1841 – 14 August, p. 4 – The Mormonites in America. A letter from Nauvoo states that Jos. Smith, the leader of the Mormons, has been arrested by the authority of the Governor of Illinois—that the Mormons had taken possession of a large tract of land without authority, and that the strongest excitement prevailed against them in the immediate neighborhood, and fearful apprehensions were entertained lest a sanguinary struggle should take place. The commissioner sent by the Governor to survey the lands had been seized by the Mormons, and both parties labored under much excitement. Smith, it is said, will be tried for1852 treason. Martin Harris, one of the pretended witnesses to the Book of Mormons, and who has been for some time lecturing in Illinois against the Mormons, was found dead last week, having been shot through the head. He was, no doubt, murdered.

1841 – 27 November, p. 4 – The Mormonite Fanatics. Last week a body of Mormons numbering about seventy individuals, passed through this city on their way to Nauvoo, Illinois, to join their fellow fanatics in that settlement. They were from Gloucester, England, and arrived at Quebec in the Collina. They appeared to be quiet inoffensive people and possessed of some means. Montreal Herald.

1843 – 14 January, p. 4 – Mormonism. It is stated that there are persons in Kendal so infatuated by the dogmas of Mormonism as to refuse medical advice in case of sickness, but rely for a healing balm on the mummery and apish antics of that depraved “priesthood.” Others there are who refuse to apprentice their sons, because they do not know how soon they may be called to “the promised land,” to bow down to their pontiff Joe Smith, who of late has been threatening to take the United States of America by fire and sword, and who, it would appear, has a numerous and organized gang of ruffians at his command.

1846 – 17 October, p. 2 – All remained quiet at Nauvoo. The place was nearly deserted. Mormons were arriving at St. Louis in a state of starvation, having fled from Nauvoo without bringing with them any means of support.

1847 – 21 August, p. 3 – Street Oratory. Public lectures are getting frequent; and crowds of people are often in the neighborhoods of Market-square and George Town, listening to open-air orators upon Teetotalism, and upon the truths or errors of Mormonism—subjects upon which the speakers get impassioned, and sometimes quarrelsome. It is amusing, on Sunday evenings, in the neighborhood of the Dynevor’s Arms, to find three speakers within hearing of each other expressing their sentiments, upon distinct subjects, at the same time; and these scenes sometimes end in very hot discussions.

1849 – 20 January, p. 3 – Merthyr and Neighborhood. California. The gold seeking mania has at last invaded the mountains of Wales; and the general desire to get suddenly rich has been well applied in the service of religious fanaticism. In consequence large numbers of the operatives of this district are preparing to visit California for the double purpose of obtaining gold in abundance, and of settling in the Canaan of the Mormon prophet. Whatever may be the immediate influence on the parent countries, England and the United States of America, there can be no doubt that the ultimate results of the founding new empires on the western shores of the North Pacific Ocean, will strongly affect the destinies of older settlements, and lead to a considerable extension of our commercial relations.

1849 – 21 July, p. 4 – A Mormon orator, while haranguing a crowd at Montrose, alleged that the blessings of his creed were so great that a true believer might swallow poison with impunity. The mob took him at his word, or rather resolved to test it; and some prussic acid having been produced, he was strongly pressed to swallow a little. A policeman rescued the disconcerted boaster from his persecutors.

1849 – 24 November, p. 4 – Another person has fallen a victim to Mormon baptism. An elder named Lloyd had just immersed a woman in the Severn at Shrewsbury last week, when his foot slipped, and he fell into the river and was drowned.

1850 – 5 October, p. 3 – Lectures on Mormonism. Two lectures, on “The Errors of Mormonism,” were delivered by Messrs. J. Williams and R. A. French, at the Town-hall, Newport, on Tuesday, when a spirited contest ensued. The Syllabus was as follows, in two lectures: Lecture 1^st.—The claims of the Prophet Smith investigated—His ordination by John the Baptist exposed, and contrasted with that of Moses and Christ—The absurdities of many of the doctrines of the Mormons obvious, and the eternal truth of Christianity displayed. Lecture 2^nd.—The origin of the Book of Mormon doubtful and obscure—The doctrines of the Church of Latter-day Saints inconsistent with reason and Scripture—Non-obedience to the pseudo-prophet Smith not disobedience to Christ. After the delivery of the two lectures, an animated discussion took place between a Captain Wheelock and the lecturers. It was ultimately arranged that the captain should have an opportunity afforded him to rebut the views taken by the lecturers. It was particularly mentioned in the handbills, that all discussion should be deferred until the close of the lectures; but we are sorry to say they were interrupted by some Mormonites. We cannot pass over this opportunity without noticing the ability displayed by Mr. French, which was highly gratifying to the company. At the close of the meeting, the Rev. W. R. Sanderson intimated an intention of holding a public lecture on the above subject, in his school-room, Cross House, Stow Hill, on Sunday afternoon next.

1850 – 12 October, p. 4 – Mormon women, it is said, have commenced dressing in pantaloons. It is not stated whether the men have undergone a corresponding change in their apparel.

1850 – 26 October, p. 3 – Mormon Controversy. A very large assemblage of people attended on Tuesday and Wednesday last, to hear the discussion between Captain Wheelock and Messrs. French and Williams, which was held at the large room in the Sunderland Inn, Llanarth-street, the mayor having very properly refused the use of the Town-hall. The meeting lasted a considerable time, and the room was densely crowded.

1851 – 21 June, p. 4 – From the Great Salt Lake it is stated that the Mormons had sent out two new colonies, one to Lower-end Basin, the other to Lower California. The General Assembly of the Church for the State of Deseret had transferred all their powers to the territorial Government, and Governor Young was awaiting the arrival of the territorial officers to organize the Government.

1851 – 23 August, p. 4 – The Mormons – Their Creed and their Kingdom. Few histories of fanaticism will better repay perusal than that of Joe Smith, the Mahomet of the 19^th century. Until the appearance of the complete history of the rise and progress of his imposture contained in the Illustrated Library, his creed and his kingdom were equally mere matters of report. We now have this wonderful and most instructive history in all its details. The following outline of it will only lead our readers to supply from the popular volume the minute facts for which we have not space.

In 1825 there lived near a village called Palmyra, in the State of New York, a family of small farmers of the name of Smith. They were of bad repute in the neighborhood—notorious for being continually in debt, and heedless of their business engagements. One of the sons named Joseph, who “could read without much difficulty, wrote a very imperfect hand, and had a very limited understanding of the elementary rules of arithmetic,” in connection with a man named Sidney Rigdon, a quondam compositor, was the founder of the new faith of Mormonism. The early history of the confederation of these worthies, is very imperfectly and obscurely know. The account given by Smith is as follows:

He all at once found himself laboring in a state of great darkness and wretchedness of mind—in the first stage, in fact, of what is ordinarily known among Methodists as “receiving a call.” He was bewildered among the conflicting doctrines of the Christian world, and could find no comfort or mental rest. In this state he resorted to earnest and “vocal” prayer, kneeling in the woods and fields, and after long perseverance in this course, his prayers were answered by the appearance of a bright light in heaven, which gradually descended until it enveloped the worshipper, who found himself standing face to face with two supernatural beings. Of these he inquired which was the right and true religion of the world? The reply was that all doctrines were equally erroneous, but that the true doctrine and the crowning dispensation of Christianity should at a future period be miraculously revealed to himself. Several similar visitations ensued and at length he was informed that the North American Indians were a remnant of Israel; that when they first entered America, they were a great, enlightened, and favored people; that their priests and rulers kept the records of their history and their doctrines; but that having fallen off from the true faith and worship, the great body of the nation were supernaturally destroyed—not, however, until after a priest and prophet named Mormon had, by celestial direction, drawn up an abstract of their national record and religious opinions. This abstract, Joseph Smith was told, still existed, buried in the earth, and he it was whom God had selected for the instrument of its recovery and its manifestation to all nations. The record, he was told, contained many prophesies as to “these latter days,” and would give instructions for the “gathering of the saints” into a temporal and spiritual kingdom, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah, which was at hand. After several of these preliminary visions, the spot in which the book lay buried was at length indicated. Joseph Smith went there, and after digging, discovered a sort of box formed of upright and horizontal flags, within which lay a certain number of plates “resembling gold,” and about the thickness of common tin. These plates were bound together by a wife, and were engraved with “Egyptian characters.” Beside them lay two transparent stones, “called by the ancients Urim and Thummim,” set in “the two rims of a bow.” These stones were evidently divining crystals, and the angels informed Joseph Smith that by using them he would be enabled to decipher the characters on the plates. What ultimately became of the plates in question—if such things existed at all—does not appear from the volume before us. They were said to have been seen and handled by eleven witnesses. With the exception of three persons, these witnesses were either members of Smith’s family, or of a neighboring family of the name of Whitmer. The Smiths, of course, gave suspicious testimony. The Whitmers have disappeared, and no one knows anything about them. Another witness (Oliver Cowdery) was afterwards an amanuensis to Joseph; and another (Martin Harris) was long a staunch and conspicuous Mormonite. There is some confusion, however, about this man. Although he signs his name as a witness who had seen and handled the plates, he assured Professor Anthon that he had never seen them, that “he was not pure of heart enough,” and that Joseph refused to show him the plates, but gave him instead a transcript of the characters engraved on them upon paper.

Meantime, however, Joseph Smith must have succeeded in working to a great extent on the soft-headedness of Martin Harris. This man, as we have just said, received from him a written transcript of the Egyptian characters, and took this transcript, as we have also mentioned, to Professor Anthon of New York, a competent philological authority. The professor’s account of the interview is of great importance. Harris then told him that he had not seen the plates, but that he intended to sell his farm, and give the proceeds to their proprietor to enable him to publish them. The Mormonite version of the interview represents Mr. Anthon “as having been unable to decipher the characters correctly, but as having presumed that, if the original records could be brought, he could assist in translating them.” On this statement being made, Professor Anthon publicly contradicted it. He described the document submitted to him as having been a sort of porpourri of ancient marks and alphabets. “It had evidently been prepared by some person who had before him a book containing various alphabets. Greek and Hebrew letters, crosses and flourishes, Roman letters, inverted or placed sideways, were arranged in perpendicular columns and the whole ended in a rude delineation of a circle, divided into various compartments, decked with various strange marks, and evidently copied after the Mexican Calendar given by Humboldt, but copies in such a way as not to betray the source whence it was derived.”

The scheme of the new religion seems to have been, at all events, in petto when Joe Smith communicated with Harris; but the great clue to the fabrication is lost in our ignorance of the time and the circumstances under which Smith and Rigdon came together. It must, however, have been subsequently to that event that the “translation,” by means of the magic Urim and Thummim, was begun. This work Smith is represented as having labored at steadily, assisted as an amanuensis by Oliver Cowdery, until at length a volume was produced containing as much matter as the Old Testament, written in imitation of the Biblical style, and containing, as Joe Smith said the angel had informed him, a history of the lost tribes in their pilgrimage to and settlement in America, with copious doctrinal and prophetic commentaries and revelations; the latter in particular distinguished by the grossest grammatical ignorance, as indeed are nine-tenths of the writings of the Mormons.

Where or how the New Bible was printed and published, we are not told. At first Joe’s doctrines were probably very mystical, in consequence of his not having exactly settled them himself. The first definite article of his creed was, however, that the disciples should believe in all the revelations vouchsafed to him; and such belief at once involved the most agreeable consequences to the “prophet,” inasmuch as he took care that the earliest of the revelations in question should enjoin upon “the saints” the necessity of making him comfortable. Thus, in February, 1831, a “revelation” pronounced that it was meet that the saints should build the “prophet” a house; another enjoined upon them that, if they had any regard for their own souls, the sooner they provided him with food and raiment, and everything he needed, the better; and the third revelation informed the resigned Joseph that “he was not to labor for his living.” The “Revelations” are masses of ungrammatical twaddle, apeing a quasi-biblical style, and the Supreme Being is always made to address the “Prophet” as “Joseph Smith, junior.” Meantime the Mormon Bible had been printed, and began to make some noise. The sect rapidly increased, and Joe Smith, by dint of his profitable revelations, flourished mightily. Unbelievers were proudly referred to the book. “How,” asked the Mormonites, “could this book have been written if not by inspiration? The prophet is not learned in a human sense, how could he have become acquainted with all the antiquarian learning here contained, if it was not supernaturally communicated to him.”

It was at this juncture that the real origin of the Mormon Bible became first known. Long before the fellow had ever dreamed of setting up for a Mahomet, there lived at New Salem a certain Solomon Spaulding. This individual had once been a clergyman, and possessed a literary turn, with a taste for the investigation of biblical antiquities. The discovery of some barrows and mounds near New Salem, supposed to be the work of an extinct aboriginal race, inspired Mr. Spaulding with the notion of writing a romance upon these ancient people; while the theory that the North American Indians were scattered descendants of the Lost Tribes, and which at one time was popular in America, seems to have been invoked in order to ogive the story a new and fanciful element of interest. The style adopted in treating such a theme was very naturally biblical. Mr. Spaulding called the theory “The Manuscript Found,” and as the work progressed, he was in the habit of reading it to his neighbors—for, as it is stated, “their amusement.” Later in life Spaulding removed to Pittsburg. There he became acquainted with a printer named Patterson, and gave him the MS. of his Judaic-Indian story, with a view to its ultimate publication. Before, however, any arrangement was come to the author died. The MS. seems to have been left lying about the office for a length of time, during which it was lent to Sydney Rigdon, one of the compositors, and a preacher in connection with some fantastic Methodist sect. This man must have copied the story either in whole or in part. It is stated, indeed, that he avowed having done so, and he had probably ample opportunity, for a considerable time elapsed ere Mrs. Spaulding received back the original MS., which we believe still exists. The document lay by her for years, almost unnoticed until Mormonism began to make rapid progress. These doctrines, with the Book of Mormon, at length reached New Salem. A female missionary summoned a meeting, and read copious extracts from the new Bible. Luckily among the congregation were many of Mr. Spaulding’s old auditory, who started up in the wildest amazement when they found that the Bible of the New Dispensation was nothing more or less than a partially mutilated version of their old friend “The Manuscript Found.” That such is the fact was vouched for by Mrs. Spaulding, the widow, and by Mr. Spaulding, the brother of the deceased author; and by a number of the most respectable inhabitants of New Salem, who could have no conceivable motive for alleging falsehood in the matter. When, therefore, they found that the new prophet, Joseph Smith, was closely associated with Sidney Rigdon, the compositor, the clue to the mystery of Mormonism was at once given, and the impudent and infamous hoax stood revealed.

The result of these facts is startling. In spite of two bitter persecutions, accompanied by murder, robbery, and arson, and two expulsions from flourishing settlements, in the course of twenty years the number of firm adherents to this faith has increased to upwards of 300,000 persons, of which a large number are now settled as an independent state, having a regular charter and organized local government, on a territory of which they possess not only the sovereignty, but the fee simple—a beautiful and exceedingly fertile tract as large as England, and situated upon the best “trail” from Eastern America to California and the Pacific. This state is called Deseret, or Utah, and will probably soon be added to the group of the American Union. Its capital is Salt Lake City, a large and flourishing town, which has sprung up like magic in the wilderness. Such being their headquarters, the Latter-day Saints have agencies and missions in every capital in Europe, and in every large town in the United Kingdom. The great object of these undertakings is to make converts and to “gather the saints” to Deseret. From Great Britain, since 1840, upwards of 14,000 persons have inclined to the doctrines of Mormon, and have gone forth to join the settlement. The Mormon emigration, in 1849, passing through Liverpool, amounted to 2,500 persons, all of the better class of emigrants; and it is calculated that 30,000 Latter-day Saints then remained behind. In June, 1850, there were in England and Scotland, 27,863 Mormonites, of whom London contributed 2,529; Manchester, 2,787; Liverpool, 1,018; Glasgow, 1,846; Sheffield, 1,920; Edinburgh, 1,331; Birmingham, 1,909; and Wales—South Wales principally—4,342. And the Mormonite census was taken in last January, giving the entire number in the British Isles as 30,747 “Saints.” During the last fourteen years more than 50,000 had been baptized in England, of which nearly 17,000 had emigrated from her shores “to Zion.”

Mormon emigration is of the better class; but there are poor Mormons as well; and for behoof of these, and in order that they may, as well as their more prosperous brethren, be “gathered to Zion,” there is now amassed in Liverpool more than three and a half tons of Californian gold belonging to the sect, and destined for the purpose of emigration.

*The National Illustrated Library. – “The Mormons.” Published at the office, 189, Strand.

1851 – 27 September, p. 4 – [A meeting of the Church Pastoral Aid Society at the Town Hall, Cardiff. The Bishop was speaking about something that he had found in a journal published in Cardiff. The writer then says:] “In the same journal he had subsequently seen a history of Mormonism. They knew what Mormonism was—that strange infatuation which had spread in this country within a few years to an almost incredible extent. The article contained a statistical account of the number of Mormons. The meeting would hear with horror and deep regret that there were calculated to be 4,342 of those unhappy people who had embraced this delusion in Wales—South Wales principally (hear, hear). He wished to appeal to other evidence; and he was sure the meeting would see it was disinterested as far as concerned the questions between the Church and Dissent.”

1851 – 29 November, p. 3 – State Education. The members of the Young Men’s Society have taken up a question which should long ago have been considered by their seniors—that of national education. This question, in some form or another, may be expected to come frequently under public notice in coming years; and it gives us unfeigned pleasure to perceive that those who are to form the future tradesmen of this place, are making it the subject of discussion; and preparing themselves for that period when it will be for them, as well as men in similar positions, to decide it in one way or another. In the meantime, the question is being very considerably simplified; a few years ago, voluntaryism was going to do everything—but in the meantime it has done nothing; and there are many indications, that it is about to withdraw from the field, ashamed of its empty boasting and do-nothingness. Henceforth the contest will probably lie between the national society and the secular education movement, reinforced by large sections of the more temperate nonconformists. In the meantime, the Church is up and doing. Dissent folds up its arms, and thinks it enough to care for the souls of the adults, without troubling itself with the education of children. Whatever the establishment may be doing at Lampeter or elsewhere, the fact is patent here, that the only religious bodies increasing in strength in Merthyr, are the Church—and its religious antipode—Mormonism. The writer of this paragraph, an ultra-Dissenter, has long been an observer of the acts of his religious neighbors, and however these things are to be accounted for, the facts are patent. The want of a sound national education appears to have something to do with these things; the Church has wisely associated the furtherance of education with its own teachings, and it reaps its just reward in the re-establishment of its influence, and in the flocking to its fold of very many Dissenters; and Mormonism is the startling fact which proclaims the inefficiency of dissent, and which announces to those who will understand it, that religious men cannot with safety to themselves, permit the rising generation to grow up in ignorance, folly, and crime. Religion will surely degenerate into gross superstition, unless the head be educated as well as the heart. Wales has already had one comment on this text, in the person of a distinguished lexicographer and believer in Johanna Southcote; and the progress of Mormon worship, which Dissenting preachers rail at but do not understand, is in truth the result of their indifference to day school tuition: if they would reap they must first of all sow; but if they sow the wind of sectarianism they will assuredly reap the whirlwind of ignorance, and all its concomitants. In reference to this question, Churchmen as well as Dissenters have important duties to perform; but it is a matter of regret, that so large a section of the religious world should be so ready to interpose difficulties, and so reluctant to do any good—so magnificent in promise, and so contemptible in performance. In this place, Churchmen alone are true to themselves: and they alone make any collective effort to educate the rising generation. For this essential service they are entitled to the gratitude of every lover of his species; and no candid mind will fail to note the fact with approbation. We have also good reason to believe, that both the quality and quantity of the education imparted, is such as to indicate considerable efficiency; but it is to be regretted that the Merthyr schools do not follow the example set by those of Dowlais, in having public examinations, and in distributing small prizes at the end of the year. From a Correspondent.

1852 – 24 January, p. 3 – Mormonism in America. The report of the Judges of the Utah territory relative to the proceedings of the Mormons is full of disgusting details of the debauchery carried on by the leading members of that sect. It should be perused by the numerous persons who, even at the present time, are emigrating from Great Britain to join them. The following is an extract from the report:

“We deem it our duty to state, in this official communication, that polygamy, or ‘plurality of wives is openly avowed and practiced in the territory, under the sanction and in obedience to the direct commands of the church.’ So universal is this practice, that very few, if any, leading men in that community can be found who have not more than one wife each, which creates a monopoly, and which was peculiarly hard upon the officers sent to reside there. The prominent men in the church, whose example in all things it is the ambition of the more humble to imitate, have each many wives, some of them, we are credibly informed and believe, as many as twenty or thirty, and Brigham Young, the governor, even a greater number. Only a few days before we left the territory, the governor was seen riding through the streets of the city in an omnibus, with a large company of his wives, more than two-thirds of whom had infants in their arms—a sure sign that the evil is increasing. It is not uncommon to find two or more sisters married to the same man; and in one instance, at least, a mother and her two daughters are among the wives of a leading member of the church. This practice, regarded and punished as a high and revolting crime in all civilized countries, would, of course, never be made a statutory offense by a Mormon Legislature; and if a crime at common law, the Court would be powerless to correct the evil with Mormon juries. The City of Great Salt Lake is an important point in the overland route to Oregon and California for the emigrant to replenish his stores, or to winter if overtaken by the advance of the season; but the intimidation which is produced by the denunciations and conduct of the Mormon church and people upon citizens of the United States passing through or engaged in business there, is such as to induce the emigrant to avoid it, if possible, and the resident to submit without a murmur. No man dares open his mouth in opposition to their lawless exactions, without feeling their effects upon his liberty, his business, or his life. And thus, upon the soil of the United States, and under the broad folds of its stars and stripes, which protect the citizen in his rights in every part of the civilized world, there is a spot where he dare not exercise the liberty of a freeman. We were told that many of the ‘Gentiles’ (as all are called there who are not members of the Mormon church and have only one wife) have been sentenced for trivial offenses to two, five, and ten years of labor upon the public highways, with ball and chain to their legs, with no shelter at night but caverns dug in the earth by their own hands. We have seen one of these highways, cut out of the side of a mountain, and the caverns far down at the base; but the approach of the federal officers, we were told, was the signal for the release and banishment of these convicts from the territory into Texas.”

1852 – 31 January, p. 4 – The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints. To the Editor of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. Vicarage, Aberdare, Jan. 28^th, 1852.

“Sir, In the last news from California we have a sad account of the disgusting details of the debauchery of the Mormons, as witnessed in their New City of the Great Salt Lake. The account is taken from the report made to Congress by the judges of that territory: it is, therefore, official. I make no apology for calling public attention to it, simply premising the fact, that in “the Hills,” so called the Mormons are to be reckoned by hundreds, if not thousands—Aberdare being, unfortunately, their great stronghold. I leave it, therefore, to those who have the welfare of the people at heart, to consider whether they ought not to be more earnest than ever in providing means for educating the working classes; whether the progress of this insane delusion is not to be imputed in some measure to our own lukewarmness; and whether, in the present state of morals, this be not a duty paramount to every other. We can be eloquent in evangelizing the Heathen, or proselytizing the Jew; and we are thankful that it is so. There is scarcely a household that has not its missionary box, whose swollen contents are outpoured over every land and every clime save our own. I said it some years ago, and incurred no small odium in consequence, that it would be as well if some of this missionary spirit were felt more practically among our own countrymen; and though that were but a niggard spirit that would confine all the efforts of Charity at home, yet Charity altogether abroad imputed but an indifferent state of things at home. But matters have much improved since, no so much, however, as to allow one nerve to be the less strung. We need all the efforts that have been made, and more, to carry on the work. Let the progress of Mormonism bear us witness. I appeal to every sect in the Christian community, and I ask them, whither have their backsliders mostly flown? They will answer, one and all, “To Mormonism.” Yet, what is this Mormonism? In vain you tell the deluded perverts; in vain you argue with them; in vain you confute them; they will not be convinced; they are altogether besotted, drunken with their folly. When such is the case; when hundreds of them have already left our shores; and when hundreds and thousands still remain, surely I require no apology for calling public attention to the report of the American Judges:

FIRST – POLYGAMY: “We deem it our duty to state, in this official communication, that polygamy, or ‘plurality of wives,’ is openly avowed and practiced in the territory, under the sanction and in obedience to the direct commands of the Church.”

SECONDLY – ITS UNIVERSALITY: “So universal is this practice, that very few, if any, leading men in that community can be found who have not more than one wife each, which creates a monopoly, and which was peculiarly hard upon the officers sent to reside there. The prominent men in the Church, whose example in all things it is the ambition of the more humble to imitate, have each many wives, some of them, we are credibly informed and believe, as many as twenty or thirty, and Brigham Young, the governor, even a great number.”

ITS SHAMELESSNESS: “Only a few days before we left the territory, the governor was seen riding through the streets of the city in an omnibus, with a large company of his wives, more than two-thirds of whom had infants in their arms—a sure sign that the evil is increasing.”

ITS INCESTUOUS NATURE: “It is not uncommon to find two or more sisters married to the same man; and in one instance, at least, a mother and her two daughters are among the wives of a leading member of the Church. This practice, regarded and punished as a high and revolting crime in all civilized countries, would, of course, never be made a statutory offence by a Mormon legislature; and, if a crime at common law, the court would be powerless to correct the evil with Mormon juries.”

Such is Mormonism at the Great Salt Lake. Such is the delusion which numbers its converts by thousands in the Principality of Wales. It is true there is not in this country an open declaration of plurality of wives. The unhappy converts delude themselves, or they are deluded by others, that though a man may have two or more wives, yet is one “the wife spiritual,” as distinguished from “the wife natural.” Such is the drapery by which the crime is glossed over. Let them reflect, however, if the power be still left then, on the matter contained in the above extracts. Let others reflect, also, what is their duty therein, as Christians and fellow-men. The Mormons should bear in mind the report is not the report of a newspaper, or an ordinary traveler, but it is that of the solemn judges of the land, men sworn to investigate the to declare the TRUTH. Your obedient servant, JOHN GRIFFITH, Vicar of Aberdare.

1852 – 14 February, p. 4 – Mormonism. To the Editor of the Cardiff & Merthyr Guardian. Sir—The letter on Mormonism by the Vicar of Aberdare, which appeared in your last impression, is at this time of greater importance than many, perhaps, are disposed to attach to it. And I have doubt he may calculate upon a larger measure of sympathy and support from his brethren in any measures he may adopt to suppress that abominable and destructive heresy which turneth the grace of God into lasciviousness, than he had in the “Cymro case.” Many are they who consider Mormonism and its abominations too despicable to be noticed; but when it is remembered how many thousands of our fellow-immortals have been led astray by it, some to the vortex of the foulest licentiousness, and some, after loss of goods, reputation, and peace, to utter destruction both of body and soul! and when it is further remembered that it still continues to lead, as if by silken bands, thousands more to the same abyss of ruin, I think that the voice of scripture, equally with the voice of reason, calls loudly upon every faithful minister and disciple of the Blessed Savior to use every legitimate means to banish and drive away this monstrous heresy. It cannot be more the duty of a shepherd to raise his staff to drive away the wolf that would ravage the flock of his care, than it is the duty of the shepherds of Christ’s flock to drive away heresies—the wolves which prey upon the sheep of His pasture: nor more the duty of a watchman to lift up the voice of warning when fire or the sword threatens to devastate the city, than it is the duty of Zion’s watchman to sound the alarm when heresy would lay waste the “City of God.” In fine, every minister of the Church of England is bound, as well by other obligations as by the sacred obligation of an oath, to give all diligence to banish and drive away all strange and erroneous doctrines contrary to God’s word, whether they be those of Mormonism or any other heretics—in the Church or out of it. The practical question then is—What are the best means under the blessing of God to suppress this heresy? However readily honest indignation would wish to seal, as if by force, the lips of all Mormon preachers, and deny them that liberty of the press, which they have abused, we must not in our zeal forget that truth does not stand in need of such weapons—“For the weapons of our warfare are not Carnal.” It is hardly necessary to show that where this evil prevails it is the duty of “Christ’s stewards” to warn their hearers against it. Where it is not known, or where the people are sufficiently armed against it, perhaps to take such a public notice of it, would be an unwise policy. For where the plague is not felt no other remedy than precaution is necessary; and this precaution consists in preaching the Word of God in its unadorned simplicity and unadulterated purity. The influence of preaching, however, is generally of too ephemeral land circumscribed a character to meet this evil. The powerful, permanent, and wide-spreading influence of the press, must be summoned to our aid. Those leaves of healing—tracts and pamphlets exposing and refuting the strange principles and foul practices of Mormonism—must be scattered among the people. These silent monitors will confirm the weak, enlighten the ignorant, and reclaim the wanderer; and, by God’s blessing, may prove as salt to purify the corruptions at the “Salt Lake,” and in other neighborhoods nearer home.

Many such tracts have appeared both in the English and Welsh languages. But of all that I know, the one best calculated to give a true picture of this “abortion,” and so more likely to act as a dissuasive from its abominations, is a pamphlet entitled “Mormonism, an exposure of the impositions adopted by the sect called the Latter-day Saints,” by the Rev. F. H. Ashley, Vicar of Wooburn, Bucks. I am not aware that this excellent exposure of Mormonism is translated into Welsh. I shall be very glad to know if it is, for I have promised a clerical friend (who has undertaken to get it printed) to translate it for the benefit of our countrymen. If this pamphlet has not already found its way in a Welsh garb among the masses on the “hills,” I hope ere long it may, and that this destructive heresy be banished from the hills to the valleys, and from the valleys to the sea, and may ere long sink like a stone into the deep and perish in the waters/ I remain, yours, &c., David Evans. Vicarage, Aberavon, Feb. 4^th, 1852.

1852 – 28 February, p. 3 – Mormonism. To the Editor of the Cardiff & Merthyr Guardian. Sir—The Mormon Church of these parts have replied to my letter on Mormonism by reissuing at Merthyr an article from the New York Tribune. This little pamphlet their delegate brought me on Sunday last.

It would be doing these unhappy people an act of some injustice were I not to take any notice of this document. They are evidently anxious to wipe off the stain which the last news from California has imposed upon them. But let me earnestly entreat them to consider the defense set up for them once again. There is not one word in it touching the serious crime of polygamy with which the American judges charged them. Surely this silence is very significant. Either the New York Tribune must know it to be true and cannot refute it; or, knowing it to be true, it did not, like a faithful Mormon, care to rebut it. There is no other conclusion to arrive at. Indeed, from the knowledge which I have personally of Mormons, the easy manner in which they break the marriage tie by deserting their wives and children for the glories of Salt Lake, and leaving them to be cared for by the parish or anybody, is a presumptive evidence against them; more especially when men holding the highest office in the Mormon Church set their disciples the example. An APOSTLE, and a man who was believed to be more efficacious in working miracles than any among them, has abandoned his wife and child now for nearly two years, and, as far as we can learn, she has heard nothing yet of him, or received anything from him. Nevertheless, this man is still regarded among them with the utmost veneration; his miracles recorded and appealed to with peculiar unction, though they know that if it had not been for the parish and the kindness of individuals, both his wife and child would have perished of starvation. I might mention many other saints of an inferior degree who have treated their wives and children—I speak only of this parish—equally cruel and severe. When, therefore, these things can be said of them, it requires a very different kind of testimony to that they have brought forward from the New York Tribune to set aside the special report of solemn judges. Testimony, indeed, it is none, as there is no pretense in it anywhere to meet the charge of immorality. The entire article turns on the civil and not on the moral administration of the community. Your obedient servant, John Griffith, Vicar of Aberdare. Vicarage, Aberdare, Feb. 25, 1852.

1852 – 10 April, p. 7 – Copy of a Letter from a Latter-day Saint in America. St. Louis, Dec. 7, 1851.

Dear Friend, I avail myself of this opportunity to write to you these few lines to inform you of the state of affairs in this country. Myself, together with my wife and child, have been ill here for five months, and now I am somewhat better, but I have lost all my comforts, for I have buried both wife and child in the same grave, in Illinois. I am now living in Missouri. It is very unhealthy here; and I beg of you to use all your influence to persuade my friends and the people of that country to stay where they are, rather than suffer themselves to be blindfolded into such a system of roguery and plunder as Mormonism. It is nothing but a mere humbug: I have found it is to my heart’s worry. Would that the people would see their error! They make them all kinds of promises at home, and when once here they laugh at them. I do not say this to dishearten any of them, but to inform them of the true state of things here; so that, if they will come after being told of their danger, they must abide the consequences.

Of the 400 who came here, 200 have died since we came. No Welshmen died in crossing the sea, and coming up the river, save four children. I am now living with William Davies, of Abercarn, Monmouthshire, who came here with the Mormons; and this is his handwriting to prove that this is true. It would have been better for us not to have been born than to come here to be Mormons. They will take all from you at home, and starve you when you come here, if they have the chance, and take your wives from you.

Their chief, Brigham Young, has twenty-four wives, and those lower in office than he, have smaller number, in proportion to their office, according to their station. Some have fourteen, some seven, and others different numbers. And now they are trying to insult the officers of the United States, who have left their places and have gone to Washington. And as Congress is now sitting, we shall hear what they will do. The Mormons are very unkind one to another. I had to dig my wife’s grave myself. She had a decent burial, but the Mormons did not put their hands to help at all. The men who gave them so much money had promises of land and everything else, when they reached here; but they have been let to die in the workhouse. Among these are Howells, Williams, and William Rees; and there are many more in the workhouse now; we do not know whether they will live or die. Your friend and well-wisher, Evan Powell [Howell].

