The Prophet and the Reformer

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

  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