UTAH.
“When you are driven hence, where shall you go?”
“We take no thought for the morrow; the Lord will guide his people,” was
my rebuke from Elder Stenhouse, delivered in the half-solemn,
half-laughing manner characteristic of the Saints. “You say miracles are
passed and gone,” he went on; “but if God has ever interfered to protect
a church, he has interposed on our behalf. In 1857, when the whole army
of the United States was let slip at us under Albert S. Johnson, we were
given strength to turn them aside, and defeat them without a blow. The
Lord permitted us to dictate our own terms of peace. Again, when the
locusts came in such swarms as to blacken the whole valley, and fill the
air with a living fog, God sent millions of strange new gulls, and these
devoured the locusts, and saved us from destruction. The Lord will guide
his people.”
Often as I discussed the future of Utah and the church with Mormons, I
could never get from them any answer but this; they would never even
express a belief, as will many Western Gentiles, that no attempt will be
made to expel them from the country they now hold. They cannot help
seeing how immediate is the danger: from the American press there comes
a cry, “Let us have this polygamy put down; its existence is a disgrace
to England from which it springs, a shame to America in which it dwells,
to the Federal government whose laws it outrages and defies. How long
will you continue to tolerate this retrogression from Christianity, this
insult to civilization?”
With the New Englanders, the question is political as well as
theological, personal as well as political--political, mainly because
there is a great likeness between Mormon expressions of belief in the
divine origin of polygamy and the Southern answers to the Abolitionists:
“Abraham was a slaveowner, and father of the faithful;” “David, the
best-loved of God, was a polygamist”--“show us a biblical prohibition of
slavery;” “show us a denunciation of polygamy, and we‘ll believe you.”
It is this similarity of the defensive positions of Mormonism and
slavery which has led to the present peril of the Salt Lake Church: the
New Englanders look on the Mormons, not only as heretics, but as friends
to the slaveowners; on the other hand, if you hear a man warmly praise
the Mormons, you may set him down as a Southerner, or at the least a
Democrat.
Another reason for the hostility of New England is, that while the
discredit of Mormonism falls upon America, the American people have but
little share in its existence: a few of the leaders are New Englanders
and New Yorkers, but of the rank and file, not one. In every ten
immigrants, the missionaries count upon finding that four come from
England, two from Wales, one from the Scotch Lowlands, one from Sweden,
one from Switzerland, and one from Prussia: from Catholic countries,
none; from all America, none. It is through this purely local and
temporary association of ideas that we see the strange sight of a party
of tolerant, large-hearted churchmen eager to march their armies against
a church.
If we put aside for a moment the question of the moral right to crush
Mormonism in the name of truth, we find that it is, at all events, easy
enough to do it. There is no difficulty in finding legal excuses for
action--no danger in backing Federal legislation with military force.
The legal point is clear enough--clear upon a double issue. Congress can
legislate for the Territories in social matters--has, in fact, already
done so. Polygamy is at this moment punishable in Utah, but the law is,
pending the completion of the railroad, not enforced. Without
extraordinary action, its enforcement would be impossible, for Mormon
juries will give no verdict antagonistic to their church; but it is not
only in this matter that the Mormons have been offenders. They have
sinned also against the land laws of America. The church, Brigham,
Kimball, all are landholders on a scale not contemplated by the
“Homestead” laws--unless to be forbidden; doubly, therefore, are the
Mormons at the mercy of the Federal Congress. There is a loophole open
in the matter of polygamy--that adopted by the New York Communists when
they chose each a woman to be his _legal_ wife, and so put themselves
without the reach of law. This method of escape, I have been assured by
Mormon elders, is one that nothing could force them to adopt. Rather
than indirectly destroy their church by any such weak compliance, they
would again renounce their homes, and make their painful way across the
wilderness to some new Deseret.
