October 1868
Cannon, George Q. "Self-Sustaining—Persecutions—Outside Influence." Journal of Discourses. Volume 12. October 7, 1868: pg. 289-297.
Pratt, Orson. "The Opposition of Wickedness to Righteousness—Persecutions of The Saints—Misrepresentations." Journal of Discourses. Volume 12. October 6, 1868: pg. 302-307. Smith, George A. "Historical Address." Journal of Discourses. Volume 13. October 8, 1868: pg. 103-124. The Deseret News. 1868. "Thirty-Eighth Semi-Annual Conference." October 14: 282-283. Young, Brigham. "Salvation Temporal and Spiritual—Self-Sustaining—Civilization." Journal of Discourses. Volume 12. October 8, 1868: pg. 281-289. Young, Brigham. "Southern Missions—Deseret Alphabet—Relief Societies—Home Manufactures." Journal of Discourses. Volume 12. October 8, 1868: pg. 297-301. THIRTY-EIGHTH SEMI-ANNUAL CONFERENCE Elder Orson Hyde Elder Orson Pratt The Opposition of Wickedness to Righteousness 2 p.m. Elder John Taylor Elder Joseph W. Young 6 ½ p.m. Bishop Edward Hunter President Brigham Young Elder George A. Smith Wednesday, 7th, 10 a.m. Sustaining of the General Authorities Elder John Van Cott Elder George Q. Cannon Self-Sustaining—Persecutions—Outside Influence 2 p.m. President George A. Smith Historical Address Thursday, 8th, 10 a.m. President George A. Smith Historical Address (continued) President Brigham Young Salvation Temporal and Spiritual—Self-Sustaining—Civilization 2 p.m. President Daniel H. Wells Mission Calls President Brigham Young Southern Missions—Deseret Alphabet |
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THIRTY-EIGHTH SEMI-ANNUAL CONFERENCE
The Thirty-Eighth Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints convened this morning in the New Tabernacle at ten o'clock. The congregation at that hour was a large one, though the vast building was not filled; and as the voices of the choir mingled in harmony with the sonorous tones of the great organ, in the opening hymn, the solemnities of the occasion pervaded the assembled thousands.
On the stands we noticed President B. Young and President D. H. Wells, of the First Presidency;
Apostles Orson Hyde, Orson Pratt, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Geo. A. Smith, E. T. Benson, C. C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards, George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith;
John Smith, Patriarch;
John Young, E. D. Woolley and Samuel W. Richards, the Presidency of the High Priests Quorum;
George B. Wallace and Joseph W. Young, of the Presidency of this Stake of Zion;
Joseph Young, Albert P. Rockwood, Jacob Gates and John Van Cott, of the First Presidency of the Seventies;
Edward Hunter, L. W. Hardy and Jesse C. Little, the Presidency of the Bishopric;
Bishops, presiding Elders, and leading men from settlements the most remote and those at nearer points of distance, Idaho, Utah and Arizona being represented.
One notable point in connection with this Conference is that it is the first General Conference of the Church held in Utah at which there has been a full Quorum of the Twelve Apostles present. The nature of the duties and labors of the Twelve causes one or more of their number to be nearly always absent in some parts of the earth, aiding to build up the Kingdom of God; but this October, through the recent arrival of Elder Franklin D. Richards, all are in the Territory and all are assembled at Conference. The communion and counselings of President Young, President Wells and the full Quorum of the Twelve, with their united wisdom, wide experience, and the spirit and inspiration which accompany them, will beyond doubt, give birth to much most valuable instruction and counsel to the people, and the adoption of such measures, under the dictation of the Spirit of God, as will be of incalculable benefit to the interests of the community. We record this meeting together of all the Twelve at Conference, as most noteworthy.
The meeting was called to order by President B. Young, and the Tabernacle Choir sang the opening hymn: "The morning breaks, &c." Elder George A. Smith offered up prayer: and the 20th Ward Choir, which occupied a position on the left of the stand, sang the hymn, "Father, how wide thy glory shines, &c."
The Thirty-Eighth Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints convened this morning in the New Tabernacle at ten o'clock. The congregation at that hour was a large one, though the vast building was not filled; and as the voices of the choir mingled in harmony with the sonorous tones of the great organ, in the opening hymn, the solemnities of the occasion pervaded the assembled thousands.
On the stands we noticed President B. Young and President D. H. Wells, of the First Presidency;
Apostles Orson Hyde, Orson Pratt, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Geo. A. Smith, E. T. Benson, C. C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards, George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith;
John Smith, Patriarch;
John Young, E. D. Woolley and Samuel W. Richards, the Presidency of the High Priests Quorum;
George B. Wallace and Joseph W. Young, of the Presidency of this Stake of Zion;
Joseph Young, Albert P. Rockwood, Jacob Gates and John Van Cott, of the First Presidency of the Seventies;
Edward Hunter, L. W. Hardy and Jesse C. Little, the Presidency of the Bishopric;
Bishops, presiding Elders, and leading men from settlements the most remote and those at nearer points of distance, Idaho, Utah and Arizona being represented.
One notable point in connection with this Conference is that it is the first General Conference of the Church held in Utah at which there has been a full Quorum of the Twelve Apostles present. The nature of the duties and labors of the Twelve causes one or more of their number to be nearly always absent in some parts of the earth, aiding to build up the Kingdom of God; but this October, through the recent arrival of Elder Franklin D. Richards, all are in the Territory and all are assembled at Conference. The communion and counselings of President Young, President Wells and the full Quorum of the Twelve, with their united wisdom, wide experience, and the spirit and inspiration which accompany them, will beyond doubt, give birth to much most valuable instruction and counsel to the people, and the adoption of such measures, under the dictation of the Spirit of God, as will be of incalculable benefit to the interests of the community. We record this meeting together of all the Twelve at Conference, as most noteworthy.
The meeting was called to order by President B. Young, and the Tabernacle Choir sang the opening hymn: "The morning breaks, &c." Elder George A. Smith offered up prayer: and the 20th Ward Choir, which occupied a position on the left of the stand, sang the hymn, "Father, how wide thy glory shines, &c."
Elder Orson Hyde
first addressed the Conference, reasoning at some length on the principles of temporal and spiritual salvation. As many followed the Savior for the loaves and fishes, so, many seek the home of the Saints for mere sordid and pecuniary motives, caring for nothing higher than the accumulation of this world's goods. But the Saints have to work out their salvation, to build up the Kingdom of God, and further the cause of human redemption. The feeling which many have, that now is a season of scarcity of bread, and from which they are led to shut up their bowels of compassion, is not one that should be indulged in. We should succor the needy and do good to all. The approach of the railroad toward completion, and the spirit which animates those engaged in its construction, are evidences of the manner in which God is working for the accomplishment of His holy purposes. When that road is completed it will be found to be a mighty instrument in the hands of the Lord for furthering His work. The speaker exhorted the Saints to labor diligently to build up the Kingdom of God; and learn to become saviors before the Lord.
The Brigham City choir, under the leadership of R. L. Fishburne, which occupied a position to the right of the stand, sang the anthem, "I will lift up mine eyes!"
first addressed the Conference, reasoning at some length on the principles of temporal and spiritual salvation. As many followed the Savior for the loaves and fishes, so, many seek the home of the Saints for mere sordid and pecuniary motives, caring for nothing higher than the accumulation of this world's goods. But the Saints have to work out their salvation, to build up the Kingdom of God, and further the cause of human redemption. The feeling which many have, that now is a season of scarcity of bread, and from which they are led to shut up their bowels of compassion, is not one that should be indulged in. We should succor the needy and do good to all. The approach of the railroad toward completion, and the spirit which animates those engaged in its construction, are evidences of the manner in which God is working for the accomplishment of His holy purposes. When that road is completed it will be found to be a mighty instrument in the hands of the Lord for furthering His work. The speaker exhorted the Saints to labor diligently to build up the Kingdom of God; and learn to become saviors before the Lord.
The Brigham City choir, under the leadership of R. L. Fishburne, which occupied a position to the right of the stand, sang the anthem, "I will lift up mine eyes!"
Elder Orson Pratt
then addressed the congregation. He noticed the reasons why we came here—not because we wanted to, but because we were compelled to, and could not help ourselves. The spirit of opposition, which drove the Saints beyond the Rocky Mountains and compelled them to seek a shelter in the then almost unknown wilds of this mountainous country, has operated against the Church and its leaders, from the time the Prophet Joseph obtained the plates up to the present. The same spirit has ever manifested its opposition to the people of God, whenever He has had a priesthood and power upon the earth and communicated His revelations to His people. The Saints have been called upon to gather out from the nations of the earth, that they may be separated from everything unrighteous and corrupt. We have toiled and labored here to make ourselves homes. We were compelled to labor by the force of circumstances and the exigencies of our situation. No other people have toiled as we have done, for no other people have been placed in such untoward circumstances. Who has done all that is to be seen in this Territory, in changing it from a wilderness to a beautiful, well cultivated and productive country? The old settlers have done it. They pioneered this region and gave to government a country which would have been unsettled perhaps for another century, for they made a base of supplies for the exploring camps, which have been the birth of several surrounding States and Territories. We were refused our rights in Missouri and Illinois, because the people there said we were not the old settlers in those regions. We are the old settlers here; and we have come here to enjoy freedom and the right guaranteed to us by the Constitution of our country. With our religious rights and liberties, we have many others and among these is the right to trade with whom we please and where we please, so long as we do not break any law nor infringe upon the rights of others. We have fostered here men who have used all the influence in their power to injure us as a people; we have given them our grain, paid them our money and impoverished the Territory by putting millions and millions in their hands, to be carried away. Did they profess friendship? Yes. But as an individual, unless men repent and keep the commandments of God, the speaker said he would not trade with them to the extent of one dime.
Elder Pratt reasoned on this principle at some length, and dwelt in a plain and forcible manner on the course pursued by merchants who openly professed friendship for the "Mormons," but secretly did everything in their power to injure and, if possible, destroy them; and said he would rather go into the mountains, kill the wolves and dress in the skins thus obtained, than put money in the hands of those who would destroy him, his brethren and the institutions of the Kingdom of God.
then addressed the congregation. He noticed the reasons why we came here—not because we wanted to, but because we were compelled to, and could not help ourselves. The spirit of opposition, which drove the Saints beyond the Rocky Mountains and compelled them to seek a shelter in the then almost unknown wilds of this mountainous country, has operated against the Church and its leaders, from the time the Prophet Joseph obtained the plates up to the present. The same spirit has ever manifested its opposition to the people of God, whenever He has had a priesthood and power upon the earth and communicated His revelations to His people. The Saints have been called upon to gather out from the nations of the earth, that they may be separated from everything unrighteous and corrupt. We have toiled and labored here to make ourselves homes. We were compelled to labor by the force of circumstances and the exigencies of our situation. No other people have toiled as we have done, for no other people have been placed in such untoward circumstances. Who has done all that is to be seen in this Territory, in changing it from a wilderness to a beautiful, well cultivated and productive country? The old settlers have done it. They pioneered this region and gave to government a country which would have been unsettled perhaps for another century, for they made a base of supplies for the exploring camps, which have been the birth of several surrounding States and Territories. We were refused our rights in Missouri and Illinois, because the people there said we were not the old settlers in those regions. We are the old settlers here; and we have come here to enjoy freedom and the right guaranteed to us by the Constitution of our country. With our religious rights and liberties, we have many others and among these is the right to trade with whom we please and where we please, so long as we do not break any law nor infringe upon the rights of others. We have fostered here men who have used all the influence in their power to injure us as a people; we have given them our grain, paid them our money and impoverished the Territory by putting millions and millions in their hands, to be carried away. Did they profess friendship? Yes. But as an individual, unless men repent and keep the commandments of God, the speaker said he would not trade with them to the extent of one dime.
Elder Pratt reasoned on this principle at some length, and dwelt in a plain and forcible manner on the course pursued by merchants who openly professed friendship for the "Mormons," but secretly did everything in their power to injure and, if possible, destroy them; and said he would rather go into the mountains, kill the wolves and dress in the skins thus obtained, than put money in the hands of those who would destroy him, his brethren and the institutions of the Kingdom of God.
The Opposition of Wickedness to Righteousness—Persecutions of The Saints—Misrepresentations
Discourse by Elder Orson Pratt, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct. 6th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
Through the mercies of our God we have assembled here in the capacity of a Conference to receive instruction and impart the same.
There are a great many points connected with the Zion of our God, now being established on the earth, which are necessary for us as a people to understand. God has not gathered us out from among the nations of the earth into these valleys without having a great purpose in view. Whatever portion of His purposes I understand I desire to abide by with all my heart, and I presume that every honest, upright Latter-day Saint desires the same.
We came to this formerly isolated place, and separated ourselves as far as we possibly could from what was termed civilization, not because we really desired to do so, or because of the fertility of the soil in this region, or the advantages we would enjoy in temporal things; but because we were in a measure obliged to do so. It is true that the Lord foretold to us, through the mouths of His servants, that the day would come when we should have to flee from our enemies, and that we would settle west of the Rocky Mountains. When we were dwelling in the State of Illinois, and had had a few years of comparative peace, the Spirit of the Lord rested upon His servant Joseph and made manifest to him that the wicked had it in their hearts to uproot His people who were established in Nauvoo, the same as they had done in our former settlements. The testimony of the Spirit to the servant of God was, that however peaceable the people around us might seem, yet, if they would not receive the Gospel and acknowledge the authority which God had restored from Heaven, they would fight against His people. Our Savior said, “he that is not for us is against us.” The truth of this saying we, as a people, have proven since the day that Joseph took the plates of the Book of Mormon from the hill Cumorah, in the town of Manchester, Ontario county, State of New York; and even before he succeeded in getting the plates, some seven years before the Lord entrusted them to his care, the prophet Joseph proved the truth of this saying. The Lord revealed himself to this youth when he was between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and as soon as he related this vision, although at that young and tender age, the wrath and indignation of the people were stirred up against him.
From that time, until he was between twenty-one and twenty-two years of age the opposition was continued. It did not matter how righteous, humble or meek he was; it did not matter how straightforward his course of conduct was, all that the world wanted to know was, Does he profess something different from our religious notions? Does he believe that the heavens can be opened to men in our day? If so, the order of the day was, “persecute him.” Let every religious minister speak against him from the pulpit, let all pious hypocrites of all sects and parties unite with the drunkard, swearer and blasphemer and persecute the poor boy.
This is the enmity that exists between that which is of God and advanced of the Almighty, and that which is ordained of man and by the power of the Devil; they are at swords' points against each other. They always have been from the period man first accepted this earth, down to the present time. There has been no union between them; it is impossible for them to fellowship one another.
Wickedness and righteousness are in direct opposition. The Devil is opposed to God, and God is opposed to the Devil. All the heavenly hosts are opposed to wickedness, and all persons who are wicked are opposed to the heavenly hosts. This will be so as long as there are wicked people in existence. It does not matter how smooth they may be in their outward appearance, or how sociable they may be in their conversation. They, with their tongues, may make you think they are the most gentle, polite, civilized and moral people on the face of the earth, while within their hearts lurks a poison which would destroy the Saints of the living God.
As this has been the case in every former age and dispensation, so it is now; hence the Latter-day Saints in every part of the globe are commanded to gather out from the midst of wickedness, corruption and priestcraft, and every abomination that exists, and assemble themselves in one place. For what purpose? That we may be separated from the world and its corruptions, which would otherwise work our temporal and spiritual destruction. We have come here, then, in obedience to this command, and we have labored and toiled with all our might to redeem this barren country and to render it capable of sustaining us. What other people on the face of the whole earth have had to toil as the Latter-day Saints have? In some of the poverty stricken districts of Europe, where all the capital is in the hands of the rich and where the poor are made slaves, it may be that some of the latter have to work as hard as we have to work here. But without being placed in such circumstances we have been compelled to undergo this toil. When we came here we were more than a thousand miles from any place where we could obtain the comforts and necessaries to preserve life. We could not live if we could not labor. We were obliged to go for miles into the rugged canyons and there labor and toil month after month to open up roads to obtain timber for fuel, for building, and for fences for our farms. In addition to this severe toil we had to open water ditches from the canyons in order to obtain water to spread over the face of this barren soil, that the desert might be reclaimed and made to yield us a subsistence. This is the labor which the first settlers who came here had to perform, and this was the way they made this country. And were it not for the poor Latter-day Saints who were driven by their enemies from city to city and from State to State, and who ultimately were driven, twenty-one years ago, to the great interior of these mountains where they established a colony, where would have been the railroad now? Would there have been any railroad across these mountains? I doubt whether there would have been pioneers among the wicked sufficiently brave to have launched forth into this wild country and have settled in the midst of the Rocky Mountains, unless they had repented of their sins and had become one with the Latter-day Saints. The wicked never would have done it, or another century, at least, would have passed away before settlements to any very great extent would have been found in the midst of these mountains.
If it had not been for the “Mormons” where would have been the gold mines of California? They might not have been opened up for fifty years yet if it not had been for the Mormon battalion, which went forth to fight the battles of the nation in her war with Mexico. Had it not been for this the world might still have been in ignorance of their existence unless God, for the accomplishment of His own wise purposes, had revealed them in some other way. The settlement, in the heart of the American continent, of the Latter-day Saints established a great highway across the continent, so that the people, in their journeyings from the Atlantic to the Pacific have found a place where they could rest their weary heads as they passed through. The settlement of this Territory has materially facilitated the opening up of the adjoining Territories. If it had not been for the Latter-day Saints settling this Territory, when would Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Arizona or Nevada have been settled?
In 1831, when we went into Jackson County, Missouri—then a comparatively new country, and commenced to lay the foundation of new settlements, the great complaint against us was that we were not the old settlers. Their cry was, “You Mormons are not the old settlers, and you have neither civil nor religious rights here.” “What is the reason?” we would enquire; “Are we not American citizens?” “Oh, yes,” said the people in Jackson County, “you are American citizens, but we are the old settlers, and consequently you must leave this part of the country.”
After we had been driven out of Jackson County into Clay County, and had been there a few years, the people rose en masse and said to us again, “You Mormons have no right in Clay County.” And when we enquired why, the reply again was, “because you are not the old settlers.” After dwelling there two or three years, an edict was issued by a mass meeting of the people assembled at Liberty, that we must seek a new location. We then fled to Caldwell County, in the State of Missouri. But, alas, after having bought a great many thousand acres of land and given signs of prosperity far beyond that of the old settlers who lived in surrounding counties, they, emboldened by the example of the people of Clay County, got up the old cry, and after having destroyed our farms and property they, in the midst of a severe winter, drove us into Illinois.
There we again gathered up our people, and not yet discouraged, we purchased a large tract of country on both sides of the Mississippi and founded a city called Nauvoo, to which a charter was given by the Legislature of Illinois. In a short time, the people of the regions round about were excited to jealousy, because the Latter-day Saints, through their industrious habits, were flourishing and were beautifying and extending their city; they could not bear to see us outstripping them. They saw that the people of Missouri had never been brought to account for murdering our people and robbing them of millions of dollars' worth of property, so they, in Illinois, made up their minds to take a similar course. Said they, “You Latter-day Saints are new settlers, and if we suffer you to remain you will soon be able to outvote us for all the officers of the county. But you have no civil nor religious rights here, and you must leave your fine farms, houses, cities, towns and villages, and you must go out of the United States. We will make a treaty with you as if you were a foreign nation, and you must undertake that you will not settle again within the bounds of the United States, and your only salvation is to go west beyond the Rocky Mountains, nearly 1,500 miles from your present abode.” We felt that this was the only course we could adopt, so we left in the month of February, 1846. After ferrying some of our teams across the Mississippi, the river froze over so hard that the remainder crossed on the ice. In this cold weather we camped out on the prairie, and took up our march for this place, our enemies expecting that they had seen the last of us, that we should most certainly be killed by Indians or die by famine. We reached this portion of the Rocky Mountains, then under Mexican rule, and settled here. By and by, after the war between the United States and Mexico, a treaty was made between them, and this land, which we occupied and to which we had been driven by our enemies, was ceded to the United States.
I have already told you what we have done here, the toils we have undergone, and the hardships we have suffered; and that we are gathering in our people from among the nations that we may enjoy civil and religious liberty, which are guaranteed by the Constitution of our country. We do not ask the United States for anything more. We do not want liberty that is not thus guaranteed; but we demand that liberty to which, as American citizens, we are entitled as a sacred right. And in having this liberty we shall have the liberty of dealing with whom we please, providing we infringe no law. That is the right of all American citizens. It does not matter whether they are Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Democrat, Whigs, or whatever they maybe, all have the undoubted right guaranteed to them, by the laws of our country, to deal just as they please and with whom the please if they do not infringe upon the laws nor injure their neighbors.
Ever since the settlement of this Territory I have felt how much better it would be if this people would unite together and appoint their merchants to go and buy their goods and bring them here and sell them at a reasonable profit to the rest of the community, and never trade here to the amount of one dime with those who are outside of us. But while this has been my feeling it has not been the feeling of all, for we have supported scores of merchants who have not been members of our Church. Have we done this because they were our friends? I will tell you the only thing that proves the existence of friendly feelings on the part of outsiders to this people—when they repent of their sins, and receive the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God has said, in the revelations which He has given in these days, “There is no people on the face of the whole earth who do good save it be those who are ready and willing to receive the fullness of my Gospel.”
We have proven this from the beginning of this work. There never has been yet, with all the apparent friendliness and politeness of outsiders, a proof of good will rendered to the Latter-day Saints, except it has been a willingness to receive the Gospel. Yet, notwithstanding that the word of the Lord and our experience have proven the truth of this, we have fostered these individuals in our midst for nearly twenty years. We have given them our grain, and have impoverished the Territory by paying millions and millions of our money into their hands. What have they done with it? Why, some who have been changed from poor men into heavy capitalists by the hundreds of thousands they have drained from this people, have gone away and used all the influence they could to destroy us. Did they appear to be friendly when in our midst? O, yes, you would have thought they were the most friendly and polite people imaginable. Why the Latter-day Saints never saw such manifestations of politeness, gentility and friendliness as were made by some of those we have nourished in our midst. What was the cause of this apparent friendliness? The dimes and dollars, the wheat, flour, produce, cattle and means that you had in your possession. It was the hope of gain which made them friendly, for that was the god they worshipped. But when they have made fortunes out of the Latter-day Saints and gulled them all they could they have gone and tried to destroy them.
As an individual I do not care how much a person in this place, outside of the Church, professes; if he will not repent of his sins and receive the message God has sent, I will not give him my dimes nor dollars if I know it. This ought to be the feeling of this whole people, otherwise we have got Babylon right in our midst. We have prayed a long time for God to deliver us from Babylon, and we have been gathered out, as we supposed, from Babylon; but we can soon establish a kind of young Babylon—one of the daughters of Babylon, if you will—and we can have it in our midst to our hearts' content. But what would be their feelings if they had the power? Judging from the experience of the past, their feelings would be that the Latter-day Saints should have no civil rights, no religious rights here in this land of Utah which they have sought for their own. It is true that our enemies here cannot plead like the people of Jackson, Clay and other places, that we are not the old settlers. They have not this for a plea, for the “Mormons” are the old settlers; but they have such enmity towards us that they would uproot us here, as they have five or six times before, if they had the power. “How do you know,” says one, “that these are the feelings entertained by the wicked towards this people? They profess to be very friendly, then how do you know their feelings are as you describe them?” From the fact that when this people elected one of their own number as Delegate to Congress by 15,000 votes, the man whom they voted for—giving him 105 votes, sixty of which were cast in a town where there were only twenty voters—contested his seat, and fought him month after month in the Halls of Congress, being sustained while so doing, by those who profess such friendship towards us. And what was the object of this would-be delegate? It was to deprive the “Mormons” of citizenship and of the privilege of taking up the land, by influencing the government to pass a law to that effect. This was his object, and to do all the injury in his power to this people. Who supported him? These men whom you support, Latter-day Saints, and to whom you pay your money. Merchants and others in this city gave their votes to that man after you had paid your thousands into their hands. They gave their votes for an individual who would deprive you of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of our country. Will you still continue to support such men? Will you go down here and trade with them year after year? If you do I know what the result will be; it is plainly visible. They will get a foothold here, and if they can only get numbers sufficient, you Latter-day Saints will have no civil rights here in this Territory. If a jury is to be empanelled it will be composed of our bitter enemies. If a Latter-day Saint has to be tried before the courts, it will be before those who are ready to eat him up. If there is a delegate to be elected to Congress they will seek very diligently to get the greatest enemy to this people they can find, so that, if possible, he may succeed in getting a large army sent up here to use us up. Why should they do this? To make money; that is their object. They feel, “If we can only stir up the government and get them to send an army to Utah it will be money in our pocket. Bless you, we don't care how much suffering it produces, or how many Latter-day Saints may be deprived of their rights; we would sell the whole of them for a dollar a head, if we could only become rich. We care nothing about them, or their rights as American citizens.” These are their feelings.
Moreover, has there not been published here year after year a scandalous paper, every number of which has teemed with lies of the blackest dye concerning us? Yet we have scarcely noticed that such a paper is in existence. Who have supported this paper? The merchants here, those whom you have been feeding and paying your money to. They are the ones who have sustained this paper. Do you suppose that a paper which is continually belching forth falsehoods of the blackest dye against you, your religion, and against the man who led you forth and planted you here, could be sustained here if the people outside of this church did not support it? If they support it, what is it for? That it may arouse the feelings of the enemies of the Saints throughout the States, and may, peradventure, result in the sending of an army here that they may make money out of it. That is what they hope to effect.
Now, Latter-day Saints, I have spoken plainly. I take the responsibility of what I have said on my own shoulders. If I have spoken too harshly I am willing to be corrected. I have spoken my feelings plainly, without trying to hide them or gloss them over. I say I would rather go and kill wolves in the forests and mountains, and skin them and tan their skins and wear wolfskin pantaloons, and wolfskin coats and vests, and have everything I wear the skin of beasts, than spend one dime with one outsider in the Territory of Utah. (The congregation said “amen.“) I do not know what are the feelings of my brethren on this subject, but I do know, unless there is a change among this people in regard to this matter, farewell to our homes again, farewell to our fine buildings, to our farms, and to the country which we now occupy as the old settlers; farewell to many of our friends who will fall victims to our enemies; yes, farewell to home and the comforts which now surround us, and we shall have to seek an asylum somewhere else, in these mountains or in some other part of this continent, through being driven again, if we, through our own foolishness, will nourish vipers in our midst. Amen.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir;
prayer by Elder E. T. Benson.
Conference adjourned till 2 o'clock.
Discourse by Elder Orson Pratt, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct. 6th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
Through the mercies of our God we have assembled here in the capacity of a Conference to receive instruction and impart the same.
There are a great many points connected with the Zion of our God, now being established on the earth, which are necessary for us as a people to understand. God has not gathered us out from among the nations of the earth into these valleys without having a great purpose in view. Whatever portion of His purposes I understand I desire to abide by with all my heart, and I presume that every honest, upright Latter-day Saint desires the same.
We came to this formerly isolated place, and separated ourselves as far as we possibly could from what was termed civilization, not because we really desired to do so, or because of the fertility of the soil in this region, or the advantages we would enjoy in temporal things; but because we were in a measure obliged to do so. It is true that the Lord foretold to us, through the mouths of His servants, that the day would come when we should have to flee from our enemies, and that we would settle west of the Rocky Mountains. When we were dwelling in the State of Illinois, and had had a few years of comparative peace, the Spirit of the Lord rested upon His servant Joseph and made manifest to him that the wicked had it in their hearts to uproot His people who were established in Nauvoo, the same as they had done in our former settlements. The testimony of the Spirit to the servant of God was, that however peaceable the people around us might seem, yet, if they would not receive the Gospel and acknowledge the authority which God had restored from Heaven, they would fight against His people. Our Savior said, “he that is not for us is against us.” The truth of this saying we, as a people, have proven since the day that Joseph took the plates of the Book of Mormon from the hill Cumorah, in the town of Manchester, Ontario county, State of New York; and even before he succeeded in getting the plates, some seven years before the Lord entrusted them to his care, the prophet Joseph proved the truth of this saying. The Lord revealed himself to this youth when he was between fourteen and fifteen years of age, and as soon as he related this vision, although at that young and tender age, the wrath and indignation of the people were stirred up against him.
From that time, until he was between twenty-one and twenty-two years of age the opposition was continued. It did not matter how righteous, humble or meek he was; it did not matter how straightforward his course of conduct was, all that the world wanted to know was, Does he profess something different from our religious notions? Does he believe that the heavens can be opened to men in our day? If so, the order of the day was, “persecute him.” Let every religious minister speak against him from the pulpit, let all pious hypocrites of all sects and parties unite with the drunkard, swearer and blasphemer and persecute the poor boy.
This is the enmity that exists between that which is of God and advanced of the Almighty, and that which is ordained of man and by the power of the Devil; they are at swords' points against each other. They always have been from the period man first accepted this earth, down to the present time. There has been no union between them; it is impossible for them to fellowship one another.
Wickedness and righteousness are in direct opposition. The Devil is opposed to God, and God is opposed to the Devil. All the heavenly hosts are opposed to wickedness, and all persons who are wicked are opposed to the heavenly hosts. This will be so as long as there are wicked people in existence. It does not matter how smooth they may be in their outward appearance, or how sociable they may be in their conversation. They, with their tongues, may make you think they are the most gentle, polite, civilized and moral people on the face of the earth, while within their hearts lurks a poison which would destroy the Saints of the living God.
As this has been the case in every former age and dispensation, so it is now; hence the Latter-day Saints in every part of the globe are commanded to gather out from the midst of wickedness, corruption and priestcraft, and every abomination that exists, and assemble themselves in one place. For what purpose? That we may be separated from the world and its corruptions, which would otherwise work our temporal and spiritual destruction. We have come here, then, in obedience to this command, and we have labored and toiled with all our might to redeem this barren country and to render it capable of sustaining us. What other people on the face of the whole earth have had to toil as the Latter-day Saints have? In some of the poverty stricken districts of Europe, where all the capital is in the hands of the rich and where the poor are made slaves, it may be that some of the latter have to work as hard as we have to work here. But without being placed in such circumstances we have been compelled to undergo this toil. When we came here we were more than a thousand miles from any place where we could obtain the comforts and necessaries to preserve life. We could not live if we could not labor. We were obliged to go for miles into the rugged canyons and there labor and toil month after month to open up roads to obtain timber for fuel, for building, and for fences for our farms. In addition to this severe toil we had to open water ditches from the canyons in order to obtain water to spread over the face of this barren soil, that the desert might be reclaimed and made to yield us a subsistence. This is the labor which the first settlers who came here had to perform, and this was the way they made this country. And were it not for the poor Latter-day Saints who were driven by their enemies from city to city and from State to State, and who ultimately were driven, twenty-one years ago, to the great interior of these mountains where they established a colony, where would have been the railroad now? Would there have been any railroad across these mountains? I doubt whether there would have been pioneers among the wicked sufficiently brave to have launched forth into this wild country and have settled in the midst of the Rocky Mountains, unless they had repented of their sins and had become one with the Latter-day Saints. The wicked never would have done it, or another century, at least, would have passed away before settlements to any very great extent would have been found in the midst of these mountains.
If it had not been for the “Mormons” where would have been the gold mines of California? They might not have been opened up for fifty years yet if it not had been for the Mormon battalion, which went forth to fight the battles of the nation in her war with Mexico. Had it not been for this the world might still have been in ignorance of their existence unless God, for the accomplishment of His own wise purposes, had revealed them in some other way. The settlement, in the heart of the American continent, of the Latter-day Saints established a great highway across the continent, so that the people, in their journeyings from the Atlantic to the Pacific have found a place where they could rest their weary heads as they passed through. The settlement of this Territory has materially facilitated the opening up of the adjoining Territories. If it had not been for the Latter-day Saints settling this Territory, when would Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Arizona or Nevada have been settled?
In 1831, when we went into Jackson County, Missouri—then a comparatively new country, and commenced to lay the foundation of new settlements, the great complaint against us was that we were not the old settlers. Their cry was, “You Mormons are not the old settlers, and you have neither civil nor religious rights here.” “What is the reason?” we would enquire; “Are we not American citizens?” “Oh, yes,” said the people in Jackson County, “you are American citizens, but we are the old settlers, and consequently you must leave this part of the country.”
After we had been driven out of Jackson County into Clay County, and had been there a few years, the people rose en masse and said to us again, “You Mormons have no right in Clay County.” And when we enquired why, the reply again was, “because you are not the old settlers.” After dwelling there two or three years, an edict was issued by a mass meeting of the people assembled at Liberty, that we must seek a new location. We then fled to Caldwell County, in the State of Missouri. But, alas, after having bought a great many thousand acres of land and given signs of prosperity far beyond that of the old settlers who lived in surrounding counties, they, emboldened by the example of the people of Clay County, got up the old cry, and after having destroyed our farms and property they, in the midst of a severe winter, drove us into Illinois.
There we again gathered up our people, and not yet discouraged, we purchased a large tract of country on both sides of the Mississippi and founded a city called Nauvoo, to which a charter was given by the Legislature of Illinois. In a short time, the people of the regions round about were excited to jealousy, because the Latter-day Saints, through their industrious habits, were flourishing and were beautifying and extending their city; they could not bear to see us outstripping them. They saw that the people of Missouri had never been brought to account for murdering our people and robbing them of millions of dollars' worth of property, so they, in Illinois, made up their minds to take a similar course. Said they, “You Latter-day Saints are new settlers, and if we suffer you to remain you will soon be able to outvote us for all the officers of the county. But you have no civil nor religious rights here, and you must leave your fine farms, houses, cities, towns and villages, and you must go out of the United States. We will make a treaty with you as if you were a foreign nation, and you must undertake that you will not settle again within the bounds of the United States, and your only salvation is to go west beyond the Rocky Mountains, nearly 1,500 miles from your present abode.” We felt that this was the only course we could adopt, so we left in the month of February, 1846. After ferrying some of our teams across the Mississippi, the river froze over so hard that the remainder crossed on the ice. In this cold weather we camped out on the prairie, and took up our march for this place, our enemies expecting that they had seen the last of us, that we should most certainly be killed by Indians or die by famine. We reached this portion of the Rocky Mountains, then under Mexican rule, and settled here. By and by, after the war between the United States and Mexico, a treaty was made between them, and this land, which we occupied and to which we had been driven by our enemies, was ceded to the United States.
I have already told you what we have done here, the toils we have undergone, and the hardships we have suffered; and that we are gathering in our people from among the nations that we may enjoy civil and religious liberty, which are guaranteed by the Constitution of our country. We do not ask the United States for anything more. We do not want liberty that is not thus guaranteed; but we demand that liberty to which, as American citizens, we are entitled as a sacred right. And in having this liberty we shall have the liberty of dealing with whom we please, providing we infringe no law. That is the right of all American citizens. It does not matter whether they are Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Democrat, Whigs, or whatever they maybe, all have the undoubted right guaranteed to them, by the laws of our country, to deal just as they please and with whom the please if they do not infringe upon the laws nor injure their neighbors.
Ever since the settlement of this Territory I have felt how much better it would be if this people would unite together and appoint their merchants to go and buy their goods and bring them here and sell them at a reasonable profit to the rest of the community, and never trade here to the amount of one dime with those who are outside of us. But while this has been my feeling it has not been the feeling of all, for we have supported scores of merchants who have not been members of our Church. Have we done this because they were our friends? I will tell you the only thing that proves the existence of friendly feelings on the part of outsiders to this people—when they repent of their sins, and receive the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God has said, in the revelations which He has given in these days, “There is no people on the face of the whole earth who do good save it be those who are ready and willing to receive the fullness of my Gospel.”
