Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 32

BRIGHAM, A TRUST BUILDER

BRIGHAM doubtless expected the federal government to celebrate its triumph over slavery by moving with resistless force on slavery's twin relic, polygamy. It was the logical thing to look for, and direct evidence on the point is not lacking. Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House of Representatives, visited Utah in June, 1865, on what closely resembled a tour of inspection. He was accompanied by Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican -- then, as now, a power in the wiser councils of the Republican party. In a conversation with Young, Colfax suggested that the Lord might be induced to send a new "revelation," abolishing polygamy. Bowles reports Brigham's answer as follows: "Mr. Young responded quietly and frankly that he should readily welcome such a revelation; that polygamy was not in the original Book of the Mormons; that it was not an essential practice of the church, but only a privilege and a duty, under special command of God."

To Linn, one of the most painstaking but hardly the most impartial historian who has dealt with Mormon matters, this story serves only as a text for a sermon on the absurdities of Editor Bowles. The present writers, however they may be inclined to laugh at the phrase, "Book of the Mormons," believe that Brigham spoke seriously and was quoted correctly. That he would have given up the practice of polygamy in good faith we do mot for a moment believe. But we have not a doubt that he was prepared to issue such a revelation stopping polygamy as the price of statehood for Utah, if such a step had seemed necessary. Brigham was a fighter, not a martyr; and he was ready to use any strategem that seemed promising in a fight against such overwhelming odds.

As it turned out, however, Brigham was not long in learning that so far as the efficiency of the federal government was concerned, the death of Lincoln had more than counterbalanced the surrender at Appomattox. The assassin's pistol had hardly cooled before the murdered President's successor was locked in a futile quarrel with Congress, a quarrel which brought credit to neither party, and which left the Mormon kingdom for years undisturbed save by troubles which came from within.

First of these in point of time were a series of crimes in which Gentiles were the victims, and whose perpetrators usually escaped discovery. The earliest of these was the Brassfield case. Newton Brassfield, a Gentile, married the plural wife of a Mormon elder named Hill, who was then absent in Europe on a mission. Holding that the marriage of Mrs. Hill was not properly a marriage at all, the parties did not even apply for a church divorce, and the woman's maiden name was used in the ceremony which united her to Brassfield. She attempted to secure possession of her children by Hill through a write of habeas corpus; but before the matter could be decided, Brassfield was shot.

The murder was at once laid to the Mormon hierarchy. There is nothing to show that Brigham or any of his aids planned or ordered the killing; but their complete approval of it was not disguised. Brassfield was murdered the night of April 2, 1866. At the opening of the church conference four days later, Brigham declared from the pulpit that in a similar case in his own family, he would lay justice to the line and righteousness to the plummet. "I say that for myself, not for another," he went on. "Were I absent from my home, I would rejoice to know that I had friends there to protect and guard the virtue of my household; and I would thank God for such friends."

This is nothing but the Mohammedan harem law over again. The Oriental marriage system had brought all sorts of Asiatic notions in its train. Brigham stuck to his guns, even when serious trouble threatened as the result of the murder. General W. T. Sherman, commander of the military department of the plains, telegraphed that he hoped to hear of no more murders of Gentiles in Utah, and intimated that it would be easy to re-enlist some of the volunteers recently disbanded. Brigham answered by wire that Brassfield was a seducer, who merited his fate; and procured another telegram signed by some Gentiles, to the effect that non-Mormons who minded their own business were not troubled in Utah. The affair blew over; but the soldiers then stationed at Camp Douglas were not disbanded.

Without endorsing either the Mohammedan harem law unconsciously imported by Brigham or the American plea of the "unwritten law," the present writers feel bound to say that there were many extenuating circumstances about the Brassfield killing. Brassfield's marriage to Mrs. Hill was conducted in a manner which combined offence to the whole community with unfair advantage taken of an absent man. If Brassfield wished to challenge the system of plural marriage, he should have waited till Hill came home. If he did not wish to make such a challenge, he should have conformed to the customs and regarded the feelings of Hill's co-religionists. The attempt to get control of the children during their father's absence was peculiarly unfair, and the whole business was conducted with lack of taste and lack of sense. This does not justify the murder; if bad taste were a capital offence in the Mormon kingdom, there would have been a terrific mortality among elders and Apostles. But people who take pains to attack community sanctities in the most offensive way are walking in danger. The historian may say of Brassfield, as the coroner's jury said of the tenderfoot who called a gun-fighter a liar, that the man committed suicide.

