by James W. Ure
Daniel Wells, Brigham's second counselor, arrived in Beaver. He preached a scorching sermon on duty and then schemed to make certain that the selected Mormon jurors would vote for conviction. Any gentiles were challenged.80 US Attorney Howard, in his opening statement, surprised the court when he said they were there to try John D. Lee and only Lee, not Brigham and the LDS Church.
Then Daniel Wells provided testimony, a signal that the church supported a guilty verdict. William Bishop, the attorney defending Lee, was stunned when it became apparent that the church was aiding the prosecution, especially in light of the fact that he had earlier been told by church authorities that his client would not be convicted.81
An affidavit from Brigham claimed that Lee had tried to give him a detailed account of the massacre but Brigham told him to stop, as he “did not wish [his] feelings harrowed up with a recital of the details.”82
New Mormon witnesses came forward, saying that at Mountain Meadows they had seen Lee club a woman to death, shoot another woman, as well as two or three of the wounded. Witness Nephi Johnson said he'd watched from a nearby hill and swore that Klingensmith and Lee “seemed to be engineering the whole thing.” In fact Johnson, a leader of the Nauvoo Legion, had ordered the assault on the women and children.83
Jacob Hamblin took the stand, and his testimony hinted at rape prior to Lee killing two girls. Hamblin and Johnson knew plenty more, but the plan was to convict Lee without involving anyone else.84
Lee now realized that “those low, deceitful, treacherous, cowardly, dastardly sycophants and serfs had combined to fasten the rope around [his] neck.”85 He had been betrayed by his adoptive father, by his southern Utah friends, and by his partners in murder. Lee refused any defense, and Howard used his closing argument to say that the Mormon authorities knew nothing of the butchery until after the fact.86
The case went to the jury at 11:45 a.m. on September 20. By 3:30 p.m. Lee had been convicted of first-degree murder. He was convinced that some men would “swear that black is white if the good Brethren only say so.” He still believed he would be saved, but the line had been crossed.87
Judge Boreman sentenced Lee to die on October 10, 1876. Utah law gave him the choice of being hanged, shot, or beheaded, the latter being the preferred method of Mormonism's blood atonement. Lee chose to be shot.88
While US Attorney Howard won the agreed upon conviction, Judge Boreman was not happy with the outcome of the trial. At the sentencing Boreman said the trials revealed that high LDS Church authorities had “inaugurated and decided upon the wholesale slaughter of the emigrants.”89
The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that Howard's deal with Brigham had cost him “the confidence of every honest man in Utah in his integrity.”90 Meanwhile, hundreds of southern Utahns wrote letters appealing for clemency for Lee.
On the afternoon of March 21, 1877, Marshal William Nelson and US Attorney Sumner Howard loaded John D. Lee into a closed carriage and headed for Mountain Meadows.91 It was supposed that execution at the site might cause him to give a fuller confession. He'd refused implicating Brigham and other officials even though he seethed with anger at their perfidy.