P.S. I wish to tell you also that the Sabbath is no more regarded here than any other day. There is gaming of every description here on the Sabbath, such as horse-racing, rolling the ten-pins, playing cards, etc.; and the leaders of the Mormons indulge in these to a great extent, together with dancing, swearing, and everything else that is beyond decency. – To Mr. John Lewis, Victoria Iron Works, South Wales.

1852 – 1 May, p. 2 – Another awful steamboat explosion took place on the 9^th instant, at Lexington, Missouri. The Saluda burst her boilers, killing 100 passengers—Mormons, on their way to the Salt Lake.

1852 – 12 June, p. 1 – The Mormon Bible.—In a discussion at Carlisle, last week, between a Mormonite leader and a lecturer named Porter, the latter read some choice extracts from the Mormon Bible. For example, the Almighty Being is there represented as telling the people to make barges, in which men, women, children, and cattle, were to cross the great Atlantic. “These barges were built after a manner that they were exceedingly tight, even that they would hold water like a dish—and the bottom thereof was tight like under a dish—and the sides thereof were tight like under a dish—and the ends thereof were peaked—and the top thereof was tight like under a dish—and the length thereof was the length of a tree—and the door thereof, when it was shut, was tight like under a dish. And the Lord said unto the brother of Jared, Behold thou shalt make a hole in the top thereof—and also in the bottom thereof (laughter)—and when thou shalt suffer for air, thou shalt unstop the hole thereof, and receive air; and if it be so that the water come in upon thee, behold ye shall stop the hole thereof, that ye may not perish in the flood” (roars of laughter).

1852 – 12 June, p. 3 – The Latter-day Saints. To the Editor of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. Sir—Having read in one of the numbers of your paper a letter from Evan Howells (late of Victoria), and William Davies (late of Aberdare), who reside at present in St. Louis, North America, charging the Latter-day Saints with unkindness towards them there, I desire of you if you will be so kind as to let the enclosed appear in the next number of your paper. If you will please grant this favor, I know it will be satisfactory to many of the readers of the CARDIFF GUARDIAN, who I am particularly acquainted with, and who are particularly acquainted with Alfred Woods. I took the trouble to copy it from Wood’s letter, which Mr. John Davis, printer, of this place, received last Sunday Morning, with whom the original may be seen, if required. Yours respectfully, W. S. PHILLIPS. 14, Castle Street, Merthyr Tydfil, June 8^th, 1852.

“Rolling Mill, Bremen, St. Louis, May 3, 1852. Dear Brother Davis,—I feel strongly impulsed to write a few lines to you, in order to inform you of the true state of affairs in this city. Through the kindness of some of our friends at Aberdare, we hear of several false and erroneous impressions, which the people in general have (at Merthyr and Aberdare), relative to the Mormons in this city, caused doubtlessly by the false and malicious statements of apostates.

“Brother Richard Palmer received a Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian, lately from his father, in which I saw a letter from W. Davies (Abercarn) and Evan Howell, now residing near St. Louis. I was truly disgusted with its contents, and I fearlessly assert that it is nothing but false and exaggerated accounts, which could not emanate from any but wicked, designing apostates, infuriated by their deep-rooted hatred to the Mormons.

“They (William Davies and Evan Howell) state that the Saints are very unkind to them, etc. This statement I boldly deny; and to the reverse, I say that the Mormons have been very kind to them (considering circumstances), especially to Wm. Davies; and nothing but ingratitude of the blackest kind, could have obliterated from their memory the obligation they are under, even to the Mormons.

“In order that you may know these men, I shall relate how they became so exasperated against the Mormons; and I shall also exemplify a little of the unkindness of the Mormons to them.

“Wm. Davies and E. Howell joined the Saints a week or two before they left Wales. Davies had been a Mormon before that, but by some means or other he got cut out of the Church. After we entered the ship in Liverpool, we had to wait a day or two in the river Mersey, in order to have a fair wind to take us on. While we were there, Wm. Davies fell into a great rage, because the provisions were not distributed (according to his ideas), fairly, or at least quick enough: his rage was so unbounded that he really had the appearance of a madman; he cursed and swore most terrible, and used the most obscene language, calling Orson Pratt and others the most infamous names: his eyes fairly appeared to start from their sockets with the intensity of his passions. He had all his boxes, etc., lowered to a boat, and ordered his trembling wife and children into the same, and paid the waterman to take him ashore, which he did; but as they reached the shore, Davies’s paroxysm having subsided by this time, he repented of what he was doing, and he desired the waterman to row him back to the vessel again.

“All this passed by, and the Saints were counseled to be careful and kind to him, for we all looked on him as a man who could not bridle his passions, and we all felt pity and commiseration for him, considering it a peculiar failing in his nature. Throughout the length of our voyage to New Orleans, we had great trouble in cooking our food, the galley not being big enough to cook for so many; consequently, each family had to cook in their turn, which was only twice a day: but for fear of offending Wm. Davies, and causing another disturbance, we all consented to give him the privilege to cook whenever he liked. Davies continued to be very outrageous and unruly, and having some influence over Evan Howell, he soon led him astray: also, Evan being naturally of a weak mind, and as ignorant as he was weak. These two were cut out of the church, in a public meeting one Sunday morning, on board ship, for their misconduct.

“When we arrived in New Orleans, there were several of the Brethren, who had not sufficient money to take them up the river to St. Louis; consequently, they must have had to abide in New Orleans, had not the charity and kindness of the Saints provided for them. They made a collection before we arrived in New Orleans for the poor, in order to defray their expenses up the river—thus they gave the chance to all the passengers (rich and poor) to go as far as St. Louis, New Orleans being a very unhealthy place, and by far too hot a climate for Europeans. Wm. Davies was one of the number who had not enough money to take himself and family up to St. Louis; well, we offered money to him, that he might come along with us; but I suppose that he was ashamed to receive so much kindness from those whom he had abused so much. So he stayed in New Orleans, and while there he was taken very sick, and almost lost his life through his temerity. He also buried his youngest child while there; and having got means somehow, he embarked from there to St. Louis. While on the river, his wife was taken severely in the Cholera, and in this state they arrived here; and undoubtedly they must have had to go to the hospital, or poorhouse, had it not been for the kindness of Brother John Phillips, of Pontypridd, who took them (sick as they were) unto his house, and provided them with food, and found William work; and in all he proved to him kinder than a brother.

“But Davies soon forgot this; and because John was favoring and defending the Saints, he (Davies) threatened to give him a thrashing, not long after this. So you see a few specimens of the unkindness of the Saints to him.

“E. Howell came up with us from New Orleans; and when he arrived here, he was taken with the Welsh Saints over to the Illinois coal diggings, where they found work for him and several of us strangers—they also helped them to remove their luggage, etc. Evan says in his letter, that he had to dig his own wife’s grave. This, undoubtedly, is true: but we must consider circumstances before we impute this as unkindness in the Saints. The Illinois coal diggings is an exceedingly unhealthy place in the summer, and it was to an unusual extent last summer; and when Evan’s wife died, I don’t think there was one of the Saints there but what was sick with the ague, and he being well, there was no one more fit to do it. Besides, they did not reside in the immediate vicinity of the Saints, and they might have died all without their knowledge. But Evan Howell did not state in his letter that his wife was over here in Missouri, staying a month in one of the Saints’ houses, on purpose to change the air; he also forgot to state that poor Rachel Price, of Cwmbach, laid his wife out when dead, when she (Rachel) was unable to stand on her feet with sickness, caused by the ague.

“But just for an illustration to the fact that the Saints in St. Louis are really kind to one another, I shall only state that over 2000 dollars were distributed amongst the poor in St. Louis the last twelve months, as reported at our last General Conference.

“The letter also states that the Saints, ere they leave Wales for this country, are promised some land “gratis” in St. Louis. This assertion of his I need not deny, only merely state that it betrays his ignorance and a certainty that all that believe him have nothing on their shoulders but wooden head.

“Evan states that Brigham Young has 24 wives. I wonder how he (Evan) found out the definite number, for it has been rumored here that he has about ninety; some say fifty, and others thirty, varying from ninety down to a cipher. And a respectable-looking Welshman called lately on us, stating that he came from California through the Valley, and that while there he saw Mr. Young, and he had two wives; so I cannot think what foundation E. H. had to state that he (Brigham) had twenty-four. He had no foundation, only his desire to do harm to the cause in Wales; for I got as firm a foundation to say that he has no more than one, as he has got to say that he has twenty-four, for we are over 1000 miles distance from the Valley; consequently we know as little about it as you do in Wales. He also states that about 200 of the Saints that came along with us in the Ellen Maria have died. This is a most swollen exaggeration, for if he had said 30, I would believe him to be over the mark. His stating that the heads of the Church in St. Louis go out on the Sabbath shooting, etc., is, in fact, nothing else but a falsehood. But he might have seen some of the Jack Mormons, who are neither saints nor Gentiles, for it is a general practice in St. Louis for people to go a shooting, fishing, etc., on Sundays. I would have noticed some other statements of Evan Howell, only that this sheet again is full; and I am afraid that it will not be intelligible to you. Please to give my love to all the Saints, especially to those of Aberdare, Cwmbach, Merthyr, and Pendarren, not forgetting your consort and yourself.

“Your affectionate brother in the everlasting covenant, Alfred J. Wood.

“P. S.—If anybody should inquire about us, say that we are quite well, and that I am delighted with this country, especially in this season of the year—and that I rather live here than in Aberdare. I must say that Wm. Davies has told me that he only joined the Saints this last time on purpose to have his passage cheaper to America than he otherwise would. It is the particular desire of the Welsh saints here that you publish this letter in the Udgorn, also try to get it into the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. Please to repair all mistakes, and excuse all imperfections. If anybody should like to hear further from me, I will answer any inquiries relative to this country and relative to the Saints; let them write, and I will answer them. My address is, Alfred J. Wood, Rolling Mill, Bremen, St. Louis, Mo., N. America.”

1852 – 17 July, p. 3 – Alarming Occurrence at Newport. On Monday evening an alarming accident occurred in this town, which occasioned the most frightful apprehensions as to the safety of nearly four hundred men, women, and children. The Latter-day Saints who form a large proportion of the population in this district, have been holding their “conference” here within the past few days. To this gathering have assembled many of the “elders” of the fraternity, some of whom have held rank as “prophets” on the banks of the Salt River. Great preparations were made to celebrate this conference on an extensive scale; and among other means, it is said that promises had been held out, and believed in by the too-credulous Welsh people, that “miracles would be performed!” On Monday afternoon, a large building named Sunderland Hall, in which the body had held their services for a long period past, was filled to overflowing by the members of the sect, and their families, who reside in Newport, together with considerable numbers of the people from the hills, the collieries, etc. It is supposed that about four hundred persons were here assembled, about to join in partaking of tea after one of the services of the day. Several Mormon elders had given out the blessing, and some hints were thrown out that even that might witness some of the great and miraculous powers of the saints. Scarcely had tea been commenced, when, without a moment’s warning, exactly one half of the lofty and heavy ceiling of the building fell with a sudden crash. For a moment all was blinding and suffocating dust and confusion, then succeeded the most appalling shrieks and the most terrifying clamor; and, amidst the din and horrible confusion that ensured, people rushed from all the surrounding houses, apprehending that some great calamity had occurred. Fearful screams were again heard bursting forth, presently the windows of the hall were dashed out, and the affrighted creatures within flung themselves through the broken sashes to the ground below; some were observed clinging with extreme tenacity to the window frames and sills apprehending death within, and fearful of mutilated limbs if they fell. The doors were burst open from without as well as the piles of people heaped upon one another inside permitted, and ingress being at length obtained, the sight that presented itself was enough to appall the stoutest heart—beams and rafters, whole patches of ceiling, amidst clouds of dust, lying upon scores of people; while the tea tables, affording protection to many, were crowded below with numbers crying aloud for mercy, for protection, and for a miracle to save them. The upper end of the hall, where the elders had been seated, was unhurt—the ceiling above their heads was broken. Immediate exertions were made, and in the course of an hour the wretched creatures were all extricated from the ruins, and on a minute search being instituted, not one was found missing; and, what is still more remarkable, although the beams and rafters were heavy, and some, with huge pieces of entire ceiling, fell directly upon the tables, and others in a direction that appeared to insure inevitable death, not one single Mormon was injured, though it was estimated that two or three unbelievers, who had gone thither to revile and sneer at the true followers of Joe Smith, received injuries, which may serve their consciences as remembrances. When the parties were all extricated another hall was obtained, and there the remainder of the evening was devoted to an ovation to the elders and the prophets who had wrought the anticipated miracle of causing a ceiling to fall upon the heads of the saints without injury. The occurrence has occasioned a remarkable sensation in the town.

1853 – 15 January, p. 4 – Lectures on Mormonism. Four lectures were delivered last week in the Odd Fellows’ Hall, Temple-street, by Mr. A. B. Hepburn, “On the Delusions of the Mormons of Latter-day Saints.” Mr. Hepburn is a specimen of the native intelligence and shrewdness, and we might even say genius, so often found among those in the humbler walks of life. He was himself a Mormon for ten months; but having soon penetrated the flimsy veil of hypocrisy and pretension which deludes the votaries of the sect, he separated from them, and has since devoted himself to the refutation of the doctrines and exposure of the self-styled Saints. He stated that whilst lecturing at Old Cummick, in Ayrshire in 1850, he denied the existence of miracles in the so-called Mormon Church when one of the elders who was present asserted that a deaf and dumb woman, at Irving, had been so far cured by the Mormons that she could hear the tick of a watch and had begun to lisp. He at once challenged the elder to put his miracle to the proof, and arranged to go next morning to Irving, accompanied by any persons the Mormons should select; and he succeeded in bringing the woman to the meeting next night, when he demonstrated to the audience that so far from being able to hear the tick of a watch, she could not even hear the report of a pistol which he fired in the room. Another reported miracle which he investigated proved to be equally unfounded. It was alleged that as two men were going down into a coal-pit 365 yards deep at Auchin, Linlithgow, the chain broke in three places; they fell the whole distance, and that one who was a Mormon escaped unhurt, while the other had his leg broken, but was cured by a Mormon and able to work the next day. Mr. Hepburn took the trouble of walking fourteen miles to enquire into this case. Having arrived at the place he entered into conversation with the collier, and told him of the miracle, and when the man laughed at the story, he bet sixpence with the intention of losing it, that the miracle had been wrought. They then went to the hoursman of the pit, who informed him that there never had been any such accident at the pit, but that they were sinking a shaft twenty feet deep, a piece of stone which had been thrown up by a blast cut the rope upon the windlass in three places, and that the men descending, unaware of the injury done to the rope, were precipitated to the bottom, when one of them had his leg broken, but so far was he from having been cured by a Mormon, and able to work the next day, that he had been for several months unable to work in consequence of the accident. The Lecturer attributed the influence gained by the Mormons over females in many instances to mesmeric power, and stated that a number of young Mormon females, hearing that he entertained this opinion, came to him and asked him whether he could mesmerize them. He desired them with solemnity of voice and manner to beware of trifling with him, and having succeeded in striking them with a certain degree of awe, necessary for his purpose, he told them to gaze intently at the polished copper on his walking-stick, and in a few minutes the greater part of them were getting into the mesmeric state. They then admitted that the sensation which they experienced was the same as that which they had been led to believe by the Mormons was the influence of the Holy Ghost; and they therefore left the Mormon body, giving up their books, of which he made a display of fire-works at his next lecture. Referring to the miracle of casting 319 devils out of a woman, reported in the Millennial Star, a Mormon publication, the Lecturer said that, as the Mormons held devils to be material beings, occupying space, and as each of the devils was alleged to be as large as a tea-pot, he would like to see the shawl which would be capable of covering the shoulders of that woman. Various miracles are alleged in the same publication to have been wrought by a Mormon elder’s walking-stick; and the Lecturer undertook to give £5 to anyone who would communicate such virtue to a stick which he produced. There was much fever about Nottingham and other places, where they might exercise their healing power if they really possessed it; and he would be himself convinced if they would make his left foot, which was shorter than the right, equal to it in length. He then recited several specimens of their unknown tongue, and gave an entertaining account of his visit to a sister who professed to be able to interpret. After he had repeated the first gibberish that came into his mind, which sounded very like ran ti rar rar, she said I think, brother, I can give you the interpretation, and proceeded to give the words of one of their hymns. In the course of the evening it was announced that Mr. Marchant, the Mormon president, was on the staircase, and Mr. Hepburn desired the doors to be opened, and called loudly upon him to come in and defend his tenets; but that leader did not appear. The Lecturer said that he knew the president’s object was to hinder the poor females from attending, lest their faith should be weakened, and proceeded to say that twenty-seven persons had died from absolute neglect, the Mormons having undertaken to cure them by their superstition, and thus prevented the proper remedies being applied. He was willing to speak night after night for fifteen weeks, if God gave him health and strength, in refutation of Mormonism, and would willingly lecture in the villages in the neighborhood, if a Committee were formed to raise funds to defray expenses. —It appears that the Mormons have no fewer than five places for their worship in Birmingham, and are carrying on a profitable trade by collecting dupes and sending them to America. One who has been ten years in their fraternity, said that twelve of his relations had been seduced into going to the Salt Lake, and they were every one dead. Indeed, the Salt Lake appears to be “a bourn from whence no traveler returns.” From a Correspondent of Aris’s Birmingham Gazette.

1853 – 9 July, p. 2 – Divisions are reported in the Mormon camp, and Brigham Young, the President at Great Salt Lake City, has been denouncing apostates with death. Addressing the congregated saints, Young related a dream, in which he cut the throats of two from ear to ear, saying, “Go to hell, across lots,” and then the report continues: “‘At this I awoke. I say, rather than that apostates should flourish here I will unsheathe my bowie-knife and conquer or die. (Great commotion in the congregation, and a simultaneous burst of feeling assenting to the declaration.) Now, you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will be put to the line, and righteousness to the plummet. (Voices generally—“Go it, go it!”) If you say it is right, raise your hands. (All hands up.) Let me call upon the Lord to assist us in this and every good work.’ The ‘saints’ appear to have other causes for fear than from ‘apostates in their midst.’ There was said to be in the territory ‘a horde of Mexicans, or outlandish men, who were infesting the settlements, stirring up the Indians to make aggressions upon the inhabitants, and who were also furnishing the Indians with guns, ammunition, etc., contrary to the laws of this territory and the laws of the United States.’ President Brigham Young has issued a proclamation ordering small detachments of ‘military’ to ‘reconnoiter the country!’ for the purpose of arresting and keeping in custody every strolling Mexican party, and furnishing information to headquarters.”

1853 – 23 July, p. 3 – Intelligence by the Overland Mail states that the Mormons are making a desperate effort just now for the conversion of India to the creed of Joe Smith. Thirteen “ministers” arrived from the city of the Salt Lake, via California, a month or six weeks ago, and their “high priest” has lately got one of the newspapers to publish his manifesto. They seem likely, however, to proceed with some difficulty, as their gift of tongues does not include Bengali.”

1853 – 6 August, p. 3 – Mormonism. The minds of all the thinking community, particularly the better-educated Christians, in this neighborhood, are seriously contemplating the effects this mania has had, and will have, on many from whom you would expect better things. Fancy the fact of an aged widow, lately, who has seen seventy summers, and about fifty of those in a married life, with a numerous family of grown-up sons and daughters, selling her little all, consisting of a cow, hay, pigs, &c., buying a new suit of clothes for her husband, who has been dead several years, and starting off in an emigrant ship for the Salt Lake, there to meet him again in perfect health. A Mormon a few days ago, said that his faith was such that he could remove a mountain in this neighborhood from where it is, and place it in front of Sir Charles Morgan’s seat in Tredegar-park, only that he had too much respect for the baronet. But this is not so striking as the following performance between Blaina and Nantyglo, where a Mormon priest met a cripple walking on crutches. He accosted him, inquiring how long he had lost the use of his limbs. On receiving a reply, he asked him if he had faith in Mormonism. The poor fellow acknowledged his ignorance, but, after a tedious explanation of the fixed principles of the sect, he asked him in a loud voice if he had any faith. He replied that he had. Then throw those crutches away. This was done. Walk—and he walked. Run—and he ran. The priest said—“Now that you have the use of your limbs, tell me if your faith is strong on you now.” “Strong,” rejoined the cripple. “Then I don’t see why I could not make you fly.” In a moment the fellow began to flutter, and away he went for the Salt Lake. Passing over Risca, he sung out “Cuckoo!” when a fellow ran out of his house with a gun, fired, and fetched him down like a crow. Alas! poor Joe Smith. His “mockery, delusion, and snare” is becoming the laughing-stock of every rightminded person.—Correspondent of the Monmouthshire Beacon.

1853 – 8 October, p. 2 – [An account of a priest who was administering the last rites to a dying woman. The priest says:]

After I had finished prayer, one of her family (who is a Mormonite and also a preacher with them) seemed very desirous to argue with me, on the fitness of men to be priests, according to the order of Moses and Aaron, and such other views as they hold. But I said, “Sir, this is not a fitting place to have controversy. My duties are with the dying, and the only priesthood I can now talk of is after the order of Melchizedek, He, who is our great High Priest; and if you are a Christian man, you will be more anxious to pray to that great High Priest to hear our prayers, and save the soul of this poor dying woman.” This put an end to the wished-for controversy, and in a few moments after, the poor woman died.

Now this is the state of things with respect to these Mormons. I have been more than once sent for to the deathbed of Mormonites, who, having some respect for my character, have asked me seriously whether I thought Mormonism was the truth or not. I have unhesitatingly told them they were decidedly in error—morally and religiously.

1854 – 4 February, p. 3 – The Latter-day Saints – Mormonism still retains its hold on a considerable number of the working men of this place, and large numbers are wistfully turning their longing eyes to that holy land which borders on the Great Salt Lake. One part of the Merthyr Mormonites took their departure for this Western Canaan on Friday last; and many others were anxious to have gone. This is another of the signs of the times, which we commend to the serious consideration of the religious world, for the existence of such infatuation surely indicates that there is “something rotten in the state of Denmark.”

1854 – 28 April, p. 4 – The John Simonds, a three-decker steamer, running to St. Louis, passed our landing yesterday with about 800 emigrants on board, all bound for the Mormon settlement at Utah. They are composed, we were told, nearly exclusively of English and Welsh converts to the Mormon religion and morality (or immorality), under the guidance of one of the Latter-day Saints, who has been on a missionary tour to Great Britain. About half, or more than half, the number were women, mostly young and buxom-looking lasses. What were their views of spiritual matrimony we did not ascertain.” Baton Rouge Advocate.

1854 – 10 November, p. 3 – To the Mormons. We advise all sane and rational people to read a little book, entitled Utah and the Mormons – six-months’ residence in the Great Salt Lake City, by Benjamin G. Ferris, late Secretary of Utah Territory. It is published by Low, Son, and Co., London. If this work does not abate the low Welsh fever, no other remedy can avail.

1855 – 12 January, p. 3 – The Mormons and their Disciples. To the Editor of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. Sir—As the agents of the Mormons are very active in deluding the working classes, perhaps you will allow the accompanying letter to be inserted in your paper: I have just received it from a person, late of this town, who writes from San Francisco. It appears no account can reach us from the “City of the Salt Lake,” but such as are approved of by the authorities there, and shews the bondage in which the people are held. I am, Sir, yours obediently, C. VACHELL. Cardiff, Jan 10, 1855.

“San Francisco, Nov. 7^th, 1854. Sir—I have taken the liberty of sending this note to you, hoping you may not think me too presumptuous in sending to you. I have crossed the continent of North America to Salt Lake; and I did not find Mormonism as it was represented in England. I thought of sending to you from Salt Lake, but all letters were opened by the Mormon authorities previous to their being sent away. I have enjoyed excellent health for a man of my years, considering the many difficulties I have to contend with. I return you my sincere thanks for the many favors I have received from your hands. I am sorry to say my sight is no better than when I left. I am coming to England in the ship ‘William.’ We are going to bring home guano from Pero. I expect to be in England about May, if God spares me so long. I remain, yours respectfully, John Davis, Late from No. 12, Herbert Street, Cardiff.”

1855 – 19 January, p. 3 – To the Editor of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. Sir—Having observed a letter in your last sent to Mr. C. Vachell, from one John Davis, late of Herbert Street, Cardiff, containing charges derogatory to the character of the Mormons in the Great Salt Lake Valley, I shall be prepared next week to bring forward facts to disprove the assertions contained in the said letter, and beg the public will suspend their judgment in the meantime. I remain, Sir, yours most respectfully, Samuel Evans. 6, Great Frederick Street, Cardiff, January 17^th, 1855.

1855 – 26 January, p. 3 – Mormons and their Disciples. To the Editor of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. Sir—According to promise, I send you these few lines in answer to John Davis’s, that appeared in your paper of the 12^th, in reference to Mormonism. That letter contained two distinct charges. First, “That he did not find Mormonism in Great Salt Lake as was represented in England.” Second, “That the reason why he did not send home from there was, that all letters were opened by the Mormon authorities previously to their being sent away.” Now, I wish to inform the public upon this last statement in particular. Utah, a Mormon Settlement, is a territory in America containing a population of somewhere about 40,000 inhabitants, and that all officers are elected by Congress, the Post-office ones included, who are under the control and supervision of the United States’ authorities; and to open a letter there would be held as criminal as in this country; and when the population of Utah is considered, such a proceeding would involve an immense amount of time and trouble, when they have no wish to conceal from the public their habits, customs, form of government, or religion—in proof of this see the American journals, which contain almost weekly something concerning this peculiar people. The Times newspaper has lately published some strange stories about them, and nothing in their favor, written by a correspondent in Great Salt Lake City. Perhaps it would be well to ask them how their letters came safe to hand? But enough on that head. I am prepared to produce ten witnesses to one of John Davis’s, or anyone else, to prove his statement to be incorrect. With regard to the other charge, “That he did not find Mormonism as it was preached in England.” I do not know what he expected to find there; but this I know that Mormonism is carried out there in more perfection than is possible to carry it out here. The people are taught in righteousness and virtue, according to the pattern laid down in the Old and New Testament. In proof of this, John Lewis, late of Bate Street, in a letter to his aged parent says, “Utah is the best place in the world for those that will keep in the Commandments of God.” James Ellis, late of Tredegar Street, writes thus, “Utah is a place where the people are taught how to live, and where children see no bad habits, but are taught righteously and in the fear of the Lord.” Mrs. Hannah Thomas, in a letter to Mrs. C. Vachell says, “When we arrived here there were hundreds that were ready to greet us as brothers and sisters in the new and everlasting covenant.” Also, in conclusion, she says, “I do find this to be the work of God and of truth.” I will now leave it with the public, the individuals’ letters I have quoted from is well known in Cardiff, and their testimony would be taken in any court of justice. By inserting the above letter, you will much oblige Yours most respectfully, Samuel Evans. 6, Great Frederick Street, Cardiff, Jan. 23^rd, 1855.

1855 – 9 February, p. 3 – Mormonism. A gentleman, named Hepburn, during the past and present week, has been engaged at the Temperance Hall, in the delivery of a series of six lectures, “Upon the Horrid Doctrines of the so-called Latter-day Saints.” The character of the lectures may be inferred from the syllabus, viz., 1. The Origin of Joe Smith, the Yankee Smith, and his Book of Mormon proved unscriptural. 2. The money system, and how the people are robbed; three Baptisms for the Living and one for the Dead, and the price of each; the Peopling of other Worlds in Eternity. 3. The Casting out of 319 Devils from one woman; their Pretended Miracles proved False; their Unknown Tongue a Delusion. 4. The Election in Heaven between Jesus Christ and the Devil; the Origin of God and his Wives in Heaven; the Mysteries of the Mormon Temple in America. 5. The Seduction of Young Females from this Country to the Salt Lake Valley. To this lecture no females will be admitted. This is a revolting catalogue of blasphemy and absurdity; and if Mr. Hepburn’s facts are authentic, he is doing good service to the cause of truth in unveiling this modern libel upon the name of religion. We are happy to find, however, that the delusion in this district is dying away, that the Saints are rapidly decreasing in number, and that Mormonism has lost its hold upon the minds of the people.

1856 – 19 January, p. 8 – A Female Mormon Tyrant. I find the women very conversable. In one house was a tidy English woman, from Bath, of some native refinement of manner. The roof was garnished with little mementoes of her native city, and she took down a print to show me the environs, and the particular point from which she came, her eyes filled with tears at the remembrance of home. I felt some hesitation in probing her with the ruthless question – “Are you the only wife?” Pretty soon a broad red-faced woman came in and seemed perfectly at home. As soon as she went out of the room, I said – “That woman lives with you?” “Yes.” “Are you relatives?” The poor woman twisted her apron, her lips quivered. I then asked, “She is your husband’s second wife?” It was some moments before she could find words to assure me it was even so. She then went on to narrate in a simple artless way, how happy she and her husband had lived together, how they had been told that the valley of the Salt Lake was a paradise, that her husband could have land for nothing, and earn five dollars a day; how their expenses had been defrayed by the Mormon agents, to be refunded by her husband’s labor here on the public works. And then, with tears streaming down her face, she said her husband, about three months since had been persuaded to take another wife, and how badly she felt when she first heard of his resolution. This coarse, blowzy, greasy specimen of womanhood had ruled with a rod of iron. She could not even have the privilege of a cup of tea without asking the jade’s permission, so effectually had the intruder usurped all authority in this humble abode. My heart wept for her. – Putnam’s New York Magazine.

1856 – 16 February, p. 5 – The Cardiff Mormonites. Many of our readers have from time to time read with astonishment the extraordinary proceedings of that singular sect who have of late years established themselves in the vicinity of the Salt Lake. Innumerable facts and fictions are daily circulated in our newspapers, periodicals, and cheap literature, of the actual, and partially or wholly incredible scenes which take place in their far distant El Dorado, or Promised Land. One week we hear that the judgment of an avenging Providence has overtaken them, and that they are starving by thousands—a cloud of locusts having devoured up their substance—that starvation and annihilation stares them in the face—that they are visited for their sins even as Sodom and Gomorrah of old. In the next account that reaches us they appear on the contrary to be increasing, multiplying, and replenishing the earth. Prosperity and plenty seem to be their portion. Who is there that has not read numerous accounts, which are represented to be Mormon revelations and exposures. Who has not heard of the tricks and chicanery stated to be practiced by their designing priest and prophets—the condition of their thickly tenanted houses—the doings and sayings of their numberless wives, or of the marvelously large families of children who congregate daily around the boards of their patriarchal elders and chiefs? What extravagant stories have we not heard of their monstrous faith—of their “bible” or book of Mormon—of the blasphemous pretenses of their preachers and leaders—of the avidity with which their wildest and most improbable pretended mystic revelations have been received by a credulous and infatuated multitude, who, judging from their conduct, are either fanatical and enthusiastic to the most extraordinary degree, or astoundingly ignorant of the acknowledged principles of common sense, religion, and morality. We are at a loss to ascertain, after a mature consideration of the subject, whether we must deem the thousand Mormon votaries influenced by the most deplorable depravity, or whether we must ascribe to mental imbecility the ready adoption of such a ridiculous creed. In other words, we are prone to ask ourselves the question, are they rogues or fools, or a heterogeneous combination of the both?

The Mormon faith, if it can be dignified with such an appellation, is so opposed to all common sense and morality—not to mention religion—that all who do not actually embrace its tenets, and who understand anything of its character, cannot but look upon its professors with disgust, indignation, or sorrow. We can better understand how the benighted heathen can bow down to worship stock and stone. We can more easily conceive how the Persians bow down to the sun—how the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and other nations of antiquity that were so advanced in civilization and accomplished in many of the arts and sciences, worshipped numberless gods, goddesses and demigods. The influence of early prejudice, education and associations—the absence of an instructor in the doctrines of the Book of books—the want of preachers to enforce and propagate the principles of Christianity. These reasons will, to no small extent, account for the infatuation and delinquencies of a great portion of the human family. But when we seek or assign any reason to analyze the motives or incentives which induce thousands of our countrymen to abjure the religion of their fathers, and embrace such a pitiful, blasphemous, stupid system of credulous imposition, we are at a loss to discover or account satisfactorily for such a phenomenon in the moral world. We are almost prone to come to the conclusion, that the mind of man is occasionally subjected to similar influences as the body, and that the most monstrous hallucination is sometime disseminated on a similar principle to that which regulates the transmission of contagious diseases. We are willing to extend Christian charity to all sectaries that conscientiously differ from ourselves; but we are loath to recognize the doctrines of such infamous and deluded enthusiasts as those whose faith it would be a mockery to call religion. It is one of the prodigies of the age, that such a faith should arise among a Christian community. In many instances, even education vainly checks its progress, and every sect in its turn contributes members to swell the infatuated train. So much has, however, of late years been said and written of Mormonism that we can say nothing which has either originality or novelty to recommend it; we shall, therefore, merely give the reader a sketch of the progress of this extraordinary and impious faith in Cardiff.

