s ar my before enter ing the Salt Lake Valley on June 26, 1858. Charles A. Scott wrote on June 25: “Orders were published to the Command for no man to leave the ranks in passing through the city to mor row and also the Ar tic les of War, about injur ing the proper ty of Citizens [etc.] and a proc lamation of the Gover nors congratulating the people on peace being established without bloodshed. June 26th Star ted at six, a long pull up for a commencement. At the top we found Ash Hollow No. 3, to descend, or Little Mountain as it is named—one of the loc k c hains of the forge (whic h I was dr iving) broke and if the other had done the same I would have gotten to the bottom in less than double quic k time...” — Rober t E. Stower s and John M. Ellis, eds., “Charles A. Scott’s Diar y of the Utah Expedition, 1857-1861,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 28 (Apr il 1960): 172-73.

PHOTOS BY JOHN ELDREDGE

Salt Lake City, 1857

On June 26th, two weeks after peace commissioner s L. W Powell and Ben McCulloch met with Br igham Young, the U. S. Ar my under the command of Brevet Br igadier General Alber t Sidney Johnston passed through Salt Lake City and encamped temporar ily on the banks of the Jordan River before establishing Camp Floyd in Cedar Valley. Jesse A. Gove wrote of the city when he marched through: “we were par ticularly struc k by its quietness…. The streets were deser ted, the houses were deser ted, the city was deser ted…. The quietness of the grave prevailed….” — Otis G Hammond, ed., The Utah Expedition, 1857-1858, 3 4 4 Wi l l i a m D row n , c h i e f bu g l e r f o r t h e S e c o n d D r a g o o n s , w h e n f i r s t viewing the valley from the mouth of Emig ration Canyon wrote: “When Br igham Young called this place a Paradise, I think he did not exaggerate at all; for it is truly the most lovely place I ever saw.” Then as he and the other soldier s marched down South Temple, he commented: “We saw about 100 men in passing through the city, but no women or c hildren, they have gone with their leader, Br igham, to a place about thir ty miles from here, called Provost….” — William Drown, “Per sonal Recollections A Tr umpeter’s Notes (’52-258),” in Theophilus F Rodenbough, comp , From E ve r g l a d e t o C a nyo n w i t h t h e S e c o n d U n i t e d S t a t e s C a va l r y, 1 8 3 6 - 1 8 7 5 ( 1 8 7 5 ; N o r m a n : U n ive r s i t y o f Oklahoma Press, 2000), 230. As several of the ar my units paraded in front of the Beehive and Lion Houses, one of militar y bands played a popular tune “One-Eye Riley.”

THE UTAH WAR

LONDON ILLUSTRATED NEWS, JANUARY 2, 1858

Sam Houston and the Utah War

By MICHAEL SCOTT VAN WAGENEN

The “Utah War” of 1857-58, g rew out of r umor s that the Utah Ter r itor y was embroiled in open rebellion against the United States gover nment. Member s of The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-day Saints, commonly called Mor mons, did in f act distr ust federal, state, and local gover nments after being dr iven from their homes in Ohio, Missour i, and Illinois In the isolation of the Utah Ter r itor y they created their own theocratic judicial and leg islative bodies. To outsider s, there appeared to be sinister motives behind Gover nor Br igham Young’s kingdom in the West.1

T h i s c o n f l i c t c a m e t o a h e a d i n 1 8 5 7 , w h e n f e d e r a l J u d g e W. W. D r u m m o n d i n U t a h r e l a ye d e x a g g e r a t e d repor ts to President James Buchanan that the M o r m o n s we re e n g a g e d i n s e d i t i o n a g a i n s t

1 For additional backg round of the tension between the federal gover nment and Utah’s theocracy, see Nor man F Fur niss, The Mor mon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1960), 1-20; Donald R. Moor man, with Gene A. Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mor mons: The Utah War (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Press, 1992), 8-9.

Michael Scott Van Wagenen is a Ph.D candidate in histor y at the Univer sity of Utah.

Sam Houston, Senator from Texas c. 1860

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

SAM HOUSTON AND THE UTAH WAR

the United States.2 Garland Hur t, a ter r itor ial Indian agent, fur ther repor ted that the Mor mons had joined forces with Native Amer icans to retake Utah from the United States.3 In spite of these r umored separatist leanings, the Mor mon leader ship made a second petition for statehood in 1856.4 While cong ressional rejection of that petition contr ibuted to a deepening resentment of the federal gover nment, the Mor mons were f ar from implementing any for mal plan of secession.

Mor mon appeals for an investigative commission of the Utah situation fell on deaf ears, and the president sent the United States Ar my westward to suppress the Mor mon upr ising in the summer of 1857.5 Church leaders met the federal challenge with a scorched ear th policy The Nauvoo Leg ion (Utah’s ter r itor ial militia) implemented the plan, bur ning cr itical g razing areas on the windswept plains of Wyoming, and setting the torch to For t Br idger and For t Supply before they could f all into the hands of the approaching troops.6 Dur ing the early weeks of the campaign, Mor mon guer illas attacked militar y supply trains and destroyed more than three months wor th of provisions The unexpected resistance forced the expedition of 2,500 inf antr y, dragoons, and ar tiller y to winter near the r uins of For t Br idger 7

As word of Mor mon resistance reached Washington, D.C., Buchanan formulated a plan to increase the size of the standing ar my by five reg iments to help meet the threat posed by the Mor mons 8 The president’s “Ar my Bill,” as it was called, easily passed the House of Representatives, and in Febr uar y 1858, after weeks of debate, the Senate prepared to vote on the Ar my Bill

In the midst of this federal war monger ing, an elderly statesman whittled at his desk.9 Going back four teen year s, Texas Senator Sam Houston had had dealings with member s of The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-day Saints. As President of the then Texas Republic Houston had negotiated with Mor mon officials for the settlement of the church in his souther n borderlands.10 Some 250 of the church’s adherents cur rently lived in his state, where they had proven themselves to be an impor tant par t of the

2 William P MacKinnon, “Utah Expedition of 1857-58, or Utah War,” in The New Encyc lopedia of the Amer ican West, ed. Howard R. Lamar (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1998), 1149-51; and William P. MacKinnon, “And the War Came: James Buchanan, the Utah Expedition and the Decision to Inter vene” in this issue

3 MacKinnon, “Utah Expedition,” 1149.

4 In addition to these fir st two attempts at statehood, five other petitions were made to Cong ress, the last in 1894 resulted in Cong ress passing the enabling act to allow for a constitutional convention in Utah.

5 Moor man, Camp Floyd, 3-24. This introductor y chapter g ives an excellent over view of the events leading to Buchanan’s decision to send the ar my to the Utah Ter r itor y.

6 Gordon B Dodds, “Br idger, James,” in The New Encyc lopedia of the Amer ican West, ed Howard R Lamar, (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1998), 125-26. The Mor mons claimed to have bought these outposts in 1855, although Jim Br idger disputed this purchase See Moor man, Camp Floyd, 48.

7 W i l l i a m P M a c K i n n o n , “ U t a h E x p e d i t i o n , , ” 1 1 4 9 ; R i c h a r d D Po l l a n d R a l p h W H a n s e n , “‘Buchanan’s Blunder’ The Utah War, 1857-1858,” Military Affairs 25 (Autumn 1961): 124.

8 A force as large as five thousand.

9 James L. Haley, Sam Houston (Nor man: Univer sity of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 354.

10 These obscure and ultimately unsuccessful negotiations are explored in Michael Scott Van Wagenen’s The Texas Republic and the Mor mon Kingdom of God (College Station: Texas A & M Univer sity Press, 2002).

Texas frontier economy 11 Perhaps most impor tant, Houston had fr iends in the Utah Ter r itor y he hoped to protect.

A c o m b i n a t i o n o f p o l i t i c s , e c o n o m i c s , a n d i n t o l e r a n c e o n b o t h s i d e s pitted the Mor mons against their more numerous “gentile” neighbor s.12 In 1844 the church’s founder Joseph Smith Jr. began searching for a place of refuge for his people The Oregon Countr y, Alta Califor nia, and the Texas Republic all provided possible solutions.13

To explore the Texas option, Smith sent three political minister s: Lucien Wo o d wo r t h , G e o r g e M i l l e r, a n d A l m o n B a b b i t t t o m e e t w i t h Te x a s Republic President Sam Houston.14 These emissar ies car r ied instr uctions to purchase land from President Houston in the disputed wester n and souther n borderlands of Texas. The details of these negotiations remain vague although it is clear that Houston and the Mor mons had reached some preliminar y ag reements in the spr ing of 1844.15 According to one account, Houston outr ight rejected the or ig inal offer. Instead he ag reed to sell the M o r m o n s a s m a l l s t r i p o f l a n d b e t we e n t h e N u e c e s a n d R i o G r a n d e River s.16 To complicate matter s, this area, a geog raphic no-man’s land called the Nueces Str ip, was also claimed by Mexico The dispute over this front i e r h a d p ro m p t e d i n t e r m i t t e n t wa r f a re b e t we e n M e x i c o a n d t h e Te x a s Republic for several year s. But before any fir m actions could be taken by the church, a mob killed Smith in June of 1844, putting an end to the negotiations with Houston.17

P r i o r t o h i s d e a t h , S m i t h h a d a p p o i n t e d Ly m a n W i g h t , o n e o f t h e c h u rc h ’ s Twe l ve A p o s t l e s , t o l e a d a p re l i m i n a r y m i s s i o n i n t o t h e Te x a s R e p u bl i c W h i l e f e l l ow a p o s t l e B r i g h a m Yo u n g c o n s o l i d a t e d h i s p owe r and prepared for a westward exodus, Wight led a g roup of 150 Mor mons to the Texas Republic. The g roup established their or ig inal settlement in Austin shor tly after the United States annexed Texas This small colony o f M o r m o n s i m m e d i a t e l y s e t t o wo r k bu i l d i n g a m i l l o n t h e o u t s k i r t s of town. “Mor mon Spr ings,” as it came to be known, was the fir st g r istmill

11 For a complete treatment of the early Mor mon-Texas exper ience see Melvin C Johnson’s Polygamy on the Peder nales: Lyman Wight’s Mor mon Villages in Antebellum Texas, 1845 to 1858 (Logan: Utah State Univer sity Press, 2006).

12 Repor ts of Mor mon “outrages” were popular in the major easter n newspaper s dur ing this time While these were mostly sensationalized, popular accusations of Mor mon polygamy later proved to be tr ue The N e w Yo r k H e ra l d in par ticular pr inted and repr inted many inflammator y ar ticles about the Mor mons. See: “Highly Impor tant from the West – Ar rest of Joe Smith, the Mor mon Chief , ” June 26, 1841; and “Highly Impor tant from the West – Prog ress of the Mor mons, ” August 10, 1841.

13 Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic, 29, 34-63.

14 George Miller, Cor respondence of Bishop George Miller With The Nor ther n Islander From his first acquaintance with Mor monism up to near the c lose of his life Wr itten by himself in the year 1855 (Michigan: Wingfield Watson, 1916), 21. Miller’s account actually lists A. W Brown, which is a mispr inting of Almon W Babbitt, a member of the Council of Fifty who was deeply involved in Mor mon politics at the time

15 Miller, Cor respondence, 20-21.

16 Jour nal Histor y, The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-day Saints, Apr il 2, 1847. Family and Church Histor y Depar tment, The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. Hereinafter cited as LDS Church Histor y Librar y.

17 Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic, 53-54.

in central Texas.18

After the Mor mon’s fir st p u b l i c m e e t i n g i n A u s t i n , o n e Te x a n o b s e r v e d t h a t t h e t ow n s p e o p l e f e l t t h a t the Mor mons “were a lawless band, and the subject of r ising up and dr iving them f r o m t h e c o u n t r y w a s s t ro n g l y a d vo c a t e d . ” W h i l e W i g h t ’ s p r a c t i c e o f p o l y g a my r a i s e d t h e i re o f h i s n e i g h b o r s i n t h e n e w Texas capital, they tolerated t h e M o r m o n a p o s t l e o n c e t h ey re a l i z e d t h e va l u e o f his milling ser vices.19 Soon the Mor mons were g r indi n g c o r n a n d c o n s t r u c t i n g bu i l d i n g s f o r t h e re s i d e n t s o f A u s t i n T h ey eve n wo n t h e c o n t r a c t t o b u i l d Austin’s fir st jail.20

D u r i n g t h e n e x t t we l ve y e a r s , W i g h t ’ s c o l o n y o f M o r m o n s w o u l d m o v e t h ro u g h o u t c e n t r a l Te x a s . T h e y m a i n l y e n g a g e d i n t h e m i l l i n g i n d u s t r y, although they also f ar med, ranched, and made shingles and fur niture to supplement their “common stock” economy 21 (Their contr ibutions to the Texas frontier, while largely forgotten today, were well known in central Texas dur ing the mid-nineteenth centur y.)

There is little histor ical evidence to indicate that Houston had any per sonal contact w i t h t h e M o r m o n s i n Te x a s . H e d i d , h oweve r, h ave s eve r a l f r i e n d s a n d

18 Ibid., 54-59.

19 Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State: Recollections of Old Texas Days (Austin, 1900), 235-36.

20 Heman Hale Smith, “The Lyman Wight Colony in Texas,” unpublished manuscr ipt, (ca. 1900), 12. The L. Tom Per r y Special Collections of Br igham Young Univer sity, Provo, Utah.

21 Van Wagenen,The Texas Republic, 60-62.

SAM HOUSTON AND THE UTAH WAR

George A. Smith, who, with John M. Bernhisel, met privately with Senator Houston in 1856 in an effort to secure statehood for Utah.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

acquaintances in the Utah Ter r itor y These fr iends proved most impor tant in influencing the senator dur ing the Utah War As a result of his negotiations with the Mor mons i n 1 8 4 4 , H o u s t o n h a d c o m e t o u n d e r s t a n d t h e unusual practice of the church sending political a m b a s s a d o r s t o l o b b y wo r l d g ove r n m e n t s o n var ious issues In 1856, when the Mor mon-dominated constitutional convention again considered p e t i t i o n i n g C o n g r e s s f o r s t a t e h o o d , M o r m o n leaders George A Smith and John M Ber nhisel met pr ivately with Senator Houston.22 In this meeting H o u s t o n e x p r e s s e d g r e a t i n t e r e s t i n B r i g h a m Young’s polygamist lifestyle. Like many Amer icans, Houston seemed filled with an odd combination of c u r i o s i t y a n d m o r a l i n d i g n a t i o n a t t h e u nu s u a l M o r m o n m a r r i a g e p r a c t i c e s . 2 3 N o n e t h e l e s s , H o u s t o n e x p re s s e d s y m p a t hy f o r t h e M o r m o n desire for statehood.24

An oral tradition has per sisted among some Latter-day Saints about Sam Houston’s meeting with George A. Smith and John M. Ber nhisel. Although s o m e f a c t s s e e m e x a g g e r a t e d , t h e b a s i c s t o r y p o s s e s s e s a n o t e o f t r u t h . According to one ver sion of the stor y, Smith and Houston became f ast fr iends:

The two old men then laid down on the floor with a pillow under their heads and laid on the back of chair s and went on talking After General Houston and President Smith had been talking a little while President Smith became cold whereupon General Houston got a parcel which he had and took a Navajo Blanket out of the parcel and put it over his shoulder s and again went on talking . . . General Houston was always a g reat fr iend to the West and remained a fr iend to the Mor mon people up to the time of his death.25

While such meetings with Mor mon leader ship proved amiable, Houston re s p o n d e d b e s t t o t h e M o r m o n s w h o h a d f o u g h t a l o n g s i d e h i m i n t h e Texas Republic. Early Mor mon missionar y effor ts in the state yielded some o n e t h o u s a n d Te x a n c o nve r t s w h o eve n t u a l l y m ove d we s t t o t h e U t a h Ter r itor y Records show that some of these individuals had in f act fought with Houston in the Texas War of Independence.26 The bond of alleg iance

22 The quest for Utah statehood proved a long, politically-charged process that was not completed until 1896.

23 Houston had been mar r ied three times. His apparent difficulty in obtaining divorces from his fir st two wives led to r umor s that Houston was himself a bigamist. See Haley, Sam Houston, 90, 98-99, 202.

