The Prophet and the Reformer
Page 33
own letter: I use
for the purpose of producing
producing the impression that there is something disagreeable to be
examined into besides the question of the Governorship. Mr. Buchanan
is a timorous man, as well as just now an overworked one.12
11. In this draf
t, Kane wrote interlinear words or phrases immediately above other words
or phrases in the letter, indicating that he intended to substitute them, even though he did not strike out the original phrases. For clarity, we have represented the original phrases as strikeouts and the interlinear phrases, where legible, in angle brackets.
12. According to Philip Klein, “During April, 1857, Buchanan was besieged and weakened by a small army of men seeking appointment to a federal office.” Klein observed, “Many of
. . . [Buchanan’s] notes and letter of April 1857, far from the methodical, delicate, and precise penmanship which is the trademark of his manuscripts, present a hurried, sloppy scrawl.”
Klein, President James Buchanan, 284.
35
Kane to Young, May 21, 1857
the pressure On President Buchanan to take decisive action on Utah rose
in April 1857, largely due to Drummond’s public campaign calling for Young’s
removal as governor and for a military escort to accompany a new governor
to Utah (which Drummond hoped would be himself). In a letter of resigna-
tion, written on March 30, 1857, Drummond made a series of charges against
the Mormons. Many of the allegations were extreme (and false), such as that
Captain John W. Gunnison, Judge Leonidas Shaver, and Almon W. Babbitt
had all been killed by Mormon “Danites,” a supposed secret “band of Mormon
marauders” who operated under the direction of church leaders.1 His letter
was widely published and reverberated throughout the nation.2 Recognizing
the threat posed by Drummond, Kane (assisted by Mormon leaders in the
midwest and east, including George A. Smith, John Taylor, William Appleby,
and Erastus Snow) sought to discredit him, reminiscent of Kane’s earlier
efforts against the “runaway” officials in 1852. Kane asked Smith, Appleby,
Taylor, and Snow to write letters against the officials’ conduct in Utah, which
he then passed on to Attorney General Jeremiah Black in late April with his
personal validations. The letters focused on refuting Drummond’s allegations
and documenting his official and personal indiscretions.3 Nevertheless, Kane’s
efforts failed, in part because the cabinet had received accusations similar to
Drummond’s from other territorial officials and non-Mormons living in the
territory. By May, Buchanan had decided to replace Young as governor and
send his replacement with a military escort to Utah.
1. W
illiam W. Drummond to Jeremiah S. Black, March 30, 1857, Utah Expedition. Message from the President of the United States, 211.
2. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 116.
3. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 119–120.
220
the prOphet And the refOrmer
On May 21, Kane wrote the following letter to Young, stating that he
only hoped to delay Buchanan’s decisions. Nevertheless, he mentioned that
Buchanan had already offered the governorship to Ben McCulloch, a Texan
who had achieved celebrity status as an officer in the Texas Rangers and the
Mexican War. The self-educated McCulloch was widely considered one of the
nation’s foremost authorities on “arms and military affairs.” A confidante of
Buchanan, McCulloch claimed to have told the president to dispatch troops
to Utah.4
Three days after he penned this letter, Kane found himself publicly
attacked on the front page of the New York Times. The Times published a letter from “Verastus,” widely believed to be Drummond, which criticized “this young man Kane” who “gratuitously and voluntarily asks to be
heard by the present Administration before his bosom friend, and mild,
meek, and humble Christian companion Brigham Young, is removed
from the office of Governor of Utah.” Verastus accused Kane of perpetrat-
ing a “fraud” on Millard Fillmore’s administration with his initial vouch-
ing of Young’s character. Now, Verastus wrote, Kane sought to discredit
the personal observations of the non-Mormon federal officials in Utah,
even though he had never visited Utah and only received his information
second-hand from Mormons. The Mormons had “cajoled and fed and
pampered” Kane, who as a result had evinced a “blind and fanatical zeal
for a false doctrine, and false devotion to false believers.” Verastus con-
cluded with a threat: “As soon as he lectures the President on his duties
on Mormonism, I may refer to him again, but trust the necessity will not
exist.”5
Since Verastus clearly had access to Kane’s March 21, 1857, letter to
Buchanan (which had never been answered), Kane thought that anti-Mormons
within the presidential administration had passed on his letter to outsiders; he
saw this as a “personal indignity” against his honor. (Later, both Buchanan
and Attorney General Black claimed, perhaps disingenuously, that they had
never received Kane’s letters.) Kane wrote bitterly on the top of his retained
copy of his March 21, 1857 letter to Buchanan, “Acknowledged by Letter in N. Y.
Times.”6
4. M
acKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 173; Thomas W. Cutrer, Ben McCulloch and the Frontier Military Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press), 8, 143–144.
5.“Col. Thomas L. Kane on Mormonism,” New York Times, May 24, 1857.
