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80 - Roughing It by Mark Twain · Roughing It

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  Speaker 1: This is Appendix A of roughing It. This is a
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  Speaker 1: Roughing It by Mark Twain Appendix A brief sketch of
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  Speaker 1: Mormon history. Mormonism is only about forty years old, but
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  Speaker 1: its career has been full of stir and adventure from
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  Speaker 1: the beginning, and it is likely to remain so to
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  Speaker 1: the end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from
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  Speaker 1: one end of the country to the other, and the
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  Speaker 1: result is that for years they have hated all gentiles,
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  Speaker 1: indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph Smith, the finder
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  Speaker 1: of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion,
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  Speaker 1: was driven from state to state with his mysterious copper
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  Speaker 1: plates and the miraculous stones he read their inscriptions with. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: he instituted his church in Ohio, and Brigham Young joined it.
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  Speaker 1: The neighbors began to persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held
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  Speaker 1: to the faith and worked hard. He arrested desertion, he
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  Speaker 1: did more. He added converts. In the midst of the trouble,
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  Speaker 1: he rose in favor and importance with the brethren. He
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  Speaker 1: was made one of the twelve apostles of the church.
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  Speaker 1: He shortly fought his way to a higher post and
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  Speaker 1: more powerful president of the twelve. The neighbors rose up
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  Speaker 1: and drove the Mormons out of Ohio, and they settled
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  Speaker 1: in Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians drove them out,
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  Speaker 1: and they retreated to Nauviau, Illinois. They prospered there and
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  Speaker 1: built a temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace,
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  Speaker 1: and achieved some celebrity in a section of country where
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  Speaker 1: a brick court house with a tin dome and a
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  Speaker 1: cupula on it was contemplated with reverential awe. But the
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  Speaker 1: Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors. All
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  Speaker 1: the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing polygamy and repudiating
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  Speaker 1: it as utterly ante Mormon were of no avail. The
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  Speaker 1: people of the neighborhood on both sides of the Mississippi
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  Speaker 1: claimed that polygamy was practiced by the Mormons, and not
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  Speaker 1: only polygamy, but little of everything that was bad. Brigham
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  Speaker 1: returned from a mission to England, where he had established
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  Speaker 1: a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him several
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  Speaker 1: hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among the Brethren
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  Speaker 1: augmented with every move he made. Finally, Novoux was invaded
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  Speaker 1: by the Missouri and Illinois gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed.
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  Speaker 1: A Mormon named Ridgdon assumed the presidency of the Mormon
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  Speaker 1: Church and government in Smith's place, and even tried his
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  Speaker 1: hand at a prophecy or two. But greater than he
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  Speaker 1: was at hand, Brigham seized the advantage of the hour, and,
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  Speaker 1: without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will,
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  Speaker 1: hurled Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself.
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  Speaker 1: He did more. He launched an elaborate curse at Ridgdon
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  Speaker 1: and his disciples, and he pronounced Rigdon's prophecies emanations from
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  Speaker 1: the devil, and ended by handing the false prophet over
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  Speaker 1: to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand years, probably
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  Speaker 1: the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The people recognized
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  Speaker 1: their master. They straightway elected Brigham Young President by a
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  Speaker 1: prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their devotion to
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  Speaker 1: him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast a
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  Speaker 1: quality which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed.
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  Speaker 1: He recognized that it was better to move to the
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  Speaker 1: wilderness than be moved By his command, the people gathered
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  Speaker 1: together their meager effects, turned their backs upon their homes
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  Speaker 1: and their faces toward the wilderness, and on the bitter
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  Speaker 1: night in February, filed in sorrowful procession across the frozen Mississippi,
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  Speaker 1: lighted on their way by the glare of their burning temple,
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  Speaker 1: whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired, they camped
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  Speaker 1: several days afterward on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want, hunger, cold, sickness, grief,
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  Speaker 1: and persecution did their work, and many succumbed and died
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  Speaker 1: martyrs fair and true, whatever else they might have been.
