The Prophet and the Reformer
Page 22
Kane and Grant published all three letters as a pamphlet, The Truth of the
Mormons: Three Letters to the New York Herald, from J. M. Grant, of Utah, in May 1852. In the final letters, Grant and Kane responded to the specific charges,
strongly defended the Saints’ actions, and neither admitted nor denied polyg-
amy, asking instead, “Whose business is it? Does the Constitution forbid it?”18
As they had with Kane’s earlier pamphlet, Bernhisel and Kane sent copies
to politicians and newspaper editors. The pamphlet convinced Democratic
Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine that “the returned officers were d——d
scoundrels.”19 Another government official told Bernhisel, “Grant’s pamphlet
was a perfect tomahawk.”20
The public relations efforts by Kane and Grant, combined with the lobbying
of Bernhisel and Kane, increased the likelihood that Young would remain as
Utah’s governor. During the winter of 1851–1852, rumors had swirled about his
removal, perhaps to be replaced by General Alexander Doniphan, a Missourian
well-liked among the Mormons for his refusal to execute Joseph Smith in
1838.21 Kane may have also been offered the position, as his fiancée Elizabeth
Wood queried in early May, “You have decided against the Governorship of
Utah, haven’t you? Deseret, in the engraving, doesn’t look very inviting.”22
Fillmore decided to replace the “runaway” officials and, following the publica-
tion of the Herald letter, Bernhisel even hoped that the Saints “may get one or two additional appointees.”23 Fillmore nominated Orson Hyde as a territorial
justice, but despite lobbying by Bernhisel and Kane, he was rejected by the
Senate on the stated grounds that he was not a lawyer.24
Even though no more Mormon officials were appointed, Young con-
tinued as governor and the allegations of the “runaway” officials had been
largely discredited. In the long history of disputes between Mormons and
territorial officials—which lasted from the early 1850s into the 1890s—this
17
. Bernhisel to Kane, March 18, 1852 and March 29, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
18. Grant, Truth of the Mormons, 44, 45.
19. Bernhisel to Kane, July 17, 1852, Kane Collection, Yale.
20. Bernhisel to Kane, August 16, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
21. Bernhisel to Kane, February 21, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
22. Elizabeth Wood to Kane, May 2–5, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
23. Bernhisel to Kane, March 18, 1852, May 11, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
24. Bernhisel to Kane, May 19, 1852, August 16, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
Kane to Young, October 17, 1852
143
represented the only significant occasion when the Mormons prevailed in the
halls of Congress and in the press. Grant credited Kane for much of the Saints’
success, promising him that the Saints would repay Kane in the hereafter: “We
can never in this world, cansel the Debt we owe you. But when the Saints judge
the world, some may be forgoten, But the poor Mormons, will never forget Col
Kane.”25 Nevertheless, the Saints’ admission of polygamy also marked the end
of Kane’s sustained efforts to shape public image of the Saints as a suffering,
persecuted people who could coexist with American society. Kane told his friend
and future father-in-law William Wood that writing the pamphlet with Grant was
“my last labor of the kind.”26 While Kane did not completely abandon reshaping
the public image of Mormonism, his tactics largely shifted from open appeals to
the public to backroom political negotiating to help the Saints.
With the immediate crisis regarding the “runaway” officials over, Kane
raised the issue of plural marriage with Young in the following letter. Kane
wrote that the news of Mormon polygamy gave him “great pain,” expressed
his disapproval of the practice, and averred his continuing support for the
Saints.
Source
Kane to Young, October 17, 1852, box 40, fd 11, BYOF.
Letter
(Personal)
Independence Hall Octo 17, 1852
My dear Sir,
I sent you an Obituary Notice to account to you for my delay in
noticing your Letter.27 I was pleased to get it and directed its contents
to be published, but my brother was on his Death Bed when it arrived,
and he left us shortly after.28
25. G
rant to Kane, May 5, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
26. Kane to William Wood, May 21, 1852, Kane Collection, BYU.
27. Kane’s 14-year-old brother William died on August 25, 1852. William’s obituary was reprinted in the Deseret News, November 6, 1852, 3.
28. The following year, Kane responded to Young’s May 1852 letter on Utah geography by asking detailed questions to Jedediah M. Grant, including the possibility of constructing a railroad and the amount of timber and coal deposits. See Grant to Kane, 31 December 1853, BYU.
