By Victoria Reed.
On the 24th of July, 1847, Brigham Young and a few followers pitched
their tents at the base of the Wasatch Range--a spur of the Rocky
Mountains. This was the nucleus of what is now known as the flourishing
city of Salt Lake. These pioneers came across the vast plains, over the
desolate mountains and entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake through
Emigration Canon. Their first view of the locality was from the mouth of
the canon which is at an elevation of seven hundred feet above the city,
and from this eminence the clearness of the atmosphere enabled them to
see mountain ranges ninety miles distant.
The wide valley, the broad expanse of the lake with its mountainous
islands, miles in extent, and the encircling ranges, formed an
amphitheatre of unexampled grandeur and rugged beauty. The valley itself
at that time was a vast desert without tree or shrub, nothing but the
wild sage-brush and the white alkali soil could be seen, if we except
the scrub-oaks and lebanon cedars that covered the mountain sides and
the emerald colored waters of the lake. Utah was then Mexican Territory,
and this fact, as much perhaps as any other, determined Brigham Young to
settle there. When the exodus from Nauvoo took place, the Mormons were
roughly estimated at four thousand souls and probably about that number
made the first settlement in Utah; but they have increased now to over
two hundred and fifty thousand in the United States with societies in
England, Wales and Scandinavia, all flourishing and sending yearly to
Salt Lake as many as they can find means to transport. The history of
this people will probably never be fully written, but they endured
hardships, privations, sufferings, torture and death. Their settlement
of Utah was one of extreme peril and anxiety, and for years it was a
question whether they would survive or perish. Had they been actuated by
conscience, by pure religious zeal, by patriotism, by any of the nobler
sentiments, they would have made an enviable reputation in history and
gone down to posterity as a society commanding the respect and
veneration of the world; but when it is known that no community or state
even would tolerate them and that they sought this uninhabitable wild,
this unknown and then foreign territory, to escape the punishment of
their crimes, and to practise an abhorrent and barbarous tenet of their
faith, their glory departs and they look and will look in the light of
history abject and pitiable. Some conception of their great undertaking
in crossing the continent may be imagined when we reflect there were no
roads, no known way across the vast arid plains, no mountain cuts, no
bridged streams, no drinking water for miles upon miles with long
tedious marches resulting in sickness and death.
To one acquainted with the country, knowing the obstacles they overcame,
it is a matter of wonder that women and children were ever able to
perform it. It must be remembered that their destination reached, their
trials had only fairly begun. They were surrounded by savages, they were
over a thousand miles from the habitation of a white man. They had
pitched their tents on an alkali plain that had never been tilled; not a
blade of grass grew in the soil and this in a climate where not a drop
of rain or even a cloud appeared for six months in the year. Irrigation
had never been tried, and the whole scheme was an experiment, the
failure of which would have been fatal to the settlement. The first
winter was spent in their wagons and in tents, while their subsistence
was upon a scanty supply of vegetables. It is no more than common
justice to accord to this people a great undertaking in founding the
settlements of the territory, and a great triumph in their complete
success; but above and beyond this, very little can be said in their
favor.
The legal title of the Mormon church is the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter Day Saints, and in the church parlance, Salt Lake city is a state
of Zion and the real Zion is at Jackson, Missouri, to which place the
Mormons claim they are some day to return. The Mormon church is a very
complicated institution, but as perfect in its organization and
operations as the Catholic church. Church and State are inseparable and
the main complications are in the priesthood which extends to nearly
every male member of the church who has a family, thus making them all
more or less responsible for the proceedings of their leaders. This
priesthood is composed of a president, in whom is combined prophet, seer
or revelator of the church. There have been only three men to fill that
office, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and John Taylor who now occupies
the position. This chief with two councillors form the first presidency.
