Oneida, October 24TH, 1878.
Has Merrill been released? If not, where is he?
[Signed] Washington Dunn.
On receipt of the foregoing telegrams, the judge ignored the authority of the President, saying that President Hayes had no jurisdiction in the case—that it belonged to the Secretary of the Interior, Carl Schurz; and finding himself in an awkward and embarrassing dilemma, this policy judge, being destitute of sufficient noble manhood to acknowledge and honor a defeat, instead of dismissing those cases and discharging those under indictment, he affected to disregard the telegrams and resorted to base subterfuges, conniving with his mobocratic clan; and all of those indictments remained for years as so many foul blots on the judicial docket. At length they were expunged by order of the court.
On Sunday, four or five days after the receipt of the despatch to set the prisoners free, the United States marshal took Elder Merrill from Malad jail, and, pretending he was taking him to Boise in conformity to the verdict of the judge, stopped in Corinne, sixty miles from Malad, after dark, when, after Mr. Merrill stepped out of the carriage and proposed to assist in taking care of the horses, the marshal gruffly replied, "No, I'll see to them myself," and drove off, leaving his prisoner standing alone, unguarded and unacquitted.
The mill, which the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association purchased in Marsh Valley, had been in operation there twelve years before the purchase; and, after the raid, the foreman of the jury bought it of the association at half price, and has kept it running from that time, supplied from the same woodland, which proves his egregious dishonesty as a juror.
It was understood, and those raiders must have been cognizant of the fact, that the government not only granted the right of way, but also the right of timber for building the railroad, and that the section under controversy was included.
Irrespective of the anxieties, disappointments and embarrassments resulting from that unhallowed onslaught, the financial loss which the association suffered amounted to from six thousand to eight thousand dollars.