"By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes from
thorns or figs from thistles? Can an impure fountain send forth
pure water?"--JESUS.
Bishop D. S. Tuttle--now and for years past an Episcopal clergyman in
Salt Lake City--in a lecture on "Mormonism," published in the New York
_Sun_, November, 1877, held these views:
"In Salt Lake City alone there are over 17,000 Latter-day Saints,
Now, who are they? I will tell you, and I think, that after I have
concluded, you will look on them more favorably than you have been
accustomed to do. Springing from the centre of your own State (New
York) in 1830, they drifted slowly westward until they finally
rested in the basin of the Great Salt Lake. I know that the people
of the east have obtained the most unfavorable opinion of them,
and have {340} judged them unjustly. They have many traits that
are worthy of admiration, and they believe with a fervent faith
that their religion is a direct revelation from God. We of the east
are accustomed to look upon the Mormons as either a licentious,
arrogant or rebellious mob, bent only on defying the United States
Government and deriding the faith of the Christians. This is
not so. I know them to be honest, faithful, prayerful workers,
and earnest in their faith that heaven will bless the Church of
Latter-day Saints. Another strong and admirable feature in the
Mormon religion is the tenacious and efficient organization. They
follow with the greatest care all the forms of the old church."
From the caustic pen of Henry Edger, in the New York _Evolution_, July,
1877:
The Federal Government is doing at this moment a great injustice
to the 200,000 Mormons in Utah. We have no right to demand any
conditions of Mormons more than Presbyterians or Methodists. The
Federal Government engaged in a crusade of extermination against
a people with such a record as the Mormons have to show, is a
spectacle of which no one can be proud. Unfortunately we need not
go out into the Rocky Mountains to find debasing, superstitious
and immoral practices, sheltering themselves under the cloak of
religion; nor do we need go to Utah to find polygamy openly and
shamelessly practised. A polygamy which sacrifices utterly and
dooms to a fate most horrible all the wives but one, deceiving and
betraying her also, is surely not very much morally superior to a
polygamy that, for the first time in modern society, completely
shuts out that horrible social institution, prostitution. That
the government of the United States can virtually introduce the
brothel, the gambling house and various other charming New York
institutions into Salt Lake under color of abolishing Mormon
polygamy is unhappily only too plainly evident. Driven by mob
violence from one State to another, despoiled of their legitimate
possessions--fruits of honest toil--this despised and grossly
wronged people found their way at last across the trackless desert
and by an almost unexampled perseverance and industry created an
oasis in the desert itself.
Elder Miles Grant, the Adventist, and editor of _The World's Crisis_,
says:
"After a careful observation for some days, we came to the settled
conclusion that there is less licentiousness in Salt Lake {341}
City than in any other one of the same size in the United States;
and were we to bring up a family of children in these last days of
wickedness, we should have less fears of their moral corruption,
were they in that city than in any other. Swearing, drinking,
gambling, idleness, and licentiousness have made but small headway
there, when compared with other places of equal size."
In a late visit of Governor Safford, of Arizona, to a "Mormon" colony
on the Little Colorado, he writes:
We were kindly received by the colonists, numbering some 400 souls,
who made us welcomed and gave us freely of such comforts as they
had, as this people do to all strangers who come among them. Every
one works with a will. They have no drones, and the work they have
accomplished in so short a time is truly wonderful. All concede
that we need an energetic, industrious, economical and self-relying
people to subdue and bring into use the vast unproductive lands of
Arizona. These Mormons fill every one of the above requirements.
Tea, coffee, tobacco and spirituous liquors they do not use. They
are spoken of by those living nearest to them as the kindest of
neighbors, and all strangers receive a hearty welcome among them.
They have a splendid robust looking lot of children, and are very
desirous of having schools.
General Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania, says:
I have given you in terms the opinion my four years' experience
has enabled me to form of the Mormons, preferring to force you to
deduce it for yourselves from the facts. But I will add that I have
not heard a single charge made against them as a community--against
_their habitual purity of life_, their willing integrity, their
toleration of _religious differences_ of opinion, their regard for
the laws, their devotion to the constitutional government under
which we live--that I do not, from my own observation, or upon the
testimony of others, _know to be unfounded_.
Chief Justice White, formerly of Huntsville, Alabama, in charging the
Grand Jury, Salt Lake City, February, 1876, said:
I do not utter the language of prejudice, nor treat lightly or
derisively the Mormon people or their faith. No matter how much I
differ from them in belief, nor how widely they differ from the
American people in matters of religion, yet {342} testing them
and it by a standard which the world recognizes as just, that is,
what they have practised and what they have accomplished, and they
deserve higher consideration than ever has been accorded to them.
