Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 30

A PROFIT-SEEKING PROPHET

IN spite of the governor's friendship, the President's pardon, and the reassuring despatch of General Johnston, the Mormons camped by Utah Lake did not immediately return to their homes. Brigham was still suspicious, both of the army and of its commander; and he knew that the federal judges bore him no good will. Governor Cumming bustled about, swearing that the amnesty should be kept, that no one need fear anything -- saying "No,sir! By God, sir!" -- and generally making himself a model of pompous incompetence. No one paid any attention to him -- a fact which does not seem to have lessened his good humour in the least. Brigham waited until satisfied that the troops were under perfect discipline, and that General Johnston had no night-riding tendencies. Then, on July 5, the uncrowned emperor climbed on his wagon at the camp by the lake, and told his people that he was going home. The return began at once.

But it was not a return to the care-free, irresponsible dominion he had enjoyed before. Brigham's power was almost as great as ever; but he was obliged to be more circumspect in the use of it. He remained ruler of the kingdom, but now he found it necessary to rule with some slight regard for "foreign" public opinion. Even so slight a restraint was irksome to the free-spoken despot, and for a time he -- or his people -- had some apprehensions for his personal safety. Wherever he went, a small but devoted bodyguard attended him, and a watch was kept over the house where he passed the night.

This fear was not wholly without foundation. The new federal judges appointed to Utah were of higher character than most of their predecessors. But they were endowed with long memories, and they did not grasp the necessity of ignoring past political offences. At the November term of court in 1858, judge Sinclair tried to secure the arrest of Brigham and his aids on the indictments for treason found against them the previous winter. He admitted that the President's pardon covered these offences, but insisted that this pardon must be pleaded in court; that it was a bar to punishment, but not to arrest. This may have been good law, but in the existing condition of Utah affairs, it was bad sense. The president had chosen to forgive the Mormon leaders. There was nothing to do but accept that pardon as a fact, close accounts, open a new set of books, and start afresh. To fail in this, to seek to humiliate Brigham and Heber Kimball was to repeat the blunder of the Mormon chiefs, who, by their everlasting harping on their trials in Missouri and Illinois, were giving to their followers an almost incurable case of political jaundice. The United States district attorney, wiser than judge Sinclair, refused to take any action in the matter, and this first clash passed harmlessly.

There were offences not covered by any mantle of forgiveness, however; and with such judge Cradlebaugh came in contact when he held court in southern Utah. The story of Mountain Meadows had leaked out. Some doings of the "reformation" had come to light. Cradlebaugh made a personal investigation of these crimes, and -- not unnaturally -- seemed to lose his sense of judicial propriety in anger at the ecclesiastical tyranny which could permit or promote such atrocities. Cradlebaugh became convinced that Brigham and his aids were not only morally but legally responsible for Mountain Meadows. In the full belief that he had found a way to break up the Mormon hierarchy, the judge called a grand jury at Provo in March, 1859. He laid before them the facts he had collected and the opinions he had formed, and practically ordered them to return indictments, not only against actual participants in the various outrages, but against the heads of the church. In order to protect the court and witnesses from Mormon vengeance, judge Cradlebaugh had a detachment of soldiers from Camp Floyd stationed at Provo.

It was a bad move in a good cause; but if it had no other effect, it at least showed the marvellous solidarity of Brigham's empire. Judge Cradlebaugh had supposed that the Mormons were held in ecclesiastical bondage through terror, that they would break away gladly the moment they were assured of protection. The Spartan king who thought to rouse the people of Alexandria by the cry of "Liberty!" was not more grievously disappointed. The whole Mormon community blazed forth in indignation at the judge who dared accuse their holy priests of crime, and who proclaimed that the law of the land was higher than the law of God, as revealed through the mouth of His prophet.

The grand jury refused to return indictments. Judge Cradlebaugh issued bench warrants, but they could not be served. The whole community closed ranks and acted as one man in protection of their hierarchy. Governor Cumming ordered the troops at Provo to return to Camp Floyd. General Johnston replied that Cradlebaugh had asked for protection and should have it. In spite of the soldiers, in spite of his own unjudicial zeal, Cradlebaugh's efforts came to nothing. At last, he entered on the docket a minute that the whole population seemed leagued to defeat justice, and adjourned court without day in a bitter speech, whose unseemly phrases are kept alive by Mormon historians even yet.