Notwithstanding that the doctrines of the Mormonites are diametrically opposed to all the feelings and practices of the inhabitants of Great Britain, still they are increasing daily in numbers in the United Kingdom. There are now but few large towns who have not their avowed Mormon elders, teachers, and places of worship.

Some years have now elapsed since first a body who embraced this creed congregated together at Cardiff for the celebration of their delusive rituals and ceremonials. The number has been steadily increasing and several hard-working and apparently industrious individuals, many of whom have hitherto even been considered respectable and creditable citizens have become proselytes, and embraced this creed which for a while appears fated to spread in this country as well as America. The Mormons have meeting-houses in every part of Wales. They form themselves into organized bodies and prepare to quit their native country and homes to repair to their Canaan. Those who have any worldly substance sell off their goods and chattels, and with a wonderful infatuation quit all near and dear to them should they refuse to embrace their new faith, and in companies, headed by elders and teachers, they engage a vessel to transport them to Utah. The natural feelings of the heart seem altogether subjected to an obstinate religious enthusiasm. Substantial farmers have in scores of instances sold all their goods and thrown the proceeds to the Mormon treasury, trusting in the honesty of their chiefs for sustenance. The poorer members are compelled to wait in this country until they can save a certain proportion of money or until they are assisted by more wealthy brethren, but one after another they gradually disappear from their native haunts. It may not, perhaps, be generally known to the inhabitants of this town that the Mormons of Cardiff have a place of meeting in this town. For some time they met in a private house, but when their numbers gradually increased, they rented a room in the Lord Nelson beer-house, Millicent-street, where they now regularly assemble to read the adopted production of that arch-impostor, Joe Smith, to worship after the manner of their sect. A large party of this sect quitted Cardiff for Liverpool, on Monday, from which port they will sail for California and Salt Lake. If this body continues to increase in the same proportion as they hitherto have, they will shortly form a most important colony and a powerful people. This singular people have lately occupied the serious attention of the American Legislature, and it has been a matter of some discussion whether or not they should be admitted to the immunities of American citizens. Various speculations have been hazarded respecting the ultimate result of this republic, some prognosticate strife and divisions which will scatter them to the four winds of heaven, others prophecy they will compose a great and powerful state, while not a few are in expectation of hearing that the earth will swallow them up, or that they will destroy each other. The elders or leaders of the body at this town are well-known to many persons, one as an ex-showman and the other as the former keeper of an infamous house in the most disreputable part of the town.

Once the mind becomes infected by the delusions of this fanatical sect, the mental faculties, given to every intelligent being for the purpose of discerning right and wrong, appear to have become clouded, the victim of inexpressible credulity becomes deaf to the dictates of reason or the voice of warning. Notwithstanding the Mormon exposures which have been constantly made from time to time by those who have experienced the deception practiced, to induce thousands to emigrate to the Mormon city, still a tide of emigration flows to their Salt Lake settlement, from Great Britain and America.

We append a letter from a late Mormon as an impressive commentary on our remarks; but not so much with the view of preventing Mormons from experiencing similar disappointments as to deter others from being infected by the new and extravagant creed which is being so widely propagated. Once the mind becomes infected with the mania, we have cause to believe that reason has resigned her empire in the mind, and it replaced by the most extravagant hallucinations, which nothing but personal experience can remove, and indeed so strong is the infatuation, that the evidence of the senses themselves not unfrequently fail to convince the Mormon.

On Thursday morning last, his Worship C. Vachell, Esq., the Mayor of Cardiff, after the business of the Police Court had concluded, begged to submit to the gentlemen of the press a communication which he had just received from a Mormonite who had recently made his escape from Utah, the Salt-Lake city. John Davies, the person alluded to, is well known to many of the inhabitants of Cardiff. He was, a few years ago a tenant of Mr. W. Vachell, and resided in No. 12, Herbert-street. The unfortunate man, on his arrival in London, addressed the following letter to the Mayor of Cardiff, and that gentleman, anxious to give publicity to the communication, so as if possible to undeceive the infatuated professors of Mormonism, placed it at our disposal:

“Sir,—after a boisterous passage of nearly fifteen months, thank God I have arrived safe in England, by the ship William (Captain McPhea). My object in sending this note is, in the first place, because I consider it my duty from the favors you have bestowed on me previously. Secondly, knowing it is about the time that parties leave Wales for the Mormon country, I wish you to caution them against any false delusion they might be laboring under. I have lived amongst them nine months, and the supposed Zion I found to be a city of the Sultan. Virtue or good deeds are never placed in the balance of justice. Should this caution be insufficient, be kind enough to tell them to take care of their money, as it is very scarce in Salt-lake Valley. Laboring men, if they can get employment, which is difficult, cannot get money except under peculiar circumstances, but must take anything their employers think proper to give—say, flour, potatoes, lumber, etc. I myself have lived for weeks on bread and potatoes only, at the same time fully employed, and can state without fear of contradiction that many others have done the same. I hope, if it please God, soon to be in Cardiff, and shall then be able to fully explain to you and others the false delusions thousands have labored under. Hundreds at this present moment would leave this talked-of Zion, but are without means to do so. I left, myself, in the dead of the night, and travelled on foot 1400 miles, at times with great privations. Nothing but Divine Providence has brought me here, and I will explain to the world the supposed Zion. My eyesight is no better after the Mormon Prophet laying hands on me. I am waiting here to see Doctor Alexander, whom I trust will relieve me.

I remain, Sir, your humble Servant,

John Davies

C. Vachell, Esq., Crockherbtown, Cardiff

P.S.—Sir, I beg to add that I lived under your brother, 12, Herbert-street, Cardiff.”

1856 – 23 February, p. 8 – The Cardiff Mormonites. We adverted last week to the emigration of Mormonites which is constantly taking place from Cardiff, as well as from the Principality generally. The party who left Cardiff last week, in company with a large number of the same infatuated sect who arrived from the hills, assembled at Liverpool, where they were duly organized under their respective leaders, prior to sailing for Salt Lake. Several hundreds of them, including the Cardiff and Merthyr party, sailed from Liverpool on Thursday last. We last week inserted a letter written by an ex-Mormon, in which he describes the disappointment he experienced on arriving at Utah; and he gives a very unfavorable sketch of the Promised Land. This week we append a letter from a female Mormon, who gives a somewhat more favorable account of the prosperity of the settlement. Our female readers will be astonished to perceive with what non-chalance the deluded woman speaks of the period when it will devolve upon her to select a second spouse for her husband. The writer of the letter is the wife of a brother of Mr. Ellis, late landlord of the Lord Nelson beer-house, named “Ann Ellis,” and to Mr. Morgan Phillips, 42, Working-street, Cardiff, the letter is addressed. It is reported that all the letters posted at the Salt Lake City are subjected to the closest inspection by the Post-office authorities, and no letters are allowed to leave the city if they should chance to contain anything inimical to the religion or city of the Mormons. How far this is correct it would be difficult to ascertain, as considerable obscurity and doubt seems to hang over everything connected with the settlement and its inhabitants. We shall insert the letter in the writer’s own words:

“Aug. 29, 1855. Farmington, near Great Salt Lake City.

“Dear Sister Jane,—(The writer, in the commencement of the letter, condoles with her father and sister on the death of her mother; she then says):—I do feel quite thankful to Mr. Richard Evans for his kindness towards my poor mother; and I say, May the Lord that did feast with Abraham upon the fat calf, bless him; a man will never feel bad for doing a good turn for his fellow-man. We cannot help feeling for the hard times that our fellow-countrymen had last winter. We had a very mild winter here, but it is a very dry summer, and there are very good crops here of what is left by the grass-hoppers: they have destroyed many thousands of acres of all kinds of grain here this year, especially down south of us. It has been saved pretty well with us; and I believe that there will be enough to supply us all until next harvest. The wheat is sold the same as usual, two dollars a-bushel, and will remain so except with some; and when a man charges more than that for his grain, he is of no account, especially with the Prophet. There have been very few deaths since we are here; there have been some accidents; and once a man is caught thieving, he is shot there and then for the crime—that is the law of the territory. We are doing very well: we shall have about 300 bushels of potatoes, and we have planted some corn, and a great many other things. We have got plenty of everything except wheat. James is getting very good wages all the summer—from three to four dollars a-day. I wish you were getting on as well as what we are. Sarah Evans does not live here now; she lives about 27 miles more north than we. David is gone to California, and left her, and she is married to Morgan John, late of Cardiff, living comfortable and doing well—that is the law of the territory—when a man leaves a woman, she is at liberty.

“You wished me to answer some questions for you: James has no other woman than myself yet; and when we have got more property—that is, when we are in a way to maintain her without injuring ourselves—then it will be my duty to look out for another woman for him,—that is my duty, and not his. You wished to know whether we have increased in family: no, none; we should like to know have you, any more.” (Here follows a list of the writer’s friends and relations in Cardiff.)

1856 – 12 April, p. 2 – Extraordinary Elopement. The Worcester Chronicle describes at length a flight of incipient Mormons, which took place last week.

“On the previous Sunday morning Mr. Hodgetts had made one of his usual voyages to the coal country, and on his return on the following Saturday was distracted on finding that his wife had left him, and induced all the children to accompany her. Not only had she left him, but she had taken away a great deal of ready cash, which she had collected from the customers, had drawn £314 by cheque out of the bank on the previous day, and had carried off everything portable, even the bed linen from the house. The poor man’s agony and distraction of mind can scarcely be imagined; he implored the aid of the police in recovering wife and children; and on the same night Superintendent Chipp started with him in pursuit. They proceeded at once to Liverpool, procured the assistance of the police in that town, and, after several hours spend in making inquiries, learned that the Enoch Trail had started out of port two hours before with 400 Mormons on board, and it was supposed that Mrs. Hodgetts and family were of the number. With some difficulty a bargain was struck with the captain of a steam-tug, the Great Conquest, which shortly afterwards started in pursuit of the fugitives. Nothing was seen of the Enoch Trail until the Conquest had crossed the bar at the mouth of the Mersey, when the captain made out the vessel with his glass, and screwed down his safety valves. For two or three hours the chase continued, when the Enoch Trail slackened speed, and the Conquest was allowed to come alongside. As soon as the errand of the pursuers became known, the greatest excitement pervaded the passengers; but after a great deal of wrangling and abuse, which lasted an hour and a half, Mr. Hodgetts was allowed to take away his wife and three of his children. The two eldest girls, aged respectively 16 and 18, obstinately refused to go back. Mr. Hodgetts is now once more safely housed with his wife, who, we believe, positively declares that she will go back to the Salt Lake at some time or other. She has brought back with her the greater portion of the money, but not the whole.”

1856 – 26 April, p. 7 – Hereford Journal. More Victims to Mormonism. A Prophet Checkmated. There seems to be no end to the list of dupes to this devilish delusion; and when we hear of families ruined and females whose virtue has been trifled with by these wolves in sheep’s clothing—the followers of the fanatic Joe Smith—we begin to regret that there is no penal enactment by which society can be freed from the evil machinations of such villains. The tale we have to tell is one that has come under our notice in this city, and is not, though we select it for its sequel, the most offensive that we could expose. The Mormons have, for two or three years, established themselves in this city, holding their Sunday meetings in a large room at the Black Swan, and their week-day assemblies up a passage in St. Martin’s street. In this street for a great number of years has lived a widow woman, who kept a small shop as a means of obtaining a livelihood, and managed it so well as to amass a little money. About twelve months ago, a fellow named Reece calling himself a disciple or elder of the fraternity of Mormons, came into the neighborhood, and with the cunning of imposters generally, obtained lodgings at and managed to ingratiate himself into the old woman’s good graces. The seed of delusion once sown, under the teaching of this disciple soon ripened into fanaticism, and the weak woman placed implicit confidence in the gross absurdities taught by Reece. He became the principal of the establishment, directing the expenditure of the house, and receiving the money in the shop, when his “sacred” duties would permit his attendance behind the counter. Having fathomed the depth of the convictions of his aged dupe and her younger sister, he thought the time for a flight to the abodes of happiness and the “saints” on the other side of the Great Salt Lake, had at length arrived. Various meetings have within the last few months been held for concerting the plans of the journey, and several deluded young girls with these two “old uns” had determined upon trying the experiment. The old lady, who though 60 and nearly blind into the bargain, proved herself gull sufficient to believe the ridiculous teachings of Reece, who it seems assured her that when she arrived at Utica, she would be blessed with unfading youth, would have her sight restored, and being joined again to her deceased but risen husband would be fruitful and multiply. This seems almost too much for human nature to credit, but we have evidence before us that gullibility has no limit. Under the direction of this Mormon imposter, the old woman disposed of her business, and had given instructions for the conveyance of such articles as she needed for her convenience when in the “promised land” to be dispatched en route. Her neighbors in vain remonstrated with her on the worse than insanity, but she was inexorable. But, as the adage says, “it is a long lane that has no turn;” for this Mormon was destined to be the cause of his own overthrow. When he wanted was the old woman’s money, and not to be troubled with her at the Salt Lake where he might pick up with half-a-dozen young active wives; so he tried to wring £50 from her on the pretense of purchasing a cart and horse to take over with them. At this demand the old woman for the first time paused, and it became pretty evident that, although nearly blind, she had sight sufficient to “see through” this move, and refused to loose the guineas. The Saint was staggered at this unexpected denouement, and used all his eloquence in picturing the joy of the immortelles in Utica, and the eternal perdition of those who having once professed a love for the Saints turned back into the highways of life. But the veil of superstition had been removed from the old dame’s reason; she stuck to her resolution and countermanded the orders she had given for the removal of her goods and chattels. Since then there has been great wavering among the flock in St. Martin’s Street and many have resolved not to leave the shores of old England, to become the victims of an abominable delusion.

1856 – 26 April, p. 8 – An Evening Party At Utah.—“We went sufficiently late not to be among the first arrivals, and were ushered into an ante-room, to be divested of cloaks and shawls. From this, a short flight of steps brough us into a long saloon, where six cotillions were in active motion. Another short flight landed us on a raised platform, which overlooked the dancing party, and here a band of music were in the full tide of performance. This dais was well accommodated with seats, including two or three sofas, on which were elders and apostles reclining, with a few of their concubines. Brigham was there, and had his hat on, according to his usual habit. We were treated with distinguished attention—the company generally seemed to exert themselves to make the evening pleasant to us. Our old acquaintance, Judge Snow, was there, with Mrs. S., his only wife; and I took advantage of our familiar footing with both to enquire out all the peculiarities of the evening. Elder Kimble, one of the chief men, was present, and very sociable. He has a harem, numbering some twenty-five or thirty; but, strange to say, has continued to treat his real wife (so the story goes) as superior to the rest. She was at his right hand on the present occasion, and looked careworn and sad; on his left was one of his sealed ones, a keen, shrewd-looking woman, from Philadelphia, and who, in the few words of conversation I had with her, evinced some intelligence. Near them sat a delicate woman, with raven hair, and piercing black eyes, who proved to be Eliza Snow, the Mormon poetess, and who belongs to Brigham’s harem. Polygamy cannot be a subject calculated to produce poetic inspiration—at least the effusions which appear under her name in the Deseret News would scare the muses out of their senses. I found Mrs. Orson Hyde, a pleasant woman, of much simplicity of manners, and to her husband’s credit be it said, he lives with her alone, although one of the twelve apostles. Another of the twelve, Amass Lyman, was pointed out, a man of grossly sensual appearance. This man lives in San Bernardino, and has a straggling harem, extending at convenient points from that place to Salt Lake. He collects the tithings in California, and is constantly going back and forth. A heavy dark-colored, beetle-browed man was pointed out as Elder John Taylor, who had been badly wounded when the prophet was murdered at Illinois. He had his wife on one arm, on the other was a young widow from Tennessee, reputed to be wealthy, and reputed also to have been lately sealed to this pious elder. The cotillions upon the floor when we went in were soon danced out, and the dancers came crowding upon the platform—and here happened what seemed to me the crowning incident of the evening; Parley Pratt marched up with four wives, and introduced them successively as Mrs. Pratts. The thing was done with such an easy, nonchalant air, that I had difficulty in keeping from laughing outright. The thought came over me, with what scorn these people, who are here first and foremost, would be banished from society at home. Did the man do this to show what he could do, or because he thought politeness required it of him? I don’t know. Some, however, only introduced the first wife, and I internally thanked them for the forbearance. One thing was peculiar—it was only the first wives that tried to make themselves familiar with me. Dancing continued fast and furious till a late hour. Each man danced with two women at a time, and took the lead in all the chassés promenades; so it seems that even in their amusements women take a subordinate position.” —The Mormons at Home, by Mrs. Ferris.

[NOT INCLUDED] 1856 – 3 May, p. 6 – “Novelty. On Saturday morning last, the good people of Merthyr were startled from their propriety by the following announcement:—A challenge to the Infidels, Secularists, and Mormons of Merthyr and its neighbourhood.—Three sermons will be preached in the English Wesleyan Chapel, Merthyr, to-morrow, Sunday, April 27, by E. Yelland, Esq., of London. In the morning, at half-past 10,—subject: “What is the Almighty and the Power of Prayer.” Afternoon at half-past 2, “The Plant of Renown.” Evening, at 6, “The Immateriality and Immortality of Man’s Soul.”—Mr. Yelland is prepared to meet any member of the above societies, in the Temperance Hall, to discuss either of the above subjects.—The sermons were delivered; but they fell flat upon the public ear, and failed to create the desired excitement. Mr. Yelland seems to live in a world of misconceptions, and imagines that because there are Infidels and Secularist Societies in London, and the large towns in England, they must necessarily exist in Merthyr. But if there were none already, the issuing of such a challenge has a direct tendency to produce them; for if the chapel is to be reduced to the level of the ring, and sermons are to compete for attention after the fashion of a prize fight, the ministry will cease to deserve or elicit respect, and religion itself must wear the appearance of hypocrisy, and lose its power to regenerate the world. For these reasons Mr. Yelland’s challenge appears to us to exhibit very bad taste, and a very low state of religious feeling. It has grated upon the minds of many devout persons, and ought to be reproved.

1856 – 10 May, p. 8 – “Mormon Dupes. The early cheap up train from Bristol to Worcester on Monday morning was laden with Mormonites on their way to Liverpool en route for the Salt Lake. At Worcester no less than sixty-eight others, of whom at least one-third were children under five years of age, were waiting to join them. They were almost all clad in smock frocks, and were evidently country folk of the most ignorant class. One old man, who said he was eighty-two years of age, and stone blind, with a wallet on his back, told one of the railway porters with the gravest possible countenance that he had “faith,” and was going off in the full expectation of having his sight restored. One woman, faint of heart, was going to run away at the last moment, but the elder caught her by the arm, and compelled her to return. The “prophet” who had the chief oversight of the “saints,” having seen them all safely in the carriages (himself much too knowing to go along), went round and gave them the kiss of peace, not forgetting to make a collection for himself, which he did so successfully that he carried away a double handful of copper and silver.” – Worcester Chronicle.

1856 – 17 May, p. 2 – “The Emigration of the Mormon Prophet Reece and his Deluded Victims—A few weeks since we adverted to the doings in Hereford of an impostor named Reece, a disciple of the fanatic Joe Smith, who has for some months been busily engaged in Hereford and its neighborhood in indoctrinating the silly and the ignorant with the principles of the gross delusion of which he is the representative. When we last alluded to this fellow we were led to hope that his evil machinations with the old lady at whose table he had fed and whom he had induced to dispose of her business on the belief that if she accompanied him to Nauvoo she would regain her sight and the health and spirits of her youth, had been frustrated, and the common sense had gained another triumph over groveling and immoral belief. In this we regret to say we have, in common with others, been mistaken. As the bloodhound hunts down its prey so did this Mormon heretic his unprotected victims; and with the cunning of the fox, the weak woman seems to have been the especial object of his anxious solicitude. The rational convictions which caused the old dame to refuse to undertake the journey to the Salt Lake were soon set aside by the continued importunities and denunciations of this limb of a prophet, and then she called in her money she had out at interest and in safe hands to commit it to the care of her subtle adviser. Last week he beat to arms and all his efficient troops were ordered to be in marching order; but some of his victims needed some of the tact of a general and all the artful villainy of the highwayman to steal them away from their homes. Capable, as it would seem, of anything this stealer of wives and children undertook, and successfully carried it out. Among the newly-made converts was the wife of a hard-working industrious man. She appears to have been persuaded by Reece to leave her husband, and report says that having got all her husband’s money and valuables together without his knowledge (besides contracting sundry debts) it was arranged that she should follow Reece and his old-lay-victim to Ludlow, there to spend a few days with them and to say “farewell,” ere they quitted England for the Salt Lake. But judge the fond husband’s surprise on receiving a letter one morning stating that his partner and her three children had set out for Liverpool en route to Nauvoo. As soon as the first paroxysm of grief was over he started to Liverpool, but only reached it in time to learn that the good ship in which the fugitives had embarked had some hours before sailed out of port with a fair wind. The disconsolate husband returned to this city virtually a widower and childless; but we hear that some kind friends have made arrangements for his following the Mormon emigrants to Nauvoo, and that he will, in all probability, arrive there before his silly but affectionate wife. Few are disposed to think that such material is worth the trouble, but a father’s feeling few can properly estimate. As the enterprise is to be undertaken we say “God speed the good ship.” Hereford Journal.

1856 – 17 May, p. 7 – Life among the Mormons. We stated last week that we had received a long letter from a person named Parrott, residing in Bristol, in which he detailed his experience among the Mormons, which sect he left with the greatest disgust. This person’s statement, the accuracy of which is vouched for by the Rev. J. B. Clifford, is to the effect that, some time since, he became entangled in the meshes of Mormonism, through the influence of a “leader,” a most pleasing and fascinating man, who introduced the subject to him, and he was led to join a “church” which met in Milk-street. For a time he was perfectly enchanted with the system, and, with his wife and children, was preparing to leave his home and take his departure for the settlement on the Salt Lake. At first he observed the strictest sanctity in their public services and movements, but after a while their real character began to develop itself, as he says, “in the most Satanic manner.” After honestly watching their private and public actions, and carefully observing their principles, and having been by the priest favored to “attend one of their secret council meetings held every Monday night until midnight, when they secretly concoct their hellish and diabolical purposes to entrap the innocent,” he determined to withdraw from them and on March 18^th last, he wrote a letter to the pastor requesting to be excluded from the “church.” For this conduct he was publicly anathematized in the following language: “May his eyes sink in their sockets; his flesh fall from his bones; may he wish to die, and not be able; may his right arm wither; may he beg his bread, but none be given him.” Mr. Parrott states Brigham Young, the present head of the Mormons, has now about twenty women, whom he denominates as his wives, besides the keeping of all the wives of the missionaries while they are away on their missions for five or seven years together; and he instances the case of an “elder” or “priest,” who has just been removed from Cheltenham for having seduced twenty young women. The Mormons now number “4,345 trained officers or black spirits ready for anything their leader Brigham Young has for them to do.” Mr. Parrott states in conclusion that the real object of the American Mormon leaders, called priests, in their mission to the United Kingdom, is under the mask of religion, to recruit men, women, and children, for the purpose of raising an army to carry the Book of Mormon, by the sword and fire, into the present peaceful States of America, of which army Brigham Young, like a second Mohammed, is to be the king. The men, on leaving England, are expected to provide themselves with a six-barreled revolver, a Minie rifle, a sword, and a large knife, under the pretext of killing buffaloes; while the women are taught to make bullets, &c. The Mormons intend to call to their aid the disaffected powerful tribes of the Indians around Utah, in order to assist them in deluging the States in rivers of blood. Pembrokeshire Herald.

1856 – 24 May, p. 8 – A Visit to the Salt Lake by a Cardiff Resident. A pamphlet was last week published by Mr. Hugh Bird, of Duke Street, in this town, containing “A short account of a journey from Cardiff to the Salt Lake,” by John E. Davis, who has just returned from the Mormon settlement, and who, previous to his departure, resided at 12, Herbert-street, Cardiff. The preface states “The following pages are intended to show the detestable proceedings of the disciples of Joe Smith, at the city of the Salt Lake, Utah. They are written, not with an attempt at language, but with a view to depict faithfully what the writers saw and heard during a nine months’ residence amongst them. It is ‘a plain unvarnished tale,’ and the only object in its publication is, if possible, to deter others from being duped by the inducements which are held out. It is unnecessary to make any further remarks; the facts speak plainly for themselves.”

Davis left Cardiff on the 26^th of January, 1853, for Utah, via Bristol, Liverpool, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Cainsville, sailing on the 5^th of February, from Liverpool, with between three hundred and fifty and four hundred other Mormon dupes. The arrangements for the journey were made with Captain Daniel Jones, one of the Mormon elders who supplied converts, and duplicity and deceit appears to have been practiced upon them from their embarkation to their arrival in Utah. In the first place they were not sent out in the ship mentioned in their papers, and in the second place they were only supplied with provisions for six weeks and two days instead of ten weeks as agreed for. Their agreement was that each should be provided with provisions for ten weeks, and if the vessel reached its destination, New Orleans, before that time they were to have the remainder of their provisions to support them on their passage up the Mississippi river; they landed in six weeks and two days, thus having provisions for three weeks and five days to spare. At this they were much pleased and embarked in a steamer for St. Louis in good spirits; they had only been on board, however, a very short time when hunger beginning to pinch, they were most disagreeably surprised on being informed that no provisions were on board and that they must either purchase at the small ports where the steamer touched or starve! Thus each of the party was cheated out of three weeks and five days’ provisions. Thirdly, they were swindled out of their money under the pretense that they were to be supplied with cattle and wagons to convey them from Cainsville across the plains, and which were to be their own property on their arrival at the Salt Lake, in both of which, however, they were sadly mistaken. The elders told them before leaving England “that the call had come from Sion that every man, woman, and child, who could raise £10 in Liverpool was to come forward, and flee from Babylon to Sion before the curse fell upon them.” They paid their money, and it was understood before leaving England that with it they were to be provided with cattle and wagons to convey them after leaving the steamer to Salt Lake, and with food during their march free of further charge. The deceit practised upon them immediately began to manifest itself. On their landing from the steamer in Caycock, between two and three hundred miles further up the river than St. Louis; they were there kept encamped in tents which they had purchased in Liverpool, for two months, daily expecting their cattle and wagons, which they had paid for, and the money remitted to America six weeks before they left England. They were told, for their comfort, that cattle had risen in price,—that it was difficult to get them at all—and that wagons, of the roughest possible build, were worth more money than they had bargained for. Whilst anxiously waiting, Elder Isaac Height came to their camp with a corroborative announcement that cattle had advanced in price so much that he had been obliged to borrow 7,000 dollars in addition to the sum they had sent out, and another disappointment which can be better imagined than described, was that they could not have the number of cows they had agreed upon, although they had sent out before them no less than £1,458 6s. 8d.! After waiting eight weeks under canvass, their cows and cattle not arriving they were ordered to march forward, and each man to carry one cwt. of their luggage, although the agreement in England with the elder was that the whole was to be carried for them. As Davis had upwards of two cwt., he was puzzled to know what was to be done, until he observed elder Chuckliffe, who had been preaching in Cardiff, comfortably riding in a wagon drawn by cattle. Chuckliffe having been Davis’s intimate and beloved friend in Cardiff, he now tried to turn his acquaintance to some account by asking to be allowed to place some of his luggage in his ox-wagon. Chuckliffe readily complied on the understanding that Davis should pay him 7d.per lb., kindly telling him that if it were not worth that he had better throw it away. There were no favors to be had from the elders and teachers without paying for them. They next halted about 15 or 16 miles from Caycock, when some of their cattle arrived, and as a consolation for thew ant of milk they were told that it was difficult to purchase cows. On they went, being assured that the cows would follow. The road became very bad; wagons up to the axles, and obliged to be pulled out by six or seven yoke of oxen. They next encamped near a wood, but part of their cows arriving they were ordered on again, being told that they could not have more, and that it was no use to wait. At length they reached Cainsville, the last place in the United States before coming to the Indian country, and remained there a week, the water in the Missouri river being too high to cross. Here, as a balm for their drooping spirits, they were told that they might expect some of their money returned when they got to the Salt Lake, but were requested to remember that their board had cost a great deal. From this place they had to travel hard, their cows became dry, and they were only allowed three quarters of a pound of bacon per week, although they had agreed for 2lbs.; being 1,000 miles from a human habitation they could not turn back if they wished. At length they arrived at Fort Bridget, 100 miles from Salt Lake City, where Indians, being troublesome, a party of Mormons had been sent to protect them. From these Davis and his company thought to obtain provisions, but in this they were disappointed; they said they were short themselves, and should be obliged to kill their mules and eat them. On the 10th of October—eight months from their embarkation—they arrived at the Salt Lake City, the land of plenty and resting for the saints! Many, in addition to being fatigued, entered Utah with a hungry belly; they encamped in the square of the city, and those who had money purchased provisions, whilst those who had none were obliged to go without food until the next morning, such was the charity of the saints! Not being able to get wood or other fuel for fire to dress their victuals they were obliged to go out and gather dried cow-dung wherewith to make a fire, having many times on their journey found it useful for such purpose. Some of the twelve apostles came to them whilst lying in the square and lectured them upon their duty, telling them that they were not to follow bad example, and if they saw one of the apostles drunk (!) even they were not to get drunk also. The governor and Brigham Young afterwards paid them a visit, and in a short speech told them they were discharged, but where to go, or what to do they were not informed. Davis says:—

“They did not enquire about our comfort, whether we had food or whether we were without. Our cattle were taken from us the first night without a word about payment being said, and we were left to shift for ourselves without a house nearer than a thousand miles except those in the city, or any person but the Indians. In the camp, were the old, the young, some lame, some blind, and some worn out with fatigue and hunger, no one to afford us assistance, and the robbery of our cattle perpetrated before our eyes! Money was short with many, and numbers had borrowed from their friends at home, hoping to pay it back by the sale of their cattle and wagons and the division of the proceeds according to what each had paid into the £10 Company, as agreed upon before leaving England, upon the proposal of the elders, in the Star and tracts which are printed in Liverpool, in which it is said (at least in those issued in 1852) that the man who did not assist his poor brother or sister in getting to Sion would be visited with a curse, that something would happen to him or his family, and that he would never reach Sion, go when he would.”

Having gone through Davis’s narrative of his journey to the Salt Lake, we may now turn back to the commencement of his pamphlet and notice several incidents which happened on the way. He says they had a fine passage across the Atlantic; on board there was fiddling, dancing, and card playing, such as he had never before been accustomed to, and quite contrary to religious teachings in England. They had seven or eight weddings according to Mormon law, performed at night, and one death—a woman aged 78, from Cardiff. One Sunday morning when they were in chapel, a man named Ellis, of Cardiff, made a great noise, and gave out in a very pitiful tale that “his call was come to flee from Babylon to Sion, and he must obey the will of God and go to the land where the Lord called his people to gather together, there to be baptized on account of some relation of his who had died, through whom he was to receive salvation!” Ellis was one of the head officers of the Mormon priesthood; he made an appeal for assistance to buy clothes, and to help to take his wife and family to Sion, although they had been living for years without work, himself riding about and feasting on the best. Ellis, and another from the neighborhood of Cardiff named Williams, also a high authority among the Mormons, told them that they must obey their counsels, or they would be excommunicated. These two men, who had had their passage paid by the Mormons, and had been well provided with jars of jam, pickles, etc., besides more and better clothes than any on board, borrowed and borrowed from every passenger until the company became aware of them “they were trusted no longer.” At each place where they landed they were cautioned by their shepherds against the inhabitants persuading them to remain behind, observing that as the Scriptures mentioned a third heaven so there were three hells. New Orleans being the first, St. Louis the second, and Cainsville the third. So successful were their elders that only one of the party was left behind in New Orleans,—a young woman who showed her good sense in preferring to be the wife of one of the sailors than in going to Utah to be, probably, the 15th wife of a Mormonite. At St. Louis they met a man named Thomas Pugh, of great authority, being first counsel to the Mormon president of Wales; he was accompanied by his two sons and two women, whom he intended to make his wives on his arrival at Sion, having left his lawful wife in England. He made a pitiful tale, and they gathered no less than £100 for him. After they had gone some thousands of miles further, they discovered that Pugh had been leading a most abominable life, had “performed such wicked works” that Davis had never before heard of read of, and had borrowed £80 before leaving Wales; also that Pugh and several other elders had “houses where the brothers and sisters met, and where such practices were carried on as would shock even the most indecent minds. This was not made known to all the church—only to the elders—men and women who were said to have the gift of speaking with unknown tongues, etc.” At St. Louis they were warned by the inhabitants not to proceed further, but they were so infatuated and fearful of judgments which were said by the elders would happen to them, that only a few deserted them. At Caycock several others remained behind. After leaving Cainsville, they met with 500 mounted Indians returning from war with another tribe; being frightened at their savage appearance, they gave the Indians some victuals, with which they were not satisfied, and attempted to rifle their wagons, and strip them of their clothes. To protect themselves, the Mormons fired eight or ten shots at them, which caused them to disperse, their chief remaining in the Mormon camp for the night fearing his own people. A little further on Davis and his company came to the grave of a priest named Chambers, who when alive professed to know the mind of the Almighty, and had told Davis that if he only had sufficient faith, his eyes, which were then diseased, should be perfectly cured! At Fort Bridget, Davis says—

“We remained here one night, protecting our camps by very strong guards, lest the Indians should come down and carry off our women, as they were in the habit of doing to other parties. Their mode of capturing them was very singular and ingenious. They came down in a party with horses and slings, the latter of which they threw over the females, pulled them up, galloped off, and were not seen afterwards. Nothing, however, happened during the night, and the next morning we were off again.

