"Special Order.
"The officer in command of escort is hereby ordered to see that every man is well prepared with ammunition and have it ready at the time you see those teamsters a hundred miles from the settlements. President Young advises that they should be all killed to prevent them from returning to Bridger to join our enemies. Every precaution should be taken and see that not one escapes. Secrecy is required.
"By order of Genl. Danl. H. Wells.
James Ferguson, Asst. Adjt. Genl."
The teamsters alluded to were eighty in number, discharged from Johnson's command when at Fort Bridger, and were en route to California. Maloney, who commanded the escort, is and has been for four years employed at Camp Douglas. He was too humane to execute the order. He however preserved it, and it is now in the possession of Hon. John Titus, Chief Justice of the Territory. The signature of Ferguson is authenticated under oath, by two prominent Mormons of Salt Lake. The Mormons have on several occasions attempted to take the life of Maloney, and only a short time since destroyed a house of his near Camp Douglas.
About this time a new source of difficulty arose in the settlement of the public lands. The entire body of land in the Territory belongs to the United States Government, subject to the claims of Indian tribes roving through the country. The land has never been open to market. But very little of it, indeed, has ever been surveyed.
The Mormons claim to own the valley of the Salt Lake, and all the adjacent country; not only that which they have reduced to possession, but the square miles of adjoining land untouched by human being.
But the gentiles were not disposed to concede the rightfulness of these claims. In the summers of 1865-66, various settlements were made upon the public lands in Utah, under the National Homestead Act, by anti-Mormon or gentile citizens.
The Mormons affected to consider this an infringement of their rights, and from denunciations and threats proceeded to open violence to prevent these intrusions.
Some account of these outrages is given in the following extracts from a letter written by Captain S. E. Jocelyn, and published in the "Chicago Republican," of January 4, 1867.