In the passage of twenty years the Meadows had changed; the springs had dried up, and the verdant grass was gone. A few scrubby bushes remained. On the morning of March 23 the assembled military drew three wagons in a kind of semicircle a hundred yards east of the ruin of Carleton's cairn, which was now a mass of scattered rocks. About seventy-five persons were gathered at the site, many of them onlookers who had found out the time and place of the execution in spite of attempts to conceal it.92
Officials cobbled together a coffin of rough pine boards and then raised a blanket to screen the identity of the firing squad. It is believed that his firing squad consisted of Mormons, since traditionally the military did not take part in civil executions. Lee had a hearty breakfast and coffee. He was dressed in a red flannel shirt and a sack coat. He said, “I did all in my power to save those people…. I consider myself sacrificed.”93
The San Francisco Bulletin described the scene as “weird beyond description.”94
Lee wrote his will and was led to the coffin. He discarded his coat and sat down. He spoke to the assembly, again proclaiming his innocence. He denounced Brigham's betrayal: “I studied to make this man's will my pleasure for thirty years. See, now, what I have come to this day! I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner.”95
The reverend George Stokes, a Methodist minister from Beaver, knelt with Lee and offered a prayer. Lee was blindfolded, but at his request his arms were left untied. He sat upright on the coffin and raised his hands over his head. “Center my heart, boys!” he said to the firing squad. The order was given: “Ready, aim, fire!”96
John D. Lee tumbled into his coffin, his feet resting on the ground. Reported the Salt Lake Tribune, “The old man never flinched. It made death seem easy, the way he went off.”97
Historian Bagley summarizes Lee in this way: “In the final analysis any reasonable accounting must reckon Lee as a profoundly tormented and evil man, but at the end he faced the consequences of his acts with simple courage while others buried their guilt under an avalanche of perjury and evasion.”98
Lee is buried in Panguitch, Utah, beneath what is known as the William Prince Inn.99 Charges against both Dame and Higbee were dropped, with Dame dying in 1884 and keeping his secrets.100 Higbee died in 1904, leaving behind myriad conflicting tales.101 Haight, still a fugitive, lived as an active Mormon in Mexico until his death in Arizona in 1886.102
The legend of John D. Lee would live on. He left in book form what purported to be one of his confessions, Mormonism Unveiled. It would become a best seller.103 His family would defend him into modern times, citing Lee's last prophecy: “If I am guilty of the crime for which I am convicted I will go down and out and never be heard of again. If I am not guilty, Brigham Young will die within one year! Yes, within six months.”104
Brigham Young did die (probably of appendicitis) five months after Lee, on August 29, 1877, still blaming the Tribune and others for trying to implicate him in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. He also left behind a remarkable legacy of leadership, colonization, and political savvy, but non-Mormons mostly painted him as tyrannical and crude.105
The Tribune on August 30, 1877, wrote on the death of Young, “Yet we believe that the most graceful act of his life has been his death…if the death of Brigham Young shall be supplemented this fall by an act of Congress giving the people of Utah a free ballot and an amended jury law, the extirpation of the priestly tyranny will be complete and Utah will be Americanized and politically and socially redeemed.”106 It went on, predicting “the whole decaying structure [of Mormonism] will rapidly fall to pieces.”107 The Tribune forecast that John W. Young, a son, would succeed Brigham as president and prophet.
The New York Post editorialized of Brigham, “In one respect he was a vulgar cheat, of course. In his character he was essentially coarse and brutal, without refinement, without culture, without the finer instincts of men. He gave free rein to the worst passions of his own nature, and made the worst passions of other men his tools. Yet he was a man of almost unbelievable force of character of a certain kind.”108
As John G. Turner summarized the life of Brigham Young, “He preserved a church and created a people, but that success damaged and even destroyed some lives.”109
The church became sensitized to the very words “Mountain Meadows.” Its missionaries had them flung in their faces. As early as the 1880s it began an ongoing public relations campaign to protect the reputation of the Mormon people and of Brigham Young. Prophets can never be wrong, since God speaks through them. In the process the church doctored evidence. It ignored records. It stonewalled. The church's position would shift, and shift again, as new facts about the massacre came to light. Well into the twenty-first century the public image of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would be tarnished by evasive statements about Mounta
in Meadows.110
Should we still be friends when it could be more profitable if otherwise?
—Toba Beta
By 1880, Lockley and his Border Ruffians continued pounding on the departed Brigham Young, on polygamy, and on the new president of the LDS Church, John Taylor. They constantly called for more federal laws to curb plural marriage.
However, “there began creeping into the newspaper signs that the ‘Border Ruffians’ were tiring or running short of money,” wrote O. N. Malmquist, the Tribune's selective biographer. During the ten years since they had taken over the paper from the schismatic Godbe and others, “[Business] minutes as are still available show clearly that there was more exuberance in the editorial office than in the business office.”1
More than half the businesses in the territory were Mormon owned, and they would not risk censure from fellow Mormons or church authorities by advertising in the Tribune. Lockley believed that profitability was in sight, but, ragged and worn by cranking out thousands of words each day, he needed help. An editorial writer was brought in.
