POLYGAMY.

I do not believe the plural-wife system can long endure; yet almost

every man with whom I converse on the subject, seems intensely,

fanatically devoted to it, deeming this the choicest of his earthly

blessings. With the women, I am confident it is otherwise; and I watched

their faces as Elder Taylor, at a social gathering on Saturday night,

was expatiating humorously on this feature of the Mormon system, to the

great delight of the men; but not one responsive smile did I see on the

face of a woman. On the contrary, I thought they seemed generally to

wish the subject passed over in silence. Fanaticism, and a belief that

we are God’s especial, exclusive favorites, will carry most of us a

great way; but the natural instinct in every woman’s breast must teach

her that to be some man’s third or fourth wife is to be no wife at all.

I asked my next neighbor the name of a fair, young girl who sat some

distance from us with a babe on her knee. “That is _one_ of Judge

Smith’s ladies,” was his quiet, matter-of-course answer. I need hardly

say that no woman spoke publicly on that occasion—I believe none ever

speaks in a Mormon assemblage—and I shall not ask any one her private

opinion of polygamy; but I think I can read an unfavorable one on many

faces.

Yet polygamy is one main pillar of the Mormon church. He who has two or

more wives rarely apostatizes, as he could hardly remain here in safety

and comfort as an apostate, and dare not take his wives elsewhere. I

have heard of but a single instance in which a man with three wives

renounced Mormonism and left for California, where he experienced no

difficulty; “for” said my informant (a woman, no longer a Mormon,) “he

introduced his two younger wives (girls of nineteen and fourteen) as his

daughters, and married them both off in the course of six weeks.”

I am assured by Gentiles that there is a large business done here in

_un_marrying as well as in marrying; some of them assure me that the

church exacts a fee of ten dollars on the marriage of each wife after

the first, but charges a still heavier fee for divorcing. I do not know

that this is true, and I suspect my informants were no wiser in the

premises than I am. But it certainly looks to me as though a rich

dignitary in the church has a freer and fuller range for the selection

of his sixth or eighth wife than a poor young man of ordinary standing

has for choosing his first. And I infer that the more sharp-sighted

young men will not always be content with this.