In October of the same year came another killing devoid of all mitigating circumstances. Dr. J. King Robinson, formerly assistant surgeon at Camp Douglas, laid claim to some warm springs in the northern part of the city. He was ordered off by the city marshal, took his case to the courts, and judge Titus decided in favour of the city. Then, when all possible excuse for violence had passed, Dr. Robinson was decoyed out one night on a pretended professional call, and murdered. There is good reason to believe that the original intention was to beat him; but a young and courageous athlete is not lightly handled in this fashion. The shot which killed the doctor was fired, either by a phenomenally short man, or more probably, by a man lying on the ground, whither the physician's fist had sent him. Brigham felt it necessary to offer a reward for the apprehension of Robinson's murderers; but they never were found. It is hardly necessary to say that Brigham could have laid hands on them in three hours had be wished to do so. But however angry he may have been at the embarrassing and useless outrage, Brigham had no notion of allowing reputable Saints to suffer at the hands of Gentiles for upholding the kingdom too zealously.

The Gentile population -- horrified at Robinson's fate, and alarmed for themselves -- turned out en masse to the funeral, and conducted the best inquiry possible into the circumstances of his death. But their investigation came to nothing, and for the moment, at least, their courage faltered. General Connor, whose unhesitating nerve had been a tower of strength during the dark days of the Civil war, was gone; and there was none to take his place. Brave men, in the sense that the average soldier is brave, are common enough; but men whose nerve snaps into action automatically, and is disconcerted neither by odds nor surprise, are rather rarer than true poets. The Gentile merchants took counsel together, and drew up a statement to Brigham, offering to leave the territory. They asked only that he would guarantee their outstanding accounts, and take their goods off their hands at a 25 per cent reduction from appraised cash values.

Brigham answered curtly that he had not asked them to come and did not intend to bribe them to go. He was too shrewd to entertain such a proposal for a second. To have the Gentile merchants of Utah emigrate en masse would be sure to bring down upon the territory the heavy hand of the federal government; and Brigham knew by this time that open resistance to that government was totally out of the question.

A season of comparative quiet followed; or rather, none of the troubles threatening the Mormon kingdom came to a head. The new attempt to secure statehood failed; but on the other hand, the new and more drastic anti-polygamy hill did not pass. Indian troubles continued to bother frontier settlements, but this annoyance was not sufficient to check the growth of the territory. That growth was substantial, though perhaps too largely expressed in public works, and in the prosperity of the heads, of the church. A telegraph line between Salt Lake City and Ogden was finished in the fall of 1866; and early in 1867, the wires were carried into the southern settlements. Brigham was one of the incorporators of this "Deseret Telegraph Company," as well as its first president. Crickets ruined crops in several counties this year, but in spite of this loss, the new Tabernacle, seating nearly ten thousand persons, was ready for the general conference in October.

We may pause, too, to chronicle the death of Heber C. Kimball, June 22, 1868. Perhaps the loss of any of his wives would not have affected Brigham so nearly. Brigham had little trouble in getting married, but he paid the despot's price in the uncertainty of new-found friends. Heber's friendship was not open to question. He had followed Brigham into baptismal waters, and he continued this devoted adherence all through life. Coarse, uneducated, but loyal to the core, Heber had made a place for himself in the rather cold heart of his master; and that place was never filled. George A. Smith was chosen counsellor in Heber's place; and some time later, the list of counsellors was enlarged to enable Brigham to include the only one of the younger generation who ever won his entire confidence -- George Q. Cannon. That confidence was not mistaken. George Q. Cannon was as loyal as Heber had been, and brought far more intelligence and infinitely more knowledge and independence of thought to the churchly cabinet. But the ancient association was not to be replaced.

All this time, the Union Pacific Railroad was creeping westward across the plains, and the Central Pacific was working eastward toward a junction of which no man knew more than that it must occur in some part of Utah. Brigham once had said that he wished he could build a wall around the territory so high that no Gentile could enter; and perhaps that would have been his choice to the last hour of his life. But he knew how to accept facts; and since isolation was impossible, the sooner the railroad arrived the better. To some of the faithful who expressed doubts as to the effect of this new enterprise on the church, Brigham had answered roughly, "Damn a religion that can't stand one railroad!" He became a director in the company, and secured contracts for grading a considerable extent of the track -- contracts which he immediately sublet at a profit. That he made a tidy sum of money in this way is certain; but it was a petty fraction of what the eastern and western syndicates concerned in that enterprise managed to squeeze out of stockholders and government.