Davis winds up his journey to “the land of promise,” by saying—

“This is a specimen of the treatment we endured on our journey to Sion, but notwithstanding I made up my mind to endure everything, if the Lord spared my life to reach Utah. This sort of feeling seemed generally to pervade the camp; notwithstanding what I have before said about our unhappiness, it was a sort of quiet resignation to bear all the ills we might meet with, hoping to find comfort and rest at the end of our journey.”

Davis now proceeds to explain the laws of the Mormons as in force in Salt Lake City. He says—

“When we were in Liverpool we were to pay tithes upon all we were worth; which was done. But when we arrived at Utah, we were again obliged to pay tithes. We had also to give the tenth part of our labor all the year round: the ring and the earrings which your wife wears; the tenth chicken; the tenth egg; the tenth from your lot of ground or garden; in doors and out of doors the tenth of everything belongs to the Church, in addition to which we have to pay city tithes; that is, all persons who are possessed of property are to work so many days on the city walls, each person according to the value of his possessions. Everything you are compelled to sign away to the Church; houses, wives, children, and all that you are worth; and if the Church makes any fresh laws of which you do not approve, you durst not say anything in opposition; if you do so you are cut off from the Church, and you must go where you can, leaving wives, children, and everything behind.”

“If a man and his wife came from England, or any other place to Zion; their marriage is not considered lawful; they can live together or not as they think proper,—there being no compulsion. They can marry anybody they like according to the Mormon law, and a man is allowed to have as many wives as he thinks proper, or can maintain; and, on the latter score, he is not uneasy, because the Mormons have a way to make their wives maintain themselves. It is this: —the man has land, and four or five cows; well, that is too much for one woman to attend to, so the man must have another wife or more, and that saves paying servants: and as the stock increases so does the number of wives. Benjamin Day, the president of the Bristol branch, who went over in the same ship as myself, with his wife and her sister, on arriving at Sion married the latter, and the three live together apparently well contented and happy,—the women believing that they earned, as no doubt they did, more money than Day himself. The way a third or fourth wife is procured is this; when a camp arrives in the city, the man who is in want of further assistance engages a girl as a servant for a month at rather low wages, during which time they are sounded as to whether they would like to become one of two, three, or four wives, as the case may be; and if they consent well and good, but if not they are sent about their business at the end of the month. To the honor and virtue of the daughters of Cambria be it said, that during the whole time I was at the Salt Lake I did not hear of one Welsh girl having married except as the only wife; not a single instance came under my knowledge, where a girl from Wales had married a man who had a wife already living! Every advantage is taken to bring the women to the terms of the men in want of wives. After a marriage takes place according to the Mormon law, the parties are allowed to separate if they think proper. For instance, if a man should be so poor as to be unable to provide his wife with tea, sugar, cheese, and other necessaries, another who is better off is allowed to take her in this manner:—‘Why do you live in poverty with your husband? Come and be my wife and you shall have plenty of tea, coffee, sugar and all other nourishments.’ If she gives way to this man, he will marry her, and the former husband has no power whatever to resist. I know men living there who have married both mother and daughter. There is a man living in the first ward who has four wives, and who is actually the father of children by his own daughter! Chuckliffe, who was in Wales preaching in the years 1851 and 1852 had three wives; and another man named Willock had also three, and married a fourth in 1854. There is another thing to induce women to become wives, and that is the doctrine that the wives of him who holds the highest office in the church will have the greater honor in the world to come! If a man has two or three wives, he is more respected than he who has none. A word or two about the authority of the wives. The management of the household matters belongs by right to the first wife, and it is through her that the second, the third, and so on get their victuals if they live some distance off. Sometimes there are two or three wives in one house, and it is then a miserable life with many of them. I knew some, who although in good circumstances, would have left their husbands if they could, not being at all contented after second woman was brought into the house. I was working with a man who did an excellent business as a storekeeper; a friend of his and his wife passed through the settlement on their way to California, and the mistress being unhappy in consequence of a second wife living in the house, wished to join their party and be off with them to California; but the man was obliged to decline taking her, being afraid that the Mormons would shoot him if he did so. The reader will recollect my mentioning my old friend Chambers, a Cardiff man. His widow and children have arrived in the settlement, and as she is a good looking, tidy little woman, she was married to a man who has one wife and several children already. The wedding was performed by Brigham Young, the parties thus being sealed in this world and in the world to come. Any elder or bishop has the power to marry, but to Brigham Young alone belongs the power of being able to marry and seal to all eternity, both in this world and in the next! But Young also possesses the power of unmarrying and he did so in this case,—upon his receiving the payment of Fifty dollars from the man! This man, Young, is invested with great power, but he will not exercise it to any one’s wish or advantage unless he is well paid for it. No one is allowed to dispute the authority of Young, for I remember on one occasion when a man, J. Galop, asked for permission to preach his sentiments, and attempted to argue the point at issue, he told him to shut his mouth unless he wanted a bullet through his head. This Galop told me himself. What language for the prophet of the Most High God! Chambers’s wife and the man to whom she was married lived together a month only, when both she and her children were unceremoniously turned out of doors, and this under the sanction of the laws of the Mormons! L. D. Richards, the prophet’s first counsel, died while I was in the settlement, and his death bed was awful; also the patriarch, John Smith, whose part was to bless the people, if they paid him for it but no pay no blessing. The former left four and the latter three wives behind him. I will now give a short space to Brigham Young. He has many wives; but how many it is impossible to tell. There was no less than five living in the same house with him, and he has many small cottages in the neighborhood for his other wives and children to live in. I have heard it mentioned (and I firmly believe the statement) that this man has no less than from fifty to sixty wives and numerous children, the whole of whom are supported by the tithes which are extracted from the poor deluded Mormons!

When I arrived at Zion I expected that my eyesight, which had been previously very bad, would be restored to me, and I accordingly went to the bishop of the fifteenth ward where I lived. He laid his hands on me, and prayed that my sight might be restored, but receiving no benefit in two or three weeks time, I went to Brigham Young that he might lay his hands upon me; but instead of coming himself, he sent another person, that it might not be said that the prophet had failed in restoring my sight. In fact this was the case with many other converts. We heard a great deal of Young’s power of curing the lame, the halt, and the blind, but never when we visited him, could we be fortunate enough in getting him to lay his hands upon us,—so that his miracles (if he performed any) were done by deputy! I remember forcibly an instance of the preaching of this man Young. He was in the Tabernacle preaching, and in the course of his address he alluded to some men who had passed through the settlement, and who were charged with stealing cattle. “Shoot them, shoot them,” exclaimed the prophet and leader of the Mormon Church, “wherever they are seen. For unless their blood be spilt, there can be no redemption for their souls. I have no malice against them,” he continued, “not in the least; but I repeat that they cannot receive salvation unless their blood be spilt!” The Bible was designated by this man as an old book which was of no use in the present day, being written only for the guidance of those who were living when it was written. It was entirely out of date now, as the Mormons obtained their revelations from God, who guided them in all their actions. Our forefather Adam, we were also taught, was a God now; and it was laid down as part of our belief that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ was the Son of Adam, and not of God himself; and that Eve was not created from Adam’s rib, but that she was made as any other woman. And yet we are told that the scriptures must be preached in England, or we could not obtain converts. Shortly after we arrived at the settlement, one of the twelve apostles, John Taylor, in the course of preaching made use of the following extraordinary sentence:—“You thought this was a fine place, but now you see what it is; you are here and you cannot get back again.” I recollect hearing an instance of the roguery and duplicity of Captain Daniel Jones, already mentioned, which is enough to make one’s blood boil with indignation at its recital. Jones was preaching in Wales in the years 1845 and 1846, having just arrived from America. Amongst the many converts he was unfortunately successful in obtaining, was a respectable person of property named David Lewis and his wife, who was formerly his servant, they joined the body of Latter-day Saints, and prepared themselves to leave for Sion with Jones. Mr. Lewis disposed of all the property he could, and received the money; but there was a law-suit then going on about the other portion, and Jones contrived to get the consent of Mr. Lewis that his wife should go with him to Sion, while he awaited the termination of the law suit, and start the following season. Jones’s wife was at this time living with him, but he persuaded her to remain also until the next season, upon the plea that her health was delicate and that it would be dangerous for her to travel. He departed with Mrs. Lewis and the property, and meanwhile the suit had gone on and resulted in Mr. Lewis being defeated. He then left his native country to follow his wife and his brother saint, as did also Jones’s wife, who had some suspicion that all was not right. She overtook them at Cainsville, before they went into the Indian Country, but the bargain had been previously arranged, and Jones and Mrs. Lewis were married on their arrival in the Salt Lake City. After a lapse of time Mr. Lewis arrived, and of course expected to be restored to his wife and his property. But no such thing. He could get neither the one or the other, nor even satisfaction, and he was compelled to go to work, which he had never done before in the whole course of his life. The consequence was that not being skilled in labor, he became greatly distressed, and he was out of pure charity, taken into the house of one Samuel Thomas, who supported him for twlevemonths, but who could not afford to keep him any longer, and he was thus thrown upon the world without a friend or a cent in his pocket. After some time, he obtained a situation in the North Settlement, herding sheep. Mr. Lewis was a gentleman of property from the neighborhood of Llanelli, in Carmarthenshire, where he was well known. The story was told me by Thomas who supported him, therefore I can place every reliance on it. Becoming fully acquainted with their wicked lives and vile practices, some of which I dare not relate, I became entirely disgusted with the Mormons.”

We shall give Davis’s account of his flight from this disgusting scene of iniquity in our next.

1856 – 31 May, p. 8 – A Visit to the Salt Lake by a Cardiff Resident. (Concluded from our last.) Last week we noticed Davis’s journey to this place of abominations and his residence therein; we purpose now in conclusion to give a brief outline of his happy escape therefrom. Having satisfied himself of that, which to any man of common sense is obvious enough at a glance, namely, that Utah is nothing more than a den of iniquity, and that the sole object the Mormon elders have in view, in transporting their dupes to an inland district, is that they may the more easily possess themselves of the little all their dupes possess and be the better able to govern and rule those whom they so cruelly and wickedly deceive. Davis, becoming disgusted with the delusion practiced upon him, effected his escape from this debasing and disreputable locality, on the 20th of July, 1854, after a residence of nine months therein. Instead of finding the place “the promised land—the Saint’s rest,” he found it a miserable locality, some thousands of miles from any civilized town, surrounded by deserts almost impenetrable, and the boasted freedom of its inhabitants being a surveillance held over them which rendered it almost impossible for them to escape. Under the pretense of going to Boxelder another Mormon settlement, Davis left the city stealthily, in the dusk of evening, fearing lest he should be shot if the elders suspected his purpose, and joined a man who was going to California. These fanatics are taught that they are doing God service by shooting any one disaffected who attempts his escape! After walking 1,200 miles he arrived at Red Bluffs, in California, without passing a house or human habitation, where he sold some of his clothes, the judge of the town purchasing his black coat! He next worked his passage in a steamer to Sacramento, then to San Francisco, and in a guano ship to England via Callao, arriving in the West India Dock, London, on the 2nd of February, in the present year.

Davis is a man 65 years of age, and to him the public are much indebted for his exposition of the fanatical doctrines of the Mormons, and their horrid practices in the city of the Salt Lake. In the limited space at our disposal we cannot give a tithe of his harrowing recitals. To arrive at a correct idea of the iniquitous system, the entire pamphlet must be read. We believe it to be, as the preface states, “a plain unvarnished tale,” and sincerely do we hope that its startling contents will deter others from getting entangled in the meshes of this much to be lamented delusion, now so rife among the laboring population of this country. We observe that it is published by Mr. Bird, bookseller, Duke-street, Cardiff, price 4d.; we trust it will have an extensive sale, and we recommend it to those who endeavor to combat popular error by simple truth, for general circulation in those districts which may be tainted with the filthy and soul-debasing doctrines of Mormonism.

1856 – 14 June, p. 6 – “The Mormons. The blessing of Joe Smith rests upon our town, in that many have been converted to the “true faith,” his principles being adopted, and all the absurdities he propounded being believed by a larger number than we before suspected. To guide this flock, the presence of no less a personage than a prophet has been vouchsafed for some time past. This prophet has regularly preached and expounded and argued to the Monmouth Latter-day Saints, in a shoemaker’s house, in which he lodges, towards the bottom of Monnow Street, to their future benefit and present edification, no doubt, as much as to his own profit. Now, the prophet is young; probably, not ill-looking; certainly, with plenty to say for himself; while his high position and holy mission entitle him to every consideration. Can it excite wonder, then, that he should make an impression upon the heart of one of his young female hearers? The daughter of a laboring man living in the Baptist chapel yard, who is himself a devoted Latter-day Saint, and contemplates a journey to the Salt Lake, frequently accompanied her father to hear the exposition of “the great (un)truths,” became personally acquainted with the holy man, and if they did not feel the tender passion for each other, he, at all events, persuaded poor Mary Ann to entrust herself to his keeping, for the purpose ultimately of accompanying him to the goal of all Mormon aspiration—the Great Salt Lake. She accordingly quitted her home in the course of last week, and took refuge with the prophet. The father by no means objected to it; but the mother, with more sense and feeling, made frequent application at the house for her daughter, who was as often denied her. After eleven o’clock, on Tuesday night, however, the poor woman went in a determined manner, and the shoemaker then admitted that the daughter was in his house, saying she was his lodger, and defying any of the crowd which had collected, to attempt to take her away from under his protection. P. C. Harris, who was attracted by the commotion, went in and endeavored to persuade the young woman to go home, and the shoemaker to allow her to do so. But of no avail. The mother returned without having accomplished her purpose. The next day she was taken very ill; and some friends then succeeded in prevailing upon her daughter to return. She has since been living at home, but still expresses her determination to leave for the Salt Lake, and whenever the prophet shall require her to do so.—Monmouth Beacon.

1856 – 28 June, p. 6 – To the Editor of the Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian. Sir—I have seen in your paper various letters and other credible statements as to the detestable proceedings of the ignorant fanatics called Mormons. Were you occasionally to take notice of the “Abode of Love,” (Agapemone) where, on a smaller scale, but much nearer home, somewhat similar acts of insanity are being perpetrated, you might enlighten your readers as to what is carrying on near their own doors. The recent examination of Miss Fanny Maber, a daughter (if I do not mistake) of a former Rector of Merthyr Tydfil, as to the suicide of her wretched sister in a pond near the “Abode of Love,” displays quite as much folly as that of the ignorant Mormons. Both these abominable sects are closely connected with Glamorganshire, the High Priests of the Agapemone having resided and practiced at Swansea, and this county, to its disgrace be it spoken, having furnished more dupes to the Mormons than any other county in Great Britain. When a trial took place in the Court of Chancery as to the guardianship of a boy who had fallen into the hands of the Agapemonites, the Vice Chancellor Knight Bruce ordered the child to be taken from such custody, stating, “I should as soon permit a child to be brought up in a camp of gypsies.” Many of your readers are aware that the establishment of the Agapemone is near Bridgewater. An occasional reference to their doings in the provincial papers might possibly save a victim from falling into the snares of this “Abode of Love.” Your obedient servant, J. W. Merthyr Tydfil, June 23.

1856 – 19 July, p. 8 – Item #1 – The Mormons. The New York Herald contains some further particulars of the case of the Mormon emigrants from Hereford, to which we have previously called attention. It will be recollected that the husband of the woman Jarvis (who, accompanied by her three children, had eloped from Hereford with a Mormon “elder,”) had followed her to New York, and obtained a warrant for the recovery of his children. It appears that Jarvis had armed himself with the authority of the following letter from the Secretary of State:—

Foreign Office, May 9, 1856

“I am directed by the Earl of Clarendon to instruct you to give all proper assistance to a person named Samuel Jarvis, of Hereford, who proceeds by steamer to New York, in pursuit of his wife, who, having joined the Mormonites, has clandestinely left him, and has embarked at Liverpool on board a sailing vessel, for New York, taking Jarvis’s three children with her.

“I am, Sir, your most obedient humble servant,

“E. Hammond.

“A Barlay, Esq., her Majesty’s Consul, New York.”

The American paper gives the following account of the proceedings before the New York authorities on the writ of habeas corpus obtained by Jarvis:—

The Court room was densely crowded. The applicant, a decent-looking little hen-pecked husband, was present. The mother, a tall, good-looking and healthy specimen of an Englishwoman, was also in court. She is, apparently, some years younger than the husband, and has been, in part, instigated to this extraordinary step towards moral and religious degradation by her brother and another man, who accompany her in her wanderings. The children—two girls and a boy—are fine little creatures, “half sunshine, half tears,” as if now and again conscious of their unhappy situation. There were about forty or fifty Mormons in court—a queer set of fellows—some looking sanctimonious, some sinister, and some slovenly—a cross between a soiled Quaker and a carelessly dressed Methodist parson. Mr. Charles Edwards appeared as counsel for the British Government, of which the applicant is a subject. Mr. Latsom was counsel for the respondents.

Mr. Edwards, in addressing the court, said—This matter has relation to the infant children of Samuel Jarvis, and in order to explain it he would read the petition of the applicant. On this petition, continued Mr. Edwards, this court granted a writ of habeas corpus, and a warrant having been issued the parties were brought before his Honour, who ordered them into the custody of the Sheriff.

Mr. Latsom read, as answer, the affidavit of James Thomas, brother of the petitioner’s wife, in which he sets forth that the eldest girl is twelve years old, and qualified to elect her own guardian. It also alleges that the applicant was a cruel and tyrannical man, a drunkard, immoral and diseased, wholly without means to support, and unfit to have the care of the said children; that the mother has always clothed and supported them; that he came to New York for the purpose of residing here, and that he has no intention of leaving it.

Mr. Edwards, in reply to these accusations, said it was right that he should uphold the character of his client, first, for the way in which he had been introduced to him, and next, as the father of these three little children, for whom he has come more than three thousand miles to take them back with him to their native home. He is here without witnesses, and of course it is impossible to refute these gross charges. But there is a man here in Court (pointing to the brother of the woman) whom he (Mr. Edwards) hoped to show up in a proper light before this investigation was at an end.

The Judge: Which is the man.

Mr. Edwards (pointing him out): I will show that that man is the whole cause of this woman’s extraordinary conduct; that he has been a pauper for years, living upon my client, the man whom he now recklessly maligns. The petitioner comes within our city as a stranger, but thank God he comes amongst a people who will not let his children go where they will be brought to utter prostitution, and the woman, I cannot say to be the wife of, but the mistress of a hundred brutes (sensation). The British Government have put this man on his way; he comes with a letter to the British Consul; he comes without a dollar, but that he shall not want; he is without money to fee counsel, but counsel he shall not want; and I hope, before we leave this Court, he shall find that in this strange land he shall not want a Judge who will restore his children to him. He (Mr. Edwards) would submit that there are two points in the petitioner’s case which are not met by the respondents; first, the fact that he is the father of these children is not denied, and is therefore admitted; the next, is the fact that this woman is going to take these children among the Mormons is not denied.

The Judge: Is it not denied?

Mr. Latsom said it was.

The Judge: It is admitted that the woman is going to the Mormons.

Mr. Latsom supposed that the religion of the woman was a matter with which the Court had nothing to do. If they were Turks, would it have any influence with the Court?

The Judge: When the belief is inseparable from gross immorality, the Court will have to do with it.

Mr. Edwards: The counsel on the other side (Mr. Latsom) has been among the Mormons; he has written about them, and given them a character lower than the beasts.

The Judge: It appears to me that they are an immoral people, aside from the notions on spiritual belief, I shall take that into consideration.

Mr. Edwards who asked the Judge did he not believe from his reading, that if the man (the petitioner) had acted brutally towards his wife, the laws of England would have punished him, and the authorities would not aid him. The return to the writ does not state that this woman does not intend to go to Utah. The brother says he does not intend to leave New York, but it is not denied that the woman is going.

The Judge: The only question is which of these parties is the most competent to have the care and custody of the children, and for the purpose of ascertaining that fact, I will send it before a competent reference. The time of the Court cannot be occupied with these long investigations at Chambers.

Mr. Edwards would submit that, as there is not enough in the answer for the Court to go into the case, it was not necessary to refer it. He was prepared with evidence from Castle Garden to show the brutality of the character of these Mormons. He could prove that, when a child of one of the emigrants died on board, one of the Mormons said, “There is one pig less to feed.” (Sensation.) If this woman will go to the Mormons, let her “down the winds,” but let her give up the children to their father.

After some discussion, it was agreed that the matter should be referred to Judge Peabody.

Mr. Latsom complained that the mother was not allowed by the jailer to see her children.

The deputy keeper of the prison denied this assertion; she was allowed to see them during visiting hours, and had been two hours a day with them.

Mr. Latsom: I would ask, does not the father board in the prison?

Deputy Jailer: I give him his meals; he has nowhere else to get them.

1856 – 19 July, p. 8 – Item #2 – The Hon. James J. Strang, commonly called “King Strang,” the leader and prophet of the Mormons located on Beaver Islands, has been shot by two of his followers, and received injuries from which he was not likely to recover. Strang was the ruling spirit upon the Mormons, a large number of whom are Welsh, or are located on and haave control of the six islands in the northern part and near the outlet of Lake Michigan, called Beaver Islands, and since 1853 he has represented Newago county, which is composed of those islands, in the lower branch of the Michigan Legislature. He has been the means, in times past, of causing considerable disturbance in the regions adjacent to where he resides, and robbery, murder, and piracy are crimes which have been freely attributed to him and his followers.

1856 – 26 July, p. 3 – “The Mormons.” The Detroit Advertiser gives an account of the arrest by the sheriff of Mackinaw, and his posse, of a number of Mormons at Beaver Island, who were accused of setting fire to some houses, committing thefts and other depredations on other portions of the island. At Beaver harbor five men were arrested and taken on board the steamer, charged with theft, etc. We were able to learn but two of their names. They are Field and Biggs. Considerable resistance was offered, and it was not until the armed posse with the sheriff levelled their weapons to fire upon them that they submitted. While making these arrests another man, whose name is Samuel Wright, interfered to prevent the arrest being made. He drew a pistol at one of the officers, but it was immediately taken from him, and he was taken on board with the other prisoners. The six were brought to Mackinaw, and are now confined at that place. It was thought that Strang, who was recently shot by some of his own sect, could not possibly survive. His lower limbs from his hips down were entirely paralyzed. The report that he would recover is thought to have been put afloat by the Mormons to intimidate people from coming to make arrests. The two men who shot Strang also went up on the Michigan, and returned again to Mackinaw. Considerable excitement prevails at Mackinaw and Washington harbor against Strang and his followers, and armed forces are fitting out at both places for the purpose of going to Beaver harbor to make arrests. A company of 100 men was already formed at Washington Harbor, and a company of 50 an Mackinaw. They would proceed to the island with sail vessels. While the steamer Michigan was at the island A. R. Williams, of De Tour, was at Strang’s house, and identified property which had been stolen from him some time previously. Strang had issued an edict, stating that he had had a revelation from God; and that the United States’ steamer Michigan must never be allowed to enter the port of St. James again.

1856 – 9 August, p. 3 – “Mormon Morals.” The latest numbers of the Deseret News which have reached the States, contain not a few pictures of Mormon life and sentiment. Read, for instance, the following apology for polygamy addressed by Brigham Young to some of the refractory brethren: “I do really wish that some were possessed of better sense; I will therefore tell you a few things that you should know. God never introduced the patriarchal order of marriage with a view to please man in his carnal desires, nor to punish females for anything which they had done; but he introduced it for the express purpose of raising up to his name a royal priesthood, a peculiar people. Do we not see the benefit of it? Yes, we have lived long enough to realize its advantages. Suppose that I had had the privilege of having only one wife, I should have had only three sons, for these are all that my first wife bore, whereas I know have buried five sons and have 13 living. It is obvious that I could not have been blessed with such a family if I had been restricted to one wife; but by the introduction of this law I can be the instrument in preparing tabernacles for those spirits which have to come in this dispensation. Under this law I and my brethren are preparing tabernacles for those spirits which have been preserved to enter into bodies of honor, and be taught the pure principles of life and salvation, and those tabernacles will grow up and become mighty in the kingdom of our God.” One of the elders—Brother Grant—in a Sunday morning discourse, gives the following as his experience of the workings of polygamy: “You cannot alter it; you cannot alter it; you cannot revoke this eternal law. If a man has 50 wives, and the 50^th is the best, and does the most good, she will get the greatest reward, in spite of all the grunting on the part of the first ones.”

1856 – 16 August, p. 5 – “Women in Mormondom.” A Mormon elder, just escaped from the Mormon territory, writes to his wife:—“I have detailed to you in previous letters the debased condition of the women in Utah. The Mormons after their passions (or, as they call it, their holy desires to people the earth) are gratified, seldom pretend to support their numerous wives. Brigham Young declared last conference that he did not know how many wives he had. ‘Tell the Gentiles,’ said he, ‘I did not know half of them when I see them.’ The majority of these poor women are compelled to work for their daily bread, and many are forced to seek charity of strangers. One of the wives of the chief apostles gained her livelihood by washing for the boarders of a public house in town. Indeed, it is not uncommon for those ‘lords of creation’ to send their wives out for wood, and any day you can see women chopping logs and driving cattle to the mountains. Yesterday, a widow told me that the bishop of her ward had demanded her whole family, including herself, in marriage. She had given up all she had for tithes and other taxes, and with tears in her eyes she prayed me to afford her means of going to California in the spring. These cases occur every day; indeed the spirit of dissatisfaction is universal. I have never discoursed with a woman who was not discontented with the situation and prospects.”

1856 – 27 September, p. 5 – “The Mormons.” The rapid rise of this sect is truly marvelous. A few years have sufficed to enable them to erect cities, construct a vast social system, and perform acts of novel import to the human race. Under the title of “The Mormons or Latter-day Saints,” a book has just appeared that is full of extraordinary revelations. It gives the History, Present Condition, and Future Prospects of Mormonism; and is illustrated with fifty original Portraits and Views of the leading Mormons and their Settlements. This work will be read with great interest. Price 3s. 6d.

1856 – 4 October, p. 2 – “The Mormons.” A file of the Salt Lake News to the 30th July was received by the Niagara. The Mormon paradise seems to be threatened with starvation. The News says:—“In addition to the drought and destruction by insects last season, to the severity of the past winter and consequent heavy loss of stock, and to the destitution we are still suffering, the long continued dry weather, the scanty supply of water at command for irrigation, the entire destruction of crops by grasshoppers, Cache county, and the like destruction in portions of Box Elder and Utah counties, the general ravages of tobacco and other worms upon potatoes and corn, and the parching of whole fields of grain before the heads are filled, are far from promising a surplus of food for the saints now here and the thousands already on their way to the mountains. Strong faith in the wisdom and providence of the Almighty, great skill, strict obedience to the commandments of the Lord and the counsels of his servants, the most rigid economy and untiring well directed industry may enable us to escape starvation until a harvest in 1857. But those who have not the above-named-essential qualifications, and who do not intend to strive for them, will be apt to have their feelings sorely chafed and their stomachs severely pinched, ere plenty again gladdens our wretched homes. And until the elapse of at least another year, emigrants and others will fail in their dependence upon Utah for sustenance, and will run great risk of starving unless they bring their supplies with them, and that, too, not in gold, silver, and merchandise, with a view to exchange advantageously, but in such an amount of provisions as they may need until August 1857, and for how much longer we are not informed. The first President had issued an address to the people, in which he says ‘the continued drought, the failure of the streams, the destruction by insects and by cattle allowed to run at random, or miserably herded, will compel the strenuous efforts of all to secure sustenance for the present and incoming population until a harvest in 1857. To accomplish so desirable a result and prevent unnecessary privation and suffering, we have heretofore counselled, and now repeat it, that both the owners of fields and gardens and those who have not should be extremely careful that not a particle of food be lost, wasted, or made and unwise use of.’”

The Mormons of Great Salt Lake City celebrated the ninth anniversary of their entrance in to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, on the 24th of July, at the head waters of the big Cottonwood. About 450 persons, 71 carriages, and 201 horses and mules participated in the celebration. The dancing was kept up until the afternoon of the 25^th.

The News says:—During the egress from the canyon, one of President Kimball’s wives described a bear sitting upon a rock not far from the roadside, and apparently looking with amazement upon the strange spectacle of a long line of carriages in so wild a region. Not satisfied with a distant view, the bear approached the road, and was shot by Brother Charles Decker with a rifle.”

Brigham Young gives the following advice to the elders about loving their wives:—“Elders, never lose your wives one hair’s breadth further than they adorn the gospel, never love them so but that you can leave them at a moment’s warning without shedding a tear. Should you love a child more than this? No.”

The general election was to have been held on the first Monday in August, when county officers and members to the Legislature were to be chosen. There seemed to be but one party, which regularly nominated and elected these candidates without opposition.

1856 – 6 December, p. 3 – “Mormonism.” Mr. W. S. Parrott, professedly an inhabitant of Bristol, delivered two lectures at the Temperance Hall, on Monday and Tuesday evening last, on the subject of Mormonism and the Salt Lake; the chair on each occasion having been taken by the Rev. J. C. Campbell. The lecturer is evidently an uneducated man, murders the Queen’s English very frequently, and speaks what may be termed an American dialect; but these drawbacks are much more than counterbalanced by the abundance of his facts, the intimacy of his acquaintance with the secret workings of Mormonism and the authority which attaches itself to the revelations of personal experience.

On the second evening, the Chairman pointed out the most desirable course for the speaker to adopt,—namely, to describe the means used to allure persons to join the Mormons, the way in which he was induced to become one of their number, his experience in that position, the general conduct of Mormons in this country, and the fate which awaited the deluded victims after leaving this country. In adopting this course, the lecturer introduced a good deal of irrelevant matter; but in the main, his speech fixed the attention of his hearers and was the means of conveying a large amount of very peculiar, and, apparently, trustworthy information. He revealed the existence of an amount of blasphemy, debauchery, and knavery, that was quite revolting to hear, and would have been quite incredible in itself, but that the books of the Mormons themselves were cited in support of his assertations, and that his own experience, and that of “old John Davies,” confirmed the accusations. We could have wished that Mr. Parrott had been a man of greater ability, and one more competent to deal with the doctrinal errors of the sect, which, especially those quoted on Tuesday night, have their exact counterparts in the Koran, and the old heresy; but in giving his discourse a practical character, and fixing attention upon the moral depravity of the sect, he is, undoubtedly, doing a public service, and well deserved the vote of thanks, moved by the Rev. J. Howells on the last named evening. Invitations were given to Mormons, at the close of each lecture, to step forward and discuss the points advanced or to refute the accusations made. One or two parties accepted the challenge and attempted to show, but very ineffectually, that he had misrepresented their doctrinal views; but no attempt was made to disprove the moral enormities charged against the sect. Another speaker, who said he was not a Mormon, thought that the Christian ministry were liable to blame for having neglected the education of the people, and for having permitted them to grow up in a state of heathen ignorance, which caused them to become the dupes of these designing men. The Church of England, he said, was in the possession of a revenue of twelve millions of money, which ought to have been better employed. The Rev. J. Howells said he had greatly exaggerated the amount of the Church revenue, and denied the charge of supineness; and Mr. Campbell said there was some force in the speaker’s remarks. For his own part, since he had been born in Merthyr he had done all he could to promote education (hear, hear). Several schools had been erected and opened, and he would be glad at all times to meet the wishes of parents who desired their children should attend those schools. But he was sorry to say that the present schools were far from being filled. Should it fortunately so happen that more accommodation was required, he would be ready by begging or otherwise, to get the want supplied (hear, hear). He hoped that the audience would reflect upon what they had heard, and that the Mormon members would see and abandon their errors and ways. For himself, in acknowledging a vote of thanks, he felt that he was discharging a duty in being present. The lectures were but thinly attended.

1856 – 13 December, p. 7 – Society among the Mormons. The following items of news will serve to illustrate to the minds of the people in the States the situation in which the United States’ officers and the “Gentile” residents in Utah are in, and also the importance of immediate action in respect to the state of affairs in this territory.

In the first place when the United States’ mail was preparing to leave this place on the 2^nd of the month, we were much astonished to see a body of 14 horsemen, with arms secreted about their persons, among whom were Bill Hickman, Hiram Clawson, J. C. Little, and Brigham Young, Jun., ride down to the United States’ mail carriages and follow them wherever they went, and forming in a line alongside of them whenever they stopped. They escorted the mail in this manner until it reached the mouth of Emigration Canyon, when Mr. Maxwell, the conductor, stopped the carriages, and, riding back to the possee, told them that he would proceed no further until they gave him the reasons for their unwarranted conduct. They gave him as an excuse that when the mail came into the city the mail carriers had shouted and made a great noise, and to prevent them from doing so in going out they had been ordered to escort them. They then returned to the city and the mail proceeded on its way. It was, however, rumored in the city, and generally believed, that there were persons who intended to go in the mail carriage whom they wished to prevent from leaving the country.