* * * * *

Since the foregoing was written, I have enjoyed opportunities for

visiting Mormons, and studying Mormonism, in the home of its votaries,

and of discussing with them in the freedom of social intercourse, what

the outside world regards as the distinguishing feature of their faith

and polity. In one instance, a veteran apostle of the faith, having

first introduced to me, a worthy matron of fifty-five or sixty—the wife

of his youth, and the mother of his grown-up sons—as Mrs. T., soon after

introduced a young and winning lady of perhaps twenty-five summers, in

these words: “Here is another Mrs. T.” This lady is a recent emigrant

from our state, of more than average powers of mind and graces of

person, who came here with her father, as a convert, a little over a

year ago, and has been the sixth wife of Mr. T. since a few weeks after

her arrival. (The intermediate four wives of Elder T. live on a farm or

farms some miles distant). The manner of the husband was perfectly

unconstrained and off-hand throughout; but I could not well be mistaken

in my conviction that both ladies failed to conceal dissatisfaction with

their position in the eyes of their visitor, and of the world. They

seemed to feel that it needed vindication. Their manner toward each

other was most cordial and sisterly—sincerely so, I doubt not—but this

is by no means the rule. A Gentile friend, whose duties require him to

travel widely over the territory, informs me that he has repeatedly

stopped with a bishop, some hundred miles south of this, whose two wives

he has never known to address each other, nor evince the slightest

cordiality, during the hours he has spent in their society. The bishop’s

house consists of two rooms; and when my informant staid there with a

Gentile friend, the bishop being absent, one wife slept in the same

apartment with them rather than in that occupied by her double. I

presume that an extreme case, but the spirit which impels it is not

unusual. I met this evening a large party of young people, consisting in

nearly equal numbers of husbands and wives; but no husband was attended

by more than one wife, and no gentleman admitted or implied, in our

repeated and animated discussions of polygamy, that _he_ had more than

one wife. And I was again struck by the circumstance that here, as

heretofore, no woman indicated, by word or look, her approval of any

arguments in favor of polygamy. That many women acquiesce in it as an

ordinance of God, and have been drilled into a mechanical assent of the

logic by which it is upheld, I believe; but that there is not a woman in

Utah who does not in her heart wish that God had _not_ ordained it, I am

confident. And quite a number of the young men treat it in conversation

as a temporary or experimental arrangement, which is to be sustained or

put aside as experience shall demonstrate its utility or mischief. One

old Mormon farmer, with whom I discussed the matter privately, admitted

that it was impossible for a poor working-man to have a well-ordered,

well-governed household, where his children had two or more living

mothers occupying the same ordinary dwelling. On the whole, I conclude

that polygamy, as it was a graft on the original stock of Mormonism,

will be outlived by the root—that there will be a new revelation, ere

many years, whereby the saints will be admonished to love and cherish

the wives they already have, but not to marry any more beyond the

natural assignment of one wife to each husband.

I regret that I have found time and opportunity to visit but one of the

nineteen common schools of this city. This was thinly attended, by

children nearly all quite young, and of the most rudimentary

attainments. Their phrenological developments were, in the average, bad;

I say this with freedom, since I have stated that those of the adults,

as I noted them in the tabernacle, were good. But I am told that idiotic

or malformed children are very rare, if not unknown here. The male

saints emphasize the fact that a majority of the children born here are

girls, holding it a proof that Providence smiles on their “peculiar

institution;” I, on the contrary, maintain that such is the case in all

polygamous countries, and proves simply a preponderance of vigor on the

part of the mothers over that of the fathers whereever this result is

noted. I presume that a majority anywhere of the children of old

husbands by young wives are girls.

But again the wheels revolve, and my face must once more be turned

westward. With the most hearty and grateful acknowledgments of the

exceeding kindness and hospitality with which I have been treated here

alike by Mormon and Gentile, and with barely a word of praise for the

magnificent gardens I have been invited to visit—of which Brigham

Young’s is probably the most costly and eye-pleasing, but I like Heber

Kimball’s the best—I bid adieu to Salt Lake City, the great mass of

whose people, I am sure, have an unfeigned “zeal for God,” though I must

deem it “not according to knowlege.” Long may they live to unlearn their

errors, and enjoy the rich fruits of their industry, frugality, and

sincere, though misguided piety!

NOTE.—An inaccurate report of some casual remarks made by me at the

social gathering, hereinbefore alluded to, having appeared in _The

Valley Tan_, and been widely copied, I am impelled here to print these

remarks more correctly; though, had nothing been already said on the

subject, I should not have deemed them worth preservation.

The occasion was a meeting on Saturday evening, July 19th, in a public

hall, under the _Deseret News_ office, of the Deseret Typographical

Association, at which I had expected to meet ten or twelve printers,

Mormon and Gentile; but wherein I found myself face to face with some

two hundred people, nearly half ladies. In response to a sentiment, in

which the Art of Printing was honored, I spoke of the vast

transformations which the world has witnessed since the auspicious

invention of the art—the discovery of America—steam, and

steamships—the steam printing press—the electric telegraph, etc.,

etc.,—with the corresponding moral and intellectual growth of

Christendom, the triumphs of religious liberty, the progress made

toward a general recognition of the rights of man, and the true theory

of government, etc., etc. Speeches were also made by Elder John

Taylor, Elder Orson Hyde, and others, all devoted in good part to

eulogiums on Mormonism, glances at the past history of their churches,

denunciations of their enemies, etc., etc. I think fully two hours

were devoted to these addresses. A pause ensuing, I rose, and said:

“The remarks of the friends who have addressed us, especially those

which set forth the oppressions and outrages to which they have at

sundry times and in different localities been subjected, remind me

that I have not heard to-night, and I think I never heard, from the

lips or the journals of any of your people, one word in reprehension

of that gigantic national crime and scandal, American chattel

slavery. You speak forcibly of the wrongs to which your feeble

brethren have from time to time been subjected; but what are they

all to the perpetual, the gigantic outrage involved in holding in

abject bondage four millions of human beings? This obstinate

silence, this seeming indifference on your part, reflects no credit

on your faith and morals, and I trust they will not be persisted

in.”

