Governor Cumming had entered the Territory, his authority had been acknowledged, he was in the full discharge of his official duties and congratulated himself that all the Utah difficulties were approaching a happy termination. His rejoicing was premature. The difficulties were not ended. The army was within a few days' march of the capital and other thickly settled portions of the Territory, and might rush in at any time to be quartered in Salt Lake City or encamped in close proximity to other settlements to insult, abuse and oppress the people. Furthermore, with the army and its camp followers once settled in or near Salt Lake City, with judges deeply prejudiced against them, and with an idea that they were judges with a mission, it was more than possible, it was quite probable, that juries composed of teamsters and camp followers would be packed to set in judgment on the old settlers of Utah in respect to events which had occurred during the unsettled state of affairs of the past two years. To these things the leaders of the people had determined not to submit; and rather than brook such treatment, an exodus from the Territory was determined upon.
Early spring saw the people in the northern settlements moving en masse for the south, leaving only enough men in the deserted settlements to fire them and lay waste the country. Alfred Cumming might be Governor of the Territory, but the people leaving would make his sceptre a barren one. The army might march into the Territory with all the pomp and circumstance of glorious war, but the country would be a blackened waste—not much glory to be reaped on such a field for the army of the great Republic!
By June, Salt Lake City and all the settlements north of Lehi were deserted, save by those left to destroy them. Such was the state of things in Utah when President Buchanan's Peace Commissioners—L. W. Powell, Senator-elect from Kentucky, and ex-Governor of that state, and Major-General Ben McCullough—arrived. A conference between them and the leaders of the Church, in which Elder Taylor took part, resulted in an adjustment of the Utah difficulties. The past was to be buried. In the language of Commissioner Powell, "Bygones are to be bygones;" and while the army was to be permitted to enter the Territory it was not to be encamped nearer than forty miles of Salt Lake City, and not adjacent to densely settled districts.
The location decided upon for its encampment was in Cedar Valley, south-west of Salt Lake City. The troops marched through the deserted city en route for this point, but made no stay in it. Their permanent encampment in Ceder Valley was made at Fairfield, and named Camp Floyd, in honor of the then Secretary of War.
These stipulations carried out on the part of the Governor, the Commission and the army, and assurances given that they should be faithfully observed, the people returned to their deserted homes in time to reap the volunteer harvest with which their fields were spread; and affairs in troubled Utah began to settle to normal conditions.
In all these stirring events Elder Taylor took a prominent part. Having implicit faith in God his glorious hopes for the future, lined the dark and threatening clouds with brightest silver. Confident, as he ever was, that God held the destiny of His people and that of their enemies in His own hands, he was ready for peace or war; or for the abandonment and destruction of his home, if such were the will of God. This spirit of trust and confidence in the Lord he not only possessed himself, but had also the faculty of imbuing others with it. He encouraged the disheartened, cheered the sorrowful, strengthened the weak, reproved the fearful, convinced the unbelieving, counseled even the wise; and throughout those dark and turbulent times, bore himself with dignity, courage and true manliness which intensified the love of the Saints for him, and called forth the admiration of his brethren.
Footnotes
[1]. Governor Cumming's report to Lewis Cass, Secretary of State, bears the date of May 2, 1858: The President issued his proclamation, on the sixth of April, of the same year.