The Prophet and the Reformer
Page 15
Letter
Rensselaer near Philadelphia
Independence Hall.
Philada., Feb. 19., 1851.
My dear friends,
I wrote to you in haste last fall;13 but fear I must write to you again
off hand, and without leisure to be concise. Dr. Bernhisel has informed
me, in the midst of a busy time, that he will leave for Salt Lake on the
25th. instant. This is much earlier than I anticipated, yet I have no wish
to detain him.
It is my hope—and I am ready to say, God willing, my intention—to
correspond with you freely, about your interests in this quarter of the
world. Your character now fully vindicated, I hardly know any better
office of friendship remaining to me. As you may have learned from
others, I have [p. 2] withdrawn myself almost entirely from the active
contests of politics. I have little to
Washington. Some of my intimate personal friends to the North are of the
most violent Whigs.14 I help them and their newspapers and crotchets so
far as they advance my own views, but keep them at arms length when
they advocate their own erroneous doctrines on Banking, the Tariff, and
general currency and revenue questions.—On the other hand, owing
probably to my past associations, I at home pass muster as a Democrat.
I recently received an invitation to let my name be used in the next
canvass for Congress in this District, (IVth.) but, though I believe it was
thought flattering, owing to the uniformly large Democratic majority
here, I was not tempted to think twice in refusing it. I wish to avoid
public life entirely, until I can enter upon the career of mature age.15
You may remember my old notions. [p. 3] I still think it a man’s first
duty and highest gain, to attend to the nurture and development of his
13. Kane to Y
oung, September 24, 1850.
14. Kane, for instance, maintained an active friendship with Horace Greeley, a radical Whig.
Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 38–40.
15. Kane often expressed ambivalence about partisan politics. He told his parents that Mormonism and Free Soil had freed him from the “older Politics.” Given his “naturally Jesuit and gambling disposition, my fondness for scheming and hazard,” he wrote, “I acknowledge with much like thankfulness to my poor God how great an escape I have made from ruin.”
Kane to Jane D. Kane and John K. Kane, January 4, 1849, Thomas L. Kane Papers, APS.
Kane to Young, February 19, 1851
95
own individual character: He should first assert and establish his own
intellectual and moral Manhood: Thus alone he can secure that through
life he will govern and not be governed. I am able to consider the acci-
dents of fortune as only to be regarded so far as they affect or react upon
this independence. My circumstances are easy and my personal popu-
larity greater than I deserve. My social position (since we can quote
Mormonism at par) needs no improvement. I could hardly think to bet-
ter it by any star, garter, title, or notoriety as whip master of any number
of office beggars and dancing dogs.—Regarding the matter, however,
merely from a vulgar point of observation, I suspect inaction may be
policy, in the present posture of national affairs. It is [p. 4] unmistake-
ably what the raftsmen in some waters call, a breaking up season. Office
holders are not popular now, nor the fuglemen of caucuses, and those
who have no wife with nineteen nieces—had better go home and ask
for that umbrella.
For me, meanwhile, there is unstinted field for the labors of sym-
pathy in the condition of the destitute and degraded poor of our city,
while I know I best employ my mind in prosecuting my study of the
great Social Questions which Philosophy is now first propounding to
the Statesmanship of our Age.16 I will not, I tell my friends here, camp
now a days with either Whigs or Democrats of the old line. I had rather
go on giving my strength to cogging and suckling the clever Northern
children of Free Soil, whose party, though very possibly
objectionable to success in its present shape, both as a third party,
and one apt to incur the reproach of one idea-ism and ultraism—will
ultimately place its best men in the best commands of both parties to
the North.17 At the future [p. 5] auspicious period, when I may choose
to come out from my ambush, that party will find me under its ban-
ners whose Radical and Progressive Democracy then, I find to be most
sound & thorough going.
16. Kane had thoroughly engaged A
ugust Comte’s sociological writings. Comte sent Kane a
thank-you note in October 1851 for his gift of three hundred francs to promote the study of positivism. See Comte to Kane, October 28, 1851, Kane Collection, BYU.
17. While Kane reconciled himself to the demise of the Free Soil Party, he looked forward to eventual anti-slavery victory through the mainstream political parties. Furthermore, Kane viewed setback as only temporary. “Majorities are never the authors of generous deeds,” he believed, and most political change occurred through the efforts of “determined minorities.”
Kane to John K. Kane, ca. January 1849, Thomas L. Kane Papers, APS; Kane, “Africanization of America,” 33–34, 40–41, BYU.
