Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft

by Frank J. Cannon; Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins

Chapter V. On the Road to Freedom

In any discussion of the public affairs that make the subject matter of this narrative, a line of discrimination must be drawn at the year 1890. In that year the Church began a progressive course of submission to the civil law, and the nation received each act of surrender with forgiveness. The previous defiance's of the Mormon people ceased to give grounds for a complaint against them. The old harshnesses of the Federal government were canceled by the new generosity of a placated nation. And neither party to the present strife in Utah should go back, beyond the period of this composition, to dig up, from the past, its buried wrongs.

In relating, here, some of the events of 1888 and 1889, I have tried neither to justify the Mormons nor to defend their prosecutors. I have wished merely to make clear the situation in Utah, and to introduce to you, in advance, some of the leaders of the distracted community, so that you might understand the conditions from which the Mormons escaped by giving their covenant to the nation and be able to judge of the obligations and responsibilities of the men who gave it.

I, have described the promulgation and acceptance of "the manifesto" with such circumstance and detail, because of what has since occurred in Utah. Let me add that some two weeks later the General Conference of the Church endorsed the President's pronouncement as "authoritative and binding." And let me point out that it was the first and only law of the Mormon Church ever so sustained by triple sanctities—"revealed" as a command from God, accepted by the prophets in solemn fraternity assembled, and ratified by the vote of the entire "congregation of Israel" before it was declared to be binding upon men.

At first, because of the somewhat indefinite promise of the message itself, many of the non-Mormons of Utah remained suspicious and in doubt of it. But it was recognized by Judge Zane, in court—on the day following the close of the Conference—as an official declaration, "honest and sincere." The newspapers throughout the whole country so received it. The Church authorities sent assurances to Washington that convinced the statesmen, there, of the completeness and finality of the submission. And the good faith of the covenant was at last admitted by the non-Mormons of Utah and endorsed by their trust. I do not know of any change in human affairs dependent on human will—more speedy, effective and comprehensive than this recession. Within the space of a few days a revolution was completed that had been sought by the power of our nation and of the civilized world, for a generation, with stripes and imprisonment, death, confiscation and the ostracism of the country's public contempt. It had been obtained, I knew, chiefly by the sagacity of the First Councillor using the pressure of circumstances to enforce the persuasions of diplomacy. I felt that a miracle of change had been brought to pass. He had placed us on the road to freedom; and I trusted his guidance to lead us to our goal.

That goal, to me personally, was the honor of American citizenship—an ambition that had been an obsession with me from my earliest youth. I had never heard a man on a railroad train talk of how he was going to vote in a national election, without feeling a pang of shamed envy; for my lack of citizenship seemed a mark of inferiority. The patriotic reading of my boyhood had made the American republic, to me, the noblest administration of freemen in the history of government and the exercise of its franchise literally the highest dignity of human privilege. I would have been as proud—I was as proud when the day came—to vote for the President of the United States as he could have been to take his oath of office. I do not believe that any poor serf, escaped from the tyranny of Russia, ever saw the American shore with a more grateful eye than I looked to the prospect of being admitted, with the citizens of Utah, into the enfranchisement of the Republic.

But it was evident that the Church's recession from polygamy would not be enough to free us, so long as its control of politics remained. Its other practices had flourished and been sheltered under its political power; and now that the Church had ceased to be a lawbreaker, our friends in Washington were properly expecting that it would cease to interfere with its members in the exercise of their citizenship. For this reason, when I was notified that I had been selected as a member of the advisory committee of the People's Party (the Church party), I went at once to my father and told him that I would not take the place; that I intended to work, personally, and through my newspaper, for the political division of Utah on the lines of the national parties. He held that until Gentile solidarity was dissolved, it would be dangerous to divide the allegiance of the Mormons; but he did not stand against my protest; he contented himself—diplomatically—with sending me to consult with President Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith.

To them, I argued that the political emancipation of the Mormon people from ecclesiastical direction was as necessary as the recession from polygamy had been. We must be set free to perform our duty to the country solely as citizens of the country, before we could expect to be given the right to perform it at all. And, for my part, the only action I would consent to take as a member of the advisory committee of the People's Party would be to vote for the dissolution of the party.

President Woodruff referred me to my father, and advised me to be guided by him. Joseph F. Smith urged that a division of the Mormon people on national party lines would enable the Liberal (the Gentile) party to march in between. I argued in reply that we must divide at some time, and the sooner the better, since every year was increasing the Gentile population. They would never split as long as we remained solid. And if we were ever to be permitted to nationalize ourselves, it would not be until we had dissolved the party organizations whose very names were a proof of the continued rule of the Church in politics.

When he had no more arguments to advance, he gave a reluctant assent to mine. I reported back to my father and he approved of my plans. He asked me humorously with whom I expected to affiliate, since he knew of no one who was likely to go with me; but I could see that he was pleased with my independence and hoped I might succeed in doing something to break the deadlock-grapple of Mormon and Gentile that held Utah apart from the rest of the country in politics.