The following Sunday Brigham Young told the people in the tabernacle that any man who would sell a bushel of wheat to a “Gentile” would have to give the same amount for the benefit of the church, and that if he persisted in so doing his property should all be confiscated. Again, he said, “If you owe anything to the Gentile merchants, suffer yourselves to be sued, and your horses, cattle, lands, etc., to be taken from you, before you allow a bushel of wheat to go from your granaries.” Thus, simply telling them that if they did not pay the merchants the wheat, which many of them are under bonds to deliver for debts which they have incurred in anticipation of the harvest, he would see that they would lose nothing by being sued. Also, in speaking of the Gentiles, he said that he hated the very sight of them, “and if you were all,” said he, “real good Mormons—such Mormons as I should like to see you—not a single Gentile would remain in the place a minute. It would be too hot for them here. You would make it hotter for them than the southeast corner of a Methodist hell.”

But the event which has created the greatest excitement in this city was a most outrageous attempt at assassination which was made upon a United States’ officer in the public streets under the sanction and countenance of the authorities of the Mormon church. The facts are these—About dusk one evening Mr. Joseph Troskolawski, a United States’ deputy surveyor, went to the store of Messrs. Hooper and Williams to make a few purchases. Here he met Bill Hickman, a notorious member of the “Danite Band,” who entered into conversation with him in a friendly manner, no one having any suspicion that he had the least unkind feeling towards him. Mr. Troskolawski then left the store alone to go to his lodgings. He had gone but a few steps when three men, associates of Hickman, stepped up behind him and knocked him down. One of them then commenced beating him about the head with the butt of a heavy loaded whip, and the other stamped upon and kicked him, being assisted by Bill Hickman, who had followed him up from the store, and who cried out to the other villains, “kill the ---- son of a ----! kill him quick. I’ll stand the consequences!” Messrs. Hooper and Williams, hearing a cry in the street ran to their door, and seeing these fellows beating a man rushed to the spot just in time to save Mr. Troskolawski’s life. Mr. Hooper seized Hickman by the collar, when the latter drew a knife upon him. He, however, succeeded in throwing him off. Mr. Williams in the meantime throwing the other two fellows off liberated Mr. Troskolawski, who staggered, blind and strangling in his blood, towards the office of the mail agent, and was caught by Mr. Dotson, who carried him in. Hickman and his associates then jumped on their horses and rode off unmolested, yelling and shouting like Indians.

On examination, Mr. Troskolawski was found to be very seriously hurt, having received a severe internal injury and being dreadfully cut up and bruised. He had received heavy blows behind each ear and on his forehead. He passed four days in the greatest agony, his friends expecting every moment that he would die; but under the care of Dr. Lee the inflammation was arrested, and he is now slowly recovering. No cause was assigned for the attack, except that Mr. Troskolawski had used too great freedom of speech in expressing his views of Mormon religion. Bill Hickman was in town the next day boasting of what he had done, and saying that he was not afraid; that he could pay damages and stand a trial, for his counsel was a high one. Towards the middle of the day Brigham Young, the governor of the territory, sent for Hickman, who remained with him some two hours. There was a great deal of excitement in the city, and the sympathy of the mass of the people was for Mr. Troskalawski, although many of the leaders said they were sorry the ---- Gentile had not been killed. Hickman was in town every day that week, and no effort was made by the authorities to bring the offender to justice. It is useless for the Gentiles to make complaint, for there is not the least shadow of law or justice in Utah. Brigham Young is absolute monarch, and his word is the only law acknowledged.

On the Sunday afternoon following Jedediah M. Grant, the second counselor of Brigham, made the following remarks in the tabernacle, rebuking the people for the sympathy which they had evinced for Mr. Troskolawski. He said: “I am sick of this sympathizing spirit which you as individuals, have with the Gentiles and apostate Mormons. I abhor this sympathetic feeling you have towards the wretches who would cut our throats, and of whom I can say, as I have said of Martin Van Buren, that they should be winked at by blind men, they should be kicked across lots by cripples, they should be nibbled to death by young ducks, and be drawn through the keyhole to hell by bumblebees. Because a poor---scoundrel will come into our streets drunk and fall into a ditch, and some of our ‘shanpip’ brethren happened to stumble over him, you should sympathize with him! I am ashamed of you. We ask no odds of the Gentiles; we care not what they say or do.” (Brigham repeated, “Yes, we ask no odds of any of them.”) He spoke in this manner for an hour, using language which would not be tolerated among the lowest and most degraded class of persons anywhere in the world.

After Jedediah had finished speaking, Heber C. Kimball, Brigham’s first counselor, rose and remarked that he agreed with all Jedediah had said, and then added, “This occurrence, alluded to by brother Grant, I never heard of until a day or two ago; and if another such occurrence takes place you’ll not hear of it at all;” and then continued in about the same strain as the preceding speaker. They then finished by ordering Thomas S. Williams to go on a mission, as a reward for his interference in the affair.

The above are the passages which are fit to be published, for some are too indecent to be repeated. The whole drift of the afternoon’s discourses was that the church approved this deed and upheld the “shanpip brethren” (not Danite, as formerly) in what they had done; that the people had no business to be surprised; that they reproved them for the excitement which had been created, and that the next time such a deed was committed, there would be no occasion for any noise to be made about it.

Bill Hickman was sent out to Green River the week after with a couple of wagon loads of goods for Washakee, the Chief of the Snake tribe. Why he was sent instead of Armstrong, the Indian agent, remains to be ascertained; but probably it is part of the excellent peace policy which Brigham has found to work so well, and in pursuance of which he distributes presents to the Indians in the name of the Mormons (taking care to make the distinction broad between Americans and Mormons), which presents are paid for the United States’ Government. The immediate cause of these presents being sent is that news has been received from the upper county that the Snake and Bonnack Indians are all ready at a moment’s warning to make war upon the Mormons, and that they are only waiting to hear the success of the war in Oregon to commence hostilities.—New York Times.

1856 – 20 December, p. 2 – Troubles of Polygamists. The Deseret News published at Utah, the capital of the Mormon territory, gives some discourses to “the saints” at Utah, recently delivered by President Brigham Young, the governor, from which it seems that the dissatisfaction of the female population of the Great Salt Lake Valley is becoming serious, and driving the leaders of the community to the use of violent language. One of the officials of the Mormon state, President Grant, thus describes the feeling which now prevails; “And we have women here who like anything but the celestial law of God; and if they could break asunder the cable of the church of Christ, there is scarcely a mother in Israel but would do it this day. And they talk it to their husbands, to their daughters, and say they have not seen a week’s happiness since they became acquainted with that law, or since their husbands took a second wife. They want to break up the church of God, and to break it from their husbands, and from their family connections.”

Brigham Young has thus delivered himself on the same theme: “It is said that women are tied down and abused—that they are misused, and have not the liberty they ought to have—that many of them are wading through a flood of tears, because of the conduct of some men, together with their own folly. I wish my own women to understand what I am going to say is for them as well as others, and I want those who are here to tell their sisters—yes, all the women of this community—and then write it back to the States, and do as you please with it. I am going to give you from this time to the 6^th of October next for reflection, that you may determine whether you wish to stay with your husbands or not, and then I am going to set every woman at liberty, and say to them, ‘Now go your way, my women, with the rest—go your way.’ And my wives have got to do one of two things—either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this world, and live their religion, or they may leave, for I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone, rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I will set all at liberty. ‘What, first wife, too?’ Yes, I will liberate you all. I know what my women will say; they will say, ‘You can have as many women as you please, Brigham.’ But I want to go somewhere and do something to get rid of the whiners; I do not want them to receive a part of the truth and spurn the rest out of doors. I wish my women, and Mr. Kimball’s and Brother Grant’s, to leave, and every woman in this territory, or else say in their hearts that they will embrace the gospel—the whole of it. Tell the Gentiles that I will free every woman in this territory at our next conference. ‘What, the first wife, too?’ Yes, there shall not b e one held in bondage—all shall be set free. And then let the father be the head of the family, the master of his own household; and let him treat them as an angel would treat them; and let the wives and the children say amen to what he says, and be subject to his dictates—instead of their trying to govern. Now, recollect that two weeks from tomorrow I am going to set you at liberty. But the first wife will say, ‘It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial for me for him to have more women;’ then, I say, it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children. If my wife had borne me all the children that she ever would bear, the celestial law would teach me to take young women that would have children. It is the duty of every righteous man and every woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can. Hence if my women leave, I will go and search up others who will abide by the celestial law, and let all I now have go where they please; though I will send the gospel to them. This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits which are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth to the glory of Mormonism.”

1857 – 24 January, p. 8 – Mormon Polygamy. The following interesting statistics of Mormon polygamy are given by a correspondent of the San Francisco Herald, who writes from Utah as follows:—“As it may be a matter of interest to the Gentile world to know how fast our people are in the Utah territory, I will give you briefly a list of the standing among the women of the members of the last Legislature, that is, their names and the number of wives, to wit:—Of the members of the Council, 13 persons:—

Heber C. Kimball, President of Council 57

Daniel H. Wells, Councilman, cross-eyed 10

Albert Carrington, cripple and near-sighted 21

Orson Pratt, cripple and near-sighted 7

Wilford Woodruff, cripple and near-sighted 12

John Stoker, cripple and near-sighted 8

Lorin Farr, cripple and near-sighted 3

Lorenzo Snow, cripple and near sighted 25

L. E. Harrington, cripple and near-sighted 3

Benj. F. Johnson, cripple and near-sighted 4

Isaac Modey, 72 years old 5

John A. Ray, from Texas 2

George A. Smith, cripple and near-sighted 5

Grand total—men, 13, women 171

House of Representatives, 26 members:—

J. M. Grant, Speaker 6

W. W. Phelps, printer of Morgan’s book 0

A. P. Rockwood, an old man 8

Edwin D. Woolley, a small man 5

J. W. Cummings, cripple 10

H[?] Stout, lawyer, from Kentucky—3 dead 1

S. W. Richards, young and handsome lawyer 15

Jesse O. Little, lawyer, of Boston, Massachusetts 3

William Snow, Vermont, [?] 8

P. H. Young, elder brother of Brigham, tailor 5

C. V. Spencer, of Massachusetts, quite small 2

Ezra S. Benson, old and homely 15

James C. Snow, quite poor 3

Aaron Johnson, has three sisters, and altogether 6

Lorenzo H. Hatch, waggon-maker 2

Jacob C. Bigler, farmer 10

George Peacock, farmer 10

John Eldridge, phrenologist—2 dead 1

Isaac C. Haight, coal-digger 12

Jesse N. Smith, lawyer 2

John D. Parker, old and deaf 3

Jesse Hobson, ox teamster 10

J. C. Wright, hotel-keeper 5

James Brown, dairyman 7

Enoch Rease, farmer, etc. 2

W. A. Hickman, one of the Danites 3

Total 157

To which add officers of the House, to wit:—

Thomas Bullock, clerk, and an Englishman 4

J. Grimshaw, assistant clerk, and an Englishman 5

Chandler Halbrook, foreman, and deaf 4

Jacob F. Hutchinson, messenger 2

Joel H. Johnson, chaplain 7

Total 22

To which add 68 for the number then living of Governor Young’s wives, and you have the whole number of women thus represented by the members of the Legislature, officers of the same, and his Excellency, amounting to 420; or, in other words, 40 men and 420 wives. These, Mr. Editor, are sober truths, and in what they will end is for the dark and doleful future.”

1857 – 14 February, p. 3 – News for Mormon Converts. A Trip to the Salt Lake. The following letter has been received in Leeds during the present week by a brother of the writer:

Leavenworth City, Kansas Territory, December 27, 1856.

Dear Brother and Sister. I take the present opportunity of writing these few lines to acquaint you with our sufferings and loss. I hope they will find you as well as they leave me at present. I have been better in health this winter than I have been for years before. I am sorry to inform you that I am separated from my family above 1,000 miles. The cause of this arises from the fatigue and hardship of the handcart company. We landed at Boston, and had to travel some hundreds of miles through the States by rail and road before we got to Florence, the starting point to cross the plains. They had agreed to do so. I had got a situation, and my sister Mary might have got one in a gentleman’s family, and I knew that my father might have done well in his business; but after a day the oxen and cows made their appearance, and they then said they would go on, let the consequence be what it would. We were given to understand before we left England, in the Star paper, published in Liverpool, that one cow would be allotted to nine persons. Instead of that we had one pint of milk for 14 persons. As for luggage, 17 lb. weight was all that was allowed each person to cross the plains with, and if you took more you must pay 15s. per cwt., or get rid of it the best way you could. We started and got on pretty well at first, but after a journey of 300 miles from Iowa City, we encamped on the top of a hill, and it looked like a little town. Brothers Richards and Wheelock, and many others of the American elders, we were very glad to see; they gave us good instructions and cheered us up. We pushed on, my mother walking 16, 18, or 20 miles a day for weeks, without a ride or any assistance, until she was exhausted, with no convenience to ride. This brought on disease, and I had to haul her in my handcart for two days, and after a month’s journey from Florence, she was quite worn out, wished to give up, and died one morning before we started out. We buried her by the roadside without a coffin. We mourned her loss, knowing she was one of our best friends. The time rolled on for eight or nine days, and my sister Mary caught the same complaint. I hauled her in my handcart for some days, and she then died. We went on our journey for another fortnight, when my youngest child, Ephraim, died likewise. My father kept pushing and pulling the handcart with sore feet, until he was worn out, and had to go to the wagons to ride. My son William fell sick of the fever and ague, and his mother was ill of the same complaint. We pushed on to Fort Laramie, when I was completely exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and stayed behind with another young man, from Manchester (John Barlow). If I had gone on another week, I should have been a dead man. I cannot say whether my father is dead or alive, but I hope they have sent you all particulars before now. I stayed at Fort Laramie six days, and then returned with Major and Russell’s ox-train to Leavenworth, knowing there was no conveyance to Salt Lake. I am staying at a boarding house, paying three dollars per week, chopping wood, and getting along the best way I can, until Spring, when I hope, by the help of God, to get to Salt Lake to my family.

I remain your affectionate brother, W. H. Leeds Mercury

1857 – 9 May, p. 7 – The Mormons. (From the New York Express)

Mormonism hitherto has been popularly associated only with the grosser immoralities, and looked upon by most people in the States as a revolting plague-spot upon civilized society, which would die out in the course of time by virtue, so to speak, of its own rottenness.

We are now beginning, however, to get glimpses of the “ism” from a different stand-point, and the addition to our knowledge of its nature and disposition thus gained is certainly not of a character to realize the expectation that the pestilence is going to abate without a severe struggle sooner or later, with the “powers that be.”

As long as the Mormons broke the moral law simply by themselves away off on the borders of Salt Lake, the best thing that could be done was to let them alone; but, as they are now making a serious demonstration against the civil law, and exhibiting a spirit of open hostility towards the constitution and the Union, it becomes a graver question than ever what is to be done with them.

The letter of Judge Drummond to the Attorney-General of the United States, resigning his office as Justice of the Supreme Court in Utah, for the reason that he was not permitted to exercise its functions without imperiling his life, shows that the Federal Government is utterly powerless; and, such being the case, it devolves upon that Federal Government to assert its authority. No time should be lost in a business of this kind. If there is to be organized resistance to the execution of the laws, that organization will gain strength by the lapse of time.

The case is a clear one. We are for “toleration” in the most liberal sense of the word; but is it toleration to countenance a system which, if practiced in any one of the States of this Union, would send its disciples to the State prison or penitentiary for bigamy, adultery, or disorderly conduct? We are for respecting all religions, but what religion is there in a creed which is constantly at war with good morals and those fundamental principles of Christianity upon which the institutions of the Republic itself may be said to depend?

As soon as the Federal Government is satisfied of the truth of Judge Drummond’s statement, that it is out of the question for a United States’ judge to sit at Utah, steps should at once be taken to enforce its authority. The appearance of a few regiments of United States’ Dragoons, in all human probability, would exercise a salutary influence upon Brigham and the elders. It is high time that those gentlemen were given to understand that, though encamped in the heart of Utah, Utah is United States’ territory, over which the Federal Congress has jurisdiction, and to resist that jurisdiction in the manner so set forth by Judge Drummond, is a species of Higher Law-ism, which must draw down upon their heads certain retribution.

1857 – 16 May, p. 3 – The Mormons. On the borders of a great Salt Lake in the heart of one of the most terrible deserts in the world a community has established itself which ought to make us blush for our generation, and to which the history of mankind hardly furnishes a parallel. But a very few years have elapsed since an imposter named Joseph Smith professed to be the recipient of a new revelation from God. On the strength of this commission he produced a Bible and founded a religion, and before his death, which occurred during a riot within the walls of a jail, his tenets had been adopted by a considerable number of followers. The scene of the imposture was in the United States, and Mormonism, as the new persuasion was designated, presently became localized in a city of its own. From this seat, however, it was expelled by the alarmed and indignant population of the vicinity, and the Mormons carried themselves and their institutions into the midst of a wilderness, where it seemed probable at the time that they would escape the cognizance and contact of their fellow-men. But these speculations were upset through the discovery of gold in California, which prodigiously accelerated the growth of that marvelous State, and exposed the new Mormon settlement to the vista and observation of emigrants on their overland route to the diggings. Nevertheless, the isolation of the community was still maintained, and to such effect has the imposture been propagated that the doctrines of Joe Smith are now professed and exemplified by a body of 100,000 persons, living under such conditions of moral and social existence as could hardly be credited if they were not so authentically described.

In this territory of Utah, as it is termed, and in the city of the Mormons, the direct commission of the Deity is presumed to reside in the person of a Governor, named Brigham Young, who, with other elders, administers affairs according to his will. The community is considered to be a Church, or body of the faithful, and all its institutions are regulated upon the model of a theocracy. All persons external to this body are regarded as “Gentiles,” nor do the Mormons appear to recognize any tie or obligation except such as arise from their own creed. Such is the theory of these institutions; in practice they have been developed into usages so revolting to the natural instincts of humanity as scarcely to admit of toleration, even when buried in the trackless wilds of the Far West. The leading feature of Mormonism is polygamy, and every woman in the settlement is at the mercy of the men who may have raised themselves to authority. Thirty, forty, or fifty “wives” are claimed and appropriated by a single “husband,” and, as the power of the rulers is supposed to be identified with the direct mission of the Almighty, there is no escape from their decisions. The same assumption dispenses also with law, for no law can pretend to authority comparable with the will of the Supreme Being as revealed through his vice-gerent upon earth. To enforce, however, an obedience which might only be theoretically rendered, or which on the abatement of delusion might very probably be refused a system of sanguinary terrorism has been organized, and a band of men stand sworn to execute the behests, whatever they may be, of the head of the Church. To what extent these atrocities are carried we now learn from a communication of unimpeachable character. The Federal Government of the United States, in virtue of its authority over all the territories of the Union, appointed Judge Drummond to preside in the Supreme Court of Utah, in which capacity he would, of course, exercise a jurisdiction independent of the Mormon Administration. Such a commission, however, he has found it impossible to discharge, and he has resigned his office accordingly, conveying, at the same time, a full explanation of the circumstances in a letter to the Attorney-General of the Union.

In this astounding document Judge Drummond affirms that the administration of Justice in Utah was reduced to a nullity by the tyranny of the Mormon governors, who by their influence over juries acquit or condemn at their discretion, and give impunity for homicide or instructions for assassination according to their caprices. Proceeding to details, this officer charges the Mormons with having commissioned the Indians to murder Captain Gunnison and his party of eight men, with having destroyed his own predecessor in office by poison, and with having deliberately murdered the late Territorial Secretary. As if to show, indeed, their independence of any decrees but those of their own Church, the Mormons are said to have destroyed the records and archives of the Supreme Court; and its President, therefore, retires from a position where the authority which he represents is openly set at naught, and where all the ordinary bonds of society and obligations of law are violently thrust aside to leave free scope for a despotism without example.

The collision thus probably provoked between the American Government and the Mormon community has been long anticipated. It has often been debated, indeed, to what extent toleration could be carried in a case like this, even on the assumption that the Mormons abstained from any office beyond that attaching to their institutions themselves; but they have now exceeded these limits, and have violated laws to which, as citizens of the Union, they undoubtedly owed respect. It was not binding upon them to profess Christianity, and, whatever might have been the scandal attending their license and their lies, it was doubtful on what ground they could be assailed, especially after the self-imposed exile by which they buried their brutality and blasphemy in the solitudes of a desert. But Utah, however desolate and remote, is American territory still, and the Mormons can only occupy it on the same conditions of political allegiance as are exacted from others. The soil on which they reared their city, though untenanted, was not unowned. It pertained to the dominion of the Union as entirely as any district in Massachusetts or Georgia, and the resistance of the settlers to the authority of the Federal Government lawfully represented is an act of rebellion. It cannot be supposed that such an act will be overlooked by the Administration at Washington, and the whole question of Mormonism and its title to toleration will now probably be raised for practical solution. The Mormons are far off, but they are not out of reach. The desert is a frightful one, but it can be passed by the protectors of public order as well as by the miserable victims of spiritual delusion.

Unhappily, the whole case touches us nearly. Mormonism, if conceived in America, is propagated and supported in England, nor do we know of any sign of our times more bewildering than the success of this shocking imposture among a civilized and instructed population. Witchcraft is a mere nothing by the side of this living and moving monstrosity. No pilgrim or crusader in past ages ever ventured upon such an expedition as is now undertaken by educated Christians with a huge den of vice and wickedness awaiting them at its close. The picture now given of these abominations by Judge Drummond shows that tyranny, by a natural sequence of events, has been brought in aid of delusion, and that when once the unhappy proselytes have been entrapped no room is allowed them for repentance or return. It is this which aggravates the enormity of the institution. It is terrible enough to think of the delusion itself, but the view becomes infinitely more alarming when it is known that violence and terror are prepared to overwhelm any symptom of penitence or remorse. This feature of Mormonism, at any rate, we may hope to see extinguished, and such an exposure as is now given may tend, we trust, to open the eyes of even the weakest and most credulous to the real nature of the snare. —Times.

1857 – 16 May, p. 5 – The Mormons. By the City of Washington, Captain W. Wylie, which arrived at Liverpool on Wednesday morning, we are informed that serious dissensions are reported to have broken out among the Mormons, both at San Bernardino and Salt Lake.

1857 – 23 May, p. 5 – Mormon Tracts. These pestilential productions are still being forced into the houses of the working population of this town, and we therefore again beg to caution the heads of families on the subject, earnestly hoping that our fellow-townsmen, of all ranks, will use their utmost endeavors to stop these systematic attempts to circulate the vile and profligate delusions in which the Mormon impostors trade.

1857 – 30 May, p. 5 – Mormonism. George Daken Thomas, Georgetown, subscribed to the usual declaration of being a Christian, and took the usual oaths of abjuration and supremacy, to enable him to follow his profession as a Mormon preacher!

1857 – 6 June, p. 3 – The Mormons. By the Europa, which arrived at Liverpool on Sunday, we learn that the rumor of Brigham Young having had to flee from Utah is incorrect. He still remains at the Mormon settlement, at Salmon River. For some unknown cause the Mormons at Bernardino and the surrounding settlements had been summoned to Salt Lake City.

1857 – 20 June, p. 7 – The American papers record the death of Orson [Parley] Pratt, the famous Mormon elder. He seduced the wife of a man named M’Lean, in San Francisco, and was conveying her and her children into Utah, where she was to live with him as his ninth wife. M’Lean followed the fugitive, and shot Pratt dead at Van Buren, in Arkansas. The deceased was a man of considerable ability, and had traveled as a missionary through Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany. He was next in influence to Brigham Young, and was one of the original followers of Joe Smith, the Mormon founder.

1857 – 27 June, p. 5 – But it is from Utah that we have the most stirring news. Brigham Young has for some time been bidding defiance to the United States Government, but the General in command of the United States forces is to offer an asylum to all in the Mormon State wishing to get out of it, and many will assuredly avail themselves it.

1857 – 4 July, p. 3 – The Mormonites in Utah. Affairs in Utah, the Mormon territory, seem to be rapidly approaching a crisis. Brigham Young has at last determined to drive “all heathen gentiles” out “from the Canaan of the saints.” He has hitherto satisfied himself with harassing other people, and making their sojourn or residence in his neighborhood uncomfortable. Now he is resolved to make it intolerable. He has broken up the judicial tribunals of the Republic in the territory—he has expelled all the public servants of the federal government—he has announced himself the “vicegerent of the Almighty” in the land of the Saints; and now he boldly defies the whole central power of the national administration. It is well, since things have gone so far, that they should go still further. It fortunately precipitates a crisis, which in any event could not have been long delayed; and it justifies the prompt action of the government, which has already ordered several regiments of troops, under the command of one of our frontier generals, to march to the scene of rebellion. There may be bloody work; but the better opinion seems to be that a very serious collision may be avoided. Gen. Harney is ordered to publish a proclamation on his arrival at the Salt Lake, offering protection to all persons in the territory who may wish to escape from the oppressive rule of Brigham Young. It is well known that many persons—not Mormons—now reside in the territory who would embrace the first opportunity of a safe escape. The class is mostly made up of the relatives and personal friends of “the Saints,” who have from various motives been induced to struggle so far into the wilderness. But many American citizens who have had no affinities with Mormonism are residing in that region; and most deeply have they suffered in their interests and feelings of which we can certainly form no adequate conception. And there is another and probably far more numerous class of malcontents within the Mormon community. It is said that there are not less than forty thousand women in Utah, who are held in the most degrading state of concubinage, utterly helpless either to fly from their wrongs or to redress them. Among them there are many of a superior education, who now recall the recollection of their distant English, Scotch, or Welsh homes, where they were virtuously brought up, where they first loved and became wives and mothers. Some were carried away by religious fanaticism, or terrified by invocations of Divine wrath if they refused to obey the Lord’s prophet. Others went to that far-off region rather than part with husband and children. But once settled in the Mormon land, deprived of all the charities of home, and the amenities and decencies of Christian life—cast off as wives from the confidence of their husbands, and as mothers denied all control over their children—witnessing every day the desecration of their nuptial beds, and reduced to utter helplessness—powerless even for revenge—it would be strange indeed if there should not be many wives, mothers, daughters, and sisters in such a community who would now fly with desperate eagerness to the protection of a friendly and powerful government. It is therefore believed that General Harney’s proclamation will be likely to undermine the brutal despotism of this most disgusting and despicable tyrant. But if sterner measures are called for, we are assured they will be employed.—New York Times.

1857 – 18 July, p. 5 – The Mormons at Bath. The disclosures which have recently been made with regard to this sect have caused considerable excitement amongst some of the lower orders of this city. A few evenings since a large number of persons congregated outside the Mormon chapel, Westgate buildings, and on the appearance of the elders, who had been conducting the service, they were hooted by the mob along the Lower Borough walls and down Southgate street. Not content with this demonstration, they pelted the Mormon leaders with stones, one of whom received a severe wound in the head, and they were obliged to run for protection to the Widcome police station. The mob continued outside hooting and yelling, and it was feared that an attempt would be made to force the station.

1857 – 25 July, p. 8 – Troubles of Polygamists. The Deseret News publishes some discourses to “the saints” at Utah, recently delivered by President Brigham Young, the governor, from which it seems that the dissatisfaction of the female population of the Great Salt Lake Valley is becoming serious, and driving the leaders of the community to the use of violent language. One of the officials of the Mormon state, President Grant, thus describes the feeling which now prevails:—“And we have women here who like anything but the celestial law of God; and if they could break asunder the cable of the church of Christ, there is scarcely a mother in Israel but would do it this day. And they talk it to their husbands, to their daughter, and to their neighbors, and say they have not seen a week’s happiness since they became acquainted with that law, or since their husbands took a second wife. They want to break up the church of God, and to break it from their husbands and from their family connections.”

Brigham Young has thus delivered himself on the same theme:—“It is said that women are tied down and abused—that they are misused, and have not the liberty they ought to have—that many of them are wading through a flood of tears, because of the conduct of some men, together with their own folly. I wish my own women to understand that what I am going to say is for them as well as others, and I want those who are here to tell their sisters—yes, all the women of this community—and then write it back to the States, and do as you please with it. I am going to give you from this time to the 6th day of October next for reflection, that you may determine whether you wish to stay with your husbands or not, and then I am going to set every woman at liberty, and say to them ‘Now go your way, my women, with the rest—go your way.’ And my wives have got to do one of two things—either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this world, and live their religion, or they may leave, for I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I will set all at liberty. ‘What, first wife too?’ Yes, I will liberate you all. I know what my women will say; they will say, ‘You can have as many women as you please, Brigham.’ But I want to go some where and do something to get rid of the whiners; I do not want them to receive a part of the truth and spurn the rest out of doors. I wish my women, and Mr. Kimball’s and Brother Grant’s, to leave, and every woman in this territory, or say in their hearts that they will embrace the gospel—the whole of it. Tell the gentiles that I will free every woman in this territory at our next conference. ‘What, the first wife too?’ Yes, there shall not be one held in bondage—all shall be set free. And then let the father be the head of the family, and the master of his own household; and let him treat them as an angel would treat them; and let the wives and the children say amen to what he says, and be subject to his dictates, instead of their dictating the man—instead of their trying to govern. Now, recollect that two weeks from to-morrow I am going to set you at liberty. But the first wife will say, ‘It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial to me for him to have more women;’ then, I say, it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children. If my wife had borne me all the children that she ever would bear, the celestial law would teach me to take young women that would have children. It is the duty of every righteous man and every woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can. Hence if my women leave, I will go and search up others who will abide the celestial law, and let all I now have go where they please; though I will send the gospel to them. This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits which are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth.”

1857 – 15 August, p. 6 - Remarkable Letter from an Escaped Mormon. The following letter, which has appeared in the Swansea Herald, details some remarkable features in the character of the Mormons at the Salt Lake. The writer went out with his father and mother, from the neighborhood of Maesteg, in this county, a confirmed Mormon, about two years since.

Council Bluffs City, June 29, 1857. Cardiff and Merthyr Guardian

My dear brother Thomas and family—With great happiness and pleasure I write you these few lines, in the hope that you are all quite well. I have to inform you that I am much better than when I last wrote to you, and am now able to see and go about without a shade over my eyes. I will now proceed to give you some account of my journey from the Salt Lake City, across the Plains, as I can now more freely write my mind. I often think of the promise I made you before we parted, that I would let you know the truth, and I have done it so far as I could, and have written many letters, but do not expect you have received them all. Thank God I am now in a free country, and in the society of white men, after having been so long in the company of blacks. As I have no doubt you are anxious to know the reason why I left the Salt Lake, I will therefore proceed, in the first place, to inform you what a man must do if he be a Mormon. He must sign over himself and family, and all that he is possessed of, to Brigham Young. The next thing he has to do is to give a tenth of what he gets, and the tenth day in every year, and must keep from two to ten wives; and the man who refuses to obey these laws must quit the place, and in doing so is in danger of losing his life every moment—as they would sooner kill him than that he should be the means of conveying to the States, or elsewhere, information of their proceedings.

Great numbers have been shot whilst attempting to leave. I myself have been scores of persons shot down in the streets, and a few days before I made my escape, I witnessed three persons being killed only because they were preparing to go away. They were packing up their boxes and provisions at a place called Springfield, and were shot down at eight o’clock on a Sunday evening, and within fifty yards of the City Gate. The first was Wm. Parish, a young man; he had seven shots in him. The old man was stabbed in the back, and had his throat cut in three places. I saw them lying dead, and could name the persons who shot them. Brigham Young has got men whom he has set apart for this business, who number about four hundred, and are called the “Destroying Angels.” The captain of them is one William Hickman, and the second in command is named Porter Rockwell.

The walls about the city are 15 feet high, and surrounded by a deep ditch. The city is entered by four gates, which are all guarded by night. Those gates or entrances are so narrow that only one wagon can pass at a time. The “Destroying Angels” go into the plains every spring for the purpose of watching parties who have made their escape from the city. A great many left in December on foot, sleeping in the day time and traveling by night. I know men and women who have walked all the way—the women being dressed in men’s clothes; and I have passed parties on the way who were short of provisions—the little they had was supplied to the women—the men living principally on the women’s milk.