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  Speaker 1: Two years, the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a
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  Speaker 1: small party crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City,
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  Speaker 1: purposely choosing a land which was outside the ownership and
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  Speaker 1: jurisdiction of the hated American nation. Note that this was
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen forty seven. Brigham moved his people there and
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  Speaker 1: got them settled just in time to see disaster fall again,
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  Speaker 1: for the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to
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  Speaker 1: the enemy, the United States. In eighteen forty nine, the
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  Speaker 1: Mormons organized a free and independent government and erected the
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  Speaker 1: state of Desiree, with Brigham Young as its head. But
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  Speaker 1: the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed it and created
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  Speaker 1: the territory of Utah out of the same accumulation of mountains, sagebrush, Alkali,
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  Speaker 1: and general desolation, but made Brigham governor of it. Then
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  Speaker 1: for years, the enormous migration across the plains to California
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  Speaker 1: poured through the land of the Mormons, and yet the
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  Speaker 1: church remained staunch and true to its Lord and Master.
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  Speaker 1: Neither hunger, thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could
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  Speaker 1: drive the Mormons from their faith or their allegiance. And
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  Speaker 1: even the thirst for gold, which gleaned the flower of
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  Speaker 1: the youth and strength of many nations, was not able
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  Speaker 1: to entice them. That was the final test. An experiment
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  Speaker 1: that could survive. That was an experiment with some substance
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  Speaker 1: to it. Somewhere, Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and
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  Speaker 1: so did Utah. One of the last things which Brigham
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  Speaker 1: Young had done before leaving Iowa was to appear in
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  Speaker 1: the pulpit, dressed to personate the worshiped and lamented Prophet Smith,
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  Speaker 1: and confer the prophetic succession with all its dignities, emoluments,
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  Speaker 1: and authorities upon President Brigham ye Young. The people accepted
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  Speaker 1: the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham's power
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  Speaker 1: was sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward,
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  Speaker 1: he openly added polygamy to the tenants of the church,
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  Speaker 1: by authority of a revelation which he pretended had been
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  Speaker 1: received nine years before by Joseph Smith, albeit Joseph is
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  Speaker 1: amply on record as denouncing polygamy to the day of
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  Speaker 1: his death. Now was Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson.
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  Speaker 1: In the small beginning and steady progress of his official grandeur,
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  Speaker 1: he had served successively as a disciple in the ranks,
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  Speaker 1: home missionary, foreign missionary, editor and publisher, apostle, president of
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  Speaker 1: the Board of Apostles, President of all Mormondom, civil and
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  Speaker 1: ecclesiastical successor to the Great Joseph by the will of Heaven, prophet, seer, revelator.
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  Speaker 1: There was but one dignity higher which he could aspire to,
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  Speaker 1: and he reached out modestly and took that he proclaimed
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  Speaker 1: himself a god. He claims that he is to have
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  Speaker 1: a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he will
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  Speaker 1: be its God, and his wives and children, its goddesses,
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  Speaker 1: princes and princesses into it. All faithful Mormons will be
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  Speaker 1: admitted with their families, and will take rank and consequence
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  Speaker 1: according to the number of their wives and children. If
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  Speaker 1: a disciple dies before he has had time to accumulate
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  Speaker 1: enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable
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  Speaker 1: in the next world, any friend can marry a few
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  Speaker 1: wives and raise a few children for him after he
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  Speaker 1: is dead, and they are duly credited to his account,
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  Speaker 1: and his heavenly status advanced accordingly. Let it be born
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  Speaker 1: in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always
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  Speaker 1: been ignorant, simple of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted
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  Speaker 1: with the world and its ways. And let it be
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  Speaker 1: born in mind that the wives of these Mormons are
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  Speaker 1: necessarily after the same pattern, and their children likely to
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  Speaker 1: be fit representatives of such a conjunction. And then let