The response to this appeal was made by Elder Taylor, in very nearly

these words:

“The subject of slavery is one on which Mr. Greeley is known to be

enthusiastic, as we are on the subject of our religion. We cannot

help speaking of our religion at every opportunity, as he cannot

help speaking of slavery. Those who do not relish this or that

topic, must excuse its introduction.” [I give the import, not the

exact words of the Elder’s remarks.]

At a later hour—as late as 11 o’clock, when many were impatient for

adjournment to supper—one whose name I did not learn, rose and

expressed a desire that I should make a speech, setting forth my views

of Woman’s Rights! A murmur of “Too late,” “Not time,” etc., being

heard, I said:

“Mr. President, I can make the speech our friend requires in just

one minute. I hold it the right of every woman to do any and every

thing that she can do well, provided it ought to be done. If it

ought not to be done at all, or if she cannot do it, then she has no

right to do it; but if it ought to be done, and she can do it, then

her right to do it is, to my mind, indisputable. And that is all

that I have to say, now or ever, on the subject of Woman’s Rights.”

XXIV.

THE ARMY IN UTAH.

CAMP FLOYD, Utah, _July 21, 1859_.

Camp Floyd, forty miles south of Salt Lake City, is located on the west

side of a dry valley, perhaps ten miles wide by thirty miles long,

separated by high hills from Lake Utah, some fifteen to twenty miles

distant on the north-east. This valley would be fertile were it not

doomed to sterility by drouth. A small stream takes its rise in copious

springs at the foot of the western hills just north of the camp, but is

soon drank up by the thirsty plain. Water in this stream, and wood (low

cedar) on the adjacent hills, probably dictated the selection of this

site for a camp; though I believe a desire, if not a secret compact, to

locate the troops as far as possible from the Mormon settlements, had an

influence in the premises. No Mormons live in this valley nor within

sight of it; though all the roads leading from Salt Lake City, as well

as from Provo and the other settlements around Lake Utah, are within a

day’s march and may be said to be commanded by the camp. The soil is

easily pulverized when dry, and keeps the entire area enveloped, during

summer, in a dense cloud of dust, visible for miles in every direction.

I saw it when eight miles away, as I came down from Salt Lake City

yesterday. We passed few houses on the way; but a distillery and a

brewery were among them. We crossed the Jordan by fording, at a point

seven or eight miles from the Lake, and twenty-five to thirty from Salt

Lake City. The stream is here swift and strong, but hardly thirty inches

deep, and not more than thirty yards wide. We passed within sight of

Provo, but several miles from it. We passed one spring on the route, and

two or three brooks running from the high-steep mountains on the east.

The drouth was intense, and seemed habitual in summer; there was no

cultivation nor industry of any sort on our road, save within twenty

miles of Salt Lake City.

The camp is formed of low and neat adobe houses, generally small. I

presume there are three or four hundred of them—enough, at all events,

to make six or eight Kansas cities. “Frogtown” is a satellite, or

suburb, whence grog and other luxuries (including execrable whisky at

about ten dollars per gallon) are dispensed to thirsty soldiers who have

not already drank up more than their pay amounts to. The valley is

covered with sage-bush and grease-wood, as usual; but the camp has been

freed from these, and is mainly level as a house-floor. The adobes ware

made on the spot by Mexicans; the boards for roofs, finishing off, etc.,

supplied by Brigham Young and his son-in-law, from the only cañon

opening into Salt Lake Valley which abounds in timber (yellow-pine, I

believe,) fit for sawing. The territorial legislature—(which is another

name for “the church”) granted this cañon to Brigham, who runs three

saw-mills therein, at a clear profit of one hundred dollars or so per

day. His profit on the lumber supplied to the camp was probably over

fifty thousand dollars. The price was seventy dollars per thousand feet,

delivered. President Young assured me, with evident self-complacency,

that he did not need and would not accept a dollar of salary from “the

church”—he considered himself able to make all the money he needed by

business, as he had made the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars

worth of property he already possesses. With a legislature ever ready to

grant him such perquisites as this lumber cañon, I should think he

might. The total cost of this post to the government was about two

hundred thousand dollars.

