PRESIDING UNDER DIFFICULTIES—GENERAL EPISTLE—AN INFAMOUS CRUSADE—HOMES INVADED—JUDICIAL LEGISLATION—COHABITATION—PRESIDENT TAYLOR'S DEPORTMENT.
From his places of retirement among the Saints, President Taylor continued to preside over the Church, and under God to shape its policy and direct its movements. Prevented by the mistaken zeal of the United States officials and the vigilance of their myrmidons—the spotters and spies—from attending the public meetings and conferences of the Church, he, with his counselors, addressed general epistles to the Saints in which they imparted such counsel and instruction as they considered necessary and suited to the conditions by which they were environed.
These papers are remarkable for their conservative tone and wisdom; for the total absence of anger or vindictiveness, as also for the scope and variety of the subjects they treated upon. They compare favorably with the wisest and best state papers ever issued by kings or presidents, ministers of state or cabinet councils. The flock of Christ, therefore, was not left without the counsel of heaven or the care of the shepherds.
Still those were dark days. The seats reserved and usually occupied by the leaders of Israel in the public assemblies were either vacant or filled by comparative strangers. The recent enactments of Congress infamous in themselves, were still more infamously enforced. The courts and United States officials in Utah seemed utterly reckless in their methods of executing the law. Men who at the most were guilty of what the law defined to be a misdemeanor, punishable by six months imprisonment and three hundred dollars fine, were hunted as if they were guilty of the grossest crimes which could endanger the peace and safety of the community.
Frequently, and I may say usually, deputy marshals in the night would surround the houses suspected as being the places where their victims were to be found, and then in the morning, before the inmates were astir, would pounce upon them in the most unceremonious and brutal manner. No place was so sacred in the homes of the people but these minions under the color of law would force their way into it. Even the bed chambers of modest maidenhood were rudely entered before the occupants could dress, and in some instances the covering of their beds stripped from them in the pretended search for violators of the law; and they the while compelled to listen to their low blasphemies.
In proof of these allegations, which may seem too hard for belief as time with its ever-moving wheels carries us away from the years in which these acts of petty tyranny were perpetrated, I insert a few statements of parties who suffered them. These statements are to be found in a memorial addressed to Congress by the women of Utah, presented in the Senate on the 6th of April, 1886, by Senator Blair of New Hampshire, and ordered printed by that body:
"On January 11th, 1886, early in the morning, five deputy marshals appeared at the residence of William Grant, American Fork, forced the front door open, and, while the inmates were still in bed, made their way up stairs to their sleeping apartments. There they were met by one of the daughters of William Grant, who was aroused by the intrusion and, despite her protestations, without giving time for the object of their search to get up and dress himself, made their way into his bedroom, finding him still in bed and his wife en deshabille in the act of dressing herself."
Mrs. Easton, of Greenville, near Beaver, relates the following:
"About seven a. m. deputies came to our house and demanded admittance. I asked them to wait until we got dressed, and we would let them in. Deputy Gleason said he would not wait, and raised the window and got partly through by the time we opened the door, when he drew himself back and came in through the door. He then went into the bedroom; one of the young ladies had got under the bed, from which Gleason pulled the bedding and ordered the young lady to come out. This she did, and ran into the other room, where she was met by Thompson. I asked Gleason why he pulled the bedding from the bed, and he answered, 'By God! I found Watson in the same kind of a place.' He then said he thought Easton was concealed in a small compass, and that he expected to find him in a similar place, and was going to get him before he left."
Miss Morris, of the same place, says: