Meantime the adversary was not idle. A number of United States officials that had been sent to Utah turned out to be the vilest of characters. Vain, ambitious, corrupt, revengeful, hypocritical; and evidently regarding the Mormons as their legitimate prey—as a people having no rights which they were under obligations to respect. As the time-serving, villainous Oswald, in King Lear, looked upon the eyeless head of the unfortunate, traitor-proclaimed and yet innocent Gloucester, as being framed to raise his fortunes, so did these impudent, corrupt officials regard the Mormon people; and hoped by opposing their unpopular religion, and social customs—with which they had, of right, nothing to do—to ride into popular favor and good fortune. Utah was to be a convenient stepping-stone to higher political preferment.
The outrages of these officials reached a climax in the conduct of Associate Judge W. W. Drummond; who, having deserted his wife in Illinois, brought with him a prostitute who sat by him on the judicial bench in open court; and in various ways insulted the people by unwarranted assaults upon institutions religious and social which they held to be most sacred; and even their territorial laws, to which the government at Washington had taken no exceptions whatever, were threatened by this gambler and black-leg, upon whose unworthy shoulders the ermine had been unwisely thrown. To the honor of the Mormon community, he did not long remain in the Territory to disgrace her judiciary, but fled in fear from Utah to California, from which place he wrote his resignation and falsely reported to the Attorney-General that the Mormons were in open rebellion to the government; that the records and papers of the supreme court had been destroyed by order of the Church; that Brigham Young and other leading Church officials were responsible for the murder of a number of U. S. officials who had died in the Territory, and others who had been massacred by Indians.
Upon receiving these statements from Judge Drummond, President Buchanan, without taking the pains to ascertain the truth or falsehood of them, about the latter part of May, 1857, ordered an army into Utah to suppress this imaginary rebellion.
Many criticisms were made upon the evident inconsiderate action of President Buchanan in this affair. Elder Taylor, in a discussion he had some years later on the "Mormon Question" with Vice-President Schuyler Colfax, in referring to this action on the part of the government, says: "Mr. Buchanan had another object in view, [than that of suppressing the "Mormon Rebellion">[ and Mr. J. B. Floyd, Secretary of War, had also his ax to grind, and the whole combined was considered a grand coup d'etat. It is hardly necessary to inform Mr. Colfax that this army, under pretense of subjugating the Mormons, was intended to coerce the people of Kansas to his views, and that they were not detained, as stated by Mr. Colfax's history, which said: 'The troops necessarily moving slowly were overtaken by the snows of November and wintered at Bridger.' I need not inform Mr Colfax that another part of this grand tableau originated in the desire of Secretary Floyd to scatter the U. S. forces and arms preparatory to the Confederate Rebellion. Such is history and such are facts."
John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in Buchanan's cabinet, was from Virginia, and favored the southern cause, as indeed the whole administration and the party that elected it did; so that Elder Taylor's charge respecting the scattering of United States forces, rests upon the ground of strong probability. Relative to the charge that under pretence of subjugating Utah the President intended to coerce the people of Kansas to an acceptance of his views, it is true that part of the army for Utah left Fort Leavenworth before the last of July; but Brigadier-General Harney, to whom the command of the expedition had been given, remained with several squadrons of the second dragoons in Kansas, until after the elections in that Territory in October; and President Buchanan was involved in an intrigue to defeat the popular will in Kansas.
There is, however, another consideration which I doubt not influenced the action of the administration in sending an army to Utah. The party that supported the administration was anxious to give proof to the country that it was no more favorable to the unpopular Mormons than the Republican party was; and seized upon the false reports of Judge Drummond as a golden opportunity to out-herod Herod, hoping by that movement to throw off the odium its opponents had fastened upon it in charging that its doctrines of popular sovereignty would permit the people of Utah to establish polygamy as well as slavery if they so elected.
It was in May, 1857, that Elder Taylor left New York for the west. Judge William I. Appleby and T. B. H. Stenhouse were left in charge of The Mormon, and continued its publication until September 19th, when it was discontinued, principally on account of the threatened "Mormon War."
Footnotes
[1]. It may be of interest to note in passing that once in conversation with Senator Douglas, early in the forties—the Senator then being a judge in one of the judicial districts of Illinois—the Prophet Joseph said to him in substance: "Judge Douglas, you will yet aspire to the Presidency of the United States; but if you ever turn against me or my people, you will fail." When Senator Douglas forgot the warning of the Prophet and advocated cutting "the loathsome ulcer out of the body politic," he sounded the death knell to his ambitious hopes.