Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 34

STILL "LION OF THE LORD"

BRIGHAM was now at the zenith of his worldly fortunes. Thirty years had passed since the creaking wagon that was his sick-bed had lumbered down the half-broken trail of Emigration canon, to the valley of his vision and his hope. His handful of heroic followers had become a myriad. The poverty of a little band had changed to the wealth of a mighty community; and their devotion to their chief had grown with their numbers and his triumphs. The seeming desert had uncovered its fertility. There was no want. There was no serious schism within, and no imminent menace from without.

The outcasts of Illinois had made an empire; an empire not only in the assurance of Brigham and the faith of his subjects, but in the scarcely veiled recognition of the Republic and the world. Brigham's ambassador sat in the halls of Congress. Brigham's agents made treaties with foreign governments for the protection and profit of Mormon residents abroad; and every large interest (with the bare exception of mining) which desired security and advantage within his realm negotiated with Brigham, in full knowledge that the word of the king was at once contract and fulfilment, the law, the judgment, and the execution.

Here again we must pause to emphasize a fact little understood, and where understood, too lightly esteemed: the fact that Brigham's assumption of a Divine right to rule was vindicated to his people by the marvellous success of that rule. Many men have won lands from savagery to civilization, to be rewarded only with placid gratitude or dismissed in quick forgetfulness by their successors. But they were only men, while Brigham was -- so he claimed -- the prophet of God. Each victory of his career piled itself on each preceding victory as cumulative proof that he was the king anointed of God, and that the empire he had founded in the wilderness was to be the everlasting inheritance of his people. It was impossible to shake the faith of the ordinary Mormon in Brigham Young. He had been a witness of Brigham's triumphs in contests with man and Nature; he had seen Brigham's courage and strategy win a score of times in struggles with earthly powers; he had seen the will of the great Republic bow before the rod of Zion's ruler -- and that ruler never failed to teach that his success was proof of Divine authority. That teaching remains to this day the mainspring of Mormon solidarity and discipline. Now, as then, the survival of the kingdom is cited as the only necessary evidence of God's promise and purpose that it should survive. Now, as then, the increasing wealth and power of the kingdom are proclaimed as proof that it must eventually overthrow all other governments on the face of the earth. And now, as then, the assurance of the Mormon kingdom its victories, its persistence, its almost sublime selfsatisfaction -- commands a thousand allies in the unbelieving but profit-hungry world. Gentiles in Zion paraphrase Brigham's old aphorism about the Indians, and say: "It is cheaper to feed the Mormon church than to fight it"; and captains of industry finance, and politics in the nation at large take it at its own valuation.

In the early summer of 1877, the point which this history has now reached, Brigham himself paused in gratified contemplation of the peace which had come to his power. With no apparent premonition of his death, which was hovering near, he remarked in conversation: "Now the kingdom can spread. The machinations of our enemies have all been overthrown. For the first time since I heard the gospel I feel that we are free from tribulation by the wicked."

He was soon to find the rest for himself which he had erroneously predicted for the church. With the cessation of legal troubles at home and apparent peace abroad Brigham set himself the task of putting the Lord's house in order. He organized new stakes of Zion. He projected new missionary and colonizing labors. He selected vigorous personalities to take the place of men who had fallen into inutile routine. Some of his aggressive men had grown away from him in their financial operations. He planned the consolidation of their interests into institutions which should take their license to live from the ruler of the kingdom and should therefore pay deference to his will. But all this activity and all these plans to further solidify his power at the capital, and to push back the horizon of his empire, were to be but the last flash of his creative genius and his autocratic and monopolistic will.

On August 19, 1877, he spoke at the organization of a new stake of Zion. Four days later, he was taken with cholera-morbus. The difficulty quickly developed into inflammation of the bowels -- a disorder to which he had been subject at intervals since the time of his severe trials in the exodus from Nauvoo. Word of his serious condition went by wire throughout the kingdom and all the Saints joined in prayer for his recovery. His elders administered to him and promised in the name of Israel's God that he should be raised up to continue his divine work in the world. But Brigham had notions of his own.

Administration by the elders -- the laying on of hands for the healing of the body -- was a doctrine for a child with membranous croup, or a barren woman, or a man with pneumonia; but a royal case of bowel complaint demanded something more. The physicians were called in and they used all their Babylonish skill and drugs; the Prophet steadily failed; and on August 29, at four o'clock in the afternoon at his home in the "Beehive House" in Salt Lake City, Brigham Young passed away. He had been wavering on the borderland of consciousness for hours, and his last words, uttered shortly before he died, were: "Joseph! Joseph! Joseph!" Brigham Young had passed a thousand dangers. He had been threatened by an army and prosecuted by the law. For more than twenty years the mass of the people in the United States had expected to see him imprisoned or executed as a traitor. And he died at a good old age in his bed, surrounded by a worshipping court, in the capital of an empire which he had built and which he maintained to the hour of his death in the heart of a republic.

