The Prophet and the Reformer
Page 2
began to envision a permanent relationship with himself as the Mormons’
self-appointed defender to the nation. The following month, Kane’s fragile
frame succumbed to the sicknesses ravaging the camps, and he credited the
Mormons’ nursing with saving his life. In addition, Kane resented Protestant
evangelicalism and the reformers it inspired, and he blamed evangelicals for
targeting the Mormons. The pluralistic vision and emphasis on liberty of the
Democratic Party also influenced Kane, an ardent Democrat, to take up the
Mormons’ cause. Young recognized that Kane’s talents and political connec-
tions would prove immensely useful in defending the Mormon cause in the
halls of Congress and in the pages of eastern newspapers. He cultivated a per-
sonal bond of friendship with Kane, which both cemented Kane’s decision to
become the Saints’ advocate and created a collaboration between the two men.
Young and Kane were a study in contrast. Born in 1801 in Vermont, Young
and his progenitors had been nourished in the Puritan soil of New England
since the middle 1600s. While the Young family had traditions of well-born
ancestors, its members had fallen on hard times. At the age of six, Brigham’s
father, John Young, was placed in a foster home where he did menial tasks
along with black boys and white orphans. To get away, John enlisted for mili-
tary service in the American Revolution.4
3. W
illard Richards, journal, July 13, 1846, CHL.
4. Fanny Young Murray to Phineas H. Young, January 1, 1845, CHL.
Introduction
3
Brigham Young recalled his father’s great hopes. “My father was a poor,
honest-hard-working man,” he said, “and his mind seemingly stretched from
east to west, from north to south; and to the day of death he wanted to com-
mand worlds.”5 The family moved often, but nothing seemed to change their
hardscrabble living. Young remembered that his father’s discipline was as
harsh as the surroundings. “A word and a blow,” he said, “but the blow came
first.”6 His mother, Abigail “Nabby” Howe was softer; she died when Brigham
was 14, worn out by the family’s restless moving, 11 pregnancies, and a linger-
ing illness that was given the name of consumption—almost certainly tuber-
culosis. Nabby had “always been a child of sorrow,” recalled a family member.7
She may have had bouts of depression.
As a child, Young tried to help his family get by, which meant that there
was not much time for school. He claimed only 11 days of school-house learn-
ing and, like many frontier children, his main curriculum was the Bible and
perhaps a few other books like John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. 8 “When I meet ladies and gentlemen of high rank,” he would later say, “they must not
expect from me the same formal ceremony and etiquette that are observed
among the great in the courts of kings.”9
When Brigham was 16, John Young placed the boy into an apprentice-
ship to learn carpentry and joinery. The arrangement ended when John made
another of his moves. By now the family was living in the Finger Lake district
in upstate New York, at the time considered to be a “dense wilderness” and a
part of the “Far West.”10 After his father’s remarriage, Brigham left the house-
hold to make his own way. For the next 18 years, he worked as a common
laborer and then as an artisan. He dug wells, painted houses, made pails and
furniture, and did odd jobs. He helped build some of the locks and boats for
5. Brigham Y
oung, Remarks, January 5, 1860, Journal of Discourses Delivered by President
Brigham Young, His Two Counsellors, The Twelve Apostles, and Others, Reported by G. D
Watt and J. F. Long (Liverpool: George Q. Cannon, 1862), 9:104. Also see Brigham Young, remarks, February 19, 1865, George D. Watt Papers, CHL, shorthand transcribed by LaJean Purcell Carruth.
6. Young, remarks, October 5, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 4:112.
7. Fanny Young Murray to Phineas H. Young, January 1, 1845. The secondary literature on Young is voluminous. See especially the works of two biographers: Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York City: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985); and John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).
8. Brigham Young, “Discourse,” Deseret News, May 11, 1854, 52.
9. Young, remarks, August 8, 1869, Journal of Discourses, 14:103.
10. Lorenzo D. Young, in James Amasa Little, Research Materials (1890–1893), CHL.
4 intrOductiOn
the Erie Canal—anything to make a living—and gained a reputation for hard
work and skill.11
He was also known as a seeker of proper religion. At first he avoided bap-
tism into any of the denominations of upstate New York’s spiritual hothouse;
he claimed that he was confused by their various arguments. However, at the
age of 23, he joined the Primitive Methodists, without much expectation but
hoping to live “a better life.”12 About the same time, he married 18-year-old
Miriam Works. Shortly after, Brigham and Miriam moved to Mendon,
New York, leaving behind a smattering of small debts that Young would not
fully repay until years later.13 The decision to move to Mendon likely had to do
with Miriam’s failing health. Other members of the extended Young family
had moved to Mendon, and perhaps Brigham hoped that they might help with
her care as well as the raising of the couple’s daughter. A second daughter was
born shortly after the Youngs arrived at Mendon.