The army in Utah has numbered three thousand five hundred men—I believe

its present strength is but about three thousand. It is mainly

concentrated in this camp, though some small detachments are engaged in

surveying or opening roads, guarding herds, etc., in different parts of

the territory. I presume this is still the largest regular force ever

concentrated upon the soil of our country in time of peace. It consists

of the 5th, 7th and 10th regiments of infantry, a battalion of light

artillery, and two or three companies of dragoons. I met, between

Bridger and Ham’s Fork, a considerable force of dragoons going down.

Let us briefly consider the history and position of this little army:

In the earlier half of 1857, it was concentrated in Kansas; late in that

year, the several regiments composing it were severally put in march

toward the Rocky Mountains. The Mormons soon full learned that this band

was to be launched against them, and at once prepared to give it a warm

reception; the army had no information on the subject, save general

report. Detained in Kansas to give effect to Governor Walker’s

electioneering quackeries, it was at length sent on its way at a season

too late to allow it to reach Salt Lake before winter. No commander was

sent with it; General Harney was announced as its chief, but has not

even yet joined it. It was thus dispatched on a long and difficult

expedition, in detachments, without a chief, without orders, without any

clear idea of its object or destination. Entering Utah thus as no army,

but as a number of separate, straggling detachments, neither of which

was ordered to protect the supply-train, which followed one or two

marches behind them, the soldiers had the mortification to learn, about

the first of October, that those supply-trains, without even an armed

corporal’s guard in their vicinity, had been surprised and burnt by a

Mormon band, who thus in effect made war on the United States.

Indignantly, but still without a leader and without definite orders, the

army struggled on to Bridger, one hundred and thirteen miles from Salt

Lake, which the Mormons abandoned on its approach. Bridger is many

thousand feet above the sea level, and the ground was here so buried in

snow that its gaunt animals died by hundreds, and the residue were

unable to drag the baggage over the rivers and steep mountains which

still separated it from Salt Lake. So the regiments halted, built huts

to shelter themselves from the winter’s inclemency, and lived through

the snowy season as they might on a half allowance of beef from their

lean, gristly animals, without salt.

Spring at length came; the order to march, long hoped and impatiently

waited for, was given; they had been promised a warm reception in the

narrow defiles of Echo Cañon by Lieutenant-General Wells and his Mormon

host, and they eagerly courted that reception. If General Wells were

able, as he boasted, to send them to the right about, they would have

nothing to do but to go. They had grown rusty from inaction, and stood

ready to be polished, even by so rough an implement as General Wells.

But news came that the whole affair had been somehow arranged—that

Colonel Kane, Brigham Young, and Governor Cumming had fixed matters so

that there would be no fighting—not even further train-burning. Yet the

Mormons fled from Salt Lake City in anticipation of their entering it;

they were somehow, required to encamp as far from the Mormon settlements

as possible; and they have ever since been treated by the federal

executive as though they had volunteered to come here in defiance of,

rather than in obedience to, that executive’s own orders.

Whether truly or falsely, this army, probably without an individual

exception, undoubtingly believes the Mormons as a body to be traitors to

the Union and its government, inflexibly intent on establishing here a

power which shall be at first independent of, and ultimately dominant

over, that of the United States. They believe that the ostentatious,

defiant refusal of Brigham Young, in 1857, to surrender the territorial

governorship, and his declaration that he would hold that post until God

Almighty should tell him to give it up, were but the natural development

of a polity which looks to the subjugation of all earthly kingdoms,

states, empires, sovereignties, to a rule nominally theocratic, but

practically autocratic, with Brigham Young or his designated successor

as despot. They hold that the instinct of self-preservation, the spirit

of that requirement of the Federal Constitution which enjoins that each

state shall be guaranteed a republican form of government, cry out

against such a despotism, and demand its overthrow.

