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The Civil War Years in Utah
The Kingdom of God and the Territory That Did Not Fight
By John Gary Maxwell UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 John Gary Maxwell
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-5527-2
CHAPTER 1
Transition from a Utah War to a Civil War, 1859–1860
A peace with traitors, begun by concessions, must end in disgrace. CHIEF JUSTICE DELANA R. ECKELS
There was no winner in the Utah War. Buchanan failed to achieve federal supremacy, and the Mormons' quest for sovereignty went unfulfilled. Neither did the 1857–58 Utah War escalate into an apocalyptic end with LDS Church priesthood men surviving to take the reins of government, but soon another potential pathway to this goal opened. As matters of tariffs, abolition of slavery, and state's rights reached ignition temperatures in South Carolina and elsewhere across the South, Brigham Young and church leaders refocused on Joseph Smith's 1832 prophecy of a war of national scope that would result in Mormon rule of the nation and the world.
The New York Times asserted that the Utah Expedition had been an ignominious defeat for Buchanan, that affairs in Utah seemed to be "in precisely the same condition ... as before the troops marched at all." The "insolence" of the Mormons had not been punished, and "we have neither restored the authority of the Federal Government nor secured the administration of the laws." Still remaining was the "contempt with which the Mormons treated the United States, and the open resistance which they offered to their authority." Buchanan's actions in Utah, according to the Times, had "ended by making neither peace, nor war, for the Mormons would neither fight nor treat." Armies and proclamations "have effected no great change." The Times complained that Mormons "ridicule the effeminacy and credulity of President Buchanan, and boast that Brigham Young has overreached him." Furthermore, Mormons had "accomplished by strategy what they could not effect by force of arms, and ... made fortunes while they did it." The San Francisco Bulletin observed that Buchanan had "offered a premium to treason," for the federal government had "expended millions of dollars" and "strewn wealth and prosperity in a region that was before isolated and poverty stricken." Whenever Young desired "another harvest at federal expense," he could "incite his people to new manifestations of disloyalty," without adverse consequences. The Bulletin's incisive prediction was spot-on.
Secretary of War John B. Floyd's spring 1859 letter informed Bvt. Brig. Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston, commander of the Camp Floyd troops, that peace "had been restored to the Territory." However, Floyd's instruction that Johnston would activate troops only at the "written direction" of Governor Alfred Cumming, of itself, proved that peace — even among factions of the federal government — did not exist. Citizens of Salt Lake City petitioned Cumming for a military escort for safe passage out of Utah, a request that would have been unnecessary had "peace" existed. It was argued that Cumming violated the military chain of command by placing regular troops of the U.S. Army under orders from the executive branch of a territory. Nonetheless, Johnston responded to Cumming's request in a May letter offering to "furnish the force for their protection" for all who wished to leave. Emigrants organized; all who wished "to avail themselves of this security" were "to convene at the California House" hotel to plan for their departure. The newspaper of Camp Floyd's troops, the Valley Tan, reported: "Treason exists as much this day as when Echo Kanyon [sic] with it fortifications was bristling with arms and traitors against the Government of the United States." Buchanan's blanket pardon of the Mormons was "laughed at and ... derided, ... in the most indecent terms." Those pardoned "sniggered at the idea," for they had "overreached the Government," whose efforts had accomplished nothing. Visiting newsmen observed that conditions in Utah were "on the very eve of open hostilities ... brought on by the firm and manly stand of the two Judges of the U.S. District Court, [Charles E.] Sinclair and [John] Cradlebaugh, ... in their endeavors to ferret out the numerous murders that have been committed." The state of affairs in Utah brought on by efforts of "the Third District Court to enforce laws and bring criminals to justice" was threatening to spark an "immediate collision between the Saints and the United States troops," added the St. Louis Democrat.
The Judges' "Manly Stand"
Alvira Parrish set in motion a cascade of serious events when, in the district court, she accused eight men from Springville of the 1857 murder of her husband, William R. Parrish, and a son, William Beason Parrish. Among them were Cumming's restriction on the use of U.S. troops, as well as the tense collisions of the executive, the military, and the judiciary with Cumming, Johnston, and Judges Sinclair and Cradlebaugh. Cradlebaugh, with only one good eye but with clear and penetrating judicial vision, issued arrest warrants for eight men accused in the Parrish killings. However, U.S. marshal Peter Kessler Dotson swore he was not able to jail any of them unless he was provided with a military posse. When one hundred infantrymen under the command of Capt. Henry Heth arrived in support, their numbers were inflated by Provo's Mormons to "1,000 bayonets" glistening on the city's foothills. Strenuous objections to the troops' presence were raised by citizens and Mayor Benjamin K. Bullock. An additional eight hundred troops under the command of Maj. Gabriel R. Paul were sent to control unrest, enforce warrants, and protect federal officers. To lessen citizens' alarm, they camped four miles from the city. Governor Cumming's reaction was two-pronged: he first appealed to Secretary of State Lewis Cass, who forwarded the matter to Secretary Floyd. Then, with the cooperation of the all-Mormon legislature, Cumming gerrymandered the judicial districts of the territory, assigning Judge Cradlebaugh to appear May 1 at the post in Genoa, the seat of Carson County and six hundred miles from Provo or Salt Lake City. Formerly called Mormon Station, near present-day Carson City, Nevada, the settlement was then within Utah Territory.
