"Repeated again that he had come for the purpose of trying John
D. Lee, because the evidence led and pointed to him as the main
instigator and leader, and he had given the jury unanswerable
documentary evidence proving that the authorities of the Mormon
Church knew nothing of the butchery until after it was committed,
and that Lee, in his letter to President Young a few weeks later,
had knowingly misrepresented the actual facts relative to the
massacre seeking to keep him still in the dark and in ignorance.
"He had received all the assistance any United States official
could ask on earth in any case. Nothing had been kept back, and he
was determined to clear the calender of every indictment against
any and every actual guilty participator in the massacre, but he
did not intend to prosecute any one that had been lured to the
meadows at the time, many of whom were only young boys, and knew
nothing of the vile plan which Lee originated and carried out for
the destruction of the emigrants."
"As stated by Mr. Howard, Lee misrepresented the facts to Brigham
Young respecting the massacre, and kept him in the dark as to
the part he had taken in the butchery, always saying it was the
Indians who had done it, and whom he tried in vain to restrain. Nor
did the facts in the case come to the knowledge of Brigham Young
until 1870; and as soon as he and the Church authorities learned
that Lee was implicated in the heartless deed, they immediately
excommunicated him from the Church,--a thing they would not dare to
do had they been connected with him in the crime, or in any degree
responsible for it.
"Numerous efforts have been made to fasten, the responsibility of
this awful crime upon the leaders of the Mormon Church. Inducements
were held out to John D. Lee to implicate Brigham Young, but all
to no purpose. After his death, however, a supposed confession of
his is published by the enemies of the Mormon people, and on that
the world is asked to believe that the Mormon Church and people are
responsible for the bloody tragedy; the thing is too monstrous and
absurd for credence. And no people more emphatically condemn that
crime than do the Latter-day Saints. Of it the late President John
Taylor said, in an article he furnished for the press, in 1882:--
"I now come to the investigation of a subject that has been harped
upon for the last seventeen years, namely, the Mountain Meadows
massacre. That bloody tragedy has been the chief stock-in-trade for
{190} penny-a-liners, and press and pulpit, who have gloated in
turns by chorus over the sickening details. 'Do you deny it?' No.
'Do you excuse it?' No. There is no excuse for such a relentless,
diabolical, sanguinary deed. That outrageous infamy is looked upon
with as much abhorrence by our people as by any other parties in
this nation or in the world, and at its first announcement its
loathing recital chilled the marrow and sent a thrill of horror
through the breasts of the listeners. It was most certainly a
horrible deed, and like many other defenceless tragedies, it is
one of those things that cannot be undone. The world is full of
deeds of crime and darkness, and the question often arises--Who is
responsible therefore? It is usual to blame the perpetrators. It
does not seem fair to accuse nations, states, and communities for
deeds perpetrated by some of their citizens, unless they uphold it."
_"It is by no means improbable that some future text book, for the
use of generations yet unborn, will contain a question something
like this: What historical American of the nineteenth century has
exerted the most powerful influence upon the destinies of his
countrymen? And it is by no means impossible that the answer to
that interrogatory may be thus written: Joseph Smith, The Mormon
Prophet."_
--_Josiah Quincy, 1844_.
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