The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 19, May, 1859

The other principal buildings within the city are the Council-House, a square pile of sandstone, once used as the Capitol,—and the County Court-House, yet unfinished, above which rises a cupola covered with tin. Most of the houses in the immediate vicinity of Young's are two stories high, for that is the aristocratic quarter of the town. In the outskirts, however, they never exceed one story, and resemble in dimensions the innumerable cobblers'-shops of Eastern Massachusetts.

None of the streets have names, except those which bound the Temple Square and are known as North, South, East, and West Temple Streets, and also the broad avenue which receives the road from Emigration Cañon and is called Emigration Street. Except on East Temple or Main Street, which is the business street of the city, the houses are all built at least twenty feet back from the sidewalk, and to each one is attached a considerable plot of ground. There is no provision for lighting the streets at night. The cotton-wood trees along the borders of the gutters have attained a considerable growth during the eight or nine years since they were planted, and afford an agreeable shade to all the sidewalks.

Around a great portion of the city stretches a mud wall with embrasures and loopholes for musketry, which was built under Young's direction in 1853, ostensibly to guard against Indian attacks, but really to keep the people busy and prevent their murmuring. To the east of this runs a narrow canal, which was dug by the voluntary labor of the Saints, nearly fifteen miles to Cottonwood Creek, for the transportation of stone to be used in building the Temple.

Just outside the city-limits, near the northeastern corner of the wall, lies the Cemetery, on a piece of undulating ground traversed by deep gullies, and unadorned even by a solitary tree,—the only vegetation sprouting out of its parched soil being a melancholy crop of weeds interspersed with languid sunflowers. The disproportion between the deaths of adults and those of children, which has been a subject for comment by every writer on Mormonism, is peculiarly noticeable there. Most of the graves are indicated only by rough boards, on which are scrawled rudely, with pencil or paint, the names and ages of the dead, and usually also verses from the Bible and scraps of poetry; but among all the inscriptions it is remarkable that there is not a single quotation from the "Book of Mormon." The graves are totally neglected after the bodies are consigned to them. Nowhere has a shrub or a flower been planted by any affectionate hand, except in one little corner of the inclosure which is assigned to the Gentiles, between whose dust and that of the Mormons there seems to exist a distinction like that which prevails in Catholic countries between the ashes of heretics and those of faithful churchmen. The mode of burial is singularly careless. A funeral procession is rarely seen; and such instances are mentioned by travellers as that of a father bearing to the grave the coffin of his own child upon his shoulder.

The interiors of the houses are as neat as could be expected, considering the extent of the families. Very often, three wives, one husband, and half-a-dozen children will be huddled together in a hovel containing only two habitable rooms,—an arrangement of course subversive of decency. Few people are able to purchase carpets, and their furniture is of the coarsest and commonest kind. There are few, if any, families which maintain servants. In that of Brigham Young, each woman has a room assigned her, for the neatness of which she is herself responsible;—Young's own chamber is in the rear of the office of the President of the Church, upon the ground floor. The precise number of the female inmates can often be computed from the exterior of the houses. These being frequently divided into compartments, each with its own entrance from the yard, and its own chimney, and being generally only one story in height, the number of doors is an exact index to that of residents.

The domestic habits of the people vary greatly according to their nativity. Of the forty-five thousand inhabitants of the Territory, at least one-half are immigrants from England and Wales,—the scum of the manufacturing towns and mining districts, so superstitious as to have been capable of imbibing the Mormon faith,—though between what is preached in Great Britain and what is practised in America there exists a wide difference,—and so destitute in circumstances as to have been incapable of deteriorating their fortunes by emigration. Possibly one-fifth are Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. This allows a remainder of three-tenths for the native American element. An Irishman or a German is rarely found. Of the Americans, by far the greater proportion were born in the Northeastern States; and the three principal characters in the history of the Church—Smith, Young, and Kimball—all originated in Vermont, but were reared in Western New York, a region which has been the hot-bed of American isms from the discovery of the Golden Bible to the outbreak of the Rochester rappings. This American element maintains, in all affairs of the Church, its natural political ascendency. Of the twelve Apostles only one is a foreigner, and among the rest of the ecclesiastical dignitaries the proportion is not very different.

