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“Brigham Young Mustering His Forces"
No caption.
After
Brigham Young, the Utah governor and Mormon Church leader, resisted
federal authority, President James Buchanan sent federal troops to the
Utah Territory during the winter of 1857-1858 in order to install a
non-Mormon governor and uphold law and order.
This cartoon pokes fun at the Mormons and their practice of
polygamy (having several wives simultaneously) by showing Young and
other Mormon men arming their many wives to fight the “Mormon War”
(or “Utah War”).
Joseph Smith founded the Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon
Church, in the early 1820s in western New York State.
Smith’s claim to have received a divine revelation to restore
the original church, along with his personal charisma, attracted
thousands of adherents to the faith.
Mormon leaders encouraged adult male followers to practice
polygamy, which combined with other factors to produce friction between
the Mormon community and their neighbors.
The Mormons were forced to flee to Ohio, then Missouri, and back
to Illinois, where Smith was murdered in 1844.
Two years later, his successor, Brigham Young, led the Mormons
across a thousand miles of unsettled territory to the Great Salt Lake,
where they established their own state of Deseret.
In 1850, Congress created the territory of Utah, and President
Millard Fillmore appointed Young the governor.
The Utah Territory soon
numbered 40,000 Mormons, but non-Mormons were officially discouraged
from settling there. Young,
as leader of both the Mormon Church and the Utah territorial government,
made no distinction between church and state, and refused to allow the
legislative and judicial branches to act independently of his authority.
In December 1856, Mormons broke into the law offices of Judge
George Stiles (an excommunicated Mormon), burning his books and stealing
his records. Judge W. W.
Drummond accused the Mormons of poisoning his predecessor.
Both federal judges returned to Washington in early 1857,
claiming they had been prevented from carrying out their official
duties. The Mormons
countered that the judges had attempted to commit land fraud.
The situation in Utah produced
a rare instance of unity between Northerners and Southerners through
their collective call for federal action against the Mormons, even
gaining the support of those who opposed federal intervention against
slavery. Senator Stephen
Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, tried to explain why his concept of
“popular sovereignty,” which allowed territorial voters to legalize
slavery, did not apply to polygamy in Utah.
The new Republican Party spoke against the “twin barbarisms”
of slavery and polygamy. Newspapers
reported acts of violence against non-Mormons (some true, some false),
while ex-Mormon F. G. J. Margetson’s sensational exposé, Horrors
of Mormonism, became a best seller.
In May 1857, President Buchanan
named Alfred Cumming, a non-Mormon, to replace Young as the territorial
governor of Utah, and a slate of non-Mormons to other administrative and
judicial positions. In order to protect the federal appointees and uphold law
and order, Buchanan authorized Colonel Albert Sydney Johnston and 2500
federal troops to accompany the officials to Utah.
Along the way, Mormon raiders destroyed 74 wagons of army
supplies, stampeded the army’s horses and cattle, and burned the Utah
grasslands, forcing Johnston’s men to spend a harsh winter at Fort
Bridger, about 100 miles northeast of Salt Lake City.
The raid turned out to be the only “battle” of the “war.” There were, however, numerous deaths among the federal
soldiers due to the deprivation and cold.
In southern Utah, a group of Mormons attacked and killed 137
non-Mormons bound for California (the Mountain Meadows Massacre).
Congress authorized 3000
federal troops under General Winfield Scott and two volunteer regiments
to proceed to Utah, while the Mormons armed 1000 men.
Young considered burning the existing communities and permanently
moving the Mormons to a new settlement until scouting parties
discouraged the idea. However,
in late March 1858, 30,000 Mormons left their homes temporarily in
northern Utah and relocated 50 miles south to Provo.
Meanwhile, Thomas Kane, a sympathetic non-Mormon, had convinced
Buchanan to send him unofficially to Utah to negotiate a settlement with
the Mormons. In April,
Young surrendered the governorship to Cummings, and in June, the Mormons
accepted a presidential proclamation of amnesty and agreed to the
stationing of an army garrison in Utah (not near Mormon settlements).
Although
a full-scale crisis was averted, tensions between Mormons and the
federal government continued for decades.
Congress outlawed polygamy and other forms of plural marriage in
1862, which the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld in 1879, and disfranchised polygamists in 1882.
In 1890, the Mormon Church announced that it no longer condoned
the practice of polygamy, and in 1896 Congress finally admitted the Utah
Territory to statehood.
Robert C. Kennedy
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