THE GOVERNOR'S LADY A LETTER FROM CAMP SCOTT, 1857 EDITED BY A.
M
R.
MORTENSEN
written about the causes, real or imagined, which led up to that clash between the Mormons and the federal government variously known as the "Utah W a r , " "Echo Canyon W a r , " "Buchanan's Blunder," or the "Utah Expedition." Much also has been told about the effects of the clash upon Utah and its people with the subsequent garrisoning of the territory with a considerable body of troops. However, the complete and definitive story yet remains to be told. UCH HAS BEEN
Whatever the cause and results, the affair, when viewed objectively and from the vantage point of nearly a hundred years, has many of the earmarks of comic opera. However, to the participants at the time on both sides, the affair was real and serious enough. Brigham Young is reputed to have said when the Pioneers first entered the valley, "Give us ten years of peace and we will ask no odds of the United States." Ten years had now passed and the Mormons were faced with the realities of an approaching army on their eastern border. Ten years earlier the Latter-day Saints, after years of trouble and persecution in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, had fled to a sanctuary in the Rocky Mountains. Here they had hoped to build a community, a thousand miles from anywhere, free and unfettered from persecution. Their desire to be left alone and to build up their Kingdom of God on earth was rudely shattered by the discovery of gold and the subsequent westward movement of humanity. In a short span of time the erstwhile isolated Mormon capital found itself sitting fairly astride the great overland highroad to the Pacific. T h e increase of gentiles caused by overland travel, accelerated by the Gold Rush and augmented by federally-appointed officials after the creation of the territory, led to continual frictions which culminated in the first great crisis in Mormon affairs in the W e s t . Brigham Young now had had his ten years. How well he had builded remained to be seen.