The Scandinavian Mormons are very clannish in their disposition. They occupy some settlements exclusively, and in Salt Lake City there is one quarter tenanted wholly by them, and nicknamed "Denmark," just as that portion of Cincinnati monopolized by Germans is known as "over the Rhine." Like their English and Welsh associates, they belonged to the lowest classes of the mechanics and peasantry of their native countries. They are all clownish and brutal. Their women work in the fields. In their houses and gardens there is no symptom of taste, or of the recollection of former and more innocent days; while in every cottage owned by Americans there is visible, at least, a clock, or a pair of China vases, or a rude picture, which once held a similar position in some farm-house in New England.

It is not intended to discuss here the cardinal points of the Mormon faith, for the subject is too extensive for the limits of this article. A great misapprehension, however, prevails concerning polygamy, that it was one of the original doctrines of the Church. On the contrary, it was expressly prohibited in the Book of Mormon, which declares:—

"Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. … Wherefore hearken to the word of the Lord: There shall not any man among you have save it be one wife, and concubines he shall have none; for I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women."—p. 118.

Up to this date, there have been four eras in the history of polygamy among the Mormons: the first, from about 1833 to 1843, during which it was practised stealthily only by those Church leaders to whom it was considered prudent to impart the secret; the second, from 1843 to 1852, during which its existence was known to the Church, but denied to the world; the third, from 1852 to 1856, during which it was left to the discretion of individuals whether to adopt its practice or not; and the fourth, since 1856, when its acceptance was inculcated as essential to happiness in this world and salvation in the next. It was the inevitable tendency of Mormonism, like every other religious delusion, from the advent of John of Leyden to that of the Spiritualists, to disturb the natural relation of the sexes under the Christian dispensation. The mystery surrounding the subject constituted the most attractive charm of the religion, both to the initiated and to those who were seeking to be admitted to the secrets of the Endowment,—for the Endowed alone possess the privilege of a plurality of wives. But until the community had become firmly fixed in Utah, no one dared to justify or even to proclaim the doctrine. At the time of the passage of the Organic Act of the Territory, in the autumn of 1850, and repeatedly during the next two years, prominent Mormons at Washington and New York denied its existence, with the most solemn asseverations. It was on Sunday, August 29th, 1852, that it was openly avowed at Salt Lake City,—Brigham Young on that day producing the copy of a revelation, pretended to have been received by Smith on the 12th of July, 1843, which annulled the monogamic injunctions of the Book of Mormon, and stating, that, "although the doctrine of polygamy has not been preached by the elders, the people have believed in it for years." Upon the same occasion, another doctrine was urged,—that human beings upon earth propagate merely bodies, the souls which inhabit them being begotten by spirits in heaven.

The number of the wives of many of the principal Mormons has been greatly exaggerated. Attached to Young's establishment in Salt Lake City, there are only sixteen. His first wife occupies the Mansion-House exclusively, while the others are quartered in the Lion-House. Besides these, he has probably fifty or sixty more, scattered all over the Territory, and in the principal cities of the United States and of Great Britain. His living children do not exceed thirty in number. Kimball's wives, resident in Salt Lake City, are quite as numerous as Young's, and his children even more so. Both of them aim to reproduce the domestic life of the Biblical patriarchs; and within the squares which they occupy their descendants dwell also, with their wives and progeny, all of them acknowledging the control of the head of the family. The harems of very few of the Church dignitaries approach these in magnitude. The extent of the practice of polygamy cannot be determined by a residence in Salt Lake City alone, for it is there that those Church officers congregate whose wealth enables them to maintain large families. As the traveller journeys northward or southward, he finds the instances diminish in almost exact proportion to his remoteness from the central ecclesiastical influence. There is even a sect of Mormons, called Gladdenites, after their founder, one Gladden Bishop, who deny the right of Young to supreme authority over the Church, and discountenance polygamy. No computation of their number can be made, for few of them dare avow their heresy, on account of the persecution which is the invariable result. The leaders of this sect maintain that a majority of the married men in Utah have but one wife each, and their assertion has never been controverted.