We have proven this from the beginning of this work. There never has been yet, with all the apparent friendliness and politeness of outsiders, a proof of good will rendered to the Latter-day Saints, except it has been a willingness to receive the Gospel. Yet, notwithstanding that the word of the Lord and our experience have proven the truth of this, we have fostered these individuals in our midst for nearly twenty years. We have given them our grain, and have impoverished the Territory by paying millions and millions of our money into their hands. What have they done with it? Why, some who have been changed from poor men into heavy capitalists by the hundreds of thousands they have drained from this people, have gone away and used all the influence they could to destroy us. Did they appear to be friendly when in our midst? O, yes, you would have thought they were the most friendly and polite people imaginable. Why the Latter-day Saints never saw such manifestations of politeness, gentility and friendliness as were made by some of those we have nourished in our midst. What was the cause of this apparent friendliness? The dimes and dollars, the wheat, flour, produce, cattle and means that you had in your possession. It was the hope of gain which made them friendly, for that was the god they worshipped. But when they have made fortunes out of the Latter-day Saints and gulled them all they could they have gone and tried to destroy them.
As an individual I do not care how much a person in this place, outside of the Church, professes; if he will not repent of his sins and receive the message God has sent, I will not give him my dimes nor dollars if I know it. This ought to be the feeling of this whole people, otherwise we have got Babylon right in our midst. We have prayed a long time for God to deliver us from Babylon, and we have been gathered out, as we supposed, from Babylon; but we can soon establish a kind of young Babylon—one of the daughters of Babylon, if you will—and we can have it in our midst to our hearts' content. But what would be their feelings if they had the power? Judging from the experience of the past, their feelings would be that the Latter-day Saints should have no civil rights, no religious rights here in this land of Utah which they have sought for their own. It is true that our enemies here cannot plead like the people of Jackson, Clay and other places, that we are not the old settlers. They have not this for a plea, for the “Mormons” are the old settlers; but they have such enmity towards us that they would uproot us here, as they have five or six times before, if they had the power. “How do you know,” says one, “that these are the feelings entertained by the wicked towards this people? They profess to be very friendly, then how do you know their feelings are as you describe them?” From the fact that when this people elected one of their own number as Delegate to Congress by 15,000 votes, the man whom they voted for—giving him 105 votes, sixty of which were cast in a town where there were only twenty voters—contested his seat, and fought him month after month in the Halls of Congress, being sustained while so doing, by those who profess such friendship towards us. And what was the object of this would-be delegate? It was to deprive the “Mormons” of citizenship and of the privilege of taking up the land, by influencing the government to pass a law to that effect. This was his object, and to do all the injury in his power to this people. Who supported him? These men whom you support, Latter-day Saints, and to whom you pay your money. Merchants and others in this city gave their votes to that man after you had paid your thousands into their hands. They gave their votes for an individual who would deprive you of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution of our country. Will you still continue to support such men? Will you go down here and trade with them year after year? If you do I know what the result will be; it is plainly visible. They will get a foothold here, and if they can only get numbers sufficient, you Latter-day Saints will have no civil rights here in this Territory. If a jury is to be empanelled it will be composed of our bitter enemies. If a Latter-day Saint has to be tried before the courts, it will be before those who are ready to eat him up. If there is a delegate to be elected to Congress they will seek very diligently to get the greatest enemy to this people they can find, so that, if possible, he may succeed in getting a large army sent up here to use us up. Why should they do this? To make money; that is their object. They feel, “If we can only stir up the government and get them to send an army to Utah it will be money in our pocket. Bless you, we don't care how much suffering it produces, or how many Latter-day Saints may be deprived of their rights; we would sell the whole of them for a dollar a head, if we could only become rich. We care nothing about them, or their rights as American citizens.” These are their feelings.
Moreover, has there not been published here year after year a scandalous paper, every number of which has teemed with lies of the blackest dye concerning us? Yet we have scarcely noticed that such a paper is in existence. Who have supported this paper? The merchants here, those whom you have been feeding and paying your money to. They are the ones who have sustained this paper. Do you suppose that a paper which is continually belching forth falsehoods of the blackest dye against you, your religion, and against the man who led you forth and planted you here, could be sustained here if the people outside of this church did not support it? If they support it, what is it for? That it may arouse the feelings of the enemies of the Saints throughout the States, and may, peradventure, result in the sending of an army here that they may make money out of it. That is what they hope to effect.
Now, Latter-day Saints, I have spoken plainly. I take the responsibility of what I have said on my own shoulders. If I have spoken too harshly I am willing to be corrected. I have spoken my feelings plainly, without trying to hide them or gloss them over. I say I would rather go and kill wolves in the forests and mountains, and skin them and tan their skins and wear wolfskin pantaloons, and wolfskin coats and vests, and have everything I wear the skin of beasts, than spend one dime with one outsider in the Territory of Utah. (The congregation said “amen.“) I do not know what are the feelings of my brethren on this subject, but I do know, unless there is a change among this people in regard to this matter, farewell to our homes again, farewell to our fine buildings, to our farms, and to the country which we now occupy as the old settlers; farewell to many of our friends who will fall victims to our enemies; yes, farewell to home and the comforts which now surround us, and we shall have to seek an asylum somewhere else, in these mountains or in some other part of this continent, through being driven again, if we, through our own foolishness, will nourish vipers in our midst. Amen.
Singing by the Tabernacle choir;
prayer by Elder E. T. Benson.
Conference adjourned till 2 o'clock.
2 p.m.
The 20th Ward choir sang "My soul is full of peace and love," with Hallelujah by Bro. J. J. Daynes.
Elder Erastus Snow prayed.
The Fishburne choir sang a quartette—"Pray for the Peace of Deseret."
The 20th Ward choir sang "My soul is full of peace and love," with Hallelujah by Bro. J. J. Daynes.
Elder Erastus Snow prayed.
The Fishburne choir sang a quartette—"Pray for the Peace of Deseret."
Elder John Taylor
spoke of the character of our Conferences, and the objects for which we assembled together in such a capacity. The subjects dwelt upon at such times are not confined to that which is usually called religious by the sectarian world, but comprise everything that relates to man's welfare, happiness, prosperity and existence all of which is embraced in our religion. The subject of trading, spoken of in the forenoon, would bear considerable investigation. It had been a principle acted upon by all nations to adopt measures calculated to further the general good. Our position is such a one as many nations have been placed in at some period of their existence. Nations make treaties of commerce, appoint consuls and take other steps to protect their trade and commercial relations. Special advantages are conferred upon various industries; protection is extended to home manufactures and prohibition is exercised to a greater or less extent against imported goods. No one questions the right to do thus; no one thinks of bringing charges against any people or nations who try to further their own interests in such a manner. We are not a nation, but as a part of this Republic and in our Territorial condition we hold political relations with the general government. We are somewhat different from other communities. Our religion has brought us together; our faith unites us; yet we have rights which we cannot neglect and be justified. Numerous and strong reasons were adduced by Elder Taylor why we should not trade with those who have tried and continue to try and injure us; and why we should support ourselves, do our own trading, our own merchandising, and build up the Territory that is our home. This is done by political organizations and by religious societies all through Christendom, and we have an equal right with others to protect ourselves and our own interests.
After Elder John Taylor closed,
Several rules for the guidance of the moral course of the Saints were then read, and submitted to the vote of the congregation, who unanimously agreed to sustain and live by them.
spoke of the character of our Conferences, and the objects for which we assembled together in such a capacity. The subjects dwelt upon at such times are not confined to that which is usually called religious by the sectarian world, but comprise everything that relates to man's welfare, happiness, prosperity and existence all of which is embraced in our religion. The subject of trading, spoken of in the forenoon, would bear considerable investigation. It had been a principle acted upon by all nations to adopt measures calculated to further the general good. Our position is such a one as many nations have been placed in at some period of their existence. Nations make treaties of commerce, appoint consuls and take other steps to protect their trade and commercial relations. Special advantages are conferred upon various industries; protection is extended to home manufactures and prohibition is exercised to a greater or less extent against imported goods. No one questions the right to do thus; no one thinks of bringing charges against any people or nations who try to further their own interests in such a manner. We are not a nation, but as a part of this Republic and in our Territorial condition we hold political relations with the general government. We are somewhat different from other communities. Our religion has brought us together; our faith unites us; yet we have rights which we cannot neglect and be justified. Numerous and strong reasons were adduced by Elder Taylor why we should not trade with those who have tried and continue to try and injure us; and why we should support ourselves, do our own trading, our own merchandising, and build up the Territory that is our home. This is done by political organizations and by religious societies all through Christendom, and we have an equal right with others to protect ourselves and our own interests.
After Elder John Taylor closed,
Several rules for the guidance of the moral course of the Saints were then read, and submitted to the vote of the congregation, who unanimously agreed to sustain and live by them.
Elder Joseph W. Young
testified to the truth and importance of the doctrines advanced to-day. The question is, will we sustain ourselves? He quoted the words of Jesus, "He that is not with us is against us," and urged the necessity of our being united and faithfully acting upon the principles advanced touching this matter.
The Tabernacle choir then sang the following hymn, composed for the occasion by Sister Eliza R. Snow:
O God of life and glory,
Hear Thou a people's prayer:
Bless, bless our prophet Brigham,
And let him, Thy fullness share.
He is Thy chosen servant,
To lead Thine Israel forth;
Till Zion, crown'd with joy, shall be
A praise in all the earth.
He draws from Christ, the Fountain
Of everlasting truth,
The wise and prudent counsels
Which he gives to age and youth.
Thyself in him reflected,
Through mortal agency--
He is Thy representative,
To set Thy people free.
Thou richly has endow'd him
With wisdom's bounteous store;
And Thou has made him mighty,
By Thy own almighty power,
O, let his life be precious--
Bless Thou, his brethren, too,
Who firmly join him side by side--
Who're true as he is true.
Help him to found Thy kingdom
In majesty and power:
With peace in every palace,
And with strength in every tow'r.
And when Thy chosen Israel
Their noblest strains have sung:
The swelling chorus then shall be,
Our prophet, Brigham Young.
Bishop E. D. Woolley offered up prayer, and the Conference adjourned till Wednesday morning, 7th, at 10 o'clock; a meeting of the priesthood being called for half-past six o'clock in the evening.
testified to the truth and importance of the doctrines advanced to-day. The question is, will we sustain ourselves? He quoted the words of Jesus, "He that is not with us is against us," and urged the necessity of our being united and faithfully acting upon the principles advanced touching this matter.
The Tabernacle choir then sang the following hymn, composed for the occasion by Sister Eliza R. Snow:
O God of life and glory,
Hear Thou a people's prayer:
Bless, bless our prophet Brigham,
And let him, Thy fullness share.
He is Thy chosen servant,
To lead Thine Israel forth;
Till Zion, crown'd with joy, shall be
A praise in all the earth.
He draws from Christ, the Fountain
Of everlasting truth,
The wise and prudent counsels
Which he gives to age and youth.
Thyself in him reflected,
Through mortal agency--
He is Thy representative,
To set Thy people free.
Thou richly has endow'd him
With wisdom's bounteous store;
And Thou has made him mighty,
By Thy own almighty power,
O, let his life be precious--
Bless Thou, his brethren, too,
Who firmly join him side by side--
Who're true as he is true.
Help him to found Thy kingdom
In majesty and power:
With peace in every palace,
And with strength in every tow'r.
And when Thy chosen Israel
Their noblest strains have sung:
The swelling chorus then shall be,
Our prophet, Brigham Young.
Bishop E. D. Woolley offered up prayer, and the Conference adjourned till Wednesday morning, 7th, at 10 o'clock; a meeting of the priesthood being called for half-past six o'clock in the evening.
6 ½ p.m.
Pursuant to call, the bishops, their counselors, with the priesthood generally, convened in the Old Tabernacle, Presidents B. Young and D. H. Wells, the Twelve Apostles, and over three thousand elders being present.
"Softly beams the Sacred Dawning" was sung by Elders J. D. T. McAllister and G. Goddard;
and Elder Orson Hyde offered prayer.
"Glorious things are sung of Zion" was then sung.
Pursuant to call, the bishops, their counselors, with the priesthood generally, convened in the Old Tabernacle, Presidents B. Young and D. H. Wells, the Twelve Apostles, and over three thousand elders being present.
"Softly beams the Sacred Dawning" was sung by Elders J. D. T. McAllister and G. Goddard;
and Elder Orson Hyde offered prayer.
"Glorious things are sung of Zion" was then sung.
Bishop Edward Hunter
made some remarks, recalling personal reminiscences of his early history in the church, and touching on some scenes through which he had passed. He said we are here and in the right place to build up the kingdom of God. When he came here the country was a barren desert, and there seemed to be no natural soil that would produce sustenance for human life; but the Lord blessed the land and the elements, and now the country is productive and our labor is blessed. He called attention to the negligence which some manifest with regard to paying their tithing. He said some evaded doing their duty in this respect when they should rejoice in the privilege; and he urged the brethren to do their duty and act like men of God; to pay their tithing and realize the blessing which accompanies obedience to the commandments of the Lord.
made some remarks, recalling personal reminiscences of his early history in the church, and touching on some scenes through which he had passed. He said we are here and in the right place to build up the kingdom of God. When he came here the country was a barren desert, and there seemed to be no natural soil that would produce sustenance for human life; but the Lord blessed the land and the elements, and now the country is productive and our labor is blessed. He called attention to the negligence which some manifest with regard to paying their tithing. He said some evaded doing their duty in this respect when they should rejoice in the privilege; and he urged the brethren to do their duty and act like men of God; to pay their tithing and realize the blessing which accompanies obedience to the commandments of the Lord.
President B. Young
said that he thought he could be able to make the congregation hear without injury to himself, if the brethren would keep very still. We have a great work to perform to save the house of Israel and gather the honest-in-heart. Much was done since the last Fall Conference to bring the poor Saints from the nations. And while the disposition was manifested by the brethren to do everything in their power, much faith had to be exercised to accomplish what has been done. At the first of February last there had only been received $9000 towards gathering the poor this season; yet when Elders H. B. Clawson and William C. Staines were sent east on the 17th of the same month, there was $27,000, to send with them. Over $70,000 had been received for this purpose. There had been 3,197 persons emigrated from Liverpool; and as on a calculation it was found that it would cost about sixty-five dollars a head, or about $65,000 for one thousand adults, to bring them from Liverpool to the terminus of the U. P. R. R., it would be seen that the agents had been greatly blessed in furthering the immigration, although a number of those brought on were able to help themselves in part. He said we have still much to do to gather those who remain; and after he had related what had been done by some last year, he proposed that we should re-commence our efforts in the same direction. He offered a donation of another thousand dollars this year; and Captain W. H. Hooper proposed also to give a thousand. He spoke of the railroad as one of the greatest blessings, of a temporal character, which had ever been conferred upon the Saints; and referred to the honorable manner in which those connected with it had dealt with us; and said they should be blessed of the Lord. He spoke in a calm, clear and impressive manner on the subject of trading with those not connected with the Church. A report of his remarks will be published, to which we refer our readers.
said that he thought he could be able to make the congregation hear without injury to himself, if the brethren would keep very still. We have a great work to perform to save the house of Israel and gather the honest-in-heart. Much was done since the last Fall Conference to bring the poor Saints from the nations. And while the disposition was manifested by the brethren to do everything in their power, much faith had to be exercised to accomplish what has been done. At the first of February last there had only been received $9000 towards gathering the poor this season; yet when Elders H. B. Clawson and William C. Staines were sent east on the 17th of the same month, there was $27,000, to send with them. Over $70,000 had been received for this purpose. There had been 3,197 persons emigrated from Liverpool; and as on a calculation it was found that it would cost about sixty-five dollars a head, or about $65,000 for one thousand adults, to bring them from Liverpool to the terminus of the U. P. R. R., it would be seen that the agents had been greatly blessed in furthering the immigration, although a number of those brought on were able to help themselves in part. He said we have still much to do to gather those who remain; and after he had related what had been done by some last year, he proposed that we should re-commence our efforts in the same direction. He offered a donation of another thousand dollars this year; and Captain W. H. Hooper proposed also to give a thousand. He spoke of the railroad as one of the greatest blessings, of a temporal character, which had ever been conferred upon the Saints; and referred to the honorable manner in which those connected with it had dealt with us; and said they should be blessed of the Lord. He spoke in a calm, clear and impressive manner on the subject of trading with those not connected with the Church. A report of his remarks will be published, to which we refer our readers.
Elder George A. Smith
urged the brethren on a subject which he has often dwelt upon—the importance of those who have not done so taking out their naturalization papers, that they may be in a position to assume the responsibility and claim the rights of citizenship. He also advocated the importance of educating our own teachers, by sending young men and women to normal schools where they can be qualified for successfully taking charge of schools.
An expression of opinion was called for relative to the subject of trading, when it was unanimously voted that we sustain ourselves and those who sustain us.
Elder Joseph F. Smith offered the closing prayer.
urged the brethren on a subject which he has often dwelt upon—the importance of those who have not done so taking out their naturalization papers, that they may be in a position to assume the responsibility and claim the rights of citizenship. He also advocated the importance of educating our own teachers, by sending young men and women to normal schools where they can be qualified for successfully taking charge of schools.
An expression of opinion was called for relative to the subject of trading, when it was unanimously voted that we sustain ourselves and those who sustain us.
Elder Joseph F. Smith offered the closing prayer.
Wednesday, 7th, 10 a.m.
The Tabernacle choir sang the hymn commencing on the 67th page—"Praise ye the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Jacob Gates.
Singing by the 20th Ward choir, the Anthem, "Zion Awake."
The Tabernacle choir sang the hymn commencing on the 67th page—"Praise ye the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Jacob Gates.
Singing by the 20th Ward choir, the Anthem, "Zion Awake."
President B. Young then said the authorities of the Church would be presented to the Conference; and Elder George Q. Cannon presented them in the following order.
It will be seen that Elder George A. Smith was called to fill the position of President H. C. Kimball as First Counselor to President Young; and Elder Brigham Young, Junr., was appointed to fill the vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve thus created. Every vote, was, as usual, unanimous.
Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, George A. Smith his first and Daniel H. Wells his second counselor.
Orson Hyde, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Orson Pratt, Sen., John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Ezra T. Benson, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards, George Q. Cannon, Joseph F. Smith, and Brigham Young, Jun., members of the said Quorum.
John Smith, Patriarch of the Church.
Daniel Spencer, President of this Stake of Zion, and George B. Wallace and John T. Caine his counsellors.
William Eddington, John W. Young, John L. Blythe, Howard O. Spencer, Claudius V. Spencer, John Squires, William H. Folsom, Emanuel M. Murphy, Thomas E. Jeremy, George W. Thatcher, Peter Nebeker, and Charles S. Kimball, members of the High Council.
John Young, President of the High Priests' Quorum, Edwin D. Wooley and Samuel W. Richards his counselors.
Joseph Young, President of the first seven President of the Seventies, and Levi W. Hancock, Henry Harriman, Albert P. Rockwood, Horace S. Eldredge, Jacob Gates, and John Van Cott, members of the first seven Presidents of the Seventies.
Edward Hunter, Presiding Bishop, Leonard W. Hardy, and Jesse C. Little, his counsellors.
Samuel G. Ladd, President of the Priests' Quorum, Robert Price and Wm. McLaughlin his counselors.
Adam Spiers, President of the Teachers' Quorum; Henry I. Doremus and Martin Lenzi his counselors.
James Leach, President of the Deacon's Quorum; Peter Johnson and Chas. S. Cram his counselors.
Brigham Young, Trustee in Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Truman O. Angel, Architect for the Church.
Brigham Young, President of the Perpetual Emigration Fund to gather the poor; George A. Smith, Daniel H. Wells, and Edward Hunter his assistants for said fund.
George A. Smith, Historian and general Church Recorder, and Wilford Woodruff, his assistant.
It will be seen that Elder George A. Smith was called to fill the position of President H. C. Kimball as First Counselor to President Young; and Elder Brigham Young, Junr., was appointed to fill the vacancy in the Quorum of the Twelve thus created. Every vote, was, as usual, unanimous.
Brigham Young, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, George A. Smith his first and Daniel H. Wells his second counselor.
Orson Hyde, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Orson Pratt, Sen., John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Ezra T. Benson, Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, Franklin D. Richards, George Q. Cannon, Joseph F. Smith, and Brigham Young, Jun., members of the said Quorum.
John Smith, Patriarch of the Church.
Daniel Spencer, President of this Stake of Zion, and George B. Wallace and John T. Caine his counsellors.
William Eddington, John W. Young, John L. Blythe, Howard O. Spencer, Claudius V. Spencer, John Squires, William H. Folsom, Emanuel M. Murphy, Thomas E. Jeremy, George W. Thatcher, Peter Nebeker, and Charles S. Kimball, members of the High Council.
John Young, President of the High Priests' Quorum, Edwin D. Wooley and Samuel W. Richards his counselors.
Joseph Young, President of the first seven President of the Seventies, and Levi W. Hancock, Henry Harriman, Albert P. Rockwood, Horace S. Eldredge, Jacob Gates, and John Van Cott, members of the first seven Presidents of the Seventies.
Edward Hunter, Presiding Bishop, Leonard W. Hardy, and Jesse C. Little, his counsellors.
Samuel G. Ladd, President of the Priests' Quorum, Robert Price and Wm. McLaughlin his counselors.
Adam Spiers, President of the Teachers' Quorum; Henry I. Doremus and Martin Lenzi his counselors.
James Leach, President of the Deacon's Quorum; Peter Johnson and Chas. S. Cram his counselors.
Brigham Young, Trustee in Trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Truman O. Angel, Architect for the Church.
Brigham Young, President of the Perpetual Emigration Fund to gather the poor; George A. Smith, Daniel H. Wells, and Edward Hunter his assistants for said fund.
George A. Smith, Historian and general Church Recorder, and Wilford Woodruff, his assistant.
Elder John Van Cott
in some spirited and pointed remarks contended that we should govern ourselves in wisdom, in our appetites and labors, and cease to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for those who grow strong on our weakness and fat on our leanness. As a people we have had to labor very hard to conquer this wilderness and subdue the elements around us, that we might draw a sustenance from the earth. We have labored to excess and have been unwise in so doing. We should learn to govern our lives so as to prolong them. He testified to the truth and wisdom of the teachings given during this Conference, and said the Saints should take care of themselves, exalt themselves and sustain the interests of the Kingdom of God.
Fishburne's choir sang, "Do they pray for me at home," sweetly and touchingly.
in some spirited and pointed remarks contended that we should govern ourselves in wisdom, in our appetites and labors, and cease to be "hewers of wood and drawers of water" for those who grow strong on our weakness and fat on our leanness. As a people we have had to labor very hard to conquer this wilderness and subdue the elements around us, that we might draw a sustenance from the earth. We have labored to excess and have been unwise in so doing. We should learn to govern our lives so as to prolong them. He testified to the truth and wisdom of the teachings given during this Conference, and said the Saints should take care of themselves, exalt themselves and sustain the interests of the Kingdom of God.
Fishburne's choir sang, "Do they pray for me at home," sweetly and touchingly.
Elder George Q. Cannon
said this was a momentous period, and he felt deeply impressed with its importance. He was extremely desirous that the people should realize the full force of the course they had been pursuing. He reviewed the circumstances which had given power and influence to our enemies here in our midst; and referred to the events which occurred in Nauvoo immediately preceding the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum. The threat is made that we will be crushed and destroyed, and this threat is not made covertly, quietly nor in a corner, but it is published in our principal city and sent forth to the world, north, south, east and west; and with it slanders the most foul and abominable have been circulated. No greater evidence of our patience, forbearance and law-abiding tendencies could be given than the fact that the author of these threats, falsehoods and slanders is not hung. He walks our streets unnoticed and unchallenged. In any other territory he would be hung up to a telegraph pole by an outraged community. If the people will not sustain the author of these outrages on themselves, let them cease sustaining those who do sustain them; for the paper he publishes is subscribed for, fostered and sustained by individuals in this city who seek the support of this people. It has been claimed that those from whom we are withdrawing our patronage here, have been the means of bringing prosperity and trade to us—that they have benefitted us instead of us benefitting them. If such is the case it will not hurt them nor do them any injury for us to cease contributing our strength to them. There are among the merchants here fine gentlemen, and were they in the east he would as soon trade with them as any others; but the reason why he would trade with them there and not here, is, if they were there they would have no interest in exciting a crusade against us, they would have no fat contracts to seek for, and no reasons for creating bitterness against us that the results consequent upon it might make contracts for them to gain money by. Elder Cannon said the subject was one that should be investigated wisely and dispassionately; and he urged the people to serve God and keep His commandments.
said this was a momentous period, and he felt deeply impressed with its importance. He was extremely desirous that the people should realize the full force of the course they had been pursuing. He reviewed the circumstances which had given power and influence to our enemies here in our midst; and referred to the events which occurred in Nauvoo immediately preceding the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum. The threat is made that we will be crushed and destroyed, and this threat is not made covertly, quietly nor in a corner, but it is published in our principal city and sent forth to the world, north, south, east and west; and with it slanders the most foul and abominable have been circulated. No greater evidence of our patience, forbearance and law-abiding tendencies could be given than the fact that the author of these threats, falsehoods and slanders is not hung. He walks our streets unnoticed and unchallenged. In any other territory he would be hung up to a telegraph pole by an outraged community. If the people will not sustain the author of these outrages on themselves, let them cease sustaining those who do sustain them; for the paper he publishes is subscribed for, fostered and sustained by individuals in this city who seek the support of this people. It has been claimed that those from whom we are withdrawing our patronage here, have been the means of bringing prosperity and trade to us—that they have benefitted us instead of us benefitting them. If such is the case it will not hurt them nor do them any injury for us to cease contributing our strength to them. There are among the merchants here fine gentlemen, and were they in the east he would as soon trade with them as any others; but the reason why he would trade with them there and not here, is, if they were there they would have no interest in exciting a crusade against us, they would have no fat contracts to seek for, and no reasons for creating bitterness against us that the results consequent upon it might make contracts for them to gain money by. Elder Cannon said the subject was one that should be investigated wisely and dispassionately; and he urged the people to serve God and keep His commandments.
Self-Sustaining—Persecutions—Outside Influence
Discourse by Elder George Q. Cannon, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct, 7th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
There have been some exceedingly important questions presented before us for our consideration at this Conference. I look upon them as of momentous importance, because upon their correct solution depends, to a very great extent, the perpetuity of our homes, and of the institution which God has given us. God has entrusted to this people His Gospel. He has placed in His church the oracles of the holy priesthood. He has given unto us the labor of upbuilding His Zion on the earth, and it is for us, if we expect to receive the reward that He has promised, to fulfill that trust faithfully, let the consequences be what they may.
Already the establishment of this work has cost the best blood of this generation. Already a prophet, a patriarch, apostles and numerous Saints have laid down their lives to establish the work with which we are connected. It is for us to decide during this Conference whether that blood has been shed in vain; whether the sufferings, trials, difficulties and hardships, our exodus from the lands which we formerly occupied and inhabited, our pilgrimage to this country, our sufferings since we came here, the labors we have expended in rearing this city and in extending civilization throughout this Territory—I say it is for us to decide today and during this Conference whether or not all this has been in vain; and whether we will build up His kingdom according to His divine commandment, or divide our strength and energy, and the talents with which He has endowed us in building up a system or systems that are opposed to this work. It is for us to decide whether we will submit to the jurisdiction of the holy priesthood, or whether we will renounce that jurisdiction and our allegiance to God. These are the questions which present themselves before us today. They are important questions, and should be decided carefully and understandingly.
I look upon the position which we occupy today as, in some respects, a critical one. Not that I anticipate any danger, or have any fears that we are going to be overthrown, if the people will only be true to themselves and their God. I know, as I know that I live and am speaking to you today, that this is the work of God. I know that He has promised that it shall stand forever, and that it shall break in pieces everything that is opposed to it. But I also know that in order for it to accomplish this great work, and for us to share in all its benefit and blessings, we individually must be faithful to it, for the blessings which are promised to us are made conditionally. If we prove recreant to the trust that God has given to us, others will be raised in our places to take the great work in their hands, and carry it forward to its full consummation.
I look upon the present time, as I have said, as a critical one. I feel that if we do not listen to the counsels that are given to us, God has a scourge in store for the Latter-day Saints. I feel in every fiber of my body, in every nerve of my system that this is a turning point with the Latter-day Saints, and that there is required of us today, a decision upon this subject. We have now, for a long period, done as we pleased. We have gone here or there, and done to a certain extent to suit ourselves, regardless of God, the counsels of His servants or the interests of His kingdom, and regardless of everything save our own general interests. The consequence is that there is growing up in our midst a power that menaces us with utter destruction and overthrow. We are told—openly and without disguise, that when the railroad is completed there will be such a flood of so-called “civilization” brought in here that every vestige of us, our church and institutions shall be completely obliterated. When we are told thus plainly and undisguisedly, would it not be folly, nay insanity, for us to sit still, fold our arms supinely and await the crash without making a single effort to ward it off? A people who would be thus besotted would be unworthy the blessings which God has bestowed upon us.
I know there is a feeling of great confidence in the minds of our brethren and sisters. They have, as President Young has often said, a great amount of faith; they have so great trust in God as to go and sell their grain, expecting that God will feed them whether the grain is in the bin or not. Some such confidence as this seems to pervade their minds respecting that which is in the future, and they manifest to a certain extent, carelessness and indifference in regard to carrying out the counsels that are given them, thinking that God, who has so signally preserved them in times past, will still continue to protect them. It is an excellent thing for us to have faith, but we should not have faith alone. Our faith should be associated with works, and the latter should correspond with the former. When our faith and works are united we can call upon God for help to enable us to accomplish that which he requires at our hands.
When I reflect, my brethren and sisters, on past scenes, as I have been doing while listening to the remarks of the brethren during this Conference; when I reflect on the condition we were in when driven from Nauvoo, and on our journey from the Mississippi to this valley—the sufferings of the women and children, and of the aged among us; when I reflect upon the hundreds we buried in Winter Quarters, and the privations the people endured while there; on the hardships the people were compelled to endure after their arrival here, and remember that all this was caused by the red hand of persecution, by mobocracy and the violence of wicked men, who envied us the possession of our Heaven-given rights; when I reflect upon all this, and also upon our circumstances now, I feel thankful for what God has done for us, and my prayer, oft repeated, has been “O God, never let this people again become a prey to mobocrats, never let us fall again into the hands of our enemies, but if we do wrong, do Thou chasten us and save us from the hands of those who have persecuted us.” This has been my feeling. But when I look at our circumstances now, I feel as though the people had forgotten that which they have passed through, and were not averse to having a repetition of those scenes.
For years after we came into these valleys we felt as though we never wanted to see the face of an enemy again, and if we could only have bread and water and peace we could be content. We felt, as Bro. Pratt expressed himself yesterday, that if we had only wolf and deer skins to clothe ourselves with we would be satisfied, if we could only have peace. It was peace we came here to enjoy. It was for peace that we fled from our former homes and made the long and wearisome journey to these valleys.
But, how is it today? What are the circumstances which surround us now? Why, here in the head city of Zion, in the center city, where the foundations of the temple are laid and where the House of the Lord has been reared in which endowments and sacred ordinances are given, what do we find? We find a power growing up in our midst that threatens us, in the most plain and undisguised manner, with utter destruction. Is this so? It is, and has been so for years; and this power has been fostered by us as a people. It has grown, flourished and fattened upon us and the means we have produced. Is it not necessary, then, that something should be done? To my mind it is clear that some effort, such as has been proposed, should be made to concentrate the Saints and to set before them the principles of salvation in such a manner that they will understand the course they ought to take.
While the brethren were talking yesterday, and while we were South, I often had brought to my mind a circumstance that occurred in Nauvoo. It was on the 10th of June, 1844, I had occasion to go to the City Council of Nauvoo, with some proof sheets to the editor of the “Nauvoo Neighbor”—Elder John Taylor. I was a boy at the time, the printer's “devil,” as it is technically called. While there, the subject under discussion, was the declaring of the “Nauvoo Expositor” a nuisance. Doubtless many of you recollect that paper, one number of which was issued by the Laws and other apostates. You who do not recollect the paper may recollect reading about it. There was some excitement at the time in the Council. They had passed an ordinance declaring it a nuisance, and empowering the city marshal, John P. Green, to abate it. Joseph and Hyrum were in conversation at one of the windows of the room. Hyrum remarked to Joseph: “Before I will consent to have that paper continued to defame our wives, sisters and daughters, as it has done, I will lay my body on the walls of the building.” The sentiment as he uttered it, ran through me. I felt as he did. Yet we, for years, have had in our city a paper which publishes, if possible, more abominable lies about us and our people than were published by the “Nauvoo Expositor,” for the abatement of which Hyrum Smith said he was willing to die. We have not noticed it; we have suffered it to go on undisturbed. But the time has come for us to take this matter into consideration. Brother Pratt said yesterday, that our papers scarcely ever alluded to it. We have never alluded to it; we have deemed it unworthy of allusion, it is so utterly contemptible; but I now lay it before you. What we are doing on the present occasion is to fully bring it home to our minds, that we may see and understand the nature of the power that is growing in our midst, which we foster and sustain.
I glanced over a few of these papers that are now being published here, and there are two from which I will read you a few extracts so that you may see the spirit which animates our opponents.
In an editorial of the 11th of August we find the following, written in regard to an extract taken from one of our papers:
“The hankering for seclusion and exclusion, and the foul spirit of the assassinator to secure them, stick out in every word of the above extract. It is as full of the fell spirit that has always actuated the crew, whose spokesman this Editor is in this instance, as the sting of the adder is of venom. But it is the vain and weak boast of a throttled bully. The day has gone by when hired bands of cutthroats, ‘destroying angels,’ can ply their heinous avocation, and drive from the Territory, or murder all whom Brigham Young and his crew do not want in it. This fellow, who at the bidding of his master, Brigham, to whom he servilely and profanely bows as his god, insults the citizens of the United States by telling them that no one but those who bow as servilely as himself to Brigham, shall have leave to stay in this Territory, ignores the fact that the Salt Lake basin is a rich oasis in which nature has lavishly congregated all that is needed at the Halfway Point on the great National highway, the Pacific Railroad, and that it all belongs to the citizens of the United States, and not to Brigham and his crew. We speak advisedly when we say Brigham and his crew, for by reference to the doings of the Latter-day Saints' Legislature it will be seen that they have attempted to give Brigham and his set very great quantities of the richest part of this valley, including mill privileges, &c.
“Hitherto this Territory has only been of interest to the people of the United States because of the infamous establishment sought to be set up in it in the sacred name of religion, and the motor of the warfare against the gross outrage has been alone the moral sense of the country, but now for the reason just named, a commercial interest is added, and the two together will as surely as truth is truth, and right is right, crush out the vile thing and rid the country of the foul blot, peaceably if possible, but with a besom of destruction if that is inevitable.” [Mark these words! How much they sound like the language of the manifesto of the mob in Jackson County, Missouri!]
“This Editor, in his shallow boasting, forgets, or purposely keeps out of sight, the truth that this Mormonism, which is sacrilegiously called a religion, is a heathenish heterodoxy, and that therefore the orthodox churches of the land, whose members number millions, will throw themselves against the spurious monster of Utah with all their force. This force only awaits the opportunity that the railroad will give it. In that day it will do you no good to buy a pitiful Congressman, and he must be a pitiful one indeed who would sell himself to Brigham.”
In another article which appeared on the 8th of September, we find the following:
“There are numbers of foreigners in this Territory, who have never abjured their allegiance to the foreign ruler from whose dominions they emigrated; and who have year after year voted for local officers and a delegate to Congress. There are others who, deceived by the representations of the Probate Judges, either willfully or ignorantly made, that they had power to naturalize, have taken out their papers from the Probate Courts, in many instances paying a larger fee therefore than the clerk of the District Court would be entitled to charge. These foreigners all occupy and hold more or less land in this Territory, and expect to avail themselves of the pre-emption law to the exclusion of actual citizens who are ready and desirous of occupying the land which the laws of the United States gives them a right to do. Many of these foreigners, either holding no papers at all or those spurious ones issued by Probate Courts, have since the passage of the act of 1862, prohibiting polygamy in the Territories of the United States, openly and persistently violated its provisions; and have been loud in the expressions of disloyalty towards the government of the United States.”
If we were living in the days of Nauvoo, and I had heard these extracts read, I should have thought they were from the “Warsaw Signal.” But these execrable sentiments were not published in Warsaw, they were not published at the Sweetwater, at Austin, or Virginia in Montana, but they were published at Salt Lake City, in the Center Stake of Zion, as at present organized. They are circulated through our streets, and placed in the hands of our children. They are disseminated throughout the Territory, so far as they can be; they are sent to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south, and everywhere as far as the influence of our enemies extends. In these infamous sheets the public are informed that the Latter-day Saints are assassins and everything that is vile, low and degraded. And no attempts are spared to excite against us in the minds of the officers of the parent government feelings of hatred, and to make them believe that a crusade ought to be inaugurated against us. When a paper of this kind is published in our midst and goes forth to the world unchallenged, it is a difficult thing for men and women outside of this Territory to realize that everything in its pages concerning us is false. If there were any greater evidence needed of our patience and forbearance and of our law-abiding tendencies than we have already given, they are to be found in the fact that the editor of this paper is not hung. (Hear, hear.) In any other community he would have been strung up to a telegraph pole; but here, in Utah Territory, in Salt Lake City, under the nose and in the eyes of the people and their leaders, this man who proclaims these infamous falsehoods travels our streets unnoticed and unchallenged. Let it be known throughout the world what we have submitted to in this respect, and there is not a man from Texas to Maine, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, who would not say we are the most patient and forbearing people on the Continent, or we would not submit to it. In any other Territory that office would be “gutted” within five days.
I allude to this matter because this paper is sustained in our midst, and those whom we sustain, sustain it; our money pays for its subscriptions. Our money pays its editor, buys its ink, paper and type, and pays its compositors and pressmen.
I will refer to another instance of the growth of this antagonistic power in our midst. A short time ago a circular, got up secretly by certain reverend gentlemen dwelling in this City, and probably printed and mailed by night, was sent broadcast throughout the East, in which every vile epithet that so called religious men could consistently use, was applied to us as a people. In this circular, those so-called Christian divines appealed as they said, from a strange land and from the midst of a strange people, to their brethren in the East, invoking them, if they wished to save this land from barbarism and to civilization, to raise $15,000 to buy a lot, on which a rectory might be established and a school built. And the purpose for which that school was designed was to inoculate the children of the Latter-day Saints with their damnable and pernicious doctrines. Who sustains this institution and who sustains and has sustained this paper? You can answer these questions. Will we patiently submit to these things? Shall we bow ourselves as willing slaves to the yoke they would fasten upon us? (Cries of “No, No.“) Well, then, if you will not bow to it, stop your trading with men of this class and sustain your friends; sustain those who want to build up the kingdom of God, who are one with us. If this fight must come and we have to cut off all from the church who will not reform in this respect, I would rather have it done now than wait until, environed by enemies, we are thrust out of our possessions at the point of the bayonet and compelled to flee to the mountains for safety. (Congregation said “Amen.“)
As an individual, I have no fellowship with those who sustain the enemies of the kingdom of God. I never did have. From my childhood my heart has been in this kingdom; every pulsation of it has been for Zion.
For years we have submitted to this treatment at the hands of outsiders in our midst. The present paper has been, if anything, better than its predecessor, for that had no editor's name to it. Fostered on the hill here, its contributors were men who wore the uniform of our respected “Uncle.” Its printers were men who were paid as soldiers. There was no name published at the head of its columns, and it was more base even than the present publication, because no one was responsible for its contents. I have not made any quotations from that. It, too, was sustained and contributed to by merchants in this City who seek the support of this people. I am informed, however, that the one at present published here is now issued without an editor's name to it.
It may be said, and is said by a great many, that this outside element has brought us trade. We have heard it stated time and time again that until the advent of Colonel Johnson and his army we were destitute of a circulating medium, but that since that period we have increased in wealth, money is more plentiful, and we have grown and spread abroad. And they take the glory to themselves and say it is their presence here that has produced this change. If this be so, the withdrawal of our support will make no difference to them. They cannot complain if we withdraw our support from them, because, if their statements be true, we are likely to be the greatest sufferers from this withdrawal. But let them test the truth of this themselves practically as we intend to do.
It is very plain to be seen, from the extracts which I have read to you, what the intention is, we have seen it carried out before at other places where we have dwelt. As soon as we began to increase in wealth, to build comfortable houses, and to open farms, the cupidity of our enemies was excited against us. When we came here we were poor and poverty stricken. We possessed nothing to excite anybody's cupidity. It was hoped that we would perish in the wilderness; but when it was found that we had money, there was a class, who, like vultures scenting the carrion from afar, came here, and to hear them talk one would have thought that the “Mormons” had thousands of friends. Why, they always sympathized with and pitied us! They always felt kindly towards us and thought, we were a very much abused people! Unfortunately, we never heard that they were thus sympathetic or had any feelings of kindness towards us—we had never seen their publications appealing in our behalf, or heard their voices imploring the authorities or the parent government to shield us from the attacks of our enemies. We had never heard anything of this kind, and should never have known anything about it had they not come and communicated this pleasing intelligence. But unfortunately the knowledge came too late for us to avail ourselves of it.
Allusion was made here, yesterday, to the fact that not one of those who have fattened at our expense ever lifted up his tongue or voice, or used his pen in defense of us in times of difficulty or danger; and should there be danger today, and we be menaced from without in the most unjustifiable manner, you would find that these fair-weather friends would soon take their flight and leave us to our fate, just as their predecessors did when the army came here from the east, as I met a whole company of them going to California by the southern route. It may be said “these are exceptions.” I do not doubt but there are men among our merchants who are very fine men. I would as soon deal with them in the eastern States as with anybody else; but it is because they are in Salt Lake City that I am opposed to them. “Ah, that is exclusive,” it may be said. I confess it is exclusive. I do not want a power to be brought into our midst as the wooden horse was into Troy. I do not want a power in our midst inimical to us, and that, as President Young has said, poisons everything around it. If such a power flourishes here, I wish it to flourish without our aid, and subsist without our contributing to its subsistence. If it can sustain itself after we have withdrawn our support, well and good. If there is government patronage and travel enough to sustain a class of this kind in our midst, all right, I have no objections. But the point at issue is for us to withdraw our support from this power, leave it to itself and sustain ourselves, and trade with those who are one with us in building up the kingdom of God. If outsiders want a paper, Sunday Schools and preachers, all right, if they sustain them themselves. Then they are in the hands of God. But while we sustain them or contribute of our strength to do so, we have no claim on the providence and deliverance of God our Heavenly Father. We cannot ask Him to deliver us from a power that we ourselves have fostered, and which we are sustaining. As I have said, if they were in the East we would have no objections to do it. Some cannot see any difference between sustaining them here or elsewhere. Why, when they are there they have no interest in exciting a crusade against us. If they have no contracts to get, it is no object for them to have thousands of soldiers here. But while they are here it is an object for them to try and create a feeling against us in the East. It is an object with them while here to try and have men of their choice elected for city and Territorial officers, and to get the whole machinery of the Territorial government into their own hands. Why? Because they are here, and consequently their interests are here; but if they were in New York, Chicago, London or San Francisco they would have no interest in any of these things. They would look at our money and be as glad to take it as anybody else's money.
I expect some of our friends will say this is a confession of weakness on our part, and that we are alarmed for the perpetuity of the power of the Priesthood. Let it be granted; I am willing they should put this construction upon it. I care not what construction they put on our words or our addresses during this Conference. The fact is we want to warn the people, and to stir them up to the necessity of taking the course we are urging upon them. That is our duty, and it makes no difference what others may think about it. Time will prove whether the Priesthood will be perpetuated or not, or whether the majority of this people will give heed to those who are not of us or not; and whether they will apostatize because they can get goods cheaper from an outsider than they can somewhere else; even if such is the case, which, however, is not true. Time is the great rectifier of all these things. We may labor for a time under misconstruction; but we can afford to wait. We shall outlive all erroneous ideas.
There are a great many points connected with this question which might be dwelt upon. It is an important matter, and one that should claim our earnest attention and calm consideration. The question is, Will we sustain the Kingdom of God or will we not? Will we sustain the priesthood of God or will we not? This power of which I have been speaking, or more properly, this antagonistic class in our midst, flatter themselves with the idea that when it comes to the test this people will desert their leaders and cleave to something else. This is an illusory hope. The Latter-day Saints know too well the source of their blessings. We have obtained a knowledge from God respecting this work; we know that it is of more value to us than all the earth besides. As I have said, we have forsaken former homes for it. The great majority of the first settlers came without shoes to their feet, and passed the first two or three winters in moccasins, and ate but a very scanty allowance of food. What was this for? Because we had obtained a knowledge of the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is no less dear to us now that twenty-one or twenty-two years have elapsed. God has proven to us that He is still willing to bless and sustain us and to give us the victory over all our enemies. He has endowed His servant with superhuman wisdom to guide this people. We have seen this and we rejoice in it. Amen.
Anthem, by the Tabernacle Choir—"O, Praise the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Lorenzo Snow.
Discourse by Elder George Q. Cannon, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct, 7th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
There have been some exceedingly important questions presented before us for our consideration at this Conference. I look upon them as of momentous importance, because upon their correct solution depends, to a very great extent, the perpetuity of our homes, and of the institution which God has given us. God has entrusted to this people His Gospel. He has placed in His church the oracles of the holy priesthood. He has given unto us the labor of upbuilding His Zion on the earth, and it is for us, if we expect to receive the reward that He has promised, to fulfill that trust faithfully, let the consequences be what they may.
Already the establishment of this work has cost the best blood of this generation. Already a prophet, a patriarch, apostles and numerous Saints have laid down their lives to establish the work with which we are connected. It is for us to decide during this Conference whether that blood has been shed in vain; whether the sufferings, trials, difficulties and hardships, our exodus from the lands which we formerly occupied and inhabited, our pilgrimage to this country, our sufferings since we came here, the labors we have expended in rearing this city and in extending civilization throughout this Territory—I say it is for us to decide today and during this Conference whether or not all this has been in vain; and whether we will build up His kingdom according to His divine commandment, or divide our strength and energy, and the talents with which He has endowed us in building up a system or systems that are opposed to this work. It is for us to decide whether we will submit to the jurisdiction of the holy priesthood, or whether we will renounce that jurisdiction and our allegiance to God. These are the questions which present themselves before us today. They are important questions, and should be decided carefully and understandingly.
I look upon the position which we occupy today as, in some respects, a critical one. Not that I anticipate any danger, or have any fears that we are going to be overthrown, if the people will only be true to themselves and their God. I know, as I know that I live and am speaking to you today, that this is the work of God. I know that He has promised that it shall stand forever, and that it shall break in pieces everything that is opposed to it. But I also know that in order for it to accomplish this great work, and for us to share in all its benefit and blessings, we individually must be faithful to it, for the blessings which are promised to us are made conditionally. If we prove recreant to the trust that God has given to us, others will be raised in our places to take the great work in their hands, and carry it forward to its full consummation.
I look upon the present time, as I have said, as a critical one. I feel that if we do not listen to the counsels that are given to us, God has a scourge in store for the Latter-day Saints. I feel in every fiber of my body, in every nerve of my system that this is a turning point with the Latter-day Saints, and that there is required of us today, a decision upon this subject. We have now, for a long period, done as we pleased. We have gone here or there, and done to a certain extent to suit ourselves, regardless of God, the counsels of His servants or the interests of His kingdom, and regardless of everything save our own general interests. The consequence is that there is growing up in our midst a power that menaces us with utter destruction and overthrow. We are told—openly and without disguise, that when the railroad is completed there will be such a flood of so-called “civilization” brought in here that every vestige of us, our church and institutions shall be completely obliterated. When we are told thus plainly and undisguisedly, would it not be folly, nay insanity, for us to sit still, fold our arms supinely and await the crash without making a single effort to ward it off? A people who would be thus besotted would be unworthy the blessings which God has bestowed upon us.
I know there is a feeling of great confidence in the minds of our brethren and sisters. They have, as President Young has often said, a great amount of faith; they have so great trust in God as to go and sell their grain, expecting that God will feed them whether the grain is in the bin or not. Some such confidence as this seems to pervade their minds respecting that which is in the future, and they manifest to a certain extent, carelessness and indifference in regard to carrying out the counsels that are given them, thinking that God, who has so signally preserved them in times past, will still continue to protect them. It is an excellent thing for us to have faith, but we should not have faith alone. Our faith should be associated with works, and the latter should correspond with the former. When our faith and works are united we can call upon God for help to enable us to accomplish that which he requires at our hands.
When I reflect, my brethren and sisters, on past scenes, as I have been doing while listening to the remarks of the brethren during this Conference; when I reflect on the condition we were in when driven from Nauvoo, and on our journey from the Mississippi to this valley—the sufferings of the women and children, and of the aged among us; when I reflect upon the hundreds we buried in Winter Quarters, and the privations the people endured while there; on the hardships the people were compelled to endure after their arrival here, and remember that all this was caused by the red hand of persecution, by mobocracy and the violence of wicked men, who envied us the possession of our Heaven-given rights; when I reflect upon all this, and also upon our circumstances now, I feel thankful for what God has done for us, and my prayer, oft repeated, has been “O God, never let this people again become a prey to mobocrats, never let us fall again into the hands of our enemies, but if we do wrong, do Thou chasten us and save us from the hands of those who have persecuted us.” This has been my feeling. But when I look at our circumstances now, I feel as though the people had forgotten that which they have passed through, and were not averse to having a repetition of those scenes.
For years after we came into these valleys we felt as though we never wanted to see the face of an enemy again, and if we could only have bread and water and peace we could be content. We felt, as Bro. Pratt expressed himself yesterday, that if we had only wolf and deer skins to clothe ourselves with we would be satisfied, if we could only have peace. It was peace we came here to enjoy. It was for peace that we fled from our former homes and made the long and wearisome journey to these valleys.
But, how is it today? What are the circumstances which surround us now? Why, here in the head city of Zion, in the center city, where the foundations of the temple are laid and where the House of the Lord has been reared in which endowments and sacred ordinances are given, what do we find? We find a power growing up in our midst that threatens us, in the most plain and undisguised manner, with utter destruction. Is this so? It is, and has been so for years; and this power has been fostered by us as a people. It has grown, flourished and fattened upon us and the means we have produced. Is it not necessary, then, that something should be done? To my mind it is clear that some effort, such as has been proposed, should be made to concentrate the Saints and to set before them the principles of salvation in such a manner that they will understand the course they ought to take.
While the brethren were talking yesterday, and while we were South, I often had brought to my mind a circumstance that occurred in Nauvoo. It was on the 10th of June, 1844, I had occasion to go to the City Council of Nauvoo, with some proof sheets to the editor of the “Nauvoo Neighbor”—Elder John Taylor. I was a boy at the time, the printer's “devil,” as it is technically called. While there, the subject under discussion, was the declaring of the “Nauvoo Expositor” a nuisance. Doubtless many of you recollect that paper, one number of which was issued by the Laws and other apostates. You who do not recollect the paper may recollect reading about it. There was some excitement at the time in the Council. They had passed an ordinance declaring it a nuisance, and empowering the city marshal, John P. Green, to abate it. Joseph and Hyrum were in conversation at one of the windows of the room. Hyrum remarked to Joseph: “Before I will consent to have that paper continued to defame our wives, sisters and daughters, as it has done, I will lay my body on the walls of the building.” The sentiment as he uttered it, ran through me. I felt as he did. Yet we, for years, have had in our city a paper which publishes, if possible, more abominable lies about us and our people than were published by the “Nauvoo Expositor,” for the abatement of which Hyrum Smith said he was willing to die. We have not noticed it; we have suffered it to go on undisturbed. But the time has come for us to take this matter into consideration. Brother Pratt said yesterday, that our papers scarcely ever alluded to it. We have never alluded to it; we have deemed it unworthy of allusion, it is so utterly contemptible; but I now lay it before you. What we are doing on the present occasion is to fully bring it home to our minds, that we may see and understand the nature of the power that is growing in our midst, which we foster and sustain.
I glanced over a few of these papers that are now being published here, and there are two from which I will read you a few extracts so that you may see the spirit which animates our opponents.
In an editorial of the 11th of August we find the following, written in regard to an extract taken from one of our papers:
“The hankering for seclusion and exclusion, and the foul spirit of the assassinator to secure them, stick out in every word of the above extract. It is as full of the fell spirit that has always actuated the crew, whose spokesman this Editor is in this instance, as the sting of the adder is of venom. But it is the vain and weak boast of a throttled bully. The day has gone by when hired bands of cutthroats, ‘destroying angels,’ can ply their heinous avocation, and drive from the Territory, or murder all whom Brigham Young and his crew do not want in it. This fellow, who at the bidding of his master, Brigham, to whom he servilely and profanely bows as his god, insults the citizens of the United States by telling them that no one but those who bow as servilely as himself to Brigham, shall have leave to stay in this Territory, ignores the fact that the Salt Lake basin is a rich oasis in which nature has lavishly congregated all that is needed at the Halfway Point on the great National highway, the Pacific Railroad, and that it all belongs to the citizens of the United States, and not to Brigham and his crew. We speak advisedly when we say Brigham and his crew, for by reference to the doings of the Latter-day Saints' Legislature it will be seen that they have attempted to give Brigham and his set very great quantities of the richest part of this valley, including mill privileges, &c.
“Hitherto this Territory has only been of interest to the people of the United States because of the infamous establishment sought to be set up in it in the sacred name of religion, and the motor of the warfare against the gross outrage has been alone the moral sense of the country, but now for the reason just named, a commercial interest is added, and the two together will as surely as truth is truth, and right is right, crush out the vile thing and rid the country of the foul blot, peaceably if possible, but with a besom of destruction if that is inevitable.” [Mark these words! How much they sound like the language of the manifesto of the mob in Jackson County, Missouri!]
“This Editor, in his shallow boasting, forgets, or purposely keeps out of sight, the truth that this Mormonism, which is sacrilegiously called a religion, is a heathenish heterodoxy, and that therefore the orthodox churches of the land, whose members number millions, will throw themselves against the spurious monster of Utah with all their force. This force only awaits the opportunity that the railroad will give it. In that day it will do you no good to buy a pitiful Congressman, and he must be a pitiful one indeed who would sell himself to Brigham.”
In another article which appeared on the 8th of September, we find the following:
“There are numbers of foreigners in this Territory, who have never abjured their allegiance to the foreign ruler from whose dominions they emigrated; and who have year after year voted for local officers and a delegate to Congress. There are others who, deceived by the representations of the Probate Judges, either willfully or ignorantly made, that they had power to naturalize, have taken out their papers from the Probate Courts, in many instances paying a larger fee therefore than the clerk of the District Court would be entitled to charge. These foreigners all occupy and hold more or less land in this Territory, and expect to avail themselves of the pre-emption law to the exclusion of actual citizens who are ready and desirous of occupying the land which the laws of the United States gives them a right to do. Many of these foreigners, either holding no papers at all or those spurious ones issued by Probate Courts, have since the passage of the act of 1862, prohibiting polygamy in the Territories of the United States, openly and persistently violated its provisions; and have been loud in the expressions of disloyalty towards the government of the United States.”
If we were living in the days of Nauvoo, and I had heard these extracts read, I should have thought they were from the “Warsaw Signal.” But these execrable sentiments were not published in Warsaw, they were not published at the Sweetwater, at Austin, or Virginia in Montana, but they were published at Salt Lake City, in the Center Stake of Zion, as at present organized. They are circulated through our streets, and placed in the hands of our children. They are disseminated throughout the Territory, so far as they can be; they are sent to the east and to the west, to the north and to the south, and everywhere as far as the influence of our enemies extends. In these infamous sheets the public are informed that the Latter-day Saints are assassins and everything that is vile, low and degraded. And no attempts are spared to excite against us in the minds of the officers of the parent government feelings of hatred, and to make them believe that a crusade ought to be inaugurated against us. When a paper of this kind is published in our midst and goes forth to the world unchallenged, it is a difficult thing for men and women outside of this Territory to realize that everything in its pages concerning us is false. If there were any greater evidence needed of our patience and forbearance and of our law-abiding tendencies than we have already given, they are to be found in the fact that the editor of this paper is not hung. (Hear, hear.) In any other community he would have been strung up to a telegraph pole; but here, in Utah Territory, in Salt Lake City, under the nose and in the eyes of the people and their leaders, this man who proclaims these infamous falsehoods travels our streets unnoticed and unchallenged. Let it be known throughout the world what we have submitted to in this respect, and there is not a man from Texas to Maine, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, who would not say we are the most patient and forbearing people on the Continent, or we would not submit to it. In any other Territory that office would be “gutted” within five days.
I allude to this matter because this paper is sustained in our midst, and those whom we sustain, sustain it; our money pays for its subscriptions. Our money pays its editor, buys its ink, paper and type, and pays its compositors and pressmen.
I will refer to another instance of the growth of this antagonistic power in our midst. A short time ago a circular, got up secretly by certain reverend gentlemen dwelling in this City, and probably printed and mailed by night, was sent broadcast throughout the East, in which every vile epithet that so called religious men could consistently use, was applied to us as a people. In this circular, those so-called Christian divines appealed as they said, from a strange land and from the midst of a strange people, to their brethren in the East, invoking them, if they wished to save this land from barbarism and to civilization, to raise $15,000 to buy a lot, on which a rectory might be established and a school built. And the purpose for which that school was designed was to inoculate the children of the Latter-day Saints with their damnable and pernicious doctrines. Who sustains this institution and who sustains and has sustained this paper? You can answer these questions. Will we patiently submit to these things? Shall we bow ourselves as willing slaves to the yoke they would fasten upon us? (Cries of “No, No.“) Well, then, if you will not bow to it, stop your trading with men of this class and sustain your friends; sustain those who want to build up the kingdom of God, who are one with us. If this fight must come and we have to cut off all from the church who will not reform in this respect, I would rather have it done now than wait until, environed by enemies, we are thrust out of our possessions at the point of the bayonet and compelled to flee to the mountains for safety. (Congregation said “Amen.“)
As an individual, I have no fellowship with those who sustain the enemies of the kingdom of God. I never did have. From my childhood my heart has been in this kingdom; every pulsation of it has been for Zion.
For years we have submitted to this treatment at the hands of outsiders in our midst. The present paper has been, if anything, better than its predecessor, for that had no editor's name to it. Fostered on the hill here, its contributors were men who wore the uniform of our respected “Uncle.” Its printers were men who were paid as soldiers. There was no name published at the head of its columns, and it was more base even than the present publication, because no one was responsible for its contents. I have not made any quotations from that. It, too, was sustained and contributed to by merchants in this City who seek the support of this people. I am informed, however, that the one at present published here is now issued without an editor's name to it.
It may be said, and is said by a great many, that this outside element has brought us trade. We have heard it stated time and time again that until the advent of Colonel Johnson and his army we were destitute of a circulating medium, but that since that period we have increased in wealth, money is more plentiful, and we have grown and spread abroad. And they take the glory to themselves and say it is their presence here that has produced this change. If this be so, the withdrawal of our support will make no difference to them. They cannot complain if we withdraw our support from them, because, if their statements be true, we are likely to be the greatest sufferers from this withdrawal. But let them test the truth of this themselves practically as we intend to do.
It is very plain to be seen, from the extracts which I have read to you, what the intention is, we have seen it carried out before at other places where we have dwelt. As soon as we began to increase in wealth, to build comfortable houses, and to open farms, the cupidity of our enemies was excited against us. When we came here we were poor and poverty stricken. We possessed nothing to excite anybody's cupidity. It was hoped that we would perish in the wilderness; but when it was found that we had money, there was a class, who, like vultures scenting the carrion from afar, came here, and to hear them talk one would have thought that the “Mormons” had thousands of friends. Why, they always sympathized with and pitied us! They always felt kindly towards us and thought, we were a very much abused people! Unfortunately, we never heard that they were thus sympathetic or had any feelings of kindness towards us—we had never seen their publications appealing in our behalf, or heard their voices imploring the authorities or the parent government to shield us from the attacks of our enemies. We had never heard anything of this kind, and should never have known anything about it had they not come and communicated this pleasing intelligence. But unfortunately the knowledge came too late for us to avail ourselves of it.
Allusion was made here, yesterday, to the fact that not one of those who have fattened at our expense ever lifted up his tongue or voice, or used his pen in defense of us in times of difficulty or danger; and should there be danger today, and we be menaced from without in the most unjustifiable manner, you would find that these fair-weather friends would soon take their flight and leave us to our fate, just as their predecessors did when the army came here from the east, as I met a whole company of them going to California by the southern route. It may be said “these are exceptions.” I do not doubt but there are men among our merchants who are very fine men. I would as soon deal with them in the eastern States as with anybody else; but it is because they are in Salt Lake City that I am opposed to them. “Ah, that is exclusive,” it may be said. I confess it is exclusive. I do not want a power to be brought into our midst as the wooden horse was into Troy. I do not want a power in our midst inimical to us, and that, as President Young has said, poisons everything around it. If such a power flourishes here, I wish it to flourish without our aid, and subsist without our contributing to its subsistence. If it can sustain itself after we have withdrawn our support, well and good. If there is government patronage and travel enough to sustain a class of this kind in our midst, all right, I have no objections. But the point at issue is for us to withdraw our support from this power, leave it to itself and sustain ourselves, and trade with those who are one with us in building up the kingdom of God. If outsiders want a paper, Sunday Schools and preachers, all right, if they sustain them themselves. Then they are in the hands of God. But while we sustain them or contribute of our strength to do so, we have no claim on the providence and deliverance of God our Heavenly Father. We cannot ask Him to deliver us from a power that we ourselves have fostered, and which we are sustaining. As I have said, if they were in the East we would have no objections to do it. Some cannot see any difference between sustaining them here or elsewhere. Why, when they are there they have no interest in exciting a crusade against us. If they have no contracts to get, it is no object for them to have thousands of soldiers here. But while they are here it is an object for them to try and create a feeling against us in the East. It is an object with them while here to try and have men of their choice elected for city and Territorial officers, and to get the whole machinery of the Territorial government into their own hands. Why? Because they are here, and consequently their interests are here; but if they were in New York, Chicago, London or San Francisco they would have no interest in any of these things. They would look at our money and be as glad to take it as anybody else's money.
I expect some of our friends will say this is a confession of weakness on our part, and that we are alarmed for the perpetuity of the power of the Priesthood. Let it be granted; I am willing they should put this construction upon it. I care not what construction they put on our words or our addresses during this Conference. The fact is we want to warn the people, and to stir them up to the necessity of taking the course we are urging upon them. That is our duty, and it makes no difference what others may think about it. Time will prove whether the Priesthood will be perpetuated or not, or whether the majority of this people will give heed to those who are not of us or not; and whether they will apostatize because they can get goods cheaper from an outsider than they can somewhere else; even if such is the case, which, however, is not true. Time is the great rectifier of all these things. We may labor for a time under misconstruction; but we can afford to wait. We shall outlive all erroneous ideas.
There are a great many points connected with this question which might be dwelt upon. It is an important matter, and one that should claim our earnest attention and calm consideration. The question is, Will we sustain the Kingdom of God or will we not? Will we sustain the priesthood of God or will we not? This power of which I have been speaking, or more properly, this antagonistic class in our midst, flatter themselves with the idea that when it comes to the test this people will desert their leaders and cleave to something else. This is an illusory hope. The Latter-day Saints know too well the source of their blessings. We have obtained a knowledge from God respecting this work; we know that it is of more value to us than all the earth besides. As I have said, we have forsaken former homes for it. The great majority of the first settlers came without shoes to their feet, and passed the first two or three winters in moccasins, and ate but a very scanty allowance of food. What was this for? Because we had obtained a knowledge of the blessings of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is no less dear to us now that twenty-one or twenty-two years have elapsed. God has proven to us that He is still willing to bless and sustain us and to give us the victory over all our enemies. He has endowed His servant with superhuman wisdom to guide this people. We have seen this and we rejoice in it. Amen.
Anthem, by the Tabernacle Choir—"O, Praise the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Lorenzo Snow.
2 p.m.
The 20th Ward choir sang the anthem "O, come, let us sing unto the Lord," composed and arranged by Brother J. J. Daynes.
Elder John Taylor offered up prayer.
Br. Fishburne's choir sang "How will the Saints rejoice to tell."
The 20th Ward choir sang the anthem "O, come, let us sing unto the Lord," composed and arranged by Brother J. J. Daynes.
Elder John Taylor offered up prayer.
Br. Fishburne's choir sang "How will the Saints rejoice to tell."
President George A. Smith
expressed peculiar sensations and feelings that were elicited by thinking that at every general Conference for years past our beloved brother and President, Heber C. Kimball, was with us. But now he is gone; and while we feel the loss, we cannot but rejoice that he has received the reward of his life of humility, integrity, righteousness and unswerving faithfulness.
Brother Smith reviewed at length the early history of the Church, and the persecutions which commenced as soon as the Prophet Joseph received the plates. About forty-nine times was the Prophet brought before the courts on various charges trumped up against him, and in every instance he was acquitted. He was again arrested and without examination was lodged in prison at Carthage; and while there, though under the pledged faith of the State of Illinois, given by its governor for his security, he was basely murdered, his brother Hyrum was murdered, and Elder John Taylor who was with them received four balls.
A summary of the discourse during the time occupied by the afternoon meeting would only do it injustice, the history of the Church being brought down to the expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo; and some interesting documents were read illustrating the historical remarks made.
Historical Address
By President George A. Smith, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, October 8th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
The circumstances by which we are surrounded are such as to cause feeling of no ordinary character. In all the Conferences held hitherto, in this city and in Nauvoo, we have enjoyed the society of our late lamented President, Heber C. Kimball; and his being called away from a useful field in which he had long labored, should remind us that each of us, at any moment, may be called to close our career here for time, and to await our reward in the resurrection. We can but rejoice that our brother, in his long life and labors in the Church, was a pattern of humility, faith and diligence, and was instrumental in the hands of God in bringing many thousands to a knowledge of the truth.
The blow which has fallen upon us in being deprived of his company, counsel and instruction, should remind us of the necessity of diligence in the discharge of all our duties, that, like him, we may be prepared to inherit celestial glory, and to associate with Joseph and Hyrum Smith and David Patten, and the martyrs who have gone before.
The incidents that have been brought to our notice by our brethren who have spoken during the Conference, give rise to a series of reflections in relation to our early history as a people, which, I presume, it would be well for us all to review. There are some in this Territory who have been in the Church thirty-six, thirty-seven or thirty-eight years, but a great many of the people have been in only a few years. A very large portion of our population have been reared here, and consequently a brief sketch of the early incidents of our history may not be unprofitable to any.
When Joseph Smith took the plates of Mormon from the hill Cumorah, he was immediately surrounded by enemies, and though he was a young man of unexceptional character, he was compelled to go from place to place, while translating the work, to avoid persecution. The press and the pulpit denounced him as an impostor and his followers as dupes. As soon as he preached the doctrine of baptism for the remission of sins, and organized a Church with six members, he was arrested and brought before a magistrate, honorably discharged by him, and immediately arrested again and hurried into an adjoining county, where he was insulted, spit upon, and kept without food during the day, and then given crusts of bread and water. The next day he was taken before magistrates who, after a rigid examination, found no fault in him. A mob resolved to “tar and feather” him, but through the instrumentality of the constable, who previously treated him roughly, but who now became his friend, he made his escape in safety. All these proceedings were instigated by clergymen and professors of religion in high standing. A similar spirit of persecution was manifested in a greater or less degree in every place where the Gospel was proclaimed, not only against Joseph Smith, but also against other Elders who preached the word.
This system of persecution continued, especially in the shape of vexatious law suits, numbering some fifty in all, up to the day of his death, and in all of which a most vicious and vindictive spirit was manifested outside of judicial questions. In every case he was honorably acquitted, and upon the charge of treason upon which he was detained in Carthage jail, when murdered, he had not even been lawfully examined before a magistrate. In all these trials except one he had been before persons religiously opposed to him—his enemies were his judges—and all this while every act of his life was prompted by a firm desire to do good to his fellow men—to preach the Gospel of peace, to magnify the high and holy calling he had received from the Lord, and thereby lead back to the ancient faith of Jesus Christ his fellow beings who had fallen into darkness.
Vexatious law suits not accomplishing the work to the satisfaction of the persecutors of the Saints, mob violence was resorted to, as being more effective. On the 25th day of March, 1832, in Hyrum, Portage Co., Ohio, Joseph Smith was dragged from his bed and carried to the woods, daubed with tar and feathers, and otherwise ill-treated. The following is his account of the outrage:
“On the 25th of March, the twins before mentioned, which had been sick for some time with the measles, caused us to be broke of our rest in taking care of them, especially my wife. In the evening I told her she had better retire to rest with one of the children, and I would watch with the sickest child. In the night she told me I had better lie down on the trundle bed, and I did so, and was soon after awoke by her screaming ‘murder!’ when I found myself going out of the door, in the hands of about a dozen men, some of whose hands were in my hair, and some had hold of my shirt, drawers, and limbs. The foot of the trundle bed was towards the door, leaving only room enough for the door to swing. My wife heard a gentle tapping on the windows, which she then took no particular notice of (but which was unquestionably designed for ascertaining whether we were all asleep), and soon after the mob burst open the door and surrounded the bed in an instant, and, as I said, the first I knew, I was going out of the door in the hands of an infuriated mob. I made a desperate struggle, as I was forced out, to extricate myself, but only cleared one leg, with which I made a pass at one man, and he fell on the door steps. I was immediately confined again; and they swore by God they would kill me if I did not be still, which quieted me. As they passed around the house with me, the fellow that I kicked came to me and thrust his hand into my face, all covered with blood (for I hit him on the nose), and with an exulting horse laugh, muttered, ‘Ge, gee, God damn ye, I'll fix ye.’
“They then seized me by the throat, and held on till I lost my breath. After I came to, as they passed along with me, about thirty rods from the house, I saw Elder Rigdon stretched out on the ground, whither they had dragged him by the heels. I supposed he was dead. I began to plead with them, saying, 'You will have mercy and spare my life, I hope,' to which they replied, ‘God damn ye, call on your God for help, we'll show ye no mercy;’ and the people began to show themselves in every direction; one coming from the orchard had a plank, and I expected they would kill me, and carry me off on the plank. They then turned to the right and went on about thirty rods further, about sixty rods from the house and thirty from where I saw Elder Rigdon, into the meadow, where they stopped, and one said, ‘Simonds, Simonds’ (meaning, I suppose, Simonds Rider), ‘pull up his drawers, pull up his drawers, he will take cold.’ Another replied, ‘Ain't ye going to kill 'im, ain't ye going to kill 'im?’ when a group of mobbers collected a little way off and said, ‘Simonds, Simonds, come here;’ and Simonds charged those who had hold of me to keep me from touching the ground (as they had all the time done), lest I should get a spring upon them. They went and held a council, and, as I could occasionally overhear a word, I supposed it was to know whether it was best to kill me. They returned after a while when I learned they had concluded not to kill me, but pound and scratch me well, tear off my shirt and drawers, and leave me naked. One cried, ‘Simonds, Simonds, where's the tar bucket?’ ‘I don't know,’ answered one, 'where 'tis, Eli's left it.' They ran back and fetched the bucket of tar, when one exclaimed, 'God damn it, let us tar up his mouth;' and they tried to force the tar-paddle into my mouth; I twisted my head around, so that they could not, and they cried out, ‘God damn ye, hold up your head and let us give ye some tar.’ They then tried to force a vial into my mouth, and broke it in my teeth. All my clothes were torn off me except my shirt collar, and one man fell on me and scratched my body with his nails like a mad cat, and then muttered out, 'God damn ye, that's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks.'
“They then left me, and I attempted to rise, but fell again. I pulled the tar away from my lips, so that I could breathe more freely, and raised myself up, when I saw two lights. I made my way towards one of them, and found it was Father Johnson's. When I had come to the door, I was naked, and the tar made me look as though I had been covered with blood; and when my wife saw me she thought I was mashed all to pieces, and fainted. During the affray abroad, the sisters of the neighborhood had collected at my room. I called for a blanket, they threw me one, and shut the door. I wrapped it around me and went in.” History of Joseph Smith, Mill. Star, vol. 14, page 148.
I will add that the exposure of the child above referred to, to the night air, caused its death. This murdered child was doubtless the first martyr of the last dispensation.
In a revelation given Sept., 1831, the Lord said, “It is my will that the Saints retain a strong hold in the land of Kirtland for the space of five years.”