Next in order come the twelve apostles who hold equal authority in
church matters with the president, though the presidency is the last
resort in case of appeal. Next comes the order of the seventies, which
consists of seven presidents, each having control or presiding over
seventy priests or lower presidents, each of whom in turn, presides over
a quorum of seventy. Out of this order of seventies come the patriarchs
who dispense the blessings of the church, the high council which is an
ecclesiastical court, all these orders making up a priesthood after the
order of Melchisedec. Then follows the Aaronic priesthood which is
composed of a senior bishop with two councillors acting as president of
the state of Zion, and an indefinite number of bishops of lower rank
with elders, teachers and deacons. The Mormons claim that this is the
only apostolic church, the only church having the sign of miracles, the
laying on of hands, the giving of tongues, the baptism for the dead, the
consecration of marriage, the only church through whom and with whom God
is talking as of old. Many of the ordinances of the church are performed
in secret and are still more complicated. Although some of these rites
and ceremonies have been revealed by apostates, yet there are others of
such a character that even the bitterest seceder from the church would
not dare unfold them. With this complex system conceived after the
manner of the Jewish priesthood, and with the various revelations that
have been added from time to time, the church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints stands to-day as a very curious monument to the ingenuity of
men, the most prominent of whom were descended from Puritan fathers.
The ordinance that has given so much unpleasant notoriety to this church
is that of polygamy, or plural marriage as the Mormons designate it.
There are three kinds of marriage; the marriage for this world as in
other churches, "till death do us part;" the marriage for this world and
for eternity combined; and the marriage for eternity alone, independent
and separate from this world's relationship.
The Mormon woman has no place in the future state excepting as she
enters under the protection of her husband, so this last marriage or
sealing for eternity was instituted to enable all unmarried women, or
those who were only married for this world, to gain a foothold in the
life to come. The motto of the Mormon church is, the greater the family,
the greater the reward. Brigham Young with his nineteen families
excelled in this respect, and he will be awarded the highest seat in
Heaven. His sealed wives are said to number two hundred and fifty.
Joseph Smith has also been very popular and has had scores sealed to
him.
To uphold this peculiarly constituted church, various crimes have been
committed, varying in hue, but the Mountain Meadow Massacre, when one
hundred and nineteen men, women and children were butchered in cold
blood under a flag of truce, surpasses in atrocity any act of the savage
tribes by whom they are surrounded, and has stained indelibly the Mormon
church. Before the advent of the Union Pacific Railroad, to breath a
word against the church organization or any of its acts or resist one of
their tenets or accumulate more wealth than was acceptable to the
leaders, has always brought down instant and the severest punishment,
and the perpetrators could never be brought to justice as they were
emissaries of Brigham Young and his councillors.
It is polygamy, however, more than all their other deeds and revelations
that has entailed misery, suffering and degradation. It has been the
parent of more crime, more disloyalty, more deceit and sin generally
than all the other causes combined. It is claimed that the revelation of
polygamy came to the prophet Joseph Smith in 1843 at Nauvoo, and it was
secretly practised by him and by other members of his church; but it was
not published to the world until 1852, when Brigham Young made it known
in Utah, thinking no doubt that he was beyond the pale of civilization
and the terrors of the law. It was not made obligatory, but those who
practised it were to have greater exaltation in the next world. A woman
conforming in other respects is entitled to a seat in Heaven, but it is
reserved for the polygamist to be one with the Father. Of course there
is no room for Gentiles in the Mormon Heaven, excepting as hewers of
wood and drawers of water to some Mormon saint.
