character of the Mormons. What they were in Illinois, or what some of
their predecessors were there, it will not be difficult for those to
learn who are curious after the truth: the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas,
who as Presiding Judge of the Circuit in which they lived was often
called upon to dismiss idle charges against them, is now at Washington,
an honored member of the Senate of the United States. His personal
testimony I am assured has always vindicated his judicial action.
Some good people who believe the Mormons traduced, ask me how they
are to account for the great prevalence of these charges before the
expulsion. Interest, and feeling founded on it, is the answer. The
value of the property of which the Mormons were dispossessed in
Missouri and Illinois is currently estimated at over Twenty Millions
of Dollars: an adequate consideration certainly for a good deal
of misrepresentation on the part of those who were endeavoring to
appropriate it to themselves.
A motive sufficiently analogous explains the active circulation of
new calumnies within the last half year. Instead of being broken up
forever, as not more than five years ago their foes supposed with
reason, their Congregation is gathering in increased numbers, and
their application to be admitted as a State into the Union announces
their probable restoration to power and influence, and is a cause
of corresponding disquiet to the possessors of the properties in
Illinois and Missouri from which they have been expelled. These are
now the busiest Mormon slanderers. I speak of them with reluctance.
They are, the best of them, but interested persons, who circulate
calumnies at hearsay, calumnies which began with the original enemies
of the Mormons, the felons, that charged with unchastity the wretched
women they had ravished--with riot the men whose brothers they had
murdered--with community of Property those whom themselves had robbed,
whose houses and homes they fired over their heads on the lands from
which they drove them. Such wretches lie with the brutal strength of
Crime. And the Mormons are far away, and their few friends here are
nearly all in humble life, and those public men in the West whose duty
it was to do them justice, consent to render themselves parties to the
guilt of their constituents by their interested silence.
At all events, was there not something about their religion made their
neighbors unable to live with them?--Undoubtedly the industrious
chevaliers of the Half Breed Tract, and other like precious neighbors
of the Mormons, have in one sense proved this to be the case: perhaps,
in the course of their wolf and lamb quarrel, they may have even
said so, and before they finally devoured the offenders, complained
seriously of the insulting proximity of their good roads, good
schools, temperance and moral reform and musical associations, and
their good laws not enacted only, but enforced. I understand this to
be essentially the ground of complaint of the same marauders against
the Swedish Quaker Colony, they have lately broken up in Henry County,
above Nauvoo.
With other neighbors the Mormons have no trouble. We have had large
numbers of them in Philadelphia, and elsewhere to the East, for now
nearly twenty years past, whose good citizenship is no subject of
discussion with those who have daily business dealings with them. In
England too, they number nearly twice as many adult members as the
Baptists in Pennsylvania. Once indeed, when their religion was first
preached in that country--it was at the very time their earliest trial
before Lynch J., in Missouri, was pending--a charge was laid against
them in a manufacturing borough there, that they had made away with
an Elizabeth, or Betsey Martin, one of their new converts; and the
beginning of a mob entered upon its examination. But to her British
Majesty's Government, which holds the old fashioned notions of law
and order, it mattered as little if it were the case of Betty Martin
a Mormon, as of Betty Martin the Cyprian: a commonplace Government
Magistrate decided there should be no mob, and a commonplace legal
investigation decided the charge was groundless. The Mormons have
therefore been free to preach and sing and pray in the United Kingdom
to this hour; and I remark that Evangelic sectaries of my own
persuasion there, do battle with them in print on the same terms as
with Millerites, Wesleyans, or Seventh, or Every Day Baptists.
It is observed to me with a vile meaning, that I have said little about
the Mormon women. I have scarcely alluded to them, because my memories
of them are such that I cannot think of their character as a theme for
discussion. In one word, it was eminently that which for Americans
dignifies the names of mother, wife, and sister. Of the self-denying
generosity which went to ennoble the whole people in my eyes, I
witnessed among them the brightest illustrations. I have seen the ideal
Charity of the statue gallery surpassed by the young Mormon mother, who
shared with the stranger's orphan the breast of milk of her own child.
Can charges, which are so commonly and so circumstantially laid, be
without any foundation at all?--I know it. Upon my return from the
Prairie, I met through the settlements scandalous stories against the
President of the Sect, which dated of the precise period when I myself
was best acquainted with his self-denying and blameless life. I had
an experience no less satisfactory with regard to other falsehoods,
some of them the most extravagant and most widely believed. During
the sickness I have referred to, I was nursed by a dear lady, well
connected in New York and New Jersey, whom I sufficiently name to
many, by stating that she was the first cousin of one of our most
respected citizens, whose conduct as chief Magistrate of Philadelphia
in an excited time won for him our general esteem. In her exile, she
found her severest suffering in the belief that her friends in the
States looked upon her as irreclaimably outcast. It was one of the
first duties I performed on my return, to enlighten them as to her true
position, and the character of her exemplary husband; and the knowledge
of this fact arrived in time, I believe, to be of comfort to her before
she sank under the privation and hardship of the march her frame was
too delicate to endure.
