CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Pioneers to the West

While the Latter-day Saints in Winter Quarters and in the wilderness of Iowa waited out the winter of 1846–47 and planned for the momentous trek the following spring, three other groups of Saints were already on the move to the West: the Mormon Battalion, members from the eastern United States who sailed on the ship Brooklyn, and a small party known as the Mississippi Saints.

The March of the Mormon Battalion

Captain James Allen of the United States army was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel after enlisting five companies of Mormon men. Under his direction 541 soldiers, 35 women (20 of whom were designated as laundresses), and 42 children began their march to Fort Leavenworth on 21 July 1846. Before they left, the officers, all of whom had been selected by Church leaders, met privately with members of the Twelve. The Brethren promised them that their lives would be spared if they were faithful. Sergeant William Hyde reported that they were charged “to remember their prayers, to see that the name of the Deity was revered, and that virtue and cleanliness were strictly observed. [The troops were instructed] to treat all men with kindness . . . and never take life when it could be avoided.”¹

[click for enlarged version] [Bitmap] [PDF] The route of the Mormon Battalion from Iowa to California. Note that three separate sick detachments were sent to Pueblo, Colorado. They later joined the pioneers on the main trail in Wyoming.

Nevertheless the departure of the Mormon Battalion worried many. Sergeant William Hyde, who left a wife and two small children with aged relatives, said, “When we were to meet with them again, God only knew. Nevertheless, we did not feel to murmur.”² Drusilla Hendricks, whose husband had been wounded in the Battle of Crooked River in Missouri, would not let her oldest son, William, join until the voice of the Spirit convinced her otherwise. On the morning the battalion left, she was still heartsick and could not go with her husband to see her son off. Instead she went to milk the cows and pray for William’s safety. She wrote, “Then the voice . . . answered me saying, It shall be done unto you as it was unto Abraham when he offered Isaac on the altar. I don’t know whether I milked or not for I felt the Lord had spoken to me.”³

The new soldiers marched two hundred miles down the east side of the Missouri River, then crossed over to Fort Leavenworth, arriving on 1 August 1846. There they were outfitted with supplies, guns, and forty-two dollars per man as clothing money for the year. The paymaster at the fort was surprised when every man was able to sign his name on the payroll. Only a third of the volunteers he had previously paid could write. A portion of the money was collected by Parley P. Pratt and others sent by the Church. This was used to support the battalion members’ families in Iowa and in unorganized territory, to assist in evacuating the poor from Nauvoo, and to help Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor, and Orson Hyde on their mission to England.

General Stephen W. Kearny’s regiment had already embarked in June toward Santa Fe to conquer New Mexico for the United States. The Mormon Battalion was to follow him and aid his operations if necessary. For two weeks the battalion remained at Fort Leavenworth. The weather was very hot, and many men suffered, particularly with fevers. Their commanding officer, Colonel Allen, became severely ill and was not able to leave with them when they took up their march. Captain Jefferson Hunt, the ranking Mormon officer, took temporary command of the battalion. About two weeks after leaving the Missouri River, the men learned that Colonel Allen had died. This saddened them because they had grown to admire this benevolent officer.

The Mormon officers felt that Captain Hunt should continue as their leader and requested by letter that President Polk appoint him to the position. But First Lieutenant A. J. Smith of the regular army was already en route to assume command. “The appointment of Smith, even before his character was known, caused a greater gloom throughout the command than the death of Colonel Allen had,” wrote battalion historian, Daniel Tyler.⁴

Lieutenant Smith set a rapid pace for Santa Fe, hoping to overtake General Kearny before the latter left for California. This wore heavily on the soldiers, and more especially on the wives and children who were allowed to travel with the battalion. With the relentless push, the men had little rest, and often the weary fell behind, trudging into camp hours after the others. Worse than the fast travel were the ministrations of the military doctor, George B. Sanderson of Missouri. He seemed to dislike the Mormons and forced the men to swallow calomel and arsenic for their ills from the same rusty spoon. The men referred to him as “mineral quack” and “Doctor Death.” William L. McIntire, a good botanic physician, had been appointed assistant surgeon to the battalion but was unable to administer to his afflicted friends in any way unless ordered to by Dr. Sanderson, the battalion surgeon.

On 16 September at the last crossing of the Arkansas River (in present-day Kansas), Smith sent Captain Nelson Higgins and ten men to convey most of the soldiers’ families up the river to the Mexican village of Pueblo (in present-day Colorado) for the winter. The men strongly protested this “division” of the battalion because they had been promised that their families could accompany the army to California. The decision proved to be wise, however, in light of the difficult trek that lay ahead. A month later at Santa Fe, a detachment of sick men and all but five of the remaining women were sent under the direction of Captain James Brown to join the earlier group at Pueblo. There the battalion members met John Brown and his company of Mississippi Saints who were wintering in Pueblo.

On 9 October 1846 the weary soldiers dragged themselves into Santa Fe, the provincial capital of New Mexico, which had some six thousand inhabitants. General Kearny had already left for California, leaving the city under the command of Colonel Alexander Doniphan, a friend of the Saints from the Missouri days. Doniphan ordered a one hundred gun salute in honor of the arrival of the Mormon Battalion. In Santa Fe, Lieutenant Smith relinquished command to Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke, whom the men came to respect as a fair but firm leader. The new commander had orders to blaze a wagon trail from Santa Fe to California. Veering south along the Rio Grande, the soldiers sometimes followed Spanish or Mexican trails but generally cut new roads. Once again the march took its toll in sickness; on 10 November a third detachment of fifty-five worn and weakened men turned back toward Pueblo.⁶

Not only did lack of water and food plague the remaining 350 members of the battalion, but the sandy trails were a constant challenge. The soldiers were either pulling long ropes to help the teams get through the deep sand, or they were walking double file in front of the wagons to make firm trails for the wheels. After they turned northwest toward Tucson they encountered a herd of wild bulls. These were bulls abandoned by Spanish and Mexican ranchers. The bulls stampeded the line of march, sending the soldiers rushing for safety. The “battle” lasted only a few minutes, but ten to fifteen animals were killed, two of the battalion’s mules were gored to death, and three soldiers were wounded. The event was immortalized as the Battle of the Bulls, and was the only fight during the battalion’s long journey.

The battalion passed without incident through Tucson, where a small Mexican garrison was stationed. They then rejoined Kearny’s route along the Gila River. Beyond the Colorado River lay over a hundred miles of trackless desert, where water was obtained only by digging deep wells.⁷ There the battalion encountered the heaviest sands, the hottest days, and the coldest nights. Weakened animals were butchered for food and all parts were eaten, including the hide, which was boiled until it was tender enough to eat. By this time many of the men were nearly barefoot, and some of them wrapped rawhide and old clothing around their feet to protect them from the hot sands. Beyond the desert they transported wagons through the narrow mountain passes of the coastal range with ropes and pulleys. Finally on 29 January 1847 they reached Mission San Diego at the end of their 2,030-mile march and reported to General Kearny. Kearny was named governor of California by President Polk in February.

Since California was already in the hands of the United States, the battalion men served as occupation troops with garrison duty in San Diego, San Luis Rey, and Los Angeles.⁸ While in southern California, the Saints gained the respect of the local citizens. Those in San Diego built a courthouse and houses, burned brick, and dug wells, thus contributing significantly to the building of the community. On 16 July, at the end of their year’s enlistment, the battalion members were discharged, although eighty-one men chose to reenlist for an additional six months.

Most of the discharged men left for northern California, intending to travel east to join the Saints in the Salt Lake Valley. They were met by Captain James Brown, pioneer, founder of Ogden, and counselor in Ogden’s stake presidency for many years. He conveyed a message from Brigham Young asking those without families to stay in California to work during the winter of 1847–48. Most of them did. Many spent the winter at Sutter’s Fort on the Sacramento River and assisted in the discovery of gold in January 1848 that began the California gold rush. The following summer they honorably completed their contracts with Sutter, abandoned the gold fields, and joined their families in Salt Lake City or at the Missouri River.

The Brooklyn Saints

The Mormon Battalion was not the first group of Saints to reach the West. That honor belongs to a company of Saints who sailed out of New York harbor aboard the ship Brooklyn on 4 February 1846, coincidentally the same day the first Saints left Nauvoo. In August 1845 Church leaders had decided that a way station on the California coast would be needed for immigrating Saints from the South Pacific or England who came around the tip of South America. Apparently Brigham Young envisioned the young, energetic Samuel Brannan as a Church agent in the San Francisco bay region. The publisher of the Prophet, the Church newspaper in New York, he was appointed in September 1845 to charter a ship and direct the company.

During the last three months of 1845, Samuel Brannan and Orson Pratt visited various branches in the East and recruited seventy men, sixty-eight women, and one hundred children to sail for the West about the middle of January. They were chiefly farmers and mechanics who carried with them all the tools necessary to build a new colony on the west coast. They also took a large quantity of school books and the printing press on which the Prophet had been printed. In December, Brannan chartered a ship at seventy-five dollars per adult, including provisions, and half fare for children. Known as the Brooklyn Saints, they left for California expecting to help choose and establish the final destination for the Church.

The voyage of the Brooklyn was relatively pleasant except for two severe storms—one encountered in the Atlantic and the other in the Pacific Ocean. Twenty-one specific rules governed the conduct of the Saints during their journey. Reveille was at six o’clock, and the Saints were not permitted to leave their staterooms “without being completely dressed (i e) without their coats, &c.” The rooms were to be cleaned by seven and to be inspected and aired daily. Breakfast was at eight-thirty (children first) and dinner from three to five o’clock, with a “cold lunch” served at eight in the evening. Provisions were made for attending to the sick and for cooking for the group, and Sabbath morning services were held at which “all that are able must attend, shaved, and washed clean, so as to appear in a manner becoming the solemn, and holy occasion.”¹⁰ Rounding Cape Horn, the ship stopped at Juan Fernandez, the island made famous by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. They also spent ten days in the Sandwich Islands (now the Hawaiian Islands). There were two births during the voyage, and the children were named Atlantic and Pacific, after the oceans where they first saw life. Ten of the passengers died on the voyage.¹¹

When the Brooklyn arrived at San Francisco Bay on 31 July 1846, Brannan, who had hoped to be the first American to fly the United States flag in California, was disappointed to see it atop the Mexican customhouse. Some of the company sought work along the coast, but others founded a colony further inland, which they called New Hope. Brannan dreamed that New Hope would become the center for the Saints in the West. By January 1847 he was publishing the California Star, the second English newspaper in California. Most of the Brooklyn Saints were unaware the Church was settling in the Great Basin and willingly followed Brannan’s direction.

In April 1847, Samuel Brannan headed east to meet the body of the Church and offer to guide them to California. He met Brigham Young and the Pioneer Company in June at the Green River (in present-day Wyoming). Thomas S. Williams and Samuel Brannan were sent to guide the members of the battalion and also members of the Mississippi Company into the Salt Lake Valley. These two groups had wintered at Pueblo and were at the time en route toward Salt Lake City. After spending a few days in the Salt Lake Valley with Brigham Young and the Saints, Brannan returned to California with Captain James Brown of the Mormon Battalion to conduct Church business. Disenchanted with Brigham Young’s decision not to establish Church headquarters on the coast, Brannan soon apostatized. Some of the Brooklyn Saints followed him. Brannan publicized the California gold rush and became the region’s first millionaire, but eventually lost his fortune through unwise investments and died a pauper.

The Pueblo Saints

As we have seen,¹² during the winter of 1846–47 about 275 Latter-day Saints formed a substantial community at Pueblo, hundreds of miles west of the main body of the Saints at the Missouri River. This group consisted of the three sick detachments from the Mormon Battalion and approximately sixty “Mississippi Saints” who had come to Pueblo in August.

These southern members of the Church were accompanied by John Brown, who had moved from Mississippi to Nauvoo in 1845. He was appointed by Brigham Young in January 1846 to return to his fellow Saints in the South and urge them to join in the westward migration. Brown and William Crosby led forty-three people 640 miles to Independence, Missouri, where they were joined by fourteen others. They continued west along the Oregon Trail expecting to find the main body of the Saints led by Brigham Young. In July, however, when they reached Chimney Rock in western Nebraska, there were still no Saints. Trappers returning from California told them there were no Mormons ahead of them. Unaware that Brigham Young had decided to establish Winter Quarters on the Missouri, they decided to move to Fort Laramie. There they met John Richard, a trapper who invited them to winter near his trading post at Pueblo. Word finally reached them in Pueblo that Brigham Young had stopped at Winter Quarters.

Life was somewhat settled in Pueblo. In addition to hunting for venison, the Mississippi Saints planted turnips, pumpkins, beans, and melons and worked for fur trappers who paid them with corn. With the incoming battalion men, they built a school which doubled as a church. The battalion kept up regular military drills, and dances were frequent. Seven babies were born during the winter, but there were also nine deaths.

In the spring, Brigham Young wrote to the Pueblo Saints and told them of the plans of the main Pioneer Company to go to the Great Basin in the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake. An advance party from Pueblo went north to Fort Laramie where they met Brigham Young and the pioneers. President Young then dispatched Elder Amasa Lyman and others to guide the rest of the Pueblo Saints to the Salt Lake Valley, where they arrived just five days after the Pioneer Company.

Winter Quarters: A Staging Ground for the Pioneer Company

The winter of 1846–47 saw the Mormon Battalion en route across a trackless desert—the Brooklyn Saints on the sea and then arriving at San Francisco Bay, and the Pueblo Saints waiting out the winter. Meanwhile, Winter Quarters, Nebraska, was bustling with activity in preparation for a Pioneer Company to make the trek west to the Rocky Mountains.

During the fall of 1846 plans were laid for the westward trek. It was decided that a relatively small party should make the initial crossing of the plains to blaze a trail for the larger companies to follow. But even this smaller undertaking required extensive preparation. Wagons were built and outfitted, horses and oxen sturdy enough to withstand the rigorous thousand-mile trip were procured, foodstuffs and other supplies were gathered, and sustenance and protection were arranged for those who remained behind.¹³

Equally important was the need for more information about the largely-uncharted regions of the West. Besides conferring in November and December with local traders and trappers, such as Peter Sarpy, about the trail west of Winter Quarters, council leaders consulted with four men who had recently been in the Rocky Mountain region. Father Pierre Jean DeSmet, a Catholic priest and missionary among the Indians of the Oregon country, arrived in camp en route to St. Louis after five years in the mountains. He was one of the few white men who had visited the Great Salt Lake. Taking advantage of this good fortune, the Brethren questioned him carefully. Five days later two American Fur Company traders gave detailed accounts of the regions west of the Rockies and drew a map of the best areas to settle. Later, Logan Fontenelle, an interpreter for the Omaha Indians, described in detail the westward trail and the best locations for settlement in the mountains.

George Miller, a headstrong leader, argued with Brigham Young over prospective travel and settlement plans. Miller did not agree that the Twelve Apostles held supreme authority in the Church, therefore, he took a small group of Saints to live among the Ponca Indians on the Niobrara River in northern Nebraska. President Young, realizing that dissension in Church leadership was dangerous, sought the will of the Lord on how to deal with Miller and his followers. On 11 January 1847 he related a dream he had the night before where he discussed with Joseph Smith the best method of organizing the companies. Three days later he presented to the Church “the Word and Will of the Lord concerning the Camp of Israel in their journeyings to the West” (D&C 136:1).

Accepted by the assembled priesthood quorums as a revelation to the Church, this document became a constitution governing the westward migration. It said that the trek was “under the direction of the Twelve Apostles” (v. 3) and required the Saints to enter into a “covenant and promise to keep all the commandments and statutes of the Lord our God” (v. 2). It contained much practical direction about preparing for the pioneer journey and caring for the poor, widows, orphans, and Mormon Battalion families. Each man was to “use all his influence and property to remove this people to the place where the Lord shall locate a stake of Zion” (v. 10). The Saints were also to cease contending with each other and were directed to eliminate other vices that were among them.¹⁴

Delegations went to each encampment to read the revelation and to announce the names of men Brigham Young desired to go in the Pioneer Company and in the companies to follow during the first year. Throughout the spring Church leaders held many meetings with various emigrating companies, providing information relative to their tentative location, the construction of boats for fording rivers, methods of pioneer travel, planting seeds, and irrigation.

The original idea was to handpick 144 men for the Pioneer Company—twelve for each of the twelve tribes of Israel—but as it turned out the original group consisted of 143 men (including three slaves of southern members), three women (wives of Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Lorenzo Dow Young), and two children. Collectively they had a variety of pioneering talents and skills. They included mechanics, teamsters, hunters, frontiersmen, carpenters, sailors, soldiers, accountants, bricklayers, blacksmiths, wagon makers, lumbermen, joiners, dairymen, stockmen, millers, and engineers.¹⁵ Eight of the party were Apostles, and several had been with Zion’s Camp. The company’s equipment included a boat, a cannon, seventy wagons and carriages, ninety-three horses, fifty-two mules, sixty-six oxen, nineteen cows, seventeen dogs, and some chickens.¹⁶

Journey of the Pioneer Company

Some of the vanguard company left Winter Quarters on 5 April 1847, but because of delays caused by general conference and the arrival of Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor from England, little progress was made during the first several days. The arrival of the two Apostles was a blessing because they brought money contributed by the English Saints and scientific instruments for calculating latitude, elevation, temperature, and barometric pressure. Orson Hyde, who had accompanied the two to England, arrived during the middle of May. Since these three were not yet outfitted, they remained in Winter Quarters. Elders Pratt and Taylor traveled with other companies later in the season, and Elder Hyde superintended the Saints who remained at the Missouri River.

Finally on 16 April the camp began its one thousand-mile trek. After two days on the trail, Brigham Young organized the camp in military fashion in case they encountered hostile Indians. William Clayton, the official camp historian, recorded accurate mileage for later emigrants. For the first few days this meticulous record keeper counted the monotonous revolutions of the wagon wheel to calculate the daily mileage. He soon proposed using a mechanical odometer for the job. Scientific-minded Orson Pratt designed the device, and Appleton Harmon, an experienced woodworker, constructed it.¹⁷

[click for enlarged version] [Bitmap] [PDF] The Pioneer Company of 1847 traversed eleven hundred miles from Winter Quarters, near present-day Omaha, Nebraska, to the Salt Lake Valley. Their route followed the broad and gentle Platte River valley for six hundred miles to Fort Laramie in Wyoming, where they arrived on 1 June. They crossed to the south side of the Platte and followed the Oregon Trail for almost four hundred more miles to Fort Bridger. West of Independence Rock in Wyoming, their trail crossed the Continental Divide at South Pass. Somewhere southwest of there the Pioneers met Jim Bridger. On 7 July the pioneers reached Fort Bridger. Continuing south, they picked up the Reed-Donner trail into the Salt Lake Valley. During this final phase of the trek, which was the roughest section of the trip, Brigham Young contracted mountain fever, and the company split into three groups—the vanguard, the main company, and the rear guard with Brigham Young.