The Saints owned several farms in Kirtland. Mr. Lyman, a Presbyterian, also owned a grist mill there, and many of us got our grinding done at his mill, although our brethren owned mills two or three miles distant. We had commenced building the Kirtland Temple. A portion of the city site had been surveyed, and many of the Saints who had recently come in were building houses on the lots. Mr. Lyman associated himself with a combination to starve us out. The authorities proceeded to warn all the Latter-day Saints out of the township, and formed a compact not to employ us or sell us grain, which was scarce at the time. Mr. Lyman had 3,000 bushels of wheat, but refused to let us have it at any reasonable price, and it was believed we were so destitute of money that we would have to scatter abroad. The warning out of town was designed to prevent our becoming a township charge, the law of Ohio being that if a person, who had been warned out of town, applied for assistance, he was to be carried to the next town and so on till he was taken out of the State or to the town from which he formerly came.
We were obliged to send fifty miles for grain, which cost us one dollar and six cents per bushel delivered in Kirtland. Mr. Lyman's grain remained unsold and his effort to starve us taught us better than to longer patronize his mill, although it cost us the trouble of going two or three miles to mills belonging to our brethren. We built a magnificent temple and a large city. We paid our quota of taxes and we were as noted and remarkable for our industry, temperance, thrift and morality there, as our people are at the present day. We also patronized a Mr. Lyon, who was a gentlemanly outside merchant, but the moment he got an opportunity he united with our enemies to oppress us.
We sent our children to school to Mr. Bates, a Presbyterian minister, who soon after went into court and bore false witness against the Elders, and further testified on oath that every “Mormon” was intellectually insane. This lesson did admonish us not to longer entrust the education of our youth to canting hypocrites.
For several years we had used the paper of Geauga Bank at Painesville, as money. A loan of a few hundred dollars was asked for by Joseph Smith, with ample security, but was refused, and Elder Reynolds Cahoon was told they would not accommodate the “Mormon Prophet,” although they acknowledged the endorsers were above question, simply because it would encourage “Mormonism.” So much of their specie was drawn by Joseph Smith during the three succeeding days, as greatly improved their tempers, and they said to Elder Cahoon, “Tell Mr. Smith he must stop this, and any favor he wants we are ready to accord him.”
Subsequently application was made to the Legislature of the State for a bank charter, the notes to be redeemed with specie and their redemption secured by real estate. The charter was denied us on the grounds that we were “Mormons,” and soon a combination of apostates and outsiders caused us to leave Kirtland, the most of our property unsold; and our beautiful Temple yet remains a lasting monument of our perseverance and industry. The loss sustained through this persecution was probably not less than one million dollars.
MISSOURI.
On the 20th day of July, 1831, at Independence, Jackson County, Joseph Smith set apart and dedicated a lot as the site of the Temple of the center stake of Zion, ground having been purchased for this purpose, and it still is known as the “Temple lot.” The Saints entered lands in different parts of the county, built houses, opened farms, constructed mills, established a printing office (owned by W. W. Phelps and Co., and the first in Western Missouri), and opened a mercantile establishment, the largest, in the county, owned by Messrs. Gilbert and Whitney.
In July, 1833, a mob was organized by signing a circular, which set forth that the civil law did not afford them a sufficient guarantee against the “Mormons,” whom they accused of “blasphemously pretending to heal the sick by the administration of holy oil,” and consequently they must be either “fanatics” or “knaves.” Under the influence of Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian ministers, they tore down the printing office of the Evening and Morning Star, which cost some $6,000. They stripped and tarred and feathered Bishop Partridge and Elder Charles Allen, and seized several other Elders and cast them into prison, compelled Gilbert and Whitney to close their store, and soon after broke it open and scattered their goods to the four winds. They tore down twenty houses over the heads of the inmates, and whipped and terribly lacerated with hickory withes many of the Elders, killed Andrew Barber, and severely wounded many others; robbed the houses of their property, and finally expelled fifteen hundred people from the county. They also destroyed some two hundred and sixteen dwellings, and much of the land, being valuable timber land, became public plunder. The Saints were robbed of most of their horses, cattle, implements of husbandry, etc. The total loss in these transactions is estimated at half a million dollars.
“Horrible to relate, several women thus driven from their homes gave birth to children in the woods and on the prairies, destitute of beds or clothing, having escaped in fright. It is stated on the authority of Solomon Hancock, an eyewitness, that he, with the assistance of two or three others, protected one hundred and twenty women and children for the space of ten days, who were obliged to keep themselves hid from their pursuers, while they were hourly expecting to be massacred, and who finally escaped into Clay county, by finding a circuitous route to the ferry.”
They could be traced by the blood from their feet, on the burnt prairie. This occurred in the month of November, and is a specimen of the kindness that law-abiding Latter-day Saints received at the hands of those who had power over them. The Saints were so law-abiding that not a single process had been issued against any member of the Church in Jackson County up to the organization of the mob, although all the offices, civil and military, were in the hands of their enemies.
Prominent in these cruelties as actors and apologists were the Revds. Isaac McCoy and D. Pixley, the former a Baptist and the latter a Presbyterian missionary to the Indians.
CLAY COUNTY.
The arrival of the Saints in Clay county was a blessing to the inhabitants, who had just opened small prairie farms and planted them with Indian corn, much of which was unharvested. They had cattle on the bottoms and hogs in the woods. The majority of the people received the Saints with gladness and gave them employment, and paid them in corn, pork and beef. The wages were low, but sufficient to supply the more pressing wants of the people. From time to time Joseph Smith forwarded money from Kirtland to Bishop Partridge to supply the most needy. The mob in Jackson County sent committees to stir up the feelings of the people of Clay against the Saints. For some time their oft-repeated efforts to do so were unsuccessful. Parties of the mob would come over from Jackson and seize our brethren and inflict violence upon them. The industry of our people soon enabled them to make some purchases of land, and then their numbers were increased by arrivals from the east. The mob of Jackson County continued their endeavors to stir up dissatisfaction among the people of Clay county against the Saints. At length the citizens of Clay county held a public meeting and requested the “Mormons” to seek another home, when the Saints located in the new county of Caldwell, which contained only seven families, who were bee hunters. As the county was mostly prairie, their business was not very profitable, and they gladly embraced the opportunity of selling their claims.
Caldwell county, being nearly destitute of timber, was regarded by the people of upper Missouri as worthless. Every Saint that could raise fifty dollars entered forty acres of land, and there were few but what could do that much, while many entered large tracts. The Saints migrated from the east and settled Caldwell in great numbers.
In three years they had built mills, shops, school, meeting and dwelling houses, and opened and fenced hundreds of farms. Our industry and temperance rendered our settlements the most prosperous of any in Missouri, while they embraced all of Caldwell, most of Davis, and large portions of Clinton, Ray, Carrol and Livingston counties, when the storm of mobocracy was again aroused and aided by the Governor of the State, Lilburn W. Boggs, who issued the order expelling all the Latter-day Saints from the State under penalty of extermination. This caused the loss of hundreds of lives through violence and suffering. Houses were plundered, women were violated, men were whipped, and a great variety of cruelties inflicted, and a loss of property amounting to millions was sustained, while anyone that would renounce his religion was permitted to remain.
Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Alexander McRae, Lyman Wight and others were for several months thrust into prison, and in one instance, while there, were fed on human flesh and tantalized with the inquiry, “How they liked Mormon beef”—it being the flesh of some of their murdered brethren.
The Lord softened the hearts of the people of Quincy, Illinois, and while the hundreds of Saints were fleeing over the snow-clad prairies of Missouri, not knowing where to go, the people of Quincy were holding public meetings, raising subscriptions and adopting measures to give the fugitives employment and succor, for which our hearts overflow with gratitude.
As soon as the Saints were all expelled from Missouri, Joseph Smith went to Washington and laid the grievances of the people before the President and Congress of the United States. Mr. Van Buren said, “Your cause is just, but we can do nothing for you.” Mr. Clay, when appealed to, said we “had better go to Oregon.” Mr. Calhoun informed Mr. Smith it would involve the question of State rights, and was a dangerous question, and it would not do to agitate it. Mr. Cass, as chairman of the Senate committee, to which the petition was referred, reported that Congress had no business with it.
Elder John P. Green went east, and published an appeal in behalf of the Saints, holding public meetings in Cincinnati and New York, and received some small contributions for the assistance of the most needy.
As soon as Joseph Smith escaped from Missouri to Illinois, he purchased lands at a place known as Commerce, in Hancock county, and commenced the survey of a city which he called Nauvoo, the word being derived from the Hebrew, meaning beauty and rest. Although the situation was handsome, it was famed for being unhealthy. There were but few inhabitants in the vicinity, but many graves in the burying ground, and much of the subsequent sickness was the result of exposure and the want of suitable means of nursing the sick. The swamps in the vicinity of Nauvoo were soon drained, and the lands around put under cultivation. Numerous dwellings and several mills were erected, and thrift and prosperity, the invariable results of industry and sobriety, were manifest.
Demands were made from Missouri for the persons of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Joseph was arrested and tried at Monmouth, before Judge Stephen A. Douglas, and honorably discharged. His principal attorney in this case was the Hon. O. H. Browning, now U.S. Secretary of the Interior. This suit cost him upwards of three thousand dollars. He was soon again arrested on a demand from Missouri, and discharged by Judge Pope, of the U.S. District Court. This time it cost him twelve thousand dollars. Not long after this second acquittal he was again arrested in Lee County, Illinois, and an attempt made, in the face of the State authorities, to kidnap him into Missouri. Nauvoo sent out three hundred men and rescued him. He was afterwards discharged by the municipal court of that place, and Thomas Ford, Governor of Illinois, sanctioned his discharge.
In 1844 Joseph and Hyrum were arrested on a charge of treason, under pledge of the executive that they should have a fair trial, but they were murdered by one hundred and fifty men with blackened faces; merchants and men that we had sustained in business, and apostates, took a leading part in bringing this about.
EXPENSES ATTENDANT UPON THE ARREST OF JOSEPH SMITH.
Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was subjected, during his short ministerial career of fifteen years, to about fifty vexatious law suits. The principal expense was incurred in liquidating lawyers bills, and the brethren's time and expenditure in attending courts to defend the Prophet from mob violence.
Magistrates court expenses were generally one hundred dollars. The Prophet paid Generals Doniphan and Atchison for legal services at Richmond, Mo., in 1838-9, sixteen thousand dollars; but this amount was fruitlessly expended, as the benefits of the law were not accorded to him, because of the predominance and overruling power of a mob.
At the Prophet's trial at Monmouth, Ill., in 1841, before Judge Douglas, the lawyers' fees and expenses amounted to three thousand dollars.
His next trial was before Judge Pope, U.S. District Court, in 1842-3, the expenses of which may be reasonably estimated at twelve thousand dollars.
Cyrus Walker charged ten thousand dollars for defending Joseph in his political arrest, or the attempt at kidnapping him at Dixon, Ill., in 1843. There were four other lawyers employed for the defense besides Walker. The expenses of the defense in this trial were enormous, involving the amounts incurred by the horse companies who went in pursuit to aid Joseph, and the trip of the steamer Maid of Iowa, from Nauvoo to Ottawa, and may be fairly estimated at one hundred thousand dollars.
When the mantle of Joseph Smith fell upon Brigham Young, the enemies of God and His kingdom sought to inaugurate a similar career for President Young; but he took his revolver from his pocket at the public stand in Nauvoo, and declared that upon the first attempt of an officer to read a writ to him in a State that had violated its plighted faith in the murder of the Prophet and Patriarch while under arrest, he should serve the contents of this writ (holding his loaded revolver in his hand) first; to this the vast congregation assembled said, Amen. He was never arrested.
APPEAL TO THE GOVERNORS OF THE STATES.
In 1845, the storm of mobocracy raging around us, we sent an appeal to the President of the United States, and to the Governor of every State in the Union, except Missouri, of which the following, addressed to Governor Drew, of Arkansas, is a copy to the Governor, he being the only one from whom an answer was received— “To His Excellency Thomas S. Drew, Governor of Arkansas. “Nauvoo, Ill., May 1, 1845.
“Honorable Sir—Suffer us, sir, in behalf of a disfranchised and long afflicted people, to prefer a few suggestions for your serious consideration, in hope of a friendly and unequivocal response, at as early a period as may suit your convenience, and the extreme urgency of the case seems to demand.
“It is not our present design to detail the multiplied and aggravated wrongs that we have received in the midst of a nation that gave us birth. Some of us have long been loyal citizens of the State over which you have the honor to preside, while others' claim citizenship in each of the States of this great confederacy. We say we are a disfranchised people. We are privately told by the highest authorities of this State, that it is neither prudent nor safe for us to vote at the polls; still we have continued to maintain our right to vote, until the blood of our best men has been shed, both in Missouri and the State of Illinois, with impunity.
“You are doubtless somewhat familiar with the history of our extermination from the State of Missouri, wherein scores of our brethren were massacred, hundreds died through want and sickness, occasioned by their unparalleled sufferings, some millions of our property were confiscated or destroyed, and some fifteen thousand souls fled for their lives to the then hospitable and peaceful shores of Illinois; and that the State of Illinois granted to us a liberal charter, for the term of perpetual succession, and under its provisions private rights have become invested, and the largest city in the State has grown up, numbering about twenty thousand inhabitants.
“But, sir, the startling attitude recently assumed by the State of Illinois forbids us to think that her designs are any less vindictive than those of Missouri. She has already used the military of the State, with the Executive at their head, to coerce and surrender up our best men to unparalleled murder, and that, too, under the most sacred pledges of protection and safety. As a salve for such unearthly perfidy and guilt, she told us, through her highest Executive officer, that the laws should be magnified, and the murderers brought to justice; but the blood of her innocent victims had not been wholly wiped from the floor of the awful arena, where the citizens of a sovereign State pounced upon two defenseless servants of God, our Prophet and our Patriarch, before the Senate of that State rescued one of the indicted actors in that mournful tragedy from the sheriff of Hancock county, and gave him an honorable seat in her halls of legislation. And all others who were indicted by the grand jury of Hancock county for the murders of Generals Joseph and Hyrum Smith, are suffered to roam at large, watching for further prey.
“To crown the climax of those bloody deeds, the State has repealed all those chartered rights by which we might have defended ourselves against aggressors. If we defend ourselves hereafter against violence, whether it comes under the shadow of law or otherwise (for we have reason to expect it both ways), we shall then be charged with treason, and suffer the penalty; and if we continue passive and nonresistant, we must certainly expect to perish, for our enemies have sworn it.
“And here, sir, permit us to state that General Joseph Smith, during this short life, was arraigned at the bar of his country about fifty times, charged with criminal offenses, but was acquitted every time by his country, or rather his religious opponents almost invariably being his judges. And we further testify, that as a people we are law-abiding, peaceable, and without crimes; and we challenge the world to prove the contrary. And while other less cities in Illinois have had special courts instituted to try their criminals, we have been stript of every source of arraigning marauders and murderers who are prowling around to destroy us, except the common magistracy.
“With these facts before you, sir, will you write to us without delay, as a father and friend, and advise us what to do? We are, many of us, citizens of your State, and all members of the same great confederacy. Our fathers, nay, some of us, have fought and bled for our country, and we love her dearly.
“In the name of Israel's God, and by virtue of multiplied ties of country and kindred, we ask your friendly interposition in our favor. Will it be too much to ask you to convene a special session of your State Legislature, and furnish us an asylum where we can enjoy our rights of conscience and religion unmolested? Or will you in a special message to that body, when convened, recommend a remonstrance against such unhallowed acts of oppression and expatriation, as this people have continued to receive from the States of Missouri and Illinois? Or will you favor us by your personal influence, and by your official rank? Or will you express your views concerning what is called the Great Western Measure, of colonizing the Latter-day Saints in Oregon, the northwestern Territory, or some location, remote from the States, where the hand of oppression shall not crush every noble principle, and extinguish every patriotic feeling?
“And now, honored sir, having reached out our imploring hands to you with deep solemnity, we would importune with you as a father, a friend, a patriot and statesman; by the constitution of American liberty; by the blood of our fathers, who have fought for the independence of this Republic; by the blood of the martyrs which has been shed in our midst; by the wailings of the widows and orphans; by our murdered fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, wives and children; by the dread of immediate destruction from secret combinations now forming for our overthrow; and by every endearing tie that binds men to men, and renders life bearable, and that, too, for aught we know, for the last time, that you will lend your immediate aid to quell the violence of mobocracy, and exert your influence to establish us as a people in our civil and religious rights, where we now are, or in some part of the United States, or at some place remote therefrom, where we may colonize in peace and safety as soon as circumstances will permit.
“We sincerely hope that your future prompt measures towards us will be dictated by the best feelings that dwell in the bosom of humanity; and the blessings of a grateful people, and of many ready to perish, shall come upon you.
“We are, sir, with great respect, “Your obedient servants, “Brigham Young, Chairman.
“W. Richards, | “Orson Spencer, | “Orson Pratt, | Committee. “W. W. Phelps, | “A. W. Babbit, | “Jno. M. Bernhisel,|
“In behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at Nauvoo, Ill.
“P.S.—As many of our communications postmarked at Nauvoo, have failed of their destination, and the mails around us have been intercepted by our enemies, we shall send this to some distant office by the hand of a special messenger.”
The following reply was received from Governor Drew--
“Executive Office, Little Rock, Ark., May 27, 1845. “Hon. Brigham Young, President of the Committee of Twelve of Christ's Church of Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Ill.
“Sir—Your letter of the 1st inst. has been received, and claims my earnest attention. I must acknowledge my inability to serve your people by calling an extra Session of the General Assembly of this State for the object contemplated. And although I do not know that prejudice against your tenets in Arkansas would weigh aught against the action of that body, in refusing to furnish within our borders an asylum from the oppression of which you so sorely complain; yet I am sure the representatives of the people would long hesitate to extend to any class of citizens exclusive privileges, however innocent their motives, aims, objects or actions might appear, when the prospects of collision, from causes of which in your case I know nothing, appear so evident from the two very recent manifestations presented in the States of Missouri and Illinois. I have no doubt Illinois, prompted by the kindest of sympathies for your people in the late struggle and overthrow they encountered in Missouri, extended a liberal helping hand, but to repent her supposed folly. Could Arkansas, after witnessing the same scene reenacted in Illinois, calculate on anything short of a like catastrophe?
“I am not sufficiently informed of the course taken against you by the authorities of the State of Illinois, in the difficulties detailed in your communication, to justify a recommendation from me to the Legislature to remonstrate against the acts of Illinois—the detailed statement of facts afforded me by your communication being of an ex parte character. But were I regularly informed of all the facts from both parties, and felt able to form a correct opinion as to the justice of the course pursued by the State of Illinois, yet I am of opinion that this State would not have, nor would I have as its chief Executive officer, the right to interfere in the least with the internal concerns or police of the State of Illinois, or of any other neighboring State, where its operations do not distract or in any way affect the good order of the citizens of the State of Arkansas. There are instances, but they are rare, where the interposition of one State to arrest the progress of violence in another, would be at all admissible. Such, for instance, as where the public authorities of the State affected are palpably incompetent to quell an insurrection within her limits, and the violence is likely to extend its ravages and bad influence to such neighboring State, or where a proper call has been made for succor.
“Nor can I afford to exercise my official rank as chief Executive of this State, in behalf of a faction in a neighboring State; and I humbly conceive that my personal influence would add nothing to your cause, unless it should prove to be a just one, in which event public opinion will afford you support of a character more lasting in the eye of an enlightened public, than wiser and greater men than your humble servant—than official rank, or force backed by power. It is true that while prejudice may have the ascendancy over the minds of the neighboring community, your people may be exposed more or less to loss of life and destruction of property; I therefore heartily agree with you in the proposed plan of emigration to the Oregon Territory—or to California—the north of Texas, or to Nebraska; thereby placing your community beyond the reach of contention, until, at least, you shall have had time and opportunity to test the practicability of your system, and to develop its contemplated superior advantages in ameliorating the condition of the human race, and adding to the blessings of civil and religious liberty. That such a community, constituted as yours, with the mass of prejudice which surrounds and obstructs its progress at this time, cannot prosper in that or any of the neighboring States, appears very evident from the signal failures upon two occasions under auspices at least as favorable as you could reasonably expect from any of the States.
“My personal sympathies are strong for the oppressed, though my official station can know nothing but what is sanctioned by the strictest justice, and that circumscribed to the limited jurisdiction of my own State; and while I deplore, as a man and a philanthropist, your distressed situation, I would refer you to the emphatic and patriarchal proposition of Abraham to Lot; and whilst I allude to the eloquent paraphrase of one of Virginia's most gifted sons, wherein he circumscribed the bounds of our domain within to the great valley of the Mississippi, I would only add that the way is now open to the Pacific without let or hindrance. Should the Latter-day Saints migrate to Oregon, they will carry with them the good will of philanthropists, and the blessing of every friend of humanity. If they are wrong, their wrongs will be abated with many degrees of allowance, and if right, migration will afford an opportunity to make it manifest in due season to the whole civilized world.
“With my hearty desires for your peace and prosperity, I subscribe myself respectfully yours, “Thomas S. Drew.”
This correspondence shows us the necessity of our being united in sustaining the Latter-day Saints, that we may not build up, by our own acts, a power to renew persecution again in our midst.
EXPULSION FROM ILLINOIS.
In September, 1845, the mob commenced burning the houses of the Saints in the southern part of the county of Hancock, and continued until stopped by the sheriff, who summoned a posse comitatus, while few but Latter-day Saints would serve under him. The Governor sent troops and disbanded the posse. The murderers of Joseph and Hyrum had a sham trial and were acquitted. A convention of nine counties notified us that we must leave the State. The Governor informed us through General John J. Harding and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, that we could not be protected in Illinois. We commenced our emigration west on the 6th of February, 1846. During that month some twelve hundred wagons crossed the Mississippi, many of them on the ice. Everybody that was able to leave continued to do so until late in the summer, and the outfits with which they left were insufficient, while the winter and spring weather was inclement, which caused a great deal of suffering.
While the strength of Israel had gone westward, the Illinois mob commenced their hostilities with redoubled fury. They whipped, plundered and murdered men, abused women and children, and drove all the scattering ones into Nauvoo, then laid siege to the place and bombarded it for three days, killing several persons and wounding others, and peremptorily expelled the remainder across the river into Iowa, after robbing them of the remainder of the property they possessed, and leaving them on the shore to perish.
Their encampment was probably one of the most miserable and distressed that ever existed. All who were able, by any possible means, had got away; those left were the poor and the helpless. Great numbers were sick, and they were without tents or conveniences of any kind to make them comfortable. Encamped on the foggy bottoms of the Mississippi River, they were scorched with fevers, without medicine or proper food.
In this helpless condition a merciful Providence smiled on them by sending quails, so tame that many caught them with their hands; yet many perished within sight of hundreds of houses belonging to them and their friends, which were under the dominion of the Rev. Thomas S. Brockman and his mob legions, who viciously trampled the constitution and laws of Illinois, and the laws of humanity, under their feet.
The victims continued to suffer until the camps in the west sent them relief. For a more full description of these scenes, I read from the historical address of Col. (now General) Thomas L. Kane, who was an eye witness.
“A few years ago,” said Colonel Kane, “ascending the Upper Mississippi, in the autumn, when its waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of the Rapids. My road lay through the Half-breed Tract, a fine section of Iowa, which the unsettled state of its land-titles had appropriated as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves, and other outlaws. I had left my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the Lower Fall, to hire a carriage, and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming flies, the only scavengers of the locality.
“From this place to where the deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere sordid, vagabond, and idle settlers, and a country marred, without being improved, by their careless hands. I was descending the last hillside upon my journey, when a landscape in delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half encircled by a bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning sun; its bright new dwellings, set in cool green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome-shaped hill, which was crowned by a noble edifice, whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city appeared to cover several miles, and beyond it, in the background, there rolled off a fair country, chequered by the careful lines of fruitful husbandry. The unmistakable marks of industry, enterprise, and educated wealth everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most striking beauty. It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a skiff, and rowing across the river, landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked, and saw no one. I could hear no one move, though the quiet everywhere was such that I heard the flies buzz, and the water-ripples break against the shallow of the beach. I walked through the solitary street. The town lay as in a dream, under some deadening spell of loneliness, from which I almost feared to wake it, for plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing up in the paved ways; rains had not entirely washed away the prints of dusty footsteps.
“Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty workshops, rope-walks and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his workbench and shavings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh chopped lightwood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold; but his coal heap and lading pool, and crooked water horn were all there, as if he had just gone off for a holiday. No work-people anywhere looked to know my errand.
“If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket-latch loudly after me, to pull the marigolds, heartsease, and lady-slippers, and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain; or, knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunted over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples—no one called out to me from any opened window, or dog sprang forward to bark an alarm.
“I could have supposed the people hidden in the houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearths, and had to tread a tip-toe, as if walking down the aisle of a country church, to avoid rousing irreverent echoes from the naked floors. On the outskirts of the town was the city graveyard; but there was no record of plague there, nor did it in anywise differ much from other Protestant American cemeteries. Some of the mounds were not long sodded; some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent, and their black inscriptions glossy in the mason's hardly dried lettering ink. Beyond the graveyard, out in the fields, I saw, in one spot hard by where the fruited boughs of a young orchard had been roughly torn down, the still smoldering remains of a barbecue fire, that had been constructed of rails from the fencing around it. It was the latest sign of life there. Fields upon fields of heavy-headed yellow grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was there to take in their rich harvest.
“As far as the eye could reach they stretched away—they sleeping, too, in the hazy air of autumn. Only two portions of the city seemed to suggest the import of this mysterious solitude. On the southern suburb, the houses looking out upon the country showed, by their splintered woodwork and walls battered to the foundation, that they had lately been the mark of a destructive cannonade. And in and around the splendid Temple, which had been the chief object of my admiration, armed men were barracked, surrounded by their stacks of musketry and pieces of heavy ordnance. These challenged me to render an account of myself, and why I had had the temerity to cross the water without written permit from a leader of their band.
“Though these men were generally more or less under the influence of ardent spirits, after I had explained myself as a passing stranger, they seemed anxious to gain my good opinion. They told the story of the Dead City; that it had been a notable manufacturing and commercial mart, sheltering over twenty thousand persons; that they had waged war with its inhabitants for several years, and had been finally successful only a few days before my visit, in an action fought in front of the ruined suburb; after which they had driven them forth at the point of the sword. The defense, they said, had been obstinate, but gave way on the third day's bombardment. They boasted greatly of their prowess, especially in this battle, as they called it; but I discovered they were not of one mind as to certain of the exploits that had distinguished it, one of which, as I remember, was, that they had slain a father and his son, a boy of fifteen, not long residents of the fated city, whom they admitted to have borne a character without reproach.
“They also conducted me inside the massive sculptured walls of the curious Temple, in which they said the banished inhabitants were accustomed to celebrate the mystic rites of an unhallowed worship. They particularly pointed out to me certain features of the building which, having been the peculiar objects of a former superstitious regard, they had, as a matter of duty, sedulously defiled and defaced. The reputed sites of certain shrines they had thus particularly noticed; and various sheltered chambers, in one of which was a deep well, constructed, they believed, with a dreadful design. Beside these, they led me to see a large and deep chiseled marble vase or basin, supported upon twelve oxen, also of marble, and of the size of life, of which they told some romantic stories. They said the deluded persons, most of whom were emigrants from a great distance, believed their Deity countenanced their reception here of a baptism of regeneration, as proxies for whomsoever they held in warm affection in the countries from which they had come. That here parents 'went into the water' for their lost children, children for their parents, widows for their spouses, and young persons for their lovers; that thus the Great Vase came to be for them associated with all dear and distant memories, and was therefore the object, of all others in the building, to which they attached the greatest degree of idolatrous affection. On this account, the victors had so diligently desecrated it, as to render the apartment in which it was contained too noisome to abide in.
“They permitted me also to ascend into the steeple, to see where it had been lightning-struck the Sabbath before; and to look out, east and south, on wasted farms like those I had seen near the city, extending till they were lost in the distance. Here, in the face of the pure day, close to the scar of the divine wrath left by the thunderbolt, were fragments of food, cruises of liquor, and broken drinking vessels, with a bass drum and a steamboat signal bell, of which I afterwards learned the use with pain.
“It was after nightfall when I was ready to cross the river on my return. The wind had freshened since the sunset, and the water beating roughly into my little boat, I edged higher up the stream than the point I had left in the morning, and landed where a faint glimmering light invited me to steer.
“Here, among the dock and rushes, sheltered only by the darkness, without roof between them and the sky, I came upon a crowd of several hundred human beings, whom my movements roused from uneasy slumber on the ground.
“Passing these on my way to the light, I found it came from a tallow candle in a paper funnel shade, such as is used by street vendors of apples and peanuts, and which, flaming and guttering away in the bleak air off the water, shone flickeringly on the emaciated features of a man in the last stage of a bilious remittent fever. They had done their best for him. Over his head was something like a tent, made of a sheet or two, and he rested on a partially ripped open old straw mattress, with a hair sofa cushion under his head for a pillow. His gaping jaw and glazing eye told how short a time he would monopolize these luxuries; though a seemingly bewildered and excited person, who might have been his wife, seemed to find hope in occasionally forcing him to swallow, awkwardly, sips of the tepid river water, from a burned and battered bitter-smelling tin coffee pot. Those who knew better had furnished the apothecary he needed; a toothless old bald-head, whose manner had the repulsive dullness of a man familiar with death scenes. He, so long as I remained, mumbled in his patient's ear a monotonous and melancholy prayer, between the pauses of which I heard the hiccup and sobbing of two little girls, who were sitting upon a piece of drift wood outside.
“Dreadful, indeed, was the suffering of these forsaken beings; bowed and cramped with cold and sunburn, alternating as each weary day and night dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poorhouse, nor friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick; they had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike, were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort those whom the sick shiver of fever was searching to the marrow.
“These were Mormons, in Lee county, Iowa, in the fourth week of the month of September, in the year of our Lord 1846. The city—it was Nauvoo, Ill. The Mormons were the owners of that city, and the smiling country around. And those who had stopped their ploughs, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles, and their workshop wheels; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested bread; these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their Temple, whose drunken riot insulted the ears of the dying.
“I think it was as I turned from the wretched night watch of which I have spoken, that I first listened to the sounds of revel of a party of the guard within the city. Above the distant hum of the voices of many, occasionally rose distinct the loud oath-tainted exclamation, and the falsely intonated scrap of vulgar song; but lest this requiem should go unheeded, every now and then, when their boisterous orgies strove to attain a sort of ecstatic climax, a cruel spirit of insulting frolic carried some of them up into the high belfry of the Temple steeple, and there, with the wicked childishness of inebriates, they whooped, and shrieked, and beat the drum that I had seen, and rang in charivaric unison their loud-tongued steamboat bell.
“They were, all told, not more than six hundred and forty persons who were thus lying on the river flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its dependencies had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen carrying in mournful train their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them; and people asked with curiosity, ‘What had been their fate—what their fortunes?’”
The conclusion of the discourse was postponed till to-morrow morning.
"Singing, "Rejoice in the Lord," by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder Brigham Young, Junr.
expressed peculiar sensations and feelings that were elicited by thinking that at every general Conference for years past our beloved brother and President, Heber C. Kimball, was with us. But now he is gone; and while we feel the loss, we cannot but rejoice that he has received the reward of his life of humility, integrity, righteousness and unswerving faithfulness.
Brother Smith reviewed at length the early history of the Church, and the persecutions which commenced as soon as the Prophet Joseph received the plates. About forty-nine times was the Prophet brought before the courts on various charges trumped up against him, and in every instance he was acquitted. He was again arrested and without examination was lodged in prison at Carthage; and while there, though under the pledged faith of the State of Illinois, given by its governor for his security, he was basely murdered, his brother Hyrum was murdered, and Elder John Taylor who was with them received four balls.
A summary of the discourse during the time occupied by the afternoon meeting would only do it injustice, the history of the Church being brought down to the expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo; and some interesting documents were read illustrating the historical remarks made.
Historical Address
By President George A. Smith, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, October 8th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
The circumstances by which we are surrounded are such as to cause feeling of no ordinary character. In all the Conferences held hitherto, in this city and in Nauvoo, we have enjoyed the society of our late lamented President, Heber C. Kimball; and his being called away from a useful field in which he had long labored, should remind us that each of us, at any moment, may be called to close our career here for time, and to await our reward in the resurrection. We can but rejoice that our brother, in his long life and labors in the Church, was a pattern of humility, faith and diligence, and was instrumental in the hands of God in bringing many thousands to a knowledge of the truth.
The blow which has fallen upon us in being deprived of his company, counsel and instruction, should remind us of the necessity of diligence in the discharge of all our duties, that, like him, we may be prepared to inherit celestial glory, and to associate with Joseph and Hyrum Smith and David Patten, and the martyrs who have gone before.
The incidents that have been brought to our notice by our brethren who have spoken during the Conference, give rise to a series of reflections in relation to our early history as a people, which, I presume, it would be well for us all to review. There are some in this Territory who have been in the Church thirty-six, thirty-seven or thirty-eight years, but a great many of the people have been in only a few years. A very large portion of our population have been reared here, and consequently a brief sketch of the early incidents of our history may not be unprofitable to any.
When Joseph Smith took the plates of Mormon from the hill Cumorah, he was immediately surrounded by enemies, and though he was a young man of unexceptional character, he was compelled to go from place to place, while translating the work, to avoid persecution. The press and the pulpit denounced him as an impostor and his followers as dupes. As soon as he preached the doctrine of baptism for the remission of sins, and organized a Church with six members, he was arrested and brought before a magistrate, honorably discharged by him, and immediately arrested again and hurried into an adjoining county, where he was insulted, spit upon, and kept without food during the day, and then given crusts of bread and water. The next day he was taken before magistrates who, after a rigid examination, found no fault in him. A mob resolved to “tar and feather” him, but through the instrumentality of the constable, who previously treated him roughly, but who now became his friend, he made his escape in safety. All these proceedings were instigated by clergymen and professors of religion in high standing. A similar spirit of persecution was manifested in a greater or less degree in every place where the Gospel was proclaimed, not only against Joseph Smith, but also against other Elders who preached the word.
This system of persecution continued, especially in the shape of vexatious law suits, numbering some fifty in all, up to the day of his death, and in all of which a most vicious and vindictive spirit was manifested outside of judicial questions. In every case he was honorably acquitted, and upon the charge of treason upon which he was detained in Carthage jail, when murdered, he had not even been lawfully examined before a magistrate. In all these trials except one he had been before persons religiously opposed to him—his enemies were his judges—and all this while every act of his life was prompted by a firm desire to do good to his fellow men—to preach the Gospel of peace, to magnify the high and holy calling he had received from the Lord, and thereby lead back to the ancient faith of Jesus Christ his fellow beings who had fallen into darkness.
Vexatious law suits not accomplishing the work to the satisfaction of the persecutors of the Saints, mob violence was resorted to, as being more effective. On the 25th day of March, 1832, in Hyrum, Portage Co., Ohio, Joseph Smith was dragged from his bed and carried to the woods, daubed with tar and feathers, and otherwise ill-treated. The following is his account of the outrage:
“On the 25th of March, the twins before mentioned, which had been sick for some time with the measles, caused us to be broke of our rest in taking care of them, especially my wife. In the evening I told her she had better retire to rest with one of the children, and I would watch with the sickest child. In the night she told me I had better lie down on the trundle bed, and I did so, and was soon after awoke by her screaming ‘murder!’ when I found myself going out of the door, in the hands of about a dozen men, some of whose hands were in my hair, and some had hold of my shirt, drawers, and limbs. The foot of the trundle bed was towards the door, leaving only room enough for the door to swing. My wife heard a gentle tapping on the windows, which she then took no particular notice of (but which was unquestionably designed for ascertaining whether we were all asleep), and soon after the mob burst open the door and surrounded the bed in an instant, and, as I said, the first I knew, I was going out of the door in the hands of an infuriated mob. I made a desperate struggle, as I was forced out, to extricate myself, but only cleared one leg, with which I made a pass at one man, and he fell on the door steps. I was immediately confined again; and they swore by God they would kill me if I did not be still, which quieted me. As they passed around the house with me, the fellow that I kicked came to me and thrust his hand into my face, all covered with blood (for I hit him on the nose), and with an exulting horse laugh, muttered, ‘Ge, gee, God damn ye, I'll fix ye.’
