The Prophet and the Reformer
Page 7
and your people, with the knowledge that my sickness in your midst
has touched the chords of noble feeling in a brave heart;12 and that, even
if I do not succeed in getting home in person to secure to you your
rights—my papers are now so arranged that my Father will find it little
more labour to do you service than
Yours sincerely
Thomas L. Kane
You can return me my Father’s two letters—which I value—by mail
from Ft. Leavenworth, at your leisure. They show him as he is and as
you may know him from them—yet I feel loth to part with them entirely.
General Brigham Young
12. In his letter to Thomas on A
ugust 18, 1846, John Kane congratulated his son on his
involvement with the Mormons: “I am sincerely happy at the prospect there is of your doing good to the sufferers for conscience’ sake. You say right, that you have not lived in vain, if you can guard one individual from outrage or one heart from anxiety.” John K. Kane to Thomas L. Kane, August 18, 1846, BYOF.
4
Kane to Young, November 5, 1846
frOm nauvOO, Kane took the Great Lakes to upper New York, every mile
a trial, as old and recent maladies threatened, both physical and mental. At
Albany, he prepared for a “final exit” and wrote his father that he must take on
the Mormon cause as his final request. A younger brother, Pat, rushed to the
city to take him home on a “couch.” For several weeks he was unable to move,
“still less [to] think or act.”1 Judge Kane’s diagnosis was less dire, especially
after a month and a half. “Tom, back from his California Mormon pilgrim-
age, after sundry mortal sicknesses, has been home for six weeks with a con-
stitution apparently altered, and certainly more flesh & more equanimity of
spirit than he has had since boyhood,” he told Thomas’s older brother Elisha.2
Thomas, his strength returning, wrote Elisha, “You have heard that I had a
queer mild journey this summer West of the Missouri—so queer that I cannot
risk writing about it now.” He continued, “I suffered much from pain as well
as hardship but I did much goodness as to set more store upon this year than
any of my life. I am at work now in the same matter with hope of success—not
personal for I am not personally involved in it—but success for my proteges
whose condition is most forlorn.”3
Kane’s campaign was the same as it had been during his trip west: help-
ing the Mormons by political lobbying and by public relations. By November,
he visited Washington to lobby for permission for the Mormons to camp on
1. Thomas L.
Kane to Willard Richards, October 26, 1846, Willard Richards Papers, CHL;
Orson Spencer to Young, November 26, 1846, BYOF. Pat wrote of his trip to retrieve Thomas that he traveled “15 hours, under the impression, that he was dead and having made preparations to bring on the body. Pleasant trip?” Robert Patterson Kane to Elisha K. Kane, December 17, [1846], Elisha K. Kane Papers, APS.
2. John K. Kane to Elisha K. Kane, November 11, 1846, Elisha K. Kane Papers, APS.
3. Thomas L. Kane to Elisha K. Kane, November 12, 1846, APS.
Kane to Young, November 5, 1846
37
Omaha lands, in addition to the permission they had already received to stay
on Pottawatomie lands; he had solid success to report, which he dashed off in
a short memo to Young as he prepared to return to Philadelphia.
Source
Kane to Young and others, November 5, 1846, box 40, fd 9, BYOF.4
Letter
Washington, (Dec) Nov. 5. ’/46
My dear friends,
After a heavy week’s work in good earnest, I am at last able to return
home. The instructions to Major Harvey5 with regard to your resid-
ing on Pottawatamie lands, will be made to include also your present
case with regard to the Omahas: besides, instructions from the Indian
Department will generally look to your interest, relation had to the
tribes by whom you are surrounded. This, I think I may say is fixed,
and will not be changed. ~ I must follow my trunk which I have already
sent to the Baltimore R. R. Depôt, but I will write to you at length from
Philadelphia.
A happy winter to you all in your present homes. !
Faithfully yours
Thomas L. Kane
Prest. Brigham Young and my friends with him.
4. On the accompanying envelope, Kane addressed the letter to “President Brigham Y
oung
and others. Camp of Israel”; the return address read, “Locust St. Phil
5. Thomas H. Harvey, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in St. Louis.
5
Kane to Young or Willard Richards,
December 2, 1846
Kane left Only a few details about his week-long lobbying in Washington,
D.C., which he referred to in his November 5 letter to Young. Before he went
to Washington, he believed his work would not be as difficult as his father’s
earlier effort. Once the precedent of the Mormon camps in Indian territory
had been established, Kane could draw upon it.1 However, he left Washington
unsettled: there were contrary winds stirring, he knew, and if Kane’s later mem-
ories were right, they went as high as President Polk. During his November
lobbying or in a later visit to the White House, Kane found Polk uncertain
about his Mormon policy. His ear appeared tuned to the advice of Missouri
Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who was talking about sending a “dragoonade”
to force the Mormons from their camps. During one heated interview, Kane
accused Polk of “deceit”—Polk was privately telling his Indian agents to let the
Mormons alone, but the western congressional delegations were hearing a
different story. Nor would Polk approve the Mormons’ request to serve as U.S.