Even as the date of Cradlebaugh's banishment to Genoa grew closer, grand jurors heard abundant testimony regarding the Parrish murders, but no indictments emerged. Frustrated, Cradlebaugh dismissed the all-Mormon jury. Neighboring news editors, well aware of the happenings, reported that Utah's news seemed "to argue the impossibility of the Federal Court administering justice" and that "Judge Cradlebaugh had dismissed the grand jury, they refusing to find any bills of indictment." Also noted was that the jurors used "every other means to screen murderers and robbers from justice." Cradlebaugh sent Marshal Dotson with two hundred soldiers and arrest warrants for a dozen men, including Provo's Mayor Bullock and Springville's Bishop Aaron Johnson. Bullock was released a day later, but Johnson fled into the adjacent Wasatch Mountains.
On April 17, General Johnston, with Cradlebaugh's concurrence, ordered Capt. Reuben Campbell south to the Santa Clara River to investigate the much talked-of 1857 killings of more than 120 California-bound Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows. Secretary Floyd ordered officers from the Department of the Pacific also to investigate. Bvt. Maj. James Henry Carleton of the California First Dragoons met Campbell on May 8 in California, where they shared what they had seen. Both officers "opened a telling [verbal] fire on Mormon settlers for committing the atrocity." Deputy Marshal William H. Rogers and Indian agent Jacob Forney also searched the massacre site, and Rogers reported: "When I first passed through the place I could walk for nearly a mile on bones, and skulls laying grinning at you, and women and children's hair in bunches as big as a bushel." Rogers and Cradlebaugh named sixty white men as perpetrators. Warrants for the arrest of John D. Lee, Isaac C. Haight, and John M. Higbee were issued from Provo. However, Buchanan dismissed the Cradlebaugh-Carleton-Johnston investigation of the Mountain Meadows murders — and multiple other crimes in Utah — by his order that troops were at the singular call of the puppet governor, Alfred Cumming.
Second Lt. John Van Deusen Du Bois, who rode with Johnston's troops on the June 1858 trek down Echo Canyon into Salt Lake City, left his appraisal of Cumming's allegiance: "The Governor is becoming a Mormon rapidly. Everyone is disgusted with him. He seems to truckle to Mormondom and cultivate intimate relations with Brigham Young." Federal presence failed to influence violence, according to Du Bois, for "murderers & robbers have been pardoned and now roam around unmolested." He continued, "[Young is] stronger than ever, and we have been conquered as surely by the Washington weakness as we would have been by the sword. The army ... feels its degradation and asks nothing more [in humiliation] now except a Mormon General to command it." Humiliation may have prompted Johnston's request to be relieved, suggested the San Francisco Bulletin, adding that "the request will not be granted at present."
Peace was further disproved by the presence of two cannons "cached and guarded by three or four men on the bench north of this city, and about half a mile west of City Creek Kanyon," as Joseph R. Logue informed Marshal Dotson in May. This discovery led to an inspection of the ordinance of the Nauvoo Legion by Utah Territorial secretary John Hartnett, Marshal Dotson, and Logue. The inspection report, written by Legion Adj. Gen. James Ferguson to Cumming, listed the Legion's "12 pounder Mountain Howitzer" given to the territory "in the fall of 1851" as constituting "all the public arms in the Territory." Most significant in this brief report are the words "public arms," for weaponry was held in private ownership, not as the property of the territorial or federal government. Unaddressed were the origin and purpose of the Mormons' cannons situated on the commanding peaks above the city. A Valley Tan article further contradicted Floyd's claim of peace: "There are armed scouting parties sent out, cannons mounted, cached, and when discovered, subsequently hid," as well as "signal arrangements prepared upon the mountain heights" to communicate with other parts of the territory."
Peace with Traitors Must End in Disgrace
Utah Supreme Court chief justice Delana R. Eckels' first exposure to Utah was in the winter of 1857–58, when he and Utah Expedition troops were stopped at Fort Bridger by the Nauvoo Legion. Thus he learned who controlled the territory. By the fall of 1859 he judged matters becoming "worse and worse," elaborating to Secretary of State Cass in September that when he commenced court in August for the First District in Nephi, "there were many, very many high crimes that were not passed upon by the grand jury." Two-thirds of the male population fled from the prospect of being arrested or called as witnesses. Those charged with murder and grand larceny were "turned loose by Mormon officials a few days before court," and "no steps were taken to bring the perpetrators of the massacre at Mountain Meadows before the grand jury." Eckels said that Mormons were "not openly under arms," yet were "as rebellious against our form of government to-day as they ever were," since "all power, civil and ecclesiastical, is in their priesthood" in an "inseparable union of church and state." Stating that Mormons constituted "a terror to all travellers through these mountains," Eckels added: "No road from the States to California is safe. Five trains have been robbed of their stock almost in sight of our camp with impunity. ... The Indians are blamed for it," but "whites plan and aid in the execution of these murders."