One of the most monstrous results of the practice is the indifference with which an incestuous connection is tolerated. The cohabitation, with the same man, of a mother, and her daughter by a previous marriage, is not unfrequent; and there are other instances even more disgusting. One or two of them will exemplify the character of the whole. One George D. Watt, an Englishman, residing at Salt Lake City, has for his fourth wife his own half-sister, who had been previously divorced from Brigham Young; and one Aaron Johnson, the Bishop of the town of Springville, on Lake Utah, has seven wives, four of whom are sisters, and his own nieces. Young himself has declared in print, that he looks forward to the time when his son by one wife shall marry his daughter by another. Marriages also are effected with girls who are mere children. Accustomed from their cradles to sights and sounds calculated to impart precocious development, they mature rapidly, and few of them remain single after attaining the age of sixteen. They look around for husbands, and understand, that, if they marry young men and become first wives, in course of time other wives will be associated with them; and they conclude, therefore, that it is as well for themselves to unite with some Bishop or High-Priest, with perhaps half-a-dozen wives already, who is able to feed his family well and clothe them decently; so they plunge into polygamy at once. Another result of the practice is universal obscenity of language among both sexes. The published sermons of the Mormon leaders are utterly vile in this respect, although they are somewhat expurgated before being printed. They consider no language profane from which the name of the Deity is exempted.

There is, unquestionably, much unhappiness in families where polygamy prevails,—daily bickering, jealousies, and heart-burnings,—but it is carefully concealed from the knowledge of the public. If domestic troubles become so aggravated as to be unendurable, recourse is usually had to Brigham Young for a divorce. There are women in Salt Lake City who have been married and divorced half-a-dozen times within a year. The first wife maintains a supremacy over all the others. On the occasion of her marriage, a civil magistrate usually officiates, and the rite of "sealing" is afterwards administered by Young. By the civil process, in the cant language of the Mormons, she is bound to her husband "for time," and by the ecclesiastical solemnization "for eternity." Every wife taken after the first is called a "spiritual," and is "sealed" ecclesiastically only, not civilly. It follows, as a legitimate consequence, that the first wife of one man "for time" may be the "spiritual" wife of another man "for eternity." The power of sealing and unsealing is vested in the Head of the Church, which, however, he may and does assign, with certain limitations, to deputies. The ceremony is performed in a room in the Mansion-House within Brigham's square, which is furnished with an altar and kneelng-benches. In every instance of divorce, the woman is supplied with a printed certificate of the fact, for which a fee of ten or eleven dollars is exacted. When a polygamist dies, it becomes the duty of his "next friend" to care for his wives. Thus, when Young became the President of the Church, he succeeded to all the widows of Joseph Smith.

Every year some modification of the system is effected, which tends to increase still further the confusion in the relations of the sexes. The latest is the doctrine, (which, like polygamy in its earlier stages, is believed, but not avowed,) that absence is temporary death, so far as concerns the transference of wives. This is intended to apply to the two or three hundred missionaries who are dispatched yearly to all parts of the globe, from Stockholm to Macao. It is astonishing that these missionary efforts, which have been pursued with unremitting zeal for the last twenty years, should not have ingrafted upon Mormonism some degree of that refinement which is supposed to result from travel. On the contrary, they seem to have elaborated the natural brutality of the Anglo-Saxon character; and especially with regard to polygamy, their effect has been to acquaint the people of Utah with the grossest features of its practice in foreign lands, and encourage them to imitation. Every Mormon, prominent in the Church, however illiterate in other respects, is thoroughly acquainted with the extent and characteristics of polygamy in Asiatic countries, and prepared to defend his own domestic habits, in argument, by historical and geographical references. Not one of their missionaries has ever been admitted to intercourse with the higher classes of European society. Their sphere of labor and acquaintance has been entirely among those whom they would term the lowly, but who might also be called the credulous and vulgar. The abuse of a knowledge of the machinery of the Masonic order—from which they have been formally excluded—is one of the least evil of their practices, not only abroad, but at home. Of the Endowment, one apostate Mormon has declared that "its signs, tokens, marks, and ideas are plagiarized from Masonry"; and it was a notorious fact, that every one of the Mormon prisoners at the camp at Fort Bridger was accustomed to endeavor to influence the sentinels at the guard-tents by means of the Masonic signs.

