The Prophet and the Reformer
Page 23
tions and dogmas that profit nothing; and learn to be freemen; christians
in very deed; do as they would be done unto; and dwell eternally in the
heavens. It is for this I live; for this I labor night and day; for this I am
willing to toil and suffer, to save my fellow men, ’till my life is spent, ’till
the God of Abraham and Joseph shall say enough, come home. [p. 3]
Young to Kane, May 20, 1853
149
Thus, my dear sir, you will perceive that I have expressed my feel-
ings as freely and frankly as yourself; and this is what makes me glory
in American Liberty; even if I am compelled to flee to the mountains to
enjoy it, and you may tell your friends for ever and for ever, if you please
so to do, that the principles of our great Magna Charta, the American
Constitution, I shall defend, while God gives me breath, if I have to flee
to Africa Deserts for doing it; so that when a friend writes to me with
open heart, I can answer him as freely, and not find myself bound by the
world darling espionage, which circumscribes all other nations but this,
(England ½ excepted)
I expect this will reach you at a beloved Father’s Domicil. Though
you did not hint that you were anticipating a visit to Southern Isles,
I learn, by letters from a friend, that you have taken a migration for your
health,8 which, I would hope has proved triumphant in your restora-
tion; although as I have before expressed, if you felt inclined Westward,
you would find Deseret a more healthy place than any Island of the
sea: passing the miasmatic quagmires of the Missouri, at the earliest
date, and resting a short season at Laramie, you would find yourself
among your friends, in our peaceful valley, in improved health.
Dont be afraid of any little trouble or expence you might be at, in
the Bee Hive, (and I speak of it because of your frequent expressions
on Omaha lands) for we are differently situated now, and can give you,
at least, a comfortable room and bed, if not as good as you can find in
Philadelphia, you will call it good, for Mountain
ductions of the Earth, and good nursing, (which I trust you will rejoice
that you do not need) you shall not want;9 if you can trust to your experi-
ence. If you wish to return the same season, let your wishes be executed;
but if you find it agreeable to spend a Winter with us, you will find many
warm friends here to bid you welcome, and none more so than myself.
Command me as freely as you have offered your commands, and
a thousand fold more so, in any thing that may tend to promote your
peace, comfort, health, or happiness, that I have to bestow, and your
commands will ever meet with a warm response, and believe me as you
8.
See John Bernhisel to Young, February 5, 1853, BYOF. To recover his health, Kane traveled to the West Indies from January through March 1853. Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 108–110.
9. The draft letter includes the following clause, which was stricken out: “and should you feel disposed to bring your good lady.”
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the prOphet and the refOrmer
ever have, a lover of truth and righteousness; a dispenser of the truths
and blessings of Divine Providence to all within my reach, and an unde-
viating friend to those who have ever proved themselves friendly, like
the beloved, Coll. Kane, not for filthy lucre, but from pure friendship
and the truths’ sake.
Brigham Young
P. S. The Doctor,10 learning that I am writing to Coll. Kane, wishes to
be remembered most affectionately, says he has refrained from writ-
ing for a long time, fearing his scriblings are not acceptable, as he has
received no answer.11
10. W
illard Richards.
11. After Kane received Young’s letter, he wrote to Willard Richards: “Let me therefore write to you at once to say what pleasure they have always given me, and to thank you for them, once for all. I have ever esteemed myself personally beholden to you on their account. Many as have been the times when I have been able to make good use of them, I have never done so without pride. I have no correspondent; I may say I know of none, more frank spoken, more able, more uniformly cordially delightful. Your public affairs, thank God, no longer calling for my interference, my letters are like to prove of little interest; but I shall be glad to write to you and all my faithful friends, whenever they are glad to hear from me. Governor Young will explain to you my late seeming remissness.” Kane to Richards, July 18, 1853, Willard Richards Papers, CHL.
23
Kane to Young, July 18, 1853
On the day Kane received Young’s May 20, 1853 letter, Kane wrote a
reply. Kane expressed relief at Young’s response to his questioning of the
Latter-day Saints’ practice of plural marriage and thanked Young for sending
a daguerreotype of himself. John Bernhisel, who visited Kane in Philadelphia
in December 1853, reported to Young that Kane “seemed much pleased” with
this letter.1
Two months earlier, on April 21, 1853, Kane had married his sixteen-year-old
second cousin Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood in a Presbyterian church. In this
letter, Thomas happily reported on the marriage. Born in a suburb of Liverpool
in 1836, Elizabeth had emigrated to New York City with her parents in 1844.