I left Salt Lake City on the night of the 17^th April, in company with two Welsh boys and an African, in all four persons. The Mormons who knew of our intention, told us that we should never reach the States alive, but I informed them that I was determined to make the trial at all hazards. On Saturday (the day after we left) we had traveled about thirty miles from the city, when we were overtaken by a party of three men, who were sent in pursuit of us—one was Patrick Lynch, Brigham Young’s clerk, who is an Irishman. This man fired a shot from a revolver—the ball whizzed by me. They then rode up and inquired my name, which I gave, when they said I must go back with them to the city; and upon my refusing to obey their command, they said they would “blow my d--- brains out.” One of them seized a revolver-he had one on each side of his horse. I then took a revolver from my belt, and told him to fire if he wished. I was armed with six revolvers—four in my belt and one in each of my boots, and also a rifle—altogether 37 shots. Another shot was then fired at me, the ball passing close to my left cheek. I then fired and hit him on the leg, and the second ball took him in the shoulder. My companions had run into the woods, and I was compelled to fight alone. I then lost my footing and fell, when one of the men jumped upon me with a knife in his hand, cut my belt, and took four revolvers from me. I then gave a spring backwards, and taking another out of my boot, fired, and thus made my escape into the woods, where I was soon joined by my own party. We continued on our journey the whole of that day and the night following, until we reached a place called Fort Bridger, distance 113 miles from Salt Lake. The number of our pursuers had by this time increased to twenty, and we were again compelled to take refuge in the woods. We traveled the whole of that night, and were fortunate in meeting with a party of friendly Indians, and partook of some Buffalo meat with them. On the day following we came up with a train of wagons, called “Mrs. Babbit’s train,” 28 in number. I was engaged to drive one of the wagons drawn by six mules. We had some trouble with a party of Indians, known as the Crow tribe, numbering about 1,000 horsemen, armed with rifles, bows and arrows, etc. We had about 600 shots in our camp, and killed about thirty of the Indians, losing five of our own men.

We arrived here on the 13^th of June, with cheerful hearts, and were well received by the citizens of Florence. I have been to see father’s grave, and thank God that he is where he is. I left mother and Jane Louisa, Mary, and John, all well—also Mr. Thomas. J. --- is a thorough Mormon, and, I am sorry to add, did his best to kill me, which he said was better for me than that I should go away. None of them believed that I should reach this place alive. I am desirous that mother and the children should quit the Salt Lake and join me here, as if they do, I will buy some land, which I can get for a dollar and a quarter. I left 500 dollars with mother to keep until she may be enabled to leave. I am employed here as superintendent in a brickyard, at 30 dollars per month, board and lodgings inclusive. From your affectionate brother, John Davies.

1857 – 15 August, p. 6 – Anti-Mormon Riot in Birmingham. A feeling of great hostility has for some time past been manifested towards the Mormons who are rather numerous in Birmingham. On Sunday matters reached a climax. The Mormons have a chapel in a narrow thoroughfare called Thorpe Street, and nearly opposite this building, Dr. Brindley, the master of a scholastic establishment at Leamington, and who recently conducted a school near Liverpool, lectured upon the abominations of Joseph Smith’s followers to between fifteen hundred and two thousand people. His discourse concluded about eight o’clock. Though a few of the more respectable looking of his hearers left the street when he did, the great majority remained, and shortly afterwards a rush was made to the chapel where “president” Aubrey was preaching at the time. The aisles and unoccupied seats were speedily filled, and then a running fire of comment on the sermon was commenced and carried on by the intruders for some five or ten minutes. It is stated that much of the language used was of the lowest and most disgraceful kind. At last Aubrey abruptly closed his discourse, and dismissed his congregation. It was with great difficulty that they forced their way through the crowds in the chapel yard and street. The females were hustled, insulted and bespattered in mud; the men had their hats knocked off and were struck on every side. The police were sent for, and quiet was partially restored. As soon, however, as the constables had retired, the door of the chapel was burst open, the crowd rushed in, the front windows were smashed, and Bibles and several other books stolen. The interior of the chapel was a scene of utmost riot. A body of police arrived at this moment, and dispersed the mob, or in all probability there would have been very serious results, as hints of an intention to burn the chapel were freely circulated. No other disturbance took place that night, but on Monday morning the chapel doors were again burst; lockfast closets entered and ransacked, and a large number of school and music hooks were torn in pieces and strewn about the yard. Except when a policeman made his appearance, the crowd remained in possession of the building during the day. In the evening, showers of stones were hurled through the smashed windows. Yesterday, however, the police took active measures to prevent a repetition of these scenes. Manchester Guardian.

1857 – 19 September, p. 3 – On Monday night the Mormon Conference was brought to a close by a social meeting at the Teetotal Hall, Broadway, Westminster. The proceedings were certainly of such a character as were never witnessed in a “conference” before. The Apostle Orson Pratt gave the “sisters” some advice on the subject of marriage. He said that marriage, if celebrated by the Mormon church, which alone had full authority, extended not only till death, but throughout eternity. He urged them not to marry men not Mormons or else when they awoke in the Day of Judgment they would find themselves without husbands, and be obliged to remain single throughout eternity. This he described to be a horrible eventuality, and propounded the doctrine that a propagation of spirits would go on in a future world, just as the propagation of our species goes on in this! Ezra Benson, another Apostle from the Salt Lake Valley, addressed the audience in his shirt sleeves. His speech was full of Yankee humor, rather coarse, but it told well with the saints. He said he felt “fust rate.” He referred to the subject of marriage, and to his own wives and children whom he had left in Utah, and said he believed that all his wives would not apostatize, and that therefore he would not be likely to undergo the misery of remaining single in heaven. He described Brigham Young as the best and holiest man in the world, and said he did not wonder at the sisters falling in love with him. Every good man, he said, ought to have more than one wife. He said he would advise the editors of papers who abused them to consult their works, and they would find everything “as right as taters.” He indulged in a variety of jokes of the same class. (We omit to record some of the more improper sayings and doings of the evening.) Globe.

1857 – 19 September, p. 5 – While Birmingham is about to hold its conference on all social subjects, London has had its meeting on the prospects of Mormonism, or rather has had a series of meetings. There were few Apostles on the ground, and as to disciples their name is Legion. Human ignorance is boundless, and all who are dissatisfied with their present condition listen eagerly to those who point to something else. Joe Smith, like his predecessor Mahomet, knew how to take advantage of the weaknesses of humanity; and it cannot be denied that he has brought together, and so far, kept together, what the auctioneers would call “a miscellaneous lot.” It is said that the President of the United States has resolved on rooting the Mormons out of Utah, and certainly they will get little sympathy from this side of the water.

1857 – 19 September, p. 6 – Item #1 – Mormon Polygamy. Thirteen members of the council of the Utah territory have no less than 171 wives, of whom fifty-seven constitute the seraglio of the President of the Council.

1857 – 19 September, p. 6 – Item #2 – The Mormons. By the Royal mail steamship Arabia, which arrived at Liverpool, on Sunday last, we learn that the military expedition for Utah had been ordered to proceed to its destination. Dr. Forny had accepted the appointment of superintendent of Indian affairs in Utah. General Harney or Colonel Johnson would have the command of the force. Ten companies had been dispatched to Kansas to replace those ordered to Utah. The New York Times states that one-third of the force selected for the expedition had deserted.

1857 – 26 September, p. 6 – Swansea. The Mormons. This fanatical sect have of late been holding forth in various localities contiguous to our town, and they seem to have attained something like a “strong hold” in Llansamlet. On Sunday however, they so disgusted their hearers with their profane and preposterous “sermons,” and their assertions in reference to the impostor Joe Smith, that they were pelted with cabbages, potatoes, apples, &c., and were compelled to beat a precipitate retreat, followed by the hootings and jeers of 200 or 300 people.

1857 – 24 October, p. 3 – Our advices from the Salt Lake state that the Mormons were fortifying the fort and bridges, with the intention of contesting the progress of the United States troops now on the way to Utah.

1857 – 31 October, p. 7 – The Mormon newspaper, published in New York, has suspended, after an existence of two years and seven months.

1857 – 31 October, p. 8 – Mormonism in Bath. In the course of the last six months we have had frequent occasion to advert to Mr. Parrott, the indefatigable antagonist of Mormonism. After giving himself to this work in Bristol, London, and Wales, he arrived here in May, a stranger and uninvited, and found the system in full and vigorous operation.” The chapel was well attended, the congregation consisting chiefly of infatuated young women from 12 to 20 years of age; who, moreover, were then engaged in attempts to entrap others of their sex by means of tract distribution. Mr. Parrott immediately began his labors by holding public meetings in the Old Market and on the Quay. He next waited on the Mayor, Bishop Carr, and the other clergy, the magistrates, and the gentry, daily bringing the subject before them. A large public meeting in the Guildhall, at which Bishop Carr presided, was the consequence. Mr. Parrot likewise held meetings in the High Common, the Bear Inn field, the parochial schoolrooms, and the Riding School. These meetings were attended by thousands. He has also visited form house to house, exposing the system. Some thousands of books and trats have, besides, been dispersed by him; and, the public press aiding his efforts, it is most gratifying to state that since Mr. Parrott commenced his labors, Mormonism in Bath has not obtained a single new convert; while some have seceded, and are now laboring to expose the imposture. Nor less influential have the newspaper reports proved in the neighboring villages. Bath Paper.

1857 – 21 November, p. 6 – It is stated that there are no less than 33 Mormon meeting houses in London and the suburbs.

1857 – 28 November, p. 6 – The Mormons are on the march, and only ten or twelve days since, on the Loupa Fork of the Platte river, near the mouth of Beaver, and known as Beaver settlement of Mormons about one hundred miles inland from Omaha city. A large force of the Mormon militia, under Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, are preparing to leave Salt Lake City, with provision and ammunition for a six-weeks’ campaign in the mountains to the eastward, and thus stop, if possible, the progress of the United States Corps.

1858 – 16 January, p. 5 – Dr. Mackay, who is now in America has a new work in the press upon the Mormons—their present Condition and Future Prospects. Very interesting letters from him arrive by every mail.

1858 – 16 January, p. 7 – Brigham Young is the Ignatius Loyola of Mormonism. The points of resemblance between Young and Loyola as developed in their respective systems are here shown. Each adopted a secret form for the guidance and control of his followers, as has been adopted by different political and religious bodies, but never has this form been so prostituted as with the Jesuit and the Mormon. The “Mysteries of Mormonism,” through which the novice was conducted were then revealed. They consist of ceremonies at once awful and absurd. The neophyte is conducted into a room, and stripped naked, and a name is whispered in his ear, which he is to remember at the peril of his salvation. In another room he is clothed with a robe which makes him look half like a Brahmin, and half like a Jewish priest. In an adjoining room a dramatic blasphemy goes on. God is personated. The incidents of Genesis—the creation, the garden of Eden, the appearance of Satan, etc., are represented. The initiated then performs the circuit of four other rooms, covenanting and vowing as he goes. In one he swears to chastity—in another polygamy is accorded with the sanction of Brigham Young—in the third a terrible abjuration to secrecy is administered—the awful preparation for the fourth, where amongst horrible surroundings, the initiate is sworn to eternal enmity to the United States of North America! This is the “Mormon Endowment,” through which 50,000 of our fellow creatures have passed. All that I hold most dear on earth still cling to this most horrible system. My wife and child remain at Salt Lake. My wife has been forced, by her devotion to these things, to forego even her heart’s own yearnings, and utter prayers which shape themselves into curses! Some of you (continued the speaker) may have come here to gratify an idle curiosity. I do not come here to pander to a prurient taste, but to teach you what Mormonism is. Lecture by a Converted Mormon Elder.

1858 – 23 January, p. 4 – With respect to the Mormons the House of Representatives have declared the State of Utah to be in rebellion, and it is proposed to expel Dr. Bernhisel, the delegate, from his seat.

1858 – 30 January, p. 3 – Advices from New York to the 14^th inst. Have arrived. A telegram, dated St. Louis, January 12, conveys further information respecting the Utah expedition. On the 1^st of December the troops were all in winter quarters at Fort Bridger. The troops were comfortably stationed in tents with stoves. The weather had been very mild, and good health prevailed. The provisions on hand were sufficient to last till next June, by close allowance. Captain Marcy had been sent to Taos and Santa Fe to obtain supplies. Nearly two-thirds of the animals of the expedition had died. The Mormons were preparing to leave for the British possessions, and pioneer parties had already left. Brigham Young had sent a quantity of salt to Colonel Johnston, which that officer sent back, stating that he would hang any messenger from the same quarter on a similar errand. Young had invited the officers of the army to partake of his hospitality and spend the winter at Salt Lake City. It was said that Colonel Johnston was so well assured that the Mormons would leave in the spring that he asked no increase of the force now under his command. Governor Cummings had signed a proclamation, declaring the territory in a state of rebellion. Orders had been issued by the Government for the dispatch of reinforcements to the Utah expedition.

1858 – 6 February, p. 4 – The Mormons. New York, January 20. We have again fresh news from the army of Utah; this time with full details of the condition and prospects of the troops. The letters came down in date to the 1^st of December. The main army had taken possession of Fort Bridger, 113 miles from Great Salt Lake City, and was preparing busily to resist the inclemency of a winter among the mountain. The Mormons had burnt down the old buildings, but the soldiers were at work with picks, shovels, axes, and hammers repairing the mischief. The thermometer had already indicated very cold weather.

Colonel Johnston, who, you will remember, crossed the Rocky Mountains by the South Pass, and approached Fort Bridger by a different route from that of the main army, in order to insure fresh fodder for the horses, was within three miles of Fort Bridger, keeping his camp outside for the sake of the grass. The men of both divisions are represented as well cared for and in excellent condition, but much troubled at the necessity of wintering to the east of the mountains by the Salt Lake City. They have in the camp authentic accounts of the state of things in Brigham’s dominions. The population of Salt Lake City is almost all under arms, drawn up on the road between Emigration Canyon and Yellow Creek. The force posted in and about Echo Canyon is 3,000 strong. The Mormons have thrown up earthworks along the summit line of the Canyon, and have dug ditches through it, and so arranged the dams on the Weber River as to be able to submerge the road for miles. This looks like serious resistance on the part of the Saints—a resistance that promises trouble, unless they are attacked in the rear from California before they can make their front impregnable. Yet, as the facility of moving a force there, although starting late in the year, has now been practically demonstrated, and as the strength of the resisting force emerges from the shadowy region of speculation into the clear atmosphere of an authentic estimate, the difficulties to be dealt with diminish wonderfully, and it does not seem to hard a matter to manage the rebels. This force started from Kansas very late in the season, and yet it winters at the foot of the Wasatch Mountains, and some of its officers have been in the Great Salt Lake City.

They met with snow upon the rocky mountain passes to the depth of a foot or a foot-and-a-half, but nowhere else. They have demonstrated the complete feasibility of moving a much larger force than their own with ease upon Utah. They are already making preparations for an early march in the spring. Captain Marcy has started with a picked company for New Mexico, to procure supplies and mules for moving in the spring. Meanwhile the civil governor of the territory has fired in advance into the territory a paper broadside of proclamations, as blank cartridges are first fired upon a mob. As commandeer-in-chief of the militia of the territory he orders all armed bodies to disband and retire to their homes, and to Brigham Young he sends a treasonable proclamation found upon the person of a Captain Taylor.

1858 – 6 February, p. 6 – Proposed Migration of Mormons to British Territory. The Mormons at the date of the last advices from America, were preparing to leave Utah for the neighboring British possessions of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The general impression was that this new Mormon exodus would direct itself towards the western portions of Mexico where neither the authorities of the State nor the population would have the power to impede its progress. If, however, a comparison be drawn between the weakness of the Mexican Government and the utter imbecility of the Hudson’s Bay Administration for every purpose except that of trade, there can be no doubt that Mr. Brigham Young has exercised a wise discretion in directing the attention of his followers to a region in which nothing that can be dignified with the name of British law is even asserted to exist. The United States’ troops will, in all probability, find the Salt Lake City a desert, and all the Mormon rebels across the frontier, under the protection of that British flag which they have threatened to hoist as a defiance to the Federal Government.

1858 – 8 May, p. 7 – A Picture of Life Amongst the Mormons. The following is a copy of a letter received at Barnsley from Elizabeth Cotton, a young woman who formerly resided there. George Wadsworth, the individual named in the letter, who was well known in Barnsley, was in the habit of delivering open-air addresses upon Mormonism in the Barnsley market-place. The letter is dated Feb. 1^st, 1838 [1858], and proceeds:

“Dear Mother—I would have written to you sooner, but I could not write you the truth. I am very uneasy, hearing nothing from you but what brother-in-law told us when we met him on the plains. He told us that the Mormons had cut you out of the church, and of that I am glad, for dear mother, if I had never been in the church, it would have been a happy thing for me, for we are now on the plains with 7,000 soldiers who are waiting to go to Salt Lake to make the Mormons comply with the laws of the country; for you must bear in mind that the Mormons have their own laws, and what Brigham Young says must be done, for his is the word of the Lord.

“I am afraid I shall never see you again, but still I live in hopes.

“We started from Salt Lake some time since to come back again, but the Mormons met us, and George Wadsworth took little Jemmy and pulled him out of the wagon, and he cried out violently, ‘Mother, shoot me; don’t let me go !’

“I have learnt a great deal since I saw you, and have had a great deal to go through. The number that went the same time that we did was 1,000 men and women, as they were but 400 when they got to Salt Lake. The Mormons made them pay tithings of the clothes they had on their backs, and everything else they had, and they were obliged to get married to get something to eat and something to wear. All have to make their own clothes. They go in rags, and are as badly dressed as the rag-gatherers in England.

“On arriving at the Salt Lake, I was not a little surprised to see the men running after the women and asking them if they were married, but I have not got married yet, and I do not intend. There are no tables or chairs to rub, or floors to wash, and the bedsteads are nearly eaten away with vermin; they take them under the sheds or upon the haystacks, for they cannot sleep in houses. We only had meat twice all the eight months we were there, and my aunt had to exchange her clothes for bread, for there is no money there. Many of the men have eight or ten wives, and they sleep with one two nights and another two nights, and so on, and this is Mormonism; but this is not all, for Brigham Young has 60 women, and they had twelve sons in one year, and how many daughters I do not know. What they preach about is -----, thieving, and cutting anybody’s throat, and if you ask anything about it you are told it none of your d----d business. Marrying little children ten or eleven years of age against their mind is common, and in about two months they will leave one and go to another. I know one young woman of nineteen who has had four husbands in five months, and that gives you an idea of Mormonism. Ann Jubb came along with us across the plains, and when she got to Salt Lake there were so many men running after her that she got married, and she is the second wife, and they call her Ann Webb, but she is far from being comfortable, and would be glad to be back again.

“If I was in England, and any Mormon elder came to the house where I was, I would give him a pretty warm reception. Mormonism in England and Mormonism in Salt Lake are as different as chalk and cheese.

“When we crossed the plains, in 1856, we had a quarter of a pound of flour in one day; it was very cold weather, nearly 14 feet deep in snow. We could not travel, and had to wait on the plains until the Mormons came out with teams to fetch us in. I could tell you a great deal more if I was with you.

“I am your affectionate daughter,

“Elizabeth Cotton.”

Leeds Mercury

1858 – 29 May, p. 3 – The Mormons in America. More on the Utah Expedition. The following letter is from a German in Colonel Scott’s camp at the Salt Lake:

“Scott’s Camp, Black Fort of Green River, Feb. 20.

“Yesterday, at seven in the morning, a messenger arrived from Eco Cannians, and the 1^st Regiment of Dragoons and the 1^st Light Battery received orders to march immediately along the road towards the Salt Lake. The destination of the troops was Eco Cannians, a pass about 40 miles from here. The pass is about 12 miles long, and only broad enough to admit one vehicle. The entrance to the defile is protected by two redoubts, which have been occupied since the 2^nd of December, 1857, by the 1^st Regiment of Volunteers. At noon today a wagon with wounded men came into camp, and made the following report: Between seven and eight in the morning of the 15^th of February the two redoubts were attacked in front and rear. Lieutenant-Col. Reichenau, a German, who was formerly a captain in the British Foreign Legion, sent four companies to take the assailants in the rear, while he was defending the works with four other companies. At nine o’clock a sharp fire of small arms was heard, and Captain Magree, the commander of the four companies which had been sent out, soon after demanded reinforcements. Instead of going straight to the succor of Captain Magree, the commander marched three companies to a height about an English mile distant, from which he could take the enemy in flank and rear. The operation was so successful that the Mormons were soon put to flight, but unfortunately Captain Magree could render no assistance, as his four companies had been driven back full a mile-and-a-half from the redoubts by a very superior force. The Mormons and Utah Indians who were opposed to Captain Magree were mounted on mules. After having got rid of a part of the enemy—as has been above stated—Lieutenant Colonel Reichenau left half a company on the height as a corps of observation, sent one company back to the redoubts, and advanced with a company and a half to the assistance of Captain Magree. The enemy stood his ground, although two charges were made. The cold was so great that our men could not fire their guns. At half past three the regiment of volunteers was driven into the redoubts, and it is believed that the commander was making preparations for firing a mine, when shots fell in the flank and rear of the enemy. The half company left on the right had turned the enemy’s position, and the commander, at once divining what had happened, seized the colors, and, at the head of the regiment of volunteers, made a sally. The enemy, being between two fires got into disorder, and fled in different directions. 24 prisoners and 56 mules fell into our hands. Our loss was 1 officer and 16 privates killed, and 4 officers and 32 men wounded. Lieut. Colonel Reichenau was wounded by an arrow in the upper part of the left arm. Of the loss of the enemy I know nothing more than that it is said to be considerable.

1858 – 29 May, p. 7 – The New York Times of May 1, just received, devotes three or four columns to a detailed account of the “experiences” of one Frederick Loba (a “repentant Mormon sinner”), while in Utah, and his escape from the Salt Lake City. Loba is a Swiss, of a strong metaphysical turn of mind, with a great predilection for speculative theology; and, although a professed Protestant, he felt some years ago “rather uneasy with respect to sacred things and a future existence.” Like Faust, he tried all sorts of expositions of different views in regard to man’s final destiny, but found them all unsatisfactory, although he ranged the continent of Europe in the prosecution of his metaphysical studies. Thus, although in easy circumstances, Loba was wretched; and, when at length Mormonism was presented to him, he was, as he himself asserts, deceived into a reception of the impious and immoral heresy. His gross gullibility may be estimated when we inform our readers that he gave implicit credence to all the assurances of his Mormon instructors, that “the Valley” (or Utah) was the appointed place for the gathering of the pure and honest; that all the blessings of Heaven were their happy lot; that peace and plenty prevailed, and that no evil or wickedness was to be found in the terrestrial paradise! He was thus “completely deceived, won over, and baptized into the faith,” with all his family. He arrived at St. Louis (on his way to the “Happy Valley”) in December, 1853, and was then appointed temporary president of a Mormon “chapel.” The “tricks and rascalities” of the Mormons at St. Louis shook our friend’s faith not a little, but still he hoped to find in “the Rev.” Brigham Young, at Utah—“all the characteristics and virtues befitting a man of God.” In this faith he persisted, although plundered at every opportunity by his Mormon guides to the Salt Lake City. Mr. Loba proceeds—“Immediately after my arrival in the Valley the Prophet took me out in one of his wagons, and showed me some of his houses and other property. During this excursion he presented me with one of his houses and some land, with the condition that I should manufacture gunpowder. However, I was grievously disappointed to find that all I had been told in Switzerland of this beautiful land was far from truth, and that it was anything but fertile and fruitful. Shortly after this I was made a ‘professor chemistry,’ became a high priest and received the endowments. Thus, I was initiated into all their principles and mysteries, and became acquainted with many of their secret plans and transactions. These opened my eyes at once, and I saw at a glance the terrible position in which I was placed. I now found myself in the midst of a wicked and degraded people, shut up in the midst of the mountains, with a large and helpless family, and deprived of all resources with which to extricate myself. The conviction had been forced upon my mind that Brigham himself was at the bottom of all the clandestine assassinations, plundering of trains, robberies of mails, and the exemplar of every other species of wickedness practiced among his followers. I saw also that the system of polygamy was anything but conducive to peace and happiness in the human family, but only calculated to gratify the carnal propensities of men, and to destroy at the same time, all that is delicate, refined, or noble in woman’s character, reducing her in fact, merely to the position of an article of merchandise. I have seen two sisters sold by their own father to General Horace Eldridge for some groceries. I have seen men marrying both mother and daughter. I have known another have incestuous intercourse with his own sister, and then witnessed Brigham Young taking this last woman as his wife when she was about to become a mother. One of my own personal acquaintances, W. C. Stains, one of Brigham’s favorite ‘destroying angels’ and spies, applied to the Prophet to take a third wife. Leave was granted. The next day the lover appeared before Brigham with his betrothed, when, greatly to his astonishment, that worthy changed the program slightly, and married the lady to himself, as he found her a very pretty woman. Poor Stains accepted his bereavement “as a trial from the Lord.” Crimes of all sorts were, he found, committed with impunity, and any person accused of “uttering disparaging remarks concerning the head of the church” was certain to disappear suddenly and mysteriously, being “privately destroyed.” The vengeance of these miscreants was especially wreaked on those of their “initiated” victims who attempted to escape from the Valley. Loba had lost his wife on his journey across the plains; he took another in the city of the Salt Lake, and, although frequently urged to help himself to more wives, refused. On the 1^st of April, 1857, he resolved to escape with his wife only, leaving his eight children in the care of his mother-in-law and her brother; and after many hardships, mountain adventures, and risks by flood and field the unhappy couple at length reached Green River, and were kindly received by the Snake Indians and some Canadian traders there encamped. Brigham Young had started 32 horsemen on Loba’s track to recapture him, but after incredible exertions to do so they were forced to return. Loba arrived at Kickapoo last December, after several attacks of fever, in a state of perfect destitution. His relatives and children have rejoined him. Mr. Loba thus concludes—“This is a very brief outline of what I and mine have suffered from Mormonism. Every educated man will realize much more readily than I can describe it how keen has been my mental suffering amid the degraded, uncultivated, and besotted followers of Brigham Young. Could all that be obliterated from the pages of my memory, how lightly should I esteem the physical privations and sufferings of the last few years. But nothing remains to me but regret for the past, and joy that I have escaped the trammels of the Salt Lake, and that the remnant of my family are spared the contamination and ruin, which a life among ‘the Saints’ would inevitably involve.” Will this narrative operate as a caution to the gullible greenhorns who are even now flocking, like geese, to the “Happy Valley?”

1858 – 26 June, p. 3 – It was stated positively that Governor Cumming has not been driven from Salt Lake City, and that the intentions of the Mormons were not belligerent; but, on the contrary, that the Governor had been well received; that Brigham was perfectly willing to transfer all authority to him, and that the Mormons had given up all idea of fighting and had gone to work on their farms. The report that Captain Marcy’s train had been cut off is contradicted, nothing whatever having been heard from him.

1858 – 3 July, p. 5 – The Mormon Difficulty. The American President has transmitted to Congress a message enclosing a copy of a dispatch from Governor Cumming, dated May 2, received at the State Department on June 9. From this the President says there is reason to believe that the difficulties with Utah have terminated and the laws are restored. He congratulated Congress on this auspicious event; expresses the opinion that there will be no occasion to make the appropriation for the three regiments of volunteers recently authorized for the purpose of quelling the disturbances in Utah, and for the protection of the emigrant trains and supplies, and says that Texas can be defended by the regular troops now within her limits. The President is the more gratified because the events in Utah will afford some relief to the Treasury, and not require a loan and additional taxation of the people.

In a letter to Secretary Cass, Governor Cumming says that he left the camp on the 5^th of April, en route to Salt Lake City, accompanied by Colonel Kane as his guide, and two servants. In passing through the settlements he was greeted with such respectful attentions as were due to the representative of the Executive authority of the United States in the Territory. Near Warm Springs, at the line dividing Great Salt Lake from Davis county, he was honored with a formal and respectful reception by many gentlemen, including the mayor and municipal officers of that city, and by them escorted to lodgings previously prepared for him, the mayor occupying a seat at this side in his carriage.

The territorial seal with other property was tendered to Governor Cumming by William H. Hooper, late acting Secretary of the territory. The records and library remain unimpaired.

Governor Cumming had informed General Johnston that he should probably be compelled to make a requisition upon him for a sufficient force to chastise the Indians.

At every point Governor Cumming was recognized as the Governor of Utah, and received with a military salute. He invited responses to his speech, and several spoke, referring in excited tones to the murder of Joseph Smith, to the services rendered by the Mormon battalion in the Mexican war, and recapitulated long chapters of their wrongs. The tumult fearfully increased as they progressed, but an appeal from Young restored calmness. Several afterwards expressed regret for their behavior.

There were illuminations in his honor. Having heard numerous complaints, Governor Cumming caused a public notice to the posted signifying his readiness to relieve those who deemed themselves aggrieved by being illegally restrained of their liberty, and assuring protection to all persons. He kept his office open at all hours of the day and night, and registered 56 men, 33 women, and 71 children as desirous of his protection and evincing a disposition of proceeding to the United States. A large majority of these people were of English birth, and were promised assistance to remove. Governor Cumming says his visit to the Tabernacle will never be forgotten. There were between 3,000 and 4,000 persons assembled for the purpose of public worship, and there was a most profound silence when he appeared. Brigham Young introduced him by name as Governor of Utah, and he (Cumming) addressed them for half an hour, telling them his purpose was to uphold the constitution and the laws, and that he would expect their obedience to all lawful authority, at the same time assuring them of his determination to administer equal and exact justice, etc. He was listened to respectfully.

The masses everywhere announced to Governor Cumming that the torch will be applied to every house indiscriminately throughout the country as soon as the troops attempt to cross the mountains, and that although their people were scattered, they would take very means to rally them.

1858 – 10 July, p. 7 – Item #1 – Mormonism in London. Disgusting Revelations. Thames Police Court. Thursday.

Hannah Brown, an elderly woman, dwelling at No. 4, Stratford-terrace, Thomas-street, Davenport-street, Commercial-road, appeared to answer a summons which charged her with assaulting and beating Mrs. Elizabeth Watson.

Mr. Charles Young, solicitor, who appeared for the complainant said, that Mrs. Watson had been a Mormonite for three years, and was for some time considered one of the most promising of the “Latter-day Saints,” but in consequence of having discovered the disgusting tricks of the Mormon religion—

Mr. Yardley—Religion! Are there any Mormons in this quarter?

Mr. Young—Oh yes, Sir; there are some half-dozen places called chapels of the present, I mean Latter-day Saints, sinners they ought to be called Sir—where these people meet to inculcate their pernicious doctrines among the ignorant. The husband of the defendant had also been a Mormon, but gave it up. The defendant had been jealous of Mrs. Watson ever since, and finding her talking to Mr. Brown attacked her with great fury, scratched her face, and beat her.

Mr. Yardley asked the complainant if she lived with the defendant’s husband?—Mrs. Watson replied in the negative, and said—I was a Mormonite three years. Mrs. Brown is a Mormonite. Her husband was ordered by the elders to walk with me, to instruct me in the principles of Mormonism, and to rob my husband and go to Utah, for the good of the church.

Mr. Yardley—I thought all the Mormons had gone to Utah.—Mr. Young—No sir; there are troubles in Utah, and Governor Cummins and the United States army have taken possession of the place of the place. There are plenty of Mormons left here.

Mrs. Watson—Well, I was cut off from the church because I would not rob my husband and leave him, and the defendant’s husband was cut off from the church because he was not successful in teaching me how to rob my husband, and could not induce me to leave my husband and go to Utah to marry one of the elders there.

Mr. Young—Those are the principles of Mormonism?

Mrs. Watson—Yes Sir; I was taught that to rob my husband, leave him, and commit adultery was to glorify the church.

Mr. Young—the Mormon church you mean?

Mrs. Watson—Yes, Sir. Well, Sir, I found out the baseness of the Mormon doctrines, and I would not leave my husband or rob him, and the defendant has been persecuting me ever since. Last Sunday evening I was speaking to Mrs. Brown’s husband, he having first accosted me, when Mr. Brown came up and called me a great many infamous names, struck me with her fist, and scratched my face. She threatened to kill me, and I had much trouble in getting out of her way.

Mr. Yardley—Did you voluntarily leave the Mormonites?

Mrs. Watson—I did, Sir; the elders of the church wanted me to go into their apartments and be initiated into the mysteries of Mormonism, but I would not, and have been persecuted ever since by Mrs. Brown and her friends.

The defendant said that Mrs. Watson did not voluntary leave the church of the Latter-day Saints (a laugh), but was publicly expelled and cut off, and had ever since been in the habit of meeting her (Mrs. Brown’s) husband and walking about with him.

Mr. Yardley—Is not that according to Mormonism?

The Defendant—No, Sir, it is not. Mrs. Watson was cut off from the church, and my husband was publicly cut off from the church, and they have been in the habit of meeting each other.

Mr. Yardley—Is that any reason you should scratch the complainant’s face?

Mrs. Brown—I watched her, the hussy. She shook hands with my husband, and kissed him.

Mr. Yardley—Is that contrary to Mormonism?

The Defendant—It has nothing to do with Mormonism.

Mr. Yardley—Then I am much misinformed on the subject.

The Defendant—Yes you are, Sir.

The Complainant—The meeting was accidental. I kiss her husband, indeed!—the wretch who wanted me to rob my husband, and go into the apartment of the elders? Not I, indeed.

Mr. Yardley—I would recommend you to renounce Mormonism if you wish to keep your husband to yourself.

The Defendant—It has nothing to do with Mormonism.

Mr. Yardley—I have nothing to do with Mormonism. With respect to the morality of it, I say nothing.

The Defendant—I have a large family of nine children, and have had 12, and I won’t let my husband go with her.

The Complainant—I don’t want the old man.

Mr. Yardley—Well, Mrs. Brown it does appear she was excessively familiar with your own husband on Saturday last, but that is no reason you should scratch her face, but a good reason for scratching his face.