The new man was Charles Carroll Goodwin, former editor of the Territorial Enterprise, the rambunctious newspaper of Virginia City, Nevada, where Mark Twain had once labored. For Goodwin, roughhouse journalism was a way of life. Lockley introduced to readers a tough fire-breathing writer who would bring to Mormondom a battle that would excite, delight, and infuriate. Goodwin, and his equally deft counterpart editing the Deseret News, Charles W. Penrose, engaged in an inky war of vitriol, sarcasm, and humor. The competition would sharpen the talents of both men, and because of the “Mormon problem” they would gain national and international status.2
Malmquist, in his study of the Salt Lake Tribune, wrote that “there are reasons to suspect that they privately respected and admired each other.” Penrose would later refer to Goodwin as “[m]y friend, the enemy.”3
Goodwin expanded the political coverage of the paper and was stanchly a supporter of the Liberal, or anti-Mormon, party. His Liberal Party support appeared to be a valiant but quixotic cause; in the congressional election of 1880, People's Party voters elected the Mormon apostle George Q. Cannon with 18,568 votes to Liberal Allen G. Campbell's 1,370 votes.4
However, the Liberals now had a new territorial governor, Eli H. Murray, and he would lead an assault on Mormonism, first by declaring Campbell the winner of the election. He based his decision on the premise that George Q. Cannon was an unnatural alien (born in England), made further ineligible because of his polygamous relationships (he was in violation of the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act). Cannon fired back. The clerk of the House of Representatives placed Cannon's name on the roll based on his huge plurality of votes. Cannon continued to draw a salary. It created an uproar locally and nationally. The seat remained vacant.5
During the conflict between Cannon and Campbell, President James A. Garfield was assassinated. From July 2, 1881, when he was shot, to September 19, when he died, the event dominated the press. Instead of producing a lull in the conflict, Mormonism got dragged onto the national stage once again when the Boston Watchman claimed, “It is an interesting fact that on the day set apart for prayer by the President…the Deseret News, organ of the Mormons, declared that the ‘Praying Circle’ of the Mormon Church was engaged in continual supplication for the death of President Garfield.” The News called it an “atrocious untruth.”6 It is representative of the no-holds-barred conflict of the Mormons and the anti-Mormons.
In 1882 the tempo of the conflict picked up. The Tribune slashed away at polygamy and the church's economic system. The Edmunds Act was passed, an anti-polygamy law designed to plug loopholes created by Supreme Court decisions. It would be followed five years later by the Edmunds-Tucker Act, which would finally bring polygamy to heel.
Perhaps tired of the constant battling, Lockley and his associates sold the Tribune in 1883. Its buyers were its editor, Goodwin, and Patrick H. Lannan, a Nevadan, with the purchase likely financed by John W. Mackay, founder of the rich Comstock Mine in Virginia City, Nevada. The net worth of the paper was listed as $39,483.44, and the buyers probably paid about that for it. The Tribune would be sold for more than $730 million 114 years later.7
Goodwin's acerbic tongue was somewhat curbed by Lannan, but the paper clearly was on the side of the non-Mormons. In an editorial on New Year's Day 1884, the paper declared that “it is the only real missionary journal, its mission work being the attempt to convert this region to full allegiance to American laws.”8 The issues that created the paper were still the issues of the day, with added attacks on the “Word of Wisdom,” which had become more emphasized by the church after Brigham's death and after John Taylor became president. (The Word of Wisdom advises Mormons to eschew coffee, tea, tobacco, and alcohol.) The Tribune frequently snarled its disapproval of the liquor stances of the church and continues to do so to the present day.9
The moderated tone of Lannan's Tribune was short-lived. By the end of 1884 the “Great Divide” reached new heights. One lacerating editorial began with the following:
The Beast of the News
The bastard in charge of the [Deseret] News again last evening filled his dreary columns with an attempt to convict a man before trial, to advertising a young girl's shame and everlasting disgrace and to seek to make out that the Tribune was trying to conceal and apologize for a crime.10
The Tribune was angry that a local doctor had been named by the News for procuring an abortion for a young woman.