The approaching railroad focussed and brought to a head the long-drawn mercantile problem of the kingdom. In the beginning, as the Mormon historian Tulledge points out, " to become a merchant was to antagonize the church." This first antipathy had passed; but even yet, an undue proportion of Utah trade was in the hands of Gentiles, or -- worse yet -- of apostates.

Foremost of these were four Englishmen, the Walker brothers. Their parents had joined the Mormon faith while the lads were yet minors, and all had come to America together. The father died of cholera, but the mother and her sons made the journey to Utah, and shared in all the hardships of the early days. When Camp Floyd was established, the Walkers started a store to supply soldiers and camp followers. Brigham could not well object to this, while he was making a fortune by supplying wood and flour to the army, but he did not look on the new enterprise with any enthusiasm. When the camp was abandoned, the Walkers bought a considerable share of the goods thrown on the market, and moved their store to Salt Lake City. Here they came more directly under the espionage of the prophet; and soon found themselves in trouble over tithes. They refused to let the bishop of the ward see their books. When a rather pressing demand for their tithes was made upon them, they gave a check for $500 as a contribution to "the poor." Brigham sent back the check with a high-handed message, and a demand for a tenth of their profits, on pain of cutting them off from the church. Joseph Robert Walker, who though not the oldest was clearly the leader of the four brothers, took the check, tore it up, and told the bishop-messenger boy to "cut away."

Had the clash come before the Civil war, the defiant merchants must have been beaten. Even now they had a hard struggle. But they were natural traders and business men, they had the merit of absolute loyalty within their own ranks, and the soldiers at Camp Douglas relieved them of any fear of summary proceedings. The Walkers sold goods cheaper than any one else in the valley; and women, even though they be Saints, and stars in the crown of a coming deity, cannot resist a bargain. Brigham stationed "pickets" before the apostate door to warn away trade -- and trade went around to the back door. He resorted to the expedient of placing an "all-seeing eye," and the words "holiness to the Lord" over the doors of Mormon storekeepers; but even this did not suffice. If the Walker brothers could thus defy the church when it still had considerable control over means of transportation, what would happen when the new railroad arrived, and the great Gentle world was brought to the kingdom's very door?

Brigham saw the danger, and prepared to meet it. Where he got the notion for his great plan cannot be told. It may have grown naturally out of the other co-operative enterprises of the Mormons. It may have been a sudden thought of his own. The important point is that late in 1868, Brigham assembled a few of the chief men of the church, and announced his scheme of a co-operative store, "Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution," quickly abbreviated to Z. C. M. I.

The scheme was nothing less than the forming of a trust. All Mormon merchants were required to go into this one grand undertaking. The tithing power and reserve of the church were to be put behind it. Shares of the new institution were to be offered to all the faithful, and in this way a large body of interested patrons would be secured. Instead of competing with each other, the Saints were to join forces to crush Gentile and apostate traders.

At first, every one balked at the new idea; and Mormon merchants whose business was doing well were particularly loud in denunciation. But Brigham's savage will and imperial power overrode all opposition. To the plea of one man that the scheme would ruin him, since he had debts that would more than cover the bare value of his stock, Brigham replied brutally that it would serve him right, as he had no business to be in debt. "If Henry W. Lawrence doesn't look out, I'll send him on a mission, and W. S. Godbe I'll cut off from the church!" he roared in answer to the protests of another pair. William Jennings, richest of the Mormon traders, had to face a yet more galling kind of treatment; for on Sunday Brigham would rise in the pulpit, and denounce by name those who, while pretending to be Saints, yet were "grinding the faces of the poor!" Jennings' name led all the rest. After a short course of this kind of ecclesiastical discipline, Jennings succumbed, joined the new corporation, turned in his stock at a good figure, and rented his store to the new enterprise for three years. Z. C. M. I. was launched early in 1869, and has been the chief mercantile factor in Utah ever since.

No event in Brigham's life shows more clearly his strength and resourcefulness than the founding of Z. C. M. I. None gives a better view of his utter ruthlessness toward those who crossed his path. None illustrates more concisely the money-making instinct which was so basic an element of his nature. Tullidge does not exaggerate when he says that the vending of this trading trust saved the temporal power of the church; and he might have added that without this temporal power, Mormonism would soon sink to the position of a rather interesting, and very unimportant sect. From this "innocuous desuetude," the church was saved by Brigham. He gathered its scattered resources, combined them in a financial fighting institution which is today a power from coast to coast; beat back the threatened inroad of Gentile merchandising; made the railroad pay toll to the kingdom, instead of wrecking it. The conception at that day was great in its novelty and its daring; the domineering will which carried the conception to reality is worthy of the same praise we accord to a stubborn soldier.