24 George A. Smith to Br igham Young, July 23, 1856, LDS Church Histor y Librar y

25 George Henr y Crosby, (1872-1938) Paper s [ca. 1929-1936] Typescr ipt. LDS Church Histor y Librar y Some details are clearly confused as the letter is the recounting of a stor y passed through several people and generations. The blanket is Houston’s f amous Cherokee cloak. Utah Mor mons might easily mistake this for a colorful Navajo blanket with which they themselves were acquainted.

John M. Bernhisel

UTAH

SAM HOUSTON AND THE UTAH WAR

f o r g e d b e t we e n ve t e r a n s o f Te x a s ’ m o s t ve n e r a t e d c o n f l i c t s e e m e d t o transcend the difficult political and theolog ical divide between Houston and his Mor mon fr iends.

The most influential of Houston’s Mor mon fr iends was Seth Millington Blair. Bor n near New London, Missour i, in 1819 Blair was five year s old, when his parents pulled up stakes and moved the f amily to Tennessee In 1836, Sam Houston sent out a call for volunteer s from the United States to help fight against Mexico in defense of the fledgling Texas Republic, and seventeen year s old, Blair joined hundreds of volunteer s from Tennessee to fight in the Texas War of Independence.27

Joining the Texas Ranger s, Blair made the acquaintance of Texas President Sam Houston. Blair must have been an impressive young man, for in spite of his youth, he achieved the rank of major a title he would car r y proudly w i t h h i m f o r l i f e. A s a m e m b e r o f t h e Te x a s R a n g e r s , h e c a m p a i g n e d through the end of the war. Blair settled near Austin, but eventually moved a b o u t s eve n t y - f ive m i l e s s o u t h e a s t o f S a n A n t o n i o t o D e Wi t t C o u n t y where he practiced law and worked as a land agent for the Texas Republic.28

A year after ar r iving in the Great Basin, Br igham Young sent Preston Thomas and William Mar tindale on missions to Texas. Their mission was twofold: to make conver ts among the Texans and to per suade Lyman Wight and his g roup to join the main body of the saints in Utah. While the latter charge proved a f ailure, Thomas and Mar tindale were successful missionaries.29 Blair encountered the Mor mon elder s when they came through De Wi t t C o u n t y, l o o k i n g f o r a p l a c e t o p re a c h . T h e M a j o r f o u n d t h e m a suitable location, and the missionar ies gave him a Book of Mor mon After re a d i n g t h e b o o k , B l a i r b e c a m e c o nv i n c e d o f t h e t r u t h f u l n e s s o f t h e Mor mon gospel. He was soon baptized, and prepared his f amily to move to the Utah Ter r itor y to join the saints.30

In Utah, Young apparently knew of Blair’s connection to Houston and made ready use of the Texas attor ney.31 In spite of Blair’s obvious devotion to Mor monism, Young intentionally withheld him from the church hierar-

26 Melvin C Johnson, “Lone Star Trails to Zion: Mor mon Nar ratives of the Republic and State of Texas 1844-1858,” 5, unpublished manuscr ipt presented at Sunstone Symposium, Salt Lake City, August 1998, copy in possession of the author See also Deseret News, July 29, 1874. Nearly for ty year s after the Texas War of Independence, the Texas Leg islature passed a law allotting an annual pension to veterans of the campaign. At the time, only three known veterans were still living in the Utah Ter r itor y All three were for mer officer s in the Texas militar y This total does not take into account how many had died or previously left the ter r itor y

27 Seth Millington Blair, “Reminiscences and Jour nal, 1819-1875,” LDS Church Histor y Librar y

28 Ibid. See also Blair’s obituar y in the Deseret News, March 24, 1875.

29 Preston Thomas, Preston Thomas: His Life and Travels, ed. Daniel Thomas, unpublished manuscr ipt, LDS Church Histor y Librar y.

30 Blair, “Reminiscences.”

31 Blair’s ser vice in this capacity began as early as 1850, when he wrote a letter of introduction for church apostle John Taylor to Sam Houston. It is unclear if Taylor and Houston ever met. See Seth M. Blair to Sam Houston, Febr uar y 17, 1850, John Taylor Collection, LDS Church Histor y Librar y William P MacKinnon provided a copy of the letter to the author

chy 32 This allowed Blair to deal with Houston and other outsider s while m a i n t a i n i n g a n a p p a re n t i n d e p e n d e n c e f ro m t h e c h u rc h . T h e s t r a t e g y worked, and Blair received appointment as Utah Attor ney General from President Millard Fillmore 33

As the ar my approached the Utah Ter r itor y, Young called upon Blair to per suade Senator Houston of the futility of the militar y campaign.34 On December 1, 1857, Blair sat down to wr ite a letter to his old fr iend in Cong ress.35 In his letter, Blair appealed to Houston as the Mor mons’ last hope “In my hear t I believe you the only Senator who sits in Cong ress of t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s w h o d a re s l i f t u p h i s vo i c e i n o p p o s i t i o n t o p u bl i c opinion.” He continued to explain that being, unheard we are condemned, without cause we have been disfranchised, as traitor s we are branded, as f anatics we are cur sed, as dogs we are to be hung! Our wives ravished by the mercenar y soldier s under the star s and str ipes, our daughter s seduced by the United States officer s, our cities pillaged, our fields laid in ashes, our altar s and temples polluted

He then recounted the defensive measures cur rently being made in the ter r itor y, war ning that the Mor mons would destroy their proper ty rather t h a n h ave i t f a l l i n t o t h e h a n d s o f t h e m i l i t a r y “ A s Fo r t s B r i d g e r a n d S u p p l y h ave g o n e, s o w i l l e a c h c i t y, t ow n , h a m l e t , v i l l a g e, s e t t l e m e n t , habitation, field, altar, temple, all and ever y trace of civilization in these mountains go at the approach of the invading ar my ” He continued, “Our number s, you ask, what are they? Enough! Our resources, tr ue patr iotism, which asks no reward save equal r ights. Our hope, victor y or death.”36

B l a i r n o d o u b t s t r u c k a c h o rd w i t h H o u s t o n w h e n h e wa r n e d t h e senator that the Utah campaign would “drain the treasur y and accomplish but one object—the dissolution of the Union.” In spite of being a souther ner, Houston defended the Union above all else and remained sensitive to threats against it.37

Blair concluded his letter with an impassioned appeal to his old fr iend:

I beseech you, then, as one who loves the Union and despises the life that would tamely submit to a tyrannical r ule, to raise your voice to stop the bigoted cr usade of the administration against Gover nor Young and this people, and ask Cong ress to counter-

32 See Seth M Blair to George A Smith, June 3, 1858, George A Smith Paper s, 1834-1875, LDS Church Histor y Librar y Blair wrote: “I felt that the good sense fine judgment & Statements like cour se of Bro Br igham would suffer if for a moment it was believed that I ‘held a high place (or low one) in his Council.’”

33 Blair Obituar y, Deseret News, March 24, 1875.

34 This was par t of a larger campaign to solicit the aid of Easter n politicians in the coming war

35 B l a i r ’ s o b i t u a r y i n t h e D e s e r e t N e w s , M a rc h 2 4 , 1 8 7 5 , s t a t e s t h e l e t t e r wa s p r i n t e d “ f i r s t i n t h e

Washington Star, and subsequently in many jour nals throughout the Union.” A search of the Washington Evening Star and other newspaper s f ailed to produce the letter William P MacKinnon located the letter in the New York Herald, March 2, 1858, and g raciously provided me this impor tant par t of the Blair–Houston stor y

36 Ibid.

37 When the Union did in f act dissolve at the outbreak of the Civil War, Houston refused to swear alleg iance to the Confederacy and was removed from his position as Gover nor of Texas See Haley, Sam Houston, 390-91.

SAM HOUSTON AND THE UTAH WAR

mand the exter minating order s of the administration, stay the floodgate that traitor s, highwaymen, public robber s (who thir st for gold), although cr imson with the blood of their fellow men, have raised to drain the treasure in sending soldier s to murder an innocent and law abiding people.38

H o u s t o n r e c e i ve d B l a i r ’ s l e t t e r t h e s e c o n d we e k o f Ja n u a r y 1 8 5 8 Unsettled by the cor respondence, Houston asked for a meeting with his old Mor mon contact in Washington, D.C., John M. Ber nhisel.39 On Januar y 18, 1858, the two men met in the Senate chamber when Houston assured Ber nhisel he would speak per sonally to the president about the Utah campaign and would recommend a commission be sent to investigate the state of aff air s in the ter r itor y. Whatever Houston may have said to Buchanan seemed to have no effect as he continued with his plan to raise five additional reg iments for the Utah campaign.

Given Buchanan’s refusal to act on his advice, Houston carefully planned his next step On Febr uar y 1, 1858, Buchanan hoped to have a f avorable vo t e f o r h i s A r my B i l l i n t h e S e n a t e. D u r i n g t h e d e b a t e ove r t h e b i l l , Houston sat at his desk whittling and feigning disinterest. Finally, laying his car ving knife aside, he rose to address his fellow senator s.

If it is necessar y on this occasion, for the Mor mon war or any other pur pose, I care not what, to raise an additional force, of what descr iption should that force be? Is it to be composed of active and efficient men? Are they to be such men as could be raised in the United States? No, sir 40

W h i l e H o u s t o n b e l i eve d t h a t t h e M o r m o n s n e e d e d t o a c c e p t f e d e r a l a u t h o r i t y, h e d o u b t e d t h e y i n t e n d e d r e b e l l i o n H e c l a i m e d t h a t t h e impending war against the Mor mon rebellion was a thinly veiled effor t to build up a large, standing ar my. He adamantly per sisted in his opinion that a large standing ar my could not conquer Utah, and suggested that a volunteer force could better deal with the Mor mon situation.41

While such language seems to infer that Houston wanted to invade the Utah Ter r itor y, his call for volunteer s would actually derail the president’s bill by denying him the author ity to recr uit additional regular troops. Any f u r t h e r a c t i o n w o u l d r e q u i r e t h e b i l l t o r e t u r n t o t h e H o u s e o f Representatives. This would provide an impor tant delay which could allow the organization of a commission to investigate the extent of Mor mon re b e l l i o n i n t h e t e r r i t o r y. T h i s wa s i n ke e p i n g w i t h h i s d i s c u s s i o n w i t h Ber nhisel two weeks earlier, when he voiced suppor t of such a commission. Rather than seem too sympathetic towards the Mor mons, however, Houston focused his attack on the raising of additional troops for the Utah campaign. The day ended without a vote.

38 New York Herald, March 2, 1858.

39 John M. Ber nhisel to Br igham Young, Januar y 17, 1858, LDS Church Histor y Librar y

40 Sam Houston, The Wr itings of Sam Houston, 1813-1863, ed. Amelia W Williams and Eugene C Barker (Austin: The Univer sity of Texas Press, 1941) 6:471. The entire speech can be found in the Congressional Globe, 35th Cong., 1st sess., Par t 1, 1857-1858, pp 492-97.

41 Houston, Wr itings, 483.

On Febr uar y 10, 1858, President Buchanan again hoped for a positive vote on his Ar my Bill. As the debate ensued, Houston was accused of not only tr ying to defeat the bill, but also attempting to reduce the ranks of the existing militar y The old Texan rose to his own defense, claiming once again that he prefer red volunteer s be recr uited rather than regular troops.42 For the fir st time though, he raised the issue that the president’s appointees may have actually star ted the whole aff air.43 While discussing the efficiency of using volunteer s for shor t campaigns, he added:

if war be necessar y; but I doubt whether, unfor tunately, men have not been there in for mer times who were wor se than the Mor mons themselves, and whose moral texture and complexion might reflect disg race upon the Mor mons. It may be that such per sons incited these men to desperation, and led to the statements which have induced the present Executive to act as he has done, when, perhaps there would not have been a necessity for that action if the tr uth had been before him.44

Houston’s attack now focused on President Buchanan, creating quite a stir in the Senate chamber s. This, along with Houston’s poor character ization of the standing ar my, continued to make him the target of considerable cr iticism

The following day, Senator Jeffer son Davis rose in an ang r y invective against Houston. Once again, Houston was on the defense. He tr ied to explain his position on volunteer s yet another time Then tur ning to his c h a r a c t e r i s t i c u s e o f l ev i t y t o d i f f u s e h o s t i l e s i t u a t i o n s , h e m a d e a j o ke about the Utah campaign.

These are my views in relation to this emergency, and I am as anxious to see the countr y quiet as any one. I think that volunteer s, actively, spr ightly, animated young men, going to that countr y, would be the best means of breaking up the Mor mons. When they get there they will feel that they are cut off from the rest of the countr y, and be pleased to settle there. They will take wives from amongst the Mor mons, and that will break up the whole establishment; it will take away their capital.45

The Congressional Globe made note of the laughter that filled the Senate following Houston’s remark.

As f ar as charges that the Native Amer icans were collaborating with the M o r m o n s , H o u s t o n c h a s t i s e d h i s f e l l ow c o n g re s s m e n R e f e re n c i n g t h e br utal militar y policy toward the Native Amer icans, he claimed:

it has dr iven them to the Mor mons; they are their allies. Why? Because they were killed when they wanted peace. Because the Mor mons have not committed a cor responding wrong on them, they are the allies of the Mor mons They will always go where fr iendship and justice are accorded to them.46

42 Ibid., 492. Sam Houston’s speech can be found in its entirety in the Congressional Globe, Par t 1, 18571858, pp 646-47.

43 For examples of federal officials g iving misinfor mation to President James Buchanan see William P MacKinnon, “The Buchanan Spoils System and the Utah Expedition: Career s of W. M. F. Mag raw and John M. Hockaday” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 31 (Spr ing 1963): 127-50.

44 Houston, Wr itings, 492-93.

45 Ibid., 504. This speech can be found in its entirety in the Congressional Globe, Par t 1, 1857-1858, pp 669-73.

SAM HOUSTON AND THE UTAH WAR

Houston, an advocate for indigenous r ights, believed that the Mor mons shared his f avorable view of Native Amer icans.47

Two weeks later, on Febr uar y 25, 1858, Houston retur ned to the Senate for the final confrontation with President Buchanan over the Ar my Bill. While he once again stressed his preference for the raising of volunteer s for emergency actions such as the Utah War, he over tly took to the defense of the Mor mons for the fir st time. In a long and impassioned speech, Houston focused on the Mor mon problem. He war ned:

If they have to be subdued – and God forfend [sic] us all from such a result – and the valley of Salt Lake is to be ensanguined with the blood of Amer ican citizens, I think it will be one of the most fearful calamities that has [sic] bef allen this countr y, from its inception to the present moment. I deprecate it as an intolerable evil.48 H o u s t o n c o n t i nu e d t o d e t a i l t h e m a s s a c re t h a t t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s A r my wo u l d l i ke l y f a c e a g a i n s t t h e M o r m o n g u e r i l l a s , w h o we re we l l - a c c u stomed to the mountainous ter rain. Once again, he saved his most pointed cr iticism for the president. The debate allowed Houston the oppor tunity to attack his old political r ival. He accused Buchanan of abusing his power by launching the Utah Expedition without fully investigating the veracity of the claims of Mor mon sedition.