Wherever possible the pioneers followed existing roads and trails. They did very little trailblazing between Winter Quarters and the Salt Lake Valley. Across Nebraska the Oregon Trail ran along the south side of the Platte River. The first part of the Mormon Trail paralleled the Oregon Trail to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, but was on the north side of the river because the pioneers hoped to find better grazing and to avoid conflict with immigrants on their way to Oregon. The next section of the trail crossed Wyoming from Fort Laramie to Fort Bridger. Forbidding bluffs on the north side of the Platte forced the Saints to cross over at Fort Laramie and follow the Oregon Trail for 397 miles. At Fort Bridger the Oregon Trail turned north to the Pacific Coast, and the final segment of the Mormon Trail picked up the year-old track of the Reed-Donner party through the Rockies into the Salt Lake Valley.

On 26 May the company passed Chimney Rock—a principal landmark in Wyoming—which was considered the halfway mark by emigrating Saints. It was near Chimney Rock that Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball expressed concern over the lightmindedness and profanity of some camp members who were holding mock trials and elections, gambling, and playing cards. Late one evening the two senior Apostles, moved by the Spirit, discussed calling the camp to repentance. The next day Brigham Young spoke to the men plainly.

William Clayton recalled Brigham saying, “Give me the man of prayers, give me the man of faith, give me the man of meditation, a sober-minded man, and I would far rather go amongst the savages with six or eight such men than to trust myself with the whole of this camp with the spirit they now possess. . . . Do we suppose that we are going to look out a home for the Saints, a resting place, a place of peace where they can build up the kingdom and bid the nations welcome, with a low, mean, dirty, trifling, covetous, wicked spirit dwelling in our bosoms? It is vain!” He concluded with a call to repentance: “If they [the brethren] will not enter into a covenant to put away their iniquity and turn to the Lord and serve Him and acknowledge and honor His name, I want them to take their wagons and retreat back, for I shall go no farther under such a state of things. If we don’t repent and quit our wickedness we will have more hinderances than we have had, and worse storms to encounter.”¹⁸

The following day, Sunday, Brigham Young convened a special meeting of the leaders. They went out on the bluffs, clothed themselves in their temple robes, and held a prayer circle. William Clayton said they “offered up prayer to God for ourselves, this camp and all pertaining to it, the brethren in the army, our families and all the Saints.”¹⁹ Thereafter a more saintly atmosphere prevailed in the camp.

At Fort Laramie the pioneers halted for repairs, Brigham Young celebrated his forty-sixth birthday, and the camp was joined by some of the Pueblo Saints. At the last crossing of the Platte (in present-day Casper, Wyoming), the pioneers used their boat, the Revenue Cutter, to ferry their goods and belongings across. They built rafts to ferry their wagons. Several Oregon-bound people paid $1.50 per wagon to be ferried across as well. Recognizing an opportunity to earn needed funds, Brigham Young left nine men behind to continue the lucrative ferry. The rest pushed on through South Pass, rafted across the Green River, and arrived at Fort Bridger early in July.

The pioneers encountered a number of mountain men as they traveled west, such as Moses Harris, Jim Bridger, and Miles Goodyear. Harris and Bridger were not optimistic about planting crops in the Salt Lake Valley. Goodyear was the most enthusiastic about agricultural success and encouraged the Saints to settle in Weber Valley, where he lived.

Beyond Fort Bridger travel through the mountain passes became more difficult. By the time they reached the Salt Lake Valley, the company was separated into three groups. Brigham Young, ill from mountain fever, lagged behind the main group. After 13 July, a third division, under the direction of Orson Pratt, moved ahead to chart the route and prepare a wagon road through what became known as Emigration Canyon. On 21 July, Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow caught the first glimpse of the Salt Lake Valley and shouted for joy at the sight. After a twelve-mile circuit into the valley, the two men returned to camp.²⁰

The advance company of pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley on 22 July 1847 and immediately set up a crude irrigation system to flood the land and prepare for planting. On 24 July, Brigham Young and the rear company arrived at the mouth of Emigration Canyon. Wilford Woodruff drove President Young in his carriage. They looked to the future as they gazed over the valley. Wilford Woodruff wrote, “Thoughts of pleasing meditations ran in rapid succession through our minds while we contemplated that not many years that the House of GOD would stand upon the top of the mountains while the valleys would be converted into orchard, vineyard, gardens and fields by the inhabitants of Zion and the standard be unfurled for the nations to gather there to.” Brigham Young said he was satisfied with the appearance of the valley as a “resting place for the Saints and was amply repaid for his journey.”²¹

On a later occasion, Wilford Woodruff explained that when they came out of the canyon he turned the carriage so that President Young could see the whole valley. “While gazing upon the scene before us, he was enwrapped in vision for several minutes. He had seen the valley before in vision, and upon this occasion he saw the future glory of Zion and of Israel, as they would be, planted in the valleys of these mountains. When the vision had passed, he said, ‘It is enough. This is the right place. Drive on.’”²²

Establishing a Settlement in the Valley

Sunday, 25 July was a day of worship and thanksgiving. Members of the Twelve spoke at morning and afternoon meetings on the importance of industry and upright behavior.²³ For the first few days in the valley, there was some exploring to the north and south to determine the best place to settle. By 28 July, Brigham Young’s decision about the location of a city was firm. Between two forks of City Creek, he designated the lot where the temple would stand. The city would be laid out evenly and perfectly square from that point.

The first weeks were filled with activity. Within a week, a survey of the area had begun and men not engaged in farming were making adobes for a temporary fort, as protection from Indians and wild animals.²⁴ The Mississippi Saints and some of the “battalion boys” who arrived in the valley in October built a bowery for public meetings on the temple block. The first child born in the valley was Elizabeth Steel, who was born to a Mormon Battalion family on 9 August. Two days later the Saints mourned the death of the son of a Mississippi couple, three-year old Milton Threlkill who had wandered from camp and drowned in City Creek.

Exploration of the surrounding country was also undertaken. Brigham Young and the Twelve climbed a mount-like promontory to the north where they prophesied of Zion and which they named Ensign Peak after the prophecy of Isaiah which reads: “He shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel” (Isaiah 11:12). Expeditions were sent to investigate adjacent valleys. The Saints also discovered the enjoyment of bathing in the Great Salt Lake to the west and in some warm sulphur springs north of the city.

Brigham Young, the Twelve, and most of the original Pioneer Company spent only thirty-three days in the valley in 1847. On 16 August they commenced their return to Winter Quarters to prepare their families to come to the valley the next year. En route they met with 1,553 Saints who were already on their way to the Salt Lake Valley. More familiar with the terrain this time, and with fewer wagons and light loads, men and teams found the traveling considerably faster.²⁵ Their major excitement consisted of losing many valuable horses to the Indians and seeing Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball chased by a grizzly bear.

Meanwhile the arriving Saints settled in at the “Old Fort,” now the site of Pioneer Park in Salt Lake City, and prepared for winter. Before leaving the valley, Brigham Young designated John Smith, who he knew was in a later company, to preside over the newly created Salt Lake Stake. After he arrived in September, President Smith selected Charles C. Rich and John Young as counselors and organized a high council. This organization, like the high council established in Winter Quarters a year earlier, acted as both spiritual and civic leaders of the community. It was the only government in Utah until January 1849.

Reorganization of the First Presidency

Brigham Young and his company arrived in Winter Quarters just before sunset on 31 October 1847, rejoicing to be with their families again. While en route Brigham Young discussed the possibilities of reorganizing the First Presidency of the Church with members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Although he emphasized that the Spirit was prompting him, not all of the Brethren were immediately in favor. In the absence of a precedent for such action they were uncertain if it was appropriate to reorganize the First Presidency at that time.

During the three years the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presided over the Church, a great deal of significant work was accomplished. They completed and dedicated the Nauvoo Temple, administered the temple endowment to a host of faithful Saints, evacuated Nauvoo, expanded missionary work and Church administration in Great Britain, organized the Mormon Battalion, founded several settlements in Iowa, presided over the settling of Winter Quarters, and blazed the way to a new home in the West. Nearly all of these tasks were revealed to Joseph Smith prior to his death, and the Twelve completed them in a wonderful manner. Next was the question of whether the Twelve was to remain the presiding quorum of the Church or whether there should be another First Presidency; and this question needed to be resolved.

After arriving at Winter Quarters, Brigham Young continued to meet and discuss the matter with his colleagues. On 30 November he raised “the subject of appointing three of the Twelve as the Presidency of the Church,” suggesting that such a course would liberate the remainder so they could “go to the nations of the earth to preach the gospel.”²⁶ This was consistent with previous revelations which identified this as the Twelve’s chief calling (see D&C 107:23; 112:1, 16, 19, 28).

While the pioneers journeyed westward in 1847, a more permanent and larger settlement was built in Iowa and named Kanesville in honor of Thomas L. Kane, who had befriended the Saints. The west side of the Missouri River was abandoned for health reasons and because the Saints had promised they would leave Indian land with all improvements after two years. By the time the pioneers returned, most of the Saints had already moved or were moving to Kanesville or other Iowa settlements that Orson Hyde presided over. On 5 December 1847, President Young convened another meeting of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in Hyde’s home in Kanesville. He said the subject of the First Presidency had been weighing heavily upon his mind and that the Spirit of the Lord had been stirring him on this matter. He asked the nine members of the Quorum present (Parley P. Pratt and John Taylor were in the Salt Lake Valley, and Lyman Wight was in Texas) to freely express their views on the subject, beginning with the oldest.²⁷

Following the discussion, Orson Hyde moved that Brigham Young be sustained as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, that he nominate his two counselors, and that they form the new First Presidency. The motion was seconded by Wilford Woodruff and carried unanimously. President Young then nominated Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards as his counselors. They were also unanimously approved.

Three weeks later the Brethren held a general conference in a commodious log tabernacle that had been rushed to completion in Kanesville. During the joyful sessions of 24–26 December, suspense grew that a new First Presidency was about to be announced. On Monday, 27 December 1847, one thousand members crowded into the tabernacle and heard Brigham Young explain the need for a full organization of the Church, including a First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the Seventies, and the Patriarch to the Church. Then Orson Pratt presented Brigham Young as the new President, and the Saints readily sustained him. President Young then presented his counselors who were likewise sustained. Finally “Uncle” John Smith, president of the new Salt Lake Stake, was sustained as the new Patriarch to the Church. Each of these officers was again sustained in the Salt Lake Valley in October 1848.²⁸

As important as the first arrival of Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Valley was, no event in 1847 was more significant than the smooth transference of leadership from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to a new First Presidency, thus setting the precedent for future transitions up to the present day.

Endnotes

1. In Daniel Tyler, A Concise History of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War, 1846–1847, reprinted, 1881 (Glorieta, N. Mex.: Rio Grande Press, 1964), pp. 128–29.

2. In Tyler, A Concise History, p. 128.

3. Marguerite H. Allen, comp., Henry Hendricks Genealogy (Salt Lake City: Hendricks Family Organization, 1963), pp. 26–27.

4. Tyler, A Concise History, p. 144.

5. A. R. Mortensen, ed., “The Command and Staff of the Mormon Battalion in the Mexican War,” in Utah Historical Quarterly, Oct. 1952, p. 343.

6. The previous two paragraphs are derived from James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), p. 231.

7. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 232.

8. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 232.

9. Henry Bigler’s journal entry; spelling standardized.

10. “Rules and Regulations,” Times and Seasons, 15 Feb. 1846, pp. 1127–28.

11. Previous three paragraphs derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 238–39.

12. Section derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 233–34.

13. Derived from Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 130.

14. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 237.

15. See B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century One, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1930), 3:181.

16. See James Amasa Little, “Biography of Lorenzo Dow Young,” Utah Historical Quarterly, 1946, p. 80.

17. Previous two paragraphs derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 242–44.

18. William Clayton, William Clayton’s Journal (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1921), pp. 191, 194, 197; spelling standardized.

19. Clayton, William Clayton’s Journal, pp. 202–3.

20. Previous three paragraphs derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 244–46.

21. Wilford Woodruff Journals, 24 July 1847, LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City; spelling and capitalization standardized.

22. In “Pioneers’ Day,” Deseret Evening News, 26 July 1880, p. 2.

23. Derived from Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, p. 146.

24. Derived from Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, p. 146.

25. Derived from Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, p. 147.

26. Wilford Woodruff Journals, 30 Nov. 1847; capitalization standardized.

27. See Wilford Woodruff Journals, 5 Dec. 1847.

28. See History of the Church, 7:623–24.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Establishing a Refuge in Deseret

Only four days after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young told the pioneers that “he intended to have every hole and corner from the Bay of [San] Francisco to Hudson bay known to us and that our people would be connected with every tribe of Indians throughout America.”¹ President Young named the region Deseret, which is a word from the Book of Mormon meaning honeybee (see Ether 2:3). The prophet intended the new settlements to be a hive of activity. The Saints were virtually the only white settlers in the vast Great Basin, the name for an area about the size of Texas between the Rocky Mountains on the east, the Sierra Nevadas on the west, the Columbia River drainage on the north, and the Colorado River drainage on the south. The area was relatively isolated and arid and short on timber and game. The Saints realized that settling here would require considerable faith and their best efforts, but they believed that with God’s help they could succeed.

First Year in the Salt Lake Valley

In August 1847, Brigham Young, the Apostles, and about one hundred others left the Salt Lake Valley for Winter Quarters, Nebraska. At the same time approximately fifteen hundred Saints in ten companies were on the plains en route to the valley. There was great rejoicing when Church leaders met these companies in present-day western Wyoming. After feasting together, President Young’s company continued their journey east while the other companies continued west, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley during the months of September and October.

Crossing the plains was difficult for these Saints who came as entire families. Many were not able to bear the arduous journey and died on the plains. Jedediah M. Grant, member of the First Council of the Seventy and captain of the third company, lost his wife, Caroline, and their infant daughter, Margaret, who, like many others, contracted cholera on the Sweetwater River. Caroline died four days after her daughter. Before her death, she requested that their bodies be buried in the valley, but Jedediah was forced to inter the baby in a shallow grave and continue on to the Salt Lake Valley where he buried his wife. Then he and his friend Joseph Bates Noble returned to the Wyoming plains to exhume Margaret’s body, only to find that wolves had found the grave first.

But before they reached the grave, the Spirit of God had already comforted him. Elder Grant confided to his friend, “Bates, God has made it plain. The joy of Paradise where my wife and baby are together, seems to be upon me tonight. For some wise purpose they have been released from the earth struggles into which you and I are plunged. They are many, many times happier than we can possibly be here.” Sad that they could not fulfill his promise, they returned to Salt Lake.²

Several years later Jedediah was permitted to see his wife and daughter in the world of spirits. Not long before Elder Grant died, President Heber C. Kimball gave him a blessing. On that occasion Elder Grant related a vision he had received. “He saw the righteous gathered together in the spirit world, and there were no wicked spirits among them. He saw his wife; she was the first person that came to him. He saw many that he knew, but did not have conversation with any except his wife Caroline. She came to him, and he said that she looked beautiful and had their little child, that died on the Plains, in her arms, and said, ‘Mr. Grant, here is little Margaret; you know that the wolves ate her up, but it did not hurt her; here she is all right.’”³

Charles C. Rich and John Young organized a municipal high council in the Salt Lake Valley similar to the one formed a year previously at Winter Quarters. Under the council’s direction, two ten-acre blocks were added to the fort, 450 log cabins were built, an adobe wall around the fort was completed, a fence was constructed around the city to control the livestock, and a number of roads and bridges were built. The “big field,” an area of 5,133 acres, was cultivated, with 872 acres being planted in winter wheat. When Captain James Brown arrived from California with approximately $5,000 in Mormon Battalion pay, the council appointed a group to take some of the money to southern California to buy cows, mules, wheat, and a variety of seeds. The council also approved the use of $1,950 to purchase the Miles Goodyear ranch and trading post on the Weber River thirty-five miles north of Salt Lake, eliminating a possible obstacle in settling that large and promising area.⁴

The Saints were not alone in the valley. A few of the approximately twelve thousand American Indians who inhabited the Great Basin in 1847 lived in the Salt Lake Valley. In the fall a group of Ute Indians came to the fort. One of them offered to sell two young Indians who had been captured in a raid. When the Saints recoiled at the suggestion, the Indian threatened to kill the children. After another refusal, one was killed. Then Charles Decker, Brigham Young’s brother-in-law, purchased the other and gave her to Lucy Decker Young to raise. Sally, as she was named, later became chief cook in the Beehive House and eventually married the Pauvant Ute chief Kanosh.⁵

The first winter in the valley was mild, but there were many discomforts in the Old Fort. Wolves, foxes, and other predators annoyed the people with their incessant howling and depredations. One night Lorenzo Dow Young spread some strychnine around the area and in the morning found fourteen dead white wolves. Swarms of mice were also a nuisance. One contrivance for catching them was a bucket partially filled with water and a board sloping at each end, greased and balanced on the bucket edge, so that the mice would run onto the board to lick the grease, fall in, and drown. One of the most valuable possessions in the fort was a cat.