“They then seized me by the throat, and held on till I lost my breath. After I came to, as they passed along with me, about thirty rods from the house, I saw Elder Rigdon stretched out on the ground, whither they had dragged him by the heels. I supposed he was dead. I began to plead with them, saying, 'You will have mercy and spare my life, I hope,' to which they replied, ‘God damn ye, call on your God for help, we'll show ye no mercy;’ and the people began to show themselves in every direction; one coming from the orchard had a plank, and I expected they would kill me, and carry me off on the plank. They then turned to the right and went on about thirty rods further, about sixty rods from the house and thirty from where I saw Elder Rigdon, into the meadow, where they stopped, and one said, ‘Simonds, Simonds’ (meaning, I suppose, Simonds Rider), ‘pull up his drawers, pull up his drawers, he will take cold.’ Another replied, ‘Ain't ye going to kill 'im, ain't ye going to kill 'im?’ when a group of mobbers collected a little way off and said, ‘Simonds, Simonds, come here;’ and Simonds charged those who had hold of me to keep me from touching the ground (as they had all the time done), lest I should get a spring upon them. They went and held a council, and, as I could occasionally overhear a word, I supposed it was to know whether it was best to kill me. They returned after a while when I learned they had concluded not to kill me, but pound and scratch me well, tear off my shirt and drawers, and leave me naked. One cried, ‘Simonds, Simonds, where's the tar bucket?’ ‘I don't know,’ answered one, 'where 'tis, Eli's left it.' They ran back and fetched the bucket of tar, when one exclaimed, 'God damn it, let us tar up his mouth;' and they tried to force the tar-paddle into my mouth; I twisted my head around, so that they could not, and they cried out, ‘God damn ye, hold up your head and let us give ye some tar.’ They then tried to force a vial into my mouth, and broke it in my teeth. All my clothes were torn off me except my shirt collar, and one man fell on me and scratched my body with his nails like a mad cat, and then muttered out, 'God damn ye, that's the way the Holy Ghost falls on folks.'
“They then left me, and I attempted to rise, but fell again. I pulled the tar away from my lips, so that I could breathe more freely, and raised myself up, when I saw two lights. I made my way towards one of them, and found it was Father Johnson's. When I had come to the door, I was naked, and the tar made me look as though I had been covered with blood; and when my wife saw me she thought I was mashed all to pieces, and fainted. During the affray abroad, the sisters of the neighborhood had collected at my room. I called for a blanket, they threw me one, and shut the door. I wrapped it around me and went in.” History of Joseph Smith, Mill. Star, vol. 14, page 148.
I will add that the exposure of the child above referred to, to the night air, caused its death. This murdered child was doubtless the first martyr of the last dispensation.
In a revelation given Sept., 1831, the Lord said, “It is my will that the Saints retain a strong hold in the land of Kirtland for the space of five years.”
The Saints owned several farms in Kirtland. Mr. Lyman, a Presbyterian, also owned a grist mill there, and many of us got our grinding done at his mill, although our brethren owned mills two or three miles distant. We had commenced building the Kirtland Temple. A portion of the city site had been surveyed, and many of the Saints who had recently come in were building houses on the lots. Mr. Lyman associated himself with a combination to starve us out. The authorities proceeded to warn all the Latter-day Saints out of the township, and formed a compact not to employ us or sell us grain, which was scarce at the time. Mr. Lyman had 3,000 bushels of wheat, but refused to let us have it at any reasonable price, and it was believed we were so destitute of money that we would have to scatter abroad. The warning out of town was designed to prevent our becoming a township charge, the law of Ohio being that if a person, who had been warned out of town, applied for assistance, he was to be carried to the next town and so on till he was taken out of the State or to the town from which he formerly came.
We were obliged to send fifty miles for grain, which cost us one dollar and six cents per bushel delivered in Kirtland. Mr. Lyman's grain remained unsold and his effort to starve us taught us better than to longer patronize his mill, although it cost us the trouble of going two or three miles to mills belonging to our brethren. We built a magnificent temple and a large city. We paid our quota of taxes and we were as noted and remarkable for our industry, temperance, thrift and morality there, as our people are at the present day. We also patronized a Mr. Lyon, who was a gentlemanly outside merchant, but the moment he got an opportunity he united with our enemies to oppress us.
We sent our children to school to Mr. Bates, a Presbyterian minister, who soon after went into court and bore false witness against the Elders, and further testified on oath that every “Mormon” was intellectually insane. This lesson did admonish us not to longer entrust the education of our youth to canting hypocrites.
For several years we had used the paper of Geauga Bank at Painesville, as money. A loan of a few hundred dollars was asked for by Joseph Smith, with ample security, but was refused, and Elder Reynolds Cahoon was told they would not accommodate the “Mormon Prophet,” although they acknowledged the endorsers were above question, simply because it would encourage “Mormonism.” So much of their specie was drawn by Joseph Smith during the three succeeding days, as greatly improved their tempers, and they said to Elder Cahoon, “Tell Mr. Smith he must stop this, and any favor he wants we are ready to accord him.”
Subsequently application was made to the Legislature of the State for a bank charter, the notes to be redeemed with specie and their redemption secured by real estate. The charter was denied us on the grounds that we were “Mormons,” and soon a combination of apostates and outsiders caused us to leave Kirtland, the most of our property unsold; and our beautiful Temple yet remains a lasting monument of our perseverance and industry. The loss sustained through this persecution was probably not less than one million dollars.
MISSOURI.
On the 20th day of July, 1831, at Independence, Jackson County, Joseph Smith set apart and dedicated a lot as the site of the Temple of the center stake of Zion, ground having been purchased for this purpose, and it still is known as the “Temple lot.” The Saints entered lands in different parts of the county, built houses, opened farms, constructed mills, established a printing office (owned by W. W. Phelps and Co., and the first in Western Missouri), and opened a mercantile establishment, the largest, in the county, owned by Messrs. Gilbert and Whitney.
In July, 1833, a mob was organized by signing a circular, which set forth that the civil law did not afford them a sufficient guarantee against the “Mormons,” whom they accused of “blasphemously pretending to heal the sick by the administration of holy oil,” and consequently they must be either “fanatics” or “knaves.” Under the influence of Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian ministers, they tore down the printing office of the Evening and Morning Star, which cost some $6,000. They stripped and tarred and feathered Bishop Partridge and Elder Charles Allen, and seized several other Elders and cast them into prison, compelled Gilbert and Whitney to close their store, and soon after broke it open and scattered their goods to the four winds. They tore down twenty houses over the heads of the inmates, and whipped and terribly lacerated with hickory withes many of the Elders, killed Andrew Barber, and severely wounded many others; robbed the houses of their property, and finally expelled fifteen hundred people from the county. They also destroyed some two hundred and sixteen dwellings, and much of the land, being valuable timber land, became public plunder. The Saints were robbed of most of their horses, cattle, implements of husbandry, etc. The total loss in these transactions is estimated at half a million dollars.
“Horrible to relate, several women thus driven from their homes gave birth to children in the woods and on the prairies, destitute of beds or clothing, having escaped in fright. It is stated on the authority of Solomon Hancock, an eyewitness, that he, with the assistance of two or three others, protected one hundred and twenty women and children for the space of ten days, who were obliged to keep themselves hid from their pursuers, while they were hourly expecting to be massacred, and who finally escaped into Clay county, by finding a circuitous route to the ferry.”
They could be traced by the blood from their feet, on the burnt prairie. This occurred in the month of November, and is a specimen of the kindness that law-abiding Latter-day Saints received at the hands of those who had power over them. The Saints were so law-abiding that not a single process had been issued against any member of the Church in Jackson County up to the organization of the mob, although all the offices, civil and military, were in the hands of their enemies.
Prominent in these cruelties as actors and apologists were the Revds. Isaac McCoy and D. Pixley, the former a Baptist and the latter a Presbyterian missionary to the Indians.
CLAY COUNTY.
The arrival of the Saints in Clay county was a blessing to the inhabitants, who had just opened small prairie farms and planted them with Indian corn, much of which was unharvested. They had cattle on the bottoms and hogs in the woods. The majority of the people received the Saints with gladness and gave them employment, and paid them in corn, pork and beef. The wages were low, but sufficient to supply the more pressing wants of the people. From time to time Joseph Smith forwarded money from Kirtland to Bishop Partridge to supply the most needy. The mob in Jackson County sent committees to stir up the feelings of the people of Clay against the Saints. For some time their oft-repeated efforts to do so were unsuccessful. Parties of the mob would come over from Jackson and seize our brethren and inflict violence upon them. The industry of our people soon enabled them to make some purchases of land, and then their numbers were increased by arrivals from the east. The mob of Jackson County continued their endeavors to stir up dissatisfaction among the people of Clay county against the Saints. At length the citizens of Clay county held a public meeting and requested the “Mormons” to seek another home, when the Saints located in the new county of Caldwell, which contained only seven families, who were bee hunters. As the county was mostly prairie, their business was not very profitable, and they gladly embraced the opportunity of selling their claims.
Caldwell county, being nearly destitute of timber, was regarded by the people of upper Missouri as worthless. Every Saint that could raise fifty dollars entered forty acres of land, and there were few but what could do that much, while many entered large tracts. The Saints migrated from the east and settled Caldwell in great numbers.
In three years they had built mills, shops, school, meeting and dwelling houses, and opened and fenced hundreds of farms. Our industry and temperance rendered our settlements the most prosperous of any in Missouri, while they embraced all of Caldwell, most of Davis, and large portions of Clinton, Ray, Carrol and Livingston counties, when the storm of mobocracy was again aroused and aided by the Governor of the State, Lilburn W. Boggs, who issued the order expelling all the Latter-day Saints from the State under penalty of extermination. This caused the loss of hundreds of lives through violence and suffering. Houses were plundered, women were violated, men were whipped, and a great variety of cruelties inflicted, and a loss of property amounting to millions was sustained, while anyone that would renounce his religion was permitted to remain.
Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Alexander McRae, Lyman Wight and others were for several months thrust into prison, and in one instance, while there, were fed on human flesh and tantalized with the inquiry, “How they liked Mormon beef”—it being the flesh of some of their murdered brethren.
The Lord softened the hearts of the people of Quincy, Illinois, and while the hundreds of Saints were fleeing over the snow-clad prairies of Missouri, not knowing where to go, the people of Quincy were holding public meetings, raising subscriptions and adopting measures to give the fugitives employment and succor, for which our hearts overflow with gratitude.
As soon as the Saints were all expelled from Missouri, Joseph Smith went to Washington and laid the grievances of the people before the President and Congress of the United States. Mr. Van Buren said, “Your cause is just, but we can do nothing for you.” Mr. Clay, when appealed to, said we “had better go to Oregon.” Mr. Calhoun informed Mr. Smith it would involve the question of State rights, and was a dangerous question, and it would not do to agitate it. Mr. Cass, as chairman of the Senate committee, to which the petition was referred, reported that Congress had no business with it.
Elder John P. Green went east, and published an appeal in behalf of the Saints, holding public meetings in Cincinnati and New York, and received some small contributions for the assistance of the most needy.
As soon as Joseph Smith escaped from Missouri to Illinois, he purchased lands at a place known as Commerce, in Hancock county, and commenced the survey of a city which he called Nauvoo, the word being derived from the Hebrew, meaning beauty and rest. Although the situation was handsome, it was famed for being unhealthy. There were but few inhabitants in the vicinity, but many graves in the burying ground, and much of the subsequent sickness was the result of exposure and the want of suitable means of nursing the sick. The swamps in the vicinity of Nauvoo were soon drained, and the lands around put under cultivation. Numerous dwellings and several mills were erected, and thrift and prosperity, the invariable results of industry and sobriety, were manifest.
Demands were made from Missouri for the persons of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Joseph was arrested and tried at Monmouth, before Judge Stephen A. Douglas, and honorably discharged. His principal attorney in this case was the Hon. O. H. Browning, now U.S. Secretary of the Interior. This suit cost him upwards of three thousand dollars. He was soon again arrested on a demand from Missouri, and discharged by Judge Pope, of the U.S. District Court. This time it cost him twelve thousand dollars. Not long after this second acquittal he was again arrested in Lee County, Illinois, and an attempt made, in the face of the State authorities, to kidnap him into Missouri. Nauvoo sent out three hundred men and rescued him. He was afterwards discharged by the municipal court of that place, and Thomas Ford, Governor of Illinois, sanctioned his discharge.
In 1844 Joseph and Hyrum were arrested on a charge of treason, under pledge of the executive that they should have a fair trial, but they were murdered by one hundred and fifty men with blackened faces; merchants and men that we had sustained in business, and apostates, took a leading part in bringing this about.
EXPENSES ATTENDANT UPON THE ARREST OF JOSEPH SMITH.
Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was subjected, during his short ministerial career of fifteen years, to about fifty vexatious law suits. The principal expense was incurred in liquidating lawyers bills, and the brethren's time and expenditure in attending courts to defend the Prophet from mob violence.
Magistrates court expenses were generally one hundred dollars. The Prophet paid Generals Doniphan and Atchison for legal services at Richmond, Mo., in 1838-9, sixteen thousand dollars; but this amount was fruitlessly expended, as the benefits of the law were not accorded to him, because of the predominance and overruling power of a mob.
At the Prophet's trial at Monmouth, Ill., in 1841, before Judge Douglas, the lawyers' fees and expenses amounted to three thousand dollars.
His next trial was before Judge Pope, U.S. District Court, in 1842-3, the expenses of which may be reasonably estimated at twelve thousand dollars.
Cyrus Walker charged ten thousand dollars for defending Joseph in his political arrest, or the attempt at kidnapping him at Dixon, Ill., in 1843. There were four other lawyers employed for the defense besides Walker. The expenses of the defense in this trial were enormous, involving the amounts incurred by the horse companies who went in pursuit to aid Joseph, and the trip of the steamer Maid of Iowa, from Nauvoo to Ottawa, and may be fairly estimated at one hundred thousand dollars.
When the mantle of Joseph Smith fell upon Brigham Young, the enemies of God and His kingdom sought to inaugurate a similar career for President Young; but he took his revolver from his pocket at the public stand in Nauvoo, and declared that upon the first attempt of an officer to read a writ to him in a State that had violated its plighted faith in the murder of the Prophet and Patriarch while under arrest, he should serve the contents of this writ (holding his loaded revolver in his hand) first; to this the vast congregation assembled said, Amen. He was never arrested.
APPEAL TO THE GOVERNORS OF THE STATES.
In 1845, the storm of mobocracy raging around us, we sent an appeal to the President of the United States, and to the Governor of every State in the Union, except Missouri, of which the following, addressed to Governor Drew, of Arkansas, is a copy to the Governor, he being the only one from whom an answer was received— “To His Excellency Thomas S. Drew, Governor of Arkansas. “Nauvoo, Ill., May 1, 1845.
“Honorable Sir—Suffer us, sir, in behalf of a disfranchised and long afflicted people, to prefer a few suggestions for your serious consideration, in hope of a friendly and unequivocal response, at as early a period as may suit your convenience, and the extreme urgency of the case seems to demand.
“It is not our present design to detail the multiplied and aggravated wrongs that we have received in the midst of a nation that gave us birth. Some of us have long been loyal citizens of the State over which you have the honor to preside, while others' claim citizenship in each of the States of this great confederacy. We say we are a disfranchised people. We are privately told by the highest authorities of this State, that it is neither prudent nor safe for us to vote at the polls; still we have continued to maintain our right to vote, until the blood of our best men has been shed, both in Missouri and the State of Illinois, with impunity.
“You are doubtless somewhat familiar with the history of our extermination from the State of Missouri, wherein scores of our brethren were massacred, hundreds died through want and sickness, occasioned by their unparalleled sufferings, some millions of our property were confiscated or destroyed, and some fifteen thousand souls fled for their lives to the then hospitable and peaceful shores of Illinois; and that the State of Illinois granted to us a liberal charter, for the term of perpetual succession, and under its provisions private rights have become invested, and the largest city in the State has grown up, numbering about twenty thousand inhabitants.
“But, sir, the startling attitude recently assumed by the State of Illinois forbids us to think that her designs are any less vindictive than those of Missouri. She has already used the military of the State, with the Executive at their head, to coerce and surrender up our best men to unparalleled murder, and that, too, under the most sacred pledges of protection and safety. As a salve for such unearthly perfidy and guilt, she told us, through her highest Executive officer, that the laws should be magnified, and the murderers brought to justice; but the blood of her innocent victims had not been wholly wiped from the floor of the awful arena, where the citizens of a sovereign State pounced upon two defenseless servants of God, our Prophet and our Patriarch, before the Senate of that State rescued one of the indicted actors in that mournful tragedy from the sheriff of Hancock county, and gave him an honorable seat in her halls of legislation. And all others who were indicted by the grand jury of Hancock county for the murders of Generals Joseph and Hyrum Smith, are suffered to roam at large, watching for further prey.
“To crown the climax of those bloody deeds, the State has repealed all those chartered rights by which we might have defended ourselves against aggressors. If we defend ourselves hereafter against violence, whether it comes under the shadow of law or otherwise (for we have reason to expect it both ways), we shall then be charged with treason, and suffer the penalty; and if we continue passive and nonresistant, we must certainly expect to perish, for our enemies have sworn it.
“And here, sir, permit us to state that General Joseph Smith, during this short life, was arraigned at the bar of his country about fifty times, charged with criminal offenses, but was acquitted every time by his country, or rather his religious opponents almost invariably being his judges. And we further testify, that as a people we are law-abiding, peaceable, and without crimes; and we challenge the world to prove the contrary. And while other less cities in Illinois have had special courts instituted to try their criminals, we have been stript of every source of arraigning marauders and murderers who are prowling around to destroy us, except the common magistracy.
“With these facts before you, sir, will you write to us without delay, as a father and friend, and advise us what to do? We are, many of us, citizens of your State, and all members of the same great confederacy. Our fathers, nay, some of us, have fought and bled for our country, and we love her dearly.
“In the name of Israel's God, and by virtue of multiplied ties of country and kindred, we ask your friendly interposition in our favor. Will it be too much to ask you to convene a special session of your State Legislature, and furnish us an asylum where we can enjoy our rights of conscience and religion unmolested? Or will you in a special message to that body, when convened, recommend a remonstrance against such unhallowed acts of oppression and expatriation, as this people have continued to receive from the States of Missouri and Illinois? Or will you favor us by your personal influence, and by your official rank? Or will you express your views concerning what is called the Great Western Measure, of colonizing the Latter-day Saints in Oregon, the northwestern Territory, or some location, remote from the States, where the hand of oppression shall not crush every noble principle, and extinguish every patriotic feeling?
“And now, honored sir, having reached out our imploring hands to you with deep solemnity, we would importune with you as a father, a friend, a patriot and statesman; by the constitution of American liberty; by the blood of our fathers, who have fought for the independence of this Republic; by the blood of the martyrs which has been shed in our midst; by the wailings of the widows and orphans; by our murdered fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, wives and children; by the dread of immediate destruction from secret combinations now forming for our overthrow; and by every endearing tie that binds men to men, and renders life bearable, and that, too, for aught we know, for the last time, that you will lend your immediate aid to quell the violence of mobocracy, and exert your influence to establish us as a people in our civil and religious rights, where we now are, or in some part of the United States, or at some place remote therefrom, where we may colonize in peace and safety as soon as circumstances will permit.
“We sincerely hope that your future prompt measures towards us will be dictated by the best feelings that dwell in the bosom of humanity; and the blessings of a grateful people, and of many ready to perish, shall come upon you.
“We are, sir, with great respect, “Your obedient servants, “Brigham Young, Chairman.
“W. Richards, | “Orson Spencer, | “Orson Pratt, | Committee. “W. W. Phelps, | “A. W. Babbit, | “Jno. M. Bernhisel,|
“In behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, at Nauvoo, Ill.
“P.S.—As many of our communications postmarked at Nauvoo, have failed of their destination, and the mails around us have been intercepted by our enemies, we shall send this to some distant office by the hand of a special messenger.”
The following reply was received from Governor Drew--
“Executive Office, Little Rock, Ark., May 27, 1845. “Hon. Brigham Young, President of the Committee of Twelve of Christ's Church of Latter-day Saints at Nauvoo, Ill.
“Sir—Your letter of the 1st inst. has been received, and claims my earnest attention. I must acknowledge my inability to serve your people by calling an extra Session of the General Assembly of this State for the object contemplated. And although I do not know that prejudice against your tenets in Arkansas would weigh aught against the action of that body, in refusing to furnish within our borders an asylum from the oppression of which you so sorely complain; yet I am sure the representatives of the people would long hesitate to extend to any class of citizens exclusive privileges, however innocent their motives, aims, objects or actions might appear, when the prospects of collision, from causes of which in your case I know nothing, appear so evident from the two very recent manifestations presented in the States of Missouri and Illinois. I have no doubt Illinois, prompted by the kindest of sympathies for your people in the late struggle and overthrow they encountered in Missouri, extended a liberal helping hand, but to repent her supposed folly. Could Arkansas, after witnessing the same scene reenacted in Illinois, calculate on anything short of a like catastrophe?
“I am not sufficiently informed of the course taken against you by the authorities of the State of Illinois, in the difficulties detailed in your communication, to justify a recommendation from me to the Legislature to remonstrate against the acts of Illinois—the detailed statement of facts afforded me by your communication being of an ex parte character. But were I regularly informed of all the facts from both parties, and felt able to form a correct opinion as to the justice of the course pursued by the State of Illinois, yet I am of opinion that this State would not have, nor would I have as its chief Executive officer, the right to interfere in the least with the internal concerns or police of the State of Illinois, or of any other neighboring State, where its operations do not distract or in any way affect the good order of the citizens of the State of Arkansas. There are instances, but they are rare, where the interposition of one State to arrest the progress of violence in another, would be at all admissible. Such, for instance, as where the public authorities of the State affected are palpably incompetent to quell an insurrection within her limits, and the violence is likely to extend its ravages and bad influence to such neighboring State, or where a proper call has been made for succor.
“Nor can I afford to exercise my official rank as chief Executive of this State, in behalf of a faction in a neighboring State; and I humbly conceive that my personal influence would add nothing to your cause, unless it should prove to be a just one, in which event public opinion will afford you support of a character more lasting in the eye of an enlightened public, than wiser and greater men than your humble servant—than official rank, or force backed by power. It is true that while prejudice may have the ascendancy over the minds of the neighboring community, your people may be exposed more or less to loss of life and destruction of property; I therefore heartily agree with you in the proposed plan of emigration to the Oregon Territory—or to California—the north of Texas, or to Nebraska; thereby placing your community beyond the reach of contention, until, at least, you shall have had time and opportunity to test the practicability of your system, and to develop its contemplated superior advantages in ameliorating the condition of the human race, and adding to the blessings of civil and religious liberty. That such a community, constituted as yours, with the mass of prejudice which surrounds and obstructs its progress at this time, cannot prosper in that or any of the neighboring States, appears very evident from the signal failures upon two occasions under auspices at least as favorable as you could reasonably expect from any of the States.
“My personal sympathies are strong for the oppressed, though my official station can know nothing but what is sanctioned by the strictest justice, and that circumscribed to the limited jurisdiction of my own State; and while I deplore, as a man and a philanthropist, your distressed situation, I would refer you to the emphatic and patriarchal proposition of Abraham to Lot; and whilst I allude to the eloquent paraphrase of one of Virginia's most gifted sons, wherein he circumscribed the bounds of our domain within to the great valley of the Mississippi, I would only add that the way is now open to the Pacific without let or hindrance. Should the Latter-day Saints migrate to Oregon, they will carry with them the good will of philanthropists, and the blessing of every friend of humanity. If they are wrong, their wrongs will be abated with many degrees of allowance, and if right, migration will afford an opportunity to make it manifest in due season to the whole civilized world.
“With my hearty desires for your peace and prosperity, I subscribe myself respectfully yours, “Thomas S. Drew.”
This correspondence shows us the necessity of our being united in sustaining the Latter-day Saints, that we may not build up, by our own acts, a power to renew persecution again in our midst.
EXPULSION FROM ILLINOIS.
In September, 1845, the mob commenced burning the houses of the Saints in the southern part of the county of Hancock, and continued until stopped by the sheriff, who summoned a posse comitatus, while few but Latter-day Saints would serve under him. The Governor sent troops and disbanded the posse. The murderers of Joseph and Hyrum had a sham trial and were acquitted. A convention of nine counties notified us that we must leave the State. The Governor informed us through General John J. Harding and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, that we could not be protected in Illinois. We commenced our emigration west on the 6th of February, 1846. During that month some twelve hundred wagons crossed the Mississippi, many of them on the ice. Everybody that was able to leave continued to do so until late in the summer, and the outfits with which they left were insufficient, while the winter and spring weather was inclement, which caused a great deal of suffering.
While the strength of Israel had gone westward, the Illinois mob commenced their hostilities with redoubled fury. They whipped, plundered and murdered men, abused women and children, and drove all the scattering ones into Nauvoo, then laid siege to the place and bombarded it for three days, killing several persons and wounding others, and peremptorily expelled the remainder across the river into Iowa, after robbing them of the remainder of the property they possessed, and leaving them on the shore to perish.
Their encampment was probably one of the most miserable and distressed that ever existed. All who were able, by any possible means, had got away; those left were the poor and the helpless. Great numbers were sick, and they were without tents or conveniences of any kind to make them comfortable. Encamped on the foggy bottoms of the Mississippi River, they were scorched with fevers, without medicine or proper food.
In this helpless condition a merciful Providence smiled on them by sending quails, so tame that many caught them with their hands; yet many perished within sight of hundreds of houses belonging to them and their friends, which were under the dominion of the Rev. Thomas S. Brockman and his mob legions, who viciously trampled the constitution and laws of Illinois, and the laws of humanity, under their feet.
The victims continued to suffer until the camps in the west sent them relief. For a more full description of these scenes, I read from the historical address of Col. (now General) Thomas L. Kane, who was an eye witness.
“A few years ago,” said Colonel Kane, “ascending the Upper Mississippi, in the autumn, when its waters were low, I was compelled to travel by land past the region of the Rapids. My road lay through the Half-breed Tract, a fine section of Iowa, which the unsettled state of its land-titles had appropriated as a sanctuary for coiners, horse thieves, and other outlaws. I had left my steamer at Keokuk, at the foot of the Lower Fall, to hire a carriage, and to contend for some fragments of a dirty meal with the swarming flies, the only scavengers of the locality.
“From this place to where the deep water of the river returns, my eye wearied to see everywhere sordid, vagabond, and idle settlers, and a country marred, without being improved, by their careless hands. I was descending the last hillside upon my journey, when a landscape in delightful contrast broke upon my view. Half encircled by a bend of the river, a beautiful city lay glittering in the fresh morning sun; its bright new dwellings, set in cool green gardens, ranging up around a stately dome-shaped hill, which was crowned by a noble edifice, whose high tapering spire was radiant with white and gold. The city appeared to cover several miles, and beyond it, in the background, there rolled off a fair country, chequered by the careful lines of fruitful husbandry. The unmistakable marks of industry, enterprise, and educated wealth everywhere, made the scene one of singular and most striking beauty. It was a natural impulse to visit this inviting region. I procured a skiff, and rowing across the river, landed at the chief wharf of the city. No one met me there. I looked, and saw no one. I could hear no one move, though the quiet everywhere was such that I heard the flies buzz, and the water-ripples break against the shallow of the beach. I walked through the solitary street. The town lay as in a dream, under some deadening spell of loneliness, from which I almost feared to wake it, for plainly it had not slept long. There was no grass growing up in the paved ways; rains had not entirely washed away the prints of dusty footsteps.
“Yet I went about unchecked. I went into empty workshops, rope-walks and smithies. The spinner's wheel was idle; the carpenter had gone from his workbench and shavings, his unfinished sash and casing. Fresh bark was in the tanner's vat, and the fresh chopped lightwood stood piled against the baker's oven. The blacksmith's shop was cold; but his coal heap and lading pool, and crooked water horn were all there, as if he had just gone off for a holiday. No work-people anywhere looked to know my errand.
“If I went into the gardens, clinking the wicket-latch loudly after me, to pull the marigolds, heartsease, and lady-slippers, and draw a drink with the water-sodden well-bucket and its noisy chain; or, knocking off with my stick the tall, heavy-headed dahlias and sunflowers, hunted over the beds for cucumbers and love-apples—no one called out to me from any opened window, or dog sprang forward to bark an alarm.
“I could have supposed the people hidden in the houses, but the doors were unfastened; and when at last I timidly entered them, I found dead ashes white upon the hearths, and had to tread a tip-toe, as if walking down the aisle of a country church, to avoid rousing irreverent echoes from the naked floors. On the outskirts of the town was the city graveyard; but there was no record of plague there, nor did it in anywise differ much from other Protestant American cemeteries. Some of the mounds were not long sodded; some of the stones were newly set, their dates recent, and their black inscriptions glossy in the mason's hardly dried lettering ink. Beyond the graveyard, out in the fields, I saw, in one spot hard by where the fruited boughs of a young orchard had been roughly torn down, the still smoldering remains of a barbecue fire, that had been constructed of rails from the fencing around it. It was the latest sign of life there. Fields upon fields of heavy-headed yellow grain lay rotting ungathered upon the ground. No one was there to take in their rich harvest.
“As far as the eye could reach they stretched away—they sleeping, too, in the hazy air of autumn. Only two portions of the city seemed to suggest the import of this mysterious solitude. On the southern suburb, the houses looking out upon the country showed, by their splintered woodwork and walls battered to the foundation, that they had lately been the mark of a destructive cannonade. And in and around the splendid Temple, which had been the chief object of my admiration, armed men were barracked, surrounded by their stacks of musketry and pieces of heavy ordnance. These challenged me to render an account of myself, and why I had had the temerity to cross the water without written permit from a leader of their band.
“Though these men were generally more or less under the influence of ardent spirits, after I had explained myself as a passing stranger, they seemed anxious to gain my good opinion. They told the story of the Dead City; that it had been a notable manufacturing and commercial mart, sheltering over twenty thousand persons; that they had waged war with its inhabitants for several years, and had been finally successful only a few days before my visit, in an action fought in front of the ruined suburb; after which they had driven them forth at the point of the sword. The defense, they said, had been obstinate, but gave way on the third day's bombardment. They boasted greatly of their prowess, especially in this battle, as they called it; but I discovered they were not of one mind as to certain of the exploits that had distinguished it, one of which, as I remember, was, that they had slain a father and his son, a boy of fifteen, not long residents of the fated city, whom they admitted to have borne a character without reproach.
“They also conducted me inside the massive sculptured walls of the curious Temple, in which they said the banished inhabitants were accustomed to celebrate the mystic rites of an unhallowed worship. They particularly pointed out to me certain features of the building which, having been the peculiar objects of a former superstitious regard, they had, as a matter of duty, sedulously defiled and defaced. The reputed sites of certain shrines they had thus particularly noticed; and various sheltered chambers, in one of which was a deep well, constructed, they believed, with a dreadful design. Beside these, they led me to see a large and deep chiseled marble vase or basin, supported upon twelve oxen, also of marble, and of the size of life, of which they told some romantic stories. They said the deluded persons, most of whom were emigrants from a great distance, believed their Deity countenanced their reception here of a baptism of regeneration, as proxies for whomsoever they held in warm affection in the countries from which they had come. That here parents 'went into the water' for their lost children, children for their parents, widows for their spouses, and young persons for their lovers; that thus the Great Vase came to be for them associated with all dear and distant memories, and was therefore the object, of all others in the building, to which they attached the greatest degree of idolatrous affection. On this account, the victors had so diligently desecrated it, as to render the apartment in which it was contained too noisome to abide in.
“They permitted me also to ascend into the steeple, to see where it had been lightning-struck the Sabbath before; and to look out, east and south, on wasted farms like those I had seen near the city, extending till they were lost in the distance. Here, in the face of the pure day, close to the scar of the divine wrath left by the thunderbolt, were fragments of food, cruises of liquor, and broken drinking vessels, with a bass drum and a steamboat signal bell, of which I afterwards learned the use with pain.
“It was after nightfall when I was ready to cross the river on my return. The wind had freshened since the sunset, and the water beating roughly into my little boat, I edged higher up the stream than the point I had left in the morning, and landed where a faint glimmering light invited me to steer.
“Here, among the dock and rushes, sheltered only by the darkness, without roof between them and the sky, I came upon a crowd of several hundred human beings, whom my movements roused from uneasy slumber on the ground.
“Passing these on my way to the light, I found it came from a tallow candle in a paper funnel shade, such as is used by street vendors of apples and peanuts, and which, flaming and guttering away in the bleak air off the water, shone flickeringly on the emaciated features of a man in the last stage of a bilious remittent fever. They had done their best for him. Over his head was something like a tent, made of a sheet or two, and he rested on a partially ripped open old straw mattress, with a hair sofa cushion under his head for a pillow. His gaping jaw and glazing eye told how short a time he would monopolize these luxuries; though a seemingly bewildered and excited person, who might have been his wife, seemed to find hope in occasionally forcing him to swallow, awkwardly, sips of the tepid river water, from a burned and battered bitter-smelling tin coffee pot. Those who knew better had furnished the apothecary he needed; a toothless old bald-head, whose manner had the repulsive dullness of a man familiar with death scenes. He, so long as I remained, mumbled in his patient's ear a monotonous and melancholy prayer, between the pauses of which I heard the hiccup and sobbing of two little girls, who were sitting upon a piece of drift wood outside.
“Dreadful, indeed, was the suffering of these forsaken beings; bowed and cramped with cold and sunburn, alternating as each weary day and night dragged on, they were, almost all of them, the crippled victims of disease. They were there because they had no homes, nor hospital, nor poorhouse, nor friends to offer them any. They could not satisfy the feeble cravings of their sick; they had not bread to quiet the fractious hunger cries of their children. Mothers and babes, daughters and grandparents, all of them alike, were bivouacked in tatters, wanting even covering to comfort those whom the sick shiver of fever was searching to the marrow.
“These were Mormons, in Lee county, Iowa, in the fourth week of the month of September, in the year of our Lord 1846. The city—it was Nauvoo, Ill. The Mormons were the owners of that city, and the smiling country around. And those who had stopped their ploughs, who had silenced their hammers, their axes, their shuttles, and their workshop wheels; those who had put out their fires, who had eaten their food, spoiled their orchards, and trampled under foot their thousands of acres of unharvested bread; these were the keepers of their dwellings, the carousers in their Temple, whose drunken riot insulted the ears of the dying.
“I think it was as I turned from the wretched night watch of which I have spoken, that I first listened to the sounds of revel of a party of the guard within the city. Above the distant hum of the voices of many, occasionally rose distinct the loud oath-tainted exclamation, and the falsely intonated scrap of vulgar song; but lest this requiem should go unheeded, every now and then, when their boisterous orgies strove to attain a sort of ecstatic climax, a cruel spirit of insulting frolic carried some of them up into the high belfry of the Temple steeple, and there, with the wicked childishness of inebriates, they whooped, and shrieked, and beat the drum that I had seen, and rang in charivaric unison their loud-tongued steamboat bell.
“They were, all told, not more than six hundred and forty persons who were thus lying on the river flats. But the Mormons in Nauvoo and its dependencies had been numbered the year before at over twenty thousand. Where were they? They had last been seen carrying in mournful train their sick and wounded, halt and blind, to disappear behind the western horizon, pursuing the phantom of another home. Hardly anything else was known of them; and people asked with curiosity, ‘What had been their fate—what their fortunes?’”
The conclusion of the discourse was postponed till to-morrow morning.
"Singing, "Rejoice in the Lord," by the Tabernacle choir.
Prayer by Elder Brigham Young, Junr.
Thursday, 8th, 10 a.m.
Singing by the 20th Ward Choir, Anthem, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Wilford Woodruff.
Bro. Fishburne's Choir sang, "An Angel from on high."
Singing by the 20th Ward Choir, Anthem, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Wilford Woodruff.