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the prOphet and the refOrmer
I do not consider this personal statement at all irrelevant; because
after all, in this world we will put more or less our own estimate on the
value of even the best testimony of those who assert to bear witness to
us. Nor as a friend, should any be offended to be guaged by so obvious
a rule of common prudence; or, because he believes his peculiarity of
position does not bring him prejudice, that others may not see that it,
perhaps on this very account, limits the scope of his view. I want you
to make your own allowances for what I say, wherever you can. While
I would draw the inference form my premises that I am peculiarly well
fitted to be a safe and unprejudiced counsellor; you, may conclude
otherwise, and rightly. Be sure our joint wisdom will prove none too
much. [p. 6]
There are two points to which I shall confine my present letter.
The first is, to reiterate my advice to you to persevere in your politi-
cal Neutrality. Experience has already approved the wisdom of this
course. Perhaps the highest possible inducement to violate it, offered in
the first consideration of the nominations for Utah by General Taylor’s
cabinet. The politeness of the friends of the Administration to your sup-
posed friends here was remarkable, and I will confess to the gravity
of the temptation then displayed to secure their personal influence by
concession.18—The result is;—General Taylor dies, an opposing clique
turns out the Galphins;19 and it is made clear that any arrangement with
the latter would have decided beyond question the total defeat of our
ticket. One could hardly have a more convincing instance of the safety
of not sacrificing a principle to an expediency.
But, if ever a masterly inactivity, as that pure though misguided
spirit John C. Calhoun, has phrased it were good policy, it is clearly
so at the present ti
me.20 We have to live through one of the historical
18. F
or Taylor’s position regarding Utah, see Kane to Young, July 11, 1850.
19. In 1850, a scandal involving three members of Taylor’s cabinet erupted over the payment of interest for a claim against the federal government from the heirs of an eighteenth-century trader, George Galphin. Taylor’s secretary of war, George W. Crawford, had served as attorney for the claimants and stood to receive half the payment (nearly $95,000) as fees. A congressional and public backlash against Crawford (as well as the attorney general and secretary of the treasury who approved the payment) led Taylor to consider revamping his cabinet, but he died before he could do so. K. Jack Bauer, Zachary Taylor: Soldier, Planter, Statesman of the Old Southwest (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), 312; Brainerd Dyer, Zachary Taylor (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1946), 327–334.
20. Echoing Representative John Randolph of Roanoke, Southern Carolina politician John C. Calhoun had advocated “a wise and masterly inactivity” during both the nullification
Kane to Young, February 19, 1851
97
crises when, Old Party Lines failing, the new ones are being marked out
which are to define fresh the positions of those contending [p. 7] within
them. The old names are often retained in such cases—indeed they
seem likely to be in the present—but partizans will allow them a dimin-
ished influence upon their action. Those now in the field may change
sides and rechange—combine and recombine, many times, with more
or less notoriety, before they take up their final stations. In the course
of it, most of them will fall, men and cliques of men;—some only will
survive; yet all of these will be mindful of what they have gone through,
and those who have been with them and deserted them, or whom they
have been with and deserted, or against whom they have contended, or
assailed or been abused by, will gain nothing by their past associations.
It is the story of the rats in the pickle barrel, and the Rat who has fought
the whole field for his brick, will be no better off than the last comer
who crawls in at the bunghole after it all is over.—I want you to come
in at the bunghole.21
In such a time as the present, too, it is not enough to abstain from
committal as Whig or Democrat; it is necessary to be circumspect upon
whatever assumes the aspect of a test question. Such a one at the pres-
ent time is that of Slavery, which I wish to bring specially to your notice,
as upon it the excitement runs so high that, in our section, [p. 8] few,
even private individuals can speak regarding it without feeling.22 The
South and its upholders tax all Anti Slavery Men together with enmity
to our ancestral constitution, the extreme North on the other hand, just
as groundlessly, and with even more acrimony, retort by charges of slave-
holding cruelty and sin; till the contest for principle is almost lost sight
of in personal wrangling and bitterness. I say to you, refuse perempto-
rily to take any step that may enrol you on either side of those agitating
this question. Whatever provocation offers, peremptorily refuse. I am
good authority, here, for my feelings are strongly Anti-Slavery, and my
impulse unstaid by my judgment, would be strong to have you declare
crisis
involving South Carolina in 1832–1833 and during a controversy over the boundary of Oregon in 1843. Suzy Platt, ed., Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, the Essential Reference Guide for Writers and Speechmakers (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1992), 197–198.
21. A bunghole was drilled into a barrel, such as those made for the preserving of alcoholic beverages and pickles. Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed., s.v. “bung,” “bung-hole.”
22. While Kane urged the Saints to not comment on slavery, he gave private assurances to other antislavery activists of the Mormons’ antislavery inclinations. See Kane, letter draft about Utah and Free Soil, undated, Thomas L. Kane Papers, Stanford.