And for this priceless service to the church, Brigham took pay. He was the first president of the new corporation. As would be said of a new trust flotation, he came in on the ground floor. Having fought for his people like a crusader, he proceeded to charge them full price for his brains and energy.

The financial peril against which Brigham guarded so ably was not the only one which menaced his supremacy at this time. There was also a determined effort at doctrinal and disciplinary reform of the church from within. A considerable group of well educated and well-placed Mormons had been growing gradually away from the simple gospel of paying tithes and taking orders, which had come to be the orthodox confession of faith in the kingdom. They did not wish to leave the church. They only desired to reform it, to rescue it from the despotic control of Brigham, and from the narrow exclusiveness which had inevitably grown up in a religious body so thoroughly isolated from the world.

Foremost in this "New Movement" -- at least in point of time -- were W. S. Godbe and E. L. T. Harrison. Both were men of independent means, Godbe was widely travelled, and Harrison was an architect by profession, besides having some claims to prominence as a writer. With them were soon associated Edward W. Tullidge, doubtless the leading literary light of the kingdom; Henry W. Lawrence, like Godbe a merchant and a wealthy man; and a number of others of similar standing. All things are comparative. It is probable that the New Movement included a larger proportion of the available brains and education of Utah than the Encylopedists did of the brains and learning of France. Certainly, there were few in the orthodox ranks who could meet the New Movement men far a moment in debate.

Their attack on the despotism to which they objected was conducted with remarkable skill. Harrison and Godbe owned the Utah Magazine, which was dying of inanition as a purely literary periodical. This magazine was now put to work as a journal of reform. It did not directly attack the church policies of Brigham, but it antagonized him in many ways. It encouraged the development of Utah mining, something which Brigham had always avoided. It declared openly that the greatest of all religious errors was to imagine "that God intended the priesthood to do our thinking." It sought to familiarize Mormon youth with the careers of great men in the outside world, fully trusting that the inevitable comparison would not redound to the advantage of the high-handed despot who ruled the church in Zion.

A little circumstance helped for a time the propaganda of the New Movement leaders, and then hurried their downfall. Alexander and David Hyrum Smith, two sons of the prophet Joseph, and leaders of the "Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," came to Salt Lake City. Apparently, they brought with them some charming dream that the house of Zion, which Brigham had builded with toil and bloody sweat, would be handed over to them on the mere presentation of their cards. They were not long in learning their error. Having been reared by their mother, Emma Smith, who had always abhorred the doctrine of polygamy, these young men accused Brigham of having engrafted this cult on the pure religion left by their father. Brigham answered that they possessed the spirit of their mother, not of their father; and added that the aforesaid mother, Emma Hale Smith, was "the damnedest liar that ever lived." Instead of terminating the interview with a pistol, as most men would have been tempted to do under like circumstances, the young men argued the matter, and failing with Brigham, tried to hold meetings through the city, and preach the superior merits of the "Reorganized" church.

Their efforts came to nothing, as might have been anticipated. Brigham's aids saw to it that each meeting was attended by persons familiar with church history in Missouri and Nauvoo, and each meeting degenerated into a wrangle.

Joseph F. Smith, present president of the church, was especially useful in this regard, because he was a nephew of the prophet. But the New Movement leaders noted the struggle in the Utah Magazine, and managed to take a shot at both sides. "If we know the true feelings of our brethren," they declared, "it is that they never intend Joseph Smith's son nor any other man's son to preside over them, simple because of their sonship."

This was a thrust at Brigham's well-known wish to secure the prophetic succession to his son, John W., as well as the pretensions of the resuscitated Smiths from Missouri. Brigham retorted by ordering Godbe and Harrison to go on missions. They refused. Not long after, timing his movements so as to do the most good, Brigham summoned the two men before the high council, which promptly excommunicated them. Eli B. Kelsey, who objected to this summary proceeding, was instantly dealt with in the same manner. A manifesto was issued, signed by Brigham and several others high in church counsels, denouncing the Utah Magazine as a pernicious work, and forbidding the faithful to read it. The "reformers" had a clear-cut issue sooner than they expected it.