Bro. Fishburne's Choir sang, "An Angel from on high."
President George A. Smith
continued his historical discourse.
After bringing it down to the point where the persecuted Saints reached this valley, under the guidance of President B. Young, he described the appearance of the country when they arrived, so barren-looking and burnt-up that scarcely a particle of green vegetation was to be seen, and the ground black with hideous-looking crickets, that seemed to eat up and destroy every particle of vegetation. As the trains now bring the immigrating Saints to these valleys, where smiling plenty and a beautiful country greet them on every hand, they cannot realize what this place then was. Yet here, having arrived in extreme destitution, many of them barefooted and almost naked, the early settlers lived and labored, under the direction of the Priesthood; and while yet in the midst of great poverty, steps were taken to gather out the Saints still left behind in the East and those in the nations of the earth. The Perpetual Emigration Fund was organized and the work of gathering commenced and has continued.
He referred to the opening of commercial houses here owned by men not belonging to the Church, and to the vast sums of money made by them in an incredibly short time. The Buchanan expedition was alluded to, and the fact noted that it destroyed and wasted forty millions of dollars of money belonging to government, and that was all it did. It is said by some that the money brought into the country by that expedition, and the merchandising consequent upon it, were a source of great prosperity to the people. But the flour which government paid twenty-eight and a half dollars a hundred for, was bought from the Saints at about five dollars a hundred, and paid for in poor goods. The men who had made money from us had not employed it for the benefit of the Saints, but they had used their influence and means to add to our troubles and heap injuries upon us. Papers have been sustained from such sources that have spread abroad and persistently circulated the most vile and false calumnies against us; and that have called us assassins, cut throats, vile and abominable; and represented our religion and institutions in the most odious light which corrupt imaginations can suggest, to stir up enmity against us, and to send armed bodies here to destroy our lives and property, and drive us from our homes. We crossed the great plains to come here and serve God. Shall we do so; or shall we forget the object of our gathering together? Shall we continue to sustain an influence and a power that would destroy us, and have the responsibility of our destruction upon our own heads; or shall we sustain righteousness, truth, virtue and the Kingdom of God?
He would fellowship no one who would give aid to strengthening the power of evil; and he exhorted the Saints to fellowship no one who would not sustain the Zion of God.
Historical Address (continued)
By President George A. Smith, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, October 9th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
The rear of the camp of the Saints that were driven out of Nauvoo, as we left them last evening lying on the banks of the Mississippi—a very uncomfortable and distressing situation—were frequently annoyed by the firing of cannon from the opposite side of the river, many of the shot landing in the river, but occasionally some would pass over into the camp. One of them, picked up in the camp, was sent as a present to the Governor of Iowa.
The Rev. Thomas S. Brockman, leader of the mob who expelled the Saints from Nauvoo, said when he entered the city, that he considered he had gained a tremendous triumph; but there is no language sufficient to describe the ignominy and disgrace that must attach, in all time to come, to him and his associates, in the accomplishment of so brutal a work on an innocent and unoffending people on account of their religious opinions.
The settlements of Iowa on the west side of the Mississippi River were scattering, extending back about seventy miles. We passed through these settlements on our journey westward, that is, President Young and the party that left Nauvoo in the winter. We diverged a little from the regular route in order to be in the vicinity of the settlements of Missouri. Our brethren scattered wherever there was an opportunity to take jobs from the people, making rails, building log houses, and doing a variety of work, by which they obtained grain for their animals and breadstuff for themselves. We were enabled to do this while moving slowly. In fact, the spring rains soon rendered the ground so muddy that it was impossible to travel but a very short distance at a time. Soon after, when the grass grew, this divergence from the road southerly was discontinued, by pursuing a direction further north, until we reached a point on the east fork of Grand River, where the President's company commenced a settlement called Garden Grove, then another called Pisgah was commenced on the west fork of the same river. These streams and a number of others had to be bridged at a heavy expense, which was done by the advanced parties. Our travel west of the settlements, before we reached the Missouri River, was about 300 miles. The country was in the possession of Pottawattamie Indians. They, however, had sold their lands to the United States, and were to give possession the following year. We were delayed building ferry boats and crossing the Missouri River. A large portion of our people crossed at a point now known as Omaha city; some crossed a little below, at Bellevue, or what we sometimes termed Whiskey Point, there being some missionaries and Indian traders there, who occupied their time in selling whiskey to and swindling the Indians.
We were met there by Captain James Allen, of United States dragoons, with an order from the War Department to enroll five hundred volunteers for the war in Mexico. The volunteers were enrolled in a very few days. A portion of our wagons had crossed the Missouri at this time, and the residue of our people, from whom the volunteers were drawn, were scattered on the way two hundred miles towards Nauvoo. The men, however, volunteered, leaving their families and teams on the prairies without protectors, and very materially weakened the camp, because they were the flower of the people. They marched direct for Leavenworth, and there received the arms of infantry, and then marched for California by way of Santa Fe. Their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Allen, died at Leavenworth, and they were subsequently placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel P. Saint George Cooke. They made a march of 2050 miles, to San Diego. History may be searched in vain for a parallel to this march of infantry. During a portion of this route they were on three-quarter rations, a portion on half rations, and a large portion of it on quarter rations of bread, their only meat being such draught animals as were unable to proceed further. They were, at one time, temporarily relieved from this pressure through an encounter with a herd of wild bulls. These men were discharged on the coast of California; but the Government, finding it necessary to maintain some show of force in the southern part of California, requested a company of them to reenlist, which they did, and served for a term of six months.
The departure of all these men from our party, left a great burden on the shoulders of those who remained. President Young gathered them together to a place now called Florence, which we denominated Winter Quarters. While there we built seven hundred log houses, one water-power and several horse mills for grinding grain, and some hundred and fifty dugouts, being a kind of cave dug in the earth, or houses half underground.
We gathered up the families of the battalion the best we could, but a great many were sick. Our exposures through the season, being deprived of vegetable food, and the overwork through so much bridge and road making, brought on sickness; and all who were in Winter Quarters remember it as being a place where a great many persons were afflicted, and many died.
Our brethren who were on the other side of the river established camps in various localities. There were probably two thousand wagons scattered about on the east side of the river in different parts of the Pottawattamie country, each grove or camping ground taking the name of its leader. Many of those names are still retained, the various camping grounds being known as Cutler's, Perkins', Miller's, &c.
Elders Orson Hyde, P. P. Pratt and John Taylor, left the camp and went on a mission to England. Brother Benson, accompanied by other brethren, went to the east to solicit donations from our eastern friends. I am not aware of the exact amount that was donated, but it was only a trifle. There were a few old clothes also contributed, which I believe were scarcely worth the freight. Christian sympathy was not very strong for the Latter-day Saints. But we feel very thankful to those who did contribute, and shall ever remember with kindness their generosity towards the Saints.
We were here visited by Col. Thos. L. Kane, of Philadelphia, an extract from whose historical address was read yesterday. He visited our camp and saw our condition, and was the only man, I believe, who by words and deeds manifested that he felt to sympathize with the outraged and plundered people called Latter-day Saints. It may be that he was not the only man, but he was the only man who made himself conspicuous by his sympathy towards us. It is true that we have had men come here, as merchants and officers, who have expressed to us that they did have great sympathy with us at that time. It does us a great deal of good now to hear them say so, we did not know anything about it then.
In the spring of 1847, President Young, with one hundred and forty-three pioneers, started in search of a place of settlement. We started early, before there was a particle of grass in the Platte valley. We carried our food with us, and fed our animals on the cottonwood bark, until the grass grew, and managed to get along, making the road for six hundred and fifty miles, and followed the trappers' trail about four hundred miles more until we arrived in this valley. The whole company arrived here on the 24th of July, 1847. There were a few bushes along the streams of City Creek, and other creeks south. The land was barren; it was covered with large black crickets, which seemed to be devouring everything that had outlived the drouth and desolation. Here we commenced our work by making an irrigation ditch, and planting potatoes, which we had brought from the States; and late as it was in the season, with all the disadvantages with which we had to contend, we raised enough to preserve the seed, though very few were as large as chestnuts. For the next three years we were reduced to considerable straits for food. Fast-meetings were held, and contributions constantly made for those who had no provisions. Every head of a family issued rations to those dependent upon him, for fear his supply of provisions should fall short. Rawhides, wolves, rabbits, thistle roots, segos, and everything that could be thought of that would preserve life, were resorted to; there were a few deaths by eating poisonous roots. A great deal of the grain planted here the first year grew only a few inches high; it was so short it could not be cut. The people had to pull it. A great many got discouraged and wanted to leave the country; some did leave. The discovery of gold mines in California by the brethren of the battalion, caused many of the discontented to go to that paradise of gold.
During all these trials President Young was firm and decided; he put on a smile when among the people, and said this was the place God had pointed out for the gathering place of the Saints, and it would be blessed and become one of the most productive places in the world. In this way he encouraged the people, and he was sustained by men who felt that God had inspired him to lead us here.
President Young went back to Winter Quarters the first season, and in 1848 returned with his family. John Smith, my honored father, who was subsequently Patriarch of the whole Church, and who had been President of the Stake in Nauvoo, presided during the absence of President Young. I think that, for a man of his age and health, it was, in many respects, a very unpleasant position to be placed in, for all the murmuring, complaining, faultfinding, distress, hunger, annoyances, fears and doubts of the whole people were poured into his ear. But God inspired him, although a feeble man, to keep up their spirits, and to sustain the work that was entrusted to him until the arrival of the President next season.
In three years—1850, the idea of a man issuing rations to his family to keep them from starving had passed away; but the grasshopper war of 1856 inflicted upon us so great a scarcity, that issuing rations had to be resorted to again. Through all these circumstances no one was permitted to suffer, though all had to be pinched. I shall not attempt to give a detailed account of all the circumstances connected with our position in those trying times. But when our brethren arrive here by railroad and see a country smiling with plenty, I think they can hardly appreciate how it looked when we came.
When I first sat down on this ground, in 1847, I was dressed in buckskin, having torn most of my clothes to pieces. I had rawhide soles on my feet, and had a piece of hard bread and a piece of dried antelope meat to eat. I lay down, took my pistol in my hand, and held on to my horse by a lariat while eating my meat and biscuit, for fear the Indians might take a notion to my hair, of which I was always very choice. I took that meal near where our City Hall now stands. There has been quite an improvement since then.
The first year of our settlement here the crops were greatly injured by crickets, and many of the people gave up all hope, and it seemed as if actual starvation was inevitable for the whole colony. God sent gulls from the Lake, and they came and devoured the crickets. It seemed as if they were heavenly messengers sent to stay the famine. They would eat until they were filled, and would then disgorge; and so they continued eating and vomiting until the fields were cleared, and the colony saved: Praise the Lord! During the time of scarcity, when there was a short allowance of bread, the people were remarkably healthy, more so than they were afterwards when food became more plentiful.
In 1847 it was the counsel for every person leaving the Missouri River to be provided with three hundred and sixty-five pounds of breadstuff; many, however, came with less. The next season they were to bring three hundred pounds, the season after two hundred and fifty pounds; but in 1850 the people came with just enough to serve them during their journey across the Plains. In 1849, President Young founded the P. E. Fund. We had covenanted while in Conference in the Temple at Nauvoo, that we would never quit our exertions to the extent of our influence and property, until every man, woman and child of the Latter-day Saints who wanted to come to the mountains had been gathered. In 1849, notwithstanding all our poverty, a large sum in gold was contributed by the brethren for emigration purposes, and Bishop Edward Hunter went back and commenced the work. We also recommenced the work of missions, which for a short time had been partially suspended. Missionaries were sent to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the islands of the Pacific.
The first commercial house established here by strangers was Livingston and Kinkead's. Mr. Livingston had about eight thousand dollars, which was all the money the firm had to invest. Kinkead was taken in as a partner, and they obtained credit in the east for twenty thousand dollars' worth of goods, freighted them here and opened their store. They reported to their creditors that on the first day of opening they received ten thousand dollars in gold. They remained here until they made themselves fortunes, and carried gold from this Territory, perhaps to the amount of millions, and established themselves elsewhere. They were an honorable business house, but I have often reflected upon the bad policy that we, as servants of God, adopted at that time in sustaining strangers. If the ten thousand dollars which were paid into that house the first day, had been handled by some of our experienced merchants in a cooperative institution, it would have been just as easy to have furnished our own merchandise as to have bought theirs. Bishop N. K. Whitney, who was then living, or Bishop Woolley, and numbers of others were well acquainted with mercantile business; but they had been robbed of all they had, and had no capital. It only wanted unity and willingness on the part of the people to sustain their brethren in their business relations, to have laid the foundation to supply all that was ever supplied by Livingston and Kinkead.
I would like everyone to inquire for himself—What would have been the result if, instead of sustaining Livingston and Kinkead and other merchants, our people had sustained Latter-day Saints? The result would have been, that large sums of money would have remained here and been used for building up the country; and when a dark cloud had lowered over us, our brethren with this means in their possession would have been on hand to aid the Saints in defending and preserving their lives and liberties; while, as it was, the influence of the men we had enriched was turned against us, they believing they could make more money out of the Government, and get rich quicker through war, than they could by continuing their honest, legitimate business with the people here. This firm is but one; several other firms might be mentioned who pursued a similar course.
As soon as it was known in Christendom that the Latter-day Saints were not dead, but that they were alive and flourishing, and were gathering their people to the mountains at the rate of from two to five thousand a year, and that they had succeeded in reclaiming the desert, and in making grain and grass grow where nothing would grow before, it seemed as though all hell was aroused again. Federal officers were sent here, and they thought it policy to join in the general hue and cry, or at least some of them; there were a few honorable exceptions. But the majority of them raised a hue and cry against us, and it was thought so much of, that one of the rotten planks in the platform of the great rising party which contested the elevation of James Buchanan to the Presidency, was the destruction of polygamy. This brought to our country immense armies, more men being concerned in the matter than in some of the principal battles of the revolution, or even in the war of 1812. Some six thousand regulars were marched in this direction, while teamsters and hangers on increased this number to about seventeen thousand. There were also several thousand freight wagons, and everything on the face of the earth, seemingly, that could be done to hurl into this country destruction and vengeance, was done. But God overruled it. When they got here they found that they really had been deceived. They went and established themselves at Camp Floyd, and spent their time in destroying arms and ammunition, and breaking up the property of the United States, until forty million dollars, the reported cost of the expedition, had been wasted. The armies then scattered to the four winds of the heaven. This expenditure of the Government money laid the foundation of these outside mercantile establishments which have been nursed by us to so great an extent from that time to this.
It has been believed that great benefit, financially, accrued to the Saints through this expedition; but I think that as a whole it has been a hindrance to our real progress. Very little of the money came into the hands of the Saints, but some merchandise at high prices, which might have been a temporary convenience. But it caused our people to relax their energies in producing from the elements what they needed, such as flax, cotton and wool; and also turned their attention from the manufacture of iron. The burning of wagons, the bursting of shell, and the destruction of arms, furnished much of the latter at comparatively nominal prices; hence a present benefit worked a permanent injury. The speculators who made vast fortunes at the expense of the nation soon squandered them, and part of this army, and even its commander, and many of the officers, were soon found arrayed against the flag of our country, and taking an active part in the terrible war between the North and South, the results of which are being so severely felt at the present time.
Scandalous sheets have been issued here for years, and, as far as possible, sent to all parts of the world, filled with lies, defamation and abuse, and everything that would tend to rouse the indignation of the Christian world against us, and to get up an excuse for our annihilation. These sheets have been sustained by men in the mercantile business whom we have sustained by our trade, and consequently have been supported indirectly by our money. I have been horrified at such a use of our means, and have felt that it was our duty, as Saints, to stop supporting these slanders, lest, peradventure, should they continue until they produced the designed effect, our blood should be upon our own heads.
What did we cross the Plains for? To get where we could enjoy peace and religious liberty. Why did we drag handcarts across the Plains? That we might have the privilege of dwelling and associating with Saints, and not build up a hostile influence in our midst, and place wealth in the hands of our enemies, who use it to spread abroad defamation and falsehood, and to light a flame that will again have the direct result, unless overruled by the almighty power of God, of bringing upon the Latter-day Saints here the same sorrow, distress and desolation that have followed them elsewhere. For my part I do not fellowship Latter-day Saints who thus use their money. I advise the Saints to form cooperative societies and associations all over the Territory, and to import everything they need that they cannot manufacture, and not to pay their money to men who use it to buy bayonets to slay them with, and to stir up the indignation of our fellow men against us. Our outside friends should feel contented with the privilege of paying us the money for the products of our labor, and we should exact it at their hands, as a due reward for our exertions in producing the necessaries of life in this desert.
Some may say, “We are afraid the brethren are making money too fast,” or, “We do not like to trade with them, they charge us too high.” Suppose they do, you need not buy of them; but do not go and buy of men who would use that money to cut your throats, or to publish lies about you, and endeavor to induce all men to come here and dispossess you of your homes. Do not be so mad as that. “Well,” says one, “I really want some little article that I cannot buy elsewhere.” Man's wants are very numerous, but his necessities are really very few, and we should abridge our wants, and go to work and manufacture everything we can within ourselves; and what we cannot manufacture we can import, and save ourselves the 40, 120, 400, or 1,000 percent that we are now paying for our merchandise, and so stop building up those who are laying a foundation, openly and above board, for our destruction. And furthermore, cease to fellowship every man that will not build up Zion. Amen.
Singing "Hard times come again no more," by Bro. Fishburne's choir.
continued his historical discourse.
After bringing it down to the point where the persecuted Saints reached this valley, under the guidance of President B. Young, he described the appearance of the country when they arrived, so barren-looking and burnt-up that scarcely a particle of green vegetation was to be seen, and the ground black with hideous-looking crickets, that seemed to eat up and destroy every particle of vegetation. As the trains now bring the immigrating Saints to these valleys, where smiling plenty and a beautiful country greet them on every hand, they cannot realize what this place then was. Yet here, having arrived in extreme destitution, many of them barefooted and almost naked, the early settlers lived and labored, under the direction of the Priesthood; and while yet in the midst of great poverty, steps were taken to gather out the Saints still left behind in the East and those in the nations of the earth. The Perpetual Emigration Fund was organized and the work of gathering commenced and has continued.
He referred to the opening of commercial houses here owned by men not belonging to the Church, and to the vast sums of money made by them in an incredibly short time. The Buchanan expedition was alluded to, and the fact noted that it destroyed and wasted forty millions of dollars of money belonging to government, and that was all it did. It is said by some that the money brought into the country by that expedition, and the merchandising consequent upon it, were a source of great prosperity to the people. But the flour which government paid twenty-eight and a half dollars a hundred for, was bought from the Saints at about five dollars a hundred, and paid for in poor goods. The men who had made money from us had not employed it for the benefit of the Saints, but they had used their influence and means to add to our troubles and heap injuries upon us. Papers have been sustained from such sources that have spread abroad and persistently circulated the most vile and false calumnies against us; and that have called us assassins, cut throats, vile and abominable; and represented our religion and institutions in the most odious light which corrupt imaginations can suggest, to stir up enmity against us, and to send armed bodies here to destroy our lives and property, and drive us from our homes. We crossed the great plains to come here and serve God. Shall we do so; or shall we forget the object of our gathering together? Shall we continue to sustain an influence and a power that would destroy us, and have the responsibility of our destruction upon our own heads; or shall we sustain righteousness, truth, virtue and the Kingdom of God?
He would fellowship no one who would give aid to strengthening the power of evil; and he exhorted the Saints to fellowship no one who would not sustain the Zion of God.
Historical Address (continued)
By President George A. Smith, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, October 9th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
The rear of the camp of the Saints that were driven out of Nauvoo, as we left them last evening lying on the banks of the Mississippi—a very uncomfortable and distressing situation—were frequently annoyed by the firing of cannon from the opposite side of the river, many of the shot landing in the river, but occasionally some would pass over into the camp. One of them, picked up in the camp, was sent as a present to the Governor of Iowa.
The Rev. Thomas S. Brockman, leader of the mob who expelled the Saints from Nauvoo, said when he entered the city, that he considered he had gained a tremendous triumph; but there is no language sufficient to describe the ignominy and disgrace that must attach, in all time to come, to him and his associates, in the accomplishment of so brutal a work on an innocent and unoffending people on account of their religious opinions.
The settlements of Iowa on the west side of the Mississippi River were scattering, extending back about seventy miles. We passed through these settlements on our journey westward, that is, President Young and the party that left Nauvoo in the winter. We diverged a little from the regular route in order to be in the vicinity of the settlements of Missouri. Our brethren scattered wherever there was an opportunity to take jobs from the people, making rails, building log houses, and doing a variety of work, by which they obtained grain for their animals and breadstuff for themselves. We were enabled to do this while moving slowly. In fact, the spring rains soon rendered the ground so muddy that it was impossible to travel but a very short distance at a time. Soon after, when the grass grew, this divergence from the road southerly was discontinued, by pursuing a direction further north, until we reached a point on the east fork of Grand River, where the President's company commenced a settlement called Garden Grove, then another called Pisgah was commenced on the west fork of the same river. These streams and a number of others had to be bridged at a heavy expense, which was done by the advanced parties. Our travel west of the settlements, before we reached the Missouri River, was about 300 miles. The country was in the possession of Pottawattamie Indians. They, however, had sold their lands to the United States, and were to give possession the following year. We were delayed building ferry boats and crossing the Missouri River. A large portion of our people crossed at a point now known as Omaha city; some crossed a little below, at Bellevue, or what we sometimes termed Whiskey Point, there being some missionaries and Indian traders there, who occupied their time in selling whiskey to and swindling the Indians.
We were met there by Captain James Allen, of United States dragoons, with an order from the War Department to enroll five hundred volunteers for the war in Mexico. The volunteers were enrolled in a very few days. A portion of our wagons had crossed the Missouri at this time, and the residue of our people, from whom the volunteers were drawn, were scattered on the way two hundred miles towards Nauvoo. The men, however, volunteered, leaving their families and teams on the prairies without protectors, and very materially weakened the camp, because they were the flower of the people. They marched direct for Leavenworth, and there received the arms of infantry, and then marched for California by way of Santa Fe. Their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Allen, died at Leavenworth, and they were subsequently placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel P. Saint George Cooke. They made a march of 2050 miles, to San Diego. History may be searched in vain for a parallel to this march of infantry. During a portion of this route they were on three-quarter rations, a portion on half rations, and a large portion of it on quarter rations of bread, their only meat being such draught animals as were unable to proceed further. They were, at one time, temporarily relieved from this pressure through an encounter with a herd of wild bulls. These men were discharged on the coast of California; but the Government, finding it necessary to maintain some show of force in the southern part of California, requested a company of them to reenlist, which they did, and served for a term of six months.
The departure of all these men from our party, left a great burden on the shoulders of those who remained. President Young gathered them together to a place now called Florence, which we denominated Winter Quarters. While there we built seven hundred log houses, one water-power and several horse mills for grinding grain, and some hundred and fifty dugouts, being a kind of cave dug in the earth, or houses half underground.
We gathered up the families of the battalion the best we could, but a great many were sick. Our exposures through the season, being deprived of vegetable food, and the overwork through so much bridge and road making, brought on sickness; and all who were in Winter Quarters remember it as being a place where a great many persons were afflicted, and many died.
Our brethren who were on the other side of the river established camps in various localities. There were probably two thousand wagons scattered about on the east side of the river in different parts of the Pottawattamie country, each grove or camping ground taking the name of its leader. Many of those names are still retained, the various camping grounds being known as Cutler's, Perkins', Miller's, &c.
Elders Orson Hyde, P. P. Pratt and John Taylor, left the camp and went on a mission to England. Brother Benson, accompanied by other brethren, went to the east to solicit donations from our eastern friends. I am not aware of the exact amount that was donated, but it was only a trifle. There were a few old clothes also contributed, which I believe were scarcely worth the freight. Christian sympathy was not very strong for the Latter-day Saints. But we feel very thankful to those who did contribute, and shall ever remember with kindness their generosity towards the Saints.
We were here visited by Col. Thos. L. Kane, of Philadelphia, an extract from whose historical address was read yesterday. He visited our camp and saw our condition, and was the only man, I believe, who by words and deeds manifested that he felt to sympathize with the outraged and plundered people called Latter-day Saints. It may be that he was not the only man, but he was the only man who made himself conspicuous by his sympathy towards us. It is true that we have had men come here, as merchants and officers, who have expressed to us that they did have great sympathy with us at that time. It does us a great deal of good now to hear them say so, we did not know anything about it then.
In the spring of 1847, President Young, with one hundred and forty-three pioneers, started in search of a place of settlement. We started early, before there was a particle of grass in the Platte valley. We carried our food with us, and fed our animals on the cottonwood bark, until the grass grew, and managed to get along, making the road for six hundred and fifty miles, and followed the trappers' trail about four hundred miles more until we arrived in this valley. The whole company arrived here on the 24th of July, 1847. There were a few bushes along the streams of City Creek, and other creeks south. The land was barren; it was covered with large black crickets, which seemed to be devouring everything that had outlived the drouth and desolation. Here we commenced our work by making an irrigation ditch, and planting potatoes, which we had brought from the States; and late as it was in the season, with all the disadvantages with which we had to contend, we raised enough to preserve the seed, though very few were as large as chestnuts. For the next three years we were reduced to considerable straits for food. Fast-meetings were held, and contributions constantly made for those who had no provisions. Every head of a family issued rations to those dependent upon him, for fear his supply of provisions should fall short. Rawhides, wolves, rabbits, thistle roots, segos, and everything that could be thought of that would preserve life, were resorted to; there were a few deaths by eating poisonous roots. A great deal of the grain planted here the first year grew only a few inches high; it was so short it could not be cut. The people had to pull it. A great many got discouraged and wanted to leave the country; some did leave. The discovery of gold mines in California by the brethren of the battalion, caused many of the discontented to go to that paradise of gold.
During all these trials President Young was firm and decided; he put on a smile when among the people, and said this was the place God had pointed out for the gathering place of the Saints, and it would be blessed and become one of the most productive places in the world. In this way he encouraged the people, and he was sustained by men who felt that God had inspired him to lead us here.
President Young went back to Winter Quarters the first season, and in 1848 returned with his family. John Smith, my honored father, who was subsequently Patriarch of the whole Church, and who had been President of the Stake in Nauvoo, presided during the absence of President Young. I think that, for a man of his age and health, it was, in many respects, a very unpleasant position to be placed in, for all the murmuring, complaining, faultfinding, distress, hunger, annoyances, fears and doubts of the whole people were poured into his ear. But God inspired him, although a feeble man, to keep up their spirits, and to sustain the work that was entrusted to him until the arrival of the President next season.
In three years—1850, the idea of a man issuing rations to his family to keep them from starving had passed away; but the grasshopper war of 1856 inflicted upon us so great a scarcity, that issuing rations had to be resorted to again. Through all these circumstances no one was permitted to suffer, though all had to be pinched. I shall not attempt to give a detailed account of all the circumstances connected with our position in those trying times. But when our brethren arrive here by railroad and see a country smiling with plenty, I think they can hardly appreciate how it looked when we came.
When I first sat down on this ground, in 1847, I was dressed in buckskin, having torn most of my clothes to pieces. I had rawhide soles on my feet, and had a piece of hard bread and a piece of dried antelope meat to eat. I lay down, took my pistol in my hand, and held on to my horse by a lariat while eating my meat and biscuit, for fear the Indians might take a notion to my hair, of which I was always very choice. I took that meal near where our City Hall now stands. There has been quite an improvement since then.
The first year of our settlement here the crops were greatly injured by crickets, and many of the people gave up all hope, and it seemed as if actual starvation was inevitable for the whole colony. God sent gulls from the Lake, and they came and devoured the crickets. It seemed as if they were heavenly messengers sent to stay the famine. They would eat until they were filled, and would then disgorge; and so they continued eating and vomiting until the fields were cleared, and the colony saved: Praise the Lord! During the time of scarcity, when there was a short allowance of bread, the people were remarkably healthy, more so than they were afterwards when food became more plentiful.
In 1847 it was the counsel for every person leaving the Missouri River to be provided with three hundred and sixty-five pounds of breadstuff; many, however, came with less. The next season they were to bring three hundred pounds, the season after two hundred and fifty pounds; but in 1850 the people came with just enough to serve them during their journey across the Plains. In 1849, President Young founded the P. E. Fund. We had covenanted while in Conference in the Temple at Nauvoo, that we would never quit our exertions to the extent of our influence and property, until every man, woman and child of the Latter-day Saints who wanted to come to the mountains had been gathered. In 1849, notwithstanding all our poverty, a large sum in gold was contributed by the brethren for emigration purposes, and Bishop Edward Hunter went back and commenced the work. We also recommenced the work of missions, which for a short time had been partially suspended. Missionaries were sent to Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and the islands of the Pacific.
The first commercial house established here by strangers was Livingston and Kinkead's. Mr. Livingston had about eight thousand dollars, which was all the money the firm had to invest. Kinkead was taken in as a partner, and they obtained credit in the east for twenty thousand dollars' worth of goods, freighted them here and opened their store. They reported to their creditors that on the first day of opening they received ten thousand dollars in gold. They remained here until they made themselves fortunes, and carried gold from this Territory, perhaps to the amount of millions, and established themselves elsewhere. They were an honorable business house, but I have often reflected upon the bad policy that we, as servants of God, adopted at that time in sustaining strangers. If the ten thousand dollars which were paid into that house the first day, had been handled by some of our experienced merchants in a cooperative institution, it would have been just as easy to have furnished our own merchandise as to have bought theirs. Bishop N. K. Whitney, who was then living, or Bishop Woolley, and numbers of others were well acquainted with mercantile business; but they had been robbed of all they had, and had no capital. It only wanted unity and willingness on the part of the people to sustain their brethren in their business relations, to have laid the foundation to supply all that was ever supplied by Livingston and Kinkead.
I would like everyone to inquire for himself—What would have been the result if, instead of sustaining Livingston and Kinkead and other merchants, our people had sustained Latter-day Saints? The result would have been, that large sums of money would have remained here and been used for building up the country; and when a dark cloud had lowered over us, our brethren with this means in their possession would have been on hand to aid the Saints in defending and preserving their lives and liberties; while, as it was, the influence of the men we had enriched was turned against us, they believing they could make more money out of the Government, and get rich quicker through war, than they could by continuing their honest, legitimate business with the people here. This firm is but one; several other firms might be mentioned who pursued a similar course.
As soon as it was known in Christendom that the Latter-day Saints were not dead, but that they were alive and flourishing, and were gathering their people to the mountains at the rate of from two to five thousand a year, and that they had succeeded in reclaiming the desert, and in making grain and grass grow where nothing would grow before, it seemed as though all hell was aroused again. Federal officers were sent here, and they thought it policy to join in the general hue and cry, or at least some of them; there were a few honorable exceptions. But the majority of them raised a hue and cry against us, and it was thought so much of, that one of the rotten planks in the platform of the great rising party which contested the elevation of James Buchanan to the Presidency, was the destruction of polygamy. This brought to our country immense armies, more men being concerned in the matter than in some of the principal battles of the revolution, or even in the war of 1812. Some six thousand regulars were marched in this direction, while teamsters and hangers on increased this number to about seventeen thousand. There were also several thousand freight wagons, and everything on the face of the earth, seemingly, that could be done to hurl into this country destruction and vengeance, was done. But God overruled it. When they got here they found that they really had been deceived. They went and established themselves at Camp Floyd, and spent their time in destroying arms and ammunition, and breaking up the property of the United States, until forty million dollars, the reported cost of the expedition, had been wasted. The armies then scattered to the four winds of the heaven. This expenditure of the Government money laid the foundation of these outside mercantile establishments which have been nursed by us to so great an extent from that time to this.
It has been believed that great benefit, financially, accrued to the Saints through this expedition; but I think that as a whole it has been a hindrance to our real progress. Very little of the money came into the hands of the Saints, but some merchandise at high prices, which might have been a temporary convenience. But it caused our people to relax their energies in producing from the elements what they needed, such as flax, cotton and wool; and also turned their attention from the manufacture of iron. The burning of wagons, the bursting of shell, and the destruction of arms, furnished much of the latter at comparatively nominal prices; hence a present benefit worked a permanent injury. The speculators who made vast fortunes at the expense of the nation soon squandered them, and part of this army, and even its commander, and many of the officers, were soon found arrayed against the flag of our country, and taking an active part in the terrible war between the North and South, the results of which are being so severely felt at the present time.
Scandalous sheets have been issued here for years, and, as far as possible, sent to all parts of the world, filled with lies, defamation and abuse, and everything that would tend to rouse the indignation of the Christian world against us, and to get up an excuse for our annihilation. These sheets have been sustained by men in the mercantile business whom we have sustained by our trade, and consequently have been supported indirectly by our money. I have been horrified at such a use of our means, and have felt that it was our duty, as Saints, to stop supporting these slanders, lest, peradventure, should they continue until they produced the designed effect, our blood should be upon our own heads.
What did we cross the Plains for? To get where we could enjoy peace and religious liberty. Why did we drag handcarts across the Plains? That we might have the privilege of dwelling and associating with Saints, and not build up a hostile influence in our midst, and place wealth in the hands of our enemies, who use it to spread abroad defamation and falsehood, and to light a flame that will again have the direct result, unless overruled by the almighty power of God, of bringing upon the Latter-day Saints here the same sorrow, distress and desolation that have followed them elsewhere. For my part I do not fellowship Latter-day Saints who thus use their money. I advise the Saints to form cooperative societies and associations all over the Territory, and to import everything they need that they cannot manufacture, and not to pay their money to men who use it to buy bayonets to slay them with, and to stir up the indignation of our fellow men against us. Our outside friends should feel contented with the privilege of paying us the money for the products of our labor, and we should exact it at their hands, as a due reward for our exertions in producing the necessaries of life in this desert.
Some may say, “We are afraid the brethren are making money too fast,” or, “We do not like to trade with them, they charge us too high.” Suppose they do, you need not buy of them; but do not go and buy of men who would use that money to cut your throats, or to publish lies about you, and endeavor to induce all men to come here and dispossess you of your homes. Do not be so mad as that. “Well,” says one, “I really want some little article that I cannot buy elsewhere.” Man's wants are very numerous, but his necessities are really very few, and we should abridge our wants, and go to work and manufacture everything we can within ourselves; and what we cannot manufacture we can import, and save ourselves the 40, 120, 400, or 1,000 percent that we are now paying for our merchandise, and so stop building up those who are laying a foundation, openly and above board, for our destruction. And furthermore, cease to fellowship every man that will not build up Zion. Amen.
Singing "Hard times come again no more," by Bro. Fishburne's choir.
President B. Young
instructed the Saints on the principles of salvation, and treated on a number of subjects. A synopsis of his discourse would convey a very inadequate idea of it; and as it was reported in full we direct attention to it when published.
Salvation Temporal and Spiritual—Self-Sustaining—Civilization
Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct. 8th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
I wish to say a few words to the congregation, but if they are not perfectly still it will be very difficult for them to hear, as usual. I wish to speak to the people on salvation, and to teach them, as my brethren have been doing, how to preserve themselves. The object of the teachings at this Conference, and I may say for years past, has been to teach the people how to save themselves daily, in a temporal point of view, and also spiritually, that when the morrow comes they may be saved that day, and the next day, and so continue in a state of salvation every day that they live. According to the traditions of our fathers the salvation of the body and the salvation of the soul have no connection the one with the other. This is not in accordance with the doctrine which has been revealed to us in this our day. The kingdom that the Lord is about to establish and has commenced on the earth will, in every part and portion be a literal kingdom, a temporal kingdom and a spiritual kingdom; but while we are in a temporal state, and possess our temporalities, our abilities must correspond with the spiritual kingdom that we believe in. Consequently we have a kingdom that is actually spiritual, and to the natural eye it looks like a temporal kingdom. Still it is the kingdom where God dwells, even in these earthly tabernacles, consequently these tabernacles must be preserved in the truth, in righteousness, purity and holiness, or the Lord will not dwell therein.