Resignations and flights from the territory as described by Eckels were reminiscent of the similar exodus of federal officials in 1850–51 and again in 1856–58: "Marshal Dotson has resigned. Judge Sinclair and Attorney Wilson have gone to the States. Mr. Secretary Hartnett has gone to St. Louis, and ... he may not return. ... Judge Cradlebaugh will likely go during the fall, and I expect to leave in the spring." Eckels's observations led him to conclude: "A peace with traitors, begun by concessions, must end in disgrace." True to plan, Eckels resigned his judgeship in March 1860. A New York newspaper noted the conflict of Sinclair and Cradlebaugh with Cumming, concluding, "Governor [Cumming] is a Mormon and the Judges are Gentiles. ... The policy of the Administration seems to be to appease the Mormons by removing the Gentiles."
"Treason and rebellion without — privation and want within," stated the Valley Tan of the condition of the Saints as they migrated south from Great Salt Lake valley in spring of 1858. "Treason, which then stalked openly and publically abroad, now seeks some little disguise," penned Stephen DeWolfe, the fourth editor of Camp Floyd's weekly newspaper. He went on to say that "thanks to the presence of an army here, [citizens] can dwell with some little security more than they could two years ago." No longer were they "openly told in a court ... that their 'necks will be wrung like that of a chicken,' if they venture to assert their rights against a Mormon." Troops stationed in Utah brought other benefits to a people who in 1857 were in "want and destitution." By 1859 they had "probably never before enjoyed as much prosperity." Now able to charge "extravagant prices for all the surplus products which they have raised," they were enjoying "comforts and luxuries before unknown." Conditions were "immeasurably superior" to those prior to the federal's arrival, added DeWolfe.
Annexation of Mexico
Historian William P. MacKinnon notes Buchanan's interest, long before his presidency, in acquiring Cuba and Mexico as part of the nation's westward expansion. It was possible that 1857 found Buchanan secretly planning "to stimulate a mass Mormon exodus to Sonora, Mexico, at the point of a bayonet followed by acquisition of much of northern Mexico and Cuba through a combination of diplomatic and military gambits." Within weeks of his inauguration, Buchanan quietly instructed John Forsyth, minister to Mexico, to purchase a vast region adjacent to the U.S. border for $15 million. When Johnston's troops met obstruction at Fort Bridger in October 1857, Buchanan may have envisioned a larger project, for three moves immediately followed: he sent Christopher Fallon to Spain in order to buy Cuba, he met with Thomas L. Kane to discuss his planned mediation mission to Salt Lake City, and he "posted a reluctant General [Winfield] Scott to California to open a second front against the Mormons to hammer them from the Pacific." British diplomat Sir William Gore Ouseley wrote privately to Lord Clarendon in England that Buchanan's Utah Expedition "ostensibly against the Mormons" extended deeper, "involving relations with Mexico and plans for the acquisition of Cuba." Ouseley pointed out, "The latter however is the real object; the other is subsidiary to it and serves to mask the real movement. The intention as to the Mormons was to bring about their immigration to Sonora and thus to turn their rebellion to account by making them pioneers for future annexation under a quasi-military colonial system." Gen. Winfield Scott would become a party to the scheme without being aware of its full scope, claims MacKinnon.
When thirty thousand people left the Salt Lake valley in spring 1858 and headed southward in anticipation of the entry of Union troops into Utah's heartland, their destination was thought to be central Utah. However, other destinations were apparently under Young's consideration. Thomas Kane, heading west, had met James W. Simonton, a reporter for the New York Times, at Sweetwater Bridge, Nebraska Territory, and the correspondent gave him "the impression that Young, whom he had just left, was heading for Sonora."
The relationship between Mormon colonies in Mexico and the U.S. government's interests there, and whether Confederates were anticipating a possible role for Mexico in enhancing slavery or supplying war munitions, apparently remained concerns in Young's mind far later than 1857. His letter of December 1859 to delegate William H. Hooper asked a question — one that he would later also pose to others, including Thomas L. Kane — that indicated curiosity, if not inside knowledge, of something afoot with Mexico. Young asked, "Do you think that South Carolina means what one of her Senators lately wrote ... [:] 'We have not enough blacks to settle the country, to raise the cotton, rice, and tobacco that are wanted. If any of them do ship from Africa [to Mexico], tell them not to say a word about [it], nor in any way let it be known.'"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Civil War Years in Utah by John Gary Maxwell. Copyright © 2016 John Gary Maxwell. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
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