In Mendon, Young established a carpentry shop on rented land.14 The fam-
ily lived upstairs, which allowed Brigham to watch Miriam, who was in the
last stages of “consumption”—the same dreaded tuberculosis that had killed
Brigham’s mother. Brigham did the household chores—baking the bread,
churning the butter, milking the cow, and preparing the meals—as Miriam
watched from her rocking chair.15 Young may have inherited his mother’s
depression, or perhaps it was just because of his difficult life. He recalled of
these times, “Everything had a dreary aspect.”16 “I hated the world, and the
things of the world, and the poor miserable devils that were governing it,”
he said.17
11. Brigham
Young to Brigham Young Jr., June 5, 1862, BYOF; George Hickox to Brigham
Young, February 7, 1876, BYOF; James Amasa Little, Research Materials, 5; Richard F. Palmer,
“Brigham Young in Auburn, N.Y.,” Yesteryears 24 (Fall 1980), 19–33; William Seward, autobiography, BYU; Richard F. Palmer and Karl D. Butler, The New York Years: Brigham Young, Charles Redd Monographs in Western History, No. 14 (Brigham Young University: Provo, UT, 1992), 11–31; Stephen G. Schwendiman, The Mendon Saints: Their Lives and Legacy (Salt Lake City: Eborn Books, 2011).
12. Brigham Young, remarks, June 3, 1871, Journal of Discourses, 14:197–198
13. Thomas Ives Richardson, journal, March 11, 1904, CHL.
14. J. Sheldon Fisher, “Brigham Young as a Mendon Craftsman: A Study in Historical Archeology,” New York History 61 (October 1980), 442.
15. Mary Van Sickle Wait, Brigham Young in Cayuga County, 1813–1829 (Ithaca, New York DeWitt Historical Society of Tompkins County, 1964), 58.
16. Young, remarks, April 29, 1856, Journal of Discourses, 3:329–331.
17. Young, remarks, August 24, 1867, General Church Minutes, CHL.
Introduction
5
He found relief in a new religion. For several years he had been hearing
rumors about Joseph Smith and his claims about having received some gold
plates.18 Then, during late spring or early summer 1830, soon after Smith for-
mally organized a new church, a missionary left a copy or two of the Book
of Mormon with members of the extended Young family. The missionary
explained that Smith had translated the contents of the gold plates into a new
book of scripture. Although Young read the book and was impressed, he hesi-
tated. “Hold on,” he remembered thinking, “Wait a little while.”19
A year and a half later, another set of missionaries came through the vil-
lage. They preached “religious wild fire,” speaking in tongues and saying that
Christ’s Second Coming would soon take place.20 Phineas Young, Brigham’s
brother, was convinced that there was “something” to the missionaries’ mes-
sage. Several months later in the winter of 1832, Phineas Young, Brigham
Young, and Heber C. Kimball—Brigham’s closest friend—hitched up a team
to a sleigh to visit a Mormon congregation in Bradford County, Pennsylvania.
After this visit, Young found himself increasingly excited by the religion and
was soon baptized.21 Eventually, 35 members of the Young family were bap-
tized, including Brigham’s father and step-mother, 4 brothers, and 5 sisters.22
Young took to the preaching circuit, his depression now lifted and for-
gotten. He and Phineas baptized 45 converts in Canada, and Brigham then
raised a dozen small congregations in upstate New York and elsewhere—all
within several months of his conversion.23 Later in 1832 he and Kimball went
to Kirtland, Ohio, for their first encounter with Joseph Smith. The meeting
began an 11-year relationship that deepened as Smith began to appreciate
Young’s commitment and ability. In 1835, Young became one of the church’s
Twelve Apostles and eventually became this group’s president. From this posi-
tion, Young led the evacuation of the Saints from Missouri during the winter
of 1838–1839 when opponents imprisoned Smith. Two years later, in 1840,
18. Y
oung, remarks, January 6, 1845, Nauvoo, Illinois, Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine 11: 109–113; November 18, 1854, General Church Minutes, CHL; February 18, 1855, Journal of Discourses, 180–181; July 19, 1857, Journal of Discourses, 5:55.
19. Young, remarks, August 8, 1852, Journal of Discourses, 3:91.
20. Heber C. Kimball, statement, Heber C. Kimball Papers, CHL.
21. Phineas Howe Young, diary and autobiography, BYU.
22.Young, remarks, March 15, 1857, Salt Lake City, Journal of Discourses, 4:281. See also Heber C. Kimball, undated remarks, General Church Minutes, CHL.
23. Young, remarks, April 7, 1860, Journal of Discourses, 7:229; Young, remarks, January 6, 1845, Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine, 11 (1920): 109–113.
6 intrOductiOn
Young headed up a major mission to England that led to the conversion of
thousands. Increasingly Smith’s close confidant and right-hand man, Young
became the leader of the church after Smith was killed in 1844.