We are called upon as individuals, each of us who form this community, to come out from the wicked world, from Babylon. All those who believe the history given by John, the “beloved disciple,” know that the time would come when the Lord would call upon all people, who believe in Him, delight to do His will, and seek to understand the requirements of heaven, to gather out from the midst of Babylon. John wrote plainly in reference to this gathering, and we have believed it. We are called upon to come out from among the wicked, as it is written, “Come out of her, O my people,” that is, come out of Babylon. What is Babylon? Why, it is the confused world: come out of her, then, and cease to partake of her sins, for if you do not you will be partakers of her plagues.
This people, whether they wished to separate themselves or not from the rest of mankind, have been forced to do it. Ask the Latter-day Saints, if after embracing the Gospel, they had the privilege of associating with former friends and neighbors on the same terms as they did previous to receiving the Gospel, and their answers will be, that the thread of affection that formerly existed seemed to be severed, that former friends forsook them, they passed them by and turned their eyes another way, and would hardly speak even when they met in company. Is not this the fact? It is as far as my experience has gone, and I have had a tolerable opportunity of testing the matter. We have been forced to separate ourselves, been under the necessity of leaving the society of those who did not believe as we did. We have been driven from our homes time and time again without the privilege of disposing of our property, and have taken joyfully the spoiling of our goods repeatedly, until we were under the necessity of fleeing to some land where there were none whom we could annoy.
If we have annoyed our neighbors so seriously, the question naturally arises, From what did this annoyance proceed? Was it from drinking and carousing, or hallooing in the streets by night? Was it from revelling by day or night? Was it from intruding on the rights of our neighbors? No, not from any of these causes by any means. What was it, then? This people believe in revelation. This people did believe, and do believe that the Lord has spoken from the heavens. They did believe and do believe that God has sent angels to proclaim the everlasting Gospel, according to the testimony of John. It was this that gave rise to the malice, hatred and vindictive feelings that have been so often made manifest against them. Some may say it was the political world. It was not so, although they had a share in it. It may be said that it was the moral world, but why should they entertain these feelings towards us? Are the Latter-day Saints immoral? O, no, their faith teaches men, women and children to be as moral as people can be. This cannot be the reason then. It was neither the political nor moral world; then whence did this hatred proceed? From the fanatically religious world. There was the rise and foundation of that hatred and malice that ultimately forced us to separate from the rest of mankind.
What are the teachings of the Christian world? Many of you have had an experience among them, and can answer this question very well. I have had an experience in their midst, though I never bowed down to their creeds. I never could submit to their doctrines, for they taught that which was not in the Bible, and denied that which was found in the Bible, consequently I could not be a convert to their fanaticism. I am not today. When I can hear a man, on his knees before a congregation, pray for God to come down into their midst and be one with them—“Come, O Lord, and dwell with us, open the heavens to us, give unto us the Holy Ghost, send Thine angels and administer to us,” and then get up and preach to the people that there is no such thing as revelations, no gift of the Holy Ghost, no such thing as the Lord speaking from the heavens, or men knowing anything about Heaven, I cannot receive nor bow in obedience to such absurdities. I have asked of the Christian world, “Where is heaven, where does the Lord dwell? What kind of Being is He, and is He a Being of tabernacle?” To all of which their reply would be “We do not know;” and they have mystified the character of the Deity—our Father and our God—to that degree that every person is left in the dark, feeling his way to the grave through a dark, cold, unfriendly and benighted world as best he may. Is this the state of Christendom? Yes, verily it is. They have mystified everything concerning God, heaven and eternity, until there is no man on earth, when you turn from the Latter-day Saints, who is capable of teaching the people the way of life and salvation. This is the grand difficulty, this is what stirs up the people. The priests are at the root of the matter. In the whole history of this people you cannot find an instance of a mob ever being led on except by a priest; and then the political world would take the advantage of it and come in for their share of the spoil.
Now, although it is so popular to cry delusion when referring to this Latter-day Gospel, I frequently ask myself, if it does not circumscribe all that is good and true, possessed by either the infidel or the Christian world, by our Mother Church, or any of her daughters? If the world were to embrace the Gospel we teach, would they believe all that is true in the faith of the Catholic? Yes, every iota. Would they believe all that is true in the faith of the Episcopalian, or in the faiths of the whole Christian world? Yes, every particle, every excellency, every good word and work they possess is circumscribed by and contained in the Gospel as taught by the Latter-day Saints. Then go to the scientific or philosophical world, and this Latter-day work circumscribes all the truth they possess. Well, then, we ask, why are we worse than other people? Do we teach our people to swear or to take God's name in vain? Oh, no, to the reverse; we forbid it. The Lord says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Is this good in and of itself? It is. Are we worse than other Christians? If so, wherein? Do they pray? So do we. Do the Christian world believe in being strictly honest? So do the Latter-day Saints. Do the Christian world believe in intruding upon the rights of their neighbors? No; neither do the Latter-day Saints. Do the Christian world profess to believe in charity? Yes; and the Latter-day Saints more abundantly. Do they believe in God the Father and in God the Son? Yes, so do the Latter-day Saints. Do they believe in the Holy Ghost? They say they do; so do the Latter-day Saints. Then wherein do we differ? Why, the Latter-day Saints believe that God has spoken from the heavens. The Christian world do not believe this. They do not believe that the Lord has called upon His people to come out from amongst the wicked world; but the Latter-day Saints do believe so. Is there any harm in their believing so? I frequently ask myself if there is any harm in a man having his own family around him, or in associating with his friends and neighbors? No, there is no harm in this; the Christian world believe that it is a man's privilege to do this. Is there any harm in the Latter-day Saints doing the same thing? Not the least. There is no law against it in heaven or on earth that we know of. Then wherein are we worse than our Christian friends, that is, the so-called Christian world? Are they Christ-like, or are they not? This is a matter we can test by reading the Bible, if we choose to do so. Do they lack wisdom? Apparently they do. If they, as individuals, do not acknowledge it, their neighbors acknowledge it. Do they ask of God? If they do, they do not receive. Where is there a Christian sect, now on the earth, except the Latter-day Saints, who preach the Gospel that Jesus taught—faith, repentance, baptism for the remission of sins, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, the gift of tongues, the gift of healing and the discerning of spirits? Who, in all the Christian world believes such a doctrine? None that we know of, except the Latter-day Saints. It is this which separates us and draws the division line. Well, is there any harm in our gathering out and living according to the revelations that have been given to us? Not the least. Do we injure any person in so doing? No, we do not.
This people have got to be self-sustaining, if they believe in the revelations given to them. You will find by and by that this same Babylon, which the Saints of God are required to leave, will fall. Will there be anybody left on the face of the earth? Yes, probably millions. Who will they be? Why the servants and handmaidens of the Almighty, those who love and serve Him. Now, I will ask the question, suppose this is true concerning the gathering out of the Saints, and that Babylon, or a confused and wicked world, will cease its operations as they are now going on, and the time spoken of shall have come, when the merchants will mourn and weep because there is no one to buy their merchandise, will the inhabitants of Zion go down to buy their silks and satins and keep up his trade? No. By and by there will be a gulf between the righteous and the wicked so that they cannot trade with each other, and national intercourse will cease. It is not so now, they can pass from one to the other with ease. But if this is the Kingdom of God and if we are the Saints of God—I leave you all to judge for yourselves about this—are we not required to sustain ourselves and to manufacture that which we consume, to cease our bartering, trading, mingling, drinking, smoking, chewing and joining with all the filth of Babylon? You may judge for yourselves in relation to this. But I can say that we have been striving for twenty-one years in these valleys, and before we came here, to bring this people to this point. When we look at ladies and gentlemen we can see that their wants are many, but their real necessities are very few. Now let the Latter-day Saints see that their necessities are supplied, and omit their wants for the present, and until we can manufacture what we want. We want you henceforth to be a self-sustaining people. Hear it, O Israel! Hear it neighbors, friends and enemies, this is what the Lord requires of this people.
We have been driven from our homes time and time again. I have been driven from a good handsome property and home five times without having the privilege of selling it, or making fifty cents from it, and what for? Because I was a thief? No. Because my brethren were thieves? No. Because they were liars? No. Because they were swearers? No. Because they were swindlers? No. Because they were adulterers or fornicators? No. Because they loved and made lies? No; but because they believed that God had spoken from the heavens and had bestowed upon His servant Joseph the keys of the holy priesthood of His Son. The Latter-day Saints believed this, and because they did so the Christian world said, “Up, get ye out of this place, we want your houses and possessions.” And they took them; but I will swear to them that they will never take them again. (The congregation said, Amen.)
When Colonel Kane was here, I and others said to him, “Colonel, you will find this the entering wedge for the division of our government.” Said we, “If the Government of the United States consent to rout this people again, and take it into their own hands to break us in pieces, they will go to pieces.” Did they? Did they have war? Answer the question yourselves. Have they made peace yet? Answer for yourselves. Is there any such thing today as the thirty-four United States that once composed the Federal Union, or is there not? Answer this question for yourselves, and then I will answer it, by saying there never will be again, unless they are brought together and cemented by the power of God.
Well, again I ask, what worse are the Latter-day Saints than other people? Have we the privilege of planting and eating the fruits thereof like others? Yes, politically, morally, religiously and financially. Have we the privilege of building and inhabiting our houses? Yes, we have, and there is no law against it. But this is not the question at all. I will say to my brethren who have talked to the congregation, the question is not whether we have the right to be self-sustaining or not, but will we be self-sustaining? This is the question, and we say we will be. What do you say brethren and sisters? All of you who say that we will be a self-sustaining people signify it by the show of your right hands.
[The motion was put and unanimously carried.]
This is what terrifies the Christian world, not the moral nor political portion of it; but it is the fanatics, the priests who are afraid, and they continually seek to stir up strife and mischief. They are not all so; but our past experience has given us good reason to come to this conclusion.
Bro. George A. related something in the historical discourse delivered by him yesterday and today, about the brethren going to solicit donations. In reference to this I will say that when we found we were obliged to leave Nauvoo, to deprive this nation of all excuse, and to clear our skirts of their blood, we wrote to all the governors of the States and Territories and also to the President soliciting aid and redress. We did this to deprive them of the chance of saying at the day of judgment, “you could have had an asylum with us if you had applied for it.” The result of our appeal you have already heard; redress or sympathy there was none, but “you, Mormons, may seek a home on Mexican or some other soil.”
As for the donations, here are Bros Benson and Little, who went with Colonel, now General Thomas L. Kane, to Philadelphia, Boston, New York and other places, and solicited aid of the mayors and city councils of the various places they visited, for this people who had been robbed, plundered and driven, and who, in answer to a requisition from the Government, had sent 503 men, the flower of their strength, to the Mexican war, leaving their fathers, mothers, wives and children destitute, sick and dying on the naked prairie. The result of the appeal for donations was the raising of a trifling sum. I will venture to say that we have given hundreds of dollars to them where they have given us one, consequently we are not in their debt, neither are we in debt to our merchants, not in the least. We did not ask them to come here; we do not ask them to stay, neither do we ask them to go away. We do not ask them to give us their goods, neither do we ask them to take them away. They are at perfect liberty to open their stores and exhibit their goods for sale, and we have the privilege of letting them alone; and that is not all, I mean that we shall do so.
Are we going to cut off all communication and deal with outsiders? No. If they want a house built, we will build it for them, if they will pay us the money. If they want our grain, they are welcome to it, if they will pay us the money for it. And we will take that money, and make the percentage they have made. We have as good a right to it as they have. We will furnish this little corps of United States men, here on the hill, all the hay, flour, oats and barley, and everything that they want; but we must have their money in return for it. We do not want them to stick their trade into the hands of our enemies, and thus furnish them money to use against us, while they pay us for our produce in rags at an extravagant advance above cost. This we do not want, and we will not have it. Why, how tight are you going to draw the reins? I want to tell my brethren, my friends and my enemies, that we are going to draw the reins so tight as not to let a Latter-day Saint trade with an outsider. We will trade with you, if you will give us your money; we are entitled to it. We made and broke the road from Nauvoo to this place. Some of the time we followed Indian trails; some of the time we ran by the compass; when we left the Missouri River we followed the Platte. And we killed rattlesnakes by the cord in some places; and made roads and built bridges till our backs ached. Where we could not build bridges across rivers we ferried our people across, until we arrived here, where we found a few naked Indians, a few wolves and rabbits, and any amount of crickets; but as for a green tree or a fruit tree, or any green fields, we found nothing of the kind, with the exception of a few cottonwoods and willows on the edge of City Creek. For some 1200 or 1300 miles we carried every particle of provision we had when we arrived here. When we left our homes we picked up what the mob did not steal of our horses, oxen and calves, and some women drove their own teams here. Instead of 365 pounds of breadstuff when they started from the Missouri River, there was not half of them had half of it. We had to bring our seed grain, our farming utensils, bureaus, secretaries, sideboards, sofas, pianos, large looking glasses, fine chairs, carpets, nice shovels and tongs, and other fine furniture, with all the parlor, cook stoves, &c.; and we had to bring these things piled together with the women and children, helter skelter, topsy turvy, with broken down horses, ringboned, spavined, poll evil, fistula and hipped; oxen with three legs, and cows with one tit. This was our only means of transportation, and if we had not brought our goods in this manner we should not have had them, for there was nothing here. You may say this is a burlesque. Well, I mean it as such, for we, comparatively speaking, really came here naked and barefoot.
Instead of crying over our sufferings, as some seem inclined to do, I would rather tell a good story, and leave the crying to others. I do not know that I have ever suffered; I do not realize it. Have I not gone without eating and not half clad? Yes, but that was not suffering. I was used to that in my youth. I used to work in the woods logging and driving team, summer and winter, not half clad, and with insufficient food until my stomach would ache, so that I am used to all this, and have had no suffering. As I said to the brethren the other night, the only suffering I ever realized in this Church was to preserve my temper towards my enemies. But I have even got pretty much over this. Do what you please, and we will not be angry; it is not becoming in Saints to be so. Let us do right ourselves, and we will find honor. Let the Latter-day Saints live their religion, and they will be the most honored of any people in the world by saint and sinner. Will we associate with outsiders? Yes, we will invite them to our houses, and go to theirs, if we have a mind to. We will treat gentlemen as gentlemen, friends as friends, speculators as speculators, and we will treat our enemies as enemies, by letting them alone.
Now, some of the people, I expect, will think they are never going to have the privilege of trading or doing anything again with outsiders. I will tell you how I feel with regard to such persons—they are the very ones we want to apostatize. All men and women that long after sin and sinners, iniquity and corruption we want to apostatize immediately and go their own way, go with those who are corrupt.
Our outside friends say they want to civilize us here. What do they mean by civilization? Why they mean by that, to establish gambling holes—they are called gambling hells—grog shops and houses of ill fame on every corner of every block in the city; also swearing, drinking, shooting and debauching each other. Then they would send their missionaries here with faces as long as jackasses' ears, who would go crying and groaning through the streets “Oh, what a poor, miserable, sinful world!” That is what is meant by civilization. That is what priests and deacons want to introduce here; tradesmen want it, lawyers and doctors want it, and all hell wants it. But the Saints do not want it, and we will not have it. (Congregation said, AMEN.) Why, with all the boasted attainments of the world in art and science they are as far from being really civilized as our Indians here, and farther in reality. A true system of civilization will not encourage the existence of every abomination and crime in a community but will lead them to observe the laws Heaven has laid down for the regulation of the life of man. There is no other civilization. A truly civilized person is one who is a real gentleman or lady; in language and manners he is truly refined, and gives way to no practice that is unhallowed or uncomely. This is what we are after, and trying to attain to.
We have been driven here to these mountains and have been followed up. We want to be followed up by gentlemen; we want gentlemen to associate with. We want to associate with men who aspire after pure knowledge, wisdom and advancement, and who are for introducing every improvement in the midst of the people, like the company who are building this railroad. We thank them and the government for it. Every time I think of it I feel God bless them, hallelujah! Do they want to skin us? I hope not. Do they want to destroy us? I think not. They want to meet us as friends, and we want to meet them as friends, and to share equally with them in the business of the country. Do we believe in trade and commerce? Yes. And by and by we will send our products to the east and to the west. And how long will it be before they will be sending for our dried peaches and apples? How is it now for growing fruit in the country in which Joseph obtained the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated? I remember when it was the cream of the world in this respect. But can they raise an apple or peach there now that is sound and good? No, they cannot. And where we used to reap and cradle sixty bushels of wheat to the acre they don't get more than from five to ten now. The land is barren, waste and desolate; the curse of God is upon it, and it will be so wherever the Latter-day Saints have to leave. Talk about these rich valleys, why there is not another people on the earth that could have come here and lived. We prayed over the land, and dedicated it and the water, air and everything pertaining to them unto the Lord, and the smiles of Heaven rested on the land and it became productive, and today yields us the best of grain, fruit and vegetables. But if the Latter-day Saints were compelled to leave here it would not be five years until the soil would cease to yield to sustain a community as it does now. Do you believe this, outsiders? No, you do not. No matter, I say it, and we know it, and if we know it that is satisfactory to us, without being any interruption to the faith or views of any person in the world.
There is an idea abroad that the “Mormons” are going to give way; but there is no fear that the kingdom of God—“Mormonism”—will ever give way. The only thing for you and me to fear, is whether we will build up the kingdom, whether our souls are in the kingdom or not. Here is the fear; it is not with regard to the kingdom, it will stand forever and ever; but you and I may not. The kingdom is pure; you and I are not pure. The doctrine we preach is pure and holy, and if we will abide it, it will make us pure and holy. Are we as good now as the rest of the Christian world? They say we are fools to believe in revelation. But I ask, What harm does such belief cause? It leads men and women to truth and righteousness, and leads every individual by whom it is entertained to purity and holiness of character on the earth. It also teaches us to deal justly, love mercy, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the widow and the fatherless, the poor and the homeless, and to deal kindly with all the inhabitants of the earth. To take the young and tender mind and teach it all that it can grasp, until it can comprehend all the science and philosophy of the day, and then the revelations of the Lord Jesus resting upon it teach that which cannot be learned by the wisdom of man. What harm is there in a faith like this? If Universalism is true, and the Lord is going to save all, He would certainly save those who believe thus as soon as He would a murderer or an infidel. You ask the outside world, an infidel or a Universalian, and they will say we are as well off as they are. Then I ask what harm is there in a man or woman being a Christian? Is there any harm in it? If there is, will you not point it out to us? We say to the priest and the people, if you have anything better than we have; hand it over, it is ours. If we have errors by the thousand, and you have truth, we will give you all our errors for one truth. Is there any harm in being Saints, or in our producing what we need? No. I look upon the people, and I can say our wants are many, but our real necessities are very few. Let us govern our wants by our necessities, and we shall find that we are not compelled to spend our money for nought. Let us save our money to enter and pay for our land, to buy flocks of sheep and improve them, and to buy machinery and start more woolen factories. We have a good many now, and the people will sustain them. You may call this tyranny, and say it is abridging the privileges of the Latter-day Saints. No, it is not; God requires it, angels require it; the ancient apostles and prophets required it, and why should not we require it? It does not infringe upon me in the least, why should it upon you? We will make up our wool and our flax, and manufacture our silk, we will do this here. There is no harm in it, no law against it, and we have the indisputable right to do it.
I will tell you how I feel, God bless every good man. God bless the works of nature, God bless His own work, overthrow the wicked and ungodly and them that would destroy their fellowbeings, that war and contentions may cease on the earth O Lord, remove these from office and place good men at the head of the nations, that they may learn war no more, but go to, like rational and civilized beings, sustain peace on the earth and do good to each other. May the Lord help us. Amen.
The Tabernacle Choir sang "Glory be to God in the highest."
Prayer by Elder E. L. Sloan.
instructed the Saints on the principles of salvation, and treated on a number of subjects. A synopsis of his discourse would convey a very inadequate idea of it; and as it was reported in full we direct attention to it when published.
Salvation Temporal and Spiritual—Self-Sustaining—Civilization
Discourse by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct. 8th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
I wish to say a few words to the congregation, but if they are not perfectly still it will be very difficult for them to hear, as usual. I wish to speak to the people on salvation, and to teach them, as my brethren have been doing, how to preserve themselves. The object of the teachings at this Conference, and I may say for years past, has been to teach the people how to save themselves daily, in a temporal point of view, and also spiritually, that when the morrow comes they may be saved that day, and the next day, and so continue in a state of salvation every day that they live. According to the traditions of our fathers the salvation of the body and the salvation of the soul have no connection the one with the other. This is not in accordance with the doctrine which has been revealed to us in this our day. The kingdom that the Lord is about to establish and has commenced on the earth will, in every part and portion be a literal kingdom, a temporal kingdom and a spiritual kingdom; but while we are in a temporal state, and possess our temporalities, our abilities must correspond with the spiritual kingdom that we believe in. Consequently we have a kingdom that is actually spiritual, and to the natural eye it looks like a temporal kingdom. Still it is the kingdom where God dwells, even in these earthly tabernacles, consequently these tabernacles must be preserved in the truth, in righteousness, purity and holiness, or the Lord will not dwell therein.
We are called upon as individuals, each of us who form this community, to come out from the wicked world, from Babylon. All those who believe the history given by John, the “beloved disciple,” know that the time would come when the Lord would call upon all people, who believe in Him, delight to do His will, and seek to understand the requirements of heaven, to gather out from the midst of Babylon. John wrote plainly in reference to this gathering, and we have believed it. We are called upon to come out from among the wicked, as it is written, “Come out of her, O my people,” that is, come out of Babylon. What is Babylon? Why, it is the confused world: come out of her, then, and cease to partake of her sins, for if you do not you will be partakers of her plagues.
This people, whether they wished to separate themselves or not from the rest of mankind, have been forced to do it. Ask the Latter-day Saints, if after embracing the Gospel, they had the privilege of associating with former friends and neighbors on the same terms as they did previous to receiving the Gospel, and their answers will be, that the thread of affection that formerly existed seemed to be severed, that former friends forsook them, they passed them by and turned their eyes another way, and would hardly speak even when they met in company. Is not this the fact? It is as far as my experience has gone, and I have had a tolerable opportunity of testing the matter. We have been forced to separate ourselves, been under the necessity of leaving the society of those who did not believe as we did. We have been driven from our homes time and time again without the privilege of disposing of our property, and have taken joyfully the spoiling of our goods repeatedly, until we were under the necessity of fleeing to some land where there were none whom we could annoy.
If we have annoyed our neighbors so seriously, the question naturally arises, From what did this annoyance proceed? Was it from drinking and carousing, or hallooing in the streets by night? Was it from revelling by day or night? Was it from intruding on the rights of our neighbors? No, not from any of these causes by any means. What was it, then? This people believe in revelation. This people did believe, and do believe that the Lord has spoken from the heavens. They did believe and do believe that God has sent angels to proclaim the everlasting Gospel, according to the testimony of John. It was this that gave rise to the malice, hatred and vindictive feelings that have been so often made manifest against them. Some may say it was the political world. It was not so, although they had a share in it. It may be said that it was the moral world, but why should they entertain these feelings towards us? Are the Latter-day Saints immoral? O, no, their faith teaches men, women and children to be as moral as people can be. This cannot be the reason then. It was neither the political nor moral world; then whence did this hatred proceed? From the fanatically religious world. There was the rise and foundation of that hatred and malice that ultimately forced us to separate from the rest of mankind.
What are the teachings of the Christian world? Many of you have had an experience among them, and can answer this question very well. I have had an experience in their midst, though I never bowed down to their creeds. I never could submit to their doctrines, for they taught that which was not in the Bible, and denied that which was found in the Bible, consequently I could not be a convert to their fanaticism. I am not today. When I can hear a man, on his knees before a congregation, pray for God to come down into their midst and be one with them—“Come, O Lord, and dwell with us, open the heavens to us, give unto us the Holy Ghost, send Thine angels and administer to us,” and then get up and preach to the people that there is no such thing as revelations, no gift of the Holy Ghost, no such thing as the Lord speaking from the heavens, or men knowing anything about Heaven, I cannot receive nor bow in obedience to such absurdities. I have asked of the Christian world, “Where is heaven, where does the Lord dwell? What kind of Being is He, and is He a Being of tabernacle?” To all of which their reply would be “We do not know;” and they have mystified the character of the Deity—our Father and our God—to that degree that every person is left in the dark, feeling his way to the grave through a dark, cold, unfriendly and benighted world as best he may. Is this the state of Christendom? Yes, verily it is. They have mystified everything concerning God, heaven and eternity, until there is no man on earth, when you turn from the Latter-day Saints, who is capable of teaching the people the way of life and salvation. This is the grand difficulty, this is what stirs up the people. The priests are at the root of the matter. In the whole history of this people you cannot find an instance of a mob ever being led on except by a priest; and then the political world would take the advantage of it and come in for their share of the spoil.
Now, although it is so popular to cry delusion when referring to this Latter-day Gospel, I frequently ask myself, if it does not circumscribe all that is good and true, possessed by either the infidel or the Christian world, by our Mother Church, or any of her daughters? If the world were to embrace the Gospel we teach, would they believe all that is true in the faith of the Catholic? Yes, every iota. Would they believe all that is true in the faith of the Episcopalian, or in the faiths of the whole Christian world? Yes, every particle, every excellency, every good word and work they possess is circumscribed by and contained in the Gospel as taught by the Latter-day Saints. Then go to the scientific or philosophical world, and this Latter-day work circumscribes all the truth they possess. Well, then, we ask, why are we worse than other people? Do we teach our people to swear or to take God's name in vain? Oh, no, to the reverse; we forbid it. The Lord says, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Is this good in and of itself? It is. Are we worse than other Christians? If so, wherein? Do they pray? So do we. Do the Christian world believe in being strictly honest? So do the Latter-day Saints. Do the Christian world believe in intruding upon the rights of their neighbors? No; neither do the Latter-day Saints. Do the Christian world profess to believe in charity? Yes; and the Latter-day Saints more abundantly. Do they believe in God the Father and in God the Son? Yes, so do the Latter-day Saints. Do they believe in the Holy Ghost? They say they do; so do the Latter-day Saints. Then wherein do we differ? Why, the Latter-day Saints believe that God has spoken from the heavens. The Christian world do not believe this. They do not believe that the Lord has called upon His people to come out from amongst the wicked world; but the Latter-day Saints do believe so. Is there any harm in their believing so? I frequently ask myself if there is any harm in a man having his own family around him, or in associating with his friends and neighbors? No, there is no harm in this; the Christian world believe that it is a man's privilege to do this. Is there any harm in the Latter-day Saints doing the same thing? Not the least. There is no law against it in heaven or on earth that we know of. Then wherein are we worse than our Christian friends, that is, the so-called Christian world? Are they Christ-like, or are they not? This is a matter we can test by reading the Bible, if we choose to do so. Do they lack wisdom? Apparently they do. If they, as individuals, do not acknowledge it, their neighbors acknowledge it. Do they ask of God? If they do, they do not receive. Where is there a Christian sect, now on the earth, except the Latter-day Saints, who preach the Gospel that Jesus taught—faith, repentance, baptism for the remission of sins, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, the gift of tongues, the gift of healing and the discerning of spirits? Who, in all the Christian world believes such a doctrine? None that we know of, except the Latter-day Saints. It is this which separates us and draws the division line. Well, is there any harm in our gathering out and living according to the revelations that have been given to us? Not the least. Do we injure any person in so doing? No, we do not.
This people have got to be self-sustaining, if they believe in the revelations given to them. You will find by and by that this same Babylon, which the Saints of God are required to leave, will fall. Will there be anybody left on the face of the earth? Yes, probably millions. Who will they be? Why the servants and handmaidens of the Almighty, those who love and serve Him. Now, I will ask the question, suppose this is true concerning the gathering out of the Saints, and that Babylon, or a confused and wicked world, will cease its operations as they are now going on, and the time spoken of shall have come, when the merchants will mourn and weep because there is no one to buy their merchandise, will the inhabitants of Zion go down to buy their silks and satins and keep up his trade? No. By and by there will be a gulf between the righteous and the wicked so that they cannot trade with each other, and national intercourse will cease. It is not so now, they can pass from one to the other with ease. But if this is the Kingdom of God and if we are the Saints of God—I leave you all to judge for yourselves about this—are we not required to sustain ourselves and to manufacture that which we consume, to cease our bartering, trading, mingling, drinking, smoking, chewing and joining with all the filth of Babylon? You may judge for yourselves in relation to this. But I can say that we have been striving for twenty-one years in these valleys, and before we came here, to bring this people to this point. When we look at ladies and gentlemen we can see that their wants are many, but their real necessities are very few. Now let the Latter-day Saints see that their necessities are supplied, and omit their wants for the present, and until we can manufacture what we want. We want you henceforth to be a self-sustaining people. Hear it, O Israel! Hear it neighbors, friends and enemies, this is what the Lord requires of this people.
We have been driven from our homes time and time again. I have been driven from a good handsome property and home five times without having the privilege of selling it, or making fifty cents from it, and what for? Because I was a thief? No. Because my brethren were thieves? No. Because they were liars? No. Because they were swearers? No. Because they were swindlers? No. Because they were adulterers or fornicators? No. Because they loved and made lies? No; but because they believed that God had spoken from the heavens and had bestowed upon His servant Joseph the keys of the holy priesthood of His Son. The Latter-day Saints believed this, and because they did so the Christian world said, “Up, get ye out of this place, we want your houses and possessions.” And they took them; but I will swear to them that they will never take them again. (The congregation said, Amen.)
When Colonel Kane was here, I and others said to him, “Colonel, you will find this the entering wedge for the division of our government.” Said we, “If the Government of the United States consent to rout this people again, and take it into their own hands to break us in pieces, they will go to pieces.” Did they? Did they have war? Answer the question yourselves. Have they made peace yet? Answer for yourselves. Is there any such thing today as the thirty-four United States that once composed the Federal Union, or is there not? Answer this question for yourselves, and then I will answer it, by saying there never will be again, unless they are brought together and cemented by the power of God.
Well, again I ask, what worse are the Latter-day Saints than other people? Have we the privilege of planting and eating the fruits thereof like others? Yes, politically, morally, religiously and financially. Have we the privilege of building and inhabiting our houses? Yes, we have, and there is no law against it. But this is not the question at all. I will say to my brethren who have talked to the congregation, the question is not whether we have the right to be self-sustaining or not, but will we be self-sustaining? This is the question, and we say we will be. What do you say brethren and sisters? All of you who say that we will be a self-sustaining people signify it by the show of your right hands.
[The motion was put and unanimously carried.]
This is what terrifies the Christian world, not the moral nor political portion of it; but it is the fanatics, the priests who are afraid, and they continually seek to stir up strife and mischief. They are not all so; but our past experience has given us good reason to come to this conclusion.
Bro. George A. related something in the historical discourse delivered by him yesterday and today, about the brethren going to solicit donations. In reference to this I will say that when we found we were obliged to leave Nauvoo, to deprive this nation of all excuse, and to clear our skirts of their blood, we wrote to all the governors of the States and Territories and also to the President soliciting aid and redress. We did this to deprive them of the chance of saying at the day of judgment, “you could have had an asylum with us if you had applied for it.” The result of our appeal you have already heard; redress or sympathy there was none, but “you, Mormons, may seek a home on Mexican or some other soil.”
As for the donations, here are Bros Benson and Little, who went with Colonel, now General Thomas L. Kane, to Philadelphia, Boston, New York and other places, and solicited aid of the mayors and city councils of the various places they visited, for this people who had been robbed, plundered and driven, and who, in answer to a requisition from the Government, had sent 503 men, the flower of their strength, to the Mexican war, leaving their fathers, mothers, wives and children destitute, sick and dying on the naked prairie. The result of the appeal for donations was the raising of a trifling sum. I will venture to say that we have given hundreds of dollars to them where they have given us one, consequently we are not in their debt, neither are we in debt to our merchants, not in the least. We did not ask them to come here; we do not ask them to stay, neither do we ask them to go away. We do not ask them to give us their goods, neither do we ask them to take them away. They are at perfect liberty to open their stores and exhibit their goods for sale, and we have the privilege of letting them alone; and that is not all, I mean that we shall do so.
Are we going to cut off all communication and deal with outsiders? No. If they want a house built, we will build it for them, if they will pay us the money. If they want our grain, they are welcome to it, if they will pay us the money for it. And we will take that money, and make the percentage they have made. We have as good a right to it as they have. We will furnish this little corps of United States men, here on the hill, all the hay, flour, oats and barley, and everything that they want; but we must have their money in return for it. We do not want them to stick their trade into the hands of our enemies, and thus furnish them money to use against us, while they pay us for our produce in rags at an extravagant advance above cost. This we do not want, and we will not have it. Why, how tight are you going to draw the reins? I want to tell my brethren, my friends and my enemies, that we are going to draw the reins so tight as not to let a Latter-day Saint trade with an outsider. We will trade with you, if you will give us your money; we are entitled to it. We made and broke the road from Nauvoo to this place. Some of the time we followed Indian trails; some of the time we ran by the compass; when we left the Missouri River we followed the Platte. And we killed rattlesnakes by the cord in some places; and made roads and built bridges till our backs ached. Where we could not build bridges across rivers we ferried our people across, until we arrived here, where we found a few naked Indians, a few wolves and rabbits, and any amount of crickets; but as for a green tree or a fruit tree, or any green fields, we found nothing of the kind, with the exception of a few cottonwoods and willows on the edge of City Creek. For some 1200 or 1300 miles we carried every particle of provision we had when we arrived here. When we left our homes we picked up what the mob did not steal of our horses, oxen and calves, and some women drove their own teams here. Instead of 365 pounds of breadstuff when they started from the Missouri River, there was not half of them had half of it. We had to bring our seed grain, our farming utensils, bureaus, secretaries, sideboards, sofas, pianos, large looking glasses, fine chairs, carpets, nice shovels and tongs, and other fine furniture, with all the parlor, cook stoves, &c.; and we had to bring these things piled together with the women and children, helter skelter, topsy turvy, with broken down horses, ringboned, spavined, poll evil, fistula and hipped; oxen with three legs, and cows with one tit. This was our only means of transportation, and if we had not brought our goods in this manner we should not have had them, for there was nothing here. You may say this is a burlesque. Well, I mean it as such, for we, comparatively speaking, really came here naked and barefoot.
Instead of crying over our sufferings, as some seem inclined to do, I would rather tell a good story, and leave the crying to others. I do not know that I have ever suffered; I do not realize it. Have I not gone without eating and not half clad? Yes, but that was not suffering. I was used to that in my youth. I used to work in the woods logging and driving team, summer and winter, not half clad, and with insufficient food until my stomach would ache, so that I am used to all this, and have had no suffering. As I said to the brethren the other night, the only suffering I ever realized in this Church was to preserve my temper towards my enemies. But I have even got pretty much over this. Do what you please, and we will not be angry; it is not becoming in Saints to be so. Let us do right ourselves, and we will find honor. Let the Latter-day Saints live their religion, and they will be the most honored of any people in the world by saint and sinner. Will we associate with outsiders? Yes, we will invite them to our houses, and go to theirs, if we have a mind to. We will treat gentlemen as gentlemen, friends as friends, speculators as speculators, and we will treat our enemies as enemies, by letting them alone.
Now, some of the people, I expect, will think they are never going to have the privilege of trading or doing anything again with outsiders. I will tell you how I feel with regard to such persons—they are the very ones we want to apostatize. All men and women that long after sin and sinners, iniquity and corruption we want to apostatize immediately and go their own way, go with those who are corrupt.
Our outside friends say they want to civilize us here. What do they mean by civilization? Why they mean by that, to establish gambling holes—they are called gambling hells—grog shops and houses of ill fame on every corner of every block in the city; also swearing, drinking, shooting and debauching each other. Then they would send their missionaries here with faces as long as jackasses' ears, who would go crying and groaning through the streets “Oh, what a poor, miserable, sinful world!” That is what is meant by civilization. That is what priests and deacons want to introduce here; tradesmen want it, lawyers and doctors want it, and all hell wants it. But the Saints do not want it, and we will not have it. (Congregation said, AMEN.) Why, with all the boasted attainments of the world in art and science they are as far from being really civilized as our Indians here, and farther in reality. A true system of civilization will not encourage the existence of every abomination and crime in a community but will lead them to observe the laws Heaven has laid down for the regulation of the life of man. There is no other civilization. A truly civilized person is one who is a real gentleman or lady; in language and manners he is truly refined, and gives way to no practice that is unhallowed or uncomely. This is what we are after, and trying to attain to.