I am satisfied that the Executive has not had the infor mation he ought to have had on this subject before making such a movement as he has directed to be made. I am convinced that f acts have been concealed from him I think his wisdom and patr iotism should have dictated the propr iety of ascer taining, in the fir st place, whether the people of Utah were willing to submit to the author ity of the United States. Why not send to them men to whom they could unbosom themselves, and see whether they would say, “we are ready to submit to the author ities of the United States…”49

To suppor t his cr iticism of the Utah campaign, Houston refer red directly to the Seth Blair letter.

I received the other day from a ver y intelligent Mor mon whom I knew in Texas, and a ver y respectable man he was, once I believe the United States distr ict attor ney for Utah, a letter of seven pages. In that letter he takes a comprehensive view of this subject. He protests most solemnly that there never would have been the least hostility to the author ities of the United States if the President had sent respectable men there He says that Gover nor Br igham Young has been anxious to get r id of the cares of office, and would freely have sur rendered it and acknowledged the author ity of the United

46 Houston, Wr itings, 507.

47 Both Houston and the Mor mons had an inconsistent record in dealing with Native Amer icans Houston had br utally fought the Creek Nation dur ing the War of 1812, but lived among and was adopted by the Cherokee Nation. For the complex relationship between the Mor mons and Native Amer icans see Howard A Chr isty, “Open Hand and Mailed Fist: Mor mon-Indian Relations in Utah, 1847-52, ” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 46 (Summer 1978): 216-35; Sondra Jones, “Saints or Sinner s? The Evolving Perceptions of Mor mon-Indian Relations in Utah Histor iog raphy,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 72 (Winter 2004): 19-46; and Ronald W Walker, “Toward a Reconstr uction of Mor mon and Indian Relations, 1847-1877,” BYU Studies 29 (Fall 1989): 23-42.

48 Houston, Wr itings, 521. The speech can be found in its entirety in the Congressional Globe, Par t 1, 1857-1858, pp 873-75.

49 Ibid., 522-23.

50 Ibid., 525.

Jefferson Davis c. 1860. As United States Senator from Mississippi, Davis denounced Sam Houston’s position on the Utah War. Davis served as President of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War.

S t a t e s ; bu t t h a t m e n h ave g o n e there, who have made threats that they would hang them . 50 H o u s t o n t h e n l a i d o u t i n d e t a i l t h e d e f e n s i ve m e as u r e s u n d e r t a k e n b y t h e M o r m o n s i n t h e t e r r i t o r y. B r i g h a m Yo u n g a n d mu c h o f t h e l e a d e r s h i p o f t h e church had gone into hidi n g i n t h e m o u n t a i n s , canyons, and smaller settlem e n t s f a r t o t h e s o u t h o f t h e c a p i t a l . T h o u s a n d s o f M o r m o n t r o o p s a r m e d t h e m s e l ve s w i t h we a p o n s car r ied in from Mor mon settlements in Califor nia and Nevada.51

Predicting the ar my f aced a bloodbath, Houston tr ied to convey the foolishness of the venture by compar ing the imminent battle to the cr ushing defeat of Napoleon at Moscow:

They will find Salt Lake, if they ever reach it, a heap of ashes Just as sure as we are now standing in the Senate, these people, if they fight at all, will fight desperately They are defending their homes. They are fighting to prevent the execution of threats that have been made, which touch their hear ths and their f amilies; and depend upon it they will fight until ever y man per ishes before he sur render s I say your men will never retur n, but their bones will whiten the valley of Salt Lake If war beg ins, the ver y moment one single drop of blood is drawn, it will be the signal of exter mination.52

Ironically, the man leading the United States forces was Colonel Alber t Sidney Johnston, a for mer Secretar y of War of the Texas Republic under Houston. In spite of their previous association, Houston had no love for Johnston and finished his discour se by openly questioning the Colonel’s abilities to successfully lead the ar my against the Mor mons.53

51 For details related to the Mor mon militar y operations in the Utah War, see Leonard J Ar r ington, Br igham Young: Amer ican Moses (Urbana: Univer sity of Illinois Press, 1985), 250-71.

52 Houston, Wr itings, 524-25.

53 Ibid., 526-27.

SAM HOUSTON AND THE UTAH WAR

Houston’s speech proved a success. Wr iting to his wife the following day, Houston claimed credit for the defeat of the Ar my Bill.54 While the f ailure of this leg islation had little impact on the force already on the Utah frontier, it signaled Buchanan’s f ailing suppor t within his own gover nment. U l t i m a t e l y, H o u s t o n u n d e r m i n e d t h e g o a l s o f t h e p r e s i d e n t ’ s U t a h Expedition, and helped tur n it into what was popularly called “Buchanan’s Blunder.”55

In an attempt to salvage some dignity from the fiasco, Buchanan offered a f u l l p a rd o n t o t h e M o r m o n s o n A p r i l 6 , 1 8 5 8 . T h e n e g o t i a t e d p e a c e required that Br igham Young step down as gover nor. Young allowed the invading force to march through Salt Lake City on the condition that they not attempt to occupy the city. To ensure that the ar my would honor its promise, Mor mon militia filled the buildings of the city with straw and stood ready to apply the torch if the ar my dared stop within city limits. For all intents and pur poses, the Utah War was over. 56

Was Houston’s defense of Br igham Young and the Mor mons merely politicking, or was he sincere in his desire to br ing a peaceful resolution to the Utah War? Cer tainly he had per sonal reasons to oppose both President Buchanan and the g rowth of the regular ar my, but the tenacity of his attack on the Utah campaign points to other f actor s.57 His fr iendship with Seth Blair, George A. Smith, and John Ber nhisel along with his willingness to r isk his reputation in defending the Mor mons, suggests that Houston acted out of compassion for a people who he felt f aced undeser ved violence at the hands of the United States Ar my.

A final piece of evidence comes in the for m of a pr ivate letter Houston wrote to his wife Margaret With no expectations that this letter would become public record, he bore his soul to his wife.

I am no Mor mon, & the evil of the difficulty has g rown out of the policy pur sued by Pierce, and kept up by Mr. Buchanan. Men were sent there of wor se morals, than the Mor mons. For instance, a man by the name of Dr ummond, who left a wife, & f amily in Ill. star ving, & from this place took a hussy (I will not call her a woman) and introduced her at var ious places, Independence, Mo, & Santa Fe, and San Francisco as his wife, and at Salt Lake lived with her as such. Other s were men [of] dissolute habits, and these f acts were known to the Mor mons. Now my Dear, this Mor mon war has, been predicated, on the repor ts of such men, and the Mor mons have never refused to receive Fe d e r a l o f f i c e r s , a n d re s p e c t t h e m . S o u p o n t h e s e p re m i s e s , t h e P re s i d e n t h a s s e n t Troops to subdue them, and Genl A. S Johns[t]on is sent to the work, and of all men living the least qualified for such business. If the Mor mons chuse [sic] to do it, they can destroy the whole command. If blood is drawn, the Troops will be annihilated…58

54 Sam Houston to Margaret Houston, Febr uar y 26, 1858, in Sam Houston, The Personal Cor respondence of Sam Houston, Volume IV: 1852-1863, ed. Madge Thor nall Rober ts (Denton: Univer sity of Nor th Texas Press, 1996) 4: 286. See also New York Times March 3, 1858, and Washington Evening Star, March 26, 1858.

55 Poll and Hansen, “Buchanan’s Blunder,” 131.

56 MacKinnon, “Utah Expedition of 1857-58,” 1150; Moor man, Camp Floyd, 38-50.

57 Houston, Wr itings, 466, and the Congressional Globe, Par t 1, 1857-1858, pp 492-97.

58 Sam Houston to Margaret Houston, March 1, 1858, in Houston, The Personal Cor respondence 290.

While Houston str uggled with the morality of Mor mon polygamy, he n o n e t h e l e s s re c og n i z e d t h a t t h e f e d e r a l g ove r n m e n t h a d t re a t e d t h e m u n f a i r l y U n d e r s t a n d i n g t h e p re c a r i o u s s i t u a t i o n , h e s i n c e re l y s o u g h t t o curb the loss of life on both sides.

Following the end of his ter m in Cong ress, Houston successfully ran for g ove r n o r o f Te x a s H e o c c u p i e d t h i s u n e nv i a bl e p o s i t i o n a s t h e n a t i o n cr umbled in 1861. A unionist to the end, Houston refused to swear alleg iance to the Confederate States of Amer ica and resigned his office He retired to his f ar m in Huntsville under a cloud of controver sy. A fighter to the end, Houston never feared suppor ting unpopular causes.59

Perhaps as an ultimate irony, Houston’s son, Sam Jr., joined the Second Texas Inf antr y at the outbreak of the Civil War, and was led into battle by C o n f e d e r a t e G e n e r a l A l b e r t S i d n ey Jo h n s t o n a m a n w i t h w h o m h i s f a t h e r h a d l i t t l e f a i t h a s a c o m m a n d e r. A t t h e B a t t l e o f S h i l o h b o t h Johnston and the younger Houston received ser ious ar ter ial leg wounds. Johnston died quickly, while surgeons gave Houston up for dead. Against the odds, Sam Jr. sur vived his wound and was taken a pr isoner of war. Paroled as an invalid, he was able to retur n to join his g rateful f ather before the elderly statesman passed away in 1863.60

Visitor s to Houston’s final resting place in Huntsville will find a marble m o n u m e n t b e f i t t i n g t h e f i r s t P r e s i d e n t o f t h e R e p u b l i c o f Te x a s A n inscr iption on the tomb reads:

A Brave Soldier A Fearless Statesman.

A Great Orator – A Pure Patr iot.

A Faithful Fr iend, A Loyal Citizen.

A Devoted Husband and Father

A Consistent Chr istian – An Honest Man. Such tr ibutes are often rhetor ic for the memor ials of mediocre politicians. Indeed, these words mask the contradictions and complexities of Houston’s t u mu l t u o u s l i f e N o n e t h e l e s s , f o r t h e M o r m o n s o f t h e U t a h Te r r i t o r y Houston’s epitaph rang tr ue. At a time when Mor mons had few allies in Cong ress, Sam Houston r isked his political career to fight for the lives of his fr iends in what he believed to be an unjust war.

59 Haley, Sam Houston, 365-94 cover s his shor t ter m as Texas gover nor 60 Ibid., 403-405.

The SpencerPike Aff air

BY RICHARD W. SADLER

At n o o n o n A u g u s t 1 1 , 1 8 5 9 , a n a s s a i l a n t s h o t a n d m o r t a l l y wounded U S Ar my Sergeant Ralph Pike on a crowded Salt Lake City street. Thir ty year s later, Howard Or son Spencer, the victim of a br utal attack by the Camp Floyd soldier was tr ied and found innocent in a civilian cour t of the murder of Pike Known as the Spencer-Pike aff air, the events of 1859 were par t of the larger Utah War that began in1857 when United States President James Buchanan ordered f e d e r a l t ro o p s t o U t a h t o e s c o r t A l f r e d C u m m i n g , B r i g h a m Yo u n g ’ s replacement as ter r itor ial gover nor.1

After spending a cold and difficult winter at Camp Scott in wester n Wyoming, the sold i e r s , u n d e r t h e c o m m a n d o f C o l A l b e r t Sidney Johnston, marched through Salt Lake

Daniel Spencer, uncle to Howard O. Spencer and on whose Rush Valley ranch the encounter with Ralph Pike took place.

1 Histor ies deal br iefly or not at all with this incident. Other coverage of this incident can be found in Charles P Roland, Alber t Sidney Johnston, Soldier of Three Republics (Austin: Univer sity of Texas Press, 1964); Harold Schindler, “Is that you Pike? Feud Between Settler s, Frontier Ar my Er upts and Simmer s for Three Decades,” The Salt Lake Tr ibune, July 2, 1995; Lance D Chase, “The Spencer-Pike Aff air, 1859-90: Method in Madness,” in Temple, Town, Tradition, The Collected Histor ical Essays of Lance D. Chase, (Laie: HI: The Institute for Polynesian Studies, 2000).

Richard W Sadler is a Fellow of the Utah State Histor ical Society and Dean of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Weber State Univer sity

City and established Camp Floyd in Cedar Valley, for ty miles southwe s t o f S a l t L a k e C i t y i n l a t e June 1858. Mistr ust and animosit y d e f i n e d r e l a t i o n s b e t w e e n M o r m o n s a n d t h e a r m y a n d s p a r k e d t h e c o n f r o n t a t i o n between Howard Or son Spencer a n d S e r g e a n t R a l p h P i k e . T h e r e s u l t i n g i n j u r y a n d d e a t h demonstrated that the Utah ter r itor y was infected by the propensities for violence that per meated mid-nineteenth centur y Amer ica.2 At the same time, while the tens i o n a n d a n i m o s i t y b e t w e e n Mor mons and the U.S. Ar my and its supplier s kept the prospect of violence boiling near the surf ace, v e r y f e w p h y s i c a l a l t e r c a t i o n s actually occur red.

The Spencer-Pike aff air was an e x c e p t i o n a s c o n f ro n t a t i o n a n d anger resulted in bloodshed and death in the spr ing and summer of 1859 The week-long tr ial of H owa r d O. S p e n c e r i n 1 8 8 9 , a y e a r b e f o r e M o r m o n s c a p i t u l a t e d t o a n i n t e n s e a n d s u s t a i n e d c o n g r e s s i o n a l a n t ipolygamy cr usade, demonstrated that the animosity and bitter feelings of three decades earlier remained.

H owa r d O r s o n S p e n c e r wa s b o r n t o O r s o n a n d C a t h a r i n e C u r t i s

2 An 1859 case of violence that had some relationship to the Spencer-Pike aff air was the murder committed in Febr uar y of 1859 by Cong ressman Daniel Sickles of New York State who shot Philip Bar ton Key, U.S Distr ict Attor ney for the Distr ict of Columbia and the son of Francis Scott Key Representative Sickles suggested that he was in a jealous rage over the illicit aff air in which Key and Sickle’s young wife Teresa were involved. In the subsequent sensational tr ial, in which Sickles plead successfully temporar y insanity, he was acquitted. He went on to be a successful soldier in the Civil War including losing a leg at Gettysburg and being awarded the Medal of Honor W.A. Swanberg, Sic kles the Incredible (Gettysburg: Stan Clark Militar y Books, 1991); Nat Brandt, The Congressman Who Got Away With Murder (Syracuse: Syracuse Univer sity Press, 1991). The middle of the nineteenth centur y also saw political violence (Bleeding Kansas and the Chr istiana Aff air), economic violence (the Squatter s’ Riots in Califor nia), racial violence (the Nat Tur ner Rebellion and the Texas Slave Insur rection of 1860), race r iots (in Cincinnati, New York, and New Orleans), relig ious and ethnic violence (the murder s of Joseph and Hyr um Smith and the Mountain Meadows Massacre), per sonal violence (the assault on Charles Sumner in the United States Senate), assassinations and political murder s (Elijah Lovejoy and Abraham Lincoln), and g roup violence (the vig ilante movements in the West).