This cursory review of the domestic condition of the Mormons would not be complete without some allusion to the Indians who infest the whole country. In the North, having their principal village at the foot of the Wind River Mountains, in the southeastern corner of Oregon, is the tribe of Mountain Snakes or Shoshonees, and the kindred tribe of Bannocks. Throughout all the valleys south of Salt Lake City are the numerous bands of the great tribe of Utahs. Still farther south are the Pyides. The Snakes are superior in condition to any of the others; for, during a portion of the year, they have access to the buffalo, which have not crossed the Wahsatch Range into the Great Basin, within the recollection of the oldest trapper. The only wild animals common in the country of the Utahs are the hare, or "jackass-rabbit," the wild-cat, the wolf, and the grizzly bear. There are few antelope or elk. Trout abound in the mountain-brooks and in Lake Utah. In the Salt Lake, as in the Dead Sea, there are no fish. Before the advent of the Mormons, the habits of all the Utah bands were very degraded. No agency had been established among them. They had few guns and blankets. For several years they were engaged in constant hostilities with the people of the young and feeble settlements,—their own method and implements of warfare improving steadily all the while. Ultimately, however, the Mormons inaugurated a system of Indian policy, which was highly successful. They propagated their religion among the Utahs, baptized some of the most prominent chiefs into the Church, fed and clothed them, and thereby acquired an ascendency over most of the bands, which they attempted to use to the detriment of the army during the winter of 1857-8, but without success. Brigham Young, being vested with the superintendence of Indian affairs, during his entire term of service as Governor, abused the functions of that office. He taught the tribe, that there was a distinction between "Americans" and "Mormons,"—and that the latter were their friends, while they were free to commit any depredations on the former which they might see fit. These infamous teachings were counteracted with considerable success by Dr. Hurt, the Indian Agent, to whom allusion has frequently been made; but it was impossible wholly to neutralize their effect. Some of the Mormons even took squaws for spiritual wives; and in all the settlements, from Provo to the Santa Clara, there are scores of half-breed children, acknowledging half-a-dozen mothers, some white, some red. The Utahs, though a beggarly, are a docile tribe. Several Government farms have now been established among them, and they display more than ordinary aptitude for work. But they require to be spurred to regular labor. None of the charges which have been preferred against the Mormons, of direct participation in the murder of Americans by the Indians in the southern portion of the Territory, have ever been substantiated by legal evidence; but no person can become familiar with the relations which they sustain to those tribes, without attaching to them some degree of credibility. The most noted instances were the slaughter of Captain Gunnison and his exploring party, near Lake Sevier, in October, 1853; and the horrible massacre of more than a hundred emigrants on their way to California, at the Mountain Meadows, still farther south, in September, 1857, from which only those children were spared who were too young to speak.

The history of events in Utah since the encamping of the army in Cedar Valley and the return of the Mormons to the northern settlements is too recent to need to be recounted. It has been established by satisfactory experiments, that law is powerless in the Territory when it conflicts with the Church. No Gentile, whose property was confiscated during the rebellion, has yet obtained redress. The legislature refuses to provide for the expenses of the District Courts while enforcing the Territorial laws. The grand juries refuse to find indictments. The traverse juries refuse to convict Mormons. The witnesses perjure themselves without scruple and without exception. The unruly crowd of camp-followers, which is the inseparable attendant of an army, has concentrated in Salt Lake City, and is in constant contact and conflict with the Mormon population. An apprehension prevails, day after day, that the presence of the army may be demanded there to prevent mob-law and bloodshed. The Governor is alien in his disposition to most of the other Federal officers; and the Judges are probably already on their way to the States, prepared to resign their commissions. The whole condition of affairs justifies a prediction made by Brigham Young, June 17th, 1855, in a sermon, in which he declared:—

"Though I may not be Governor here, my power will not be diminished. No man they can send here will have much influence with this community, unless he be the man of their choice. Let them send whom they will, it does not diminish my influence one particle."