The Complainant—I can assure you, Sir, many women have been induced to rob their husbands and leave them and go into the apartments of the elders, there to lose all that is dear to virtuous women, by the Mormons. I am sorry I had anything to do with them.

Mr. Yardley—I don’t recognize Mormonism, and I must not have a breach of the peace committed. Mrs. Watson had better not shake hands with Mr. Brown if she meets him again. As there was some aggravation I shall fine Mrs. Brown 1s. only, but if she molests Mrs. Watson again, I shall bind her over in heavy sureties to keep the peace.

1858 – 10 July, p. 7 – Item #2 – The Mormons. Additional telegraphic advices from Utah published by the Daily Times state that 70 Mormon families had come into Camp Scott and claimed protection, which had been accorded to them. The St. Louis Democrat states, according to its informant, that when the great seal and the records of the territory were delivered to Governor Cumming, the Mormon chiefs were urgent that he should place them in a fire-proof safe. The reason of this soon transpired, with the discovery that extensive preparations had been made to set fire to the city. Large quantities of dried wood had been placed in many of the houses, which a match would have instantly kindled. Efficient means were taken by Governor Cumming to prevent the catastrophe.

1858 – 24 July, p. 6 – Advices from Camp Scott to the 12^th ult., reported that Colonel Hoffman and Captain Marcy had reached the camp with supplies and reinforcements, and that the army, marching in columns, was to set out upon its march on the following day. Nothing was known of the ulterior designs of the Mormons, but the emigration southward continued.

1858 – 24 July, p. 8 – An anti-Mormon discourse was delivered at Tenby on Thursday, the 8^th instant, by a person who has returned from the Salt Lake. The speaker, after instancing his conversion, proceeded to describe his travels to the Salt Lake. From his narrative, it seemed that a system of robbery was practiced by the Mormon elders upon their deluded followers, cheating them of their provisions, cattle, and wagons; in fact, victimizing them in the most minute particulars. For be it remembered, the poor dupes are led to undertake their journeyings to the Salt Lake under the impression that the bourne once reached, food and raiment will be provided for them, and they will enjoy prolonged length of days. To keep the deluded victims from having their eyes opened, at each halting place they are particularly cautioned against holding any communication with the inhabitants, as those places are designated by the Mormon elders ‘hells;’ so that the Mormonite to reach his Salt Lake Zion, has to pass through three hells, a slight improvement on purgatory. In spite of the perils of hunger, perils by the wayside, incursions of the Pawnee Indians (who, by the way, the speaker seemed to say derive their name from their being mounted on ponies—more phonetic than accurate), the Salt Lake was reached. The twelve apostles, or leaders of the Mormons visited them, and told them if they saw them (the apostles) drunk, or thieving, etc., they were not to take any notice of it, and must not do the same. At length the Prophet came and dismissed them. The Prophet, however, kept his eyes roving sharply over the young women of the company, and then, very earnestly, said, ‘Have you any young woman who wants a place of service?’ Some of the fair Mormonites speak out, and then they are tampered with till they become first, second, or third wives of the apostles and prophets. Having spoken of the unscrupulous manner in which the deluded wights are bereft of their wives by the prophet Brigham Young, and of their being afraid to remonstrate lest they should be shot, the Chairman said: You have spoken of murders; have you known anyone shot or likely to be shot? The speaker said he had frequently heard of cases, on especially: a man named John Galt asked Brigham Young should he preach on ‘plurality of wives,’ but when Brigham heard his doctrine he said, ‘Shut your mouth, or you will soon have a revolver shot in you.’ The speaker then mentioned the fact of Brigham having sixty wives, marrying a mother and daughter, and entered into many other details which clearly show that in the Mormon Zion every bestiality which can tend to lower and degrade the human race is freely practiced.

1858 – 31 July, p. 3 – The Mormons. The news by this arrival is of very little importance. There is later intelligence from Utah. An officer, writing from gen. Johnston’s camp on Bear River, June 16, says the army would resume its march next day. Gen. Johnston had received an express from the Peace Commissioners, informing him that the army would be received peaceably by the Mormons. The general did not, however, feel any increased confidence in the peaceable attitude of the Saints, and the army was kept in readiness to repel any treacherous demonstrations. A proclamation had been issued to the people by General Johnston, in which he tells them that the army is as ready now to afford them assistance and protection as it was to oppose them when in rebellion against the government. It was thought this guarantee would cause many Mormons to evade the despotism of Young, who has sedulously inculcated the belief that the army was particularly hostile to them. The troops were in fine condition, and glad to be released from inaction. A dispatch from St. Joseph, dated 7, says that the Salt Lake mail of June 19 had arrived. General Johnston and his command was met at Echo Canyon, fifty miles from the city. The army was in excellent health and spirits. Brigham Young and his followers were still at Provo. Young had been to Salt Lake City to confer with Governor Cumming and the Peace Commissioners, but the result of the conference was not known. It was the established opinion that the Mormons would offer no resistance. Everything regarding the future movements of the Mormons was veiled in mystery. Rumors were still rife, however, that they meditate an occupancy of Sonora. Conjectures were made that the United States government intent to purchase the Mormon improvements in the South Platte.

Utah advices at St. Louis, on the 13^th, state that under date of June 18, the correspondent of the Republican says that the conditions agreed upon at the conference between Governor Cumming, the Peace Commissioners, and the heads of the Mormon Church, are, that the troops shall enter the city without opposition; that the civil officers shall be permitted to perform their duties without interruption; and that unconditional obedience shall be paid to the laws of the land; while, on the other hand, past offences are to be forgiven, as was stated in the President’s proclamation. All the houses in the city had been closed against both civil officers and strangers, except one, which was occupied by the Governor and his family. Everybody else was obliged to sleep in the wagons or on the ground.

1858 – 21 August, p. 8 – The Mormons. Their Book, Prophets, and Mysteries, which, as so many of our country men and women have been so sadly led away by this horrible imposture, we purpose to give in chapters, weekly.

The Manuscript Found. – Chapter I.

If ever the history of fanaticism be impartially written, it will be shown that beneath the crust of our superficial civilization, the miserable lune is scratching as vehemently to get through the surface, as in those ages which produced Mahomet; the Anabaptists (those red republicans of Christianity); the Muggletonians of Cromwell’s time, who awaited daily the destruction of the world; and the Fifth-monarchy men, who believed that the kingdom of Christ having then come, all human governments were to be immediately subverted.

We, of the nineteenth century, who so benignly look upon the religious agitators of the dark and half-lighted ages, as wanting the lenses of our progressed and matter-of-fact days to make out the truth, have yet witnessed the wretched blasphemy of the housemaid, Johanna Southcott, who, at forty years of age, so fixed the belief of her divine mission upon the minds of a vast number of persons of all classes of our enlightened society, that not only did she secure a comfortable fortune and the status of an embryo deity, but, credat Judaeus, is even now regarded in the same light by many unfortunate persons, who are living in a state of strained anxiety for the coming of the infant Shiloh; and the miserable delusion of Irving, of whom, however, notwithstanding the unfortunate rent in his brain, it must be recorded he was a clever and good man. Again, in almost every county in England, there may be found small coteries, whose staring eyes, listening ears, and gaping mouths, turn to a center figure, ambitious of canonization, who, but for that want of space in our Island, which necessitated the clearing of forests (amongst whose umbrageous shades alone can your fierce fanatic draw his inspirations), would practice those antics, which tend to overthrow both laws and government.

That such is not the case, however, in America, has been clearly seen by the progress of that intellectual nightmare which now sits so heavily upon her heart, and which, but for her vast prairies, forests, and mountainous districts, would, (if indeed it could ever have been born,) have been strangled at its birth. Probably, no event of modern times has given a greater proof of the utter want of soundness at the core of our present civilization, or the hollowness of our mental progress, than the avidity with which so many thousands, greedy for the marvelous, discontented with the present, hopeful for the future, and wearied with their matter-of-fact surroundings, have rushed forward to this mock Zion, as it were, throwing themselves backwards five hundred years, to get the sooner to the future. Never, with all our boastfulness, was human gullibility in a riper state; still the history of all fanatical movements bears a strong family likeness—to paraphrase Byron’s simile, a long line is thrown out, with a rogue at one end and fools at the other. Let a huge lie be courageously told, and well persevered in; let a firm eye and an unblushing front be presented to the wondering and credulous multitude, and, basilisk-like, it will fix it at its feet. Such has been the harlequinade of Mormonism. A potent lie changed a bad novel, that no publisher would purchase, into a holy book, that has since been stereotyped in the principal languages of Europe, and given the faith to four hundred and eighty thousands of people; and a pettifogging thief into a Prophet-king, whose name will go down to posterity as a representative man of his age, and forever remain a monument of the credulity of a considerable portion of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Between the first and second decades of the present century, some settlers in the then uninhabited forests of Ohio dug from the earth some human skeletons, jars of earthenware, terracotta vases beautifully carved, thin sheets of brass covered with hieroglyphics, held together by rings at their backs, and numerous articles elegantly carved in stone. The savans of the United States, who were then probably smarting under the impertinent taunts of their European brethren, who sneered at their want both of original authorship and antiquity, immediately agreed that they had stumbled upon the graves of a lost people. Speedily it came to be believed, that the buried nation had had some affinity with the lost ten tribes of Israel, and that the red men were their descendants; and as no one could prove either for or against, it became fair ground for speculation.

About the same time, there resided at Salem, Ashtabula County, one Solomon Spaulding, who, having failed as a preacher, gave himself up to the new antiquarian study, greatly to the disgust of his wife, who not only feared that the application would develop a mental disease under which he was laboring, but that he had better by far endeavor to get an honest living by the labor of his hands. Solomon, however, believed that the divine afflatus was upon him; he dreamt of the applause of future ages—moreover of the money to be obtained by composing a wondrous fiction—and set to work. The materials were within him and before him. He had been a preacher; he was well acquainted with the Bible; his past had been soured by failure, his future might be great; around him were many of the newly discovered antiquities, and his memory was saturated with the various theories concerning them. Moreover, his surroundings were dense forests, huge mountains, mighty rivers,—all of which inspired him with a desire to create a remarkable work.

With such materials and influences, it was easy to imagine the story of the lost tribes. It became his theme. The book was the history of the North American Indians, and purported to be a chronicle of the wars and migrations. They were described as descendants of the patriarch Joseph, and their fortunes traced for upwards of one thousand years, from the age of Jedekiah, king of Judah, down to the 15th century of the Christian era. Further it professed to be a compilation by different authors, under various circumstances, during a period of a thousand years; the last compiler being Mormon, who buried it in the earth. Perfectly uniform in style, it is like a mere chronological tale—without imagination, invention, or pictures of life and matters, to color the picture; here and there, however, the monotony is broken by the insertion of scriptural passages.

The work finished, Spaulding entitled it “The Manuscript Found,” and took it with him to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; where he was introduced to a printer and publisher of the name of Patterson, “who,” says a recent biographer of Joseph Smith, “saw and acknowledged the genius that could invent such a plot, and carry it so triumphantly through, as was disclosed in the perusal of the manuscript, although he failed to obtain it for publication on any other than Spaulding’s own terms, and as these would not answer his purpose, he contented himself with the privilege given by Spaulding, of taking a copy for his amusement; and he was wont to read copious extracts from this to others. One of his journeymen, Sidney Rigdon, who was a young itinerant Campbellite preacher, became fascinated by its oddity, and protested it sounded vastly like truth with all its absurdities. . . . . The author of the “Manuscript Found,” removed to Amity County, New York, and died in 1816. When his wife collected the original copy of the MS., together with other waste papers of her husband, and packing them away in a trunk, left them with the deceased relations in Otsego County, New York, where they were destroyed as waste and worthless papers. Rigdon soon after left Patterson’s employment for other printing offices in the city: occasionally borrowing the copy of Spaulding’s MS. for the amusement of his fellow-workmen. In 1826, Patterson died, leaving the manuscript in the possession of Rigdon, who had borrowed it a few days previously. He, however, made his possession of it no secret, and there are many at this hour (1855) who have seen and heard Rigdon read from the “Manuscript Found.” Rigdon, in the year after the death of Patterson, wandered away in search of work and a congregation ignorant enough to appreciate his talents.”

We have given the whole of this extract as additional evidence, that the manuscript was given by Rigdon to Joseph Smith. That, however, the “Manuscript Found” is identical with the Book of Mormon, is proven, by the depositions of Spaulding’s widow, brother, and partner, who have sworn to the identity, and who with others, have frequently heard the enthusiastic author read it aloud.

1858 – 28 August, p. 8 – Chapter II – The Prophet Joseph Smith.

Remarkable as were the circumstances which, by impressing themselves upon the sickly brain of Solomon Spaulding, gave rise to the Mormon Bible, no less so were those that surrounded the youth of the future prophet, and by means of which he engendered and developed his huge lie.

In 1814, there resided in Vermont, U.S., a certain Joseph Smith, with his family of four sons, all of whom seem to have been known as Loafers; that is, people who obtain their living by any means rather than the sweat of their brows. Of this worthy family, an American author, fitting his style to the assumed, rather than the real, character of the embryo prophet and brothers, says: “Cradled at the foot of the Green Mountains, the boys were left to roam where they listed, and they explored the deep ravine and narrow gullies which sing the mountain stream, now in soft murmurs, and anon dashing from crag to crag down their rocky beds. Then, again, they clambered up the side of some peak, whose summit was capped with snow, and from their eyrie looked out over broad lands, towards where the ocean stretched back to the horizon. No eagle from his height ever gazed with greater indifference on the busy hives of mortals on the plains below, than this half-tamed brood, who, bare-footed, and with their coarse scanty garments, hanging in tatters around them, spent their younger years, their passions undisciplined, but the very solitudes and grandeur of their mountain home instilling into their souls an awe of what they knew not, for they had never a teacher, save the calm majesty of the heavens, the still sublimity of the silent forest, or the warring of the elements, which, with their mighty force, tore the centennial oaks from their beds, and hurled them, as if they had been straws, to the earth.

They knew not that it was the soul within which longed to burst from its debasing bondage, and put to usury the talents entrusted to their keeping. They knew that much knowledge was hidden from them, but they turned bewildered from the laborious path that should strike the rock of ignorance, that silence might gush forth and envelop their way in a halo of light, whose rays could unlock the portal of truth, and before which ignorance and superstition fly back to their misty cavern. They had been apt scholars in the idle fancies that mark the ignorant and debased of every nation and clime. The moan of the forest, as it was rocked by the gale, warned them of approaching disaster, while the rivulet, as it rippled over its pebbly bed, or leaped from rock to rock, whispered words of hope, or of furious tempests. Every shade in the wax or wane of the moon had its language. while the stars were made potent auxiliaries in their superstitious creed. They had innumerable evils to propitiate—from the howling of a dog, to the whisk of a fox across their way, were so many omens of evil. They, with wonder and terror, saw the ignis fatuus dance along the marsh, and believed it the perturbed spirits of such as had been silently robbed of life, but who could not sleep in the unknown beds until they had called down vengeance on the murderer. The flitting, unsteady, phosphorescent light that united its flashes as night gathered around, they feared, as genii keeping zealous watch over immense treasures, which they believed would fall into the hands of any one who could devise a way to propitiate its spirit guardian. Many a night, between the witching hours of twelve and one, when there were neither moon nor stars to spy upon them, had they stolen out to unearth the hidden treasure; but as often, they averred, the gnomes that guarded it thwarted them, and they were forced to do, as they always had, resort to their wits, which was a reserved capital to draw upon for support.” In other words, steal cattle or any other property that came in their way.

The end of all which was, that, to avoid Lynch law, Joseph Smith, with his clever and poetic family, were compelled to move to Palmyra, in Wayne County, New York.

The chief hope of the elder Smith, in removing to Palmyra, seems to have been to discover the treasures tradition said had been buried in the neighborhood by the famous buccaneers; and by still more questionable means this indolent, vagabond family lived, till the general odium became so great that they were compelled to seek a new field in Manchester, Ontario County, about eight miles from Palmyra, where the elder Joseph secured the possession of several acres of land, and turned his attention to farming.

The embryo prophet, however, could not bring his mind to the tilling of the soil, or subjugate his propensity for the wanderings which he now extended among the Alleghany Mountains, still in search of gold, till the name of Joe Smith, the money digger, grew familiar to the people of the adjoining counties.

From earliest childhood he had practiced upon the credulity of the ignorant by a pretended power of divination. More, he asserted that he had revealed to him in a vision the veritable spot where Captain Kidd had concealed his treasures, and, moreover, that he had, in his possession, a transparent stone that would reveal fated destinies and concealed treasures; moreover, he found believers among the credulous multitude, one of whom was a man named Stowell, who invited him to his house, provided him with implements and money, and set him to work to bring to light treasures said to be hidden in the earth in Bainbridge, New York. The legend said there was such a treasure concealed, but although the young divine brough his seer-stone and divining rod, the attempt proved a failure, and Stowell lost his money.

For some time, Joe picked up a living by these means: he had discovered what to him was better than a seer-stone, viz., the weaker side of his neighbors. Had not the popular belief been strong in the legends of the buried treasures, Joe must have taken to working or stealing, either of which would have removed him from his vagabondizing habits, the first by ensuring him a lodging in the penitentiary, the latter by occupying his mind and hands.

Manchester, however, soon becoming too warm for our hero, he visited Palmyra, the inhabitants of which place were at the time agitated by one of those religious revivals which at intervals have broken out with more or less advantage in the United States. The public credulity was aroused; the general mind was prepared and eager to receive any, even the wildest revelations that might be put forth. The war of sects was going on, the representatives of each claiming to be heard. It was easy for the youthful but practiced diviner to adapt his visions to spiritual, in place of material things, and even then he thought to lead, to establish a religion of his own. To do this he must startle by a vision. First in his own family, and then to the astonished people, he declared that, while in fervent prayer, “he had seen a pillar of light about the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually upon him. It no sooner appeared, than he found himself delivered from the enemy which held him bound. When the light rested upon him, he saw two personages, whose brightness and glory defied all description, standing alone in the air, which heavenly messengers declared all existing sects to be wrong, and forbade him to join any of them.” The reputation, however, of Joseph was too well known for him to be treated otherwise than as an impostor. Moreover, he was obliged to disappear from Palmyra in order to escape the police who were then on the look-out for him, for, it is said, “upon more than suspicion of having put into circulation certain moneys unauthorized by law.” —Handy Helps to Useful Knowledge.

(To be continued.)

1858 – 4 September, p. 8 – Chapter III – The Golden Bible.

Joseph fled to the woods, rifle in hand, where he remained for some considerable time; and it was during this absence that he must have met with Rigdon, the possessor of the Spaulding manuscript, who, it is supposed, must have taught him to read. It is certain, however, that by the time his friends had made arrangements with the authorities to permit his return, Joseph had mastered the contents of the romance. Having now an opportunity of taking a lead among the quarreling religionists, his first effort was to declare that, in a vision, an angel had commanded him henceforth to be guided in all his doings by the command which should be given him by the Lord. Then acting upon the hint in the “Manuscript Found,” which purported to have been buried, and seizing as a fitting opportunity a time when a report was current that a golden bible had been found in Canada, he promulgated a report that the angel had revealed to him some golden plates, upon which were recorded holy characters. This report being industriously promulgated by his confederate Hyrum Smith, his father, a man named McKnight, and Rigdon, aroused the indignation of the populace, who proceeded to his home with unmistakable intentions. Joe, however, met them undauntedly.

“How dare you, a strolling forger, thief, and vagabond, be guilty of such blasphemous impiety?” said one.

“Let us hear him out,” said others whose mind had been prepared for the marvelous by the excitement of the times.

Then it was that the daring impostor probed to its center the credulity of his listener, by delivering himself to his manifesto.

“It is but little I can tell you,” he began, in a subdued tone. “Four years ago, while alone, two singularly beautiful personages appeared to me, and announced themselves as messengers from the throne of God, sent to reveal to me that I had been chosen to make known to man the errors of their faith,—a faith which was offensive in the sight of God,—and teach them the truth of the plan of salvation, which had been lost for ages through the stubborn willfulness of man. I had long been troubled in my mind at the sinfulness of my own heart, before that hour; but no sooner did these messengers announce to me the mission I was to fulfil, than all doubts ceased, and I felt my heart rising in adoration before my Maker. A few days passed, when I began to feel that I was passed sinning; pride entered my heart, and I gloried not at the good I should accomplish, but at the honor and fame my mission would bring me. Then I began to be again miserable, when the angels re-appeared, who chided me for the wickedness of my thoughts, forgave them, and then told me that the records of the lost tribes of Israel were buried in the hill of Cumorah, where they were deposited fourteen hundred years ago by Moroni, the son of the prophet Mormon, having previously engraved them on plates of gold; the prophet Mormon assuring his son Moroni, that, after the lapse of fourteen hundred years, a Gentile nation should recover them, and through the truth of their prophecies, be turned to the true worship of God. The angel gave me the directions by which I could find the spot indicated, and with joy I hastened to lay bare the holy treasure. On the west side of the hill, where the storms of ages had beaten against it, I dug down by the side of an immense rock, where, below the surface, about two feet, I laid bare a square marble box, so firmly cemented that water could not penetrate its interior. At the sight of the box I knelt in prayer and adoration to the great Jehovah, and my heart was melted by divine love. With reverence, I laid my hand on the lid, when it flew open by an invisible hand, and beneath I saw plates of shining gold, covered over with strange characters, and on the tops of these lay two thick glasses set in a rim of gold. At the sight of the golden plates my heart became steeled by avarice, and I resolved to use the gold; but no sooner was the thought born in my heart than an invisible hand struck me to the earth, and the ground gathered over the box and its contents. The air became filled with whispering voices, while cloud-like forms flitted around me. Ever and anon balls of fire hissed above me, while fiery serpents shot athwart the sky, and the sun paled in their fiery light. These died away, when the hosts of heaven, with their golden chariots and myriads of purified spirits, led on by the patriarchs and prophets, passed before me, among whom Mormon, the last of the prophets, paused and addressed me thus:—

“‘Take heart, O Joseph; for in thee shall the prophecies be fulfilled; and thou shalt, if thou overcomes the evil in thine own heart, reign among us.’

“The words of Mormon comforted me; and when this procession passed, darkness fell around, and groans and shrieks filled the air. Trembling with affright I looked around, and approaching I saw Satan and his friends amidst clouds of flame, the smoke of which rolled high as the heavens. And as they drew near and encompassed me, while cries and blasphemies rent the air, I threw myself in the dust, and besought aid from the great Jehovah. A moment passed, when a rushing sound, as of many winds, was heard, and Satan fled before the angel who stood before me, crying, ‘Arise, O Joseph! chosen prophet of the Lord, who delighted in thee, inasmuch as thou hast turned to Him, and scorned the evil! arise, and go thy way, for, notwithstanding thou has sinned in thy heart when thine eyes beheld the word which was shown thee, thou shalt yet abide four more years in the world before thou shalt possess it. Go thy way and sin no more!” With these words he left me, and I returned sorrowing to my home. Did you know all the bitterness and sorrow I have borne during those four years, you would think more leniently of me now, for there was time enough for me to reflect upon the glorious mission I had delayed by the sinfulness of my heart, and to fortify it against a repetition. Four years to-day the angel appeared to me while in the field at work, and said:—

“‘Arise! beloved of the Lord! and bring forth the word of thy God, and proclaim it to the world!

“As I, at the command, went forth, the heavenly messenger went before me, and stood over the place where it was entombed; and when I had thrown out the earth, the lid of the marble casket flew open of itself, and there, as I have seen it before, were the precious contents. At that moment my former sin rushed over my mind, and with fear and trembling I prostrated myself in the dust, while drops of sweat, wrung by the agony of fear that I should again sin, gathered over me, as I cried, ‘Get hence, ye powers of darkness, I know ye not.’ Then the angel fanned me with a wave of his wing, and, smiling benignly, raised the treasure, and placing it in my arms, said, ‘Go, proclaim it to the world, for thou hast been found worthy, and He that sent thee will fill thy mouth with wisdom, whereby thou shalt found a congregation of true worshippers here below!’ And he ceased speaking, he disappeared, and I was alone: but not alone in spirit, for the comforter was with me. The things I teach were given me to proclaim, and who among you will dare raise his voice against the command of Jehovah? Who shall dare dictate to his Maker the instrument he shall use for the furtherance of his glory of His kingdom? He that has the hardihood, let him go up to battle against the host of heaven; as for me, I must do my Lord’s bidding.”

This was a very fair beginning. It told upon the people, whom it sent home wondering,—some of it could be true; others, the greater part, at the clever effrontery of the daring vagabond. Joe had, however, plumbed the depth of human gullibility so accurately by the promulgation of his one huge fabrication, that he felt his success to depend upon one great plunge, and that into a sea of lies, and so wallow in them till they had eaten into a sea of lies, and so wallow in them till thy had eaten into and become part of his own nature. Henceforth, his greatest effort would be to school himself into the belief of his own imposture; and we believe his doing so was the cause of his success; for credulity, like courage and gaping, is catching.

By means of the Urim and Thummim, Joe began to translate the golden plates. He had not, however, proceeded far before he discovered, from his own translation of the prophecy of Nephi, that three witnesses, besides himself, should behold the book by the power of God, and should know and testify its truth; consequently, in June 1829, the Lord gave a revelation, through Joe, to Oliver Cowdry, Daniel Whitman, and Martin Harris, that if they would exercise faith, they would have a view of the plates.

This, indeed, was a very useful revelation, for in the first place, as Joe could not write, it was necessary to employ Cowdry as amanuensis, and Martin Harris was the only man among his new converts that had money, which would be required for the printing of the translation. When, however, the translation was ready, they took it to Palmyra, secured the copyright, and agreed with a Mr. Grandson to print 5000 copies for the sum of 300 dollars. Poor Harris, however, was not willing to part with so much money; indeed, it was not until Joe had frightened him with the following revelation that he would advance it. Joe was getting used to blasphemy. “I command thee, Martin Harris,” says the revelation, “that thou shalt not covet thine own property, but impart it freely to the printing of the ‘Book of Mormon.’ Impart a portion of thy property—yea, even part of thy land. Pay the debt thou hast contracted with the printers.” So frightened was the old gentleman, that he sold his farm to pay the printer, and the Book of Mormon was published in 1830.

To this Bible is appended the following declaration:—“We declare, with words of soberness, that an angel of God came down from heaven, and he brought and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates and the engravings thereon.” Eight persons testified to the truth of this, they being the only persons privileged to view the plates. Afterwards, it is said, “according to arrangements, the messenger called for them, and he (the angel) has them in his charge to the present day.”

Now, although the publication of this book did not, as Joseph had predicted, at once revolutionize the world, it obtained many converts, and some with money. Now was the time for revelations, and they began to come fast. The first three bear immediately upon the temporal interests of Joe. “It is meet that my servant, Joseph Smith, jun., should have a house built in which to live and translate.” If ye desire the mysteries of my kingdom, provide for him food and raiment, and whatsoever thing he needeth.”

The third, however, was particularly adapted to Joe’s indolent habits—it is, “In temporal labor thou shalt not have strength, for that is not thy calling.” Converts came in freely, and Joe now hungered for spiritual sovereignty, and a new revelation appointed him prophet, and commanded all the Church to give heed unto his words, and, moreover, declared through him that all existing sects were sinful and in error, and their members were required to seek admittance by baptism into the New Church.”

In accordance with this revelation, he proceeded to organize the Church of the Latter-day Saints, the initiatory steps being for the first twelve converts or confederates to baptize each other in a neighboring stream, in the presence of some hundreds of persons, who had been drawn together by the novelty of the scene. —Handy Helps to Useful Knowledge.

1858 – 11 September, p. 3 – Later news from Utah was received by the arrival of the Salt Lake mail at Leavenworth. All the Mormons who were able had returned from Provo, and matters were apparently quiet. Brigham Young, fearing assassination, as was alleged, had shut himself up in his residence under a strong guard of his followers. General Johnston was making preparations for going into permanent quarters. Colonel Loring, with three companies of the 3^rd Infantry and 100 riflemen, had departed for New Mexico.

1858 – 11 September, p. 7 – The Mormons at Utah.

An American Correspondent of the Times describes very graphically the state of the Mormons at Salt Lake, which he has visited in company with the United States’ expedition. The following are extracts from his letter:—

The Deserted City.—When we arrived at Salt Lake we found the city almost deserted. Under orders from Brigham the entire population had vacated their homes, and marched to the southern settlements, whether they desired to do so or not. There was not a single woman left in the town, except the wife of Governor Cumming. All the rest had been compelled to leave, the leaders having declared their fixed purpose not to let one of them remain here to witness the entrance of the army and be “corrupted and demoralized” by its officers. The houses were all closed, the window sashes removed, and windows and doors closed up with rough boards. Scarce a human being could be seen upon the streets, for in the entire city there were only two or three hundred men left to guard the property and apply the torch if orders should come to do so. A single restaurant—one in which Brigham is well known to be personally interested—had been fitted-up and opened for the reception of the Peace commissioners and other Gentiles.

The Leaders of the People.—I found Brigham Young, a well-presenced man of 57 years of age, of medium height, of figure rather inclined to corpulence, with sandy complexion, and a vulgar sensual mouth. He was well, but plainly dressed, rather austere in manner, and evidently fully conscious of the necessity of maintaining a sort of royal dignity, becoming a prophet. I should judge him to be shrewd in worldly affairs, a good business manager, a judge of human nature, and capable of adapting it to his will. The cast of his mind, however, is evidently low and vulgar. While shrewd and cunning, quick and ready in the application of what powers of mind he possesses, the prophet is by no means a wise man nor profound; and in discussion with an ordinarily skillful opponent, he fails utterly. Nevertheless, his powers over the people is limitless. His nod is law, and the ignorant masses of his followers of his followers looked upon him as almost a God. I had the pleasure of hearing him deliver a sermon on the Sabbath, in the course of which he quite satisfied me that I was not mistaken in my estimate of his mental caliber. His discourse was rambling and vulgar, although his manner was popular and forcible. He never rose to the dignity of an argument, but all his positions depended for success upon the blind acceptance of his own dictates. He referred to the army of the United States as ruffians, and then made a lame effort to cover up the blunder he had sense enough to perceive that he had perpetrated. He spoke of the President of the United States as “an old dotard, whose friends allow that he ought to have been elected twenty-five years ago, when he had a little sense about him, if ever;” and in urging the “sisters” not to hurry their husbands back to their homes, told them, if it made their heads ache to live intents, to “go out and get a chip to put on their heads.”

But Brigham is a model of elegance and refinement compared with Heber C. Kimball, the next in the priesthood. He is only a few days older than Brigham, is tall, full-formed, with short sandy hair and whiskers, florid complexion, and small, cunning, snake-like black eyes. No one knows with certainty how many wives Brigham has, but Heber pleads guilty to about forty, by whom he has only about fifty-eight living children, having lost half-a-dozen. His reputation as a husband and father is bad, and many are the secretly-whispered tales of his jealous cruelty to his wives, some of whom are younger than his first-born child. He is certainly the most vulgar and blasphemous wretch it has been my misfortune to meet. Excepting the use of the name of God there is no form of blasphemy which is not familiar to his lips. He assured me that he loved his friends and not his enemies. Being rebuked for this sentiment by a Gentile bystander, he declared that he followed the Scripture, nevertheless, and prayed for his enemies. This sentiment elicited commendation, when Heber continued, “Yes, I pray they may all go to h_ll and be damned.” This, let me assure you, is a fair sample of the style of language employed by this second member of the priesthood, in the pulpit and out of it. Another illustration of his spirit, and I leave Brother Heber. He was asked if he would resent an insult by violence; and he responded, “The Scriptures tell us that if smitten upon one cheek we must turn the other also. Well, I’ll do that; but if a ma smites me on the other cheek too, let him look out for a—of a lick back.”

The Female Mormons.—While at Provo I had good opportunity to observe the condition of the female population. As a class, the women appear to be discontented and unhappy. Perhaps I should discriminate more carefully, and say that the old women, whose days of pleasure and wordly hope have passed, seem to be happy, the middle-aged keenly sensitive and miserable, and the young reckless, listless, and hopeless, having nothing in common and painfully conscious that their natural affections must ever be stifled, and the love they would normally share alone with a husband be divided with several feminine partners. The women are all meanly clad—many of them having scarcely sufficient to cover their nakedness. This arises not merely from poverty, but from the fact that, in consequence of the merchants having been driven away from the valley, there have been no fabrics here to be purchased fit for female apparel. A friend of mine, an officer of the army, while passing along a by-road a day or two since, came suddenly upon a party of a dozen or more women, young and old, returning to their homes from the temporary refuge at Provo, on foot, who had evidently taken the by-road to avoid observation. These were almost destitute of upper clothing, and had blankets wrapped about their forms like Indian squaws to cover their nakedness. At sight of the stranger they fled from the road like frightened deer, conscious of their destitute condition and unfitness for the gaze of strangers. This is no fancy picture, but plain matter of fact. The men are excessively jealous, which makes it difficult to get opportunity to converse with the women. I have been able, however, to steal brief interviews with a few of them, two being “spiritual” wives of polygamous husbands. Slight as was the opportunity to converse with them, they found time to express their secret abhorrence of the whole system, and their earnest desire to be rescued from its degradations.