Thus closed the career of one of the most remarkable men ever born on the western continent. We will not here say one of the greatest; though many a hero occupies a seemingly permanent place in the hall of fame whose abilities and achievements are not a tithe of those of the "Lion of the Lord." Perhaps the physiological historian of the future will find a proof for Brigham's greatness in the high abilities of many of his descendants, and this often in lines wherein their sire's mastership helped them not a whit.

Tens of thousands of mourners came from all parts of Zion to attend Brigham Young's funeral, which was held in the vast tabernacle which he had designed and built. There was deep mourning among the Saints, but, strange to say, no fear. Brigham himself had shown to the Mormons, by his leadership upon the death of Joseph, how the passing of one founder only made room for another ruler of equal or greater genius. At the services, George Q. Cannon expressed the pathos of personal and public feeling; and John Taylor, President of the Quorum of Apostles, who was to succeed Brigham in the presidency of the church, expressed the calm unemotional certainty that Brigham's death left no gap which could not be filled in the rulership of the kingdom, that God would endow his prophets with wisdom, and that Zion would advance with accelerated momentum to its place of sovereignty in the world.

Brigham Young's body was buried in the heart of one of the blocks which he had selected as his inheritance when he first came to the Salt Lake valley. His grave is covered by a slab of granite weighing many tons, and surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. About a half acre of space surrounding is given to lawn and flowers. To this place Saints and travellers alike pay pilgrimage of devotion and curiosity.

For a little time an amusing error was circulated among the Gentiles of the kingdom, and it gained hopeful credence among the faithful: that Brigham was not dead and that a wax figure had been substituted for the funeral ceremonies; that he intended to show a miracle to the world by his resurrection. For some time the Saints hoped, as some of the Gentiles feared, that this might be true. But both hope and fear were soon dissipated by the assertive way in which John Taylor took charge of the affairs of the kingdom, and the attitude which Taylor assumed toward the estate of Brigham Young.

Brigham left a fortune well above two million dollars in the valuations of that time -- potentially it was worth tens of millions. This fortune he divided by will among nineteen "classes" of wives and offspring. The division into classes did not mean any particular difference in the valuation of inheritance to each; it was made to give practically equal recognition to nineteen parts of his large family. The only notable favoritism which was shown in his will was in his bequest to his favorite wife, Amelia Folsom Young. To her he devised the famous Gardo house, then just completed, in which he had intended to install her as a royal consort in royal splendor. The Gardo house was called and is called to this day "The Amelia Palace," though Amelia never occupied it. John Taylor demanded and received it for the church from the executors of Brigham's will in a settlement of the estate, and it has since passed to other ownership.

Brigham said in public not long before his death that he had grown rich in finding work for the poor and paying them for it. His enemies declared that he had grown rich by using the tithing fund to advance his own projects. There is truth in both statements.

He was essentially a builder and a manager. He hated idleness, and he loathed inefficiency. He created the Mormon empire, and by all commercial rules he had a right to exact pay for his building. His fortune, we repeat, was less than many a captain of industry whom the world calls honorable has collected for services insignificant compared to those rendered by Brigham Young. Also, he had the money-making instinct, and on at least two occasions -- the departure of the garrison from Camp Floyd and the arrival of the Union Pacific railroadhis legitimate or quasi-legitimate chances for gain were very great.

But these things alone neither explain, nor excuse his fortune. Brigham did not build his kingdom as a business enterprise, but as a holy sanctuary for a distressed church. To accept the pay of a real estate promoter for the services of a prophet and a king shocks the moral sense of mankind -- and justly. There is nothing sacred about the rags of Lazarus, and nothing especially sinful about the purple and fine linen of Dives. But the world has long since learned that he who serves a cause with his whole heart and soul has little time or chance to serve himself. Brigham gave wonderful service and unquestionable loyalty to his people -- but never for a moment did he lose sight of his own interests, never did he forget the revelation which commanded him to "care for his family." Brigham had undisputed charge of the tithing fund, which must have amounted to nearly a million dollars a year by the time of his death. He gave no accounting of this vast income. He drew no sharp line between the funds which he held for himself and the funds which he held in trust for the church. In such a case, the unrepresented party always suffers. The story that Brigham once squared accounts with the church by crediting himself with $967,000 "for services rendered," has been denied many times, and certainly lacks specific proofs. But there is no doubt that the tale at least represents Brigham's habitual way of thinking.

The size of Brigham's fortune and its method of acquirement are of more significance as showing the materialistic and temporal character of the kingdom which he built, and which his successors maintain. In the early teachings of the church, it was assumed by all the faithful that the Saints must devote themselves to immediate preparation for the second coming of Christ. A temple was built that Christ might have a place fittingly prepared from which to rule the world when He came. Long before Brigham's death, this faith was so overlaid by worldly activities that it had place neither in the purpose of the kingdom nor in the thoughts of the Saints -- except as some dreamer like Joseph Morris might read Prophet Smith's predictions, and rashly fix a date for the coming of the Heavenly Prince. The belief in a divine mission remained as firm as ever, but that mission was no longer concerned with spiritual advantages. Neither in Brigham's day nor now can the devout Mormon see the anomaly of having a temporal kingdom built in place of a heavenly kingdom; of having commerce harnessed to theology; of the idea that God Almighty, Creator and Possessor of the Universe, wants ten per cent of every human creature's income held in trust for Him by a self-chosen and self-perpetuating line of priests and kings.