During March and April heavy spring snow and rain descended upon the valley. Unfortunately, the Saints had not realized this would happen. Their homes had flat sod roofs, which leaked profusely. Food was gathered into the center of the rooms and protected with buffalo skins obtained from the Indians. “It was no uncommon thing to see a woman holding an umbrella over her while attending to her household duties. The Fort presented quite a ludicrous appearance when the weather cleared up. In whatever direction one looked, bedding and clothing of all descriptions were hanging out to dry.”⁶

In the spring of 1848, provisions became scarce. Many of the Saints were without shoes and adequate clothing, so they made moccasins and other clothing out of animal skins. The people were placed on rations. Each person was limited to about one-half pound of flour per day. They also ate crows, thistle tops, bark, roots, and sego lily bulbs.⁷

Priddy Meeks graphically described his attempts to find food while his “family went several months without a satisfying meal of victuals. I went sometimes a mile up Jordan to a patch of wild roses to get the berries to eat which I would eat as rapidly as a hog, stems and all. I shot hawks and crows and they ate well. I would go and search the mire holes and find cattle dead and fleece off what meat I could and eat it. We used wolf meat, which I thought was good. I made some wooden spades to dig seagoes [sego lilies] with, but we could not supply our wants.” He worked particularly hard for thistle roots: “I would take a grubbing-hoe and a sack and start by sunrise in the morning and go, I thought six miles before coming to where the thistle roots grew, and in time to get home I would have a bushel and sometimes more thistle roots. And we would eat them raw. I would dig until I grew weak and faint and sit down and eat a root, and then begin again.”⁸

Because of these difficult conditions, the settlers naturally looked forward to the harvest of new crops, but late spring frosts injured much of the wheat and garden vegetables. Then a May and June drought injured more of the crops. Worse yet, great swarms of crickets descended from the foothills and began devouring what remained. Men, women, and children turned out with sticks, shovels, and brooms to combat the pests. They used fire and even dug trenches to drown the crickets, but these measures failed to stop the onslaught. For about two weeks they battled and prayed for relief. Crop failure meant disaster for the present colony and no food for the more than two thousand Saints planning to immigrate that year.

Finally on a Sabbath day, while Charles C. Rich was preaching, seagulls from the Great Salt Lake flew in and began to devour the insects. “They would eat crickets and throw them up again and fill themselves again and right away throw them up again,” reported Priddy Meeks. The gulls continued their attacks for over two weeks until the crickets were effectively eliminated. Meeks said, “I guess this circumstance changed our feeling considerable for the better.”⁹ Many of the crops were preserved. Today the seagull is Utah’s state bird, and a monument to the seagulls stands on Temple Square.

The Saints nurtured the remaining crops throughout the summer and on 10 August held a harvest feast. Parley P. Pratt described it: “Large sheaves of wheat, rye, barley, oats and other productions were hoisted on poles for public exhibition, and there was prayer and thanksgiving, congratulations, songs, speeches, music, dancing, smiling faces and merry hearts. In short, it was a great day with the people of these valleys, and long to be remembered by those who had suffered and waited anxiously for the results of a first effort to redeem the interior deserts of America, and to make her hitherto unknown solitudes ‘blossom as the rose.’”¹⁰

The settlers also anxiously awaited the return of a number of their fellow Saints, including Brigham Young and other Church leaders, who arrived in September. Before the end of 1848, nearly three thousand Saints, including members of the Mormon Battalion, had arrived in the valley. About one-fourth of the exiles from Nauvoo were now in their new refuge in the West. In Deseret for the second time, Brigham Young enthusiastically wrote to those in Iowa that the Saints had surely found “a haven of rest, a place for our souls, a place where we may dwell in safety.” This was happy news to refugees who had been driven from their homes more than once. He also affirmed that they would “once more rear a temple to his [God’s] names’ honor and glory.”¹¹

The Provisional State of Deseret

During the first year in the valley, the high council made laws, levied taxes, apportioned land, issued water and timber rights, established a cemetery, and imposed fines and punishments for criminal offenses. When the First Presidency arrived in the fall of 1848, civic responsibilities for the growing community passed to a general council of about fifty leading priesthood holders, presided over by the First Presidency, which met weekly at the house of Heber C. Kimball. There was no separation of church and state because the Latter-day Saints considered all affairs of the kingdom of God to be one, whether spiritual, economic, or political.

This provisional government continued to lay out the expanding city. Throughout the fall and winter of 1848, under the direction of Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, lots were apportioned to applicants who could adequately care for their property. The city was then divided into nineteen wards, each nine blocks in size. Bishops were placed in charge of each ward, and, under their supervision, fences were built, a network of irrigation ditches was constructed, and trees were planted along the ditch banks.

A plan for distribution of farming lands worked out in the fall of 1848 was consistent with President Young’s philosophy that the land should not be monopolized by the earliest settlers, but should be put to its most productive use for the good of the community. There was to be no private ownership of water and timber—natural resources important to the entire community. Under the direction of bishops, workers turned out to build irrigation systems and roads to the canyons. Families received the right to use water and timber in proportion to the work they put into building and maintaining these systems. Disputes over land and resource use were mediated by priesthood leaders. Even though there was considerable cooperation among the Saints in the use of land, water, and timber, private business enterprises gradually developed to regulate these same resources.

Cooperation also characterized the erection of public works. Daniel H. Wells was placed in charge of this department, which began building a wall around the temple block, a tithing house, the Council House (used for public and political meetings), a small adobe Church office building, a public bathhouse at the warm springs just north of the city, an armory, and a bowery on Temple Square to be used for a central meeting place. A tannery and leather manufacturing establishment, gristmills, sawmills, and a foundry were built with a combination of public and private effort.¹²

The first means of economic exchange in the valley was the thousands of dollars worth of gold dust brought from California by members of the Mormon Battalion who had participated in the discovery of gold near Sacramento. Later the First Presidency sent a few men to California on a “gold mission” for more of the precious metal to help with Deseret’s economy. The gold dust was minted into coins. Paper currency based on the Church’s gold supply was also used.¹³

With the culmination of the Mexican War and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on 2 February 1848, the fledgling colony of the Saints became part of the Union. The treaty granted the United States all of the territory comprising the present states of California, Nevada, Utah, most of New Mexico and Arizona, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. When Church leaders realized that their colony was part of America, they began planning to become a state. Early in 1849 the general council formally established a provisional State of Deseret with Brigham Young as governor, Willard Richards as secretary of state, Heber C. Kimball as chief justice, Newel K. Whitney and John Taylor as associate justices, and Daniel H. Wells as attorney general.

The provisional State of Deseret was the civil government in the Great Basin for two years. It organized counties, granted rights to natural resources, regulated trade and commerce, established the Nauvoo Legion as an official state militia, and fulfilled all functions of a regular government.¹⁴ The “state legislature” consisted of men selected by Brigham Young and ratified by the voters. This government performed admirably and smoothly until the United States Congress formally established the Territory of Utah in September 1850.

“Here We Will Stay”

Even though the Saints were efficiently governed, there were several challenges in establishing a strong refuge in Deseret. In contrast to the previous winter, the winter of 1848–49 was very severe and created serious needs among the people. It snowed frequently, and the snow remained on the ground throughout the entire winter, making it difficult for the cattle to feed. Heavy snowfall in the mountains made it difficult to gather wood. Excessive cold and violent winds often made life miserable for the settlers.¹⁵

Food was again so scarce that the people ate wolves, hawks, crows, dogs, and animals that had been dead for some time. The council sponsored a contest to eliminate the “wasters and destroyers” that were diminishing what little food supply there was. Numerous predatory animals were killed in this hunt. The brethren also instituted a voluntary rationing and community storehouse system. Those with surplus food were asked to give it to their bishop to be divided among the needy.

The harshness of the winter, constant hunger, a meager harvest the previous year, and the pull of what was called “California fever” created some discontent, and a few settlers loaded their wagons and prepared to leave in the spring. During those trying times, President Heber C. Kimball was moved upon to prophesy, “Never mind, boys, in less than one year there will be plenty of clothes and everything that we shall want sold at less than St. Louis prices.”¹⁶

President Brigham Young also encouraged the Saints: “God has appointed this place for the gathering of His Saints, and you will do better right here than you will by going to the gold mines. . . . We have been kicked out of the frying-pan into the fire, out of the fire into the middle of the floor, and here we are and here we will stay. . . . As the Saints gather here and get strong enough to possess the land, God will temper the climate, and we shall build a city and a temple to the Most High God in this place. We will extend our settlements to the east and west, to the north and to the south, and we will build towns and cities by the hundreds, and thousands of the Saints will gather in from the nations of the earth. . . . We have the finest climate, the best water, and the purest air that can be found on the earth; there is no healthier climate anywhere. As for gold and silver, and the rich minerals of the earth, there is no other country that equals this; but let them alone; let others seek them, and we will cultivate the soil.”¹⁷

Most Saints remained loyal to the cause and planted their seeds. As summer came, the prophets of God were vindicated. The Lord did temper the elements, and there was a bounteous harvest, enough to feed the nearly five thousand Saints who were already in the valley and the fourteen hundred who immigrated during the summer. Moreover, an estimated ten to fifteen thousand gold seekers passing through Salt Lake City in both 1849 and 1850 provided an economic windfall for the Saints. Merchant companies, organized to haul goods to California, learned upon reaching Salt Lake City that food, clothing, implements, and tools sent by ship had already reached the marketplace. They sold their goods to the Saints at devalued prices rather than take an even heavier loss in California. The overland immigrants’ wagons needed servicing and re-outfitting, thus providing employment to Mormon blacksmiths, wagonsmiths, teamsters, laundresses, and millers. The Saints established ferries on the upper crossing of the North Platte, and on the Green and Bear rivers, which were used by the California-bound trains.¹⁸

Parties with empty wagons were sent out from Salt Lake to collect valuable items discarded along the route by those who had attempted to lighten their loads so they could hurry faster to the gold fields of California. John D. Lee spent several days looking for a suitable stove for his family. He finally “found one to his liking, a fine large Premium Range No. 3 which would have cost more than fifty dollars to purchase. On the way back he started loading up with powder and lead, cooking utensils, tobacco, nails, tools, bacon, coffee, sugar, trunks of clothing, axes, and harness.”¹⁹ Thus the famous 1849 gold rush fulfilled the prophecies of Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball and directly enabled the Saints to survive in the Salt Lake Valley.

Early Exploration and Colonization

Although the major effort of the Saints during their first two years in Deseret was to establish a base of operations, Church leaders also sought other locations for settlement. Exploring parties determined the natural resources of the different areas, including water supply, soil fertility, availability of timber and other building materials, altitude of surrounding mountains, and mineral deposits.²⁰

In July and August of 1847, men from the Pioneer Company were sent to explore southward in the Salt Lake Valley, northward along the Bear River, and eastward into Cache Valley. During the fall of 1847, two routes to California were traversed by Mormon companies. Captain James Brown accompanied Samuel Brannan along the northern trail back to his colony at San Francisco. Jefferson Hunt, senior Latter-day Saint captain of the Mormon Battalion, led a group of eighteen men to southern California to secure cattle and other needed supplies. Hunt was successful in reaching the Chino Rancho by way of the Old Spanish Trail, although members of his party were forced to eat some of their horses to survive.

In December 1847, Parley P. Pratt led an exploring party southward toward the large, fresh-water Utah Lake. They launched a boat, caught fish with a net, and explored the lake and Utah Valley for two days before returning home by way of the Oquirrh mountain range on the west of the Salt Lake Valley. They explored both Cedar and Tooele valleys and the southern end of the Great Salt Lake before finishing their week-long expedition.

Within a year of the pioneers’ arrival, small towns were settled in the southern part of the Salt Lake Valley and also in what became Davis and Weber counties to the north. One of these, Brownsville, named in honor of James Brown, grew into Utah’s second largest city (later called Ogden in honor of Peter Skeen Ogden, a fur trapper). Other colonists joined the Brown family to establish Brownsville, and they successfully raised wheat, corn, cabbage, turnips, potatoes, and watermelons with seed brought from California. They also milked about twenty-five cows and were the first Mormons to produce cheese in the area. This produce helped fellow Saints in the Salt Lake Valley survive the starvation period in 1848–49. In 1849 Brigham Young visited the rapidly growing colony and sent Lorin Farr to take charge of all Church and political affairs there. President Farr became Ogden’s first mayor and the president of the Weber Stake, serving in both capacities for the next twenty years.

The attractive and fertile Utah Valley—named after the Ute Indians who lived there—to the south of Salt Lake Valley was another logical place for settlement. Church leaders first proposed using this valley as a stock range and as a source to supply fish for the Saints in Salt Lake City, but potential Indian problems led them to establish a permanent fortified settlement instead. Thirty-three families, numbering about 150 people, with John S. Higbee as the president of the company, arrived at the Provo River on 1 April 1849. They built Fort Utah about a mile and a half east of Utah Lake and began farming the rich river bottom lands. In September, Brigham Young visited the fort and recommended that the city be moved to higher ground farther east.

This new location became the nucleus of the city of Provo. During the winter of 1849–50, the Utes threatened war against the new settlers, and the Nauvoo Legion was called upon to protect the people of Provo. In a two-day encounter called the Battle at Fort Utah, forty Indians and one settler were killed and several others were wounded.²¹ This confrontation effectively ended Indian resistance in Utah Valley and made it possible for other settlements to be developed in 1850 and 1851,²² including Lehi, Alpine, American Fork, Pleasant Grove, Springville, Spanish Fork, Salem, Santaquin, and Payson. This line of settlements utilized every mountain stream and was spaced so that the outlying farms and pasture lands of each community bordered the next, and all settlers could rally together in case of danger. Provo became the stake center and county seat.

Tooele Valley, west of Salt Lake Valley, was colonized in 1849. In November of that same year, one of the first Ohio converts to the Church, Isaac Morley, led 225 colonists to Sanpete Valley, about a hundred miles south of Salt Lake City. They spent a cold and difficult winter in dugouts on the hill where the Manti Utah Temple was later constructed. The next year Elder Morley and his associates established friendly relations with Ute chief Wakara and his people, who had invited the settlers to locate near them.²³

A fifty-man exploration company, headed by Parley P. Pratt, was formed on 23 November 1849 for the purpose of choosing locations for additional colonies south of the Salt Lake Valley. Four days later they visited the thriving settlement of Provo, which boasted fifty-seven log houses. The company made detailed observations throughout their exploration. They continued south through Juab and Sanpete valleys, arriving at Manti just twelve days after the colonists began that settlement. On 10 December, while on the Sevier River, over two hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, their thermometer registered twenty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. After another hundred miles, part of the company crossed the rim of the Great Basin into what would become known as Utah’s Dixie, and they noticed a marked change in the climate and topography. By New Year’s Day they had reached the present-day site of St. George.

Indian guides and villagers informed them that the country to the south was desolate and forbidding, so they decided to return north. Returning through Mountain Meadows and Pahvant Valley, they were forced to stop at Chalk Creek (now Fillmore) because of heavy snow. It was decided that half of the company would push on to Provo, while the other half would remain at Chalk Creek until spring. This decision was based on the fact that there were only enough supplies to see half of the company through the winter. One morning the brethren of the forward-moving camp were completely buried by the night’s snow. Elder Pratt arose and shouted at his sleeping brethren: “I raised my voice like a trumpet, and commanded them to arise; when all at once there was a shaking among the snow piles, the graves were opened, and all came forth! We called this Resurrection Camp.”²⁴

Gathering to Zion

During this early exploration and settlement, the First Presidency developed plans to gather the remaining Saints, most of whom were quite poor, from the Iowa camps near the Missouri River.

In 1848 the First Presidency left Orson Hyde in Kanesville, Iowa, to direct the fortunes of the Saints. Approximately thirty communities had developed in Pottawattomie County. Agriculture flourished, craftsmen pursued their trades, and schools were held. Elder Hyde established a newspaper, the Frontier Guardian, in 1849 and edited about one hundred issues before being called to Utah in 1852. This newspaper served to keep the Iowa and eastern Saints informed regarding the progress of the kingdom of God.

Kanesville, the largest of the Mormon communities in Iowa, served Church migration as the staging ground for crossing the plains. Close by were three Church-operated ferries on the Missouri River, which were also utilized by one hundred forty thousand emigrants on their way to Oregon and California. One of the happiest events that occurred in Kanesville was the return of Oliver Cowdery in October 1848. On 12 November 1848, Oliver was rebaptized. Unfortunately, before he could gather to the Salt Lake Valley, Oliver became ill and died on a visit to his wife’s family in Richmond, Missouri. He died on 3 March 1850 in the home of his brother-in-law, David Whitmer.

The rich harvest of 1849 and the economic boost of the gold rush pioneers generated confidence for the Church to gather the ten thousand Saints still in the Missouri Valley, the hundreds still in branches scattered throughout the eastern states, and the thirty thousand members of the Church in England. In the fall of 1849 the Brethren launched the Perpetual Emigrating Fund, or the PEF. Its purpose was to solicit contributions in Deseret and use these funds to outfit the poor Saints who had gathered to the camps in Iowa. Then when the immigrants arrived in the valley, they would be expected to labor on the public works or pay back their debt, thus keeping the PEF a “perpetual” fund. PEF assistance to the Saints in Europe began as soon as possible after the removal of the Nauvoo exiles to the West.

Some six thousand dollars was raised that first fall, and Bishop Edward Hunter was appointed as agent to go to Iowa and purchase wagons, livestock, and provisions to outfit numerous Saints to gather to Zion. Approximately twenty-five hundred people immigrated to Deseret in 1850 and another twenty-five hundred were aided in 1851, leaving approximately eight thousand Saints still in Iowa, including those gathered from the eastern branches under the direction of Elder Wilford Woodruff and thousands of British Saints who had come that far.²⁵

Elders Ezra T. Benson and Jedediah M. Grant were appointed in the fall of 1851 to help Orson Hyde in evacuating the camps of the Saints in 1852. To those remaining, the First Presidency implored:

“What are you waiting for? Have you any good excuse for not coming? No! you have all of you, unitedly, a far better chance than we had when we started as Pioneers to find this place: you have better teams and more of them. You have as good food and more of it; you have as much natural strength. . . .

“. . . Therefore we wish you to evacuate Pottawatamie, and the States, and next fall be with us all ye Saints of the Most High.”²⁶

Accordingly, most of the Saints sold their land and improvements in Iowa to other American frontiersmen. Twenty-one companies, averaging over sixty wagons each, migrated to the Great Basin in 1852. Only a skeleton force was left on the Missouri River to aid future emigrants.²⁷

International Expansion

Coincident with their interest in the gathering was the renewed attention given by the First Presidency to the spreading of the gospel of Jesus Christ to the nations of the earth. The responsibility for this vast undertaking resided with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Four vacancies in the Quorum (due to the formation of the First Presidency and the apostasy of Lyman Wight) were filled in February 1849 by the call of Charles C. Rich, Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, and Franklin D. Richards. Many of the Twelve and several elders under their direction were assigned to take the gospel message to the nations of the earth. John Taylor was sent to France and Germany; Lorenzo Snow went to Italy; and Erastus Snow was sent to the Scandinavian countries; each of them was accompanied by several missionaries.