In deep contrast to Young, Kane was born, in his own words, “with the gold
spoon in my mouth, to station and influence and respectability.”24 The scion
of a powerful Philadelphia political family, Kane was the son of a federal judge
and political strategist, John K. Kane, who moved in the highest circles of the
national Democratic Party. John Kane, though among the nouveau riche in
Philadelphia, participated in the city’s most exclusive scientific, literary, and
cultural circles. John’s wife, strong-willed Jane Duval Leiper, came from a
prominent political family and was reputed to be “one of the most beauti-
ful women of her day.”25 John and Jane had seven children; their first two
sons, Elisha and Thomas would one day become nationally prominent, with
Elisha gaining international renown as an Arctic explorer. The brothers were
exceptionally close.
After a semester at Dickinson College in 1839 and two lengthy voyages to
Europe in the early 1840s, Kane embarked upon a career as a lawyer and judi-
cial clerk for his father and as a freelance social reformer. Influenced by the
transatlantic flowering of romanticism and his deep roots in the antebellum
Democratic Party, Kane sought to defend various downtrodden groups and to
preserve their liberty. As such, he agitated for antislavery (even helping fugi-
tive slaves escape from the south as his father gained a reputation as a judge
especially sympathetic to the Slave Power), the abolition of the death penalty,
peace, and women’s rights.26
Kane’s personal religious journey inspired elements of his reforming
vision and made him sympathetic to religious groups outside of the main-
stream. Through the 1840s and 1850s, he meandered through atheism, a
vague sense of God’s Providence, and an attachment to the positivism and
“Religion of Humanity” of French philosopher Auguste Comte, whom Kane
24. Kane to Y
oung, September 24, 1850.
25. William Elder, Biography of Elisha Kent Kane (Philadelphia: Childs and Peterson, 1858), 18.
26. For Kane, see Matthew J. Grow, “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). On Kane’s involvement with the Mormons, see also Albert L. Zobell, Sentinel in the East: A Biography of Thomas L. Kane (Salt Lake City, 1965); Leonard J. Arrington, “ ‘In Honorable Remembrance’: Thomas L. Kane’s Services to the Mormons,” BYU Studies 21 (Summer 1981): 389–402; Richard Poll, “Thomas L. Kane and the Utah War,” Utah Historical Quarterly 61.2 (1993): 112–135; Mark Metzler Sawin, “A Sentinel for the Saints: Thomas L. Kane and the Mormon Migration,” Nauvoo Journal 10 (1998): 7–27; Colonel Thomas L. Kane and the Mormons, 1846-1883, ed. David J.
Whittaker (Provo: BYU Studies and Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2010).
Introduction
7
had met during his time in Europe. In 1853, he married his 16-year-old second
cousin Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, per-
haps spurred by his devout wife, Kane converted to Christianity, though he
always denounced denominationalism and remained suspicious of evangeli-
cal Protestants.
After they met at the Mormon refugee camps in 1846, Kane and Young
struck up a friendship that lasted 31 years and exerted a profound influence on
the history of the Latter-day Saints and the American west. Until his death in
1877, Young guided the religious, economic, and political life of the Mormon
community, whose settlements spread throughout the west and provoked a
political, legal, and even military confrontation with the American nation. For
those three decades, Young relied on Kane, 21 years his junior, as his most
trusted adviser outside of the Latter-day Saint community. As a result, Kane
became the most important non-Mormon in the history of the Latter-day
Saints. At the same time, Young deeply influenced Kane’s life.
Kane viewed his involvement with the Latter-day Saints through the
prism of social reform, as he sought to protect the Mormons’ liberties from
/>
the restrictions of the federal government and the meddling of Protestant
evangelical reformers. In Young, Kane found a similar sincerity, leadership
abilities, and willingness to suffer societal censure for his belief in his own
mission. Kane thought that both he and Young fit the description of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, an acquaintance of Kane, as romantic heroes who listened to
their own inner judgment rather than conventional norms and “advance[d] to
[their] own music.”27
While Kane remained committed to assisting Young and the Mormons
from 1846 until his death in 1883, his family had difficulty understanding his
devotion to the Saints. His father strongly opposed his initial involvement with
the Mormons and worried that his defense of the Saints blocked Thomas’s
opportunities for political and business success. As he told Thomas’s brother
Elisha, his influence “is among minorities, and always will be.”28 His wife
Elizabeth often resented the time Thomas spent defending the Mormons,
though her views softened after accompanying him to Utah in 1872–1873.
27
. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Heroism,” in The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays, First Series, ed. Joseph Slater, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 143–156.
On Kane’s acquaintance with Emerson, see Emerson to Lidia Emerson, January 9, 1854, in Ralph L. Rusk, ed., The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 4:414–415.
28. John K. Kane to Elisha K. Kane, March 7, 1854, John K. Kane Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
8 intrOductiOn
Even then, however, she could not fully accept his friendship with Young. She
recognized Young’s leadership abilities, perceptively noting that his power
among the Saints rested among his “constant intercourse with his people”
rather than tyrannical actions.29 Nevertheless, she blamed Young for leading
the Mormons into plural marriage, confiding to a nephew after Thomas’s
death, “Vulgarly speaking I couldn’t abide him! I used to be reminded by him
of a great sandy cat with his yellow-gray eyes. He was just as kind and hospi-
table to me as he could be, but I loathed him.”30 Her husband, however, prized