Howard O. Spencer c. 1910

LDS CHURCH HISTORY LIBRARY

S p e n c e r i n M i d d l e f i e l d , M a s s a c h u s e t t s , o n Ju n e 1 6 , 1 8 3 8 3 O r s o n wa s a B a p t i s t m i n i s t e r, bu t i n 1 8 4 0 , t h e S p e n c e r s c o nve r t e d t o M o r m o n i s m , moved to Nauvoo, and eventually to Utah.4 For Spencer, church callings, including missionar y ser vice abroad, required lengthy absences from his f amily. When Cathar ine died in 1846, Howard, his brother, and six sister s were raised by neighbor s and relatives in par ticular Or son’s brother Daniel.5

A successful businessman fir st in Massachusetts then in Illinois, Daniel Spencer ar r ived in Utah in 1847, and acquired residential proper ty and f ar m land in the Salt Lake City area. He also owned two substantial ranches located west of the city. The fir st was located in Salt Lake County about a mile west of what was called Millstone Point on the flat Bonneville Lake bottom nor th of the Oquir rh Mountains. This ranch, often called the ranch at the point of West Mountains, ser ved as a way station for traveler s going to and from Tooele and Rush Valleys. The second ranch was located in Rush Valley, south of the Tooele settlement, and on the south shore of Rush L a ke S p e n c e r e m p l oye d yo u n g f a r m a n d r a n c h h a n d s i n c l u d i n g h i s nephew, Howard Or son Spencer. The Utah frontier, his uncle’s ranch, the Mor mon f aith, and his f amily were cor ner stones for the young Spencer

When Utahns lear ned that a federal ar my was on its way to Utah, they prepared to resist. Nineteen-year-old Howard Or son along with his brother-in-law Hiram B Clawson joined the ter r itor ial militia and went to Echo C a nyo n , a key s t r a t e g i c l o c a t i o n f o r b l o c k i n g t h e e n t r a n c e o f f e d e r a l soldier s into the ter r itor y Spencer ser ved for a time under Lot Smith, a seasoned frontier sman whose exploits in bur ning ar my supply wagons and h a r a s s i n g t h e U t a h - b o u n d t ro o p s o n t h e h i g h p l a i n s o f Wyo m i n g a re a well-known element of Utah War lore

Lot Smith wrote his Utah War reminiscences a quar ter of a centur y after the event and recalled taking a g roup of young men into Echo Canyon that included Howard O. Spencer and his brother-in-law, Br igham Young Jr. On o n e o c c a s i o n Jo s e p h R i c h a n d H owa r d S p e n c e r, w h o wa s n u r s i n g a wound, were ordered to remain in camp Lot Smith recorded: “The latter

3 Andrew Jenson wr ites that Howard Spencer was bor n in Great Bar r ington, Massachusetts, which diff e r s f ro m f a m i l y a c c o u n t s A n d rew Je n s o n , L a t t e r - d ay S a i n t B i o g ra p h i c a l E n c y c l o p e d i a : A C o m p i l a t i o n o f Biographical Sketc hes of Prominent Men and Women in the Churc h of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-Day Saints (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson Histor y Company, 1901), 4:503-504.

4 Or son Spencer (1802-1855) received a deg ree from Union College at Schenectady, New York, in 1824 and a second deg ree from the Theolog ical College at Hamilton, New York, in 1829. Or son ser ved for a time as mayor of Nauvoo, LDS church mission president in Great Br itain, and chancellor of both the Univer sity of Nauvoo in Nauvoo and the Univer sity of Deseret in Utah. Cathar ine Cur tis Spencer died on the plains of Iowa in 1846. On Or son and Cathar ine Spencer and their f amily see: Aurelia Spencer Roger s, Life Sketc hes of Orson Spencer and Others and History of Pr imary Work (Salt Lake City: George Q Cannon and Sons, 1898); Richard W Sadler, “The Life of Or son Spencer,” (master s thesis, Univer sity of Utah, 1965); Seymour H Spencer, Life Summar y of Orson Spencer, (Salt Lake City: Mercur y Publishing Company, 1964.)

5 Daniel Spencer (1794-1868) conver ted to Mor monism in 1840 along with his brother s Hiram and Or son. Daniel was also mayor of Nauvoo for a time, was the fir st president of the Salt Lake City LDS Stake (1849-1868) as well as being involved in the Utah Ter r itor ial gover nment and the Br itish Mission.

had a fever sore on his leg, and to his disgust at being kept in camp, he remarked to his comrades: ‘Boys, if you want to get out of doing anything, just scratch your leg a little ’ He then rolled up his pants and filled the gaping wound with hot ember s. I thought him then the r ight kind of stuff to make a soldier.”6

Ralph Pike, a native of Hebron, New Hampshire, whose brother had d i e d s e r v i n g i n t h e M e x i c a n Wa r, c a m e we s t a s a c o r p o r a l i n t h e 1 0 t h Reg iment’s I Company In November 1857, Pike volunteered to go with a g roup of soldier s under the command of Captain Randolph B. Marcy to New Mexico to purchase much needed mules, sheep, and salt for the Utah b o u n d e x p e d i t i o n t h e n w i n t e r i n g a t C a m p S c o t t n e a r Fo r t B r i d g e r i n wester n Wyoming. The mid-winter march of the Marcy expedition was par ticularly g r ueling and Pike’s par ticipation in this jour ney may have led to his promotion to sergeant in 1858.7

In late June 1858, after a tr uce had been negotiated with Br igham Young e n s u r i n g t h a t t h e f e d e r a l a r my wo u l d n o t m e e t w i t h a r m e d re s i s t a n c e, R a l p h P i k e a n d h i s f e l l ow s o l d i e r s u n d e r t h e c o m m a n d o f r e c e n t l y B reve t t e d B r i g a d i e r G e n e r a l A l b e r t S i d n ey Jo h n s t o n m a rc h e d t h ro u g h Echo Canyon, the abandoned streets of Salt Lake City, and on to Cedar Valley for ty miles to the southwest where they established Camp Floyd— named in honor of President Buchanan’s Secretar y of War John B Floyd.

Rush Valley, located nor th and west of Camp Floyd, had been explored by Captain Howard Stansbur y in 1849 and 1850, and by Lt Col Edward J Steptoe in 1854 and 1855.8 Steptoe had designated Rush Valley as a reser ve for federal g razing and in doing so set up some tensions between the federal gover nment and Mor mons who viewed the areas as their s to use by pr ior appropr iation. When Steptoe and his troops left the Utah Ter r itor y in 1855, M o r m o n s , i n c l u d i n g D a n i e l S p e n c e r, m ove d i n t o u t i l i z e t h e l a n d a n d resources in Rush Valley. In 1858, following the establishment of Camp Floyd, the ar my began to use Rush Valley as g razing g round for its livestock.

At the same time Daniel Spencer asked Gover nor Cumming for per mission to continue to g raze his cattle and sheep in Rush Valley as he had

6 T h e n a r r a t ive o f L o t S m i t h i s f o u n d i n L e R oy R a n d A n n W H a f e n , M o r m o n R e s i s t a n c e, A Documentary Account of the Utah Expedition, 1857-1858 (Lincoln: Univer sity of Nebraska Press, 2005), 22046 For accounts of the Utah War see Donald Moor man and Gene A Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mor mons, The Utah War (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Press, 1992); Nor man F Fur niss, The Mor mon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven: Yale Univer sity Press, 1966); Harold D Langley, ed., To Utah with the Dragoons and Glimpses of Life in Ar izona and Califor nia, 1858-1859 (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Press, 1974); Eugene E. Campbell, Establishing Zion, the Mor mon Churc h in the Amer ican West, 1847-1869 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988).

7 Infor mation on Ralph Pike comes from cor respondence with William P MacKinnon in the author’s possession.

8 Rush Valley, located south of the city of Tooele and Tooele Valley, is thir ty miles long from nor th to south and seventeen miles wide at the widest point It is distinguished by the presence of Rush Lake which was for med when Lake Bonneville laid down a lake bar which interdicted any natural drainage from Rush Valley to the Tooele Valley Rush Lake in the 1850s was about 1.5 miles in length and with its sur roundings provided a supply of water and good g razing g round. Ouida Blanthor n, A History of Tooele County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Histor ical Society and Tooele County Commission, 1998), 15-16.

d o n e f o r m o re t h a n t h re e ye a r s C u m m i n g w ro t e Jo h n s t o n i n O c t o b e r 1 8 5 8 , a s k i n g t h a t S p e n c e r b e a l l owe d t o c o n t i nu e h i s g r a z i n g r i g h t s i n Rush Valley, an ar rangement to which the general apparently ag reed.9 Conflict intensified between the ar my and the Mor mons as both g razed their herds in Rush Valley dur ing the winter of 1858-59. With the approval of both Cumming and Johnston to continue to g raze his livestock in Rush Valley, Spencer added animals owned by Erastus Snow, Jacob Gates, and J.C. Little to the Rush Valley herds. He also, without approval, enlarged str uctures and cor rals. Fur ther more, George Reeder, Spencer’s chief herdsman, was accused of illegally selling locally produced whiskey, known as “Valley Tan,” to the soldier s. These alleged misdeeds may have been reasons that Spencer was ordered to remove his herds from Rush Valley by mid-Apr il 1 8 5 9 A s s p r i n g a p p ro a c h e d , s o l d i e r s b e g a n t o m ove t h ro u g h o u t R u s h Valley to encourage Mor mons to remove their animals before the midApr il deadline. As the troops pushed, Mor mon herder s resisted.

On March 21, 1859, Howard Spencer and Al Clift left Salt Lake City with directions to beg in to move the Mor mon owned animals nor th out of Rush Valley Clift and Spencer spent the night at Daniel Spencer’s ranch at the point of West Mountain, and reached the Spencer ranch in Rush Valley the following after noon where they were met by soldier s who ordered Spencer and Clift to move their herds from the valley that ver y after noon. When Howard Spencer maintained that three weeks remained before they were obligated to remove the livestock, the argument intensified and ang r y words gave way to violent action.

Al Clift, an eyewitness to the event, recounted to Br igham Young and other s what transpired. His repor t was recorded by Wilford Woodr uff in his diar y:

...They [the soldier s] told Spencer He Could not stay there over night. This appeared to be an officer. Howard Spencer told him that the House belonged to him & he should stay there over night. The soldier s then went away & retur ned with about a dozen men in all. The officer told Spencer He should not Stay there over night. Spencer said He would & got off his hor se & went through the fir st Carall into another Car rall whare his food was & the man that seemed to Command the soldier s rode up to him on Hor se back & took the gun by the br ich & str uck him over the Head by the bar rel with all his might across the side of the head and laid his [head] open and he fell dead to all appearance. He straitened himself out as he fell.10

Ralph Pike attacked Howard Spencer with the butt of his musket, which shattered the pitchfork in Spencer’s hands and fractured Spencer’s skull. B l e e d i n g a n d u n c o n s c i o u s , S p e n c e r c o l l a p s e d t o t h e g ro u n d M o r m o n

9 Letter s from Alfred Cumming to Alber t Sidney Johnston, October 8, 1858, and March 24, 1859, in the Mr s Mason Bar ret Collection of Alber t Sidney and William Preston Johnston Paper s, Manuscr ipts Division, Howard Tilton Memor ial Librar y, Tulane Univer sity, New Orleans, Louisiana. Copies of these letter s are in the Donald R. Moor man Collection, Stewar t Librar y, Weber State Univer sity, Ogden. 10 Scott G Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal,1853-1898 (Midvale: Signature Books, 1984), 5:31213.

herder s, Bishop Luke Johnson from nearby St John, and ar my physician a s s i s t a n t S e r g e a n t C h a r l e s E . B rewe r re n d e re d a s s i s t a n c e. 11 S p e n c e r wa s car r ied to a nearby shelter where throughout the night he dr ifted between life and death. In his repor t about the incident Brewer wrote:

In being called to see him I found that a small par t of his skull had been fractured by a severe blow When fir st seen his symptoms were those of conprelsion [sic] of the hair, his pulse full slow and ir regular accompanied by jactitation and spasms of the limbs, his breathing deep and slow with puffing of the cheeks. Indicative of threatening paralysis; no par t of his body was however paralysed and he was perfectly conscious. On a more minute examination I found a small fragment of the cranium pressing upon the brain; this fragment being cut down upon and elevated by proper instr uments, the pressure was removed and he almost immediately felt relieved, both heard his fr iends expressing g reat satisf action at the relief afforded.12

Brewer recommended that Spencer be moved to Camp Floyd, but the Mor mons refused. Shor tly after the altercation, Al Clift rode to Salt Lake City to infor m Daniel Spencer, Br igham Young, and other s about the ser iousness of Howard’s injur ies. Br igham Young sent his car r iage to retr ieve Howard. George Boardman Spencer, Howard’s younger brother, his uncle Daniel Spencer, and Dr S L. Sprague hur r iedly traveled to the Rush Valley ranch to recover Howard. On March 23, the par ty reached Rush Valley and transpor ted Howard that evening to the Spencer ranch at the point of the West Mountain. The following day Margaret Spencer, mar r ied to Howard’s cousin Charles, rode in the wagon in an effor t to comfor t Howard dur ing the day-long rough and difficult jour ney to Salt Lake City

Mor mons, the ar my, and civilian officials responded to the news of the attack differently. Wilford Woodr uff ’ s reaction to the altercation in Rush Valley mir rored the feelings of most Mor mons On March 21, following discussions with Br igham Young, Woodr uff noted in his diar y that the troops at Camp Floyd were being “sent into our Cities to slay the People” and noted that Howard Spencer’s injur ies seemed a fulfillment of prophecy. Woodr uff added that the situation might lead to fur ther bloodshed. “Unless the Lord wards off the blow it looks as though we were to have war & Boodshed [sic] Our Enemies are deter mined on our over throw as f ar as possible. But I have f aith to believe that the Lord will protect us as he has done ”13

The Spencer-Pike altercation brought different responses and assessments

11 Aurelia Spencer Roger s suggests that Brewer tr ied to poison her brother, see Roger s, Orson Spencer, 182-84 Luke Johnson had been an early Mor mon conver t and one of the or ig inal Mor mon Twelve Apostles. He was excommunicated from the church in 1838, and later rejoined the church in Nauvoo, and in 1858 settled St. John. Johnson died in 1861 at the Salt Lake City home of his brother-in-law, Or son Hyde Sgt. Charles E. Brewer penned a descr iption and analysis of Howard Spencer’s injur ies and the confrontation in a two page letter to Colonel Charles F Smith, 10th Reg iment Inf antr y Camp Floyd, U.T Copy of the Brewer letter is in the Moor man Collection, Stewar t Librar y, Weber State Univer sity March 23, 1859

12 Brewer to Smith, March 23, 1859 Wilford Woodr uff repor ted that he was with Br igham Young when the news of the Spencer-Pike altercation reached him on March 23, 1859. Kenney, Wilford Woodruff ’s Jour nal, 5:312-15.

