29. A quidnunc refers to “an inquisitive or nosy person; a gossip.” Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed., s.v. “quidnunc.”
100
the prOphet and the refOrmer
politicians cock a hoop with delight! But they, too, counted without
their host. That which was gained from the South, was lost at the
North; and the old Tariff men from that quarter, turning against them,
have, as it were hamstrung every measure that showed sign of promise.
And it is not likely the end of the Session will see any better result.30
So much for “geographical differences.” I see no reason whatever,
why you should not unite the strength of both parties and sections.
Exercising ordinary discretion, with your happily insulated position,
you have no need to take the odious part of trimmers; you have nothing
at all to do but keep yourselves entirely aloof from “entangling alli-
ances.”31 Remember, an influence like your own, so long as without
votes or active power to go into combination, is strongest, when it can
most ensure its being courted. An open union with one party or section,
while it ensures the [p. 12] hostility of the opposition, by no means
ensures the highest amount of its good offices. The love we are sure of,
is apt to be most praised, but poorest fed. Gratitude sounds well; but
with parties as with individuals, Mr. Walpole’s saying is good, that the
liveliest gratitude is the gratitude for favors to be conferred.32—Let all
sides then, be free to woo pretty Utah till she is ripe for the Union. The
professed Public Men have luckily no idea how long it is before that
will be. President Fillmore asked me if I “thought it was likely these
three or four years yet.” We will not undeceive them. The Ratio of rep-
resentation will probably be raised close to the 100,000 by the Census
of 1850.33—Till Utah numbers over that, let all be free to lay their gifts
upon her lap!34
30. On congressional tariff debates in 1850, see H
olt, American Whig Party, 575.
31. In his 1801 inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson called for the United States to maintain an independent course in foreign policy, free of outside intervention: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none.” See “The Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson,” Addresses of the Successive Presidents at Both Houses of Congress (Washington: Samuel H. Smith, 1805), xxxi.
32. Sir Robert Walpole (1676–1745), a British statesman, reputedly stated, “The gratitude of place-expectants is a lively sense of future favours.” John Bartlett, ed., Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little and Brown, 1870), 253.
33. The 1850 census raised the ratio of representation—the number of individuals within one congressional district—to 93,020 constituents. See Brian Frederick, Congressional Representation & Constituents: The Case for Increasing the U.S. House of Representatives (New York: Routledge, 2010), 31.
34. The Census of 1850, actually conducted in 1851, found 11,380 residents. Ninth Census of the United States: Statistics of Population (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1872), 67.
Kane to Young, February 19, 1851
101
I now approach my second point; which is to prostrate the charac-
ter of one of your church members on whom you have conferred a high
mark of your confidence and esteem. I trust never to be called upon to do
this again. My aim still is, as it has been, anxiously to avoid complicating
my action for you by any personal relations but those of direct friend-
ship. I have even with asperity refused to listen to a proffered tale of
[p. 13] division in your councils, so settled is my conviction that even
such knowledge, insomuch as it might go to to lessen my respect for par-
ticular members of the Church, would diminish also my means not to say
my energy of usefulness to your entire body. For you—I need not name
you—, who met me on the Prairie, you all of you who helped me, nursed
me, and I know loved me as much as I bore you love in return—I avow
I must always entertain a different kind of attachment than for others;
but all the rest of you I wish to regard also as friends entitled to my best
wishes and efforts always and always to be presumed by me united and
worthy until the contrary be intrusively shown. I wish to work with you
and for you, with all of you, and for all of you. With pain indeed, I break
through what I know so wise a reserve, and accept it as my duty to all of
you to sacrifice the one unworthy associate.
As I wrote you on this subject, if I remember rightly, last fall, and as
this sort of tale bearing is inexpressibly ungrateful to me, you will help
me to be brief [p. 14] be brief by giving my words their fullest meaning.
Mr. A. W. Babbitt has proved himself unfit to be trusted with the care
of any of your interests, and this alike by an abasement of his personal
character, and an unfaithfulness to his trusts.