About this same time an editor at the Deseret News, John Q. Cannon, was charged by the Tribune with taking a young, plural wife and arranging for a rival to be sent on a faraway church mission. Cannon sought out the Tribune city editor, Joseph Lippman, on the street, demanding an apology. The late Utah historian Harold Schindler wrote,
Cannon said: “I want you to get right down here on your knees and apologize for the lie you published about me last Sunday.”
“I never published any lie about you.”
“You did! Now, I want you to apologize.”
“I will not!” That is as far as Lippman got. Before the words were out of his mouth he found himself “flying through the air as if a cannonball had struck him.” He was knocked about ten feet and landed on the back of his neck and shoulders. Before he could scramble to his feet, Cannon was on top of him with a “little rawhide” and was about to give him a taste of it, when the prostrate reporter “began to cry most piteously and beg for his life.” Cannon gave him a couple of strokes across the head and hands and was about to apply some more, when police, alerted by Lippman's howls, arrived on the scene. Cannon pleaded guilty in court and was fined $15 for his “infraction of the law.” He then hustled back to the Deseret News city room—to write the story for the next edition.11
The upturn in venom was due to a crusade by the Tribune to enforce the anti-polygamy acts.
The Edmunds Act of 1882 and the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 were milestones in a virulent conflict between Mormon and non-Mormon,12 with the Tribune pouring fuel on what it hoped would be the death pyre of polygamy and the end of the Mormon grip on the Utah Territory. The Tribune would be the rallying flag for the anti-polygamy crusaders and would press home vitriolic attacks on the church and its leadership for failure to bow to the government.
While the first Edmunds act made polygamy a felony, the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 gave teeth to the anti-polygamy laws, directing the US attorney general to seize real estate and personal property of the church.13
Over the next several years the government's campaign to eradicate polygamy became an ordeal for all but the most insensitive and vindictive of Mormon-haters. Fathers were taken to prison, leaving wives and children destitute. Families were hunted down like quail as they attempted to find safety from pursuing federal marshals. Many church officials went into hiding.14
Mormons were plunged into despair, and non-Mormons were jubilant with the announcement that Apostle George Q. Cannon, on the run for weeks, had been caught
in Humboldt Wells, Nevada, 180 miles west of Salt Lake City.15 While John Taylor was president of the Mormon Church (and in hiding), many non-Mormons believed Cannon to be the guiding hand of the church.
Cannon consented to return to Salt Lake City, and Marshal E. A. Ireland took a train to Nevada to pick up the fugitive apostle. But while training with marshals back to Salt Lake City, Cannon came up missing.16
He next showed up in the custody of a deputy marshal at Promontory, Utah, with a broken nose, a large gash over the left eye, and most of the skin scuffed off the left side of his face. He explained he had accidentally fallen off the train. Journalists at competing papers faced off: “fallen” or “jumped” became arguable terms. Trial was set for Cannon, but he jumped bail and went missing again.17
A few weeks later Cannon popped up from hiding and returned to court to face his charges, pleading guilty to two counts under the anti-polygamy laws. Cannon was sentenced to 175 days in jail and fined $450.18
Hundreds of Mormons would also be fined and jailed for putting ecclesiastical beliefs ahead of federal law.
After the death of John Taylor on July 25, 1887, Wilford Woodruff became the fourth president of the Mormon Church. It was Woodruff who would bring a conciliatory position to end the “irrepressible conflict.”19 On September 25, 1890, the Salt Lake Tribune published a twenty-seven-line dispatch from the Associated Press in Chicago:
President Woodruff further says that inasmuch as the law forbidding polygamy has been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort he hereby declares his intention to submit to those laws and use his influence with members of the church to have them do likewise…. I now publicly declare that my advice to Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.20