Mormon Industry and its Results.—During my sojourn here I have taken much pains to form a correct judgment of the moral standing of the Mormon community. That they have good qualities is evident to the most casual observer. They certainly are very industrious, and have accomplished an amount of work in the shape of public improvements almost incredible. The whole country occupied by them is intersected by ditches in every direction to carry the water from the mountains through their fields. In Great Salt Lake City alone they have erected dwellings are all constructed of well pressed and sun-dried brick. Though exceedingly simple in form, and poorly finished, they have involved an immense amount of labor. The dwellings of Young, Kimball, and many others are superior, and their grounds are enclosed by walls of cobble stone laid in cement, ten or twelve feet high, from three to five feet thick at the base, and twelve to eighteen inches at the top. The Temple Block—a square of ten acres—is surrounded by a similar wall, constructed in panels, and handsomely plastered with a hard mastic, of which sharp gravel is a chief ingredient. Within these walls stand the Tabernacle, capable of seating nearly 3000 persons, the Endowment House in which the Masonic mysteries of Mormonism are enacted, and very extensive workshops occupied by operatives in the construction of the Temple. The foundations of the latter building are of the most massive and substantial description. They have only been carried up to the earth’s surface, yet have cost over a million of dollars paid out of the tithing fund. It has evidently been the policy of their crafty leader to keep the people always at work, foreseeing that this was the best method to keep them from thinking, and thus discovering the gigantic imposture of which they are the victims. Some years ago—I think in 1854—there was a very large immigration into the valley; so large that there was nothing for them to do, and they were in danger of starvation and revolution. What did Brigham? Bolt his doors and store the tithing house with arms for its defense? Not so. He suddenly discovered that a huge wall, entirely around the city site, of six square miles, was necessary to defend the settlement against Indian depredations. The work was ordered at once and was commenced. A deep ditch or moat was dug, and the earth taken therefrom mixed with water and straw, and laid up in a wall six feet thick at the base, pierced with loopholes for musketry. I should estimate that five or six miles of this work were completed, and then abandoned and left to fall into ruin. It had accomplished its purpose, however; had furnished an excuse for feeding the revolutionary material, and is now acknowledged, openly, to have had no other object than to afford employment. The mass of the people, too, are honest and conscientious, paying their debts promptly, observing family worship morning and evening, living quietly and peaceably with each other (with the exception of the jealous differences in the double-wived households), and in all other respects, under ordinary circumstances, living the lives of good citizens and neighbors. To all outward appearance the best order prevails; but it is evident that it is the good order of despotism, a priestly despotism, more thorough and unquestioned than the despotism of Russia, because it controls men through their religious prejudices and superstitious fears.

Proposed Mormon Migration.—Some weeks ago an agent arrived here on behalf of Colonel H. L. Kinney, of Mosquito celebrity, who proposed selling to Brigham and the Church 3,000,000 acres of land in the Mosquito territory, claimed to be held by him under the Sheppard Haley grants. Brigham publicly declares that he has absolutely and emphatically rejected the proposition, that he likes this country well enough, and intends to live and die in these mountains. I do not believe him sincere in this. He is now making strenuous efforts with a view to the admissions of Utah into the Union as a State, under the impression that when that is done his Legislature can legalize polygamy, and so save this “domestic institution” from suppression by the Courts. The movement will unquestionably fail, because public sentiment in the United States is too active against polygamy to admit of the admission of Utah into the Union with a people who are not in the least inclined to tolerate it, even though they did not make it a matter of “religion” and “conscientious duty.” When this failure becomes a fixed fact, Brigham will begin to look for some new “Zion,” unless in the meantime he becomes satisfied that Congress will not interfere with polygamy. He long ago declared that Mormonism must have a political phase; and a future empire, with its foreign ambassadors, in a dream frequently foreshadowed already in the addresses delivered before “literary” societies in the valley, where the Queen’s English is murdered without remorse. It is every day becoming more and more apparent that Mormonism cannot thrive in the midst of a Republic, because the system is patriarchal, and necessarily a theocracy, utterly inconsistent with the government of the American Union. Brigham, I know, acknowledges this, and I have reason to believe that, notwithstanding his positive declaration adverse to Kinney’s proposition, he is secretly entertaining it, and proposes to send agents there to examine the country and its resources. If the Mormons ever get there, or within the borders of any other weakly State, they will promptly depose the existing Government and establish that of the Church.

1858 – 11 September, p. 8 – Chapter IV – The Church of the Latter-day Saints.

Then, by the aid of Sidney Rigdon, the printer-preacher, Joe commenced to organize a religious society, which for compactness and that graduated subordination throughout, upon which durability depends, has not had its equal since the Society of Jesus was molded into form by Ignatius Loyola. So well was it knit together, yet of such elastic materials, that dissensions from its own body, famine, disease, terrible persecutions, and constant migrations across thousands of miles of savage and almost desolate territory, have but strengthened and developed a handful of fanatics into a powerful social state, that now not only demands but positively exercises sovereignty in its own right; and moreover, aspires to extend the circle of its baneful influence around the whole lobe. The spiritual leaders were classified into prophets, apostles, patriarchs, evangelists, elders, deacons, pastors, preachers, besides a two-fold priesthood of the former having been conferred upon Joseph by John the Baptist, whom he asserted had appeared to him.

Finding his little kingdom growing around him, Joe turned his eyes to the West. Kirkland, Ohio, was chosen, and thither they repaired, where he incorporated a school for the teaching of Mormonism, opened a bank in which to deposit the vast contributions that were daily pouring in, enthroned himself as a prophet king, and commanded his disciples to build a temple unto the Lord, which should rival St. Peter’s at Rome. “For-from here,” said he, “the candle of the Lord shall never be removed, but shall abide until the second coming of Christ, and shall receive Him, King of Zion, in her gates.”

From this place agents were sent into Europe; and—with deep regret we write it—with considerable success.

To trace the causes of the success of this miserable impostor, we must remember the wretched position in which Joe had been placed from his youth. One of a family of depredators, he had ever been an outlaw from society. The class he sprung from was numerous, though scattered; Joe had warm sympathies; he set up a rallying standard, all were welcome. For the class of persons welcomed by him we will take an extract from a work, the general truth of which we see little reason to doubt. “‘The way of truth is so plain,’ said Smith, ‘that a fool can point it out as well as anybody else. Let those who are considered fools by their neighbors and relatives come to us, we will make them kings and priests.’ And certainly, a multitude of fools accepted the invitation. ‘Let a man come to me, believe my gospel, and preach it, and all his sins shall be forgiven. He shall have riches, honors, and all the wives he wishes for in this world, and in the next, life everlasting.’ And thieves, and cut-throats, and swindlers, accepted the offer.

“Mrs. Murray, one day, gave me the history of several Mormon leaders of this latter class. One had served ten years of his life in the state prison. He had been convicted of robbing the mail, but before he was taken had concealed the money, and when his term was expired joined the Mormons with his booty. Anyone who brought gold to the coffers of the Church was welcomed, and so this desperado was immediately taken to the embrace of the faithful; and two or three beautiful girls, or girls that would have been beautiful, with suitable dress and adornments, were bestowed on him for spiritual wives.

“Another had been convicted of murder, though subsequently pardoned by the governor of the state. Others had been convicted and punished for grand larceny and other crimes, but their delinquencies were forbidden to be spoken of, and everyone was commanded to treat them with respect. Other classes of persons, chiefly the aged, the young, and the imbecile, were attracted to Mormonism by the clever jugglery by which Joe pretended to restore the dead to life, heal sick persons, interpret dreams, speak in unknown tongues, and cast out devils, the mere imitation tricks of a clever monkey, and which have been attempted to be accounted for by ascribing to this impostor a knowledge of animal magnetism long before it was popularly known in the United States.

“For a time all seemed couleur de rose—the industry and determination of the Saints soon created a prosperous colony. Converts came in, Mormon communities arose under the name of Stakes, but dependent on Kirkland, in various parts of the county. Their fanaticism and depredatory habits caused the people to rise against them; and even Kirkland became too warm to hold them. Fortunately, however, Joe had a revelation that there was a Zion in Jackson County, to which he commanded all the Saints to repair and purchase lands. 1,200 obeyed his command, and proceeded to prepare the wilderness for the reception of their lord and master. This expulsion—for expulsion it was—took place in 1834: but as Joe had declared that the candle of the Lord should never be removed from Kirkland, it was necessary, in order that he should not be deemed a false prophet, to bring forth another revelation that should meet the case. Here it is—“Verily I say unto you, I have decreed that your bretheren which have been scattered shall return. . . . Behold the redemption of Zion must needs come by power. Therefore I will raise up unto my people a man who shall lead them like as Moses led the children of Israel. . . . Verily I say unto you, that my servant, Baurak Ale, is the man. . . . Therefore let my servant, Baurak Ale, say unto the strength of my house, my young men and the middle aged, gather yourselves together unto the Land of Zion. . . . And let all the churches send up wise men, with their moneys and purchase lands, and I have commanded them. And inasmuch as mine enemies come against you, to drive you from my goodly land, which I have consecrated to be the land of Zion. Ye shall curse them; and whomsoever ye curse, I will curse. . . . It is my will that my servant, Parley Pratt, and my servant Lyman Wright, should not return until they have obtained companies to go up into the land of Zion by tens, or by twenties, or by fifties; or by an hundred, until they have obtained to the number of five hundred, of the strength of my house. Behold, this is my will; but men do not always do my will; therefore, if you cannot obtain five hundred, seek diligently that peradventure you may obtain three hundred; and if ye cannot obtain three hundred, seek diligently that peradventure ye may obtain one hundred.”

After the expulsion of the Saints, Joe lived in clover at Kirkland, chiefly in the character of banker; the coffers, however, not being sufficiently filled for the wants of the Smith family, the establishment failed, and the Prophet and his suite beat an ignominious retreat.

Some months after, Joe and the companions of his flight from Kirkland made their appearance in Independence, Missouri, from which place he issued his mandates to his disciples, commanding them to emigrate thither without delay. The order was obeyed: the people of Missouri hospitable and friendly, and thousands of the Saints, flocked to the new Zion, which, within four years from their expulsion from Kirkland, they had converted into a prosperous city. Their prudence, however, not being equal to their industry, complaints became common of their strange doings; the people became alarmed, and rose against the Prophet and his saints. War to the knife was proclaimed; Joe had grown bold, and, like Mahomet, declared that he would march through the land, crying “Joseph Smith or the sword.” The Governor called out his troops; the Mormons stood no chance against their numbers, and under a promise of good treatment from the Governor, Joe surrendered, and was taken to prison, there to lie till he should be tried for his outrage upon the laws. Joe’s star, however, had not as yet paled; he made his escape from jail, and fled to Illinois, where he found the remnant of his persecuted proselytes, who had been compelled to cross the bleak prairies exposed to the snow storms of November, with no other shelter than their wagons. 12,000 crossed the Mississippi; they were well received by the people of Illinois, and for the third time they sought to establish their precious Zion.—Handy Helps to Useful Knowledge.

(To be continued.)

1858 – 18 September, p. 8 – Chapter V – The Building of Nauvoo—Death of the Prophet, Joe.

For the third time the compact organization of the Saints had resisted all attempts to scatter, and therefore to destroy, them as a society. They had not been settled in their new Zion, Nauvoo, eighteen months, before 2,000 homes had been completed; and fields teeming with grain, warehouses and manufactures, betokened all the symptoms of a busy population; the latter, indeed, had increased to 15,000, which was added to day by day as emigrants arrived, chiefly from England, and as each brough grist to the mill. Joe began to assume the outward trappings, as well as the solid wealth and comfort, of a prophet-king. New revelations summoned all the converts to bring their gold and silver and their precious stones, and the summons was responded to heartily. Then another opportune revelation came, that a great house was to be built for the Prophet;—“Let it be built in my name, and let my servant, Joseph Smith, and his house, have place therein from generation to generation, saith the Lord; and let the name of the house be called Nauvoo House.”

Then also was commenced a splendid temple, that should outvie that of Solomon. The authorities of the Federal Government made Joseph Mayor of Nauvoo and General of the Militia, which numbered some 4,000 highly disciplined troops. Now revelling in wealth at the head of a small army, and absolute sovereign over many thousands of a thriving and industrious people, the ex-Chief had reached the height of human greatness. His power intoxicated him; he became fond of parading the city in his splendid General’s uniform, and became a candidate for the Presidentship of the United States; and thus, as he lived for five years, he might have remained to the end of his days, but for the one revelation, which has brought upon him and his people the contempt and odium of the civilised world. He had long secretly encouraged what he nicknamed celestial marriages, declaring that “it has been revealed that the measure of a man’s wealth, power, and dominion in the world to come, will depend upon the number of his wives, all of whom will continue to belong to him after the resurrection, if they have been sealed to him by the President.” This, however, had been his means to an end—viz., polygamy—which, had he openly declared to be a part of his faith in the earlier years of his career, would have ensured him and his elders the penalties of Lynch law. Now, however, that he believed himself to be endowed with something like sovereign power, the vicious sensuality of the man broke through the Prophet, and in 1843 he had the following pleasant revelation for his wife:—

“Let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those who have been given unto my servant, Joseph Smith, and who are virtuous and pure before me. . . . . Therefore it shall be lawful in me, if she receive not this law, for him to receive all whatsoever I the Lord his God will give him. . . . . And he is exempt from the law of Sarah, who administered unto Abraham to take Hagar to wife.”

For ten years, however, the Mormon chiefs had practiced polygamy secretly. It had been suspected only by the people through whose cities and villages they had passed in their various migrations, and who lost their wives, daughters, and sisters. Now it was openly proclaimed and practiced; and as it was known to be one of the chief tenets of the sect that it was lawful for Saints to take, by any means, the property of the Gentiles, the latter very naturally began to look after the safety of their families, but not before numbers of females had been taken by fraud or force from their homes, to swell the harems of the Mormon Elders.

As might be expected, a terrible animosity grew in the hearts of the once-hospitable people of Illinois—they arose en masse. “Husbands whose wives’ purity had been poisoned, or their delicacy insulted; fathers, whose daughters had been stolen or seduced; brothers and sisters, who had lost a mother or a sister; farmers, who had lost their cattle and grain; merchants who had depredations committed on their goods:—all joined in the cry for the extermination of the Mormons. The whole state arose and demanded of Governor Ford to execute the laws upon the delinquents, or they would take law in their own hands. The Governor called upon the leaders to surrender to the law; and at last even the Mormons themselves, fearing that Nauvoo would be sacked by the enraged people, urged their prophet to yield, if his safety was secured. There was no alternative, and Joseph complied, and with Hyrum and Samuel Smith, Taylor, and Richards, were conveyed, under an escort of troops, to Carthage Jail, to await their trial. The outraged people, however, were impatient; they would not await the tardy proceedings of the law. The jail was attacked, and Joe, in his attempt to escape, was shot dead. Thus, in the year 1841, at the age of thirty-nine, terminated the worldly career of the most vicious and remarkable religious impostor since the days of Mahomet.

(To be continued).

1858 – 25 September, p. 8 – Item #1 – Chapter VI – The New Prophet. The Exodus and Progress of the Saints. (Continued from our last.)

With bitter wailings and deep despair, the community at Nauvoo received the announcement of the murder of their Prophet; and but for the strong will of a master mind among them, one and all, would have rushed upon their deaths seeking to avenge him. That man was their present ruler, Brigham Young, who gently but firmly pushing aside other pretenders, slipped over his shoulders the prophetic mantle. The death of Joe seemed likely to make a rent in Mormonism; for several defections took place under different leaders. Brigham, however, saw this with little uneasiness, for it took away the turbulent and ambitious, who might have caused him serious trouble.

Drawing the remaining members into a more compact body, he sought to propitiate the people of Illinois; he informed them, that under his rule they should have nothing further to complain of the Mormons. The outraged people, however, insisted upon their departure. Young complied, begging only to be allowed to stop to gather the ripened harvest from their midst, until they could again sow and reap.

At length a post was chosen, beyond the limits of the United States territory, then belonging to Mexico, but shortly afterwards ceded by the treaty of the United States. “There,” said the new Prophet, “I will lead you over the Rocky Mountains to the fertile valleys of the Pacific, where a while man has never trod. We will take with us our wives and our children, our cattle and our grain, our implements of Labor; and there, in the fastnesses of the West we will rear for ourselves another temple and home, which shall far surpass that we leave to be desecrated by the hands of the Gentiles. There we will be secure in our rock-begirt home, and defy the powers that refuse to us her heritage, which our God took from the unworthy and gave to us, to be ours and our children’s forever. . . There, in our mountain home, we will plant the banner of our God. There we will live as the God of nature, when He made us and implanted in our souls the attributes of the Deity, intending we should enjoy the pleasures of earth, while we prepare for the world to come. There no finger of scorn, nor taunting sneer—a thousand miles of the prairies and impregnable mountains—can reach us. We may there boldly wed as many wives as we can love—and I tell you, brethren, our hearts are large enough to love all we can get; and the God whose mandates we obey, will feed the holy generations that shall be reared by us, as he fed Elijah in the mountains, when he went forth an exile from his home and kindred.”

The council having decided upon adopting this suggestion, the decision was announced throughout the world by letter, dated January 20, 1848; and the following hymn was composed upon the occasion:

“We’ll burst off all our fetters, and break the Gentile yoke,

For long it has beset us—but now it shall be broke;

No more shall Jacob bow his neck.

Henceforth he shall be great and free,

In Upper California.

Oh! that’s the land for me!

Oh! that’s the land for me!

Then commenced that exodus, which, for trial, suffering, order, patience, and determination, has not its equal in history. One thousand six hundred started before the conclusion of the winter, in hopes to prepare for the reception of the main body by autumn; and, notwithstanding their intense sufferings from cold, disease, and starvation, it must be recorded to the glory of this undaunted, though deluded, people, that they provided for their friends who were to follow them, by laying out farms in the wilderness.

Of the difficulties suffered by those who followed, Colonel Kane gives the following vivid description:

“It was with pain and toil these last unfortunate exiles reached the camp of their brethren. ‘Like the wounded birds of a flock fired into towards nightfall,’ they came struggling on with faltering steps, many of them without bag or baggage, all asking shelter or burial, and forcing a fresh repartition of the already divided rations of their friends. At last, towards the close of autumn, all these emigrants had rejoined the main body in the valley of the Missouri, and then they prepared to meet the severity of winter in the depth of an Indian wilderness. The stronger members of the party had employed the summer in cutting and storing hay for the cattle, and in laying up such supplies of food as they could obtain. But these labors had been interrupted by a destructive fever, bred by the pestilential vapors of the marshy plain, which diminished their numbers. When winter came upon them, they were but ill prepared to meet it. For want of other shelter, they were fain to dig caves in the ground, and huddle together there for warmth. Many of the cattle died of starvation, and the same fate was hardly escaped by their emaciated owners.”

At length the spring came to relieve their wretchedness: out of twenty thousand Mormons who had formed the population of Nauvoo, little more than three thousand were now assembled on the Missouri; of the rest many had perished miserably, and many had dispersed in search of employment, to await a more convenient season for joining their friends. The hardiest of the saints who still adhered to the camp of Israel, were now organized into a company of pioneers, and they set out, to the number of 143 men, up the valley of the Platte, to seek a home among the Rocky Mountains. They carried rations for six months, agricultural implements, and seed grain, and were accompanied by the President and his chief counselors. After a three-months’ journey they reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake, on the 21^st of July, and here they determined to bring their wanderings to a close, to establish a Zion.

Before the autumn they were rejoined by their brethren, whom they had left on the Missouri. This large body consisting of about three thousand persons, including many children and women, journeyed across the unknown desert with the discipline of a veteran army.

The strict order of march, the unconfused closing up to meet the attack, the skillful securing of cattle upon the halt, the system with which the watches were set at night to guard the camp. . . Every ten of their wagons were under the care of a captain; this captain of ten obeyed a captain of fifty; who, in turn, obeyed a member of the high Council of the Church. When the last mountain had been crossed, the road passes along the bottom of a deep ravine, whose scenery is of almost terrific gloom; at every turn the overhanging cliffs threaten to break down upon the river at their base. At the end of this defile, which is five miles in length, the emigrants came abruptly out of the dark pass into a lighted valley, in a terrace of its upper tableland. A ravishing panoramic landscape opens out before them, blue and green, and gold and pearl; a great sea, with hilly islands; a lake, and broad sheets of grassy plain, all set in a silver-chased cup, within mountains whose peaks of perpetual snow are burnished by a dazzling sun.

These exiles, together with that of some disbanded volunteers from California, raised the number to 4,000.

The first winter they were nearly starved for want of provisions; the end of this season, however, terminated their sufferings, and their prosperity began, and steadily increased till, in 1854, then only the sixth year of his foundation, says a writer in the Edinburgh Review, “the new commonwealth has advanced with a rapidity truly wonderful, especially when we consider the disadvantages under which it is placed, by the fact that every imported article had to be dragged by land carriage for a thousand miles over roadless prairies, bridgeless rivers, and snow-clad mountain. Thus reduced to self-dependence, we can imagine the straits to which the first emigrants were brought for want of those innumerable comforts of civilized life which cannot be extemporized, and need cumbersome machinery for their manufacture. We can understand why, even after some years of settlement, the new citizens complained that nineteen-twentieths of the most common articles of clothing and furniture were not to be procured among them at any price.”

What difficulties, however, would not fall before the energies of such a band of fanatics? The colony was not five years of age before they had completed a system of irrigation, had thrown bridges across the principal rivers, possessed iron works, coal mines, a factory of beet sugar, a nail works, sawing mills, and a manufactory of even small-tooth combs. Regular mails were established with San Francisco on the Pacific, and New York on the Atlantic; public baths were erected, and copiously supplied by the boiling springs of the volcanic region. They had founded a university in their capital, where one of the apostles gave lectures on astronomy. They had sculptured a monument to the memory of Washington. They had laid the foundation of a temple, which was to surpass the one at Nauvoo. They had reared a Mormon Sappho, who officiates as the laureate of Brigham Young; and moreover, organized a dramatic society for the performance of tragedy and comedy.

The population had increased to 30,000, of whom only 7,000 were in the capital, and the remainder scattered over the country, to replenish the earth and subdue it. Their mode of establishing new towns is highly interesting. An expedition is first sent out to explore the country, with a view to the selection of the best site. An elder of the Church is then appointed to preside over the band designated to make the first improvement. The company is composed partly of volunteers, and partly of such as are selected by the Presidency, due regard being paid to a proper intermixture of mechanical artisans to render the expedition independent of all aid from without.

When in 1849 the community had grown sufficiently important, a convention of the citizens of that part of Upper California which lies near the Great Salt lake was held, and a constitution was adopted, which was afterwards ratified by the Congress; and President Young was named Governor, an office which he soon resigned, when he was succeeded by the President Brigham Young, which he has ever since held in defiance of the Federal Government.—Handy Helps to Useful Knowledge.

(To be continued).

1858 – 25 September, p. 8 – Item #2 – Lives of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons complain of persecution—but they have had no trials. Which of them has as yet been indicted for polygamy?

1858 – 2 October, p. 8 – Chapter VII – Mysteries and Present State of Mormonism. (Concluded from our last.)

Like all great religious imposters, Mormonism appeals to the senses of the multitude; the basis of its creed is, that “God is a material, intelligent personage, possessing both body and parts, and passions; he eats, he loves, he hates, and is, moreover, ubiquitous.” This is expressed in the following hymn:

“The Gods that others worship, is not the God for me,

He has no parts, nor body, and cannot hear or see.”

Like all systems based upon treachery to humanity, the blasphemous rites of initiation into the doctrines are secret. A writer in the London Journal tells us, that “the Neophyte is conducted into a room, and stripped naked, and a name is whispered in his ear, which he is to remember at the peril of his salvation. In another room he is clothed with a robe, which makes him look half like a Brahmin, and half like a Jewish Priest. In an adjoining room a dramatic blasphemy goes on—God is personated. The incidents of Genesis—the creation—the Garden of Eden—the appearance of Satan, etc., are represented. The novice then performs the circuit of four rooms, covenanting and vowing as he goes. In one he swears to chastity, in another polygamy is accorded, with the sanction of Brigham Young; in the third a terrible adjuration of secrecy is administered; the awful preparation for the fourth, where amidst horrible surroundings, he is sworn to eternal enmity to the United States of North America, is the Mormon endowment through which 50,000 of our fellow-creatures have passed. “All that I hold most dear on earth,” says a sufferer, “still cling to this horrible system: my wife and child still remain at Salt Lake. My wife has been forced, by her devotion to these things, to forego even her heart’s own yearnings, and utter prayers which shape themselves into curses.”

With regard to the steady progress of this blasphemous and retrograde sect, the latest accounts from the United States informs us: “The Mormons have about ninety-five missionaries in Europe, and an equal number in Asia, Africa, and in the Pacific Islands, besides large numbers of native elders in the various fields of labor, and a considerable number scattered throughout the United States and British America. They have one newspaper in Salt Lake City, issuing 4,000 copies weekly; one in Swansea, South Wales; one in Copenhagen, ion the Danish language; one in Australia; one in India; and one in Switzerland, in the French language. The “Book of Mormon” has been translated and published in the Welsh, Danish, French, German, and Italian languages. The Mormons claim 480,000 members of their Church scattered over the world.”

The inhabitants of their city now number 15,000. Most of whom are English and Scotch, few Americans, many Welsh, and some Danes. All of whom are almost without exception polygamists, and bitter in their hatred of the Gentiles, and full of zeal for their miserable faith.

With reference to their future prospects, Brigham Young, who has hitherto proved himself a leader worthy of a better cause, seems to have become besotted by his success, and anxious to court the enmity of the great Republic. Captain Van Fleet, who in October last visited Utah, on a reconnoitering expedition, tells us that, among other entertainments, while there he was treated to a blasphemous sermon by Brigham Young, which was printed in the Deseret News. “I shall treat,” he says, “every army and armed company that attempts to come here as a mob. (The congregation responded “Amen.”) You might as well tell me that you could make hell a powder house, as to tell me that you could let an army in here and have peace; and I intend to tell and show them this if they do not keep away. . . Before I will suffer what I have in times past, there shall not be one building, nor one foot of timber, nor a stick, nor a tree, nor a particle of grass and hay that will burn, left in reach of our enemies. I am sworn, if driven to extremity, to utterly lay waste in the name of Israel’s God. . . As I said this morning, ten years ago on this ground I stated that we would not ask any odds of our enemies in ten years from that date, and the next time I thought of it was ten years afterwards to a day! ‘They are now sending their troops,’ was the news, and it directly occurred to me, ‘Will you ask any odds of them?’ No, in the name of Israel’s God we will not, for, as soon as we ask odds we get ends—of bayonets. . . I am aware that you want to know what will be the result of the present movement against us.

“Mormonism will take an almighty stride into influence and power, while our enemies will sink and become weaker and weaker, and be no more; and I know it just as well now as I shall five years hence. The Lord Almighty wants a name and a character, and He will show our enemies that He is God, and that He has set His hand again to gather Israel, and to try our faith and integrity. And He is saying, ‘Now, you, my children, dare you to take a step to promote righteousness, in direct and open opposition to the popular feeling of all the wicked in your Government? I will fight your battles.’”

The Government have, however, since declared the territory of Utah to be in open rebellion against the United States, and sent an expedition against the Mormons under Colonel Johnston. He went, however, at an inconvenient season, and with an insufficient force, through such a dreary and inhospitable country, part of which was eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea, where ice and snow may be expected on any day of the year. Here the troops suffered from cold, and their cattle died in great numbers before they had reached within one hundred miles of the Great Salt Lake City. On the other hand, it was reported that the Mormons were preparing to leave Utah for the neighboring British possessions of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The general impression was that this new Mormon exodus would direct itself towards the western portions of Mexico, where neither the authorities of the State nor the population would have the power to impede its ingress. And this seems to us the most reasonable surprise notwithstanding the latest news from the Salt Lake, which comes in the shape of a letter, dated November 1857, and from which we extract the following: “These Mormons have the impudence of the devil. They have a mule train of ammunition a few days behind, and its conductor applied to Colonel Johnston for passports to go on to Salt Lake City. The Colonel replied, ‘If there was no war declared against us he needed no such a thing, and, if war existed, he should permit no one to enter the valley.’ Unless they find some byway through the mountains, this train will be seized in the name of the United States, and the men held in custody for trial. A chief of the Snake Indians was in our camp two days ago; from him we learn that all the other Indians, some thousands in number, in this region are in league with the Mormons, and prepared to support them to the last extremity. He and his band prefer neutrality. Brigham Young tried to engage him, but he replied that, “When redskin fight redskin, bluecoat stands upon the hill and look on; when bluecoat fight bluecoat, redskin stand on the hill and look on; when bluecoat fight redskin, redskin turn his back—bluecoat is very great.’ I expect that Colonel Johnston will, as soon as he reaches the territory of Utah, declare martial law, and subject all offenders to a trial by court-martial.” – Handy Helps to Useful Knowledge.

1858 – 9 November, p. 7 – A Mormon preacher traveling about the country on a velocipede has been taken up at Bradford on suspicion of stealing that instrument of locomotion.

1858 – 13 November, p. 3 – The Salt Lake mail to the 25^th of September reached St. Joseph’s Mobile, on the 16^th ult. Everything was quiet in the Territory, and a good feeling is reported to exist between the Mormons and the Gentiles. Business was brisk at Salt Lake City. Trains of goods and provisions were constantly arriving from California. The supply trains from the States were also arriving in good condition and great numbers. Sixty had passed For Bridger, and twenty were met on the Streetwater, and eight were north of the Platte. All the troops under General Johnston are consolidated in one encampment. His command, including employees, numbers 7000 or 8000. About 4000 men were also at Fort Bridger, under Colonel Cambrey.

1858 – 4 December, p. 8 – The Mormons. By the British and North American mail steamship America, which arrived at Liverpool on Monday, we have the following: “Judge Eckles, having in charge Henrietta Polidore, who had been rescued from the Mormons on a writ of Habeas Corpus at the request of the British Government, had arrived at St. Louis, en route for Washington. The girl was abducted from Gloucester, England, four years ago.

1859 – 8 January, p. 3 – Restitution of an English Girl by the Mormons. Among the passengers by the steamer Africa, for Liverpool, were a messenger of the British Government and the girl named Henrietta Polydore, who was brought from Utah by Judge Eckles, in obedience to instructions from our Government. Miss Polydore was some years since taken from England by her mother, who had embraced the faith of the Mormons, and her father applied to the British authorities for her restoration. After due investigation of the facts before the Federal Court at Great Salt Lake City it was decided to restore the girl to her father, and she was accordingly brought to Washington and delivered to the custody of Lord Napier, the British minister, who has dispatched her to England. It is said that the mother of the girl followed her to Washington.

1859 – 5 February, p. 5 – Mormonism in Wales. The agents of Mormonism are making strenuous efforts to spread their debasing tenets throughout the Welsh district. In a newspaper published by the fanatics, appears a letter from a man signing himself John Davies, of Merthyr, to President Calkin. He expresses himself confident of making great progress in Wales, but for the sake, not only of true religion, but of common decency, we hope he will find himself thoroughly deceived. Here is part of his epistle: “According to my promise to you at Cardiff, I now address you a few lines. Last Sunday I was at Swansea with President Evans and brother John. We had a very good conference there, and indeed have had in each of the conferences in the mission. We have endeavored to instill in the minds of the Saints the counsel and instructions we received from you at Cardiff, and my faith is, that a large amount will be added to the Emigration Fund the coming year from Wales. I have been traveling in the ministry nearly eight years, and I can truly say that I never saw so good a feeling generally as there is now. The whole Welsh mission, with but very few exceptions, is in good working order and healthy condition. President Evans, myself, and brother John are as one in mind and feelings, and so we have been. We are looking for a good time at Birmingham.”

1859 – 12 March, p. 3 – 1859 Mar 12, p. 3 – “Dissensions amongst the Latter-day Saints. A - - - [words missing] - - - the Police Court on Saturday, before the Rev. Thomas Pope and John Lewis, Esq., Prudence Taylor was charged by Thomas Bullock with breaking his window. The parties, who are Mormons, live at Risca, and from the statement of the complainant it appeared that defendant in trying to force her way into his house broke the lock of the door, and on being ejected by him broke 8 panes of glass. Mr. Owen, who appeared for the defendant, cross examined the complainant, in which he endeavored to prove that he is a Mormon, and at one time he lodged in defendant’s house, when it would appear he endeavored to persuade her to go with him to Salt Lake City and there become one of his wives. She had no relish for polygamy, and therefore rejected his proposals; subsequently her husband left his own house with his goods and went to that of complainant’s, he having become housekeeper. Mr. Taylor left his wife from the domestic quarrel, and the wife in order to have access to him forced into the house, when she was assaulted by complainant, and in retaliation broke the window. Defendant was ordered to pay 19s., the value of the glass broken and costs, and told that she might summon Bullock for the assault.

1859 – 3 December, p. 7 – The Boston Courier states that the family of Joe Smith, the great Mormon Prophet, still dwell at Nauvoo, and cannot be prevailed on to remove to Utah.