13 Kenney, Wilford Woodruff Jour nal, 5: 313.

o f bl a m e S o l d i e r s a t C a m p F l oy d j u s t i f i e d P i ke i n h i s a c t i o n s a s t h e c a m p n ew s p a p e r, The Valley Tan, maintained that Spencer had r ushed Pike with a pitchfork, and Pike had to defend himself with his musket. Mor mons in Salt Lake City saw the attack on Spencer as being unprovoked. Gover nor Cumming, who was a distant obser ver to the events in Rush Valley, noted in a letter to General Johnston that he had been infor med of the March 22 a l t e rc a t i o n a t t h e S p e n c e r R a n c h a n d t h a t , Howard Spencer was “violently assailed and p e r h a p s m o r t a l l y i n j u r e d b y a s o l d i e r endeavor ing to eject the occupants of a herding ranch whose r ight to occupy the place for herding their own stock has been acquiesced in by you.”14 To Johnston, it appeared that the gover nor was taking the side of the Mor mons against his soldier s.

Over the cour se of the next several weeks, Howard Spencer received medical treatment in Salt Lake City. Doctor W. F. Ander son and a Doctor France of Salt Lake City perfor med several operations removing pieces of bone and placing a silver plate in Howard’s head to protect his brain as pieces of the skull were removed. Howard was sometimes delir ious, but, in time, began the long process of recover y

A t C a m p F l oy d a m i l i t a r y i n q u i r y i n t o P i ke ’ s ro l e i n t h e a l t e rc a t i o n cleared the sergeant of any wrong doing in the aff air However, shor tly thereafter, Pike was indicted by a Salt Lake City g rand jur y on a charge of “assault with the intent to kill” and ordered to appear in associate justice Charles R Sinclair’s Distr ict Cour t on August 11, 1859 With a militar y escor t of four soldier s, Pike traveled to Salt Lake City, secured lodg ing in t h e S a l t L a ke H o u s e, a n d a t t e n d e d t h e c o u r t ’ s m o r n i n g s e s s i o n w h e re Major Fitz John Por ter represented the camp commander.

Dur ing the noon recess, as Pike and his escor t walked down Main Street between 100 and 200 South Streets, a man came from behind Pike and said, “Is that you, Pike?” And when Pike tur ned around, the man shot him in the side. The shooter quickly disappeared into the crowd of perhaps a hundred or more people, mounted a hor se, and made his escape.

At Camp Floyd, Captain Alber t Tracy wrote in his jour nal:

At sundown on this date, an express r ider ar r ives in camp, but two hour s and a half from Salt Lake City, with intelligence of the shooting of Sergeant Pike….An ar my surgeon star ted for the city to attend upon Pike, but was halted until an escor t could join

14

Cumming to Johnston, March 24, 1859, Moor man collection.

George Boardman Spencer, brother to Howard O. Spencer and witness at the 1889 trial.

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him, it being the f act that ar med bodies of the Mor mons stand prepared to dispute the passage of any minor par ty or individual not desirable to them to have enter the city”15

Attempts to capture the shooter were unsuccessful. Pike was car r ied into the nearby Salt Lake House and operated on in an unsuccessful attempt to save his life Pike clung to life for three days, but before he died on August 14, he identified his assailant as Howard Spencer.

Pike’s body was retur ned to Camp Floyd where hundreds of his fellow soldier s attended a funeral Mass conducted by Father Bonaventure Keller and was bur ied in the Camp Floyd cemeter y. The Valley Tan, labeled the i n c i d e n t “ A n o t h e r A s s a s s i n a t i o n . ” I n h i s a n n o u n c e m e n t o f P i ke ’ s d e a t h , Br ig. Gen. Johnston wrote, “It is with much reg ret the commanding officer a n n o u n c e s t o t h e r e g i m e n t t h e d e a t h o f t h a t e x c e l l e n t s o l d i e r, F i r s t Sergeant Ralph Pike of Company I, late last night, the victim of Mor mon assassination, through revenge for the proper discharge of his duty.”16

Capt. Tracy named Spencer as the assailant and recorded the mood of the soldier s and officer s and the measures their leader s under took to avoid further violence.

The command, officer s, and men, seem to be simply exasperated, and were it not for discipline itself , much more might be said or done by the for mer To that pitch, indeed, have things gone, that extra details of guard have been ordered to prevent the men from leaving in squads at night, to wreak their vengeance upon whatsoever in the for m of Mor mon, or the proper ty of such, may come in their path. The officer s, moreover, are cautioned to more than ordinar y vig ilance, to see that no breach of order take place 17

Measures were taken to calm Camp Floyd but were not entirely successful as soldier s from Company I, ang r y and bitter over the murder of their comrade, raided the nearby Mor mon settlement of Cedar For t and bur ned some haystacks. For tunately, no civilians were injured. Relations between soldier s and civilians remained strained, especially in Provo and nor ther n Utah County communities.18

The broad daylight shooting of Pike on Thur sday, August 11, 1859, and

15 “The Utah War Jour nal of Alber t Tracy, 1858-1860,” Utah Histor ical Quar terly 15 (1945): 72-73.

16 The Valley Tan, August 17, 1859, quoted in Moor man and Sessions, Camp Floyd, 256. Harold Schindler also quotes the newspaper ar ticle and makes the asser tion that Bill Hickman, noted Mor mon gunman, was involved in helping Spencer get away on the day of the shooting. Hickman in his Confessions mentions n o t h i n g a b o u t t h i s S p e n c e r - P i ke a f f a i r S c h i n d l e r a l s o s u g g e s t s t h a t S p e n c e r ’ s c l o s e f r i e n d G e o r g e Str ingham was nearby at the time of the shooting, see Schindler, “Is That You Pike?”.

17 “Jour nal of Alber t Tracy,” 73.

18 Not all relationships between Mor mons and the militar y were tense Patience Loader, a Mor mon woman who ar r ived in Utah in the Fall of 1856 with the Mar tin Handcar t Company, mar r ied Sergeant Jo h n R o z s a o f t h e Te n t h I n f a n t r y f ro m C a m p F l oy d i n t h e s u m m e r o f 1 8 5 8 a s h e c o nve r t e d t o Mor monism. Sandra Ailey Petree, ed., Recollections of Past Days, The Autobiography of Patience Loader Rozsa Arc her, (Logan: Utah State Univer sity Press, 2006) 98-106 John Nay and his wife Thirza were early Mor mon settler s of Cedar For t. In the Fall of 1858, Cor poral James Haven (age twenty-six) began to regularly visit Thirza Nay (age for ty-five) who had been mar r ied to John Nay for twenty year s and had bor ne nine children in their relationship Thirza after becoming involved in “f amiliar intimacy” with Cor poral Haven, ran off with and mar r ied him. The f amily relationships are descr ibed in Joan Nay, Beth Breinholt, and Joy Stubbs, The Nay Family in Utah and the West, A History of John Nay Jr., and His wives and c hildren, (Salt Lake City: pr ivately published, 2002).

h i s d e a t h t h e f o l l ow i n g S u n d ay, r a i s e d q u e s t i o n s a s t o h ow t h e s h o o t e r could commit the deed and could get away. Lorenzo Brown reflected some o f t h e M o r m o n p o i n t o f v i e w : “ 1 2 A u g u s t , 1 8 5 9 , Ye s t e r d ay a U S A S e r g e a n t P i k e w a s s h o t w h i l e s t a n d i n g i n a c r ow d b y s o m e p e r s o n unknown who deliberately made his escape although per sued [sic] by a host & strange to say although seen by hundreds no one knew him and no two gave the same descr iption of him.”19

Hosea Stout commented in his diar y about the murder of Ralph Pike and concluded that it was Spencer who shot Pike because “Pike str uck him over the head with a gun and broke his skull near killing him.”20 A Salt Lake City g rand jur y issued a war rant for the ar rest of Spencer for the murder of P i ke ; h oweve r, h e wa s n o t t a ke n i n t o c u s t o d y u n t i l 1 8 8 8 . T h e d e l ay o f Spencer’s ar rest was the result of the threatening Civil War in the East, the subsequent abandonment of Camp Floyd by the ar my in 1861, and public suppor t for Spencer that allowed him to live a quiet but not hidden life in Salt Lake City

Nearly a year after the killing of Pike, Howard mar r ied Louise Lucy Cather ine Cross in the Salt Lake Endowment House in Apr il 1860 21 A ye a r l a t e r H owa rd a l o n g w i t h t h re e o t h e r m e n we re c a l l e d t o b e c o m e member s of the high council of the Salt Lake Stake presided over by his uncle Daniel Spencer Wilford Woodr uff recorded the setting apar t of these four men to the Salt Lake Stake high council:

12 Sunday....We met at the Histor ians Office at ? past 5 oclok & ordained 4 men to the High Pr iesthood & High counciller s of this Stake of Zion. Presidet young Blessed Brother Long Brother Kimball Blessed Brother [ ] John Taylor Blessed Br igham Young jr W Woodr uff Blessed Howard Sp [enser?] President Young said yes & I ordain you to kill evr y scoundrel that seeks your life & when you Come across such men use them up 22

Howard Spencer also spent much of 1862 with Lot Smith in Wyoming helping to guard the overland mail and teleg raph routes. He fought Indians, worked as a night watchman in Salt Lake City for ZCMI, and worked bu i l d i n g t h e U n i o n Pa c i f i c R a i l ro a d i n E c h o C a nyo n I n 1 8 6 9 - 7 0 a n d again in 1877-78 he ser ved LDS church missions to England, spending much of the time in the London area.

19 Lorenzo Brown, Jour nal I, 347 in Juanita Brooks, ed., On The Mor mon Frontier, the Diary of Hosea Stout (Salt Lake City: Univer sity of Utah Press and the Utah State Histor ical Society, 1964), 2:701, fn. 62.

20 Ibid. 701-702

21 The couple had five g irls and one boy. In 1875, Spencer mar r ied twenty-year old Per sis Ann Brown and they had two sons and three daughter s. In 1877, Howard mar r ied twenty- year old Asenath Emmeline Carling and they had five sons and twelve daughter s Elda P Mor tensen, compiler and editor, Isaac V Carling Family History (Provo: Pr inted by J Grant Stevenson, 1965).

22 Kenney, Wilford Woodruff, 5:573. On the Salt Lake Stake and its organization see Lynn M. Hilton, ed., The Salt Lake Stake, 1847-1972 (Salt Lake City: Utah Pr inting Company,1972). Howard Spencer is listed as ser ving four teen year s on the stake high council. His cousin Claudius Spencer and his brother-in-law Br igham Young Jr who had mar r ied his sister Cathar ine Cur tis Spencer in 1855 also ser ved with him par t of the time

In September 1874, Howard Spencer was called by Br igham Young to move to Mt. Car mel, a souther n Utah settlement in Long Valley near the present east entrance to Zion National Park. As bishop, or the ecclesiastical leader in Long Valley, Spencer was charged with ending contention in Mt. Car mel, most of which centered on issues relating to the United Order. U n d e r S p e n c e r ’ s c o u n c i l , o n e f a c t i o n m ove d t wo m i l e s n o r t h o f M t Car mel in 1875 to establish the community of Order ville.23 Following his second mission to England, Spencer ser ved as a counselor in the Kanab Stake Presidency from 1877 to 1884.

In 1888, at the age of fifty, Howard Spencer was ar rested in Salt Lake C i t y ’ s L i b e r t y Pa r k o n t h e c h a r g e o f u n l aw f u l c o h a b i t a t i o n a s f e d e r a l author ities vigorously prosecuted Mor mons under the Edmunds-Tucker Anti-Polygamy Act. At the time of Spencer’s ar rest ter r itor ial pr ison warden and U.S. Mar shal Ar thur Pratt remembered the murder of Ralph Pike year s earlier and ar raigned Spencer on that charge. Spencer posted a six thousand dollar bail and waited for his murder tr ial to beg in in May 1889.

George Str ingham, a close fr iend of Spencer, was also charged with Pike’s murder At the beg inning of the tr ial prosecutor s intended to tr y Spencer and Str ingham together in Judge John Walter Judd’s Salt Lake City cour t. However, the fir st year judge g ranted a defense motion for separate tr ials.24

Howard Spencer was tr ied fir st. Distr ict Attor ney George S Peter s and his assistant named Hiles prosecuted the case. Spencer was defended by an

23 O n t h e s e t t l e m e n t a n d d eve l o p m e n t o f O rd e r v i l l e, L o n g Va l l ey a n d K a n e C o u n t y, s e e, M a r t h a Sonntag Bradley, A Histor y of Kane County, (Salt Lake City: Utah State Histor ical Society and Kane County Commission, 1999) 103-29. Howard Spencer’s role in the Long Valley settlements is also dealt with in Leonard J Ar r ington, Feramorz Y Fox and Dean L. May, Building the City of God, Community & Cooperation Among the Mor mons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976). Spencer was proud of the success of the United Order in the Long Valley settlements and in 1875 and 1876 he attended a number of meetings in St. George where he often spoke about the success of the United Order in the Long Valley settlements. See A. Karl Lar son and Kathar ine Miles Lar son, editor s, Diary of Charles Lowell Walker (Logan: Utah State Univer sity Press, 1980), 1: 409, 422, 433.

24 President Grover Cleveland appointed John Walter Judd an associate ter r itor ial Supreme Cour t judge of the Utah Ter r itor y where he ser ved from 1888 to1893. Judd was bor n in 1839 in Gallatin, Sumner County, Tennessee, and dur ing the Civil War he ser ved as a cavalr yman in the Confederate ar my In 1893 Judd was appointed as a U.S Distr ict Attor ney for the Ter r itor y of Utah and ser ved until Utah became a state In 1896 he retur ned to Tennessee where he taught law at Vanderbilt Univer sity until his death in 1919. Clifford L. Ashton, The Federal Judiciary in Utah, (Salt Lake City: Utah State Bar Foundation, 1988), 45-46.

25 LeGrand Young was bor n in Nauvoo, Illinois, December 27, 1840, the son of Joseph and Jane Adeline Young. He attended the common schools in Salt Lake City, later g raduated from the law depar tment of the Univer sity of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and was admitted to the Utah Ter r itor ial Bar in 1870. Joseph L. Rawlins was bor n in 1850 in Mill Creek, Salt Lake County, and attended Dr John Park’s school at Draper He later attended the Univer sity of Deseret from 1869 to1871, and the Univer sity of Indiana from 1871 to 1873. Joseph L. Rawlins was professor of mathematics and Latin at the Univer sity of Deseret. He studied law in Salt Lake City and was admitted to the Utah Bar in 1874. A year later, he for med a par tner ship with Ben Sheets. Rawlins ser ved as a delegate from the Utah Ter r itor y to the House of Representatives from 1892 to 1895. He introduced and helped to procure the passage of the bill under which Utah was admitted to statehood in 1896. He was elected U.S Senator from Utah in 1897, ser ving from 1897 to 1 9 0 3 . A r t h u r B row n wa s a n o n - M o r m o n a t t o r n ey f ro m N eva d a w h o l a t e r b e c a m e a l e a d e r i n t h e Republican Par ty being elected along with Frank J Cannon, as Utah’s fir st United States Senator s.

e f f e c t i ve a n d h i g h - p owe r e d t e a m o f f o u r a t t o r n e y s J o s e p h L . R a w l i n s , L e G r a n d Young, and Ben Sheets who were Mor mon, and Ar thur Brown a non-Mor mon attor ney who had practiced law in Nevada.25

T h e we e k - l o n g t r i a l b e g a n o n M o n d ay May 6, 1889. The Third Distr ict Cour t was packed with onlooker s, witnesses, and journalists who wrote daily ar ticles for the city newspaper s. Dur ing the fir st day and a half of the tr ial several dozen potential juror s were e x a m i n e d by t h e p ro s e c u t i o n , d e f e n s e, a n d j u d g e b e f o re t we l ve m e n t h re e M o r m o n s a n d n i n e n o n - M o r m o n s w e r e s e l e c t e d T h ey we re F r a n k Va n H o r n e, E B Ke l s ey, J o h n M c V i c k e r , W i l l i a m J . L y n c h , H . C . R e i c h , T. P. M u r r a y, J. B. C o r n we l l , O we n Hogle, J.L. Perkes, Frank Shelton, J.M. Young, and A.W. Caine. Judge Judd admonished the jur y to be extremely cautious and to hold no communications with anyone outside of their number.