I was first unfavorably impressed as to Mr. Babbitt’s integrity, about
the time of his first calling upon me; by learning that, with the very
mistaken view of thereby raising himself in the opinion of strangers,
he made light of his religion and intimated his connection with it to be
of the slightest. After this, I heard of his associating freely with a rabble
of dissolute persons at Washington whose acquaintance was necessarily
detrimental to the public estimate of his character. But it was not till a
visit to Washington (undertaken at his entreaty to work for his seat in the
House) made me essay a co-operation of effort with him, that his graver
faults were fully disclosed. He not only manifested himself a bad man,
but a very weak one. Washington after all, is a place where even men
that intrigue, intrigue like men. Mr Babbitt evinced an almost morbid
fondness for such as you might expect in a mischievous child. He was
continually discovered weaving paltry peter funk combinations, incu-
bating trivial fivepennybit leagues, making declarations and pledges
102
the prOphet and the refOrmer
whose inconsistency he was at no pains to reconcile, and confiding to
everybody the keeping of secrets that he had no power to keep him-
self. One could have believed Nature to have gifted him with a kind of
instinct opposed to truthfulness; for, without any reasonable prospect
of apparent advantage, and certainly he [p. 15] might have anticipated
to his eventual detection, he even thought fit to impose upon me for
some time, by a magnificent statement that he had at command a cer-
tain large body of personal influence without my approach! He went
so far as to desire me in my reckoning pro and con, to count upon this
and its votes as so many fast secured and ready to act in his behalf!
though the result proved those men in buckram35 to have had no real
existence whatever—!! The only substitutes I could imagine myself
to discover for them at all, were a number of untrustworthy persons of
low degree, such as are found in the keep of some politicians of note,
(these in particular the property I think of Mr. Douglas of Illinois,36 of
whom ask Mr. Bernhisel to narrate you an edifying story) and whose
brandy and water faces are among the modern introduc
tions into the
National Capitol from the Halls of our State Legislatures. To these,
I regret to say, and what was more material, to more respectable people,
he imparted freely the most private information that he had from me in
confidence; possessed as far as I can judge, with no superior motive to
that of expanding his own importance by this proof that he had access
to the upper sources of information.—More prejudicial however, per-
haps, than all this association with the pot house37 and contract auction
jobbers,38 I consider the manner of trade he seemed desirous to drive
upon the position of Utah on the Slavery Question. His announce-
ments more than once were “perilous stuff,” indeed. At last some of
35. B
uckram “denoted a costly and delicate fabric, sometimes of cotton and sometimes of linen; but it afterwards acquired the sense of coarse gummed linen used for linings.” Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed., s.v., “buckram.”
36. Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat from Illinois in 1847. He had become well-acquainted with the Mormons during their time in Nauvoo.
37. A “pot-house” is “a house where pots of beer and other intoxicants are retailed; an ale-house; a small, unpretentious, or low tavern or public-house.” Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed., s.v., “pot-house.”
38. Auction jobbers were brokers who were part of the retail supply chain. The channel of goods often went from farmer to local buyer; from local buyer to auction receiver; from auction receiver to auction jobber; from auction jobber to retailer; and from retailer to consumer. See Charles F. Phillips and Delbert J. Duncan, Marketing: Principles and Methods (Homewood, IL: R.D. Irwin, 1968), 402.
Kane to Young, February 19, 1851
103
the buglers on our Democratic side put him up to proclaiming it ultra
pro-slavery and slave Territory. Hearing of this, at a time when the non
committal seemed peculiarly important, I made him recal his state-
ments to Mr. Wilmot and others who had them from him.39 Yet, hardly
was my back turned, before he was at it again,—which has been the
case ever since, as I am reminded by a disagreeable rupture of my own
on this account with Senator Seward,40 now of six months standing.
[p. 16] Thus he alienated and disgusted serious and sober men of both
sides, and himself mainly defeated his own election.
Still, for the reasons I have indicated, I think I should have borne
with this all in quiet; had not after conduct yet more glaringly reprehen-
sible coerced my duty of communicating with you. I cannot put aside
the conviction, that Mr. Babbitt has also been striving to advance pri-
vate interests of his own, regardless if not at the direct expense of yours.
Only by a desire to traffic for public employments with others with
whom he was under arrangement, I can explain his conduct when the
recent Utah nominations were under consideration. With one Judge or
perhaps two, given to Mr. Fillmore and his immediate personal friends,
the whole ticket was ours! Mr. Babbitt’s unauthorized and intrusive
interference had nearly lost the whole; and even the haste with which
the affair had to be closed, could not save our friend Richards, for whom
Mr. Babbitt was particularly importunate to present a substitute.41
Let me now leave this matter; I hope for once and for all.—I find
I have written upon it more fully than I thought to. Judge from this of
my anxiety lest accident or misapprehension should give this unhappy
man another opportunity to mis represent, and betray you.
39. David W
ilmot (1814–1868), a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, vaulted into
national prominence by introducing legislation in 1846 to bar slavery from the territories acquired in the Mexican–American War, which became known as the Wilmot Proviso.
Kane and Wilmot were close allies in Free Soil policies in Pennsylvania. Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 261–262.
