The Prophet and the Reformer

by Grow, Matthew J. ; Walker, Ronald W. ;

  Providence that has ordained otherwise, has at least spared me till you

  can do without me. I esteem the battle for The Mormon Reputation

  ended:—there is nothing more left to do than scatter here or there a

  routed squad or two, and bury the dead upon the field. Latterly I have

  even been praised, in the Journals, for my philanthropy in defending

  you;—a sign to me of comforting significance. For when there is some-

  thing to be gained by it, you will not lack for defenders; while on the

  other hand, my strength would have been likely to fail in exactly the

  same proportion; since, if this has ever been greater than that of some

  of my fellows; it has been so, thank God, in the maintenance of those

  good causes that have been called desperate, and have wanted other

  champions.

  Moreover, for other reasons, I must confess, I think you would have

  been likely to find me of diminished value as a friend to help forward

  24. On Kane

  ’s illness at the Mormon camps, see Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 64–66.

  Kane to Young, July 11, 1850

  75

  prosperous affairs. Not to speak of my altered strength of body, I think

  I have become morally more or less a changed man [p. 5] Though I do

  not agree with our religionists upon their doctrine of Regeneration; with

  a less artificial formula of expression, it is substantially true. I believe

  that there is a crisis in the life of every man, when he is called upon

  to decide seriously and permanently if he will die unto sin and live

  unto righteousness,25 and that, till he has gone through this, he can-

  not fit himself for the inheritance of his higher humanity, and become

  truly pure and truly strong, “to do the work of God persevering unto

  the end” Without endorsing the cant of preachers either, I believe that

  Providence brings about these crises for all of us, by events in our own

  lives which are the evangelists to us of preparation and admonition.

  Such an event, I believe too, was my visit to you. I had had many disre-

  garded hints and warnings before, but it was the spectacle of your noble

  self denial and suffering for conscience sake, first made a truly serious

  and abiding impression upon my mind, commanding me to note that

  there was something higher and better than the pursuit of the interests

  of earthly life for the spirit made after the image of Deity. When the

  good seed began to grow, there was danger for me that the cares of the

  world would grow up around and choke it.26

  I had [p. 6] great temptations to a political career especially, in the

  peculiar (miscalled) advantages of my position and associations. The

  favor and personal friendship of the National Executive was perhaps

  the chief of these tares of evil sowing, and for the plucking up of this

  also I was directly indebted to you. I do not know if you knew or remem-

  ber, that, when I left Washington in May ’/46, Mr. Polk gave me carte

  blanche as to what I should ask for you on my return. The mixed mean-

  ness and malice of others of his adherents caused him to prove faith-

  less to his promises, and, instead of redeeming these, he endeavored to

  persuade me to go abroad upon other public service. Being superior to

  this temptation, my pride made me join issue with him; on one occasion

  I taxed him openly with deceit as became a true man, and thus, we were

  at open variance and I had tried the ‘sweet uses of adversity’27 when

  the time came, (1848) for the lovers of their country to do their utmost

  to defeat General Cass in the Presidential canvass. I should not have

  25. 1 P

  eter 2:24.

  26. A reference to the New Testament parable of the seeds in Matthew 13:3–9.

  27. William Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene 1.

  76

  the prOphet and the refOrmer

  been able to injure the fortunes of this dear old friend of mine, without

  such preparation. When my action gave Pennsylvania to General Taylor,

  I had made up my mind to do my duty ever forward irrespective of the

  [p. 7] arbitrary trammels of party.28 This principle alone is enough to

  disqualify me, without rare good fortune, for being a successful politician;

  but I think I have also, lost almost entirely the natural love for intrigue and

  management once a prominent trait of my character.29 Even my brethren

  at the Bar, have had occasion to think me more nice than wise, my zeal for

  the indiscriminate practice of the Law, having so much changed that I now

  limit my clientship almost entirely to cases of Trust and the fiduciary man-

  agement of Estates.30 So, after all, you have hardly lost one fitted to direct

  to the highest profit your political influence should you come to acquire

  such unembarassed. No!—had I lived, my place would have been in the

  ranks of the supporters of causes termed desperate and at the head of the

  unthanked and unrewarded pioneers of unpopular reform.

  So Goodb’ye, if Goodb’ye it is—and I can bid you goodb’ye in

  cheerfulness! I have altered my will, which till a few days ago, stood in

  favor of your poor fund, to leave my little personal estate with some who

  need it at home; but a clause of its former dispositions still stands, by

  which I request you to receive my [p. 8] my heart to be deposited in the

  Temple of your Salt Lake City, that, after death, it may repose, where in

  metaphor at least it often was when living. The errand of this letter, if

  2 8. Kane left the Democratic Party in 1848 when the party nominated Michigan Senator Lewis Cass, a pro-slavery politician, to run against Whig Zachary Taylor, a southern slaveowner. Kane became the chairman of the Free Soil Party in Pennsylvania, though he erroneously viewed himself as the fulcrum of Cass’s defeat. See Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, chapter 6. For the Free Soil movement and the 1848 election, see Jonathan Earle, Jacksonian Antislavery and the Politics of Free Soil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 163–180.