6. Kane, “Concerning the Mormons and Pres. Buchanan,” in Poll, “Thomas L. Kane and the Utah War,” 119.
Kane to Young, May 21, 1857
221
The strong anti-Mormon public sentiment may have also persuaded Kane
that any further efforts at that moment were likely to be ineffective. He tem-
porarily cut his ties with the Buchanan administration and, troubled by ill
health and depression, soon left with his family to the Allegheny Mountains
in Elk County, Pennsylvania, where he spent the summer surveying railroad
routes. His departure, along with the return of Bernhisel to Utah in May, left a
vacuum of lobbyists for the Mormon position in Washington.7
Young first received news that Buchanan would almost certainly replace
him as governor from Bernhisel and George A. Smith, who arrived in Utah
on May 29.8 About a month later, on June 23, the mail arrived in Salt Lake
City, carrying Kane’s letter of May 21 and news of a likely military movement
against Utah.9 Young described the newspapers received to George Taylor, the
presiding Latter-day Saint in New York City:
The last mail brought a fresh supply of newspaper scraps the summary
of which give satisfactory Evidence that the Devil is swaying his sceptre
over this Great Republic. The North, the South, the East, the West, the
Politicians[,] the Priests, the Editors, and the hireling scriblers, all take
up the cry for Blood! blood! blood! Exterminate the Mormons, let us
sweep them from the Earth, go to their mountain home, lay waste their
Cities, destroy their Crops, drive off their Stock, raise their dwelling to
the ground, cause an innocent people to flee for safety and then return
and gloat over the misery we have caused.10
Amid this “vast pile of rubbish,” Kane’s letter seemed like an “oasis.”
On June 28, Young read Kane’s letter to a prayer circle of the church
leadership.11
Source
Kane to Young, May 21, 1857, box 40, fd 12, item 1, BYOF.
7 . Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 157–159.
8. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 144.
9. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 145–147. A clerk’s notation on this letter states that it arrived with the “Eastern Mail” in Salt Lake City on June 23, 1857.
10. Young to George Taylor and others, June 29, 1857, BYOF.
11. Kenney, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, June 28, 1857, 5:64.
222
the prOphet And the refOrmer
Letter
Philadelphia, May 21. 1857
My dear friend:12
I have received another letter from you and ought not to postpone
some answer any longer, though I am still without good news to com-
municate. We can place no reliance upon the President; he succumbs
in more respects than one to outside pressure. You can see from the
papers how clamorous it is for interference with Utah affairs. Now Mr.
Buchanan has not heart enough to save his friends from being thrown
over to stop the mouths of a pack of Yankee editors.
For some time past, my efforts have been almost entirely to gain
delay. If we can get through the Summer without a Gubernatorial
appointment, I shall be in hopes again. But McCulloh was really offered
the place wch. he has recently refused, [p. 2] and there are a dozen patri-
ots ready to accept of it.13
I thank you for writing to me. I am growing old enough to prize
the friends whom Time has left me. Jedediah Grant—I had rough talks
with him over Deseret matters; and have to think with bitterness that
I parted from him without saying in so many words that in my soul I did
him justice.14 Noble fellow; I could give years of my life to have written
him before he died one natural and outspoken brothers letter. Yet this
writing, my friend Young;—does it keep down the miles of waste which
seem to be growing up between us every year? I wish I had your hand
to grasp. I write myself, and it seems but form
Yours faithfully always
Thomas L. Kane
12. Kane wrote “G
overnor Young” at the bottom of the page to identify the recipient.
13. Newspaper reports indicate that Buchanan had offered the job to Ben McCulloch
as early as March and that he had declined “to govern men who have so many wives to govern.” (Nevertheless, the administration continued to pursue McCulloch. On April 25, the Washington Union, a newspaper with close ties to the administration, announced that McCulloch had been offered the position.) A Texas paper reported in early May that McCulloch would refuse the appointment, which he had been offered by telegraph. See The Liberator, March 20, 1857, 47; “General Appointments,” Daily Evening Bulletin [San Francisco], April 13, 1857; “Governor of Utah,” Washington Union, April 25, 1857, 2; “Personal,” New York Daily Times, May 12, 1857, 8, relying on the Galveston Civilian.
14. Young informed Kane of Grant’s death in his letter of January 7, 1857.
36
Young to Kane, June 29, 1857
On June 29, 1857, Young responded to Kane’s letter of May 21, complaining
about the newspaper coverage of the Latter-day Saints and asserting that the
press had been “effectually humbugged” by Drummond and others. Indeed,
the public image of Mormonism was spiraling rapidly downwards, even fur-
ther than it had during the presidential campaign of 1856. On April 1, William
Appleby, an experienced Mormon observer of eastern perceptions of the
Saints, said he had “never perceived such an acrimonious spirit prevailing
against the Mormons, as appears to be gathering at present.”1 On April 21,
the New York Times once more called for military force to be used in Utah.