It is not likely that New England interference will hinge upon
plurality. A “difficulty” can easily be made to arise upon the land
question, and no breach of the principle of toleration will, on the
surface at least, be visible. No surveys have been held in the Territory
since 1857, no lands within the territorial limits have been sold by the
Federal land office. Not only have the limitations of the “Homestead”
and “Pre-emption” laws been disregarded, but Salt Lake City, with its
palace, its theater, and hotels, is built upon the public lands of the
United States. On the other hand, Mexican titles are respected in
Arizona and New Mexico; and as Utah was Mexican soil when, before the
treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Mormons settled on its wastes, it seems
hard that their claims should not be equally respected.
After all, the theory of Spanish authority was a ridiculous fiction. The
Mormons were the first occupants of the country which now forms the
Territories of Utah and Colorado and the State of Nevada, and were thus
annexed to the United States without being in the least degree
consulted. It is true that they might be said to have occupied the
country as American citizens, and so to have carried American
sovereignty with them into the wilderness; but this, again, is a
European, not an American theory. American citizens are such, not as men
born upon a certain soil, but as being citizens of a State of the Union,
or an organized Territory; and though the Mormons may be said to have
accepted their position as citizens of the Territory of Utah, still they
did so on the understanding that it should continue a Mormon country,
where Gentiles should at the most be barely tolerated.
We need not go further into the mazes of public law, or of _ex post
facto_ American enactments. The Mormons themselves admit that the letter
of the law is against them; but say that while it is claimed that
Boston and Philadelphia may fitly legislate for the Mormons three
thousand miles away, because Utah is a Territory, not a State, men
forget that it is Boston and Philadelphia themselves who force Utah to
remain a Territory, although they admitted the less populous Nebraska,
Nevada, and Oregon to their rights as States.
If, wholly excluding morals from the calculation, there can be no doubt
upon the points of law, there can be as little upon the military
question. Of the fifteen hundred miles of waterless tract or desert that
we crossed, seven hundred have been annihilated, and 1869 may see the
railroad track in the streets of Salt Lake City. This not only settles
the military question, but is meant to do so. When men lay four miles of
railroad in a day, and average two miles a day for a whole year, when a
government bribes high enough to secure so startling a rate of progress,
there is something more than commerce or settlement in the wind. The
Pacific Railroad is not merely meant to be the shortest line from New
York to San Francisco; it is meant to put down Mormonism.
If the Federal government decides to attack these peaceable citizens of
a Territory that should long since have been a State, they certainly
will not fight, and they no less surely will not disperse. Polynesia or
Mexico is their goal, and in the Marquesas or in Sonora they may,
perhaps, for a few years at least, be let alone, again to prove the
forerunners of English civilization--planters of Saxon institutions and
the English tongue; once more to perform their mission, as they
performed it in Missouri and in Utah.
When we turn from the simple legal question, and the still more simple
military one, to the moral point involved in the forcible suppression of
plural marriage in one State by the might of all the others, we find
the consideration of the matter confused by the apparent analogy between
the so-called crusade against slavery and the proposed crusade against
polygamy. There is no real resemblance between the cases. In the
strictest sense there was no more a crusade against slavery than there
is a crusade against snakes on the part of a man who strikes one that
bit him. The purest republicans have never pretended that the abolition
of slavery was the justification of the war. The South rose in
rebellion, and in rising gave New England an opportunity for the
destruction in America of an institution at variance with the republican
form of government, and aggressive in its tendencies. So far is polygamy
from being opposed in spirit to democracy, that it is impossible here,
in Salt Lake City, not to see that it is the most leveling of all social
institutions--Mormonism the most democratic of religions. A rich man in
New York leaves his two or three sons a large property, and founds a
family; a rich Mormon leaves his twenty or thirty sons each a miserable
fraction of his money, and each son must trudge out into the world, and
toil for himself. Brigham‘s sons--those of them who are not gratuitously
employed in hard service for the church in foreign parts--are
cattle-drivers, small farmers, ranchmen. One of them was the only
poorly-clad boy I saw in Salt Lake City. A system of polygamy, in which
all the wives, and consequently all the children, are equal before the
law, is a powerful engine of democracy.