In the general conference of October 1849, Franklin D. Richards was called, along with others, to a mission in England. Elder Richards was to succeed Orson Pratt as mission president. Missionary work in Great Britain had continued with great success following the short mission of Parley P. Pratt, Orson Hyde, and John Taylor in 1846–47. Thereafter, Orson Spencer and then Orson Pratt directed the mission. Thousands of converts entered the Church between 1847 and 1850. Elder Pratt also supervised the emigration of over three thousand people to Kanesville, Iowa, in the first use of the PEF in England.

Elder Franklin D. Richards officially replaced Orson Pratt as mission president in England on 1 January 1851. Under his able leadership for the next seventeen months, thousands more joined the Church, and arrangements continued unabated for the gathering of these Saints to Zion. Both Orson Pratt and Franklin D. Richards published numerous tracts, which helped the missionary effort. The most important publication, however, was a compilation of several revelations and books of scripture translated by the Prophet Joseph Smith, which the English Saints had not previously seen. Elder Richards aptly named this compilation the Pearl of Great Price. This small volume, first published in 1851, became the foundation for the scriptural book by the same name that would be accepted as a standard work of the Church in 1880. Clearly the British Saints contributed greatly to the strength of the Church. Of the thousands who gathered to Zion in the Rocky Mountains in the nineteenth century, over half came from Great Britain.

Other members of the Twelve introduced the gospel to the continent of Europe. John Taylor directed the first missionary activity in France and Germany in 1849 and 1850. The revolutions that racked Europe in 1848 so stirred society there that Elder Taylor and his companions found little success in either nation, but the Book of Mormon was published in both French and German, and a branch of the Church was established in Hamburg, Germany. Sporadic missionary work continued in Germany for several more years.

Elder Lorenzo Snow, assigned to take the gospel to Italy, arrived in the Piedmont region in June 1850 with two companions, Joseph Toronto, a native of Italy, and T.B.H. Stenhouse, a convert from Britain. The missionaries enjoyed some success among a Protestant group known as the Waldenses, but were unsuccessful with the larger Catholic population. Lorenzo Snow arranged for the translation of the Book of Mormon into Italian and sent the first missionaries to Malta and India. In December 1850, Elder Stenhouse introduced the gospel to Switzerland. In February 1851, Elder Snow dedicated this land for the spreading of the gospel. The work there progressed slowly but steadily throughout the 1850s, and Switzerland became the third most productive mission of the Church in Europe after England and Denmark.

The task of taking the gospel to Denmark was given to Elder Erastus Snow of the Twelve. He arrived in 1850 and enjoyed almost immediate success under Denmark’s strong constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. From among the many converts, Elder Snow set apart 150 native missionaries, who in turn helped speed the dissemination of the gospel message. From Denmark the work quickly spread to Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. Although not as many converts joined the Church in these other countries as in Denmark, all of Scandinavia contributed thousands of Saints to the great gathering to Zion during the next fifty years.

During this time of renewed international missionary zeal, many courageous attempts were made to take the gospel to other nations of the earth. These were usually only marginally successful. Parley P. Pratt was assigned the responsibility of heading the Pacific Mission and sent missionaries to China, Hawaii, Australia, and New Zealand. In 1851 he went to Chile but a revolution paralyzed his efforts. The T’ai-ping Rebellion in China thwarted Hosea Stout’s work there. Labors in Australia and New Zealand bore some fruit, and a few immigrants came to Salt Lake City in the 1850s.

The greatest success in the Pacific was in the Hawaiian Mission, which was opened in 1850. George Q. Cannon felt impressed to take the gospel to the native islanders instead of only to the Europeans and Americans. Learning Hawaiian, Elder Cannon and the brethren who followed him found thousands of people ready to accept the gospel.

In the first years following the 1847 founding of a refuge in the West, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, under inspired leadership, achieved a remarkable work. It began to conquer a desert, establish a core of settlements, gather thousands of refugees to Deseret, and courageously take the gospel to many nations of the earth.

Endnotes

1. In Wilford Woodruff Journals, 28 July 1847, LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City; spelling standardized.

2. In Carter E. Grant, “Robbed by Wolves: A True Story,” Relief Society Magazine, July 1928, pp. 363–64.

3. Heber C. Kimball, in Journal of Discourses, 4:136.

4. See B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century One, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1930), 3:476–77; this paragraph is derived from Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 47–48.

5. See John R. Young, Memoirs of John R. Young, Utah Pioneer, 1847 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1920), p. 62; Solomon F. Kimball, “Our Pioneer Boys,” Improvement Era, Aug. 1908, pp. 734–35; derived from Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), p. 210.

6. M. Isabella Horne, “Pioneer Reminiscences,” Young Woman’s Journal, July 1902, p. 294.

7. Derived from Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 49.

8. Priddy Meeks, “Journal of Priddy Meeks,” in Utah Historical Quarterly, 1942, p. 163.

9. “Journal of Priddy Meeks,” p. 164; see also William Hartley, “Mormons, Crickets, and Gulls: A New Look at an Old Story,” Utah Historical Quarterly, Summer 1970, pp. 224–39.

10. Parley P. Pratt, ed., Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, Classics in Mormon Literature series (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1985), p. 335.

11. In James R. Clark, comp., Messages of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965–75), 1:341.

12. Previous three paragraphs derived from Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, pp. 51–54.

13. See Eugene Edward Campbell, “The Mormon Gold Mining Mission of 1849,” Brigham Young University Studies, Autumn 1959–Winter 1960, pp. 23–24; Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, pp. 71–74.

14. Derived from James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), p. 253.

15. See Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Willard Richards, in Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 1:352.

16. In Journal of Discourses, 10:247; previous two paragraphs derived from Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, pp. 58–59.

17. In James S. Brown, Giant of the Lord: Life of a Pioneer (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1960), pp. 132–33.

18. Derived from Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, pp. 68–69; Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 252.

19. Juanita Brooks, John Doyle Lee: Zealot-Pioneer Builder-Scapegoat, new ed. (Glendale, Ca.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1972), pp. 48–49.

20. Derived from Eugene E. Campbell, “The Mormon Migrations to Utah,” in Richard D. Poll, et al., eds., Utah’s History, 2d ed. (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1989), pp. 127–28.

21. See Peter Gottfredson, Indian Depredations in Utah, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: Merlin G. Christensen, 1969), pp. 28–35.

22. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 254.

23. Previous four paragraphs derived from Eugene E. Campbell, “Early Colonization Patterns,” in Poll, Utah’s History, pp. 137–40.

24. Pratt, Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, p. 340; previous two paragraphs derived from Campbell, “Mormon Migrations to Utah,” p. 129.

25. See Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 79.

26. In Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 2:75–76.

27. Derived from Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom, p. 79.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Utah in Isolation

When the Saints first arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they were satisfied that they were isolated from their enemies and could build the kingdom of God in peace and safety. Brigham Young declared to members of the Pioneer Company on 24 July 1847, “If the people of the United States will let us alone for ten years, we will ask no odds of them.”¹ With the sustaining help of the Lord and by their own industry, the Saints established a strong refuge within the ten years. Success, however, did not come easily. Conflicts developed with government appointees, and great sacrifice was required to gather Church members to Zion and to colonize.

Organization of Utah Territory

Church leaders laid plans in 1848 to negotiate with the United States government for either statehood or territorial status. In March of 1849 an election was held to ratify officers for the proposed territory, and by early May a twenty-two-foot long petition containing 2,270 signatures was on its way to Washington, D.C., proposing the creation of an immense territory including all of what is now Utah and Nevada, portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Oregon, and a third of California, including a narrow strip on the Pacific coast taking in the port city of San Diego.

John M. Bernhisel, a medical doctor with political acumen, was chosen to take Deseret’s petition to the nation’s capital. En route to Washington from Deseret he met with several key politicians in the East and succeeded in soliciting considerable support for his project. In November 1849, Dr. Bernhisel met in Philadelphia with Wilford Woodruff and Colonel Thomas L. Kane, a close friend of the Church. A year earlier at the request of Brigham Young, Kane had been in Washington and had spoken with President James K. Polk and other leading officials about a territorial government for Deseret. He had found little sympathy for the Mormons in Washington and therefore recommended that Deseret apply for statehood. Under territorial status officials would be appointed by the president.

Kane told Wilford Woodruff, “You are better off without any Government from the hands of Congress than a Territorial Government. The political intrigues of government officers will be against you. You can govern yourselves better than they can govern you. . . . You do not want corrupt political men from Washington strutting around you with military epaulets and dress who will speculate out of you all they can.” Kane also recommended that Brigham Young be the governor because “His head is not filled with law books and lawyers tactics but he has power to see through men and things.”²

By the time Bernhisel met with Kane, Church officials in Salt Lake City had also concluded that they should direct their lobbying efforts toward becoming a state rather than a territory. They drew up a formal constitution for the State of Deseret, complete with the necessary elected officials, including First Presidency members Brigham Young as governor, Heber C. Kimball as lieutenant governor, and Willard Richards as secretary of state. Almon W. Babbitt was selected as a delegate to Congress, and he left in July with a draft of the constitution. Babbitt printed the document in Kanesville, Iowa, and then in December met Dr. Bernhisel in Washington.

Unfortunately, Deseret’s application for statehood was not given serious consideration. As Colonel Kane and Dr. Bernhisel quickly perceived, Washington officials were preoccupied with the conflict between the northern and southern states over the extension of slavery into the territory obtained in the war with Mexico. From December 1849 through September 1850 Congress vehemently debated slavery-related issues and showed little concern for the Mormon colony in the Great Basin.

The Church’s best friend in Congress proved to be Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, who had befriended Joseph Smith and the Saints during the Nauvoo period. Douglas, the chairman of the Senate committee on territories, graciously met with Dr. Bernhisel and promised to help take the petition through the legislative process. Although Congress willingly agreed to rapidly growing California’s petition for statehood, the slavery controversy prohibited serious consideration of the statehood petitions for sparsely populated Deseret and New Mexico. Senator Douglas decided to call for territorial status instead, to appease the South, which could not accept more senators from “free” states. He also changed Deseret’s name to Utah (after the Ute Indians) to avoid offending his colleagues, particularly Senator Thomas Benton of Missouri, who thought Deseret sounded too much like desert.³

After lengthy debate, Congress completed a legislative package known as the Compromise of 1850, which, among other things, admitted California into the Union as a free state and designated Utah and New Mexico as territories with the right to decide by popular sovereignty whether they would eventually become slave or free states. On 9 September 1850 President Millard Fillmore signed the bill creating the Utah Territory. Neither the Latter-day Saints nor the federal officials knew then that this action would begin forty-six years of mistrust and conflict before statehood was finally granted.⁴

Bernhisel’s skill as a lobbyist became particularly important as President Fillmore considered appointment of officers for the new territory. Meeting with the president, Bernhisel stated, “The people of Utah cannot but consider it their right, as American citizens to be governed by men of their own choice, entitled to their confidence, and united with them in opinion and feeling.”⁵ Fillmore, fearing that the Senate would not approve an all-Mormon slate, compromised and selected four Mormons (Young, Snow, Blair, and Heywood) and four others to the federally appointed slots. The appointees for the new territory of Utah were Brigham Young, governor and superintendent of Indian affairs; Broughton D. Harris of Vermont, secretary; Joseph Buffington of Pennsylvania, chief justice; Zerubbabel Snow of Ohio and Perry E. Brocchus of Alabama, associate justices; Seth M. Blair of Utah, U.S. attorney; Joseph L. Heywood of Utah, U.S. marshal; and Henry R. Day, Indian agent.

Conflict with the Non-Mormons

Throughout the fall and winter of 1850–51, fragments of information about the federal government’s action reached the Salt Lake Valley. Upon learning that he was appointed governor and assigned to take a census and establish legislative districts, Brigham Young got to work immediately after taking the oath of office on 3 February 1851. An election for other officials was held in August, the most important official elected being John M. Bernhisel, as territorial delegate to Congress.

The non-Mormon appointees arrived during the following summer. The first to come was Chief Justice Lemuel D. Brandebury, who had replaced Joseph Buffington after he had refused his appointment. The Saints charitably greeted Brandebury and entertained him with a banquet and several dances. Each of the other officials was accorded similar treatment. The last to come was Associate Judge Perry E. Brocchus, who told his traveling companion, Orson Hyde, that he would like to be considered for the position of congressional delegate from Utah Territory. When he arrived on 17 August, he was disappointed to learn of Bernhisel’s election.

Conflict between the Saints and the “Gentile” officials began almost immediately. The territorial secretary, Broughton Harris, accused Brigham Young of irregularities in handling the census and election, which technically could not be certified without the secretary. Mrs. Harris condescendingly referred to the Mormon men and their plural wives as hardly better than animals. Because of his alienation, Harris refused to turn over to Governor Young the territorial seal and the twenty-four thousand dollars appropriated for running the government.

In September, Judge Perry Brocchus asked Brigham Young for permission to speak in the Church’s general conference. After expressing gratitude for the kindness and hospitality of the Saints, he launched into a diatribe against the Mormons for their lack of patriotism and the immorality of their women (because of plural marriage). The audience was infuriated with Brocchus’s speech. President Young took the stand and rebuked Brocchus for his imprudent remarks. The two men later exchanged letters, which, instead of achieving accord, revealed an irreconcilable difference. From the non-member point of view, the Mormons were guilty of sedition for speaking harshly against the United States and its officials, they were a peculiar and immoral people because of their unusual marriage practices, and they were under the “un-American” political domination of their church leaders. The Latter-day Saints, on the other hand, felt justified in criticizing the United States for not redressing their grievances against Missouri and not bringing the murderers of Joseph and Hyrum Smith to justice. Furthermore, they pointed out that despite these injustices, they were loyal to the Constitution.

Brocchus, Harris, Brandebury, and Day left Utah on 28 September 1851. These “runaway officials” as the Saints called them, went to Washington, D.C., with highly colored stories about the Mormons, including the practice of plural marriage. They claimed they had been compelled to leave Utah because of the lawless acts and seditious tendencies of Brigham Young and the majority of the residents. Anticipating these charges, Governor Young wrote to President Fillmore setting forth his own view of affairs in the territory. He also sent Jedediah M. Grant to join John M. Bernhisel and Thomas L. Kane in Washington to represent the Church’s interest. After reading Governor Young’s letter and conducting a preliminary investigation, U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster ordered the “runaway officials” to return to their posts or to resign; they resigned.⁶

Back in Utah territorial business proceeded unhindered, and the laws previously enacted by the provisional State of Deseret were officially incorporated into territorial law. In honor of the president of the United States, the legislature created Millard County, christened its county seat Fillmore, and designated it as the future territorial capital. The most important legislative act, passed on 4 February 1852, gave original jurisdiction in both civil and criminal cases to local probate courts, which were presided over by Church officials. This, in effect, made it possible in most instances for these local courts to displace the federal courts, which were presided over by judges appointed by the president of the United States. This situation prevailed in Utah until Congress repealed the territorial statute in 1874. Meanwhile President Fillmore appointed officials who, because they did not criticize the Saints, were more to the citizens’ liking.⁷

In the fall of 1853, a tragedy brought sorrow to both Saints and Gentiles alike. Captain John W. Gunnison led a party of army topographical engineers to survey in the Utah Territory for the proposed transcontinental railroad. In October, a band of vengeful Indians, angered because members of a California emigrant train had killed one of their tribe and wounded two others, attacked Gunnison’s party, killing the commander and seven others. “The tragedy cast a gloom over all the ‘Mormon’ settlements” because Gunnison “was respected by all the people for his kindness and friendly feeling.” Even though Church members had no part in the killing, the image of the Church suffered from rumors that the Mormons had planned and ordered the awful deed.⁸

In 1854 at the conclusion of Brigham Young’s term of four years as governor, President Franklin Pierce refused the entreaties of the Utah citizens to reappoint him. Instead, he selected Colonel E. J. Steptoe as governor. Steptoe was in Utah on assignment to study the feasibility of a military road through the territory and to assist in capturing the murderers of the Gunnison party. Instead of accepting the governorship, Steptoe signed a petition that Brigham Young be reappointed; he then left for California. Pierce offered the position to others, but when they also declined he reappointed Brigham Young as governor.⁹

Gathering to Zion Accelerated

In spite of the seemingly all-consuming task of building a model city in their new Zion, Church leaders took on additional challenges. Few things were more urgent than spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and preparing for the arrival of converted Saints. It was the goal of the Church to gather all members to the West. Missionary work was so successful first in Britain and then in various parts of the European continent, that in the early 1850s Church members there outnumbered those in Utah. For example, there were 30,747 Latter-day Saints in the British Isles in 1850 and 11,380 in Utah. As missionary success continued, it became a Herculean task to arrange for the emigration of so many people, particularly since most converts were poor.

Despite these challenges, with the organization of the Perpetual Emigrating Fund (PEF) in 1849, the remaining Saints at the camps in Iowa were brought into the valley by 1852. Attention could then be given to gathering the many thousands of Church members in Europe. Friends and relatives in Utah played an important part in gathering the European Saints. Church leaders encouraged friends and family members to contribute cash, or items that could be converted to cash, to the PEF office in Salt Lake City, which in turn directed the agents abroad to send the persons named under the care of the company. Most immigrants, however, did not come totally by way of PEF funds. Many European Saints paid all or part of their own way.¹⁰

The PEF employed various agents along the route to the Great Basin to assist the immigrating Saints. The agent in Liverpool, England, chartered ships and assembled and instructed prospective emigrants. During the first few years, the emigrants sailed to New Orleans, where another representative met them and booked passage up the Mississippi River to St. Louis. A third agent arranged transit up the Missouri River about five hundred miles to an outfitting post, where a final agent prepared them for the overland journey to Utah. In 1855 the New Orleans-Mississippi River route was abandoned for health reasons in favor of entry into the United States at Philadelphia, New York, or Boston, where immigrants traveled by rail either to St. Louis or another railhead farther west. The entire journey usually required eight or nine months.¹¹

[click for enlarged version] [Bitmap] [PDF] Sea routes of Mormon emigration

In over half a century of sea travel, the Saints “experienced only one sea disaster, the wreck of the American bark Julia Ann.”¹² Twenty-eight members of the Church were aboard the Julia Ann, which set sail from Australia bound for San Francisco. Five people lost their lives when the ship encountered strong winds that swept them into a coral reef. “The Saints and some masters attributed this remarkable safety record to the hand of Providence and the fact that ships were often dedicated and blessed before embarking on an emigrant voyage. Many of these vessels were eventually lost at sea, but not while carrying Mormon passengers.”¹³

A grasshopper plague during the summer of 1855 seriously jolted the economy in Utah, and even with the donations from the Saints, the PEF was in financial difficulty. Church leaders therefore sought a way to cut the costs of immigration.¹⁴ Brigham Young wrote to Franklin D. Richards, the European mission president, in September 1855: “We cannot afford to purchase wagons and teams as in times past, I am consequently thrown back upon my old plan—to make hand-carts, and let the emigration foot it, and draw upon them the necessary supplies, having a cow or two for every ten. They can come just as quick, if not quicker, and much cheaper—can start earlier and escape the prevailing sickness which annually lays so many of our brethren in the dust.”¹⁵ A general epistle by the First Presidency giving detailed instructions on handcart travel was read at the October 1855 general conference but was not acted upon until 1856. It was estimated that using handcarts would reduce emigration costs by a third to a half for each person. Consequently many more people could come to Zion through the available PEF funds.