The consequences of the Expedition, therefore, have not corresponded to the original expectation of its projectors. So far as the political condition of the Territory is concerned, the result, filtered down, amounts simply to a demonstration of the impolicy of applying the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty as a rule for its government. The administration of President Polk was an epoch in the history of the continent. By the annexation of Texas a system of territorial aggrandizement was inaugurated; and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which California, Utah, and New Mexico were acquired, was a legitimate result. Every child knows that the tendency is toward the acquisition of all North America. But the statesmen who originated a policy so grand did not stop to establish a system of Territorial government correspondent to its necessities. The character of such a Territorial policy is now the principal subject upon which the great parties of the nation are divided; and its development will constitute the chief political achievement of the generation. On one side, it is proposed to leave each community to work out its own destiny, trusting to Providence for the result. On the other, it is contended, that the only safe doctrine is, that supreme authority over the Territories resides in Congress, which it is its duty to assign to such hands and in such degrees as it may deem expedient, with a view to create homogeneous States; that the same influences which moulded Minnesota into a State homogeneous to Massachusetts might operate on Cuba, or Sonora and Chihuahua, without avail; and that to various districts the various methods should be applied which a father would employ to secure the obedience and welfare of his children.

At the very outset, the Territory of Utah now presents itself as a subject for the application of the one system or the other. To all intents and purposes, the Mormons are proved to be a people more foreign to the population of the States than the inhabitants of Cuba or Mexico. Alien in great part by birth, and entirely alien in religion, there never can occur in the history of the country an instance of a community harder to govern, with a view to adapt it to harmonious association with the States on the Atlantic and the Pacific. It is undeniably demonstrated that it is unsafe to trust it to administer a government in accordance with republican ideas; for it acknowledges a higher law than even the human conscience, in the will of a person whom it professes to believe a vicegerent of Divinity, and in obedience to whom perjury, robbery, incest, and even murder, may be justifiable,—for his commands are those of Heaven. It is obvious that it is fruitless to anticipate fair dealing from a people professing such doctrines; and the result has shown, that, in transactions with Mormons, even under oath, no one who does not acknowledge a standard of religious belief similar to their own can count upon justice any farther than they may think it politic to accord it. The army is, indeed, placed in a position to suppress instantaneously another forcible outbreak; but everybody is aware that there are means of annulling the operation of law quite as effectually as by an uprising in arms. Recent proceedings in the courts of the extreme Southern States have caused this fact to be keenly appreciated. The pirates who sailed the slavers "Echo" and "Wanderer" yet remain to be punished. So far as South Carolina and Georgia are concerned, the law declaring the slave-trade piracy is a dead letter; and the sentiment which prevails toward it in Charleston and Savannah is an imperfect index of that which is manifested at Salt Lake City toward all national authority.