Industry, frugality, temperance, honesty, and in every respect but
one, obedience to the law, are with them the common practices of
life.
This land thy have redeemed from sterility, and occupied its once
barren solitudes with cities, villages, cultivated fields and farm
houses, and made it the habitation of a numerous people, where a
beggar is never seen and alms houses are neither needed or known.
These are facts and accomplishments which any candid observer
recognizes and every fair mind admits.
United States Prosecuting Attorney Dickson:
It was a matter of history that the Mormons did not cohabit
together, in the sense as used by the other side, without a form of
marriage, and it was alone this form of marriage and the practice
under it, and not sexual sins, that Congress was legislating
against. They knew that those sins are not upheld in Utah, but
are condemned by the Mormons and deplored by the Gentiles; they
recognized the Mormon system of marriage as a constant menace
against monogamous marriage, and thus legislated against it, and it
was the prevention of its continuance that was the primal object of
the law. The cause and necessity of the act showed its intention
and the only objects against which it should be directed; and for
this it could be extended to its full purpose. The design and only
purpose of the law was to root out and extirpate polygamy. The two
systems of marriage could not dwell side by side. If polygamy was
allowed to grow, without being placed under the ban of the law
and of public opinion, it would in the end supplant the monogamic
system, and was a constant threat and menace to and jeopardized
the latter, and Congress so viewed it.
The following statistics covering the year 1882, obtained mainly from
Gentile sources, furnish their own comment.
Let the reader bear in mind that the non-"Mormons" of Utah are
clamorous for the enforcement of unconstitutional laws against the
"Mormons," for the purpose of purifying their morals and Christianizing
their practices.
These men and their associates, are the ones, who engage in the
wholesale denunciation of the "Mormon" people.
{343} CRIMINAL STATISTICS.
Mormons. Non-Mormons.
Assault and battery 40 260
Assault with intent to kill 2
Assault with deadly weapons 7
Assault with intent to commit rape 1 5
Assault with threats 18
Murder 1 15
Manslaughter 1
Attempt to murder 4
Accused of murder 6
Threatening to murder 1
Mayhem 2
Dueling 1
Prostitution 95
Keeping brothels 27
Lewd conduct 6
Insulting women 3
Exposing person 9
Nuisance 5
Obscene and profane language 4 24
Forgery and counterfeiting 8
Drunkenness 68 307
Drunk and disorderly 29 151
Drunk and profane 12 136
Selling liquor without license 18
Gambling and keeping gambling houses 1 52
Mail and highway robbery 1 6
Grand larceny 3 48
Burglary 1 8
Disturbing peace 34 111
Bigamy 1
Destroying property 15 26
Arson 26
Obtaining money under false pretenses 25
Opium smoking, etc 16
Stealing railroad rides 19
Vagrancy 147
Violating prison rules 6
Total 208 1578
So that the Mormons, comprising seventy-eight per cent. of the
population of the Territory, contributed one-eighth of the arrests made
during 1882, and the non-Mormons, having only twenty-two per cent.,
contributed seven-eighths.
In those pursuits having a demoralizing tendency, the distribution was
as follows:
Mormons. Non-Mormons.
No. saloons and breweries 16 146
No. billiard tables and bowling alleys 1 46
No. gambling houses 10
Total 17 202
{344} The number of brothels throughout the Territory was twelve, all
kept by non-Mormons; number of inmates not given.
The criminal record of Salt Lake City, for 1882, shows that in a
population of about 25,000, divided between Mormons and non-Mormons as
nineteen to six, the total number of arrests was 1,561, of which 188
were Mormons, and 1,373 non-Mormons.
If it should be suspected that these territorial and city exhibits show
an unfair discrimination in favor of the Mormon population, through the
sympathy of the Mormon police officers and magistrates, such suspicion
will be removed by the summary of the records of the territorial
penitentiary for the same year. It will be recollected that for the
conviction of this class of criminals, the whole machinery of the law,
judicial and ministerial, is in the hands of the Federal government.
The number of penitentiary convicts for the year was twenty-eight. Of
these but one was an orthodox Mormon, and she a woman, confined for one
day for contempt of court; five others were Mormons only by reason of
their parentage, and the remaining twenty-two were; eight Catholics,
four Methodists, one Jew, one Adventist, one Presbyterian, and seven of
no religious faith.