  29. In a letter to his friend and future father-in-law William Wood in 1852, Kane likewise expressed his moral ambivalence about organized politics. He complained that the

  “excitement of contest” caused him to be “so tricky, so successful in appeals to mean motives” and to “have disguised so much if not perverted the truth.” He continued, “I am by nature unscrupulous, a low animal cunning, a natural proneness to even unnecessary intrigue and artifice, are among the inherent defects of my character.” He thus asked Wood to “enjoin me from Politics.” Kane to William Wood, January 10–11, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.

  30. Kane also continued to work as a clerk in his father’s federal courtroom. Elizabeth Kane succinctly captured the differences between Kane’s perception of the law and his father’s: “The Judge thought the Law the noblest profession a man could follow, Tom thought it a school for perverting a man’s conscience.” Elizabeth W. Kane, history, November 26, 1868, 28, Kane Collection, BYU.

  Kane to Young, July 11, 1850

  77

  it has any one more than another, is to ask you not to fail to claim of my

  Executors,31 in case of ill event, another letter which I shall not fail to

  write at future leisure and which will be a letter of advice of and of fare-

  well. It will be found among my papers, together with an M.S. history of

  my official
connexion with you. You never, I know, have understood this,

  and otherwise, you never will. There is nothing as far as I can gather,

  to be laid hold of among Mr. Polks papers, and he is dead now you

  know, and so are poor James Allen, and gallant General Kearney,32 and,

  when I follow them, for aught I know, no living man survives informed

  upon the topic unless Trist the Mexican Treaty Negotiator is still in

  existence with whom, as Chief Clerk in the State Department, I think

  Mr. Polk had conversations upon the subject of one official paper.33 The

  Manuscript will enlighten you besides, as to some of your past Indian

  Relations, and particularly the contemplated dragoonade off the Omaha

  lands; the subject upon which took place my final rupture with the

  President. It will interest you to know who were some of the persons

  beside that official, who were willing to see you driven by force out

  upon the wilderness, and should by any hazard, some of these attain

  political eminence, the knowledge may be of service to you as an arm

  31. In an undated document, Kane wrote:

  “My breathing is short to night I have always

  wished to die suddenly. If this is found in my drawer, my last Will is that Pat have me remembered a Thousand Dollars worth (If you think better, Father & Pat, make this up of the Furniture & Knicknacks in this Room by those whom he knows I least like to be forgotten (say $800 by Elder $200 to others; or make E’s $1000.) The rest may follow the Law, though I have cherished a plan for its investment as a Fund to be voted twenty one years hence to the most deserving of the family in the estimation of its members then in being—now too late.”

  On that same page, he wrote sideways on top of this writing: “Mind this or not as you choose But have me no burial. My heart goes to Salt Lake to which pay its Expenses. If my body is worth nothing to Science, $10 should pay all else. Look at this writing to see if I am myself Pat will burn everything of mine—no exception but what scraps relate to Family Genealogy

  &c.” Kane estimated his worth, including a $5,000 insurance policy, at $7,000. See Kane’s Last Will and Testament, Kane Collection, BYU.

  32. Polk died on June 15, 1849; James Allen, the commanding officer of the Mormon Battalion, died on August 23, 1846; and Stephen W. Kearny, the commander at Fort Leavenworth during the recruitment of that battalion, died on October 31, 1848. For Kane’s interactions with Allen and Kearny, see Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 53–54, 57–58, 62–67.

  33. In 1852, Kane told his fiancée Elizabeth that the circumstances of his original visit to the Mormons in 1846 was a “little state secret,” known only to Polk, Kearney, and Allen. He added, “And they are all dead, and can tell no tales.” Kane to Elizabeth Wood, May 19–21, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU. Nicholas P. Trist (1800–1874) was the chief clerk of the State Department during Polk’s Administration and negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican–American War.

  78

  the prOphet and the refOrmer

  against them.34 I have kept it to myself with the rest that has come to

  me confidentially, for obvious reasons, but should accident visit me, it

  becomes your property.35

  With this request, I close my letter, abruptly, since I have not the

  heart otherwise to bid you

  Farewell,

  Thomas L. Kane

  34. In 1847, shortly af

  ter the arrival of the pioneer company of Latter-day Saints in the Salt

  Lake Valley, Young accused Missouri Senator Thomas H. Benton and President Polk of hatching a plan to destroy the Saints by forcing them to raise the Mormon Battalion. If the Saints refused, Young warned, “Missouri was ready with 3000 men, to have swept the Saints out of existence.” (Thomas Bullock, journal, July 28, 1847, CHL.) In 1856, Jedediah M. Grant, Young’s counselor, credited the accusation to Kane. According to Grant, Kane had informed him that Benton advocated the “NECESSITY OF RAISING TROOPS AND CUTTING OFF

  ALL THE MORMONS FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH.” Benton, Grant continued,

  “wanted to take troops and pounce upon your wives and children when upon the banks of the Missouri river, and sweep them out of existence. And when Colonel Kane argued the case, and said, ‘supposing you cut off the men, what shall be done with the women and children?’ ‘Oh’ said Benton, ‘if you argue the case, and wish to know what shall be done with the women, I say wipe them off too.’ ‘Well then,’ said Colonel Kane, ‘what shall be done with the children?’ ‘Why,’ said Benton, ‘cut them off, men women and children, for the earth ought to drink their blood.’ ” John F. Yurtinus, “A Ram in the Thicket: A History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War,” (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1975), 655–656; Matthew J. Grow, “ ‘Liberty to the Downtrodden’: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer”

  (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 2006), 149–151.