144
the prOphet and the refOrmer
I wish to thank you for making my old friend Grant the bearer to
me of his tidings. I ought not to conceal from you that they gave me
great pain. Independent of every other consideration, my Pride in you
depends so much on your holding your position in the van of Human
Progress, that I have [p. 2] to grieve over your favor to a custom which
belongs essentially, I think, to communities in other respects behind
your own. Your Government is too well administered now for you to be
aware of this; but Institutions should be calculated for the average of
human nature, infirmities included, and I fear that those who come after
you, in the diminution for inferior natures of the needful stimulus to a
concentration of the affections, if not in more readily noticed influences,
upon female education, the concord of households, the distribution of
family property and the like, will be called on to deplore the introduc-
tion of these elements of weakness and dissension into the State.
These are my views at all events. I hope you will see in this free
expression [p. 3] of them a respect for your opinion and an affection for
the relations that have subsisted between us. I have not yet been dis-
appointed in treating you as a Man, able and accustomed to look and
speak to Men in the face. You understand me now as you have under-
stood me hitherto, and have it in your power to accept understandingly
the friendship of which I also understandingly offer you the full continu-
ance. I think it my duty to give you thus distinctly my opinion that you
err: I can now discharge you and myself from further notice of the subject.
I have suffered much from my brother’s death. I loved him tenderly,
and my health was besides seriously impaired [p. 4] by long watching
through his trying illness. Yet it is evident I shall live some years yet,
and I hope, still to battle for the right because I cannot otherwise be
willing to live. It seems to me that as the ties grow fewer which attach
me to the world here my thought turns more frequently toward happy
Deseret and my many cherished friends there. I trust soon to feel you
are settled safe beyond any aid of mine; but, until then, write to me as
freely as you have done hitherto, command me as freely, and know me,
as long as I can render you needful service,
Faithfully your friend
Thomas L. Kane
Governor Young.
22
Young to Kane, May 20, 1853
due tO heavy snows during the winter of 1852–1853, Young received Kane’s
October 17, 1852 letter regarding plural marriage on May 8, 1853. By the time he
received Young’s reply, Kane worried that his frankness had injured the rela-
tionship between he and Young.1 However, Young’s letter, written on May 20,
1853, lauded Kane’s “open, frank and candid expression,” and stated that his
“plain expression of fear and feeling, endears you to me.” Rather than speak
specifically about plural marriage, which the Mormons officially acknowledged
in August 1852, Young penned a lengthy defense of the Mormons’ rights to
religious freedom. He praised the American constitution, asserting its divine
provenance and correct principles, particularly in guaranteeing religious free-
dom in a world of state-supported churches and intolerance.
Source
Young to Kane, May 20, 1853, Box 15, fd 2, Kane Collection, BYU.
A draft of this letter is in box 17, fd 7, BYOF.
Letter
Great Salt Lake City, May 20, 18532
My very dear Friend
Your letter (Personal) of Oct. 17,3 I received the 8th inst: and
improve the first mail to receipt the favor. Most of the heavy mail from
1. Kane to Y
oung, July 18, 1853.
2. The envelope for this letter indicates that it was mailed from Salt Lake City on June 1, 1853.
3. Kane to Young, October 17, 1852.
146
the prOphet and the refOrmer
Independence, since Nov. is still en route, so hazardous and forbidding
have been the Mountain Passes; so severe was the winter, that most of
the fleeter animals became extinct on the post route; and an ox train is
now supplying the deficiency with our heavy mail. This will suffice, for
the delay of your letter.
After reiterating the warmest sympathetic associations for the loss
of your dear friend and brother,4 Permit me to thank you most cordially
for the open, frank and candid expression of your views and feelings,
on one important truth connected with my history, and the history of
friends and worlds with which I associate. Your brief, explicit, and plain
expression of fear and feeling, endears you to me, more than all the
rhetoric of ages could have done; fear, that I am wrong; feeling, that you
desire me right. These are such views as the Gods exercise, so far as
knowledge permits those views to have place in their breasts.
Permit me to repeat, your plainness strengthens our bonds of
endearment, for my soul delights in plainness;5 and God himself is a
plain Being and delights to be understood by all, to whom he commu-
nicates. You close the free expressions of your feelings on one point,
with: “I can now discharge you and myself, from further notice of the
subject.” therefore I feel free to pass that subject, except so far as gen-
eral principles are concerned, and I have not the least desire to intro-
duce any thing in my communication, that should give you the least
pain or anxiety. Whatever you have found me, you will so continue to
find me, until my nature is changed by power irresistible; and when that
occurs, I shall not be accountable for the change; but you will have to
take me then as you find me.