Writers on Mormonism, unconsciously copying the estimate which the literary leaders of the New Movement placed on their own work, have assured the world for a generation that this revolt did serious damage to Brigham's rule, and threatened for a time to overthrow his sway altogether. The present writers regret to dissent from so amiable and unanimous a conclusion, but are quite unable to reconcile that opinion with the facts. The reformers had courage, devotion, steadfastness, and high intelligence; but their movement went to wreck the moment it was launched. With all their wit, they found themselves unable to reach the people whom Brigham held as in the hollow of his hand, and a single raging sermon from him made the term "Godbeite" hated and feared throughout the kingdom. And with all their resentment of Mormon autocracy, its capital was the only place where the ablest of the New Movement leaders felt secure. Godbe and several of his co-workers were polygamists, whose hands were tied by plural wives, and children born in plural marriage.

The New Movement cost the Mormon kingdom the cession of not a single dogma, and the loss of scarcely a hundred members. Seldom, if ever, has so formidable seeming an attack on ecclesiastical ramparts been so quickly and finally repelled.

And all this time Brigham was colonizing throughout the inter-mountain region and some other parts of the world with his usual energy and skill. Neither trouble nor triumph at home deterred him. His ablest pioneers were directed into the choicest valleys of southern Idaho, western Wyoming, Arizona, and New Mexico to establish the Lord's possession and Brigham's rule. Any man who made a notable success in the kingdom proper, either as a tiller of the soil or as a governor of tillers of the soil, was likely to be called to open new provinces. Such a man was usually sent as a leader after the land had been carefully and shrewdly observed by himself, or a predecessor; and a body of faithful young men with their families was selected to accompany him. There was neither rebellion nor delay in fulfilling this mission. To leave the Salt Lake and other valleys of Utah with their plenitude and their ties may have been a hardship, but it was invariably endured without murmur.

Brigham had said that all this land was Zion, to be ruled by the prophet of Zion; and, beginning with 1855 and continuing to the time of his death, Brigham was establishing his claim as a fact. Nor did he pause with colonization in the United States. His missionaries had gained a strong foothold in the Hawaiian Islands, where one-fifth of the native population had accepted his gospel; and there he secured profitable plantations. In Mexico on the south and Canada on the north, his pioneers located their towns, built their meeting-houses, and reached out for all the valuable land that joined them. It was the exercise of imperial ambition, as well as wisdom. Brigham wanted rich provinces to feed with unfailing stream the growing capital of his kingdom. He wanted land-owning and the work attendant thereupon for the oncoming generation of his people. He saw without any dimness the political and commercial splendour of a kingdom which should hold the backbone of the continent.

Idaho was the most promising of the provinces and here he established an Apostle -- the only place outside of Utah itself which has had a resident governor of this high ecclesiastical dignity. To the other states he sent elders of proved valor and executive capacity. His orders to all of these representatives were direct and sufficient: "Get choice land; till it intelligently; get water-power for your mills; file on coalmines and quarries; build good meeting-houses and comfortable homes; pay your tithes -- pay your tithes. Make no unnecessary political conflict with your Gentile neighbours; but hold our own -- and our own is all that comes within your reach."

From the hour when the kingdom was self-sustaining at home this work of colonization went on definitely without intermission; but it reached its intensity always in any period of trouble. Brigham had found in the days of Nauvoo the superlative value of work for his people when they were assailed by dangers from without or doubts from within. He continued to magnify the hope and courage of his followers, and quell nearly all questioning of his Divine authority by finding prodigious tasks for his people to perform.

To all these new colonies -- wherever situated -- he was the law-giver-supreme. The man who went to Idaho, Arizona, Canada, or Mexico, owed and paid his allegiance to Brigham Young. And the circumstances as well as the inclination of the adventuring colonist compelled this deference. The Mormon -- no matter what his wealth -- carried very little with him from Utah to the new settlement. He was dependent upon community industry for the building of a new home, surrounded by the comforts and the sustenances of civilization. He was dependent upon Brigham's favor to finance any large enterprise in the new land. He was dependent upon Brigham's recognition of incipient success for the sending of colonists in larger body to build towns and to diversify profitable occupation.

Almost without exception every attempted settlement became a fixture; almost immediately in every case the new colony began to send in its stream of tithes.

After Brigham had been ten years in the valley of Salt Lake, when he travelled from the southern boundary of Utah to the southernmost settlement, in every halting-place he could see some mill or granary or other edifice -- usually built of adobe, bearing the hammered iron letters "B. Y." He did not extend this definite mark of ownership into his provinces; but if Brigham had chosen to use a flag, and if he had chosen to plant it wherever his power was supreme, it could have floated in an almost unbroken line through the Rocky Mountain region, from Alberta to Sonora.