The paper editorialized: “The Mormons, deluded as they are, may believe as
they like, but they must not be allowed practical and illegal manifestations of
their beliefs in the form of polygamy and other abominations.”2 Its language
became more extreme the following week, as the newspaper denounced the
“notorious licentiousness of the Mormons” and called them the “worst of reli-
gious madmen and bigots.”3
In May, the New York Times relentlessly pressed the case for action
against the Mormons. On May 10, the paper stated that “The treason of
Brigham Young and his deluded followers is every day becoming more and
more open in its manifestations.” According to its depiction, Young firmly
controlled the territory, his Danite assassins terrorized Mormon dissenters
and non-Mormons, and women were slaves of the Mormon elders.4 The
1. W
illiam Appleby to Young, April 1, 1857, BYOF.
2. New York Times, April 21, 1857.
3. New York Times, April 27, 1857, 4.
4. New York Times, May 10, 1857, 1.
224
the prOphet And the refOrmer
federal government needed to respond quickly and wage a “war against
treason, murder, arson, and rapine perpetuated against the lives and peace
of American citizens under the cloak of religious bigotry and supersti-
tion.”5 On May 19, the Times published a “Graphic Narrative of Mormon
Outrages,” from a correspondent in Utah, dated March 5. The subtitles
set the tone: “Melancholy and Affecting Incidents. Horrible Practices
in the Church. Sale of Young Girls—Forcible ‘Sealing’—Extraordinary
Proceedings of a Probate Court—Stirring Appeals for Succor, &c., &c.” The
letter-writer called on Buchanan to save the territorial non-Mormons from
the oppressive Mormon theocracy.6
Another public relations blow against the Saints came in late May, when
eastern newspapers reported that apostle Parley P. Pratt had been murdered
in Arkansas by the estranged husband of his twelfth plural wife. National
newspapers asserted that his killer, Hector McLean, had justifiably killed his
wife’s “seducer” (even though Eleanor McComb McLean Pratt stated that she
had willingly fled Hector’s abuse and alcoholism and that she had not been
seduced by Pratt). Nevertheless, news of Pratt’s murder fit easily with stories
of other Mormon horrors, another example of the depravity of the Latter-day
Saints in general and the evils of the polygamous hierarchy in particular. For
the St. Louis Democrat, it was “another painful narrative of Mormon iniquity, seduction and villainy.”7
In his letter to Kane, Young also described his recent five-week trip
with most of the senior leadership of the church and the territorial militia,
along with two American Indian chiefs, to Fort Limhi, a Mormon outpost
along the Salmon River in Oregon Territory. Young had sent settlers to
establish Fort Limhi in 1855 to proselytize local American Indian tribes and
to expand the northern limits of Mormon settlement. This was the only
time Young left Utah between 1848 and his death in 1877.8 Young’s letter
shows little sense of the growing crisis, despite the dire warnings he was
hearing.
5.
New York Times, May 13, 1857, 4.
6. New York Times, May 19, 1857, 1–2.
7. Reprinted as “Another Startling Tragedy,” New York Times, May 28, 1857, 5. See Matthew J. Grow, “Martyred Apostle or Un-Saintly Seducer?: Narratives on the Death of Parley P. Pratt,”
in Gregory K. Armstrong, Matthew J. Grow, and Dennis J. Siler, eds., Parley P. Pratt and the Making of Mormonism (Norman, Oklahoma: Arthur H. Clark Company, 2011), 275–296.
8. MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, 143–145.
Young to Kane, June 29, 1857
225
Source
Young to Kane, June 29, 1857, Thomas L. Kane Papers, Yale University.
Presidents Office,
Great Salt Lake City June 29th 1857.
My Dear friend,
Your favor of the 21st May is at hand, I was exceedingly glad to hear
from you.9 It seems that the press at least have been most effectually hum-
bugged by the fellow Drummond and some two or three irresponsible
and anonymous letter writers in this city, were we not used to such things
we might be surprised at the mass of rubbish that found its way here by
the two mails for be it remembered that none of these reports came to
hand until brought by the last two mails arriving this present month, I shall
not notice them, but confess that I feel amused the humbug appears so
complete. Wonder if the press will acknowledge themselves duped when
Drummond gets up where they can look at him. It proved that we were
correct in our conclusions last winter when we regarded the non resident
officers as using all their influence to create a disturbance between us and
the general government, Truly the Press has lent its most eficient aid to
accomplish this thankless task. We look for a reaction, when they find that
“Mormon hierarchy” has not “slain” all [p. 2] the respectable gentry if
“Mormon oppression” has pressed them out. The truth is they had made
their false statements and expecting they might be published fled for fear
of the report which might come by the mails. They did not know which
end of the gun which they loaded would shoot the hardest therefore left
in time. There howlings do not disturb me, their troops will find nothing