The army undoubtingly and universally believes that Mormonism is, at

least on the part of the master spirits of “the church,” an organized,

secret, treasonable conspiracy to extend the power, increase the wealth,

and gratify the lecherous appetites of those leaders, who are using the

forms and terms of religion to mask and shield systematic adultery,

perjury, counterfeiting, robbery, treason, and even murder. It points to

the wholesale massacre at Mountain-meadows, the murder of the Parrishes,

and a hundred more such, as instances of Mormon assassination for the

good of the church, the chastisement of its enemies, or the

aggrandizement of its leading members—to the impossibility of bringing

the perpetrators of these crimes to justice, to the territorial laws of

Utah which empower Mormon functionaries to select the grand and petit

jurors even for the United States courts, and impose qualifications

which in effect secure the exclusion of all but Mormons from the

jury-box, and to the uniform refusal of those jurors to indict or

convict those who have committed crimes in the interest of Mormonism,[9]

as proof positive that all attempts to punish Mormon criminals by Mormon

jurors and officers must ever prove abortive, and demands of the federal

government that it shall devise and put in execution some remedy for

this unbearable impunity to crime. It is uniformly believed in camp that

not less than _seventy-five_ distinct instances of murder by Mormons

because of apostacy, or some other form of hostility to “the church,” or

mainly for the sake of plunder, are known to the authorities here, and

that there is no shadow of hope that one of the perpetrators will ever

be brought to justice under the sway of Mormon “popular sovereignty” as

now established in this territory. The army, therefore, turns an anxious

eye to Washington, and strains its ear to hear what remedy is to be

applied.

Footnote 9:

Judge Cradlebaugh asserts that on the list of jurors recently imposed

on him for the investigation at Provo of the Parrish and other

murders, he knows there were not less than _nine_ leading participants

in those murders.

Manifestly, the recent responses from that quarter are not calculated to

allay this anxiety. The official rebuke recently and publicly given to

the federal judges here, for employing detachments of troops to arrest

and hold securely Mormons accused of capital crime, elicits low

mutterings of dissatisfaction from some, with a grave silence on the

part of many whom discipline restrains from speaking. As the recent

orders from Washington are understood here, no employment of federal

troops to arrest or secure persons charged with or even convicted of

crime is allowed, except where the civil power (intensely Mormon) shall

have certified that the execution of process is resisted by a force

which it cannot overcome by means of a civil _posse_. How opposite this

is to the orders given and obeyed in the fugitive slave cases at Boston,

etc., need hardly be indicated.

Very general, then, is the inquiry in the army, Why were we sent here?

and why are we kept here? What good can our remaining do? What mischief

can it prevent? A fettered, suspected, watched, distrusted army—an army

which must do nothing—must not even be asked to do anything in any

probable contingency—what purpose does it subserve beyond enriching

contractors and Mormon magnates at its own cost and that of the federal

treasury? Every article eaten, drank, worn, or in any manner bought by

the soldiers, costs three to ten times its value in the states; part of

this extra cost falls on the treasury, the residue on the troops

individually. Their position here is an irksome one; their comforts few;

home, family, friends are far away. If the policy now pursued is to

prevail, they cannot be needed in this territory. Why, then, are they

kept here? Brigham Young will contract, and make money by contracting,

to put down all resistance to this policy at one-tenth the cost of

keeping the army here: why, then, not withdraw it?

I have not so bad an opinion of the Mormons as that entertained by the

army. While I consider the Mormon religion, so called, a delusion and a

blight, I believe many of its devoted adherents, including most of those

I have met, to be pure-minded, well-meaning people; and I do not believe

that Mormons generally delight in plunder or murder, though the

testimony in the Mountain-meadows, Parrish, and one or two other cases,

is certainly staggering. But I concur entirely in the conviction of the

army, that there is no use in its retention here under existing orders

and circumstances, and that three or four companies of dragoons would

answer every purpose of this large and costly concentration of troops.

The army would cost less almost anywhere else, and could not anywhere be

less useful.