Thomas first met Elizabeth during a trip to England in 1840 and he became
close friends with her father, Scottish merchant William Wood, and some-
times visited the Woods in New York.2 According to family tradition, Elizabeth
announced at the age of twelve, “I intend to marry Cousin Tom Kane!”3 By 1851,
Thomas began to “manifest a partiality” for Elizabeth and visited the Woods
more frequently.4 They became unofficially engaged on January 25, 1852, and
affectionate letters flowed back and forth between Thomas and Elizabeth until
their marriage. The newlyweds initially lived next door to Thomas’s parents on
Girard Street in central Philadelphia.5
1. Bernhisel to Y
oung, December 12, 1853, BYOF.
2. Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 128–129.
3.“Elizabeth Dennistoun Kane,” Kane Leader, May 28, 1909, Kane Collection, BYU.
4. Kane to William Wood, n.d. [1852], Kane Collection, BYU.
5. Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 130, 152.
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the prOphet and the refOrmer
figure 23.1 A portrait of Elizabeth W. Kane.
Source: Reproduced by permission from L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
Source
Kane to Young, July 18, 1853, box 40, fd 11, BYOF.
Letter
Independence Hall, July 18. 1853.
My dear Sir,
Your letter received to day I sit down to answer before the Mail
closes.6 I must honestly tell you how glad I have been to get it. I was
discomforted by your not answering my Letter of October last.7 It was
plain spoken as I well remembered: time wore by and still no answer
came: I had no Spring visits from Deseret friends: I heard from you only
through the newspapers.—Reluctantly, I began to try to bring myself to
think you the Mormons too were,—even as the rest of the world.
6. Y
oung to Kane, May 20, 1853.
7. Kane to
Young, October 17, 1852.
Kane to Young, July 18, 1853
153
It cost me a great deal. Not for [p. 2] nothing, old friend, do men
stand by one another through good and evil report for years. Their
attachment strikes so deep in time that to get it down you must tear
up the Earth with its roots. I could not believe I had not rightly known
you; it was harder still to believe you changed. And now your letter
explains me everything as I would have it, and its ‘internal evidence’
more than its words of text satisfies me my heart full that you are as
you say: “a lover of truth, and an undeviating friend.”8 I never have
changed, and therefore know you will understand my pledging you in
your own offer: Long may we truly know each other, for so long we shall
be friends!
—To speak less gravely; were you anything else, you have given
me a fair chance to say, “you [p. 3] lie in your face”! I have been
exceedingly gratified by your present of Daguerreotypes which
I lately received. I am a bigoted physiognomist9 you perhaps know
and it was a great satisfaction to see you all looking as I remem-
bered you; that is, as you are.—The impressions are very well taken
and I hope you will write me whom particularly I am to thank for
their execution and transmission.10—I have myself had now some
time on hand waiting its opportunity of transmontane expedition
a Friendship’s Offering for you. It is a Wedding Cake that I wish
divided among all my well wishers who will accept my sincere good
wishes with it.11 I am now a married man; and, as I have neither mar-
ried Beauty, Expectations, Millinery, Dancing, or Piano Playing,
I think you may afford to congratulate me. My wife is a young lady
whom I [p. 4] first met in Europe where she was born, but well well
known to me through a distant relationship that subsists between
us,—a fine mind, a generous heart, a sweet temper, and one that
from her earliest childhood has had the advantage of earnest and
truly pious Christian training. Her family is one of the most ancient
8. Y
oung to Kane, May 20, 1853.
9. A physiognomist sought to read an individual’s character through his or her facial expressions. See Lucy Hartley, Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
10. Young had probably sent Kane images of the Church’s First Presidency and Twelve Apostles. For the likely image, see Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, Brigham Young: Images of a Mormon Prophet (Salt Lake City: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2000), 110–111.
11. The cake, if it was sent, apparently did not arrive in Utah. See Young to Kane, January 31, 1854.
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the prOphet and the refOrmer
of commoners in Scotland, and I have yet to learn that any one of its
members has even been cowardly, recreant, or dishonest. Her Father
is eldest of the line of the Woods of Largo, a lineal descendant of
Sir Andrew Wood “of that same,” the brave old Admiral whose vic-
tories over the Howards & Co. so incensed the pure founder of the
English Church, Hen. 8.12 On the other side she descends from the
Dennistouns of Dennistoun, whose motto was: Kings come of us, not
we [p. 5] of Kings,” Robert Bruce the Monarch having been of their
stock.13 Carstairs, the intimate adviser of William of Orange whom
History records to have withstood dreadful torture so firmly rather
than reveal the secrets upon which the fate of English Freedom in
his day depended, was one of her collateral ancestors, and she can
boast of many other such who were staunch and valiant friends of
civil and religious liberty.14 If I am blessed with offspring, I trust, if
I have no other Estate, I shall leave them at least the ability and the
will to stand up in their day for Truth and Honor. I hope this—and
for what may I not hope, having returned from the West Indies in
spite of adverse prophesy and the Yellow Fever gauntlet I ran there,
and marrying being married as if on purpose to fulfil my old Patriarch
friend’s seemingly long ago last prediction, [p. 6] married I really am
constrained to say by a strange course of happy events rather than
my own original will.15—You must give my regards most particularly
to Mr. Smith.16 It really occurs to me as I write this, that I will most
appropriately direct my cake to his care.
