Stop the Press

by James W. Ure

  Howard Christy, professor emeritus and former senior editor of scholarly publications at Brigham Young University, wrote, “It was at once the most ill-advised and tragic, the most heroic, and arguably the proudest single event in the Mormon pioneer experience.”14

  Blaming others would be Brigham's doctrine in 1862 when the dissident Joseph Morris was killed, a man who, with a hundred breakaway followers, would taunt Brigham as a false prophet from their redoubt at the mouth of Weber Canyon. Six died before the dissident rebellion was put down.15

  Scapegoating would become critical to the Mormon version of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857. The church's inability to squarely face its own history would feed 2013's acts of retribution against the Salt Lake Tribune.

  To learn who rules over you simply look to those you cannot criticize.

  —Voltaire

  Brigham was closer to being an emperor than a governor during the early 1850s. He enjoyed unfettered powers. A theocratic sovereign, he said he could “dictate this community better than any other man.”1 At one point he called for the beheading of a Mormon “thief and swindler” named Ira West.

  Hyperbole? No.

  The extra-legal proceedings in the West case were a direct outgrowth of calls to cleanse the church, and it was during this time that Brigham expanded on the doctrine of blood atonement.

  The idea of atoning in blood had been around since Nauvoo, when a man named Irvine Hodges was murdered by a gang of fellow thieves. Brigham explained that his killers had done a good deed. Since Hodges could do no further evil, it had increased Hodge's chances at redemption.2 At Winter Quarters Apostle Heber Kimball encouraged adulterers to make confessions and be willing to have their heads cut off.3 The attempted murder of former Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs was also an act of blood atonement.

  At Brigham's call to behead West, Apostle Erastus Snow bluntly said it would have been right for Joseph Smith's faithful followers to have slain those who dissented against his policies in Nauvoo.4 Brigham vowed not to let disunity reemerge in the Great Basin. He expected his followers to adhere to his every word. When John Pack, a member of the Council of Fifty, apparently “divulged the secrets of the council,” Brigham warned him to leave the valley, intimating his life was in danger.5 The Destroying Angels were in wait, whetting their blades. Pack begged for forgiveness and offered to have his head cut off as blood atonement if he should ever again break the secrecy of the council.

  Writes Turner, “By giving an assembled crowd the license to kill petty criminals like Ira West, Young gave his blessing to what many observers would regard as church-sponsored vigilantism.”6 It also muted dissidents, which was its main purpose.

  Brigham “had no intention of separating ecclesiastical from political authority,” wrote author John G. Turner.7 He established a civil government that was in tandem—and indistinguishable—from the hierarchy of the priesthood. In fact, the settlers saw no need for a written constitution. They considered the Quorum of Fifty constitution enough.

  In 1848 the Mormons had petitioned Congress to create the Deseret Territory. Brigham and his counselors soon realized with some alarm that if they were granted territorial status, it would give the federal government the power to appoint territorial officials. He wanted nothing less than for the Mormons to run their own affairs.8

  The church reconsidered the petition and instead held an election calling for the establishment of the state of Deseret in the hopes they could head off federal entry into Mormon country. The Mormons voted unanimously for Deseret's slate of candidates, including Brigham as governor. Deseret State had its own flag, its own currency, and its own army. The General Assembly of Deseret established counties and created courts and laws. They granted special privileges to the church leadership for owning toll roads, ferries, waterways, and canyons. The general assembly also incorporated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It empowered them to solemnize marriages, providing legal sanction, at least in the eyes of the state of Deseret, to polygamy.9

  While Brigham avowed that the US Constitution was divinely inspired, he was quick to follow up with curses for the politicians and the federal government. “Corrupt as hell,” he said and predicted the downfall of the US government, which he felt had been unresponsive to Mormon killings and other outrages in Missouri and Illinois.10

  Washington was aware of the Mormon hegemony in the Great Basin. After a series of negotiations, primarily having to do with compromises on slave states and territories, Congress deemed Utah one of its territories.11

  To every Mormon's relief, President Millard Fillmore appointed Brigham as governor. In a short time the state of Deseret was dissolved and a new territorial legislature convened to adopt the state of Deseret's laws as its own. God's law had more force than manmade law.12 However, Brigham's iron grip on the territory's affairs was about to be challenged.