We have been driven here to these mountains and have been followed up. We want to be followed up by gentlemen; we want gentlemen to associate with. We want to associate with men who aspire after pure knowledge, wisdom and advancement, and who are for introducing every improvement in the midst of the people, like the company who are building this railroad. We thank them and the government for it. Every time I think of it I feel God bless them, hallelujah! Do they want to skin us? I hope not. Do they want to destroy us? I think not. They want to meet us as friends, and we want to meet them as friends, and to share equally with them in the business of the country. Do we believe in trade and commerce? Yes. And by and by we will send our products to the east and to the west. And how long will it be before they will be sending for our dried peaches and apples? How is it now for growing fruit in the country in which Joseph obtained the plates from which the Book of Mormon was translated? I remember when it was the cream of the world in this respect. But can they raise an apple or peach there now that is sound and good? No, they cannot. And where we used to reap and cradle sixty bushels of wheat to the acre they don't get more than from five to ten now. The land is barren, waste and desolate; the curse of God is upon it, and it will be so wherever the Latter-day Saints have to leave. Talk about these rich valleys, why there is not another people on the earth that could have come here and lived. We prayed over the land, and dedicated it and the water, air and everything pertaining to them unto the Lord, and the smiles of Heaven rested on the land and it became productive, and today yields us the best of grain, fruit and vegetables. But if the Latter-day Saints were compelled to leave here it would not be five years until the soil would cease to yield to sustain a community as it does now. Do you believe this, outsiders? No, you do not. No matter, I say it, and we know it, and if we know it that is satisfactory to us, without being any interruption to the faith or views of any person in the world.
There is an idea abroad that the “Mormons” are going to give way; but there is no fear that the kingdom of God—“Mormonism”—will ever give way. The only thing for you and me to fear, is whether we will build up the kingdom, whether our souls are in the kingdom or not. Here is the fear; it is not with regard to the kingdom, it will stand forever and ever; but you and I may not. The kingdom is pure; you and I are not pure. The doctrine we preach is pure and holy, and if we will abide it, it will make us pure and holy. Are we as good now as the rest of the Christian world? They say we are fools to believe in revelation. But I ask, What harm does such belief cause? It leads men and women to truth and righteousness, and leads every individual by whom it is entertained to purity and holiness of character on the earth. It also teaches us to deal justly, love mercy, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the widow and the fatherless, the poor and the homeless, and to deal kindly with all the inhabitants of the earth. To take the young and tender mind and teach it all that it can grasp, until it can comprehend all the science and philosophy of the day, and then the revelations of the Lord Jesus resting upon it teach that which cannot be learned by the wisdom of man. What harm is there in a faith like this? If Universalism is true, and the Lord is going to save all, He would certainly save those who believe thus as soon as He would a murderer or an infidel. You ask the outside world, an infidel or a Universalian, and they will say we are as well off as they are. Then I ask what harm is there in a man or woman being a Christian? Is there any harm in it? If there is, will you not point it out to us? We say to the priest and the people, if you have anything better than we have; hand it over, it is ours. If we have errors by the thousand, and you have truth, we will give you all our errors for one truth. Is there any harm in being Saints, or in our producing what we need? No. I look upon the people, and I can say our wants are many, but our real necessities are very few. Let us govern our wants by our necessities, and we shall find that we are not compelled to spend our money for nought. Let us save our money to enter and pay for our land, to buy flocks of sheep and improve them, and to buy machinery and start more woolen factories. We have a good many now, and the people will sustain them. You may call this tyranny, and say it is abridging the privileges of the Latter-day Saints. No, it is not; God requires it, angels require it; the ancient apostles and prophets required it, and why should not we require it? It does not infringe upon me in the least, why should it upon you? We will make up our wool and our flax, and manufacture our silk, we will do this here. There is no harm in it, no law against it, and we have the indisputable right to do it.
I will tell you how I feel, God bless every good man. God bless the works of nature, God bless His own work, overthrow the wicked and ungodly and them that would destroy their fellowbeings, that war and contentions may cease on the earth O Lord, remove these from office and place good men at the head of the nations, that they may learn war no more, but go to, like rational and civilized beings, sustain peace on the earth and do good to each other. May the Lord help us. Amen.
The Tabernacle Choir sang "Glory be to God in the highest."
Prayer by Elder E. L. Sloan.
2 p.m.
Singing by the 20th Ward choir; anthem, "Praise ye the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Franklin D. Richards.
Bro. Fishburne's choir sang, "Now pray we for our country."
Singing by the 20th Ward choir; anthem, "Praise ye the Lord."
Prayer by Elder Franklin D. Richards.
Bro. Fishburne's choir sang, "Now pray we for our country."
President D. H. Wells
spoke of the overruling providences of the Almighty in our behalf, manifested in the prosperity and progress of the Saints. But the blessings He has to bestow upon us cannot be enjoyed by us unless we are obedient; and we must prove by our actions that we will employ those blessings to further the cause of truth, and not aid in building up the kingdom of the evil one. We have gathered out from the nations and we have desired to see our children trained up uncontaminated with the errors and false opinions existing in the world; but we must keep ourselves separate and apart from the society of the wicked, or we shall have with us the iniquity and wickedness of the Babylon from which we have gathered. We do not expect to cease communication with the outside world. We are on the highway of the nations, and we expect many will come here. Some will wish to remain, which they have a perfect right to do; but we must keep ourselves uncontaminated by wickedness; we must preserve our own interests and sustain ourselves, and we must build up the kingdom of God, or He will find a people who will do it and keep His commandments in all things.
spoke of the overruling providences of the Almighty in our behalf, manifested in the prosperity and progress of the Saints. But the blessings He has to bestow upon us cannot be enjoyed by us unless we are obedient; and we must prove by our actions that we will employ those blessings to further the cause of truth, and not aid in building up the kingdom of the evil one. We have gathered out from the nations and we have desired to see our children trained up uncontaminated with the errors and false opinions existing in the world; but we must keep ourselves separate and apart from the society of the wicked, or we shall have with us the iniquity and wickedness of the Babylon from which we have gathered. We do not expect to cease communication with the outside world. We are on the highway of the nations, and we expect many will come here. Some will wish to remain, which they have a perfect right to do; but we must keep ourselves uncontaminated by wickedness; we must preserve our own interests and sustain ourselves, and we must build up the kingdom of God, or He will find a people who will do it and keep His commandments in all things.
The names of the following brethren, from the places specified, were then presented to the Conference to go on a mission to the Southern settlements, and were unanimously sustained:
Albert W. Davies, Adam Spiers, Geo. Naylor, B. L. Adams, Ward Pack, Alfred Lampson, William Asper, S. L. Sprague, Jr., Jno. Houtz, Elliot Hartwell, Silvester Jackman, W. L. N. Allen, Boyd Stewart, John W. Chamberlain, David Stewart, Barnard Rigby, Fred. Heath, George Goodrich, William Atkins, John Wayman, Amos Neff, Isaac Groo, Moses Thurston, Charles B. Taylor, Wm. Red, Daniel Seegmiller, Charles Seegmiller, James Vantassel, John Gabbott, Smith Bros.
Spanish Fork—Geo. B. Snell, Willard O. Creer, August Swensen, John H. Koil.
Payson—Daniel Stark,--Curtis, William Heaton, Joseph Tanner, William Whiteman, Jesse Taylor, Newell Potter, John Burr, John W. Keil Christopher F. Dixon, Charles C. Burr.
American Fork.—Arza Adams, Alexander Nichol, Henry Chipman, Steven Mott, Alexander Miller, William Robinson, Nathan Adams, William Kelly.
Springville.—Elmer Taylor, Lyman S. Wood, -- Bird, Lorenzo Johnson, Richard Thorn, Nelson Spafford.
Nephi – Samuel Claridge, Samuel Linton, Charles Foote, George Harmon, Israel Hoyt, John Esplin, Thomas Vicors.
Battle Creek—Ben. W. Driggs, Chauncy Bacon, Henson Walker, John Long.
Bountiful—William S. Muir, Israel Barlow, Jun., David Thackerel, Thomas James, David Thompson, Brigham Y. Baird, Christian Christiansen, Thomas Atkinson, Peter Corney, Chester Call.
Farmington.—Job Welling, David Hess, Oliver Robinson, Thomas Grover, Jr., David Saunders, Alma Hayes, Philander Brown, Elias Van Fleit, Lorenzo Watson, Thomas Steids.
Centreville. – William Myers, Ira Parks, Z. Cheeny, Michael Garns, Lyman Leavitt, Thomas Stolworthy, Chas. Hogg, John Myers, George Leavitt.
Coalville.—Hyrum Eldredge.
West Jordan—John Benion, Samuel Egbert, Robert Pickston, Samuel Bateman, Joseph Bateman, Benj. Cuttler.
Mill Creek—Edward Pugh, James Miller.
Grantsville—Aroet Hale, Ara W. Sabin, James Karl.
Tooele—David H. Leonard, Robert McHendrie, Peter Phister, George Coleman, Captain John Gillespie, Wm. A. Picket, Orson P. Bates, Enos Stookey.
Herriman's Fort—Thomas Butterfield.
Draperville—Joseph G. Brown.
Kaysville—Geo. Stevens, William A. Flint, Robert Egbert, James Shearer, John Weaver, James Green, James Sheen.
Big Cottonwood—James Spillet, Daniel G. Bryan, Charles Bagley, Preston Lewis, Wm. Newman, Samuel Rich, Duncan S. Casper.
Provo City – Martin W. Mills, Riley G. Clark, Samuel Pratt, Zenos T. Pratt, Wm. Brown, Alfred D. Young, Benjamin K. Bullock, Thos. B. Clark, Lyman L. Wood, Benjamin M. Roberts, James Stratton, John H. Carter, James C. Snow, George Baum, Caleb C. Baldwin, Hyram Pratt.
Morgan County—Sanford Porter.
Ogden City—Chauncey W. West, Jun., Nathaniel Leavitt.
Albert W. Davies, Adam Spiers, Geo. Naylor, B. L. Adams, Ward Pack, Alfred Lampson, William Asper, S. L. Sprague, Jr., Jno. Houtz, Elliot Hartwell, Silvester Jackman, W. L. N. Allen, Boyd Stewart, John W. Chamberlain, David Stewart, Barnard Rigby, Fred. Heath, George Goodrich, William Atkins, John Wayman, Amos Neff, Isaac Groo, Moses Thurston, Charles B. Taylor, Wm. Red, Daniel Seegmiller, Charles Seegmiller, James Vantassel, John Gabbott, Smith Bros.
Spanish Fork—Geo. B. Snell, Willard O. Creer, August Swensen, John H. Koil.
Payson—Daniel Stark,--Curtis, William Heaton, Joseph Tanner, William Whiteman, Jesse Taylor, Newell Potter, John Burr, John W. Keil Christopher F. Dixon, Charles C. Burr.
American Fork.—Arza Adams, Alexander Nichol, Henry Chipman, Steven Mott, Alexander Miller, William Robinson, Nathan Adams, William Kelly.
Springville.—Elmer Taylor, Lyman S. Wood, -- Bird, Lorenzo Johnson, Richard Thorn, Nelson Spafford.
Nephi – Samuel Claridge, Samuel Linton, Charles Foote, George Harmon, Israel Hoyt, John Esplin, Thomas Vicors.
Battle Creek—Ben. W. Driggs, Chauncy Bacon, Henson Walker, John Long.
Bountiful—William S. Muir, Israel Barlow, Jun., David Thackerel, Thomas James, David Thompson, Brigham Y. Baird, Christian Christiansen, Thomas Atkinson, Peter Corney, Chester Call.
Farmington.—Job Welling, David Hess, Oliver Robinson, Thomas Grover, Jr., David Saunders, Alma Hayes, Philander Brown, Elias Van Fleit, Lorenzo Watson, Thomas Steids.
Centreville. – William Myers, Ira Parks, Z. Cheeny, Michael Garns, Lyman Leavitt, Thomas Stolworthy, Chas. Hogg, John Myers, George Leavitt.
Coalville.—Hyrum Eldredge.
West Jordan—John Benion, Samuel Egbert, Robert Pickston, Samuel Bateman, Joseph Bateman, Benj. Cuttler.
Mill Creek—Edward Pugh, James Miller.
Grantsville—Aroet Hale, Ara W. Sabin, James Karl.
Tooele—David H. Leonard, Robert McHendrie, Peter Phister, George Coleman, Captain John Gillespie, Wm. A. Picket, Orson P. Bates, Enos Stookey.
Herriman's Fort—Thomas Butterfield.
Draperville—Joseph G. Brown.
Kaysville—Geo. Stevens, William A. Flint, Robert Egbert, James Shearer, John Weaver, James Green, James Sheen.
Big Cottonwood—James Spillet, Daniel G. Bryan, Charles Bagley, Preston Lewis, Wm. Newman, Samuel Rich, Duncan S. Casper.
Provo City – Martin W. Mills, Riley G. Clark, Samuel Pratt, Zenos T. Pratt, Wm. Brown, Alfred D. Young, Benjamin K. Bullock, Thos. B. Clark, Lyman L. Wood, Benjamin M. Roberts, James Stratton, John H. Carter, James C. Snow, George Baum, Caleb C. Baldwin, Hyram Pratt.
Morgan County—Sanford Porter.
Ogden City—Chauncey W. West, Jun., Nathaniel Leavitt.
President B. Young
then addressed the Conference on a number of subjects. His remarks were reported in full for publication.
Southern Missions—Deseret Alphabet—Relief Societies—Home Manufactures
Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct. 8th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
I wish to say to those who are called to go on the Southern mission, that I expect some of them cannot conveniently go; if so, they can be excused just as others have been. I think we called about one hundred and seventy-five one year ago to go on the Southern mission. Of those who responded to that call and went south, twelve or fifteen stayed; the rest have returned, I do not know whether to see their mothers or not. We hope a few will go out of this company, and a few of those will return who were called last year. We have our reasons for requesting the brethren to go into those new settlements; if they do not know the reasons now, let them wait until they do. We calculate to spread abroad, and when we have settled one valley we calculate to settle another. We are settling north, south, east and west, and we mean to keep it up. There are some who will be excused. One of the brethren has excused himself on the ground that he is building himself a barn. Now, this is so reasonable that I think we will excuse him, at any rate until he gets it finished. Perhaps we will find some who have married wives, others who have bought a yoke of oxen, and because of this they cannot go.
There is no necessity for the brethren hurrying away. They can go down this Fall, tarry through the Winter, and be prepared for the Spring. We shall excuse those who ought to be excused, and especially if they are building barns. As for those who have been there and have left, we expect to see the time that they will wish they had stayed there; and that those who have been called and have not gone will wish they had done so.
There are a few items I wish to lay before the Conference before we dismiss, which I think we shall do when we get through our meeting this afternoon. One of these items is to present to the congregation the Deseret Alphabet. We have now many thousands of small books, called the first and second readers, adapted to school purposes, on the way to this city. As soon as they arrive we shall distribute them throughout the Territory. We wish to introduce this alphabet into our schools, consequently we give this public notice. We have been contemplating this for years. The advantages of this alphabet will soon be realized, especially by foreigners. Brethren who come here knowing nothing of the English language will find its acquisition greatly facilitated by means of this alphabet, by which all the sounds of the language can be represented and expressed with the greatest ease. As this is the grand difficulty foreigners experience in learning the English language, they will find a knowledge of this alphabet will greatly facilitate their efforts in acquiring at least a partial English education. It will also be very advantageous to our children. It will be the means of introducing uniformity in our orthography, and the years that are now required to learn to read and spell can be devoted to other studies.
I wish to call the attention of our sisters to our Relief Societies. We are happy to say that many of them have done a great deal. We wish them to continue and progress. During this Conference, many of the ladies have worn very nice straw hats of home manufacture. This is commendable, and this course should be persevered in, until our hats and dresses are the workmanship of our own hands. To my view no trimming for a hat looks more beautiful than a nice straw rosette, bow or button; it looks better than a feather or artificial flower. In our Relief Societies we wish to introduce many improvements. We wish our sisters of experience to teach the young girls not to be so anxious for the gratification of their imaginary wants, but to confine themselves more to their real necessities. Fancy has no bounds, and I often think it is without form and comeliness. We are too apt to give way to the imagination of our hearts, but if we will be guided by wisdom, our judgment will be corrected, and we will find that we can improve very much. We can improve the language we use. I want my children to use better language than I sometimes use. Still, I have thought as the prophet Joseph has said, when you speak to a people or person you must use language to represent your ideas, so that they will be remembered. When you wish the people to feel what you say, you have got to use language that they will remember, or else the ideas are lost to them. Consequently, in many instances we use language that we would rather not use. When talking to a refined people we should use refined language. When we become perfectly civilized we will leave off every harsh expression. We should correct our children in these matters, and teach them good language. I would like to urge upon my brethren and sisters the necessity of doing this. We should instill into the minds of our children good ideas and principles. If we teach them that there are prophets and apostles now on the earth, we shall teach them the truth. If we teach them that the Bible is true, it will be very wholesome for them to believe; but instead of teaching them that it requires a spiritual explanation, by men not endowed with the Spirit of God, teach them that such a notion is incorrect, and that if the word of God does not mean what it says, no man or woman can explain it without a direct revelation from Heaven.
We wish to introduce into this community manufactures and manufacturing so thoroughly that the people will consider themselves under obligation to feed and clothe themselves. Many of us are in the habit of doing only just what we like to do or of sitting with our arms folded, trusting to others to feed and clothe us. It is the duty of the husband to provide for the wife or wives and children, and it is the duty of the wife or wives and children to assist the husband and father all they can. If it is required of the father or husband to furnish his wives and children with flour, it is equally required of the wives, sisters and daughters to be careful in the use of that flour and see that it is not wasted. If it is the duty of the husband or father to furnish his family with cloth to dress themselves, it is their duty to see that that cloth is cut and made prudently and not wasted. It is a disgrace to a community to drag their cloth in the dirt. How many women are there here today who walked to this Tabernacle without throwing dirt every step they took, not only on themselves but upon those who walked near them? I shun them; when I see them coming I try to make my way in some other direction in order to avoid their dust. I can get enough of it without receiving it from them. If there is a nuisance in the path, they are sure to wipe up a portion of it with their dress, and then trail it on to their carpet or into the bedrooms and distribute it through the house. This is a disgrace to them. It is not the duty of my brethren to buy cloth to be dragged through these streets, and the wife or daughter who will not cease dragging her dress through them, ought to have it cut shorter. I have borne it and so have my brethren until duty demands that we put a stop to it. I have politely expostulated with my wives and daughters on this subject. I have asked them if they think it looks nice, and have been told that it did, their reason for thinking so being that somebody else wore it so. That is all the argument that can be brought in its favor. There is no reason in the world why a dress looks well trailing through the streets.
On the other hand I will say, ladies, if we ask you to make your dresses a little shorter, do not be extravagant and cut them so short that we can see the tops of your stockings. Bring them down to the top of your shoes, and have them so that you can walk and clear the dust, and do not expose your persons. Have your dresses neat and comely, and conduct yourselves, in the strictest sense of the word, in chastity. If you do this you set a good example before the rising generation. Use good language, wear comely clothing and act in all things so that you can respect yourselves and respect each other. We wish you to remember and carry out these counsels.
Can you, ladies, manufacture bonnets for yourselves and daughters, and hats for your husbands, sons and brothers? Yes, you can, and save us scores of thousands of dollars.
I wonder if there is any person in our community who understands the manufacture of silk. We have some raw silk on hand that could be manufactured if we can find persons who understand the business. I am now building a house that will be sufficient to contain a million worms another year, it is a hundred feet long in the clear, and twenty broad. I calculate to fill it with worms next season, and make silk. I am going to invite some of the brethren to make up this silk into thread, and to color it and weave it. We can make our own thread and twist as easily as we can buy it. I have never seen better sewing silk than I once bought of a sister here, of her own manufacture. I would like to find somebody who knows how to manage the worms, and to double, twist, reel and weave the silk.
By ceasing the foolish practice of which we have so long been guilty—namely, trading off our produce at the stores for every little thing we have thought we needed—we shall drive ourselves to the necessity of sustaining ourselves. If we take this course and live our religion, do you think we will be respected? Yes. We are frequently told that the world is increasing in wickedness. We want the Saints to increase in goodness, until our mechanics, for instance, are so honest and reliable that this Railroad Company will say, “Give us a Mormon elder for an engineer, then none need have the least fear to ride, for if he knows there is danger he will take every measure necessary to preserve the lives of those entrusted to his care.” I want to see our elders so full of integrity that they will be preferred by this Company for their engine builders, watchmen, engineers, clerks and business managers. If we live our religion and are worthy the name of Latter-day Saints, we are just the men that all such business can be entrusted to with perfect safety; if it cannot it will prove that we do not live our religion.
A few words with regard to our Emigration Fund. We are going to continue our donations to this fund. We started our new subscriptions here on Tuesday night, and what do you think they amounted to? To two thousand dollars. That was a pretty good beginning. How many names do you think it took for that sum? Just two—a thousand dollars each. Now, sisters, do as you did last year—save the money you usually spend in tea and coffee and ribbons, and let us have it to send for the poor. We did remarkably well last year, though our prospects were not very flattering at the start. On the 1st of February, the time we thought of sending our agents East, we had nine thousand dollars, but on the 17th of the same month when brothers Clawson and Staines started we had a little over twenty-nine thousand. When the brethren said, “How dare you think of sending for the poor, we are getting no means?” I replied, “We will send for them and trust in God for the means.” And the means came in fast. The brethren and sisters brought in their five dollars, their tens, fifties, hundreds, and their thousands, and the poor were gathered. The Walker Brothers gave a thousand dollars, and they will be blest for it, if we do not wish to trade with them. Others of our merchants also contributed liberally. The poor are deserving of it. Why? Because from them they got their means. The merchants of this city have got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the poor, and if they give a little back to them it is no more than their due.
How our friends, the outside merchants will complain because we are going to stop trading with them! We cannot help it. It is not our duty to do it. Our policy in this respect, hitherto, has been one of the most foolish in the world. Henceforth it must be to let this trade alone, and save our means for other purposes than to enrich outsiders. We must use it to spread the Gospel, to gather the poor, build temples, sustain our poor, build houses for ourselves, and convert this means to a better use than to give it to those who will use it against us.
We have talked to the brethren and sisters a great deal with regard to sustaining ourselves and ceasing this outside trade. Now what say you, are you for it as well as we? Are we of one heart and one mind on this subject? We can get what we wish by sending to New York for it ourselves, as well as letting others send for us. We have skill and ability to trade for all we need; and if we have to send abroad we can send our agents to buy and bring home what we need. My feelings are that every man and woman who will not obey this counsel shall be severed from the Church, and let all who feel as I do lift up the right hand. [The vote was unanimous.] That is a pretty good vote. You who feel otherwise have the privilege of lifting up your hand to signify the same. I guess it was pretty nigh right.
Joseph used to say, “When you get the Latter-day Saints to agree on any point, you may know it is the voice of God.” I knew this before, but now it is proven to the whole people.
Will the nation find fault with us for this? No. Will the commercial world find fault? No; they will say, “This is the first trait in the ‘Mormon’ character we ever saw worthy of notice; it is praiseworthy, and they will be blessed.” That is what they will say. Why there is scarcely a decent man comes here but what says “Why don't you ‘Mormons’ do your own trading? Why do you sustain outsiders? It is the most impolitic thing you can do.”
I wish to say to the Conference that for one I feel well satisfied with our labors. We have labored diligently to sanctify ourselves and the people. If we succeed in doing this we shall be prepared to inherit life everlasting in the presence of our Father. I will say to all people, to those in the church and to those out, I want it distinctly understood that if we, that is myself, my counselors and my brethren the Twelve Apostles, and all who are heart and hand with us, can succeed in getting this people to come together in their feelings to sustain themselves and let other people alone, it will be one of the proudest days of our lives. We spread this to the world. Would to God that we had influence enough to induce all the inhabitants of the earth to listen to and obey the voice of God through his servants, to repent of their sins, be baptized for their remission and live to the glory of God that they might receive eternal life. I pray that this may be our lot, and I ask it in the name of Jesus.
This Conference is now adjourned until the 6th of next April.
The name of Elder Joseph W. Young who was appointed last winter to go south and assist President Erastus Snow, was presented to the Conference, by the President, who unanimously voted that he should fill the mission and be blessed and prospered.
Conference was then adjourned till April 6th, 1869, at 10 o'clock in the morning, to meet in the New Tabernacle.
Singing "Children of Zion awake from thy sadness," by the Tabernacle choir.
President Young pronounced the closing benediction.
E. L. Sloan,
Clerk of Conference.
then addressed the Conference on a number of subjects. His remarks were reported in full for publication.
Southern Missions—Deseret Alphabet—Relief Societies—Home Manufactures
Remarks by President Brigham Young, delivered in the New Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Oct. 8th, 1868.
Reported by David W. Evans.
I wish to say to those who are called to go on the Southern mission, that I expect some of them cannot conveniently go; if so, they can be excused just as others have been. I think we called about one hundred and seventy-five one year ago to go on the Southern mission. Of those who responded to that call and went south, twelve or fifteen stayed; the rest have returned, I do not know whether to see their mothers or not. We hope a few will go out of this company, and a few of those will return who were called last year. We have our reasons for requesting the brethren to go into those new settlements; if they do not know the reasons now, let them wait until they do. We calculate to spread abroad, and when we have settled one valley we calculate to settle another. We are settling north, south, east and west, and we mean to keep it up. There are some who will be excused. One of the brethren has excused himself on the ground that he is building himself a barn. Now, this is so reasonable that I think we will excuse him, at any rate until he gets it finished. Perhaps we will find some who have married wives, others who have bought a yoke of oxen, and because of this they cannot go.
There is no necessity for the brethren hurrying away. They can go down this Fall, tarry through the Winter, and be prepared for the Spring. We shall excuse those who ought to be excused, and especially if they are building barns. As for those who have been there and have left, we expect to see the time that they will wish they had stayed there; and that those who have been called and have not gone will wish they had done so.
There are a few items I wish to lay before the Conference before we dismiss, which I think we shall do when we get through our meeting this afternoon. One of these items is to present to the congregation the Deseret Alphabet. We have now many thousands of small books, called the first and second readers, adapted to school purposes, on the way to this city. As soon as they arrive we shall distribute them throughout the Territory. We wish to introduce this alphabet into our schools, consequently we give this public notice. We have been contemplating this for years. The advantages of this alphabet will soon be realized, especially by foreigners. Brethren who come here knowing nothing of the English language will find its acquisition greatly facilitated by means of this alphabet, by which all the sounds of the language can be represented and expressed with the greatest ease. As this is the grand difficulty foreigners experience in learning the English language, they will find a knowledge of this alphabet will greatly facilitate their efforts in acquiring at least a partial English education. It will also be very advantageous to our children. It will be the means of introducing uniformity in our orthography, and the years that are now required to learn to read and spell can be devoted to other studies.
I wish to call the attention of our sisters to our Relief Societies. We are happy to say that many of them have done a great deal. We wish them to continue and progress. During this Conference, many of the ladies have worn very nice straw hats of home manufacture. This is commendable, and this course should be persevered in, until our hats and dresses are the workmanship of our own hands. To my view no trimming for a hat looks more beautiful than a nice straw rosette, bow or button; it looks better than a feather or artificial flower. In our Relief Societies we wish to introduce many improvements. We wish our sisters of experience to teach the young girls not to be so anxious for the gratification of their imaginary wants, but to confine themselves more to their real necessities. Fancy has no bounds, and I often think it is without form and comeliness. We are too apt to give way to the imagination of our hearts, but if we will be guided by wisdom, our judgment will be corrected, and we will find that we can improve very much. We can improve the language we use. I want my children to use better language than I sometimes use. Still, I have thought as the prophet Joseph has said, when you speak to a people or person you must use language to represent your ideas, so that they will be remembered. When you wish the people to feel what you say, you have got to use language that they will remember, or else the ideas are lost to them. Consequently, in many instances we use language that we would rather not use. When talking to a refined people we should use refined language. When we become perfectly civilized we will leave off every harsh expression. We should correct our children in these matters, and teach them good language. I would like to urge upon my brethren and sisters the necessity of doing this. We should instill into the minds of our children good ideas and principles. If we teach them that there are prophets and apostles now on the earth, we shall teach them the truth. If we teach them that the Bible is true, it will be very wholesome for them to believe; but instead of teaching them that it requires a spiritual explanation, by men not endowed with the Spirit of God, teach them that such a notion is incorrect, and that if the word of God does not mean what it says, no man or woman can explain it without a direct revelation from Heaven.
We wish to introduce into this community manufactures and manufacturing so thoroughly that the people will consider themselves under obligation to feed and clothe themselves. Many of us are in the habit of doing only just what we like to do or of sitting with our arms folded, trusting to others to feed and clothe us. It is the duty of the husband to provide for the wife or wives and children, and it is the duty of the wife or wives and children to assist the husband and father all they can. If it is required of the father or husband to furnish his wives and children with flour, it is equally required of the wives, sisters and daughters to be careful in the use of that flour and see that it is not wasted. If it is the duty of the husband or father to furnish his family with cloth to dress themselves, it is their duty to see that that cloth is cut and made prudently and not wasted. It is a disgrace to a community to drag their cloth in the dirt. How many women are there here today who walked to this Tabernacle without throwing dirt every step they took, not only on themselves but upon those who walked near them? I shun them; when I see them coming I try to make my way in some other direction in order to avoid their dust. I can get enough of it without receiving it from them. If there is a nuisance in the path, they are sure to wipe up a portion of it with their dress, and then trail it on to their carpet or into the bedrooms and distribute it through the house. This is a disgrace to them. It is not the duty of my brethren to buy cloth to be dragged through these streets, and the wife or daughter who will not cease dragging her dress through them, ought to have it cut shorter. I have borne it and so have my brethren until duty demands that we put a stop to it. I have politely expostulated with my wives and daughters on this subject. I have asked them if they think it looks nice, and have been told that it did, their reason for thinking so being that somebody else wore it so. That is all the argument that can be brought in its favor. There is no reason in the world why a dress looks well trailing through the streets.
On the other hand I will say, ladies, if we ask you to make your dresses a little shorter, do not be extravagant and cut them so short that we can see the tops of your stockings. Bring them down to the top of your shoes, and have them so that you can walk and clear the dust, and do not expose your persons. Have your dresses neat and comely, and conduct yourselves, in the strictest sense of the word, in chastity. If you do this you set a good example before the rising generation. Use good language, wear comely clothing and act in all things so that you can respect yourselves and respect each other. We wish you to remember and carry out these counsels.
Can you, ladies, manufacture bonnets for yourselves and daughters, and hats for your husbands, sons and brothers? Yes, you can, and save us scores of thousands of dollars.
I wonder if there is any person in our community who understands the manufacture of silk. We have some raw silk on hand that could be manufactured if we can find persons who understand the business. I am now building a house that will be sufficient to contain a million worms another year, it is a hundred feet long in the clear, and twenty broad. I calculate to fill it with worms next season, and make silk. I am going to invite some of the brethren to make up this silk into thread, and to color it and weave it. We can make our own thread and twist as easily as we can buy it. I have never seen better sewing silk than I once bought of a sister here, of her own manufacture. I would like to find somebody who knows how to manage the worms, and to double, twist, reel and weave the silk.
By ceasing the foolish practice of which we have so long been guilty—namely, trading off our produce at the stores for every little thing we have thought we needed—we shall drive ourselves to the necessity of sustaining ourselves. If we take this course and live our religion, do you think we will be respected? Yes. We are frequently told that the world is increasing in wickedness. We want the Saints to increase in goodness, until our mechanics, for instance, are so honest and reliable that this Railroad Company will say, “Give us a Mormon elder for an engineer, then none need have the least fear to ride, for if he knows there is danger he will take every measure necessary to preserve the lives of those entrusted to his care.” I want to see our elders so full of integrity that they will be preferred by this Company for their engine builders, watchmen, engineers, clerks and business managers. If we live our religion and are worthy the name of Latter-day Saints, we are just the men that all such business can be entrusted to with perfect safety; if it cannot it will prove that we do not live our religion.
A few words with regard to our Emigration Fund. We are going to continue our donations to this fund. We started our new subscriptions here on Tuesday night, and what do you think they amounted to? To two thousand dollars. That was a pretty good beginning. How many names do you think it took for that sum? Just two—a thousand dollars each. Now, sisters, do as you did last year—save the money you usually spend in tea and coffee and ribbons, and let us have it to send for the poor. We did remarkably well last year, though our prospects were not very flattering at the start. On the 1st of February, the time we thought of sending our agents East, we had nine thousand dollars, but on the 17th of the same month when brothers Clawson and Staines started we had a little over twenty-nine thousand. When the brethren said, “How dare you think of sending for the poor, we are getting no means?” I replied, “We will send for them and trust in God for the means.” And the means came in fast. The brethren and sisters brought in their five dollars, their tens, fifties, hundreds, and their thousands, and the poor were gathered. The Walker Brothers gave a thousand dollars, and they will be blest for it, if we do not wish to trade with them. Others of our merchants also contributed liberally. The poor are deserving of it. Why? Because from them they got their means. The merchants of this city have got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the poor, and if they give a little back to them it is no more than their due.
How our friends, the outside merchants will complain because we are going to stop trading with them! We cannot help it. It is not our duty to do it. Our policy in this respect, hitherto, has been one of the most foolish in the world. Henceforth it must be to let this trade alone, and save our means for other purposes than to enrich outsiders. We must use it to spread the Gospel, to gather the poor, build temples, sustain our poor, build houses for ourselves, and convert this means to a better use than to give it to those who will use it against us.
We have talked to the brethren and sisters a great deal with regard to sustaining ourselves and ceasing this outside trade. Now what say you, are you for it as well as we? Are we of one heart and one mind on this subject? We can get what we wish by sending to New York for it ourselves, as well as letting others send for us. We have skill and ability to trade for all we need; and if we have to send abroad we can send our agents to buy and bring home what we need. My feelings are that every man and woman who will not obey this counsel shall be severed from the Church, and let all who feel as I do lift up the right hand. [The vote was unanimous.] That is a pretty good vote. You who feel otherwise have the privilege of lifting up your hand to signify the same. I guess it was pretty nigh right.
Joseph used to say, “When you get the Latter-day Saints to agree on any point, you may know it is the voice of God.” I knew this before, but now it is proven to the whole people.
Will the nation find fault with us for this? No. Will the commercial world find fault? No; they will say, “This is the first trait in the ‘Mormon’ character we ever saw worthy of notice; it is praiseworthy, and they will be blessed.” That is what they will say. Why there is scarcely a decent man comes here but what says “Why don't you ‘Mormons’ do your own trading? Why do you sustain outsiders? It is the most impolitic thing you can do.”
I wish to say to the Conference that for one I feel well satisfied with our labors. We have labored diligently to sanctify ourselves and the people. If we succeed in doing this we shall be prepared to inherit life everlasting in the presence of our Father. I will say to all people, to those in the church and to those out, I want it distinctly understood that if we, that is myself, my counselors and my brethren the Twelve Apostles, and all who are heart and hand with us, can succeed in getting this people to come together in their feelings to sustain themselves and let other people alone, it will be one of the proudest days of our lives. We spread this to the world. Would to God that we had influence enough to induce all the inhabitants of the earth to listen to and obey the voice of God through his servants, to repent of their sins, be baptized for their remission and live to the glory of God that they might receive eternal life. I pray that this may be our lot, and I ask it in the name of Jesus.
This Conference is now adjourned until the 6th of next April.
The name of Elder Joseph W. Young who was appointed last winter to go south and assist President Erastus Snow, was presented to the Conference, by the President, who unanimously voted that he should fill the mission and be blessed and prospered.
Conference was then adjourned till April 6th, 1869, at 10 o'clock in the morning, to meet in the New Tabernacle.
Singing "Children of Zion awake from thy sadness," by the Tabernacle choir.
President Young pronounced the closing benediction.
E. L. Sloan,
Clerk of Conference.