It was clear from the onset that not only was Howard Or son Spencer on t r i a l f o r m u r d e r, b u t t h a t t h e t r i a l wo u l d e x a m i n e t h e t r e a t m e n t o f Mor mons by U.S. soldier s three decades earlier as well as the interaction between federal gover nment officials and Mor mons in the ter r itor y dur ing the troubled year s after 1858.

T h e t r i a l b e g a n i n e a r n e s t o n Tu e s d ay a f t e r n o o n , M ay 7 , a s a s s i s t a n t distr ict attor ney Hiles told the jur y that the gover nment expected to prove that Sergeant Ralph Pike was mor tally wounded by the defendant Howard Or son Spencer. Hiles recalled the events on August 11, 1859, in Salt Lake C i t y l e a d i n g t o P i ke ’ s d e a t h i n c l u d i n g P i ke ’ s d e a t h b e d c o n f i r m a t i o n o f Spencer’s guilt. He then called ten witnesses for the prosecution including L ew i s S m i t h , Ja m e s G o rd o n , M r s . E l i z a b e t h Tow n s e n d , S t e p h e n Tay l o r, Wi l l i a m A l m a Wi l l i a m s , Wi l l i a m A p p l e by, H e n r y H e a t h , L e h i D a n i e l s , Leonard Phillips, and Henr y Q Cushing. Based on the testimony of these witnesses that placed Spencer at the cr ime scene, the prosecution asked Judge Judd to increase the amount of Spencer’s bond from six thousand d o l l a r s t o a mu c h h i g h e r a m o u n t S p e n c e r ’ s d e f e n s e a t t o r n ey s o b j e c t e d strenuously and were successful at keeping the bond at the six thousand dollar amount.

Cushing testified that just pr ior to the shooting he had obser ved Howard Spencer, Bill Hickman, George Str ingham, and a man named Luce in the yard near the rear of his shoe shop examining pistols and conver sing at some length Cushing noted that a little later following the “ repor t of a

Brigham Young Jr. brother-in-law to Howard O. Spencer and witness at the 1889 trial.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

pistol,” he saw Spencer r un from the area of the Salt Lake House where Pike had been shot. Phillips testified that Spencer and his fr iends Hickman, Str ingham, Luce, and Steve Taylor had planned the shooting and that the four fr iends had acted to cause confusion following the shooting in order for Spencer to make his escape. The prosecution produced no eyewitnesses to the shooting but relied pr incipally on Pike’s deathbed statement naming Spencer as his assailant to car r y its case with the jur y Ar thur Brown made the opening statement for Spencer’s defense dur ing the Wednesday after noon session of the tr ial While the prosecution had avo i d e d d i s c u s s i o n o f t h e e a r l i e r eve n t s i n R u s h Va l l ey, B row n g ave a n e x t e n s ive re c o u n t i n g o f t h e M a rc h 1 8 5 9 a t t a c k o n S p e n c e r by P i ke i n Rush Valley Spencer had been “rendered par tially insane” by the blow from Pike and “his skull was cr ushed in and his brains oozed out.”26 Brown’s opening statement outlined the defense strategy—neither Spencer nor any of his fr iends were the shooter, Spencer was not in the area dur ing the day of the shooting, Spencer was not the same per son he had been before the attack by Pike, and if he had shot Pike it was not premeditated but a rash act by an insane victim. Ten witnesses, all f amily, fr iends, and medical doctor s testified that Spencer had become unstable following the altercation in Rush Valley with Pike, that he had not fully recovered from the beating. Defense witnesses presented on Wednesday after noon included Claudius V. Spencer, George Reeder, Elijah Seamons, Mr s. Margaret Spencer, Dr W.F Ander son, Mr s. Mar tha Spencer, Dr. Benedict, Dr. Hamilton, Dr. Joseph F. Richards, and Dr Bascombe 27

The next day George Boardman Spencer, brother to the defendant, testified that he was with his brother Howard all day on August 11, 1859, and that Howard was not and could not have been involved in the shooting. George noted that after the Rush Valley incident Howard became ir r itable a n d b r u s q u e a n d t h a t h e n eve r f u l l y re c ove re d f ro m t h e a t t a c k O t h e r defense witnesses included Orlando F. Her ron and William Brown who t e s t i f i e d a s eyew i t n e s s e s t o t h e P i ke s h o o t i n g t h a t H owa rd wa s n o t t h e s h o o t e r bu t i n s t e a d wa s s o m e o n e t h ey d i d n o t k n ow F u r t h e r d e f e n s e w i t n e s s e s o n T h u r s d ay i n c l u d e d V i n c e n t S h u r t l i f f , H i r a m B. C l aw s o n , Thomas Jenkins, Mr s. Kather ine S Young, and Mr s. Ellen S Clawson.28 All testified to Howard’s weakened condition following the Pike attack and that he never fully recovered mentally from the beating. Howard Spencer

26 Deseret Evening News, May 8, 1889, Salt Lake Tr ibune, May 9, 1889, and Salt Lake Herald, May 9, 1889.

27 Claudius V Spencer, son of Daniel Spencer, was Howard Spencer’s cousin. George Reeder was the Spencer’s herdsman on the Rush Valley ranch in 1859. Mr s. Margaret Spencer was the wife of Howard’s cousin Charles Spencer, son of Hiram Spencer Margaret was bor n in England in 1830, mar r ied Charles in Salt Lake City in 1857, resided on Daniel Spencer’s ranch at the nor th end of the Oquir rh Mountains. She held Howard Spencer’s wounded head dur ing the tr ip from the ranch to Salt Lake City in March 1859.

28 Hiram B Clawson was a substantial businessman in Salt Lake City and husband to Howard’s sister Ellen (Mr s Ellen S Clawson, who also testified) Kather ine S Young was Howard’s sister and wife of Br igham Young, Jr who was at this time a member of the Quor um of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latter-day Saints.

did not testify in his own behalf as his attor neys maintained that he did not re c a l l a ny s u b s e q u e n t eve n t s f o l l ow i n g t h e b r u t a l b e a t i n g by P i ke. T h e defense then rested its case

The prosecution called two medical doctor s—Dr. J.M. Dar t and a Dr. E w i n g a s r e b u t t a l w i t n e s s e s t o c o u n t e r t h e d e f e n s e t e s t i m o n y t h a t S p e n c e r s u f f e re d a p e r m a n e n t d i a g n o s a bl e we a ke n e d m e n t a l c o n d i t i o n caused by Pike’s blows.

B e g i n n i n g T h u r s d a y a f t e r n o o n a n d c o n t i n u i n g F r i d a y m o r n i n g , Spencer’s three attor neys offered their closing arguments. Joseph Rawlins asser ted that the prosecutor s had not proven their case and that the testimony of prosecution witnesses could not be reconciled LeGrand Young f o l l owe d R aw l i n s a n d re c a l l e d t h e t e n s e a n d v i o l e n t ye a r s o f 1 8 5 8 a n d 1859.

It had been said that Pike was under ar rest but who were his custodians? His own underlings. He was an ar med pr isoner in the custody of men under his own command. What a satire on the law to say that he was in the hands of the law! Is it any wonder that the people said justice would not be done? Would it be strange if Spencer was fired by the tor ture of his wound and in his demented condition g rew frenzied and brought retr ibutive justice to the boastful sergeant who had committed the cowardly assault Usually villains have some soft spot, but this dog did not even have that. The cowardly wretch had Spencer thrown on the damp g round until a more humane officer ordered a change And then when Pike was brought in he was per mitted to go on parade with his subordinates, an ar med man, flaunting in the f ace of his victim the position he was in, and boastful of what he had done Would not a sane man have become uncontrollable under such circumstances? In those days men car r ied pistols because the law did not afford them protection...Men were justified in defending themselves if the law did not protect them. 29

At this juncture Judge Judd asked Young: “Do you say the revolver was above the law?” Young with g reat enthusiasm and standing before Judge Judd responded: “In those times and under those circumstances, yes. ” The judge ordered Young to restrain himself , and Young obediently took his seat. At this emotional climax in the tr ial, the judge recessed the cour t until the after noon.

Ar thur Brown began the Fr iday after noon session with his summation. H e m a i n t a i n e d t h a t t h e p ro s e c u t i o n h a d p rove n n e i t h e r m u r d e r n o r manslaughter. They had also tr ied to stir up a conspiracy with references to Bill Hickman in the hope that his name and association with violence in the ter r itor y would influence the jur y against Spencer Brown argued that the defense’s presentation was super ior to that offered by the prosecution and that the prosecution f ailed to show that Spencer had killed Pike He concluded his statement that Spencer exper ienced per iods of temporar y insanity brought on by the blows from Pike’s musket and these per iods of insanity were substantial and real.

29 Salt Lake Herald, May 11, 1889. For additional coverage of the tr ial, see Deseret Evening News, May 11, 12, 1889, and Salt Lake Tr ibune, May 11, 1889.

Distr ict attor ney Peter s made the closing argument for the prosecution n o t i n g t h a t t h e re wa s a c o n s p i r a c y t o k i l l P i ke a n d t h a t S p e n c e r wa s involved in the conspiracy Peter s closed by stating that there was indeed conflict between the testimony of the prosecution and the defense witnesses, but that he believed the prosecution witnesses were more credible. Following Peter s arguments, Judge Judd gave meticulous and lengthy instr uctions to the jur y. They were to be the exclusive judges of the testimony, but should not allow the statements about Howard Spencer’s insanity to influence the case. With those instr uctions fresh on their minds, the jur y retired from the cour troom at 3 p.m. After the jur y left the cour troom, Ar thur Brown, speaking for the defense, made numerous objections to the judge’s instr uctions to the jur y especially those relating to the issue of Spencer’s sanity

At nine o’clock on Saturday mor ning, May 11, 1889, John M. Young, the jur y foreman, infor med the judge that they had reached a verdict. A halfhour later the jur y member s filed into the cour troom and took their seats. W h e n t h e c l e r k re a d t h e ve rd i c t o f n o t g u i l t y a p p l a u s e e r u p t e d i n t h e crowded cour troom. Judge Judd promptly checked the demonstration and then voiced his displeasure to the juror s:

Gentlemen of the jur y. In the verdict that you have rendered you have doubtless done it honestly But if this is not a case of murder speaking from a practice of over twenty-five year s I have never seen one in a cour t of Justice I am now of the opinion that Brother Young was exactly r ight in his opinion in argument to the jur y when he said that the law in cour ts of justice in this countr y, was no protection.You may now be discharged.30

I n a l e n g t hy S u n d ay m o r n i n g e d i t o r i a l u n d e r t h e h e a d l i n e “ F a r c e Follows Tragedy,” the Salt Lake Tr ibune concluded that although insanity had been presented as a major f actor in the case, it was a screen to hide Spencer’s guilt. “The f acts of the case were that Spencer was an old time blood-atoner. He was in perfect accord with those other lambs HICKMAN, LUCE, STRINGHAM, TAYLOR, and the rest.” To the Tr ibune the real villain in the case was the Mor mon church and its leader ship and its teachings in the decade of the 1850s.31

With an alter nate view, the Sunday mor ning Salt Lake Herald noted: We doubt that there is more than one f air-minded and honest man in the ter r itor y who does not ag ree perfectly with the jur y in the HOWARD SPENCER case The solitar y exception seems to be Judge Judd, and we think the reasons why he occupys the lonely position is because he doesn’t under stand the case Killings are not always willful murder s. They are sometimes excusable, sometimes justifiable, and sometimes praisewor thy. This asser tion is based on law, justice, and common sense It seems to us that if there were ever an instance of justifiable or excusable taking of human life that was the case when HOWARD SPENCER shot Sergeant Pike...all the juror s will know that the public, almost without exception, are with them in acquitting the defendant 32

30 Ibid.

31 Salt Lake Tr ibune, May 12, 1889.

32 Salt Lake Herald, May 12, 1889.

THE SPENCER-PIKE AFFAIR

The Spencer-Pike aff air and the events sur rounding it from Rush Valley to Salt Lake City in 1859, and then the tr ial of Howard Or son Spencer thir ty year s later provides a glimpse of attitudes and actions that characterized Mor mon-Federal relations dur ing the difficult year s of the Utah War and its after math. Fur ther more, the 1889 jur y decision finding Spencer innocent reveals an ambivalence about law and order that existed in many par ts of the countr y as well. Br igham Young’s 1861 statement recorded by Wilford Woodr uff in the 1889 Salt Lake Herald indicate that Spencer did kill Pike. However, two questions remain—who posted Spencer’s six thousand dollar bail, and who financed the fir st-rate set of four lawyer s who defended Spencer in his May 1889 tr ial? It appear s that Mor mon church l e a d e r s a n d m e m b e r s d i d n o t w a n t S p e n c e r t o b e c o n v i c t e d o f murder 33

Vindicated, Howard Spencer quietly retur ned to beautiful and isolated Long Valley where for the remaining three decades of his life he f ar med a n d r a n c h e d w h i l e r e n d e r i n g c o m m u n i t y a n d c h u r c h ser vice. He died at the age of seventy-nine on March 4, 1918, after an accidental f all from a br idge over the Virg in River in Glendale nearly sixty year s after the encounter with Ralph Pike in Rush Valley.

33 As noted, Hiram Clawson and Br igham Young Jr were both mar r ied to Howard Spencer’s sister s. Hiram Clawson was also mar r ied to two of Br igham Young’s daughter s and had ser ved as Br igham Young’s pr ivate secretar y Both Clawson and Young had access to money and influence and both were ver y interested in seeing Spencer found innocent.

BOOK REVIEWS

Reflections of a Mor mon Histor ian: Leonard J Ar r ington on the New Mor mon

Histor y Essays by Leonard J Ar r ington, edited by Reid L. Neilson and Ronald W Walker (Nor man: The Ar thur H. Clark Company, 2006. 360 pp Cloth, $36.95.)