Indian agents during their travel west.2
Kane understood that the Mormon case would be decided by public
opinion. During the last months of 1846, as detailed in the following letter,
1. Thomas L. Kane to W
illard Richards, October 26, 1846, CHL.
2. Orson Spencer to Young, November 26, 1846, BYOF; Kane to Young, July 11, 1850. Kane claimed to have prepared a memorandum detailing the Polk administration’s maneuvers and promised the Mormons a copy in case of his death. Also see Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, entries for November 25–26, 1849, 3: 513–515. For further detail on Benton’s anti-Mormonism, as described by Mormon leader Jedediah Grant, see J. V. Long, Report of the First General Festival of the Renowned Mormon Battalion (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Office, 1855), 9–11.
Kane to Young, December 2, 1846
39
he wrote anonymous, pro-Mormon letters giving such authentic-sounding
addresses as “Nauvoo, Galena, St. Louis, Ft. Leavenworth and other
places west.” He also placed articles in the Pennsylvanian, a newspaper
published in Philadelphia with which the Kanes had close ties. One edito-
rial, printed next to one of Kane’s articles, showed the newspaper’s debt
to Kane.
A friend of ours, who has recently passed the summer months in the
neighborhood of the camp of Mormon emigrants . . . has impressed
us very deeply with a sense of the gross injustice which they have sus-
tained from the bordermen of Illinois . . .
He speaks of thousands
of men, women, and children, peaceable, industrious, and prosper-
ing, expelled without other cause of reproach, than the eccentricities
of their religious faith. . . . One of the strange things that his account
involves, is the want either of integrity or firmness in the newspapers
of the West, from which public opinion has been forced to glean the
material for its judgment in the case. The truth, as we are assured,
remains yet to be told; and woeful truth it is, most dishonoring to the
American name.3
In this letter, Kane informed Young that he would leave the following day
for New York City. Before the year was out, Kane managed to place a front-page
article in the New York Tribune with the headline: “The Mormons—Their
Persecutions, Sufferings and Destitution.” The article included two letters,
one written from Fort Leavenworth and one from the “Far West,” the lat-
ter republished from the Philadelphia-based United States Gazette. Both letters were likely written by Kane and compared the virtue of the Mormons
with their enemies’ transgressions. Explaining the Tribune’s coverage, editor Horace Greeley wrote of an unnamed informant, who from “extensive
personal observation” testified to the good character of the Mormons and to
the “sheer robbery, outrage, and lust” of their opponents. “Eternal shame to
Illinois for allowing them [the Mormons] to be so tortured and ravaged!” said
Greeley.4 The New York Sun soon approvingly stated that “considerable interest and sympathy began to prevail in favor of the Mormons.” In early January
3. “The M
ormons,” Pennsylvanian, November 26, 1846. See Sawin, “A Sentinel for the
Saints,” 24.
4. “The Mormons—Their Persecutions, Sufferings and Destitution,” and “Remarks on the Above,” New York Tribune, December 16, 1846.
40
the prOphet and the refOrmer
1847, the Pennsylvanian likewise stated that “many other journals,” particularly New York newspapers, had followed its lead in condemning the actions
against the Latter-day Saints.5
Kane was working hard but paying a price. He was now “glad to be with his
mother” after his exhausting trip among the Mormons, his mother Jane Kane
observed, but her son’s poor health and “hours taxed (hopelessly I fear) with
writing for the Mormons, make him nervously sensitive, and unable to cast in
a mite of joy into the home treasury.”6
Kane also found himself in the middle of a political and religious con-
troversy, as “distinguished men” came calling, including trustees of the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, who condemned his writing
“almost beyond his endurance.” “Do you mean to uphold the Mormon reli-
gion?” one of them asked. “Will you show favor to the Mormons and have
no pity upon your own denomination.” The “irrational & sensitive conduct”
astonished Kane.7 Kane also continued to suffer from ill health; “unable to
write with my own eyes,” he told Young, he dictated the following letter to
a scribe.
Kane enclosed in his letter articles from two Philadelphia newspapers,
including one from the Pennsylvanian. The Saints received the letter by
mid-January 1847. At a meeting of the Twelve Apostles, the High Council,
and bishops on January 17, church leaders read two articles that Kane had
“published in the Pennsylvania Papers concerning His stay among us.”8
Kane’s letter, addressed only to “dear Sir,” was likely intended for Brigham
Young (and it was stored among his papers) but could have been addressed
to Willard Richards. In either case, Richards had access to Kane’s letter in
mid-February when he told Kane that his published letters “produced a most
thrilling sensation” among the Saints and asked him to send “a copy of all
his ‘Feelers’ ‘Long Shots’ and ‘broadsides’ which will warm many friends at
Winter Quarters.”9
5. The article from the
Sun was reprinted in the Pennsylvanian; that paper stated that its pro-Mormon stance was derived from the “testimony of persons worthy of credit, from those who are intimate with the Mormons, and have closely observed their habits and pursuits”—a very likely reference to Kane. “The Mormons,” Pennsylvanian, January 2, 1847, 1.