Immigration during 1856 was unusually large with many of the Saints crossing the plains for the first time by handcart. Arriving at eastern United States seaports, they made their way by rail to the terminus at Iowa City, Iowa. There agents arranged for the preparation of handcarts designed for either pushing or pulling a load of one hundred to five hundred pounds of food and clothing. The first three companies, led by returning missionaries, heroically walked the plains, arriving safely in the Salt Lake Valley between 26 September and 2 October.¹⁶ Elder J.D.T. McAllister, who helped the first company get outfitted, composed a merry song, which the handcart emigrants sang as they crossed the plains:

Ye Saints that dwell on Europe’s shores,
Prepare yourselves with many more
To leave behind your native land
   For sure God’s Judgments are at hand.

Prepare to cross the stormy main
Before you do the valley gain
And with the faithful make a start
   To cross the plains with your hand cart.

Chorus

Some must push and some must pull
   As we go marching up the hill,
As merrily on the way we go
   Until we reach the valley, oh.¹⁷

Like those who preceded them, the handcart companies had their share of adventure and trial. A rescue of six-year-old Arthur Parker occurred as the first handcart company was en route on a forest trail between Iowa City and Florence, Nebraska. One day Arthur, who had been ill, sat down unnoticed to rest along the trail. The company traveled on until a sudden storm came up, and they hurriedly made camp. Finding that Arthur was not with the children, they began an organized search. After two days of searching, the company was forced by dwindling supplies to move on. Brother Parker went back on the trail alone to search for his son. As he left, his wife gave him a bright red shawl. If the son were found dead, the father was to wrap him in the shawl; if alive, he was to wave the shawl as a signal to the watchful family.

For hours Brother Parker retraced their route, calling, searching, and praying for his helpless little son. At a mail and trading station he learned that a farmer and his wife had found Arthur and helped him. For three days Ann Parker and her children watched and waited, and the entire company prayed for little Arthur. On the third day as she looked back along the trail she saw her husband in the distance. He was waving the shawl. Ann sank to the sand. She slept that night for the first time in six days.¹⁸

Twiss Birmingham, also a member of the first handcart company, recorded that the company averaged about twenty-five miles a day pulling the handcarts. On 3 August 1856, Twiss recorded in his journal: “Started at 5 o’clock without any breakfast and had to pull the carts through 6 miles of heavy sand. Some places the wheels were up to the boxes and I was so weak from thirst and hunger and being exhausted with the pain of the boils that I was obliged to lie down several times, and many others had to do the same. Some fell down. I was very much grieved today, so much so that I thought my heart would burst—sick—and poor Kate—at the same time—crawling on her hands and knees, and the children crying with hunger and fatigue. I was obliged to take the children and put them on the hand cart and urge them along the road in order to make them keep up.”¹⁹

As the Saints prepared for general conference in Salt Lake City in October 1856, everyone assumed that the arrival of the third handcart company ended the immigration that year. But Franklin D. Richards, who had come into the valley two days prior to the conference, announced that two more handcart companies and two ox-cart supply trains were still on the plains and desperately needed food and clothing to finish the journey. The Willie and Martin companies had started late from Liverpool and were further delayed in Iowa City awaiting the construction of new handcarts. Because the wood for these carts was not properly seasoned, extensive repairs were necessary in Florence, Nebraska, which further slowed them down.

One of their leaders, Levi Savage, had urged the Saints to remain at Winter Quarters until spring, but he was voted down by the enthusiastic but naive immigrants. Brother Savage then declared, “Brethren and sisters, what I have said I know to be true; but seeing you are to go forward, I will go with you, will help you all I can, will work with you, will rest with you, will suffer with you, and, if necessary I will die with you. May God in his mercy bless and preserve us.”²⁰ In early October the immigrants were toiling through the middle of Wyoming, where each member’s scant allotment of clothing gave little comfort in the frosty mornings.²¹

When Brigham Young learned that these companies were still on the plains, he spoke to the Saints who had gathered for general conference. The meeting was actually held on 5 October, one day before the conference officially convened. Brigham Young said:

“The text will be, ‘to get them here.’ . . .

“I shall call upon the Bishops this day, I shall not wait until to-morrow, nor until next day, for 60 good mule teams and 12 or 15 wagons. . . .

“I will tell you all that your faith, religion, and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you in the celestial kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains.”²² The response was impressive. Sixteen wagon loads of food and supplies were quickly assembled; and on the morning of 7 October, sixteen good four-mule teams and twenty-seven hardy young men (known as Brigham Young’s “Minute Men”) headed eastward with the first provisions. More help was solicited and obtained from all parts of the territory. By the end of October, two hundred and fifty teams were on the road to give relief.²³

Meanwhile early snows trapped the Willie Company a few miles east of South Pass and the Martin Company further back near the last crossing of the North Platte River. Relief parties finally found the Willie Company on 19 October and the Martin Company nine days later. Some rescuers looking for the Martin Company had even turned back thinking that the immigrants must have found some kind of winter quarters. The Saints in both companies were freezing, listless, and near starvation. Scores of them were already dead, and even after help arrived, nearly a hundred more died.²⁴

One of the first to find the desperate Martin Company was the hardy Ephraim Hanks, who had killed and butchered a buffalo on his way. Ephraim recalled, “I reached the ill-fated train just as the immigrants were camping for the night. The sight that met my gaze as I entered their camp can never be erased from my memory. The starved forms and haggard countenances of the poor sufferers, as they moved about slowly, shivering with cold, to prepare their scanty evening meal was enough to touch the stoutest heart. When they saw me coming, they hailed me with joy inexpressible, and when they further beheld the supply of fresh meat I brought into camp, their gratitude knew no bounds.”²⁵

Bringing the suffering immigrants into the valley was difficult. Many of the women were widowed and the children orphaned. Several could not walk because of frozen feet and legs. When shoes and stockings were removed from the feet of fourteen-year-old Maggie Pucell and her ten-year-old sister Ellen, the skin came off. The dead flesh was scraped off Maggie’s feet, but Ellen’s were frozen so badly that amputation just below the knees was necessary. The Willie Company arrived in Salt Lake City on 9 November, and the Martin Company dragged into the city before cheering Saints on 30 November. In December, members of the independent wagon trains, who had rested at Fort Bridger, reached the valley.²⁶

Over two hundred members of the two ill-fated handcart companies died before they could reach Zion. More people died in these two companies than in any other immigrant group in the United States. The fault was not in the method of travel, but was the result of a combination of many unusual and largely unforeseen circumstances. In subsequent years the Church sponsored five more handcart companies, and each of them arrived in the valley without undue hardship.

Colonization Expands

When immigrants arrived in Salt Lake City, they were usually met as they emerged from Emigration Canyon and escorted to a city block named Emigration Square. Brigham Young or some other Church leader welcomed them, and wards in the city treated them to a well-deserved celebration feast. After a few days of being cared for by the local Saints, these new arrivals were sent to other communities or were given land and work in the Salt Lake City area. Especially in the early years, the immigrants were usually assigned a location, often based on a correlation between their skills and the needs of the various communities. Between 1847 and 1857, over one hundred towns were founded and colonized.²⁷

Following the work of Parley P. Pratt’s Southern Exploring Company in 1849–50, Church leaders began establishing communities along the “Mormon Corridor” on the line of mountains leading southwestwardly toward southern California. The first of these were Parowan, an agriculture center, and Cedar City, the headquarters of the “iron mission,” both founded in 1851. By 1853 nearly all the sites recommended by the Southern Exploring Company had been settled.

San Bernardino, in southern California, was also founded in 1851. It was designed to serve as a base of supplies and a receiving station near a Pacific port. Elders Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles presided over the colony, which grew to some seven thousand people by 1857. Plans to bring the European Saints around South America’s Cape Horn and through San Bernardino up the Mormon Corridor to Salt Lake City never materialized because ships could not be chartered. Some of the Saints from Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific islands, however, did come via San Bernardino. Brigham Young eventually came to doubt the wisdom of having such a large center in California. In 1857 members of the colony were called home, partly because federal troops were approaching Utah and partly because the colony was experiencing internal dissension and problems with non-Mormon neighbors. Some residents of San Bernardino did not respond to the prophet’s direction and remained in California.

The expansion of the settlements was also influenced by missionary work among the Indians. Soon after the founding of Cedar City, groups were sent to explore the Virgin and Santa Clara rivers, and in 1854 men were sent to work among the Indians of that region. The missionaries not only taught the gospel, but also tried to help the Indians build homes and learn better agricultural methods. Missionaries were also assigned to establish Indian missions in Las Vegas, Nevada, at Elk Mountain on the Colorado River near present-day Moab, Utah, and at Fort Lemhi on the Salmon River in central Idaho. The Elk Mountain mission, while experiencing some success among the Utes, was abandoned in 1855 because fighting erupted between the Utes and Navajos, and some Indians attacked the missionaries. The settlers in Las Vegas and Fort Lemhi were recalled by Brigham Young in 1858. A primary reason for closing the fort was an attack by the Shoshone Indians upon Fort Lemhi, which resulted in the death of several of the missionaries.

The Church set up two outposts near the point where the Oregon and Mormon trails divided. The purposes of the outposts were to supervise access to Utah from the east and to serve as supply stations for immigrants. Brigham Young wanted to purchase Fort Bridger from mountain man Jim Bridger, but when Orson Hyde led a group of colonists to the fort in 1853, Bridger and his companions refused to sell. Disappointed, but not discouraged, the brethren set up a new colony, Fort Supply, approximately twelve miles to the south. Here they did missionary work among the Indians. In 1855 the Church was finally able to buy Fort Bridger from owners Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez. The two outposts provided supplies for both Mormon and non-Mormon travelers.²⁸

The final outlying settlement formed during these first ten years was Carson Valley in present-day western Nevada (still part of Utah Territory in the 1850s). Brigham Young sent Elder Orson Hyde there in 1855 to act as probate judge and to organize a county government. In 1856 some 250 people were called to colonize the beautiful valley and to proselyte and civilize the Indians. Difficulties soon arose, however, with non-Mormons who fretted at the political control and cultural influence of the Church. Discovery of gold in the area added to the problems, and in 1857 the colony was disbanded.

Despite problems with outlying settlements, several factors assured the general success of the Church’s colonization efforts. It was rare for individuals or groups to start their own settlements. Most of the sites were preselected and settled under Church auspices. Sites were carefully chosen to ensure adequate water, fertile soil, access to other important resources, and safety from Indian attack. Furthermore, large numbers of capable men headed up the colonies. Hundreds of bishops, presiding elders, and stake presidents directed the building of individual towns and villages and acted as civil officials as well as spiritual advisers. Many men served one, two, three, or more decades in these assignments. The lifeblood of the colonies was the thousands of immigrants who arrived each year. In Utah’s first decade, almost forty thousand Saints emigrated to Zion.²⁹

There were different methods of obtaining personnel for the colonies. Brigham Young selected families whose names were then presented during general conference when new colonies were announced. Occasionally idle brethren who gathered on streets were assigned to serve missions or colonize. In the winter of 1855–56 for example, while court was in session, scores of men filled the council house to watch the proceedings or simply milled around. After several weeks of this, Brigham Young sent his clerk Thomas Bullock “to take their names, for the purpose of giving them missions, if they had not anything to do of any more importance.” From the names, President Heber C. Kimball selected thirty men to go to Las Vegas, forty-eight to Fort Bridger and Fort Supply, and thirty-five to go to Fort Lemhi. Others were assigned to the lead business near Las Vegas, and some were called to the East Indies. At other times Church officials designated the leaders and authorized them to select or recruit families. Not everyone was enthusiastic about the assignments, but in most instances these calls were accepted and viewed as a test of religious commitment.³⁰

The leadership for each new settlement was carefully selected, and persons were chosen to supply the wide variety of useful talents and skills required to build a new town. Farmers were the mainstay of most settlements, but carpenters, millwrights, mechanics, cabinetmakers, plasterers, painters, brick makers, masons, dam builders, weavers, tailors, tanners, surveyors, butchers, bakers, schoolteachers, musicians, wagon makers, wheelwrights, and others were also needed. The typical settlement was carefully designed to encourage close-knit social life and religious activity. The center square was set apart for a meetinghouse, which served as both church and school. Typically, communities were laid out in square blocks separated by wide streets. Each family had acreage in town for a garden, a small orchard, and sheds for poultry and livestock, but the main planting and the herding of cattle took place outside the village.³¹

Many of the unsung heroines of the colonization effort were the women who went to the new outposts. In most Latter-day Saint communities there was an almost equal balance of men and women. Women colonists did nearly as many traditionally male jobs as they did domestic chores. The sisters labored next to their husbands building homes, laying chimneys, chinking cracks, mudding the outside of log houses, and plastering and painting the inside. Women dug irrigation ditches, plowed, planted, harvested, chopped wood, stacked hay, and herded and milked cows.

Often Mormon women carried a heavier load than other western pioneer women because their husbands, fathers, and brothers were frequently away on missions or other Church assignments, and the managing of the family resources fell to the women and the older children. All of this was in addition to their normal duties of cooking and canning, drying fruit, grinding wheat, washing, ironing, quilting, sewing, darning, spinning, weaving, making soap and sugar, preparing for weddings, attending funerals, maintaining and beautifying homes, raising children, and attending to Church duties. Some women had additional home-based employment to help the family survive economically. They sewed, took in laundry, and made and sold butter, cheese, dried fruit, rag carpets, shoes, hats, yarn, cloth, candlewick, and candles. Others taught school or were midwives. The sisters cooperated with each other in the settlements, since few homes were totally self-sufficient.³²

Growth of the Church in Early Utah

Throughout the Saints’ first decade in Utah, when approximately one hundred smaller communities were being colonized, Salt Lake City was developing into a major center. It was a planned community purposely designed to be the hub of a widespread religious commonwealth in the Great Basin. It was unique in the West because of its equitable distribution of land, community farms and herds, public work projects, organized immigration, and controlled use of natural resources. Emphasis on public convenience rather than the profitable sale of prime public lots also permitted the building of unusually wide streets.

General conferences were held semiannually in Salt Lake City, and the Saints often traveled hundreds of miles to attend. Conferences were a time of reunion and socializing and became one of the important symbols of Latter-day Saint unity. These conferences were held in the Old Tabernacle, which was dedicated on 6 April 1852 by President Willard Richards. The Old Tabernacle was also used for regular Sunday services attended by Brigham Young and other Church leaders. Most of the sermons delivered at the conferences and the Sunday meetings were recorded in the Church’s official newspaper, the Deseret News, founded in 1850; many of them, beginning in 1854, were compiled annually in England in the Journal of Discourses.

As part of his aim for economic self-sufficiency for the Saints, Brigham Young directed the building of tithing houses or bishops’ storehouses in every community. These served as supply sources for most goods needed by the Saints. Many people donated one day of labor in every ten toward various Church projects. Most common, however, was the payment of tithing “in kind.” Farmers brought chickens, eggs, cattle, vegetables, and home manufactured goods to the tithing houses. About two-thirds of the tithing donated at local offices went to the general tithing office in Salt Lake City for general Church needs.

From the beginning of their settlement in the Great Basin, the Saints exhibited interest in education and cultural life. During the first winter in Salt Lake City, a single school class for children was taught in a tent. Later Church leaders directed every ward to establish a school. The University of Deseret was created by the legislature of the provisional State of Deseret in 1850. That same year the Deseret Dramatic Association was organized, which performed several plays annually. Lorenzo Snow organized the Polysophical Society in 1852 to encourage people of all ages to study and develop themselves in all fields of thought and endeavor. He created the word polysophical when he could not think of an appropriate title for the organization.

“The society met weekly in Lorenzo’s home, where the members were treated to wide-ranging intellectual fare that included commentaries on scientific and philosophical subjects interspersed with instrumental and vocal music selections, readings, poems, and essays. Nor was it unusual for parts of the programs to be presented in languages other than English.”³³ In general, social life centered around the ward. Ward socials, dances, and dramas, and even some music clubs, contributed to the feeling of community among the Saints. Other associations that developed in the 1850s were the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society, the Deseret Theological Association, and the Horticultural Society.

The Church organization also adapted to the expanding community of Saints in Utah. Each settlement had at least one ward, which was presided over by a bishop. The bishop supervised both temporal and spiritual activities in the community. Preaching meetings were held each Sunday, and fast meetings were held one Thursday each month with members asked to contribute money saved by fasting. Block teaching was inaugurated. Block teachers were either adults from the Aaronic Priesthood or acting teachers from the Melchizedek Priesthood who visited the families in the ward and exhorted them to good works. Boys had not usually been ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood, but by January 1854 Wilford Woodruff recorded, “We are now beginning to ordain our young sons to the lesser priesthood here in Zion.”³⁴

The most dramatic religious event of the 1850s was the reformation of 1856–57. While the new communities were being settled, many members of the Church had drifted into spiritual lethargy as they struggled to survive on the frontier. During their first decade in the West, most Saints had concentrated on temporal affairs and had often neglected individual spiritual matters. The need for a reformation became especially apparent in 1856 when the effects of rapid immigration into Utah and the severe drought and grasshopper plague of 1855 combined to threaten the economic stability of Utah. Many Saints wore threadbare clothing and were on the verge of starvation. Church leaders taught that these conditions had come about partly because of the Saints’ laxity in keeping the commandments.³⁵

In 1856 the First Presidency commenced a reform movement. Leaders traveled throughout the territory preaching repentance with unprecedented fervor. Second Counselor Jedediah M. Grant in particular stirred many congregations with his enthusiastic sermons. Special reformation missionaries preached and called upon congregations to repent. Block teachers took a list of questions about moral behavior into the homes. Saints everywhere were called upon to rededicate themselves to the Lord and his commandments through rebaptism. Church leaders led the way. Elder Wilford Woodruff characterized the reformation: “The spirit of God is like a flame among the Leaders of this people and they are throwing the arrows of the Almighty among the people. JM Grant is pruning with a sharp two edged sword and calling loudly upon the people to wake up and repent of their sins. The Elders who have returned are full of the Holy Ghost and power of God.”³⁶

The reformation had a positive effect upon the Saints. Religion and moral practices once again took prominence in their lives. They demonstrated by rescuing the stricken handcart companies that they truly cared for each other and could successfully organize to meet emergencies. By the summer of 1857, ten years after first entering the Great Basin, the Church was on a strong footing and was accomplishing the things it was restored to the earth to do.