The fanatical followers of the priesthood are filled with the
superstitions of the old world, coming, as so many do from the lowest
classes of Great Britain and Scandinavia, fit subjects for all the
mummery imposed upon them in the name of religion. Brigham Young is
often quoted as saying, that he had gathered around him a set of people
that his satanic majesty himself would not have. Even after polygamy had
been openly proclaimed in Utah, their missionaries utterly repudiated
it, and in pursuance of private orders of the prophet they positively
asserted that it was not a tenet of the church. They were afraid of
bringing upon themselves the condemnation of foreign governments; but
the ignorant offshoots of European Monarchies openly commit acts here,
that they boast if perpetrated in their own land, would bring down upon
them the severest penalties of the law. The perfect indifference and
apathy of our government for so many years, however, has given the
Mormons sufficient justification for their attitude. Abroad, not only
their own security, but the large emigration which they sought and do
secure yearly, rendered necessary a great deal of deceit. Men honest and
fair-dealing in other respects have a twisted conscience in regard to
plural marriage. As a Mormon woman said, "A polygamist is the most
ingenious liar imaginable." In the earlier days on their arrival in
Zion, when securely in the toils, their money in the hands of the
elders, too far in the wilderness to make hope of return possible, these
people have awakened to the horrors of the system, and women on the day
of their arrival were hurried to the Endowment House to swell the number
of polygamic wives in the land. Perhaps of all the women in Utah those
who live in constant terror of their husbands entering polygamy are the
most to be pitied. These plural marriages are performed in private in
the Endowment House, a building in the same enclosure with the
Tabernacle and Temple. Here they take oaths of allegiance to the church
that absolve them from obedience to the laws of our country, when they
conflict with their laws. They consider their obligations to their
religion such that they perjure themselves on the witness stand in the
most unblushing manner. They thus defeat the attempts to gain evidence
of their marriages. Apostates, since the protection given to them by
United States troops and the moral support of the Gentiles, have
revealed many of the secrets of this place. This apostacy at any
previous period of their history would have cost them their lives, as
they take the most solemn oaths never to betray this most absurd and
sacrilegious performance. The Endowment House is arranged to represent
the Garden of Eden. The permanent Adam and Eve of the establishment are
a man and woman prominent in the church. A well known public functionary
who performs the ceremony represents God, while his satanic majesty
fulfils his own appropriate functions. The ordeal lasts from nine in the
morning until three in the afternoon, and one or more wives can be taken
at one ceremony.
The Miles case which attained such notoriety in Utah a short time ago
was one not altogether uncommon, in which a young girl engaged to a
Mormon Elder in London accompanied him to this country to have the
marriage ceremony performed by the fathers of the church. On their way
thither the elder felt constrained to tell this young convert that he
had already made promises of marriage to two Danish sisters who were
awaiting him in Zion; but he assured her that though he felt obliged to
fulfil all his vows yet she should be his first and only legal wife. She
reluctantly consented to this humiliating compromise and on his arrival
in Salt Lake he took the three maidens to the Endowment House and they
were in turn married to him. Unfortunately for conjugal felicity, the
English girl was made second in order on account of priority of age of
one of the Danish sisters. Terrible scenes ensued and in her indignation
this girl denounced her husband and he was brought into court on the
charge of bigamy. Only once before in the whole history of Mormonism has
the court gained evidence of these plural marriages. Wives are bound by
such terrible oaths at the marriage ceremony that they dare not give
testimony against their husbands. Also, the jurors are two-thirds
Mormons and these law breakers would never punish one of their own
number, and no person could be convicted without destroying the rights
of trial by jury. Mr. Robinson, an Englishman who has lately written a
book laudatory of the Mormons, makes the statement that "Many Mormon
women could not be happy until their husbands took other wives." A lady
who has written thrilling stories on the subject of polygamy, writes the
following in response to Mr. Robinson of a friend of hers who was a
Methodist and embraced Mormonism because she had been as she thought
miraculously healed in answer to a prayer of a Mormon Elder. Soon after
reaching Salt Lake her husband took another wife. She was an American
and had been brought up in a Christian family, so she could not take
kindly to polygamy; she thought, however, that it was something ordered
by God and that she must be very wicked to have such bitterness in her
heart towards the woman who had won her husband's love. She said, "I
thought I would go for counsel to those who were wiser and better than
I, so I paid a visit to a model family, two wives in one house who were
said to live like sisters, and exceptionally happy. I told the first
wife my story and asked her how she attained her happiness. 'Happiness,'
she replied, 'I don't know the meaning of the word, I have never seen
a happy hour since that woman came into my house and never shall until
I drop into my grave.' The second wife said, 'for the sake of peace,
I have given up every right both as woman and wife. If it were not for
my child, I would have thrown myself into the river long ago.' Then I
went to two of Brigham's wives who were held up as examples. The first
to whom I spoke said, 'I have shed tears enough since I have been in
polygamy to drown myself twice over;' the other said, 'the plains from
the Mississippi River to Salt Lake are strewed with the bones of women
who were not strong enough to bear the burdens of polygamy, and the
cemetery here is full of them; but every one of these women will wear
a martyr's crown.'" Women who give their consent to the death knell of
happiness do it on the ground that their reward will be greater in
Heaven, and that the few years in this world is as nothing in view of
eternity. Buoyed up by these hopes, women leaving large families at home
with infants in their arms, accompany their husbands and give them in
marriage to young girls who have grown up at their very doors.