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the prOphet and the refOrmer
yourselves, especially when I hear you misrepresented on this ques-
tion and find the defamation spread with unfair purpose: But, with
only the more confidence, because it goes against my grain, I say to you
again: refuse to take any action that can give official expression to your
sentiments on this point. To be practically plain; I advise you not only
to avoid passing Legislative Resolutions in reference to Slavery; but to
manage all your affairs affecting it, without unnecessary legislation. If
for instance, some action should in any case be necessary to keep your
land “free from bondage and captivity,”23 according to your own teach-
ing, by preventing some one [p. 9] calling himself an owner, depriving a
negro or other person of his liberty under color of law, there is no neces-
sity of such action being governmental, so as to declare your sentiments
as an organized Society. Other and quiet arrangements are just as effi-
cient as those which can become political manifestoes in the hands of
strangers taking no straws sincere interest in the fortunes of those from
whom they receive them.24
If it were to render any essential service to the great cause of free-
dom, I would be the first to call on you to despise your own interests;
but you have no vote in the national councils, & cannot influence and
are not responsible for the result of any of their actions. All your heed-
lessness of your past sufferings—of your recent peculiar hazards—all
the harm in short you can risk inflicting on yourselves, will be almost
without avail except to serve this or that party with ammunition to fight
its own battles, this or that party man with a barbed arrow to strike down
his opponent in debate. I see that you can make yourselves enemies;
you can hardly hope to gain permanent or useful friends. It is enough
for me then to know that the substantial interests of Freedom are safe
in your hands, and I say;—keep them in your hands!
But there are and there will constantly present [p. 10] themselves,
minor questions, affecting directly your interests, upon which you will
be supposed by all and by all admitted, to have a right to form and press
your opinions. Such are, at least, Land Liberty,25 the North Line Pacific
23. Ether 2:12.
24. The Census of 1850 recorded 26 slaves in Utah territory, brought there by southern Mormons. The territorial legislature officially recognized slavery in 1852. See Nathaniel R. Ricks, “A Peculiar Place for the Peculiar Institution: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early Territorial Utah” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 2007), 138.
25.“Land Liberty” may refer to the rights of settlers to receive or purchase land. At the time, the Mormons in Utah—similar to early settlers in other western territories—were
Kane to Young, February 19, 1851
99
Rail Road, Postal Reform, Indian Affairs, Direct Provision for territorial
necessities &c. &c.—for all of which your influence will be propor-
tionately greater, as your reserve is better maintained with respect to
those upon which the public mind is more agitated. Atlantic and Pacific
America must grow more and more pleased with the notion of well
rewarding Deseret for her halfway house in the wilderness. M
eantime
we know that there is nothing political ill temper shows itself upon
sooner than the Appropriation Bills affecting local expenses. To take
an instance that occurs to me while writing. This short session has seen
the two chief middle states signally baulked of their most darling proj-
ects. New York had perfected her arrangements a long time in prog-
ress establishing a Branch Mint at New York City. New York City has
recently spent thousands of dollars, and been guilty of the meanest
compliances to conciliate Southern feeling; everything was cut and dry
for success,—yet, at the last moment, the Southerners as maliciously
as unexpectedly, joined to and killed her Bill.26 This, it was alleged,
was to oblige Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania [p. 11] being sincere and not
designing in her doughface professions.27 Southern influence did more.
It was, as you know, inimical to Pennsylvania, on the framing of the
Tariff of 1846, which has put so many of our forges and furnaces out of
blast.28 But, to the amazement of the quid nuncs,29 it was discovered,
this session, that enough Southern Anti Tariff votes could be obtained
to put a superbly oppressive duty on foreign iron, and set our country
essentially squatters. A
land office would not be established in Utah until 1869. For the con-
text of debates over preemption rights and homestead legislation, see Daniel W. Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford, 2007), 592.
26. Legislation establishing a mint branch office in New York, known as the New York Assay Office, was not passed until March 1853; the office opened in October 1854. Lawrence H. Officer, Between the Dollar-Sterling Gold Points: Exchange Rates, Parity, and Market Behavior (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 25.
27. In antebellum America, “doughface” referred to northern support of southern interests.
28. In 1846, with the so-called Walker Tariff, named for Secretary of the Treasury Robert Walker, Congress reduced tariff rates on imported goods. The tariff passed largely with the support of Democrats, though many Pennsylvania Democrats, fearing harm to the iron industry, opposed it. By 1848, coal and iron prices had plummeted, and imports of cheap British iron had increased. Pennsylvania Whigs used the issue in the late 1840s, particularly in 1848, to gain electoral success. Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 365–368.