Endnotes

1. In Journal of Discourses, 5:226.

2. In Wilford Woodruff Journals, following 31 Dec. 1849 entry, LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City; spelling and capitalization standardized.

3. See Journal History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 5, 21, 27 Mar. 1850, Historical Department, Salt Lake City.

4. This paragraph is derived from Eugene E. Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” in Richard D. Poll, et al., eds., Utah’s History, 2d ed. (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1989), p. 157.

5. In Journal History of the Church, 16 Sept. 1850.

6. See Joseph Fielding Smith, Essentials in Church History, 27th ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1974), pp. 392–94.

7. Derived from Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” pp. 163–64.

8. Smith, Essentials in Church History, p. 406n.

9. Derived from Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” pp. 164–65.

10. Derived from Gustive O. Larson, “The Mormon Gathering,” in Poll, Utah’s History, p. 180.

11. Derived from Larson, “Mormon Gathering,” p. 180; James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), p. 284.

12. Conway B. Sonne, Saints on the Seas: A Maritime History of Mormon Migration, 1830–1890 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), p. 78.

13. Sonne, Saints on the Seas, p. 58.

14. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 284.

15. “Foreign Correspondence,” Millennial Star, 22 Dec. 1855, p. 813.

16. Derived from Larson, “Mormon Gathering,” p. 181.

17. In LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Handcarts to Zion (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 1960), p. 272.

18. See Treasures of Pioneer History, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1952–57), 5:240–41.

19. “To Utah—By Hand,” American Legion Magazine, in Eliza M. Wakefield, The Handcart Trail (Sun Valley Shopper, 1949), p. 13.

20. In Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, pp. 96–97.

21. Derived from Larson, “Mormon Gathering,” p. 182.

22. “Remarks,” Deseret News, 15 Oct. 1856, p. 252.

23. Derived from Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, pp. 124–25.

24. Derived from Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, p. 135.

25. Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, p. 135.

26. Derived from Hafen and Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, p. 138.

27. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 285–86.

28. Previous four paragraphs derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 266–67.

29. Previous two paragraphs derived from Eugene E. Campbell, “Early Colonization Patterns,” in Poll, Utah’s History, pp. 144, 149.

30. Letter from Heber C. Kimball to his son William, in “Foreign Correspondence,” Millennial Star, 21 June 1856, p. 397.

31. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 269.

32. See Ann Vest Lobb and Jill Mulvay Derr, “Women in Early Utah,” in Poll, Utah’s History, pp. 337–56.

33. Francis M. Gibbons, Lorenzo Snow: Spiritual Giant, Prophet of God (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1982), p. 73.

34. Wilford Woodruff Journals, 31 Jan. 1854; spelling and capitalization standardized.

35. Previous six paragraphs derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 272, 275–79.

36. Wilford Woodruff Journals, 9 Oct. 1856; spelling standardized.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The Utah War

The Latter-day Saints considered themselves loyal American citizens and were indignant when they heard a large army was on its way west to put down a “Mormon rebellion.” Recalling the persecutions of earlier years, the settlers feared being driven once again from their homes. For the next few months the Saints prepared to defend themselves. Church leaders and members alike were unwilling to suffer oppression again.

Two issues were at the center of the Church’s conflict with the federal government: the Saints’ practice of plural marriage and the Church’s control of the Utah territorial government. When Utah reapplied for statehood in 1856 and ran into stiff opposition, the “Mormon question” entered national politics.

The national Republican party was founded in 1854 as a staunchly anti-slavery party and fielded its first presidential candidate in 1856. In its platform it urged Congress to prohibit in the territories the twin relics of barbarism—polygamy and slavery. The Democrats, not wishing to imply support of polygamy by their support of slavery, denounced the Mormons as vehemently as the Republicans did. Successful Democratic candidate James Buchanan vowed during his presidential campaign that if elected he would replace Brigham Young as governor of Utah.

About this same time new troubles developed in Utah between the Saints and some disgruntled territorial officials who took it upon themselves to try to change the Latter-day Saints’ way of life. Letters and verbal reports from the surveyor general, three Indian agents, two supreme court justices, and the former United States mail contractor reached Washington, D.C., further poisoning the minds of eastern politicians against the Church. The worst damage was caused by Associate Judge William W. Drummond, who came into conflict with the Saints as soon as he arrived in Utah in 1854. He attacked the jurisdiction of the probate courts, which Utahns considered their most important legal defense against enemy assaults. He was also an unprincipled man who brought a Washington, D.C., prostitute to Utah as his mistress. At times he had her sit on the bench with him while he harangued the Saints about their lack of morals. It was later learned that he had abandoned his wife and children in the East.¹

When Levi Abrahams, a Jewish convert to Mormonism, made a truthful comment regarding the judge’s character, Drummond sent his body servant to Abrahams’s home in Fillmore to horsewhip him. Both the judge and his servant were later arrested for assault and battery with intent to commit murder. When freed on bail, Drummond quietly fled to California and then to New Orleans, where he made public a letter of resignation he had written to the Buchanan administration. He alleged that the Mormons had destroyed the territorial supreme court records, their leaders were disrespectful of federal officials, a secret oath-bound band operated in Utah that knew no law save Brigham Young’s, the Mormons and not the Indians had massacred John W. Gunnison’s surveying party in 1854, and a state of rebellion existed in Utah.²

Unfortunately Drummond’s charges were believed and used to form a major part of the Buchanan administration’s image of the Church. Shortly after receiving the letter, President Buchanan, without investigating the situation in Utah or communicating his intentions to Governor Young, appointed Alfred Cumming of Georgia to be governor and directed a military force of twenty-five hundred men to escort him to Salt Lake City. The military orders of 18 May 1857 came from Secretary of War John B. Floyd, who was bitterly anti-Mormon and who advocated the need for military force. Secretary of State Lewis Cass, however, urged Cumming to uphold the law but not to interfere with the Mormons’ way of living.³

Throughout the summer of 1857 many politicians of both major parties spoke out against the Latter-day Saints and their alleged wrongdoing. Among them was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who was trying to mend some political fences in his home state of Illinois, where rabid anti-Mormon feelings still existed. The Saints were especially stung by Douglas’s denunciation, since they had considered him a loyal friend. They remembered a prophecy by Joseph Smith to Douglas in 1843 and printed it in the Deseret News. The Prophet had declared that Douglas would one day aspire to the presidency of the United States, but that if he ever lifted his hand against the Latter-day Saints, he would “feel the weight of the hand of the Almighty upon you.”⁴ Douglas became the Democratic candidate for President in 1860, but he was defeated by Abraham Lincoln.

The Church Responds

On 1 July 1857,⁵ officials of Brigham Young’s mail delivery and express company, the Y. X. Company, stopped at the federal post office in Independence, Missouri, to pick up the mail. En route they had become curious when they saw several supply trains heading west on the overland route. In Independence they learned that the government had simultaneously canceled the mail contract with the Y.X. Company and sent a large consignment of federal troops to Utah. The supply trains they had observed were for the army. Abraham O. Smoot, mayor of Salt Lake City and leader of this group of trusted Latter-day Saints, and his companions Porter Rockwell and Judson Stoddard, sped as quickly as possible to Salt Lake City with the news, arriving on 23 July. On 24 July they found Brigham Young and many of the Saints in Big Cottonwood Canyon celebrating the Saints’ first ten years in the Great Basin. Not wanting to dampen the merry event, Brigham Young waited until nightfall to announce the government’s designs.

After pondering how to meet this “invasion,” Church leaders in early August issued a broadside proclamation to the citizens of Utah:

“We are invaded by a hostile force, who are evidently assailing us to accomplish our overthrow and destruction. . . .

“. . . The government has not condescended to cause an investigating committee, or other persons to be sent, to inquire into and ascertain the truth, as is customary in such cases. . . .

“The issue which has thus been forced upon us, compels us to resort to the great first law of self-preservation, and stand in our own defense and right, guarantied unto us by the genius of the institutions of our country, and on which the government is based. Our duties to ourselves and families requires us not to tamely submit to be driven and slain, without an attempt to preserve ourselves. Our duty to our country, our holy religion, our God, to freedom and liberty, requires that we shall not quietly stand still.”⁶

The broadside proclaimed three intentions: to forbid all armed forces from coming into Utah Territory on whatever pretense, to hold all forces in Utah in readiness to repel any invasion, and to declare martial law in the territory.⁷

Brigham Young then mustered the territorial militia and ordered that no grain or other staple be sold to passing immigrants or speculators. He ordered the building of fortifications and also selected raiding parties to harass the army and supply trains. He also sent a group known as the White Mountain Expedition to find another suitable location for settlement, should the Saints have to abandon their homes. Missionaries and settlers in distant colonies were called home to aid the defense. Companies of immigrants on the plains were safely guided into the valley, and all emigration plans for the next season were cancelled.

Governor Young sent Samuel W. Richards with a letter to President Buchanan informing him that his army could not enter Utah until satisfactory arrangements were made by a peace commission. Elder Richards also carried a letter to the Saints’ long-time friend Thomas L. Kane asking him to intervene with the government on the Church’s behalf. Richards also went to New York, where he was interviewed by the New York Times, which published the Saints’ point of view “without prejudice.”⁸

On 7 September, Captain Stewart Van Vliet of the Quartermaster Corps arrived in Salt Lake City to arrange for food and forage for the incoming army. He tried to assure Church leaders of the army’s peaceful intentions. Van Vliet was the first official contact the Saints had with either the military or the government since the problems had arisen. Treated kindly, Van Vliet interviewed Church leaders, inspected their resistance measures, and attended a public meeting in the Old Tabernacle where he heard many recountings of the persecutions in Missouri and Illinois. Speakers insisted that the people would burn their homes, destroy their crops, and harass the troops before they would allow them to enter the valley. The Saints pledged unanimous support of Brigham Young’s resistance policy.⁹

Van Vliet became convinced that the Mormons were not in rebellion against the authority of the United States, but that they felt justified in preparing to defend themselves against an unwarranted military invasion. Unsuccessful in making arrangements for the troops, he returned to the army and then to Washington, D.C., where he became a strong advocate of peaceful reconciliation. He was accompanied by the Utah congressional delegate, John M. Bernhisel, who carried more letters to Thomas L. Kane.

Meanwhile, Brigham Young went forward with his plans. In mid-September 1857 he proclaimed martial law in the territory and forbade the entry of armed forces. He ordered the Nauvoo Legion to prepare for the invasion. In nearly every Utah community, preparations for defense were accelerated. He also instructed bishops in the villages to prepare to burn everything should hostilities actually break out.

Mountain Meadows Massacre

The same week that Captain Van Vliet appeared in Salt Lake City, a tragic event took place nearly three hundred miles to the south; it can best be understood in the context of the war hysteria surrounding the approach of federal troops to Utah. As soon as it was known that an army was coming, George A. Smith, who was responsible for the southern settlements, went to southern Utah to mobilize troops and put that region on war alert.¹⁰

About this same time the Fancher Train—an emigrant company composed of several families from Arkansas and a group of horsemen who called themselves the Missouri Wildcats—made its way through central Utah. They were taking the southern route to California because of the lateness of the season.¹¹ Since Utah was under martial law, the party was unable to buy grain and supplies. Some of the travelers, however, pilfered from local farmers. Some also boasted about participating in the Haun’s Mill Massacre, the murder of Joseph Smith, and other mob actions against the Mormons. A few local settlers connected the group from Arkansas with the recent brutal murder of Elder Parley P. Pratt in that state. Some of the Saints thought this party was a scouting or reconnoitering party in advance of the federal army.¹²

The Indian problem in southern Utah complicated these circumstances. The Saints had endeavored to cultivate good relationships with the Indians, but there was still danger. The Indians distinguished between the “Mericats” (any Americans traveling through Utah), whom they entirely distrusted, and the “Mormonee,” whom they generally liked. The possibility existed, however, that the Indians would turn on the Mormon settlers.¹³

On Tuesday, 7 September 1857, a band of Indians attacked the Fancher Train, which was camped thirty-five miles from Cedar City. The emigrants were well armed, and the Indians were forced to retreat.

Meanwhile, the citizens in Cedar City had met and discussed what course to pursue relative to the Fancher Train. Some of those with quicker tempers argued that the emigrants should be destroyed. They were afraid the emigrants might join a California-based army and fight against the Saints as they had publicly threatened to do. It was decided to dispatch a messenger, James Haslam, to seek the advice of Brigham Young. With little rest or sleep, Haslam reached Salt Lake City in only three days and obtained a letter from President Young urging the Saints to let the emigrants go in peace. As Haslam left Salt Lake City, Brigham urged, “Go with all speed, spare no horse flesh. The emigrants must not be meddled with, if it takes all Iron county to prevent it. They must go free and unmolested.”¹⁴ Haslam hastened to Cedar City, arriving on Sunday, 13 September, two days too late.

John D. Lee, who had been appointed “Indian Farmer” by Brigham Young in the absence of Jacob Hamblin, the Indian agent, had been sent to quiet the Indians. He arrived at the Indian camp shortly after the first skirmish between them and the emigrants had occurred. Finding the Indians highly excited, Lee was in the dangerous situation of being the only white man present. He finally convinced the Indians that they would get their revenge, and he was allowed to leave.

Later that night, more Indians arrived at the camp together with a few white men from Cedar City. Sometime during the night, a diabolical plan was concocted, partly to placate the angry Indians. The next day, the morning of 11 September, the whites promised the emigrants protection if they would give up their weapons. The men of the Iron County militia, acting under orders from their local commanders, killed the men, while Indians slew the women and older children, approximately 120 in all. Only eighteen very young children were spared. They were later returned, with government help, to relatives in the East.¹⁵

The dead were buried in shallow graves, and commitments were made to blame the massacre entirely upon the Indians. More than two weeks after the tragedy, John D. Lee was sent to Salt Lake City to report the incident to Brigham Young. Lee placed all the blame on the Indians as had previously been agreed. Later Brigham Young learned that members of the Iron County militia had been full participants in the affair. He offered Governor Alfred Cumming full support in an investigation, but none was undertaken at the time because the Mormons had been pardoned for all alleged crimes in connection with the Utah War.¹⁶

For the next two decades, rumors and allegations continued to circulate, and finally the case came to trial in the 1870s. John D. Lee, a key participant, but certainly not the only officer responsible for the deed, was the only Latter-day Saint indicted. Lee was tried twice. The first trial resulted in a hung jury. Lee was finally convicted in September 1876 and a year later was taken by federal officials to the area of Mountain Meadows and executed.¹⁷

Warfare Averted

At the time of the Mountain Meadows massacre¹⁸ the United States army was approaching the area called South Pass in what is now Wyoming. They were under the temporary command of Lieutenant Colonel Edmund B. Alexander. Two Utah militiamen claiming to be California immigrants mingled with the troops. They heard firsthand the anti-Mormon threats that did not represent the official instructions of the expedition, but made Church leaders in Utah nervous about a possible confrontation. Mormon scouts watched the movements of the troops throughout their entire march.

Following Governor Young’s declaration of martial law in September, General Daniel H. Wells of the Nauvoo Legion sent about eleven hundred men east to Echo Canyon, which lay on the route through the mountains to Salt Lake City. These soldiers built walls and dug trenches from which they could act as snipers. They also loosened huge boulders that could easily be sent crashing down on the moving columns, and they constructed ditches and dams that could be opened to flood the enemy’s path.

Forty-four “Mormon raiders,” a unit of the Nauvoo Legion under the direction of Major Lot Smith, were sent to eastern Utah (now western Wyoming) to harass the oncoming troops. They were instructed, among other things, “on ascertaining the locality or route of the troops, proceed at once to annoy them in every possible way. Use every exertion to stampede their animals, and set fire to their trains. Burn the whole country before them and on their flanks. Keep them from sleeping by night surprises. . . . Take no life, but destroy their trains, and stampede or drive away their animals, at every opportunity.”¹⁹

On the night of 4 October, Major Smith and twenty others rode up to a lead wagon train carrying freight for the army. To the wagon masters it appeared that Smith commanded a large body of troops, and they were sufficiently impressed to evacuate their wagons when ordered to do so. James Terry recorded in his journal, “I never saw a scareder lot in my life until they found that they was not going to be hurt. They laughed and said they was glad the wagons was going to be burnt as they would not have to bull whack any more, as they called it. The teamsters were permitted to take their private clothing and guns out of the wagons and then they were burnt.”²⁰

The next morning Lot Smith and his men met another train loaded with supplies moving toward the valley. After disarming the teamsters, Lot rode out and met the captain who was securing cattle, and demanded his pistols. The captain replied, “‘No man ever took them yet, and if you think you can, without killing me, try it.’ We were all the time riding towards the train, with our noses about as close together as two Scotch terriers would have held theirs—his eyes flashing fire; I couldn’t see mine—I told him that I admired a brave man, but that I did not like blood—you insist on my killing you, which will only take a minute, but I don’t want to do it. We had by this time reached the train. He, seeing that his men were under guard, surrendered, saying: ‘I see you have me at a disadvantage, my men being disarmed.’ I replied that I didn’t need the advantage and asked him what he would do if we should give them their arms. ‘I’ll fight you!’ ‘Then,’ said I, ‘We know something about that too—take up your arms!’ His men exclaimed, ‘Not by a d—n sight! We came out here to whack bulls, not to fight.’ ‘What do you say to that, Simpson?’ I asked. ‘Damnation,’ he replied, grinding his teeth in the most violent manner, ‘If I had been here before and they had refused to fight, I would have killed every man of them.’”²¹

In this and succeeding engagements, the raiders torched a total of seventy-four wagons, containing enough supplies to outfit the large army for three months. They also captured fourteen hundred of the two thousand head of cattle accompanying the expedition. Major Smith’s militia assisted in burning the two key Mormon outposts, Fort Bridger and Fort Supply, which government forces had expected to occupy.