The general moral question of whether Mormonism is to be put down by the
sword, because the Latter-day Saints differ in certain social customs
from other Christians, is one for the preacher and the casuist, not for
a traveling observer of English-speaking countries as they are.
Mormonism comes under my observation as the religious and social system
of the most successful of all pioneers of English civilization. From
this point of view it would be an immediate advantage to the world that
they should be driven out once more into the wilderness, again to found
an England in Mexico, in Polynesia, or on Red River. It may be an
immediate gain to civilization, but America herself was founded by
schismatics upon a basis of tolerance to all; and there are still to be
found Americans who think it would be the severest blow that has been
dealt to liberty since the St. Bartholomew, were she to lend her
enormous power to systematic persecution at the cannon‘s mouth.
The question of where to draw the line is one of interest. Great Britain
draws it at black faces, and would hardly tolerate the existence among
her white subjects in London of such a sect as that of the Maharajas of
Bombay. “If you draw the line at black faces,” say the Mormons, “why
should you not let the Americans draw it at two thousand miles from
Washington?”
The moral question cannot be dissociated from Mormon history. The Saints
marched from Missouri and Illinois, into no man‘s land, intending there
to live out of the reach of those who differed from them, as do the
Russian dissenters transported in past ages to the provinces of Taurida
and Kherson. It is by no fault of theirs, they say, that they are
citizens of the United States.
[Illustration: PROFILE OF “JOE SMITH.”]
[Illustration: FULL FACE OF “JOE SMITH.”--P. 150.]
There is in the far West a fast increasing party who would leave people
to be polygynists, polyandrists, Free-lovers, Shakers, or monogamists,
as they please; who would place the social relations as they have placed
religion--out of the reach of the law. I need hardly say that public
opinion has such overwhelming force in America that it is probable that
even under a system of perfect toleration by law, two forms of the
family relation would never be found existing side by side. Polygamists
would continue to migrate to Mormon land, Free-lovers to New York,
Shakers to New England. Some will find in this a reason for, and some a
reason against, a change. In any case, a crusade against Mormonism will
hardly draw sympathy from Nebraska, from Michigan, from Kansas.
Many are found who say: “Leave Mormonism to itself, and it will die.”
The Pacific Railroad alone, they think, will kill it. Those Americans
who know Utah best are not of this opinion. Mormonism is no superstition
of the past. There is huge vitality in the polygamic church. Emerson
once spoke to me of Unitarianism, Buddhism, and Mormonism as three
religions which, right or wrong, are full of force. “The Mormons only
need to be persecuted,” said Elder Frederick to me, “to become as
powerful as the Mohammedans.” It is, indeed, more than doubtful whether
polygamy can endure side by side with American monogamy--it is certain
that Mormon priestly power and Mormon mysteries cannot in the long run
withstand the presence of a large Gentile population; but, if Mormon
titles to land are respected, and if great mineral wealth is not found
to exist in Utah, Mormonism will not be exposed to any much larger
Gentile intrusion than it has to cope with now. Settlers who can go to
California or to Colorado “pares” will hardly fix themselves in the Utah
desert. The Mexican table-lands will be annexed before Gentile
immigrants seriously trouble Brigham. Gold and New England are the most
dreaded foes of Mormondom. Nothing can save polygamy if lodes and
placers such as those of all the surrounding States are found in Utah;
nothing can save it if the New Englanders determine to put it down.
Were Congress to enforce the Homestead laws in Utah, and provide for the
presence of an overwhelming Gentile population, polygamy would not only
die of itself, but drag Mormonism down in its fall. Brigham knows more
completely than we can the necessity of isolation. He would not be
likely to await the blow which increased Gentile immigration would deal
his power.
If New England decides to act, the table-lands of Mexico will see played
once more the sad comedy of Utah. Again the Mormons will march into
Mexican territory, again to wake some day, and find it American. Theirs,
however, will once more be the pride of having proved the pioneers of
that English civilization which is destined to overspread the temperate
world. The treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo annexed Utah to the United
States, but Brigham Young annexed it to Anglo-Saxondom.