They have often left their husbands and even their children behind them
in foreign lands or in our own, to gain the coveted privilege of passing
the remnant of their days in communion with the Latter Day Saints in the
glorious State of Zion. These deluded women get their deserved
punishment for deserting the highest and acknowledged duties of life, by
the ignominy and contempt heaped upon them by those who allured them
from their homes. Contact with this institution has in a few cases not
only deadened all finer sensibilities, but has trampled upon instinct,
when mothers coming with grown daughters to Utah not only marry Mormons
themselves, but urge their girls to become polygamic wives to their own
husbands. Very few probably are of this character, and the majority are
mere tools in the hands of a tyrannical priesthood.
A gentleman well versed in the history of the church in Utah writes
"that after a thousand years of Christianity and civilization, Mormons
have stripped woman of all her rights, have trampled her in the dust,
have sworn her on her life to obey her jailor husband, then have given
her the ballot and boast of their liberality."
Suffrage under a theocratic government is a farce for both man or woman
and, in the latter case, a pure mockery, as the Mormon woman has
apparently a privilege which is denied to woman elsewhere, but this
privilege is entirely out of her power to use excepting as ordered by
the church that controls her. Suffrage given to the women of Utah has
had two results; first, to increase greatly the vote for the church and
its institutions, and secondly, to make woman herself the champion of
her own degradation. Brigham Young gave the suffrage to Morman women,
and he was confident that he could manipulate this element as he had all
others in behalf of his own aggrandizement, both spiritual and temporal.
Our government and Gentile residents hoped that the franchise would be
productive of great good in opening the eyes of these women to the
knowledge of the power invested in them, to free themselves from the
superstitious obedience with which their vicegerent had enchained them;
but the folly of endowing them with our privilege so long as theocracy
exists, has been fully demonstrated. To ask for rights which are
cheerfully conceded to woman in every other section of the country,
would be utterly useless in Utah. The law of suffrage like all other
laws in Utah have been made for the sole protection of their divine
institution; so these Mormon women have only raised their voices to
uphold polygamy which they have been forced to do on all occasions when
it would benefit their church. They assembled in Mass-meeting and
petitioned Congress to propose an amendment to the constitution
sanctioning polygamy, and they have waved banners in the streets of Salt
Lake on which were inscribed "The women of Utah believe in polygamy."
The brutal teachings of Brigham Young and his councillors and all the
laws and institutions of Utah are intended to reduce woman to utter and
abject servitude, and to resist this power in the earlier days when they
were sensitive to the touch of the tyrant's will would have been a very
dangerous experiment; but now, with help stretching towards them, they
seem to be too throughly paralyzed by years of total submission to be
able to avail themselves of it.
The numbering of the vote is a very essential element in the ballot, as
by that means the priesthood has knowledge of the failure of any man or
woman to vote as they have been ordered. The Edmunds commission reports
as follows in regard to Woman's suffrage: "We are satisfied that owing
to the peculiar state of affairs in Utah--this law is an obstruction to
the speedy solution of the vexed question."
There are many laws on the statute books detrimental to women. No right
of dower exists in the territory, and the legislators at their last
session wholly refused to provide for it. There are no marriage laws--as
the Mormons hold the ordinance as strictly a Latter Day Church
prerogative. There are no laws forbidding immorality such as are found
in all other states and territories.