The matter of military protection for the courts was appealed to Washington, and decided against judge Cradlebaugh. President Buchanan held that the governor alone had a right to make requisition for troops, and that the judges must prefer their requests through him. It was a proper, indeed, an inevitable decision; but it completed the triumph of Brigham, and showed that in stirring up strife between Governor Cumming and General Johnston, Colonel Kane had builded better than he knew. The governor hated the commander with all the venom that pompous inefficiency feels for haughty competency. The soldiers could scarcely have had less effect on the administration of Utah if they had been camped on the Missouri river.

Hardly had Cradlebaugh's scheme of redemption come to an inglorious end at Provo than a yet sharper excitement broke out at Salt Lake City. A Gentile named Brewer had conceived the plan of counterfeiting the notes drawn by the quartermaster at Camp Floyd on the assistant treasurer of the United States. A counterfeit plate was engraved by a young Mormon artist, who is said not to have known the purpose for which his work was required. The fraud was detected, Brewer was arrested, and immediately tried to clear himself by confessing and offering to turn state's evidence. He implicated Brigham in the plot. A writ was issued for Brigham's arrest, and officers from Camp Floyd asked Governor Cumming to deputize them to seize the Mormon king. Cumming indignantly refused to have any part in the plan. A few days later, word was brought to Salt Lake City that General Johnston was preparing to make a night march on the city for the purpose of arresting the heads of the church. The story was false; but without waiting for confirmation, Governor Cumming ordered General Wells to call out the Nauvoo Legion, and prepare to repel the threatened "invasion!" In a few hours, five thousand armed Mormons had gathered for the fight.

The charge against Brigham of counterfeiting was both malignant and absurd; though whether Cumming was wise in refusing to permit a judicial examination of that charge may well be doubted. The point worth noting in this episode is the completeness with which Brigham controlled the official head of the territory. Little more than a year had passed since Cumming was cooling his heels in a mountain camp, waiting for federal troops to disperse the rebellious Nauvoo Legion, and seat him in the governor's chair. Now, from that very chair, he was calling on these same rebels to resist the troops who had brought him to the city. The federal governor had become a mere cog in Brigham's political machine. American history holds few, if any, more striking instances of the triumph of personal ascendency over official power.

With the military arm thus effectually bound, the army soon became a source of revenue, rather than of fear. Brigham at first preached strict non-intercourse between the Saints of Zion and the sinners of Camp Floyd; but his practice did not square with his precepts and the doctrine of quarantine was soon abandoned altogether. A number of Gentile merchants with Mormon connections established tradinghouses at the camp; and supplied -- for a consideration -- goods for Uncle Sam's soldiers, and for the numerous camp followers who trail after an army. The Walker brothers, whom we shall soon find in open and not unsuccessful opposition to Brigham, got their real start in merchandising at Camp Floyd. But Brigham, as might have been expected, took a larger profit than any of his followers. On representations that no flour could be had in Utah, a contract had been let by the government to bring this article from the Missouri valley to Camp Floyd at the outrageous price of $28.40 per hundred pounds. The price of flour in Utah was $6 per hundred. Brigham and the contractors got together, the troops were fed on flour from the Mormon tithing-house, the contractors made a tremendous profit, and it is fair to believe that they made an equitable division of their plunder with the "Lion of the Lord." Many faults have been laid to his charge, but Brigham Young was never accused of the profitless weakness of being easy to cheat.