  35. Kane’s manuscript history of his involvement with the Saints has apparently not survived.

  13

  Kane to Young, September 24, 1850

  Kane sent the following letter to Young along with his letter of July 11, 1850,

  which had warned of ill health. In this letter, he reassured the Saints that he

  was “greatly improved in health, and quite likely to live, if only to swell the

  chapter of Mormon miracles.” Kane also informed the Saints of his public

  relations work on their behalf and his efforts to convince President Millard

  Fillmore to appoint Mormons to territorial offices in newly created Utah

  territory.

  Throughout 1849 and 1850, political and public opinion had threatened

  to turn against the Mormons. Kane’s public relations efforts and letters from

  California emigrants to eastern newspapers praising their treatment in Utah

  had temporarily softened attitudes. Nevertheless, a “fresh batch of calumnies

  of the William Smith copartnership,” Kane informed Young, quickly over-

  whelmed the positive statements. Smith, the younger brother of the founding

  Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, had long had a tumultuous relationship with

  Mormon leaders and had become disaffected with Young’s leadership follow-

  ing his brother’s death. In a petition to Congress, signed by Smith and thirteen

  others, and admitted to both the House and the Senate on December 31, 1849,

  Smith alleged “a number of deeds and abominations in the dark category of

  crime” against the Mormons. John Bernhisel told Young that the charges “cre-

  ated quite a sensation in both wings of the Capitol, and were ugly things to

  face,” though his patient lobbying and refutation in Washington newspapers

  quelled some of the uproar.1

  By early 1850, the prospects of statehood seemed bleak to Mormon lead-

  ers. Bernhisel told Kane in January that there was “scarcely a ray of hope of

  our being admitted as a State,” though the “prospect of obtaining a territorial

  1. Bernhisel to Y

  oung, March 21, 1850, BYOF.

  80

  the prOphet and the refOrmer

  government is far from being discouraging.” Almon Babbitt’s continued

  “impropriety” threatened to “entirely blast our prospects here.” Bernhisel

  added that Connecticut Senator Truman Smith, a powerful Whig and a rare

  congressional ally of the Saints, had “given me encouragement to hope that

  we may be authorized to elect our own officers” even under a territorial gov-

  ernment.2 Nevertheless, the negative attitudes of President Taylor and many

  congressional leaders seemed daunting to Bernhisel. “I am thoroughly con-

  vinced from
my knowledge of the views and feelings of the President and his

  Cabinet,” Bernhisel wrote Young in March, “that they would not nominate the

  present officers [of the State of Deseret], nor any persons that we should select, and if they did, the Senate would not confirm them.” Instead of Mormon officers, Bernhisel predicted the appointment of “hungry office hunters” who

  would be willing to “make a man [an] offender for a word.” To avoid this,

  Senators Smith and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, another ally and chairman

  of the Senate’s Committee on Territories, had separate plans that would admit

  Utah as a special form of territory, with the authority “to elect our own officers, and a delegate to Congress, but no Senators.”3

  Kane aided Bernhisel in his lobbying by giving him letters of introduction,

  writing congressmen, and traveling to Washington.4 The uncertain prospects

  of the statehood application also inspired Kane to reinvigorate his campaign

  to change Mormon public image. Complaining that he had tired of his “usual

  course” of planting pro-Mormon articles in eastern newspapers—an approach

  which had “to be renewed” at least quarterly—Kane decided to “edit some-

  thing of a less fugitive nature.” Furthermore, the public had grown weary of

  his “iteration of the same points of argument” and desired “something nar-

  rative and fanciful that would challenge attention and carry its pleading by

  implication.” He thus accepted an invitation to lecture at the Pennsylvania

  Historical Society in March 1850.5

  In the following letter, Kane presented his literary labors to Young in

  heroic terms. As he prepared his lecture, “pain” and “weakness” so racked

  him that he held a pen with difficulty. Nevertheless, for a month he did not

  miss a day of writing. At night he continued his work, sometimes sitting on

  the edge of his bed, his feet in a pan of hot water, a kettle of strong tea beside 2. Bernhisel to Kane, J

  anuary 17, 1850, Kane Collection, BYU.

  3. Bernhisel to the First Presidency, March 5, 1850, BYOF.

  4. Bernhisel to Young, March 21, 1850, BYOF.