6. Jane Duval Leiper Kane to Elisha K. Kane, December 14, 1846, Elisha K. Kane Papers, APS.
7. Orson Spencer to Young, November 26, 1846.
8.Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, January 17, 1847, 3:118.
9. Willard Richards to Kane, February 16–19, 1847, Kane Collection, BYU.
Kane to Young, December 2, 1846
41
Source
Kane to [Young or Willard Richards], December 2, [1846], box 40,
fd 9, BYOF.
Letter
Philadelphia
Locust Street Decr 2nd.
My dear Sir,
I had been wishing to write to you for some time when Elder
Spencer10 called upon me with your letter.11 I acquainted him gener-
ally with a great part of the condition of your affairs, and desired him
to convey to you [t] his intelligence. This I have to hope he has done,
as I continue unable to write with my own eyes and am unwilling too
much to trust those of my amanuensis: although I think the newspapers
begin to testify that these have done me yeoman service.
As I informed Elder Spencer, it was found next to impossible to do
much for you before public opinion was corrected. Your permission for
this winter was only obtained by personal influence, when unassisted;
an unreliable and therefore unsafe resource, even where most success-
ful: and it became incumbent on me to manufacture public opinion as
soon as possible. I told you
that the breaking ground had been successful beyond my hopes; and
that, at the time of his visit, I was nearly ready to stop my firing at long
shots and come to close quarters. The day after, my first feeler of the
10. Orson Spencer (1802–1855) was one of the more educated of the early M
ormons, a gradu-
ate of Union College, New York, who later studied theology at Hamilton College. (Andrew Jenson, Biographical Encyclopedia 1:337–339.) Kane and Spencer became friends in the Iowa camps. A week before Kane wrote Young this letter, Spencer stopped to see Kane in Philadelphia en route to assume the presidency of the European Mission, and Kane reported to him his public relations activity. “My own reflection upon the interview with Col Kane is that he is filled with the right spirit from head to foot at present,” Spencer wrote Young. “On parting I could not well refrain from blessing him in the name of the Lord to which his full heart responded by twice shaking my hand & returning the same blessing upon myself.”
Kane told Spencer that he “felt at home” with him and that “he had unbosomed himself [to Spencer as] to no other than confidential friends.” Spencer to Young, November 26, 1846.
11. Willard Richards’s letter, which was delivered to Kane by Spencer, reported growing friction between the Mormons and the Omaha Indians and gave details of the “Battle of Nauvoo.” Richards to Kane, October 28, 1846, Kane Collection, BYU.
42
the prOphet and the refOrmer
bold kind was put forth in the Pennsylvanian and its reception proved
that I had fully prepared the public [p. 2] to receive t
he truth. This
week I have begun the hard knocks—of what strength the you shall
judge from my first in our Religious Whig Organ, a copy of which I see
on my table and which I will order to be sent along with the one of the
Pennsylvanian I have alluded to. It is a poor business, writing by dicta-
tion; but I have had principally rude work to do, in which quantity and
not quality has been the object. Before a fortnight ago, none but the
most sneaking of editorials could be ventured upon, and I had princi-
pally to employ myself in the fabric of supposed impartial letters from
Nauvoo, Galena, St. Louis, Ft. Leavenworth and other places west.12
To morrow morning myself and scribe start for New York, and if
I can have there any position of the same success which I have had in
my own city, I will consider the brunt of the battle over, if indeed victory
be not at hand.
Outcasts you may be; but if I should turn the tide at last, believe me,
nothing will give me more honest gratification than my right thereout to
know myself your friend.
Thomas L. Kane.
Robt. Potter13
for Col. Kane
I address to your new direction. My letter to you from Washington
informing you of the non interference with your abode on the Omaha
lands, this winter &c. &c. together with an enclosure to Mrs Jedediah
Grant14 went to Ft. Leavenworth P. O
12. F
or instance, the Pennsylvanian published two letters from unnamed correspondents (both likely from Kane), one purportedly from St. Louis which denounced Illinoisans for their persecutions of the Saints and one reportedly from Fort Leavenworth, praising the soldiers of the Mormon Battalion; “The Mormons,” Pennsylvanian, November 26, 1846. A letter also appeared in the New York Tribune in early October, commending the Battalion; “The Mormon Battalion,” New York Tribune, October 5, 1846.
13. Kane’s scribe.
14. Kane to Young, November 5, 1846. Kane’s letter to Caroline Van Dyke Grant, wife of Jedediah Grant, has apparently not survived. By December 1846, Caroline had been pregnant and ill for several months. See Gene A. Sessions, Mormon Thunder: A Documentary History of Jedediah Morgan Grant (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008), 75. During the summer of 1847, Jedediah Grant was sent to Philadelphia to work with Kane in lobbying to prevent the government from removing the Saints from the federal lands. Grant wrote that Kane