There are contingencies in all things on Earth, except the principle
of Eternal Truth; and the appeciation of that principle, has been so vari-
able in the days of Revelation; that many, have doubted whether prin-
ciple did not vary, as well as the application of it. Illustration. God gave
to Israel, through Moses, a law, designed for their salvation; but when
he found by their acts that they would not save, but destroy themselves
by that law, He so far abrogated that law, as to give them another, which
they would keep; and thus, by changing the order of the school, and
not the principle of truth, salvation, He brought them to Christ, whom
4. On the death of W
illie Kane, see Kane to Young, October 17, 1852; “Died,” Deseret News,
November 6, 1852.
5.2 Nephi 25:4.
Young to Kane, May 20, 1853
147
they crucified; and to the Gospel, which they rejected; consequently
there was no further excuse for them, and they were scattered among all
nations; but, thank God, they will be gathered again, in this generation.
There was a great, an important contingency in the Establishment of
our Glorious Union. Have any of the nations of the Earth such another
Constitution? No! This is far above them all. so may it continue!6 But
if the colonies had failed to accomplish their object, would not their
yoke of bondage been ten fold heavier? Did they not know this? Did
this deter them from their designs? From what they knew was right?
Did they refrain from acting on principle, because they feared that
Washington would not have a man to come after him who could not
govern as well as he did? If they had, where would we now have been
in the scale of nations? And where are the United States now? where
have they been? With a Washington at their head all the time? Is there
the same virtue in the people now there was then? Are they as moral
and truly pious as they were then? Are the Executors, Legislators, and
Judiciary of the Nation and States, as upright as they were then? Easily
answered. But suppose they are not: Does that prove that the principles
of the Constitution are not right? And is it wise to desert from correct
principle, because some body, or even the mass may abuse it? Certainly
not! [p. 2]
Sir, next to my God, and the Salvation of the Children of Men,
I glory in the American Constitution, for that is a part of my religion;
It was given by revelation,7 and promises to me, and to all who dwell
under the broad spread wings of her boundless Eagle, that freedom of
thought, and action, which enable me to worship the God who gave it
without molestation; and to communicate to, and receive from friends,
principles of life and salvation, for time and in Eternity.
But when we look to other Governments, Christian or Heathen,
what do we find? England excepted; believe as I believe, do as I do, and
you can be protected in your conscientious belief; and even in England,
an oath of abjuration or allegiance, with certificate from civil court, is
required; and licensed room, before any man is safe to declare his reli-
gious belief, unless he be a licentiate of the Established Hierarchy. In
France, Germany, and other civilized and Christian Nations, if a Minister
6. Y
oung often made similar comments on the importance of the U.S. constitution. For
example, see Young, discourse, July 31, 1859, Journal of Discourses, 9:344.
7. See Doctrine and Covenants 101:77–80.
148
the prOphet and the refOrmer
of the Bible can get permission to express his views of Christianity in
public, it will be because he thinks as they think, or else he must do
> little else than run the gauntlet to get that permission in any form; and
when he has the permission, has little or no protection but God and his
own arm, to defend his permission.
Not so under the American Constitution; every man is guaranteed
the right to worship his God according to his conscience, and express
his belief in any or no religion, and it is nobody’s business, but his
own, so long as he does not disturb his neighbor, or molest him in His
worship. And if this principle has not been, and is not carried out, it is
because the rulers have been or are corrupted; and the people, by their
unvirtuous faith and actions, and unholy, antichristian principles, love
to have it so; but so long as the people of these United States, have
virtue, chastity, and Godliness enough left in them, to select virtuous
and wise Executors, Legislators, and Judges to rule over them, who will
be governed by the Constitution of the Union, which they are sworn to
support, all Earth and the gates of hell with all their inmates, will never
prevail against them; And when the nation shall become so corrupt, that
truth can find no place in its midst, and the Constitution shall be utterly
trampled under foot by aspiring demagogues, who profess to uphold it,
(for the sake of gain) and the people love to have it so, God will take
up the nation as he does the sea, like a very small thing in the hollow of
his hand, and dash it to the bottom, Just as one extreme usually follows
another.
Where then shall we be? What our situation? Where, O Earth, will be
thy nation of freemen? Where the Man, upon thy face, who can worship
his God in liberty, without license from Civil Court? Shall we exclaim, O
Heavens! Let us not live to see this day! I will say, No! Lord let me live
until the Earth is, swept clean of wickedness, and righteousness prevail.
But where is this world going to? Look at the fires, incendiaries, acci-
dents, shipwrecks, calamities, Roberies, Rapes, Murders, and the whole
Catalogue of devastations that are weekly reported, and tell where is
the world going to? What the doom of the Inhabitants thereof?
I would that the whole world would become reguvenated, would
believe the truth; would become enlightened; would abandon supersti-