  President Fillmore appointed several non-Mormon officials and judges for Utah. Most were nonresidents, and many were incompetent party hacks enjoying patronage.

  In Utah Territory, this became a struggle for political supremacy. It would heighten hatreds and renew old fears.

  The non-Mormon appointees had no loyalty to the people they governed and quickly fell into conflict with Brigham and the higher minions of the church, in spite of the church's affirmation of its loyalty to the country and the president. The friction was caused in part by the belief that, ultimately, it was the Mormon priesthood that would save America.13

  The first federal appointees began to arrive in 1851. Broughton Harris, the non-Mormon territorial secretary, arrived in Utah accompanied by Almon W. Babbitt and John Bernhisel, both of whom represented Mormon interests in Washington.14

  Babbitt was a Mormon who had been in positions of leadership in Kirtland and Nauvoo. He was a lawyer and a polygamist but seemed to rub Mormon authorities the wrong way; he'd been stripped of church privileges four times, each time being restored.15

  It was clear from the outset that Brigham thought him a poor selection to represent the Mormons in Washington. Brigham believed Babbitt undermined Mormon interests. Babbitt was suspect, in part, because he enjoyed the company of non-Mormons. He was also something of a dandy.

  Brigham, in a test of Babbitt shortly after his arrival, demanded Babbitt turn over $20,000, which he had been allotted by the US Treasury, for a courthouse. “Politicians are a stink in my nose,” he told Babbitt, and warned, “If you interfere with any of my dictation in the elections it will be the last…. You are shitting in my dish and I will lick it out and you too.”16

  A kind of détente was reached. Babbitt actually turned the money over to Brigham for the courthouse, and he signed a proclamation establishing judicial districts. Mormons unanimously elected John Bernhisel to serve their interests in Washington. Babbitt would later be killed on the wagon route east. It would be blamed on either Pawnees or Mormons.17

  Arriving about this same time was Associate Justice Perry Brocchus of Alabama, another federal appointee. He was sick after the long journey and had lost many of his possessions to raiding Pawnees. He was sicker when he heard Bernhisel would go to Washington. He had wanted the job himself.18

  Brocchus familiarized himself with the church and attempted to engage in friendly relations with Brigham. He was received at Brigham's office and was granted permission to address the September session of Mormon Conference. He strode to the podium and began by showing he had much knowledge of the Book of Mormon by quoting scripture. So far so good.

  Things started going south when he impugned the patriotism of the Saints. Brocchus said the federal government was right not to become involved in the battles of Saints and gentiles in Missouri and Illinois, as it was “a private wrong.”19 The states should redress these grievances. Brocchus absolved the late president Zachary Taylor and the federal government from anti-Mormonism, and then he stood down.

  The Saints seethed with anger at what they felt was an insult and let Brocchus know it. Br
occhus and three other government appointees fled the territory, taking $24,000 intended to pay for government expenses. Brocchus and the others returned to the East, loudly questioning the loyalty of the Mormon leaders.20

  Dismayingly, more federally appointed judges came into the territory. The Mormons came to view them as impediments to righteousness. To circumvent the government judges, the territorial legislature expanded the powers of local (Mormon) probate courts, giving them jurisdiction in both civil and criminal matters—not just the wills of the dead. Church authorities brazenly counseled court verdicts from the pulpit. Through the probate courts the church remained in control of Utah justice for twenty years, much to the frustration of the federal judges.21

  The struggle often resembled “comic opera more than a political battle,” wrote Bagley.22 Further, it was exacerbated by the Mormon belief in “lying for the Lord,” which dated back to Joseph.23 There were laws, and there was righteousness. You could lie for righteousness. It seemed this policy would be carried over by the church in its twenty-first-century attempts to still the voice of the Salt Lake Tribune.