The presence of federal troops and judges could not even save the lives of persons whom the kingdom wished to execute. Such matters had to be handled more circumspectly than in the days of the "reformation," and minor church officials no longer dared assume to dispense the high justice, the middle, and the low. But the man who incurred the serious enmity of the hierarchy, unless protected by high character and corresponding influence, had short shrift. For example, Brewer, the man who had accused Brigham of complicity in counterfeiting. was shot one night while walking in company with a gambler. The coroner's jury next day declared that the two men had shot each other. No one in Utah believed the ridiculous verdict, but it stood. Brewer had sought to defile the Lord's anointed, and death was his only possible punishment. The killing of the gambler was a by-product, so to speak. No one had any especial reason for wishing him dead; but he was in the way; and the life of a gambler never has been esteemed very highly in western communities. The soldiers were not allowed to come to the city; but camp followers could not be put under the same restraint. A considerable street was given over to saloons and disorderly houses designed to cater to this new class of custom --though it is not to be supposed that Gentiles alone visited this quarter. Killings in this neighborhood were frequent and excited little attention. If perchance anyone was arrested for a "Whiskey Street" offence, the odds were against his being brought to trial. The "ley fuga" was as well established in Utah at this time as in the Mexico of the Diaz regime; and seriously undesirable citizens who got into the Salt Lake City jail -- especially if under guard of "Port" Rockwell -- acquired the habit of being "killed while attempting to escape."

The only cloud that menaced Brigham's supremacy during this period was a design to remove Governor Cumming. General Johnston and other officers had not been slow in reporting the governor's subservience to the Mormon hierarchy; and President Buchanan determined to replace the compliant official with some one more nearly capable of asserting federal authority. From this danger, Brigham was saved once more by Colonel Kane. Rising from the bed where he was confined with pleurisy, when every word and movement cost him a pang, Colonel Kane delivered a lecture on "the situation in Utah" before the Historical Society of New York. He declared that the Mormons were divided into two parties: one of fire-eaters, who wanted war with the federal government; and one, headed by Brigham, who were determined to keep the peace. He praised Governor Cumming in the highest degree, as the ideal man to cope with the difficult situation. Mormon officials in New York saw to it that this lecture was reported in the press throughout the East; and Buchanan was forced to halt. He had himself praised Kane's exalted patriotism, and attested his superior knowledge of all Utah affairs; and now he was powerless before the reputation he had helped to build.

This is the last time we shall meet Colonel Kane in this history and it may not be amiss to pause a moment in contemplation of his character. That character was one which Richelieu or Charles Second would have appraised more correctly than did President Buchanan or General Johnston. It is one of the conventions of English-speaking lands that the brave man is ever truthful; that the untruthful man is ever cowardly; that false-speaking is so corrosive a poison that it destroys the whole moral nature, and leaves the liar a whited sepulchre, filled with all uncleanness, and empty of all all soundness or virtue. The persistence of this theory is due to the Anglo-Saxon's skill in deceiving himself, rather than to his reluctance in deceiving others; and the single case of Colonel Kane upsets the notion altogether.

Kane was a man of unblushing mendacity and unfaltering courage; and both qualities were used for the advantage of others, rather than of himself. In his zeal for the Mormon cause, he stopped at no falsehood and hesitated at no danger. He believed it his task to save the Mormon church from the destruction which Gentiles were plotting against it; and nothing was allowed to interfere with that sacred mission. In a letter to President Fillmore, Kane denounced the "spiritual wife story" as an unmixed outrage -- when he must have had personal acquaintance with at least half a dozen of Brigham's plural wives. When so weak from illness that most men in like condition would have deemed it an act of courage to go to a well-warmed office, Kane wallowed through snowfilled canyons to Camp Scott, to turn aside the threatened blow at the Mormon hierarchy. Reaching camp, he dared the fire of the sentry, broke the astonished soldier's head with his own musket, and challenged the commanding officer to a duel. He did these things, not from passion, but deliberately to secure attention, to show his contempt for General Johnston, and give point to his subtle flattery of Governor Cumming. The event proved the correctness of his reasoning.

Such a man never fails to win unsparing curses from enemies, and unmeasured praise from friends. Praises and curses alike are deserved; but neither, standing alone, give a picture of the man. Kane earned condemnation from the United States government; and escaped it. He earned canonization from the Mormon hierarchy; and received it. He deserves from history only the just and unprejudiced estimate which belongs to every man; and this the present writers have tried to accord. Had Kane done for himself what he did for others, he would have been an unmitigated scoundrel. Had his honor been equal to his unselfish devotion, he would have been wellnigh a saint. The combination left him a strange, baffling man, a figure that at once attracts and repels; an ecclesiastical diplomat, with the mien of a soldier, a warrior in the habit of a priest.