A prominent Mormon bishop lately asserted in the eastern press "that the
Mormon women are happy," a statement entirely contrary to that of the
women themselves who declare their state to be purgatorial.
The _Anti-polygamy Standard_ says:--"A wife lately thwarted her
husband in his attempt to enter polygamy, threatening to expose him in
court; the true spirit of Mormonism was exhibited in his reply, that the
laws of God would soon be in full force in Utah--we shall get rid of the
Gentiles, and all such Mormon women as you will be blood-atoned." This
atonement is one of the tenets of the church. Any act committed against
it has in the past been punished by death, the shedding of the guilty
persons, blood being necessary for the atonement of the sin.
A band of men called destroying angels, has committed these murderous
deeds under the guidance of the priesthood. This doctrine is no longer
in force and could not stand in the face of federal officials and a
Gentile population.
It was for many years the desire of the church to prevent any expanding
of the intellect on the part of their followers, and any casual observer
at the Tabernacle would be convinced that this and their divine
institution had done their thorough work in stamping ignorance and
misery upon a large number of the faces gathered there.
Prayer has always played an important part in both secular as well as
religious assemblages, used as a means to impress and overawe these
superstitious disciples of an all absorbing faith. Every ball, every
party, all social gatherings and even the theatre in the olden time,
opened and closed with prayer. In the dedication of a building they
bless the different parts even to shingles and nails. A full hour was
consumed when the large tabernacle was dedicated, in enumerating and
blessing the different materials that made up its construction. One
other very peculiar tenet of the church is baptism for the dead. They
are women principally who enter with enthusiasm in practising this rite,
and they have been immersed as many as twenty times in one day to insure
the future of departed friends. It was the boast of one poor simple
Scotch woman that she had secured places in Heaven for Sir William
Wallace and Robert Bruce. In accordance with a purpose of the
priesthood, children bore a prominent part in public affairs. They were
called Utah's best crop--and less than ten years ago--they formed
conspicuous portions of the audiences that gathered in the tabernacle
and theatre. Their youthful voices in concert rivalled those of the
tabernacle choir, the latter no mean institution as it numbered over
300. At the theatre, too young to hold up their heads, their mothers
tended them on pillows. This custom has gradually been abolished until
now an apostle can harangue by the hour on his favorite topic of "come
up and pay your tithing without an infant's cry to interrupt the
monotonus strain."
This theocratic government, where one man calls himself God's vicegerent
and imposes his revelations on a narrow minded fanatical class of men,
carries its own hand into all its branches, nothing being too small or
petty for its fingers to grasp, and implicit obedience is to-day, as it
always has been, the watch-word of the church. At church conferences
there is never a dissenting voice and at the polls always the same
unanimous vote. The following quotations give an idea of how the power
is placed in Utah and of what theocracy consists:--Brigham Young said
in the Tabernacle in 1869, "what is the greatest miracle that can be
wrought before God, our Saviour, the angels, the inhabitants of the
earth and the infernal regions? Is it raising the dead or healing the
sick? No--it is not--it is bringing a people to strict obedience to the
rule of the priesthood."
Orson Pratt, the learned apostle, has always taught that "people cannot
govern themselves by laws of their own making or by officers of their
own choosing, for that would be in direct rebellion to the law of God.
Absolute power vested in one man is the best and most efficient human
government. There is one kind of government that will secure permanent
prosperity and happiness, and that is theocracy or the government of God
through his prophet, seer and revelator."
President Kimball said in the tabernacle:--"Have not the majority of
this congregation made most solemn covenants and vows that they will
listen, obey and be subject to the priesthood? Have not the sisters made
the same solemn covenant before God, angels and men that they will be
subject to their husbands?"
President Taylor says:--"You want to pay your tithing fairly and
squarely, or you will find yourselves outside of the pale of the church
of the living God. You must also uphold the co-operative institutions."
Col. Hollister, a gentleman thoroughly acquainted with Mormonism, writes
thus:--"There is no rule of the people intended in the Mormon church.