15 July, 1850.
THOMAS L. KANE.
Footnotes:
A: Nine children were born the first night the women camped out. "Sugar
Creek," Feb. 5.
B: One of the company having a copy of Mme. Cottin's Elizabeth, it was
so sought after that some read it from the wagons by moonlight. They
were materially sustained, too, by the practice of psalmody, "keeping
up the Songs of Zion, and passing along Doxologies from front to rear,
when the breath froze on their eyelashes."
C: Rev. Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia.
D: It is certain that there is no sickness among the present
inhabitants of this region comparable to that of 1846.
E: This camp was moved by the beginning of October to winter quarters
on the river, where also, there was considerable sickness before the
cold weather. I am furnished with something over 600 as the number of
burials in the graveyard there.
F: I knew of an orphan boy, for instance, who came on by himself at
this time a foot, starting with no other provision than his trowser's
pocket full of biscuit, given him from a steamboat on the Mississippi.
G: Letter of the Presidency, Great Salt Lake City, Oct. 12, 1849.
H: This was BRIGHAM YOUNG, the choice of the Mormons for Governor
of Deseret. As this man, together with HEBER C. KIMBALL and WILLARD
RICHARDS, nominees of the same people for the offices of Lieutenant
Governor and Secretary, have been singled out as the objects of libel,
it is right I should state that I knew them intimately. I found Mr.
Kimball a man of singular generosity and purity of character, and Dr.
Richards a genial gentleman and pleasant scholar of the most varied
attainments: The integrity of all three altogether above question. T.
L. K.
I: It may be well, however, to quote from two of these.
SECTION CIX.--ON MARRIAGE.
Marriage should be celebrated with prayer and thanksgiving; and at the
solemnization, the persons to be married standing together, the man on
the right, and the woman on the left, shall be addressed by the person
officiating, as he shall be directed by the Holy Spirit; and if there
shall be no legal objections, he shall say, calling each by their
names: You both mutually agree to be each other's companion, husband
and wife; observing the legal rights belonging to this condition;
that is, keeping yourself wholly for each other, and from all others,
during your lives. And when they shall have answered "yes," he shall
pronounce them "Husband and wife in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and by virtue of the laws of the country, and authority vested in
him:" saying, "May God add his blessing, and keep you to fulfil your
covenants from henceforth and forever. Amen."
The clerk of every church should keep a record of all marriages
solemnized in his branch.
All legal contracts of marriages made before a person is baptised into
this church should be held sacred and fulfilled. Inasmuch as this
Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and
polygamy, we declare that we believe, that one man should have one
wife, and one woman but one husband, except in cases of death, when
either is at liberty to marry again. It is not right to persuade a
woman to be baptized contrary to the will of her husband, neither is it
lawful to influence her to leave her husband. All children are bound
by law to obey their parents; and to influence them to embrace any
religious faith, or be baptized, or leave their parents without their
consent, is unlawful and unjust. We believe that husband, parents, and
masters, who exercise control over their wives, children, and servants,
and prevent them from embracing the truth, will have to answer for that
sin.
SECTION CX.--ON GOVERNMENTS AND LAWS IN GENERAL.
We believe that governments were instituted of God, for the benefit
of man, and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation
to them, either in making laws or administering them for the good and
safety of Society. We believe that no government can exist in peace,
except such laws are framed, and held inviolate, as will secure to each
individual the FREE exercise of CONSCIENCE, the RIGHT and control of
PROPERTY, and the protection of life.
We do not believe it just to mingle religious influence with civil
government; whereby one religious society is fostered, and another
proscribed in its spiritual privileges, and the individual rights of
its members as citizens denied. We do not believe that any religious
society has authority to try men on the right of property or life, to
take from them this world's goods, or put them in jeopardy either of
life or limb, neither to inflict any physical punishment upon them:
they can only excommunicate them from their society, and withdraw from
their fellowship.
We believe that religion is instituted of God, and that men are
amenable to him, and to him only, for the exercise of it, unless
their religious opinions prompt them to infringe upon the rights and
liberties of others. We do not believe that human law has a right to
interfere in prescribing rules of worship to bind the consciences of
men, nor dictate forms for public or private devotion. We believe
that the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control
conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the liberty of the
soul.
THE BOOK OF DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS.--Edition printed by John Taylor, at
Nauvoo, Illinois, 1844; pp. 440--443.