The most insatiable and not altogether the most creditable interest in Brigham centres about his marital experiences. We have already explained the impossibility of saying how many wives he had -- Ann Eliza claimed to be the nineteenth, but according to a semi-official biography published shortly after the monarch's death, she was No. 25. In the early days of his Utah emperorship, all his wives lodged in the "Beehive House" and the "Lion House"; concerning which a thousand stories were told. At this time, all the work of his household was done by his wives, and one of them served as school-teacher to the children of all. They dined then at a common table, Brigham sitting at the head, with his legal wife, Mary Ann Angell, on one hand, and the reigning favorite on the other.

One of his favorites, Mary Van Cott, presented him with an heir when he was in his seventieth year. In his will, drawn some years later, Brigham bravely acknowledges in advance as his own any child born to any of his wives within nine months following his death. This confidence was justified, and he did not wait until the writing of his will to testify to it. His sermons on many occasions show him the possessor of at least the usual quantity of masculine jealousy, but that jealousy seldom showed itself in concrete form.

His collection of wives included many of the finest women of Utah, both from an intellectual and a physical point of view. Altogether, we may say of Brigham as Townsend says of Mohammed, that he was a lover and possessor of women, whose sensuousness never degenerated into mere sensuality.

Like many of his much-married Apostles, Brigham was called a good family man. He was a good provider for his households. He was gracious to his wives, and tender to most of his children. At the death of one of his favourite wives, Emile Free, Brigham mournfully walked alone from her house to the church undertaker's establishment and there sadly made arrangements for the casket and the funeral. Brigham did not do this to be spectacular -- he had no occasion to use such petty aids for his fame; but that he had refused the use of his carriage and the companionship of his counsellors on this occasion, was told throughout Zion at every gathering of the good sisters as a demonstration of his gentleness and a proof of the love which the Divine ordination plants in the male heart toward the female.

Avarice is said to be the vice of old age; and in a way, it showed itself in Brigham's declining years. He was no keener for personal gain than before, but he came to set more and more store on material success. In one instance, shortly before his death, he appointed a local Shylock to be president of a stake. The man was a note-shaver and money-loaner on the hardest kind of terms. His appointment was secretly resented by the whole population of the stake. But the appointment was made and not revoked, and Brigham rebuked the brethren for their suspected murmuring in a scathing sermon, wherein he praised the new president for having diligently served his own interests and thereby given proof that he could serve the Lord.

Every year, Brigham made the rounds of his immediate empire. His visit to the northern settlements lasted usually three or four weeks; that to the southern towns about twice as long. He was accompanied on these trips by a considerable number of his courtiers, and by one or more or his wives. They were royal progresses, and were treated as such. At each town, the visiting monarch was met by deputations of citizens and officials; and in each place where he stopped for more than a casual halt, he gave clear indications of his imperial pleasure. In earlier years, his scolding sermons included everything in their scope, from the proper education of children to the nature of women's sunbonnets, and the character of community fences. Toward the close of his life, his harsh speech was modified, but he continued to be interested in everything, and to express his views as those of one who has a right to give orders on all subjects.

If Brigham had a weakness, it was one which has afflicted despots since the days of Khufu -- a love of heaping up huge public buildings. The gigantic tabernacle and the far more costly temple in Salt Lake City were a serious drain on the resources of the community. In smaller settlements, the effort was even more severely felt. Whether this drain was compensated by the resultant unity of community effort is a question to which men will give different answers.

Our own view is that the specific cost of the great temple is trifling compared to the cost of that suppression of individuality which made the temple possible.

It is noticeable that the public works under Brigham's regime were mostly spectacular in character. The temple, the tabernacle, the theatre, were wonders whose like was unknown in any new Gentile city of similar size and wealth. But laboratories, libraries, and hospitals were conspicuous by their absence.

The point has been made clear in preceding chapters that at the death of Brigham Young his empire comprised Utah as its centre and held possession and political control of choice spots from Canada to Mexico. One of the strong evidences of Brigham's genius as a ruler is the fact that he had so well prepared that extensive realm to survive and flourish after he should have passed away. No other single thing so completely marks and proves the difference between Brigham and Joseph.

At the death of the prophet Joseph, the church began to disintegrate immediately, and only the masterful hand of Brigham kept it from going to pieces altogether. At the death of Brigham, the church stood secure. There were no schisms, no revolts, no important apostasies. The kingdom went on, though the king was dead. But it was a kingdom of the dead monarch's fashioning; and to-day, in every corner of the Mormon empire, one may trace the handiwork of Brigham Young.