These tactics succeeded so well in delaying the army that when its commanding officer, Colonel (soon to become General) Albert Sidney Johnston, finally joined his troops in early November, it was clearly too late in the season to reach Salt Lake City. It took the army fifteen days to push thirty-five miles through storms and sub-zero weather to burned-out Fort Bridger. Approximately twenty-five hundred American soldiers and several hundred civilian officials (including Governor Cumming and his wife), freighters, and camp followers spent a miserable winter in western Wyoming in a city of tents and improvised shelters called Camp Scott and in a newly created community named “‘Eckelsville,’ after the new chief justice of the territory.”²² Meanwhile, the eastern press expressed second thoughts about the whole enterprise, and President James Buchanan in Washington and Brigham Young in Utah weighed their options for 1858.²³

Peace Established

In the early winter²⁴ three influential men—Captain Stewart Van Vliet, Utah Congressional delegate John M. Bernhisel, and Colonel Thomas L. Kane—visited President Buchanan in Washington and urged him to send an investigation commission to Utah. Not yet willing to take that step, Buchanan gave his unofficial blessing to Kane to go to Salt Lake City to try to achieve a peaceful solution.²⁵ Leaving on a steamer from New York in January 1858 at his own expense, Kane sailed to California via Panama. He traveled under the name of Dr. Osborne to avoid having his movements known.

Colonel Kane arrived in Salt Lake City on 25 February and was most cordially received. Except for telling the leading authorities of the Church, he kept his true identity secret for some time to ascertain whether the Saints would be as friendly to a stranger in 1858 as they had been to him a decade earlier in Winter Quarters. Brigham Young and other Church leaders were certain that God had sent him. After several meetings with the leaders of the Church, Kane convinced them to allow the new governor, Alfred Cumming, to enter Utah Territory unmolested. Brigham Young insisted, however, that the army not come in with Cumming.

In early March, accompanied by an escort of Mormon militiamen, Kane, who was in poor health, traveled to Camp Scott in bitterly cold weather. As he neared the camps he dismissed the escorts and rode in alone. A shot from one of the guards nearly hit him. Courageously he identified himself and after much wrangling was successful in meeting with Governor Cumming. He persuaded Cumming that he would be recognized by the people in Utah as their new governor and that they were not in a state of rebellion against the government. He also explained that the Mormons would not allow the army to remain in the Salt Lake Valley.

In April, Colonel Kane and Governor Cumming left Camp Scott without a U.S. military escort. When Cumming arrived in Salt Lake City he found that Kane was right. Governor Cumming was treated with dignity and respect. Brigham Young delivered the territorial records and seal to the new governor, and after several meetings, good feelings were engendered. For the next three years Cumming administered his office with tact and diplomacy, and he won the respect and confidence of the people. For his part in the negotiations, Colonel Thomas L. Kane won the undying gratitude of the Latter-day Saints.

Before Kane and Cumming arrived in Salt Lake City, Church leaders had decided in a “council of war” that the Saints in northern Utah would evacuate their homes and move south to avoid conflict with the United States army when it arrived later in the season. Brigham Young vowed, “Rather than see my wives and daughters ravished and polluted, and the seeds of corruption sown in the hearts of my sons by a brutal soldiery, I would leave my home in ashes, my gardens and orchards a waste, and subsist upon roots and herbs, a wanderer through these mountains for the remainder of my natural life.”²⁶

For this “move south,” the Church was divided into three groups, each with a specific mission: (1) Those living in southern Utah were not to move, but were instructed to send wagons, teams, and teamsters to northern Utah to assist in the move. (2) The young and vigorous Saints living in northern Utah would remain behind to irrigate crops and gardens, guard property, and set fire to the straw-filled homes if need be. And (3) some thirty-five thousand Saints living north of Utah Valley were to actually make the move. Each ward was allotted a strip of land in one of four counties south of Salt Lake County. Provisions were to be moved first and then families.

The move was carried out in strict military order, each ward being organized into tens, fifties, and hundreds, with a captain over each. Families were expected to transport their own furniture, in addition to food and clothing. One pioneer teenager recorded, “We packed all we had into father’s one wagon and waited for the command to leave. At night we lay down to sleep, not knowing when word would come of the army which we thought was coming to destroy us. . . .

“. . . One morning father told us that we should leave with a large company in the evening. . . .

“Along in the middle of the day father scattered leaves and straw in all the rooms and I heard him say: ‘Never mind, little daughter, this house has sheltered us, it shall never shelter them.’”²⁷

Hulda Cordelia Thurston, a young girl living in Centerville, Utah, recalled the difficulty of the move: “In the spring of 1858 we moved at the time of the great Mormon exodus. We went as far south as Spanish Fork, and on the Spanish Fork bottoms there was good feed for our stock and plenty of fish in the river. At that time all the people living north of Utah Valley moved south leaving their homes with furniture, farming implements, in fact their all, not knowing where they were going nor what their destiny. . . .

“During that exodus I shall never forget the distress and poverty of the people. I have seen men wearing trousers made of carpet, their feet wrapped in burlap or rags. Women sewed cloth together and made moccasins for their feet. Many women and children were barefoot. One good sister, a neighbor who had a family of seven, told my mother that aside from the clothing on their bodies, she could tie up in a common bandanna handkerchief every article of clothing they possessed. She would put the children to bed early Saturday night and repair and wash and iron their clothing preparatory for Sunday. The people were practically all poor for we had, had several years of great scarcity of crops because of the grasshoppers.”²⁸ Upon arriving at their destination, families lived either in the boxes of their heavy covered wagons, canvas tents, dugouts, or in temporary board shanties and cabins.

Church records and assets were removed or buried by the public works department. One group hid all the stone that had been cut for the Salt Lake Temple, and leveled and covered over its foundation so that the plot would resemble a plowed field and remain unmolested. Another group boxed all of the tithing grain in bins and transported twenty thousand bushels to specially erected granaries in Provo. Additional wagon trains carried machinery and equipment to be housed in hastily constructed warehouses and sheds.

The move south occupied almost two months. It was completed by mid-May. A daily average of six hundred wagons passed through Salt Lake City during the first two weeks of the month. An estimated thirty thousand Saints left their homes in Salt Lake and the northern settlements.²⁹ Governor Cumming and his wife pleaded with Church members not to leave their homes, but the Saints chose to heed their prophet. The exodus of such a large body of people drew national and international attention to the Church. The London Times reported: “We are told that they have embarked for a voyage over five hundred miles of untracked desert.” The New York Times declared: “We think it would be unwise to treat Mormonism as a nuisance to be abated by a posse comitatus.”³⁰

The move placed the United States government in an unfavorable light as a persecutor of an innocent people, and demonstrated the leadership ability of Brigham Young.

Fortunately, negotiations between the government and the Church kept the army from invading. Some time early in 1858, President Buchanan decided to send a peace commission to Utah; in early June two commissioners, Ben McCulloch and Lazarus W. Powell, arrived in Salt Lake City, carrying an offer of pardon for the Saints if they would reaffirm their loyalty to the government. Church leaders were indignant at the idea of a pardon, for they had never been disloyal. Nevertheless, after several negotiation sessions, it was accepted. Church leaders felt they could accept the pardon because of the raiding activities of the Nauvoo Legion. One of the agreements between the peace commission and Church leaders was that the army would quietly enter the capital city and then establish a federal military post at least forty miles away from both Salt Lake City and Provo.

On 26 June 1858 the army entered the quiet and mostly deserted capital city. As they marched they sang, “One Eyed Riley,” a coarse, yet long treasured, barracks ditty reported to have had a thousand verses, most of which are unprintable.³¹ The band had to be commanded to stop and serenade Governor Cumming at his new home. Because they believed him to be sympathetic to the Latter-day Saints, they were less than enthusiastic in their performance. Only a few Latter-day Saints had been left behind to set the torch to the city if the army did not respect its pledge to leave the property alone. Those Saints who were left behind saw Lieutenant Colonel Philip St. George Cooke take off his hat and place it over his heart as a gesture of respect for the soldiers he had led in the long march of the Mormon Battalion. In the next few days General Johnston led his troops to Cedar Valley, west of Utah Lake, and established Camp Floyd, named after the Secretary of War. On 1 July, Brigham Young authorized the return of the bedraggled Saints to their homes.

Army Occupation

Tension between the soldiers and the Saints existed throughout the army’s deployment, but fortunately no serious long-term conflicts developed. This was largely due to the restraint exercised by General Johnston, who, while he did not have much fondness for the Saints, recognized the need to keep order among his troops.

The negative effect of the army in Utah was the introduction of various vices into the territory. Frequently street fights broke out in Salt Lake City and in nearby towns between gamblers, teamsters, and other camp followers. Saloons and houses of prostitution were also established in Utah. Main Street in Salt Lake City for a short time was nicknamed “Whiskey Street.” The prevailing social fabric was damaged. A bitterly anti-Mormon newspaper, the Valley Tan, began publication in November 1858 and ran for sixteen months. This newspaper charged the people of the Utah Territory as being murderers and traitors; it was circulated chiefly at Camp Floyd. The Saints’ isolation from so-called “civilization” had clearly ended. The presence of the army symbolized the growing number of Gentiles who would come to live among them.³²

Three new United States judges came to Utah with the army. Each enthusiastically tried to undermine the Latter-day Saint way of life. One of these, Judge John Cradlebaugh, with General Johnston’s consent took one thousand soldiers with him to Provo to back up his work in court. This excited the townspeople to the point of hysteria, which could have easily escalated into a major confrontation. Through the efforts of Governor Cumming and others, the Buchanan administration in Washington ordered the troops withdrawn to Camp Floyd, and the crisis ended.³³

The army’s stay in Utah, however, also proved an economic windfall to the Saints. A small community named Fairfield, settled in 1855 by John Carson and located adjacent to Camp Floyd, grew to a population of seven thousand. Many citizens found a market for agricultural and other goods. When the army finally abandoned the fort in the summer of 1861, approximately four million dollars worth of surplus goods were sold for a fraction of their value. The government conducted a war surplus sale, which greatly enriched the Utah economy. Colonel Cooke presented the camp flagpole as a gift to Brigham Young on 27 July 1861. President Young had the flagpole placed on the hillside east of the Lion House, and the United States flag flew from it for many years.³⁴ In addition, a few soldiers investigated the religion of the Latter-day Saints and joined the Church.

From 1859 to 1861 Church leaders quietly and cautiously resumed sending missionaries to preach the glad message to the inhabitants of the earth and encouraged the Saints to gather to Zion. Missionaries again proselyted in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and western Europe. Emigration, both by wagon train and handcart, resumed slowly in 1859 and more vigorously in 1860. Once more President Young initiated a new period of geographical expansion. He did not reinstitute the far-flung settlements, such as San Bernardino and Fort Lemhi, but instead gradually stretched the boundaries of the agriculturally based colonies in the valleys of the mountains. Thirty new settlements were founded in 1859 and another sixteen in 1860. This pattern continued throughout the 1860s. Most of the new communities were in Cache and Bear Lake valleys in northern Utah and southern Idaho, as well as in the Wasatch, Sevier, and Sanpete valleys of Utah.

Endnotes

1. The previous three paragraphs are derived from James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), pp. 296–98; Eugene E. Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” in Richard D. Poll, et al., eds., Utah’s History, 2d ed. (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1989), p. 165.

2. B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century One, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1930), 4:202–3.

3. Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” p. 166.

4. “History of Joseph Smith,” Deseret News, 24 Sept. 1856, p. 225.

5. Section derived from Leonard J. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), pp. 250–51, 253–55; Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 300–303; Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” pp. 166–67.

6. In “Citizens of Utah,” Pioneer and Democrat, 1 Jan. 1858, p. 2.

7. See “Citizens of Utah,” p. 2.

8. In Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 4:242.

9. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 301–2.

10. Previous two paragraphs derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 303–4.

11. Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” p. 170.

12. Derived from Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, pp. 257–58.

13. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 304.

14. In Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 4:150.

15. Derived from Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” p. 171.

16. Derived from Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, p. 260.

17. In Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 5:605–7.

18. Section derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 301, 306–7.

19. In Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, p. 255.

20. James Parshall Terry, “Utah War Incidents,” in Voices from the Past: Diaries, Journals, and Autobiographies, Campus Education Week Program (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1980), p. 66.

21. In Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 4:284.

22. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 4:314.

23. Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” p. 168.

24. Section derived from Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, pp. 261–67, 272, 274–75; Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 307–9.

25. Campbell, “Governmental Beginnings,” p. 169.

26. Letter from Brigham Young to Elder W. I. Appleby, 6 Jan. 1858, in Brigham Young Letterpress copybooks, typescript, LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City.

27. In E. Cecil McGavin, U.S. Soldiers Invade Utah (Boston: Meador Publishing Co., 1937), p. 216.

28. Hulda Cordelia Thurston Smith, “Sketch of the life of Jefferson Thurston,” July 1921, typescript, Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum, Salt Lake City, pp. 17–18.

29. See Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1964), p. 535.

30. In Bancroft, History of Utah, p. 536; posse comitatus is a group organized to keep the public peace, usually in emergencies.

31. See James M. Merrill, Spurs to Glory: The Story of the United States Cavalry (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1966), p. 102.

32. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 309–10; Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 4:521–22.

33. Derived from Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, pp. 276, 278.

34. See Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church, 4:540–44.

CHAPTER THIRTY
The Civil War Period

The United States had experienced a decade of intense sectional division between the North and the South. In 1861 after Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States several southern states seceded from the Union. On 12 April 1861 the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter, South Carolina. This fratricidal conflict lasted four years, destroying the Old South and costing 602,000 lives. In Utah during this period the Latter-day Saints enjoyed relative peace and progress.

The Saints and the Civil War

When the Civil War broke out,¹ many Saints remembered the “revelation and prophecy on war” received by the Prophet Joseph Smith 25 December 1832:

“Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls. . . .

“For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States” (D&C 87:1, 3). In 1843 the Prophet had declared that the bloodshed that would begin in South Carolina “may probably arise through the slave question” (D&C 130:13). Many missionaries had often referred to this prophecy and felt some satisfaction in seeing the word of the Lord so literally fulfilled.

As the conflict deepened, the Saints viewed the Civil War with mixed emotions. They considered the bloodshed and devastation in the “states” a judgment upon the nation for the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, for not keeping the commandments of God, and for the injustices inflicted upon the Saints in Missouri and Illinois. Members of the Church followed Joseph Smith’s lead in firmly supporting the American Constitution. John Taylor expressed the feelings of many Latter-day Saints when he addressed them:

“We have been driven from city to city, from state to state for no just cause of complaint. We have been banished from the pale of what is termed civilization, and forced to make a home in the desert wastes. . . .

“Shall we join the North to fight against the South? No! . . . Why? They have both, as before shown, brought it upon themselves, and we have had no hand in the matter. . . . We know no North, no South, no East, no West; we abide strictly and positively by the Constitution.”²

After war had raged for nearly a year, President Young acknowledged that the Saints were much better off in the West: “Had we not been persecuted, we would now be in the midst of the wars and bloodshed that are desolating the nation, instead of where we are, comfortable located in our peaceful dwellings in these silent, far off mountains and valleys. Instead of seeing my brethren comfortably seated around me to-day, many of them would be found in the front ranks on the battle field. I realize the blessings of God in our present safety. We are greatly blessed, greatly favored and greatly exalted, while our enemies, who sought to destroy us, are being humbled.”³

Church leaders never seriously considered supporting the Confederacy, and when President Abraham Lincoln asked them for soldiers to guard the transcontinental telegraph lines and transportation routes, the Church responded enthusiastically. The Saints also willingly paid an annual war tax of $26,982 imposed on the Utah Territory by the United States Congress. The Brethren repeatedly reaffirmed their loyalty to the Union. Indeed, just as some states were trying to get out of the Union, Utah was trying to get in.

Utah and the Church immediately felt the effects of the Southern States seceding. Governor Alfred Cumming, whose native state was Georgia, felt it his duty to resign from his federally appointed position. He quietly left Utah for his home. General Albert Sidney Johnston, from Virginia, resigned his post and joined the Confederate army. After a few months the army of Utah was withdrawn altogether. In March 1861 the Union, now minus several southern states, created the Territory of Nevada out of the western portion of Utah, and in 1862 and 1866 more territory was added to Nevada, which became a state in 1864.

With the federal troops gone from Utah, the overland mail and telegraph needed protection from Indians who were reportedly becoming more hostile and had destroyed several mail stations between Fort Bridger and Fort Laramie in Wyoming. In the spring of 1862 war officials contacted Brigham Young (though he was no longer governor) with a request that he organize a cavalry to give ninety days’ service on the trail until other U.S. troops could arrive. Soon a company of 120 men was raised and ready to travel. Ironically their commander was Captain Lot Smith of the Utah Militia, who had been instrumental just four years earlier in delaying federal troops. He was charged by Brigham Young to prevent the use of profanity and disorderly conduct among the men and to cultivate friendly and peaceful relations with the Indians. The men performed their work admirably, encountered no real fighting, pursued only a few Indians, and received compliments from the United States government for their service.⁴ This service was the only direct military participation by an organized unit of the Latter-day Saints in the Civil War.

Also in 1862 the citizens of Utah made their third attempt to gain statehood. The Saints drafted a constitution for the proposed State of Deseret and elected a full slate of officers with Brigham Young as governor. But their petition was denied, mostly because of polygamy, which the ruling Republican Party was determined to oppose.

Republican President Abraham Lincoln, although he signed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862, which was directed against the Latter-day Saints, did not press for its enforcement. He was fair-minded regarding the Mormon question and was more concerned about dealing with the southern rebellion. When Brigham Young sent Deseret News assistant editor T.B.H. Stenhouse to Washington, D.C., to ascertain Lincoln’s plans for the Mormons, the president told him, “Stenhouse, when I was a boy on the farm in Illinois there was a great deal of timber on the farms which we had to clear away. Occasionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn and too heavy to move, so we plowed around it. That’s what I intend to do with the Mormons. You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone, I will let him alone.”⁵ Throughout the remainder of the war, President Lincoln’s tolerant attitude won him the respect of the Saints.