12. S
ir Andrew Wood (d. 1515) was a Scottish sea captain from Largo and a powerful supporter of Kings James III and James IV. See Norman Macdougall, “Wood, Sir Andrew” in George Smith, The Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 21, Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee, eds. (London: Oxford University Press, 1917), 819.
13. For this saying and the Dennistoun family, see William Anderson, Scottish Nation; or, the Surnames, Families, Literature, Honours, and Biographical History of the People of Scotland (London: A. Fullarton, 1877), vol. 2, 30–31. For the Scottish King Robert Bruce, 1274–1329, see G.W.S. Barrow, “Bruce, Robert de VIII,” in Smith, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 3, 117.
14. William Carstares (or Carstairs) (1649–1715) was a minister of Church of Scotland and adviser to William of Orange. See Tristam Clarke, “Carstares, William,” in Smith, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 3, 1096.
15. During Kane’s voyage to recover his health in the West Indies between January and March 1853, he suffered several health crises, partly as a result of an outbreak of yellow fever on several Caribbean islands. See Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 108–110.
16. Kane’s patriarchal blessing, given by John Smith, had indicated that he would marry and have a large posterity. Kane, patriarchal blessing, September 7, 1846, CHL.
Kane to Young, July 18, 1853
155
I also must send a few newspapers announcing the departure of
Dr. Kane’s Expedition for the Arctic Ice, or Ocean, as it is called.17 He is
my brother, but I must say I think that if any man was ever entitled to a
favorable issue of an enterprise of self denying heroism, it is he.—I am
glad to see that your attention has been turned to the processes of Fish
Breeding said to be so successful in France, and I have sent over for you
for the little work of Dr. Haxo on the subject which perhaps may be of
service to you.18—I have not time to dwell on many topics that [p. 7]
arise in my mind in connection with your interests. I presume you have
watched with attention the progress of the Pacific Railroad movements.
General Pierce informed one of my friends that he “would like to make
it the Measure of his Administration,” and it is certain at least that all
the questions it involves will soon be before the nation for their deci-
sion.19 I am not informed whether you consider it your policy to have the
Road conducted through your valley, or the reverse;20 but, in either case
I think you can exert an influence on the determination of the question.
17
. In May 1853, Kane’s brother Elisha departed on a second voyage to the Arctic in search of the lost British explorer Sir John Franklin. Elisha’s voyage was watched closely by the American press and public. Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 137.
18. The Deseret News had recently published an article on the advancement of fish breeding in France. Ten years earlier, in March 1843, two F
rench fishermen, Laurent Remy and Antoine Gehin, successfully repopulated the Moselle River’s fish through a three-year study of fish breeding. The achievement came to the attention of the Société d’émulation des Vosges, whose secretary, Dr. Joseph Haxo, began a publicity campaign. Haxo’s report was said to have attracted the attention “not only of the French government but of the entire scientific world.” In the late 1860s, Brigham Young encouraged the development of “fish culture”
in Utah as well as the eating of fish. See “Curious Discovery—The Artificial Production of Fish,” Deseret News, March 5, 1853; Haxo, De la Fécondation Artificelle des Oeufs de Poissons (Epinal: Gley, 1853); William Fry, A Complete Treatise on Artificial Fish-Breeding (New York: D.
Appleton and Company, 1854), vi–ix, 85, 89; Darin S. Kinsey, “ ‘Seeding the Water as the Earth’: The Epicenter and Peripheries of a Western Aquacultural Revolution,” Environmental History vol. 11, no. 3 (July 2006): 527–566; Young to Seth Green, August 28, 1868, BYOF; Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, April 22, 1869, 6:464.
19. In a speech in Philadelphia in July 1853, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis proposed a Pacific Railroad to be built by private companies with government subsidies during the Pierce Administration. Sectional wrangling over the route of the railroad, however, doomed the prospect of the railroad during Pierce’s presidency and contributed to the disputes over the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854. Larry Gara, The Presidency of Franklin Pierce (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1991), 53–54, 66–67.
20. Even during their trek west in 1847, the Mormons had demonstrated interest in the construction of a transcontinental railroad. In 1868, Brigham Young recalled, “I do not suppose that we traveled but one day from the Missouri River here, but what we looked for a track where the rails could be laid with success, for a railroad through this Territory to go to the Pacific Ocean.” The Mormons continued to support enthusiastically the transcontinental
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the prOphet and the refOrmer
Your excellent letter of advice to Emigrants had universal circulation
in our journals.21 I should like much to have your opinion of the Platte
Route (by the Stansbury Bridger Pass) so slighted by Government and
Benton.22 One Fisher of this City whom I know very well and induced