  Brigham was determined to complete the work of Joseph Smith. This resulted in a “culture of violence,” according to Bagley, quoting D. Michael Quinn's Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power.24 It was within the rights of the Saints “to kill antagonistic outsiders, common criminals, LDS apostates, and even faithful Mormons who committed sins ‘worthy of death.’”25

  With the federal government intruding into their sagebrush Eden and the Mormons stirring up vigilantism, ill will smoldered. And then it burst into flame.

  On August 29, 1852, Brigham called a special conference of the church. Orson Pratt read a statement that was by then an open secret: the Mormons were practicing polygamy.26

  This was the official announcement, word of which spread like wildfire to the eastern press and to Europe. Shocking, said the world's newspapers, that in America, in the middle of the Victorian nineteenth century, men would take more than one wife. Brigham was confident now and flexing his political muscles. The world knew the name of Brigham Young.27

  Brigham's announcement provided more fuel for the anti-Mormon fires, and the federal judges felt frustrated at every turn by Brigham's hold on the system. (Utah today has its active Mormon judges and its “other” judges. A person seeking legal redress will be guided by an attorney as to which judge would be preferable in hearing his or her case. This identification of judges would play a critical role in the twenty-first-century conflict between the Tribune and the LDS Church.)

  More streams of antagonism were reaching a confluence between the federal government and Brigham's authoritarian rule.

  In the beginning, Brigham invited travelers to rest and recuperate. The first emigrants to spend time in Great Salt Lake City en route to California found the Mormons to be hard traders. Sometimes the emigrants were ruthlessly exploited. The outsiders, who were occasionally disrespectful and venomous, represented the hated federal government.28

  The Mormons harassed emigrants, especially those traveling south toward Los Angeles. The string of Mormon settlements between Great Salt Lake City and San Bernardino had been scratched from rough, largely scrubby desert and scab lands. Their residents were Saints who held bitter grudges against the government. John D. Lee, Mormon leader and by 1856 an Indian agent in southern Utah's Iron County, believed the past suffering of the Saints justified stealing from any gentile passing through the towns where extreme poverty and religious zeal went hand in hand. There was also the issue of grass, for which the animals of both settler and traveler competed.29

  The government sent more men to try to manage Utah, described by Bagley as “the renowned Botany Bay of worn out politicians.”30 Brigham believed the only reason these men were chosen to go to Utah was because they hated Mormons.

  Brigham's disgust and antagonism toward these appointees was in the open. Ever the diplomat, in a draft of an official letter to Congress, he wrote, “Kiss my arse, damn you.”31 The federal government replaced the runaway officials as fast as they fled.

  One of the more colorful appointees was William W. Drummond of Illinois. He had abandoned his family and arrived to live in Utah with a prostitute he said was his wife. He had the temerity to challenge local control of the courts. Outraged Mormons learned of his liaison with the prostitute, and Drummond found it best to leave the territory. He headed east with a litany of complaints about the Mormons.32

  Garland W. Hurt was sent by President Franklin Pierce to become an Indian agent in Utah. He was a physician and a Kentucky state legislator. He tried to establish good relations with the Mormons, but the goodwill evaporated quickly as he worked under Brigham Young.

  Hurt warned of the “rude and lawless young men such as might be regarded as a curse to any civilized community.”33 He was speaking to the Indians of the Mormon missionaries, who were suspected of forging alliances with the indigenous people. Many believed the Mormons were behind several attacks on travelers making their way through the territory, including incidents in which white men, painted as Indians, drove off herds of cattle. It is likely that whites in the territory served as fences for stolen goods brought to them by the Indians.34

  Agent Hurt disagreed with Mormon policy of giving the Indians food and clothing, feeling it made them dependent. He established farms for the Indians and was well liked by the Ute Indians, who called him “the American.”35 Hurt wrote that Brigham Young would “endure all manner of insult rather than be at war with the Indians.”36 Hurt would later play a dramatic role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre.37

  The battle for control of the territory's legal apparatus continued. Statehood was not total independence, but Brigham would settle for it if it kept control in the hands of the church.