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  Speaker 1: it be remembered that for forty years these creatures have
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  Speaker 1: been driven, driven, driven relentlessly, and mobbed, beaten, and shot down, cursed, despised, expatriated,
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  Speaker 1: banished to a remote desert, whither they journeyed, gaunt with
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  Speaker 1: famine and disease, disturbing the ancient Solitudes with their lamentations,
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  Speaker 1: and marking the long way with graves of their dead,
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  Speaker 1: and all because they were simply trying to live and
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  Speaker 1: worship God in the way which they believed with all
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  Speaker 1: their hearts and souls to be the true one. Let
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  Speaker 1: all these things be borne in mind, and then it
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  Speaker 1: will not be hard to account for the deathless hatred
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  Speaker 1: which the Mormons bear our people and our government. That
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  Speaker 1: hatred has fed fat its ancient grudge ever since Mormon
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  Speaker 1: Utah developed into a self supporting realm and the church
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  Speaker 1: waxed rich and strong, Brigham as territorial governor, made it
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  Speaker 1: plain that Mormondon was for the Mormons. The United States
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  Speaker 1: tried to rectify all that by appointing territorial officers from
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  Speaker 1: New England and other anti Mormon localities, but Brigham prepared
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  Speaker 1: to make their entrance into his dominions difficult. Three thousand
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  Speaker 1: United States troops had to go across the plains and
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  Speaker 1: put these gentlemen in office. And after they were in office,
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  Speaker 1: they were as helpless as so many stone images. They
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  Speaker 1: made laws which nobody minded and which could not be executed.
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  Speaker 1: The federal judges opened court and land filled with crime
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  Speaker 1: and violence, and sat as holiday spectacles for insolent crowds
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  Speaker 1: to gape at. For there was nothing to try, nothing
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  Speaker 1: to do, nothing on the dockets. And if a gentile
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  Speaker 1: brought a suit, the Mormon jury would do just as
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  Speaker 1: it pleased about bringing in a verdict. And when the
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  Speaker 1: judgment of the court was rendered, no Mormon cared for it,
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  Speaker 1: and no officer could execute it. Our presidents shipped one
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  Speaker 1: cargo of officials after another to Utah, but the result
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  Speaker 1: was always the same. They sat in a blight for
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  Speaker 1: a while. They fairly feed did on scowls and insults.
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  Speaker 1: Day by day, they saw every attempt to do their
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  Speaker 1: official duties find its reward in darker and darker looks,
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  Speaker 1: and in secret threats and warnings of a more and
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  Speaker 1: more dismal nature. And at last they either succumbed and
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  Speaker 1: became despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got
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  Speaker 1: scared and discomfited beyond all endurance, and left the territory.
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  Speaker 1: If a brave officer, kept on courageously till his pluck
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  Speaker 1: was proven some pliant Buchanan or Pierce would remove him
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  Speaker 1: and appoint a stick in his place. In eighteen fifty seven,
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  Speaker 1: General Harney came very near being appointed governor of Utah,
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  Speaker 1: and so it came very near being Harney governor and
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  Speaker 1: Cradlebough judge, two men who never had any idea of
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  Speaker 1: fear further than the sort of murky comprehension of it
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  Speaker 1: which they were enabled to gather from the dictionary simply,
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  Speaker 1: if for nothing else, for the variety they would have
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  Speaker 1: made in a rather monotonous history of federal servility and helplessness.
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  Speaker 1: It is a pity they were not fated to hold
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  Speaker 1: office together in Utah. Up to the date of our
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  Speaker 1: visit to Utah, such had been the territorial record. The
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  Speaker 1: territorial government established there had been a hopeless failure, and
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  Speaker 1: Brigham Young was the only real power in the land.
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  Speaker 1: He was an absolute monarch, a monarch who defied our president,
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  Speaker 1: a monarch who laughed at our armies when they camped
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  Speaker 1: about his capital. A monarch who received without emotion the
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  Speaker 1: news that the August Congress of the United states had
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  Speaker 1: enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth
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  Speaker 1: calmly and married twenty five or thirty more wives. End
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  Speaker 1: of Appendix A