Improved Communication

Although disgruntled politicians had biased many people against the Mormons, other noteworthy visitors to Utah were favorably impressed with what they saw and published their observations. In 1855 Jules Remy, a French botanist, arrived in Salt Lake City to stay a month. Remy published his observations in Europe in 1860, describing the Saints as an industrious and worshipful people, which helped change some of the negative perceptions many Europeans had of the Church. New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, one of the most prominent journalists in America, visited Utah in 1859 and relayed his more balanced impressions of Brigham Young and the Mormons to the nation. One interesting and instructive piece of contemporary observation came from the famous world traveler Richard Burton, who arrived in Utah in 1860 and later published an insightful book about the Mormons entitled The City of the Saints, which was widely read.⁶

Communication with the outside world was further enhanced starting in April 1860 with the pony express. Eighty daring, lightweight riders relayed the mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, nearly two thousand miles, in just ten days. The riders changed horses approximately every ten miles, at 320 stations, to accomplish this legendary feat. The pony express route crossed Utah, and numerous Mormon men participated in this dangerous but romantic venture during its eighteen months of existence.

The transcontinental telegraph line, completed through Salt Lake City in October 1861, was the main reason for the discontinuation of the pony express. From then on, messages could be sent to key centers in the United States without delay. This put a stop to problems like the false information disseminated by the “runaway officials” in 1851 and President Buchanan’s deployment of the Utah Expedition in 1857.

President Brigham Young was given the privilege of sending the first message over the new telegraph line. The prophet wired his congratulations to the Honorable J. H. Wade, president of the Pacific Telegraph Company in Cleveland, Ohio, saying also, “Utah has not seceded, but is firm for the Constitution and laws of our once happy country; and is warmly interested in such useful enterprises as the one so far completed.”⁷

Immediately after the transcontinental telegraph reached Salt Lake City, Brigham Young began laying plans for a local telegraph line to connect all the settlements. He established a telegraphy school in Salt Lake City. Wire, batteries, insulators, sending and receiving sets, and other equipment was ordered but, due to the Civil War, could not be obtained until 1866. In 1867 some five hundred miles of line were completed. Over a series of years the line was extended to nearly all Mormon settlements, including southern Idaho and northern Arizona. By 1880 over one thousand miles of line had been installed.

Another Army Occupation

Some of President Lincoln’s first political appointments to Utah proved unfortunate. John W. Dawson of Indiana, the territorial governor, remained only a month in Utah. Upon arriving, he unwisely spoke to the legislature about imposing a tax upon the Mormon people to vindicate the community of the charge of disloyalty. Within a few days he had made an indecent proposal to a woman in Salt Lake City, was exposed, and left the city in disgrace. He was discovered at the Mountain Dell mail station, where he was beaten by a number of drunken, lawless men, who were later brought to justice.

About two months later President Lincoln appointed Stephen A. Harding, also of Indiana, to replace Dawson. Harding had known the Joseph Smith family in Manchester, New York, and when he arrived in Utah, he pretended friendship with the Saints. Soon, however, he showed his contempt for the Church and its institutions and accused the Saints of disloyalty.

Harding’s accusations provided justification to the war department in Washington, D.C., for not renewing the enlistment of the Mormon military company and for sending to the area instead the “California volunteers” under the direction of Colonel Patrick Edward Connor. Church leaders and members were naturally distressed at the arrival of an outside military force, especially since they had been so willing to assume responsibility for maintaining the safety of the mail routes and telegraph lines and for keeping the Indians under control. What made matters worse was that Connor clearly felt that the Mormons were disloyal to the Union and that his most important task was to keep them under surveillance. The Saints expected Connor to take his seven hundred men to the military post recently vacated by Johnston’s Army, but instead he chose a site in the foothills directly east of Salt Lake City and named it Camp Douglas after the late Stephen A. Douglas.⁸

The troops came in October 1862 and remained until the end of the Civil War. They proved an irritant to the community life of Utah. The California soldiers were not happy to be in Utah because they wanted to be in the actual war. Charges and counter-charges went back and forth between the members of the Church and the army. The Saints considered the army a nuisance and a contributor to the lowering of the morals in their beloved mountain home. As a military officer, Connor, who became a general during his stay in Utah, led his troops well. He protected the trade routes, and in the famous Battle of Bear River in January 1863, rid northern Utah and southern Idaho of the threat of marauding Indians. This meant the Saints could safely colonize these inviting regions. Connor also kept his men busy prospecting for precious metals in the mountains.⁹ Because of his efforts, he became known as the “father of Utah mining.”

Meanwhile, Governor Harding became such an irritant to the Saints that they petitioned President Lincoln to remove him from office. Lincoln agreed, but to satisfy the “Gentiles” in Utah, he also released Judge John F. Kinney, who had shown respect and friendship toward the Mormons. Under Brigham Young’s direction, the Saints turned around and elected Kinney to be their delegate to Congress between 1863 and 1865. He thus became the only non-Mormon delegate in Utah Territory’s history. Lincoln appointed James Duane Doty, the Indian agent in Utah, to be the new governor. He assumed office in June 1863 and governed diplomatically throughout the duration of the Civil War.¹⁰

The Morrisite Affair

During the summer of 1862¹¹ Utah experienced the unfortunate Morrisite War. The Morrisites were an apostate faction led by former English convert Joseph Morris. They established a settlement at South Weber known as Kington Fort, thirty-five miles north of Salt Lake City. Morris had claimed as early as 1857 that he was the prophet, seer, and revelator of the Lord; by 1860 he had attracted a few followers, including the bishop of South Weber and some of his congregation. In February 1861, President Young sent Apostles John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff to South Weber to investigate. They excommunicated sixteen members of the ward, including the bishop who refused to support Brigham Young and who maintained that Joseph Morris was the prophet. The Morrisites consecrated all their belongings to a common fund and awaited the imminent coming of Christ as described in Morris’s “revelations.”

In early 1862, after successive incorrect prophecies about the Second Coming, some of Morris’s followers became disenchanted and wanted to leave with the property they had consecrated. Three dissenters who attempted to escape were imprisoned by Morris, causing their wives to appeal to legal authorities for assistance. Chief Justice Kinney issued a writ on 22 May for the release of the prisoners and the arrest of Morris and his main lieutenants. When Morris refused to obey and continued instead to announce his revelations, Kinney urged acting governor Frank Fuller to call out the militia as a posse to enforce the writs.

Robert T. Burton, chief deputy for the territorial marshal, led approximately 250 men to the bluffs south of Kington Fort early in the morning of 13 June. They sent a message to Morris demanding his surrender and compliance with the writ. Morris and his group assembled in an open bowery while Morris awaited a revelation. Impatient with the delay, Burton ordered two warning shots from a cannon to be fired over the fort. The second shot fell short, struck the plowed ground in front of the fort, and ricocheted into the bowery where the Morrisites were assembled. Two women were killed, and a young girl was seriously wounded. The fighting that erupted resulted in a three-day siege.

On the third day a white flag of truce appeared from inside the fort, and the fighting ceased. After demanding unconditional surrender, Burton and thirty militiamen entered the fort. Morris then asked the privilege of speaking to his people one more time. But instead of delivering a farewell address, he shouted, “All who are for me and my God, in life or in death follow me!” Whereupon a rush was made for the stacked rifles that had been surrendered.¹² Shots rang out, and Joseph Morris and John Banks, second in command, were killed. Ten Morrisites and two members of the Utah posse were killed during the three days of fighting. Ninety Morrisite men were taken to Salt Lake City for trial on charges of murdering the two posse members and resisting due process of law. Seven of them were convicted, but they were pardoned by Governor Harding. Most of the remaining Morrisites who wished to go were escorted by Connor’s army to Soda Springs in Idaho Territory. Although the Church was not directly involved in this unfortunate affair, the reputation of the Church suffered in the East as a result.

Difficulties in Hawaii

Another person to concern Church officials during this period was soldier of fortune Walter Murray Gibson. Gibson had advocated the Church’s cause in Washington, D.C., during the Utah War and came to Salt Lake City to learn more about the Saints. He became acquainted with numerous Church leaders, spoke to large crowds in the Old Tabernacle about his travels, and was baptized by Heber C. Kimball on 15 January 1860 along with his daughter Talula. He was confirmed by Brigham Young. President Young rejected Gibson’s proposal that the Saints move to the islands of the East Indies, but called Gibson on a mission to the eastern United States. He served only six months and then convinced the Saints in New York that he was needed in Salt Lake City immediately. They responded generously to his request for funds to make the return trip.

In November 1860 he was called by President Brigham Young to do missionary work in the Pacific. President Young told Gibson that he would do more good than he ever anticipated if he would magnify his calling.

Arriving in Hawaii in the summer of 1861, Gibson exceeded the bounds of his authority, mixed native traditions with gospel teachings, and won support of the Hawaiian Saints. Because the missionaries had been called home during the Utah War, Gibson was able to take over the leadership of the Saints. He proclaimed himself “Chief President of the Islands of the Sea, and of the Hawaiian Islands, for the Church of Latter-day Saints.” Gibson persuaded the Hawaiian members to turn over to him all of their property. He ordained twelve apostles, charging them $150 each for that office. For other offices, such as high priest, seventy, and elder, he charged proportionate fees. He also installed archbishops and minor bishops.¹³ He conducted church services with extraordinary pomp and ceremony and even wore robes and required members to bow and crawl in his presence. Gibson’s design was to build an army, unite all the Hawaiian Islands into one empire, and proclaim himself king.¹⁴

Finally in 1864, concerned native Saints wrote to Salt Lake City about the situation. President Young sent Ezra T. Benson and Lorenzo Snow of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and Joseph F. Smith, Alma Smith, and William Cluff, who all had labored in Hawaii as missionaries, to take care of the problems.

Arriving at the island of Lanai, where Gibson had his headquarters, the Brethren encountered stiff winds and turbulent seas in the harbor. While going ashore in a smaller craft, they were capsized. Except for Lorenzo Snow, everyone was safely rescued by natives who witnessed the accident from the shore. Lorenzo’s lifeless body was finally found under the capsized boat. There was little doubt in the minds of any of those present that he was dead. His devoted brethren laid his body across their knees and with faith prayed over him and administered to him, although the natives declared there was no use. The Brethren endeavored to stimulate breathing by rolling him over a barrel and then by compressing his chest and breathing into his mouth and drawing the air out again. It was one hour or more after the accident before the first signs of life returned.¹⁵

After locating Gibson, the elders found that conditions were even worse than they had been told. They confronted Gibson and ordered him to turn over to them all the property and money he had acquired in the name of the Church. He refused. The Brethren then excommunicated him. After a few weeks, most of the Hawaiian Saints were reconciled to the leaders of the Church who had been sent to them. One incident that helped the brethren regain the confidence of the Hawaiian Saints occurred when two of them walked on a rock that Gibson had identified as a sacred shrine and had warned that anyone who walked on it would be struck dead. After setting the Church in order the Apostles returned home and left Joseph F. Smith and his two companions in charge of the mission. Elder Smith obtained and began to develop a plantation at Laie, which became mission headquarters and the home of many Hawaiian Saints. In the twentieth century this site would become the location of the Laie Hawaii Temple, Brigham Young University–Hawaii, and the Polynesian Cultural Center.¹⁶

Missionary Work and Immigration

Despite the Civil War that was raging in the United States, Connor’s army, the Morrisites, and Walter Murray Gibson, the greatest interest of Church leaders was still the expansion of Zion—converting more people to the Church and gathering as many members as possible to Utah.

Approximately fifty more colonies were started during this time when most of the nation was experiencing its greatest turmoil. New settlements included St. George in southern Utah, which was part of the “cotton mission” begun when supplies could not be obtained from the American South. Pipe Springs was founded in northern Arizona; Monroe, Salina, and Richfield in central Utah; and Laketown, Paris, and Montpelier in the Bear Lake country of Utah and Idaho. Older colonies, most of them agriculturally based, became stronger. When mining in Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and Nevada became big business during the early 1860s, hundreds of Utah wagons were filled with flour, grain, and other farm produce and freighted to the mining camps for sale, thus greatly increasing the Saints’ well-being. This was a tremendous boon to the people who had recently suffered during the Utah War and the move south.

Missionary work was also strengthened again during the Civil War. While virtually no missionary activity occurred in North America during this time, the Church grew throughout Europe. The development of the transatlantic telegraph greatly aided communication with the European Saints. In 1860 the First Presidency sent three members of the Council of the Twelve—Amasa M. Lyman, Charles C. Rich, and George Q. Cannon—to preside over both the British and European missions, headquartered in Liverpool. These three Apostles presided over the European mission until 14 May 1862 when Elders Lyman and Rich returned home. Elder Cannon went to Washington, D.C., to work briefly on obtaining statehood for Utah, then he returned to England to preside until his return to Utah in 1864.

Using native British and Scandinavian missionaries where American elders were not available, these Apostles rejuvenated the gathering of Israel both in the British Isles and on the European continent. The number of conversions surged again following a decline that had occurred during and after the Utah War. England and the Scandinavian countries were the most fertile fields of labor. To save costs to the Church, Brigham Young directed the missionaries to travel “without purse or scrip” and to obtain their board and bed from willing members of the Church. Most missionaries also had children and wives who would have to support themselves, with backup from local quorums of the priesthood.

Church leaders were constantly on the lookout for new and better ways to bring the European Saints to Zion. In the fall of 1860, John W. Young brought immigrants by ox teams from the Missouri River after having taken an ox train of produce to the East to sell to provide for immigrants. His venture was so successful that he was allowed to speak in October general conference about it.

Thereafter ox teams were sent from Utah in April with provisions for the yearly immigration, and they returned with immigrants in the summer and early fall. Young men were called as missionaries to be teamsters for these “Church trains.” Between 1861 and 1868 the Church brought more than sixteen thousand Europeans to Utah at a reduced cost because the Saints gave teams, labor, and supplies. Furthermore, fewer supplies needed to be purchased from outsiders.

Growth in Salt Lake City

By 1860 there were 8,200 people in Salt Lake City; by 1870 there were 12,800. According to the 1870 census, 65 percent of the population was foreign born. Most were from the British Isles, but there were also many from Scandinavia. Salt Lake City served as the hub of colonization for the rest of the Church.

Utilizing the labor of recently arrived immigrants, the department of public works constructed numerous important buildings. During the 1850s the Council House, the Social Hall, the Endowment House, and a tithing store had been constructed in the growing community. Then in the 1860s the Salt Lake Theatre, the city hall, an arsenal, the Beehive House, the Lion House, and the Salt Lake Tabernacle were constructed. The Salt Lake Theatre, completed in 1862, became the center of much of the recreational and cultural activity in the valley.

From 1850 to 1870, Daniel H. Wells served as Superintendent of Public Works in Salt Lake City. He also served as commanding officer of the Nauvoo Legion, as Second Counselor in the First Presidency from 1857, and as mayor of Salt Lake City from 1866.

Believing that the Saints would be strengthened spiritually if they had an adequate building where they could gather to receive instruction from their leaders, President Brigham Young laid plans for a new tabernacle. He envisioned a large, dome-shaped house of worship. President Young, with the help of Henry Grow, a bridge builder, William H. Folsom, Church architect at the time, and Truman O. Angell, largely responsible for the interior, directed the construction of the unique building. It was 150 feet wide, 250 feet long, and 80 feet high. The tabernacle was completed in time for the October 1867 general conference. At the same time a gigantic organ for the tabernacle was constructed by the superb craftsman Joseph H. Ridges, a convert from Australia. The right kind of wood for the organ was finally located in Pine Valley three hundred miles away in southern Utah and was carefully transported by as many as twenty wagon teams to Salt Lake City. Acoustics were at first a problem in the tabernacle, but with the addition of a balcony by 1870, the famed structure, seating eight thousand people, became an ideal place for large meetings.

Work on the Salt Lake Temple was reinstituted in 1860, but in 1861 Church leaders concluded that the foundation was defective. Brigham Young decided that a new foundation made entirely of granite quarried from nearby mountains was required to carry the massive weight of the proposed temple. The new footings were to be sixteen feet thick. President Young declared, “I want this Temple to stand through the Millennium and I want it so built that it will be acceptable to the Lord.”¹⁷ The work of rebuilding the foundation moved slowly, and the walls did not reach ground level until 1867.

Despite the problems with apostates and military troops, improvements in communication and transportation, growth in missionary work, increased colonization, and better economic opportunities all brought joy to the Church. While most of the nation suffered a bloody conflict, the circumstances of the Latter-day Saints during the Civil War period formed a stark contrast to those of the rest of the United States. Citizens of Utah enjoyed peace and prosperity. After the difficult years associated with the Utah War, the Church was once again moving forward in its divinely designed course.

Endnotes

1. This section is derived from James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1976), pp. 310–12.

2. “Ceremonies at the Bowery,” Deseret News, 10 July 1861, p. 152; spelling standardized.

3. In Journal of Discourses, 10:38–39.

4. See “Requisition for Troops,” Deseret News, 30 Apr. 1862, p. 348.

5. In Preston Nibley, Brigham Young: The Man and His Work (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1936), p. 369.

6. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 318–19.

7. Brigham Young, “The Completion of the Telegraph,” Deseret News, 23 Oct. 1861, p. 189.

8. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 312.

9. See Gustive O. Larson, Outline History of Utah and the Mormons (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1958), p. 195; Dean L. May, “Economic Beginnings,” in Richard D. Poll, et al., eds., Utah’s History, 2d ed. (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1989), p. 204.

10. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, pp. 313–14.

11. Section derived from E. B. Long, The Saints and the Union: Utah Territory during the Civil War (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1981), p. 90.

12. In B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century One, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1930), 5:47.

13. In Andrew Jenson, “Walter Murray Gibson,” Improvement Era, Dec. 1900, p. 87.

14. Previous three paragraphs derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 335.

15. See Joseph Fielding Smith, comp., Life of Joseph F. Smith, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1969), pp. 215–16.

16. Derived from Allen and Leonard, Story of the Latter-day Saints, p. 335.

17. Wilford Woodruff, Historian’s Private Journal 1858, entry for 22 Aug. 1862, LDS Historical Department, Salt Lake City; spelling and capitalization standardized.