  Apostles John Taylor and George A. Smith took a statehood petition to Washington during the winter of 1856–57. They may have given a good accounting of the Mormon side of the story, but they couldn't easily toss off the state's failure to accept federal officials. Whatever sympathy the church had gained after being hounded from Missouri and Nauvoo had been lost in the bombast of Brigham as he exhorted the Saints to polygamy and defied the federal government. The petition never reached Congress.38

  Religious extremism came to the Mormons in early 1856. It was known as the “Reformation” but might as easily have been called the Inquisition.39 Brigham felt the Saints had lost their way and had shrugged off their commitment. His network of spies and his bishops and home teachers were encouraged to pry into the most personal matters of the members.

  “Now is the time to awake, before the time of burning,” he preached.40

  In this matter, Jedediah Grant, zealot mayor of Great Salt Lake City, became Brigham's Torquemada. He had a list of eighteen questions that winnowed out the sinners. “Have you committed murder or shed (innocent) blood?” “Have you betrayed your brethren?” “Have you ever committed adultery?” “Do you wash your body once a week?”41 Brigham admitted he'd tried the latter once but said it wasn't for everyone.

  Grant traveled from town to town, exhorting atonement and rebaptizing hundreds of Mormons in an orgy of repentance. As Bagley wrote, “Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Reformation was the Mormon leadership's obsession with blood.”42

  During this time there were several castrations of Mormon men for immoral or criminal conduct, perhaps the most famous being Thomas Lewis, castrated by Bishop Warren S. Snow. Some hold the view that Lewis was interested in a woman whose hand was sought in marriage by an older polygamist. Some apologists said he was on the way to jail for sex crimes anyway. The apologists claim Brigham condemned the act. Turner wrote that Brigham “conveyed to her [his mother] his approval of the punishment.”43

  The Reformation was a time of fire and brimstone and a return to the dark and perplexing doctrine that had begun after Joseph's death: blood atonement.

  By 1857, the Mormons were edgy and ready to fight. A cavernous break had opened with th
e federal government.

  The rift had widened when the Deseret News, on March 30, 1857, published the resignation letter of Utah Supreme Court justice W. W. Drummond. He charged the church with having men “set apart by special order of the Church, to take both the lives and property of persons who may question the authority of the Church.”44 Drummond was just warming up. The letter accused Brigham of pardoning murderers convicted by the high court and of slandering the nation and its leaders. He then went on to say that Brigham's Destroying Angels, the Danites, had been the ones to order the Indians to kill Gunnison in 1853. There was more: Drummond's predecessor, Leonidas Shaver, “came to his death by drinking poisoned liquors given to him under the orders of the leading men of the Mormon Church in Great Salt Lake City.”45 He accused two of Brigham's closest apostles, Heber C. Kimball and Jedediah Grant, of the murder of the former secretary of state, Almon W. Babbitt, on the plains after he left the Great Basin.46

  On May 23, 1857, the Deseret News printed a refutation of the accusation that Babbitt was murdered by Mormons. It was from the Council Bluffs Bugle, and it sounds convincing. Babbitt was in his wagon three hundred miles east of Great Salt Lake City when set upon by Indians. He fired his weapons but was tomahawked in the back of the head. His companions, Frank Rowland and a Mr. Sutherland, were also killed. At Fort Kearny a Major Wharton had possession of Babbitt's papers, including a draft for $8,000 and some of his hair. Babbitt's watch was obtained from the Indians by a Frenchman, according to the dispatch.47

  A new president, James Buchanan, had taken notice of the Mormons’ disregard of federal law. He viewed an action against the Mormons as a way to divert the public's attention from the thorny and raging issue of slavery.