Troubles with the Mormons

The public mind was diverted from the absorbing topic of slavery for awhile by trouble with the Mormons in the Territory of Utah. Early in 1857, these people, incensed because their Territory was not admitted into the Union as a State, commenced revolutionary proceedings. Under the instructions of Brigham Young, the successor of Joseph Smith, and their spiritual head and appointed governor, they destroyed the records of the United States Court in their district. They also resolved to set up an independent government, and looked to Young for all laws, in defiance of those of the United States. President Buchanan resolved to enforce the latter, and depriving Young of the office of governor of the Territory, he put Colonel Alfred Cumming, a superintendent of Indian affairs on the Upper Mississippi, in his place. He also appointed Judge Eckles chief justice of the Territory, and sent twenty-five hundred armed men, with experienced officers, to protect them in the discharge of their duties. Young at first determined to resist the National Government. He issued a proclamation denouncing the army as a mob, forbidding it to enter the Territory, and calling the people of Utah to arms to repel its advance. When it entered the Territory early in the autumn, it was assailed by mounted Mormons, who destroyed several supply trains and seized eight hundred of the oxen at the rear of the army. The little force, thus crippled, and caught among the snows in the mountains, went into winter quarters. Colonel A. Sidney Johnston was in command of them; and Governor Cumming proclaimed the Territory of Utah to be in a state of rebellion. Finally, in the spring of 1858, a pacification took place. The President offered pardon to all Mormons who should submit to the national authority, and Brigham Young, evidently believing discretion to be the better part of valor, received the new governor courteously, but resolved to leave the country with his people rather than submit to "Gentile" rule. But he and they are there yet, and have been asking for admission into the Union as a State, but without success. Their last application was made in 1862, when they had formed a State constitution, and elected senators and representatives under it. Instead of acting upon the application, Congress passed a law "to punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States" and in other places, and disapproving and annulling certain acts of the Legislature of Utah. The law against polygamy has remained a dead letter; but circumstances have recently occurred which will doubtless cause the speedy destruction of polygamous Mormonism, and so remove from our country a foul moral stain.