The legislation of Utah has been conducted with a view to precisely the condition of affairs which now exists, and the Territorial statute-book shows that the transfer of executive power from Brigham Young had long been anticipated. It is impracticable to adduce, in this place, proof of the fact in extenso; but a brief enumeration of some of the principal statutes will indicate the character of the entire code. An act exists incorporating the Mormon Church with power to hold property, both real and personal, to an indefinite extent, exempt from taxation, coupled with authority to establish laws and criteria for its safety, government, comfort, and control, and for the punishment of all offences relating to fellowship, according to its covenants. By this act the Church is invested with absolute and perpetual sovereignty. Under it the whole system of polygamy is conducted, for plural marriages are sanctioned by the covenants; the Danite organization is authorized, for it is instituted for the comfort and control of the Church, and the punishment of offences relative to fellowship; the burden of the taxes is thrown in a yearly increasing ratio upon Gentiles, for the Church property exempted from taxation amounts already to several millions of dollars, and increases every day; and the treasonable rites of the Endowment are celebrated, and the inferior members of the Church tithed and pillaged, for the benefit of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles. Acts also exist legalizing negro and Indian slavery. There are within the Territory at the present time not more than fifty or sixty negroes, but there are several hundred Indians, held in servitude. These are mostly Pyides, into whose country some of the Utah bands make periodical forays, capturing their young women and children, whom they sell to the Navajoes in New Mexico, as well as to the Mormons. There are other acts, which rob the United States judges of their jurisdiction, civil, criminal, and in equity, and confer it on the Probate Courts; which forbid the citation of any reports, even those of the Supreme Court of the United States, during any trial; which regulate the descent of property so as to include the issue of polygamic marriages among the legal heirs; which withdraw from exemption from attachment the entire property of persons suspected of an intention to leave the Territory; which authorize the invasion of domiciles for purposes of search, upon the simple order of any judicial officer; which legalize the rendition of verdicts in civil cases upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the jurors; which command attorneys to present in court, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, in all cases, every fact of which they are cognizant, "whether calculated to make against their clients or not"; which restrict the institution of proceedings against adulterers to the husband or the wife of one of the guilty parties; which levy duties on all goods imported into the Territory for sale; which abolish the freedom of the ballot-box, by providing that each vote shall be numbered, and a record kept of the names of the electors with the numbers attached, which, together with the ballots, shall be preserved for reference; and which empower the county courts to impose taxes to an indefinite amount on whomsoever they may please, for the erection of fortifications within their respective jurisdictions. But the most extraordinary and unconstitutional series of acts—no less than sixty in number—exists with regard to the primary disposal of the soil, with which the Territorial legislature is expressly forbidden by the Organic Act to interfere. These pretend to confer upon Church dignitaries, and especially on Brigham Young and his family, tracts of land probably amounting in the aggregate to more than ten thousand square miles, as well as the exclusive right to establish bridges and ferries over the principal rivers in the Territory,—together with the exclusive use of those streams flowing down from the Wahsatch Mountains which are most valuable for irrigating and manufacturing purposes. The virtual control of the settlement of the eastern portion of Utah is thus vested in the Church; for these grants include almost all the lands which are immediately valuable for occupation. After a glance at a list of them, it is not hard to understand the causes of the great disparity in the distribution of wealth among the Mormons. They have been so allotted as to benefit a very few at the expense of the whole people; and they are protected by a terrorism which no one dares to confront in order to challenge their validity. The majority of the population are ignorant of their rights,—and too pusillanimous to maintain them against the hierarchy, if they were not. They therefore contribute to its coffers not merely their tithing, but heavy exactions also for grazing their cattle on pastures to which they themselves have just as much title as the nominal proprietors, and for grinding their grain and purchasing their lumber at mills on streams which are of right common to all the settlers on their banks.

From the Utah Expedition, then, it has become patent to the world, if it is not to ourselves, that the Mormons are unwilling to administer a republican form of government, if not incapable of doing so. The author of the letter recently addressed by "A Man of the Latin Race" to the Emperor Napoleon, on the subject of French influence in America, comments especially upon this fact as symptomatic of the disintegration of this republic; and allusion is made to it in every other foreign review of our political condition. It is obviously inconsistent with our national dignity that a remedy should not be immediately applied; but when we seek for such, only two courses of action are discernible, in the maze of political quibbles and constitutional scruples that at once suggest themselves. One is, to repeal the Organic Act and place the Territory under military control; the other is, to buy the Mormons out of Utah, offering them a reasonable compensation for the improvements they have made there, as also transportation to whatever foreign region they may select for a future abode.