There is no state government contemplated because it has every organ of
despotic state government in and of itself. It takes no account whatever
of the natural right of man to life, liberty, property, freedom of
opinion or of conscience. Its bill of rights, its constitution, its laws
are the revelations of the prophet. It has not a single idea or
institution common to free government or free men. As long as they hold
this theocratic idea, to force democratic government upon them, is a
farce. Its political party is the church and into that political party
no one can enter excepting through the church."
Polygamy disgraces us in the eyes of the world, and fills the home where
it enters with untold misery; but a theocratic government, thoroughly
equipped, unanimously responsive in all its branches, far-reaching in
its designs and expanding as rapidly as that of the Mormon church,
presents a great political enigma to the American people even when shorn
of its most obnoxious feature. Congress and the country at large have
their attention fixed upon the question of polygamy, and the proposed
legislative commission, if endorsed by Congress, would bring the Mormon
Church itself face to face with it. It is so embedded in the very roots
of their organization that many Mormons insist that it would be utterly
impossible for the church to dispense with it; and the _Deseret
News_, the church organ in the issue following the President's
Message, declares that "neither commissions, edicts or armies, or any
earthly power can affect plural marriages of the Mormons for they are
'ecclesiastical, perpetual and eternal.'" No doubt there will be a
convulsive effort made to retain the government of the Territory in
their own hands, and they might be forced to abandon polygamy to save
such a catastrophe, but would they do it in good faith?
What would their fanatical followers say if the "absolute command of
God" to Joseph Smith is no longer to be regarded. If polygamy can,
however, be happily abolished, there still remains a solid phalanx of
determined men and women manipulated by the hand of wily priests and
bishops, who do not believe in our institutions, who deny the right of
individual feeling or action, who teach the doctrine that the Latter Day
Saints will rule eventually the whole country and the world. Such
compact power, so guarded, so absolute, is certainly an unparalleled
achievement when the few years of its conception and execution in a
barren desolate waste is considered. A similar case has never been
witnessed before in the heart of any country on the globe, and it is
safe to say that no other civilized nation would have tolerated such an
anomaly in its midst. Germany even has forbidden Mormon missionaries to
come within her borders. England is profuse in condemnation of our
Government for permitting such an institution as polygamy, which she
fosters however by sending one-half the recruits that come yearly to our
shores to practise it. Scandinavia and our own land contribute the
balance, and it is confidently asserted that Massachusetts alone gives
more converts to Mormonism than are converted from it in Utah, Worthy
mechanics and skilled laborers in our manufacturing towns are joining
this standard which holds out temptations of temporal prosperity that
are difficult to resist.
The Mormon church is fast peopling the immediate surrounding
territories. Idaho is dangerously invaded and the balance of power
threatened, while Colorado and Arizona have large, growing settlements.
The first train that passed over the new narrow guage road that runs
through Colorado, carried a load of foreign emigrants to Utah. Railroads
intersect Utah in all directions, and the church is also laying her own
peculiar rails throughout the whole region of the Rocky Mountains, and
they will give promising dividends in strength and security to the
church institutions.
The Edmunds bill is a step towards the abolishment of polygamy. It has
disfranchised the law-breakers but has not had the effect of
discouraging plural marriages. Some Gentiles maintain that there are as
many solemnized now as before the passage of the bill, and the
Commission itself acknowledges that the practice still exists, though
they think there is a decrease.
However this may be, it is certainly true that strenuous efforts were
made immediately upon its adoption to force young people into polygamy;
and at the late conferences addresses were delivered enjoining upon the
people the fact that, the Kingdom of God could not progress unless they
obeyed the revelation given to Joseph Smith at Nauvoo, and God would
never forgive his people if they did not obey his commands. While these
sentiments were freely expressed in the Tabernacle, a statement is sent
to the eastern papers by a prominent member of the church that "the
Edmunds Bill has practically abolished polygamy."
To overthrow this theocratic government and to parry the subtle wiles of
the priesthood, more than ordinary attention and wisdom will be
required, and it will be a great triumph to our legislators if they can
succeed in bringing about a peaceable solution of the greatest problem
now before the American people.
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