NEARLY A DECADE after his death comes another book of Leonard Ar r ington essays. Offered fondly and optimistically by editor s Reid Neilson and Ronald Walker Reflections of a Mor mon Histor ian is composed mainly of Ar r ington ar ticles; two previously unpublished, and twelve that have done earlier ser vice An extraordinar y collection of photos is offered along with a “chronology” of Ar r ington’s life bor rowed from the Ar r ington Paper s Reg ister at Utah State Univer sity Librar y Joining the editor s in the pref ator y mater ial are Susan Ar r ington Madsen whose “foreword” is br ief but intimate, and David Whittaker. The latter’s “Ar r ington Bibliog raphy” r uns to thir ty-five pages, and lists approximately fifty-eight books, monog raphs and pamphlets, three hundred for ty-three ar ticles and chapter s in books, as well as for ty-nine reviews, and eighty addresses and duplicated paper s. A quick glance at the ar ticles suggests that a large por tion of them are on Mor mon topics but that quite a number of impor tant titles are in economic, ag r icultural, and state and reg ional histor y; other fields upon which Ar r ington’s reputation rested. The book and monog raph titles appear to be about equally divided between Mor mon histor y and his other interests. Here, however, the more impor tant titles f all in the relig ious histor y categor y, yet, consider ing the peculiar ities of Mor mon culture, Ar r ington’s approach might simultaneously be considered to have been secular if not indeed general histor y as suggested by Dale Morgan’s comment in a 1959 review that Great Basin Kingdom went a f air piece “on the road toward being a ‘general histor y’” of Utah.

The editor s’ input also includes Walker’s nostalg ic salute, “Mor monism’s ‘Happy Wa r r i o r. ’ ” T h i s e s s ay s u m m a r i z e s A r r i n g t o n ’ s ro l e i n j u m p - s t a r t i n g t h e N ew Mor mon Histor y movement, a professionalized and vastly invigorated Mor mon interest in histor ical scholar ship, and the LDS church’s exper iment with profess i o n a l i z e d h i s t o r y i n t h e 1 9 7 0 s a n d 1 9 8 0 s . I t a l s o n o t e s t h e r i s e o f a m o d e s t cr itique of Ar r ington’s work within the movement. The editor s’ “pref ace” focuses o n t h e N ew M o r m o n H i s t o r y e l e m e n t s o f A r r i n g t o n ’ s c a re e r a n d n o t e s h i s “deter mination” to substitute a “middle way” for the defensive institutionalism of much previous Mor mon histor y. They also note a “less parochial…[more] intercultural spir it” in the cur rent development of “Mor mon Studies prog rams” and “conferences,” and in mounting interest at “prestig ious presses” which lead them t o o f f e r t h e s e e s s ay s b e c a u s e t h ey a d d re s s t h e “ h ow ” o f M o r m o n h i s t o r y a n d especially because they are “prologue” to “challenges” inherent in this broadening approach. (16-17)

Like the title, the organization of Ar r ington’s essays reflects the editor s’ pr imar y i n t e re s t i n M o r m o n s t u d i e s T h ey a r r a n g e t h e m i n t h re e p a r t s : ( 1 ) b i og r a p hy,

allowing Ar r ington to reflect on his development as a histor ian; (2) essays on the for matting and meaning of professionalized Mor mon histor y; (3) Mor mon histor iog raphy’s need for sweeping generalization, biog raphy, and intellectual tradition. While these directions hold the essays on the New-Mor mon-Histor y-track the careful reader will be moved by their autobiog raphical aspects. Appear ing again a n d a g a i n i s A r r i n g t o n t h e re g i o n a l i s t , t h e e c o n o m i s t , a n d t h e s t a t e h i s t o r i a n (par ticularly for Utah and Idaho). And g ratefully, there in full force also is the aff able organization man whose work was often superlative, but not always; pulling together, pointing, advocate of the record tur ned to wr itten word.

As one reviews this book for reader s of the Utah Histor ical Quar terly one is especially aware of Ar r ington’s role in the seismic re-organization of histor y’s professional str ucture that came as result of World War II and the G.I. Bill’s impact. More than any other scholar in the Inter mountain West he was par t of the process that changed the Mississippi Valley Histor ical Association, (in place since the tur n-ofthe-twentieth-centur y-decades), into the Organization of Amer ican Histor ians on the one hand and on the other created the Wester n Histor y Association of which Ar r ington was one of the earliest presidents. He was also a pr ime mover in the Pa c i f i c C o a s t B r a n c h o f t h e A m e r i c a n H i s t o r i c a l A s s o c i a t i o n , t h e A g r i c u l t u r a l Histor y Association, of which he was also president, and par ticularly active in the Utah and Idaho state histor ical societies, both of which were revitalized dur ing his time. His role was paramount in getting jour nals up and r unning in both the Mor mon Histor y Association and the Wester n Histor y Association and no man’s list of fr iends was larger nor more widely spread.

For year s his colorful ties and happy banter were standard f are as he talked from t a bl e t o t a bl e w h i l e c h a i r s f i l l e d a t t h e U t a h S t a t e H i s t o r i c a l S o c i e t y ’ s a n nu a l b a n q u e t s . L o n g b e f o re h e j o i n e d R ay B i l l i n g t o n , H owa rd L a m a r, a n d M a r t i n Ridge to organize the Wester n Histor y Association or with Davis Bitton, Ron Walker and Eugene England breathed life into the New Mor mon Histor y the Utah Histor ical Quar terly was his outlet and the Utah State Histor ical Society his launching pad. Indeed, for a time its director s, preser vation officer s, histor ic site committee member s and at least two editor s were people he helped br ing over from academia and the Chair man of the Board of State Histor y, Milton Abrams, was his close fr iend and ally at Utah State Univer sity.

CHARLES S. PETERSON St. George

Rec laiming Diné Histor y: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita

By

Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Tucson: The Univer sity of Ar izona Press, 2007. xiv + 241 pp Cloth, $45.00; paper, $19.95.)

BY DEFINITION, the word “reclaim” means to restore, tur n from er ror, or take back. Jennifer Denetdale proclaims, “as the fir st Diné with a Ph.D in histor y” (xi), that her mission is to “cr itiqu[e] works that refuse to acknowledge the colonial nature in which we continue to live and then advanc[e] studies that pr ivilege Diné worldview” for the better ment of Navajo communities and a tr ue restoration of their histor y.(45) In this book, a result of her doctoral studies, she has two objectives: “I intend to examine existing histor ies that focus on Manuelito [her g reat, g reat, g reat g randf ather] and pay little attention to Juanita [Manuelito’s wife] in order to demonstrate that much of what has been wr itten about Navajos by non-Navajos reflects Amer ican biases ” and “second[ly] to demonstrate that Navajos perceive their own past differently” because of a cultural belief system based on oral tradition.(7) This “anti-colonial” theme, constantly restated throughout, is the axe being g round. The question then becomes how shar p the blade and what is going to be chopped.

The bulk of the book’s content is actually a review of the literature sur rounding who should wr ite about Native people. The author provides an exhaustive ar ray of author s who feel that one has to be a native (not necessar ily from the same culture) to be successful. While “Wester n cultural constr uctions have ser ved to keep str uctures of inequalities and injustices entrenched....Native scholar s have declared our intellectual endeavor s should suppor t Native sovereignty ”(14,18) An histor ian walks a fine line when wr iting histor y for contemporar y political purposes. The underlying assumption is “genetic deter minism” or the idea that one has to be of a cer tain race or a Native-of-some-type in order to really under stand. Consequently, non-Native histor ians have missed the canoe and are flounder ing in the water s of misunder standing. There are a few cling ing to the side that meet Denetdale’s approval, but none are totally on board. The reason: they do not come from an oral tradition; therefore, they can’t “get it.” No mention is made of ethnohistor y, which has been in full bloom for more than thir ty year s, dur ing which scholar s from all walks of life have been extremely fr uitful in combining culture and histor y for clar ity of under standing. To recognize this is to remove one of the straw men.

There are other straw men neatly hewed by the ax. Who is going to argue with the idea that there should be more Native scholar s wr iting about their culture or that under standing a people’s relig ious teachings and cultural metaphor s advances inter pretation of histor ical events or that histor y wr itten in the past has not been as culturally sensitive as it is today or that the U.S. gover nment has been less than stellar in its treatment of Native Amer icans? These are all handy targets that illus-

trate Wester n wr iting has “been projects of imper ialism,” but it also ignores the tremendous contr ibution provided by the evil “colonials.”

How big this contr ibution has been is found in the book’s endnotes and bibliog raphy. By my calculation, only 15 percent of her sources are by or from Native Amer icans and many of those references were collected by non-Natives The two chapter s that come closest to the author’s stated objectives are the biog raphical account of Manuelito and the stor ies about Juanita The Manuelito chapter has 122 endnotes, six of which cite a Navajo source, and half of these are contemporar y interviews Nineteen endnotes are from or ig inal documents, most of which are cited from secondar y sources; almost the entire chapter is based on secondar y sources

There are two problems with this. The most obvious is that an histor ian needs to go to or ig inal sources to deter mine what happened. There is little of that here, but it does not need to be that way One six volume ser ies cited, Through White Men’s Eyes by J Lee Cor rell, is a vast collection of pr imar y source documents sur rounding the Long Walk per iod (1860s) with frequent mention of Manuelito. No substantive use was made of it to tell an or ig inal stor y or new inter pretation. I n s t e a d , t h e re i s a re h a s h i n g o f eve n t s f ro m s e c o n d a r y s o u rc e s ( t h e “ c o l o n i a l ” view), even though scholar s already cr iticized some of these sources for significant inaccuracy. There is nothing “Navajo” about her render ing of these events. One might argue that only the wr itten white view now exists, but there are a number of books based on testimony g iven by Navajo people about their, or their f amily’s, exper ience dur ing that time. If the Navajo view is the only valid possibility—then these sources should have been used.

The chapter about Juanita raises different problems. Here, the author attempts to integ rate f amily oral tradition “to rewr ite our histor ies in ways that more accurately reflect our exper iences, especially under colonialism.”(129) Again, out of sixty-three endnotes, five are oral inter views coming from four f amily member s. They provide small snippets of f amily recollections about Juanita, which quickly pushes the author to other topics or per sonal reflection. Of histor y, there is little An already published shor t account of the Navajo creation stor y is a br ief foray by the author to use traditional nar rative mater ials. Remember, her stated pur pose is to provide new insight, showing how some aspect of Navajo histor y relates to this type of teaching. There is some discussion about the role of women as defined in this nar rative, but consider ing that Navajo culture is matr ilineal, it is all too shor t and general. An endnote explains that the author chose to use an already existing account to maintain pr ivacy, which is fine, but if her intent is to explain Navajo thought and inter pret histor ic events from an oral tradition, then she is going to have to say something new somewhere The level of the Navajo creation stor y presented here is well known, discussed openly by tr ibal member s, and found extensively in reser vation school cur r iculum.

A final obser vation; in an attempt to be a pro-Navajo activist who will throw off the oppressive yoke of colonial r ule, Denetdale abandons good ethnohistor ical practices. To bor row a metaphor from a different arena, her wr iting of histor y is

like “playing tennis without a net.” Unwilling to use much of any or ig inal wr itten or oral sources, the author ends up either cr itiquing other scholar s’ wr iting or presenting histor y as she would like it to have been. Take for example, the issue of M a nu e l i t o t a l k i n g a b o u t e d u c a t i o n a s a l a d d e r T h i s i s s o we l l k n ow n , i t h a s become a cliché in several for ms—the song “Go My Son” with its obligator y sign l a n g u a g e , t h e M a n u e l i t o S c h o l a r s h i p s o f f e r e d b y t h e t r i b e , a n d t h e g l o s s y brochures that promote education through the picture of a ladder—as examples. The author does a ver y good job of explaining all of the second and third hand accounts of this utterance, but then points out that “no wr itten document testifies to its authenticity ”(82) Still, it works to promote education, and Manuelito was ver y much in f avor of that. Should the metaphor, however, be per petuated? Ask Mason Weems about George Washington and the cher r y tree. Where does this leave us? Denetdale’s perception of histor y and the Navajo people lies at the center of how she chooses to por tray them. To her, they are a down-trodden people held captive by the colonial, capitalist system that has created 150 year s of enslavement. The white man has created a ser ies of symbols that he refuses to let go and sees Navajo traditional dress and culture as a reaffir mation of these stereotypes. I feel differently I see Navajo people as anything but down trodden. They cer tainly have their share of issues, some of which do come from the capitalist system of the dominant society. But they are hardly passive and heavily exploited. I see them now, as well as in the past, char ting their own cour se and being successful at it. Their future is br ight and ver y much in their own hands. Thus, perhaps this is the ultimate straw man—to rewr ite (reclaim)a people’s histor y that can stand on its own mer its r ight beside its oral tradition.

ROBERT S. MCPHERSON College of Easter n Utah/San Juan Campus

Religion, Politics, and Sugar; The Mor mon Churc h, the Federal Gover nment, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921 By Matthew C Godfrey (Logan: Utah State Univer sity Press, 2007. vi + 226 pp Cloth, $34.95.)

RELIGION, POLITICS, AND MONEY sounds like the cr itical elements of Dan Brown’s next best selling novel. But in this new book, Matthew Godfrey uses these themes to tell the f ascinating and impor tant stor y of a sugar beet company in the Mountain West. It is a stor y of a young relig ion headquar tered in the har sh environment of the Inter mountain West tr ying to help its relatively poor people improve their economic circumstances It is a stor y of a gover nment slowly shifting from a philosophy of laissez-f aire (which really meant suppor t for business over labor and consumer) to a philosophy of regulator y capitalism. And finally it is a stor y of money of profits, of market forces and of a church’s involvement in both.

The stor y Matthew Godfrey tells is essentially this: The Church of Jesus Chr ist of Latter–day Saints (Mor mons), having settled in the Great Basin of Utah in 1847 but having spread into other mountain states, is the dominant ecclesiastical organization of the reg ion. In the eyes of its cr itics it is also much more than that—it is the dominant organization in the reg ion regardless of the field. Not content in providing only relig ious direction, the church is desirous of helping improve the economic circumstances of its people as well. In doing so, the church becomes involved in establishing and helping g row the sugar beet industr y After all, it could p rov i d e a c a s h c ro p f o r f a r m e r s , j o b s f o r o t h e r s i n t h e p ro c e s s i n g p l a n t s , a n d improve the self-sufficiency of its member s all at the same time

With these goals in mind, the church helped organize and finance fledgling s u g a r c o m p a n i e s . I t t h e n b e c a m e a m a j o r s t o c k h o l d e r i n t h e c o n s o l i d a t i o n o f several small sugar beet companies into the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company in 1907. Church president Joseph F Smith became the new cor poration’s fir st president. This close relationship continued for most of the cor poration’s histor y Heber J Grant, who succeeded Smith as church president also ser ved as company president. Following Grant’s death in 1945, George Alber t Smith became church president a n d p re s i d e n t o f t h e U t a h - I d a h o S u g a r C o m p a ny I n t u r n , D av i d O M c K ay succeeded Smith in the same two positions as well. Fur ther more, Charles Nibley, a self-made millionaire, and Presiding Bishop of the church ser ved as vice president and general manager for many year s until his death in 1931.