A suspicion that it is kept here to answer private pecuniary ends is

widely entertained. It is known that vast sums have been made out of its

transportation by favored contractors. Take a single instance already

quite notorious: twenty-two cents per pound is paid for the

transportation of all provisions, munitions, etc., from Leavenworth to

this point. The great contractors were allowed this for transporting

this year’s supply of flour. By a little dexterous management at

Washington, they were next allowed to furnish the flour here—Utah

flour—being paid their twenty-two cents per pound for transportation, in

addition to the prime cost on the Missouri. As Utah has a better soil

for growing wheat than almost anything else, they had no difficulty in

sub-letting this contract at seven cents per pound net, making a clear

profit of one hundred and seventy thousand dollars on the contract,

without risking a dollar, or lifting a finger. Of course, I expect

contractors to bargain for themselves, not for the government, but

somebody is well paid for taking care of the public’s interest in such

matters. Has he done his duty?

Again, pursuant to a recent order from Washington, the Assistant

Quartermaster-General here is now selling by auction some two thousand

mules—about two-thirds of all the government owns in this territory.

These mules cost one hundred and seventy-five dollars each, and are

worth to-day one hundred and twenty-five to one hundred and fifty

dollars. I attended the sale for an hour or so this forenoon; the range

of prices was from sixty to one hundred and fifteen dollars; the average

of the seven hundred already sold about seventy-five dollars. Had these

mules been taken to California, and there properly advertised and sold,

they would have brought nearly cost; even at Leavenworth, they must have

sold for at least one hundred thousand dollars more than here, where

there is practically no demand and no competition for such an immense

herd; and, after every Mormon, who can raise a hundred dollars or over,

shall have supplied himself with a span of mules for half their value,

one or two speculators will make as much as they please, while the dead

loss to the people will be at least one hundred and fifty thousand

dollars. Nobody here has recommended the sale of these mules; they were

being herded, under the care of detachments of the army, at no cost but

for herdsmen, and they could have been kept through next winter, in

secluded mountain valleys, at a cost of about ten dollars per head;

whereas the army can never move without purchasing an equal number; and

they can neither be bought here nor brought here for two hundred

thousand dollars more than these animals are now fetching. _Somebody’s_

interest is subserved by this sale; but it is certainly not that of the

army nor of the people. The order is to sell seven hundred wagon’s as

well; but these would not bring thirty dollars each, while they cost at

least one hundred and thirty, and could not be replaced when wanted even

for that, while the army cannot move without them, and keeping them

costs absolutely nothing. Who issues such orders as this, and for whose

benefit?

Look at another feature of this transaction. There is at this moment a

large amount due to officers and soldiers of this army as pay, in sums

of forty to five hundred dollars each. Many of those to whom this money

is due would very much like to take mules in part-payment, either to use

while here, to sell again, or to bear them and their baggage to

California, or back to the Missouri, on the approaching expiration of

their terms of enlistment. In many instances, two soldiers would

doubtless club to buy a mule on which to pack their blankets, etc.,

whenever their time is out. Hundreds of mules would thus have been

bought, and the proceeds of the sale considerably augmented, if the

government, by its functionaries, had consented to receive its own

honest debts in payment. But no! on some ridiculous pretense of

ill-blood between the pay and the subsistence bureaux of the War

department, this is refused—it would be too much trouble to take

certificates of soldiers’ pay actually due in payment for these mules;

so the officers and soldiers must purchase of speculators at double

price, or go without, and the mules be sold for far less than they would

have brought, if those who must have them had been enabled to bid

directly for them. Two or three speculators reap a harvest here at the

sore cost of the soldiers and the treasury.

But it will be said that forage is dear in Utah. It would suffice to

answer that idle mules obtain, save in winter, only grass growing on the

public lands, which may as well be eaten in part by government mules as

all by those of the Mormon squatters. But let us see how it costs so

much. There have recently been received here thirty thousand bushels of

corn from the states at a net cost, including transportation, of three

hundred and forty thousand dollars, or over eleven dollars per bushel.

No requisition was ever made for this corn, which could have been bought

here, delivered, for two dollars per bushel, or sixty thousand dollars

in all. The dead loss to the treasury on this corn is two hundred and

eighty thousand dollars, even supposing that the service required it at

all. _Somebody_ makes a good thing of wagoning this corn from the

Missouri at over ten dollars a bushel. Who believes that said somebody

has not influential and thrifty connections inside of the War

department?