40. William Seward (1801–1872), a former governor of New York, was elected to the U.S.
Senate in 1848 as a Whig. He became a leader of antislavery Whigs in the Senate, attempted to ban slavery from Utah territory, and opposed the Compromise of 1850 on antislavery grounds. See Journal of the Senate of the United States of America, 1789–1873, June 5, 1850, July 15, 1850, 375, 449.
41. The Mormons’ proposed slate of territorial officers in 1850 had originally included Willard Richards as secretary. Recognizing that Fillmore would not appoint an all-Mormon slate, John M. Bernhisel dropped Richards from the list. Bernhisel to Young, September 12, 1850, BYOF.
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the prOphet and the refOrmer
Thank you again for your kind presents. I have heard now thrice
from my brother in the Navy who is on the noble search after the lost
Briton, Sir John Franklin; and, in his last letter he for the second time
repeats his thanks to me for the great Wolf Robe which has been of
more service to enable him to [p. 17] withstand the fearful cold of the
Arctic Regions than all his frippery fancy furs from the City Shops. If
he bring back both it and himself safe and sound, I must send it to Salt
Lake to be preserved a trophy and votive offering.42 Dr. Bernhisel will
give you the seal rings I have made of your gold of the first fruits with as
fair simple stones as were to be had. I ask you to wear them in daily use
for my sake. They are substantially made that they may not suffer from
any amount of rough usage. Upon them I have had wrought devices by
Mr. Lovett whom we call the best artist of our gem cutters Eastward.43
The First, which I thought suited to Brigham Young, displays a
BeeHive with Bees working. I hope it explains its own meaning. As
Brigham Young is a man of few words, I abbreviated his motto to one
of them;—a name dear to me as the first tidings of hope and that I trust
that you will not suffer to die under Congressional pseudo-baptism;
Deseret
The next is Deseret, too;—“Deseret, which by interpretation is a
honeybee.”44 The bee, the emblem of industry is found above the hinge
of an escallop. The escallop or cockle shell is the heraldic expression
of Pilgrimage. In the ancient time of the Crusades when our Modern
Heraldry originated, Pilgrims to the Holy Land bore home with them
shells of this kind from the Syrian Coast where they left the land for the
Sea. They were held to have a right to bear it with them as a security
in their perilous journeys home, and, if [p. 18] they were Knights who
had fought in the Christian host, had a right to depict it to their honor
on their shields and coats of arms.45 Hence its meaning at the present
42. S
ee Elisha K. Kane, The United States Grinnell Expedition (Philadelphia: Childs and Peterson, 1857), 264.
43. Robert Lovett Sr. (1796–1874) was a prominent engraver in New York City; four of his sons—Robert, George, Thomas, and John—were also successful engravers and medalists.
Peter H. Falk, Audrey M. Lewis, Georgia Kuchen, and Veronika Roessler, eds., Who Was Who in American Art: 400 Years of Artists in America (Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1999), 2:2068.
44. Ether 2:3.
45. A contemporary book explained that the escallop shell “is the badge of a pilgrim. Thus Sir Nicholas de Villiers who followed King Edward I into Palestine, is said to have laid aside his
Kane to Young, February 19, 1851
105
day.—You too, have been pilgrims—that fought stoutly too for your reli-
gion, before you made the last long and perilous journey that brought
you home. It will be the pride and honor of your descendants to have
this held in remembrance. So I have had it blazoned on all your rings.
On my brother Kimball’s, besides adding force to the “description” of
Deseret, it has a significance to correspond with its Motto taken from the third in order of your Books of Nephi. This is the Text so often repeated
in Chapter X., speaking hopefully of the building of the City of the
New Jerusalem and in gathering of the people to it:—
The work shall commence. p. 539.46
I had no embarassment in chosing the third subject. It is the crest
of the English family of Richards, and is the rightful property of my
brilliant friend—(Hurrah for the Deseret News!)47—The Doctor. I have
supplied the motto, however,—I think not inconsistent with the sweet
symbolism of the Paschal Lamb. It appears in the Fourth Book entitled
Nephi, which is one I like best: “And it came to pass there was
No contention in the Land;
because, of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the
People”48 p. 555.
The context explains my Mottoes so much better than I could, that
I hope you will read it over thinking of me. Our [p. 19] Creeds differ; but
while of a surety, Brigham Young does not discredit the lesson I too accept
from his honey bee in the valley of Nimrod;49 I know Heber C. Kimball
and Willard Richards will feel that I write with them in the prayer that
contention may cease in christian lands, and the belief that the time is not
distant when the work shall commence of changing all our present weary
earth into a habitation of perfect human happiness and true celestial glory.50
ancient arms, and to have assumed the cross of S.
George in token of his country, and five
The Prophet and the Reformer Page 16