The church’s deep involvement in the local economy and pr ivate enter pr ise was not new. Br igham Young successfully promoted cooperatives through out Mor mon Countr y in the nineteenth centur y. But in the twentieth centur y Amer ican attitudes toward large and powerful cor porations were chang ing Big business and monopolies were under attack by intellectuals, f ar mer organizations, labor, and social activists At this time, many industr ies such as railroads, oil, steel, and sugar were dominated by a few companies Enor mous pressure was placed on gover nment to break up or at least regulate the cor porations controlling these powerful industr ies The national g ove r n m e n t re s p o n d e d t o t h e p re s s u re T h e S h e r m a n A n t i - Tr u s t A c t ( 1 8 9 0 ) , Clayton Anti-Tr ust Act (1914) and the Federal Trade Commission (1914) were all federal actions to either dismantle or regulate the monopolies

After months of investigation and hear ings, the Federal Trade Commission filed suit charg ing the Mor mon church with such unf air trade practices as working a g a i n s t t h e c re a t i o n o f o t h e r s u g a r b e e t e n t e r p r i s e s t h a t wo u l d c o m p e t e w i t h Utah-Idaho, and setting sugar pr ices so high as to “gouge” its own people

However, the book is more than a stor y of this lawsuit Godfrey provides a f ascinating and f air-minded stor y of how the Mor mon church and the national gover nment clashed over relig ion, profits, markets, and power dur ing the Prog ressive Era The book is an enjoyable read and provides an excellent analysis of major trends sweeping across the Amer ican landscape in the early twentieth centur y

MICHAEL CHRISTENSEN South Jordan

Bags to Ric hes: The Stor y of I.J Wagner By Don Gale (Salt Lake City: The Univer sity of Utah Press, 2007. xx + 202 pp Cloth, $25.95.)

FROM RECYCLING used burlap bags, bottles, batter ies, bar rels, and bootleg stills—no, not their s—to buying, selling and investing in real estate and businesses, I s a d o re Wa g n e r t o o k h i s f a m i l y ’ s b a g c o m p a ny f ro m e a r l y t we n t i e t h - c e n t u r y pover ty to postwar prosper ity In the doing, until his death in 2003 at age eightynine, this Utah native and son of immig rant Jews built his for tune, altered Salt Lake City’s cityscape, and gave back to the community “[He] wor r ied that he might leave the world before his account was in the balance, ” Don Gale wr ites in his unabashedly delightful book, Bags to Ric hes:The Stor y of I.J Wagner A Utah author and broadcaster, Gale parallels the der r ing-do of one of Salt Lake City’s “f avor ite sons” and noted “gadfly” with the city’s comingof-age

I.J. “Izzi” Wagner was a major influence in urban development at a time when downtown Salt Lake City, r iddled with a proliferation of railroad tracks and billboards, was in need of a f ace-lift. He not only helped eliminate the tracks but, f acing down cr iticism which went on for decades, reduced the amount of conspicuous signage

Wagner volunteered on multiple city and community boards. His mother’s sage advice coupled with his tenacity ear ned him praise as “the catalyst, advocate, leader,” and “conscience” behind such projects as the Salt Lake Inter national Air por t and the Salt Palace Convention Center His char itable bent emphasizing diversity and tolerance helped build the Jewish Community Center which bears his name

Gale wr ites Wagner’s “word was his bond,” his handshake his contract. In 1990, that concord coupled with the donated site of his childhood home gave credence to the Rose Wagner Perfor ming Ar ts Center.

Izzi’s parents Rose and Har r y Wagner were from Nor ther n and Easter n Europe and ar r ived in Utah in 1913 with three dollar s to their name Their small adobe home on 144 West Third South had neither sewer line nor r unning water and was sur rounded by a brothel, a small hotel, and several street-level bordellos When H a r r y a r r ive d h o m e w i t h u s e d f l o u r s a c k s i n h a n d , R o s e k n ew t h ey h a d t h e ing redients for a viable business: the Wagner Bag Company

Izzi hawked out-of-date paper s to out-of-towner s when he was six year s old. Later, he worked at Maur ice War shaw’s fr uit stand. He played the violin, took boxing lessons to defend against those intolerant of his ethnicity, and lear ned how to dance. When Har r y died suddenly in 1932, the f amily was in debt, and seventeenyear-old Izzi left his schooling at the Univer sity of Utah to take over the company

Over the year s, childhood fr iends became business par tner s; successes reinforced other s and much land was bought up around downtown. Wagner Industr ial Park was among the fir st of its kind in Utah.

Dur ing World War II, Wagner joined the Mar ines. A mosquito bite and malar ia

saved him from becoming a Pacific casualty in the bloody battle of Tarawa. In 1 9 4 2 , h e m a r r i e d t h e l ove o f h i s l i f e , M o r m o n v a u d e v i l l e d a n c e r J e a n n é Rasmussen, and by 1953, his company employed seventy people, produced fiftythousand bags a day, and impor ted millions of yards of burlap from India. When Wa g n e r B a g C o m p a ny m e r g e d w i t h S t R e g i s Pa p e r C o m p a ny i n 1 9 6 0 , t h e undisclosed amount of money ensured each f amily member a “comfor table” life.

Bags to Ric hes, a chronology of Wagner’s ver ve and exper iences, reads like a tr ibute rather than a scholarly biog raphy With unbr idled enthusiasm for a dear fr iend, Gale occasionally tumbles into excessive flatter y and repetition. The inclusion of Wagner’s stereotypic slur about Jews getting the best pr ice is unfor tunate

An ancillar y to Gale’s generous por trait is his well-seasoned comprehension of the complexities of business and its power broker s. Using practical prose, anecdotal accounts, and musings gleaned from five year s of daily conver sations with Wagner, Gale offer s rare insight into the waning genre of businessmen who value tzedakah as well as their millions. A good man, indeed, a good read.

EILEEN HALLET STONE Salt

Thunder Over Zion: The Life of Chief Judge

W. Ritter.

and Parker M. Nielson. (Salt Lake City: The Univer sity of Utah Press, 2007. xii + 372 pp Cloth, $34.95.)

THUNDER OVER ZION: The Life of Chief Judge Willis W. Ritter is an affectionate a n d e n g a g i n g p o r t r a i t o f a n u nu s u a l l y c o n t rove r s i a l U t a h f i g u re w h o w i e l d e d extraordinar y power over the legal aff air s of Utah for almost three decades. It is well-researched and well-wr itten and should be read by anyone with an interest in Utah legal histor y. The reader should be forewar ned of the book’s flaws, however.

Patr icia Cowley, mar r ied to a Utah lawyer, star ted the book and completed most of the research. When her health did not per mit her to finish the work, Parker Nielson, a Salt Lake City lawyer, completed the project, utilizing (and extending) Ms Cowley’s research and his own extensive personal exper ience with Judge Ritter

The book provides substantial infor mation about Willis Ritter’s backg round and somewhat dysfunctional upbr ing ing and it provides possible insights into the i r a s c i b i l i t y t h a t o f t e n s u r f a c e d d u r i n g h i s j u d i c i a l c a r e e r W h e n h i s p a r e n t s divorced, he stayed with his f ather and his brother s went with his mother, whom he rarely saw thereafter When Ritter’s f ather was unable to adequately provide for his son, Willis moved in with his uncle and aunt, Willis and Mar y Adams.

It is exceptional that Park High School’s class of 1918, consisting of eighteen g raduates, included not only Willis Ritter, but also Roger Traynor, future Chief Justice of the Califor nia Supreme Cour t and one of the most prominent and

Lake City

Willis

By Patr icia F. Cowley

well-respected judges in the countr y for many year s. Traynor was valedictor ian, Ritter salutator ian.

Ritter owed his appointment as a federal judge to Senator Elber t Thomas, an i m p o r t a n t m e n t o r w h o h a d b e e n R i t t e r ’ s p o l i t i c a l s c i e n c e t e a c h e r a t t h e U n ive r s i t y o f U t a h a n d o n w h o s e c a m p a i g n s R i t t e r wo r ke d t i re l e s s l y W h e n Tillman Johnson, who had ser ved as the sole federal judge in Utah for thir ty-three year s, finally decided to retire at the age of ninety-one, Thomas kept a promise to nominate Ritter for the post. The difficulties over the nomination, including the always-difficult relig ious and political tensions in Salt Lake City, make for a compelling tale

Thomas, a Democrat and practicing Mor mon, was encouraged to appoint John S Boyden, who, like Ritter, shared political affiliation with Thomas and, unlike Ritter, relig ious affiliation, and was apparently tor n in deciding whom to nominate. According to the biog raphy, recently-elected Ar thur V. Watkins, a Republican and Mor mon, employed Er nest Wilkinson and other s in an attempt to make sure that Ritter was not appointed.

It is in the descr iption of confir mation proceedings that the biases of the book b e c o m e m o s t ev i d e n t S e n a t o r A r t h u r Wa t k i n s , “ R u b e ” C l a r k ( L D S c h u rc h J Reuben Clark), Er nest Wilkinson, and John Boyden are all demonized in tur n, u s i n g t e r m s t h a t d o n o t d o t h e b o o k j u s t i c e E x a m p l e s i n c l u d e re f e r r i n g t o Watkins and Clark and their “minions,” (89) their “lies”(119), their “clever stratagem of deception to manipulate the Senate Judiciar y Committee”(142) and to Boyden as “devious,” (104)as the “ master manipulator,”(108)and as one who exhibited “paranoia.”(147)These ter ms either need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt o r t o n e d d ow n T h e re i s l i t t l e d o u b t t h a t Wa t k i n s a n d Wi l k i n s o n a n d C l a r k used hardball political tactics in an attempt to block an appointment they found objectionable, but naming chapter s 10 and 11 “Smear” and “Watkins’ Folly” is over statement.

Chief Judge Ritter’s judicial career, with all its controver sies and attainments, is descr ibed at some length, though the controver sies are under stated Ritter ultim a t e l y i s d e s c r i b e d a s o n e w h o wa s a n “ u ny i e l d i n g , t i re l e s s bu lwa r k a g a i n s t o p p re s s i o n by t h o s e i n p owe r, s e c u l a r o r re l i g i o u s ” ( 3 0 4 ) T h e b o o k d o e s n o t always directly address the problem of who would protect attor neys and litigants from the oppression of Chief Judge Ritter, a man with enor mous secular power The biog rapher s are not blind to Ritter’s f aults, but find g reater f aults in his antagonists.

Ritter appear s genuinely to have been br illiant and, in the context of cer tain legal concepts, par ticularly in the cr iminal area, f ar ahead of his time. His decisions were refer red often to when the United States Supreme Cour t afforded defendants impor tant r ights and protections that have now become f amiliar to ever yone in the United States. Not sur pr isingly, the book’s analysis of Ritter’s impor tant r ulings is excellent.

The book contains a few unexpected editing gaffes. “Eugene” McCar thy’s anticommunist cr usade is referenced (158) and a reference to “Heber Grant Ivins,” (48) clearly LDS church leader Anthony W Ivins, should have been caught by a careful editor. Both names are cor rectly referenced in other passages in the book.

The author s suggest that many of the character flaws exhibited by Judge Ritter and some of the troubles he encountered in his mar r iage and f amily may have been tr iggered by “the injustice of attacks dur ing his confir mation” or “may have been the effect of alcohol abuse in later year s.”(294) A more plausible explanation i s t h a t , a s s o m e s u g g e s t e d a t t h e t i m e o f t h e c o n f i r m a t i o n h e a r i n g s , R i t t e r ’ s t e m p e r a m e n t wa s n o t s u i t a bl e t o a l i f e - t e nu re d f e d e r a l j u d g e E l b e r t T h o m a s feared this and should have followed up on his fear s. My guess is that, while tr ial lawyer s like having smar t judges, the vast major ity, if they had to choose between br illiance and f air ness in a judge, would choose the latter It is too bad that Utah’s pr incipal federal judge for thir ty year s exhibited mental acuity but did not always exhibit the equity and the appearance of f air ness to which all should be entitled.

I n s p i t e o f i t s f l aw s , t h i s b i og r a p hy i s u l t i m a t e l y a wo r t hy c o n t r i bu t i o n t o our histor y that provides both infor mation and insights into one of Utah’s most interesting character s.

KENNETH L. CANNON II Salt Lake City

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY FELLOWS

THOMAS G ALEXANDER JAMES B ALLEN

LEONARD J ARRINGTON (1917-1999) MAUREEN URSENBACH BEECHER FAWN M. BRODIE (1915-1981) JUANITA BROOKS (1898-1989) OLIVE W. BURT (1894-1981) EUGENE E. CAMPBELL (1915-1986) C GREGORY CRAMPTON (1911-1995)

EVERETT L. COOLEY (1917-2006) S GEORGE ELLSWORTH (1916-1997) AUSTIN E. FIFE (1909-1986) PETER L. GOSS LEROY R. HAFEN (1893-1985) JOEL JANETSKI

JESSE D JENNINGS (1909-1997) A. KARL LARSON (1899-1983) GUSTIVE O LARSON (1897-1983) BRIGHAM D MADSEN CAROL CORNWALL MADSEN

DEAN L. MAY (1938-2003) DAVID E. MILLER (1909-1978) DALE L. MORGAN (1914-1971) WILLIAM MULDER FLOYD A. O’NEIL

HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS (1917-2004) CHARLES S PETERSON RICHARD W SADLER MELVIN T SMITH WALLACE E. STEGNER (1909-1993) WILLIAM A. WILSON

HONORARY LIFE MEMBERS

DAVID BIGLER JAY M. HAYMOND FLORENCE S JACOBSEN STANFORD J LAYTON WILLIAM P MACKINNON JOHN S MCCORMICK MIRIAM B MURPHY LAMAR PETERSEN RICHARD C ROBERTS MELVIN T SMITH MARTHA R. STEWART GARY TOPPING

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Depar tment of Community and Culture Division of State Histor y

BOARD OF STATE HISTORY

MICHAEL W HOMER, Salt Lake City, 2009, Chair CLAUDIA F BERRY, Midvale, 2009

MARTHA SONNTAG BRADLEY, Salt Lake City, 2009 SCOTT R. CHRISTENSEN, Salt Lake City, 2009

RONALD G COLEMAN, Salt Lake City, 2011 MARIA GARCIAZ, Salt Lake City, 2011

ROBERT S MCPHERSON, Blanding, 2011 CHERE ROMNEY, Salt Lake City, 2011

MAX J SMITH, Salt Lake City, 2009 GREGORY C THOMPSON, Salt Lake City, 2011 MICHAEL K. WINDER, West Valley City, 2009

ADMINISTRATION

PHILIP F NOTARIANNI, Director WILSON G. MARTIN, State Histor ic Preser vation Officer ALLAN KENT POWELL, Managing Editor KEVIN T JONES, State Arc haeologist

The Utah State Histor ical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spir ited Utahns to collect, preser ve, and publish Utah and related histor y Today, under state sponsor ship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Histor ical Quar terly and other histor ical mater ials; collecting histor ic Utah ar tif acts; locating, documenting, and pres e r v i n g h i s t o r i c a n d p re h i s t o r i c bu i l d i n g s a n d s i t e s ; a n d m a i n t a i n i n g a s p e c i a l i z e d research librar y. Donations and g ifts to the Society’s prog rams, museum, or its librar y are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preser ving the record of Utah’s past.

This publication has been funded with the assistance of a matching g rant-in-aid from the National Park Ser vice, under provisions of the National Histor ic Preser vation Act of 1966 as amended.

This prog ram receives financial assistance for identification and preser vation of histor ic proper ties under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The U S Depar tment of the Inter ior prohibits unlawful discr imination on the basis of race, color, national or ig in, age, or handicap in its federally assisted prog rams. If you believe you have been discr iminated against in any prog ram, activity, or f acility as descr ibed above, or if you desire fur ther infor mation, please wr ite to: Office of Equal Oppor tunity, National Park Ser vice, 1849 C Street, NW, Washington, D.C., 20240.