This passing of the gold-seekers was not, however, a blessing without drawbacks. For the Saints had hoped to wax strong unobserved, unmolested, forgotten, in this mountain retreat. But now obscurity could no longer be their lot. The hated Gentiles had again to be reckoned with.
First, the United States had expanded on the west to include their territory—the fruit of the Mexican War—the poor bleak desert they were making to blossom. Next, the government at Washington had sent to construe and administer their laws men who were aliens from the Commonwealth of Israel. True, Millard Fillmore had appointed Brigham governor of the new Territory—but there were chief justices and associate justices, secretaries, attorneys, marshals, and Indian agents from the wicked and benighted East; men who frankly disbelieved that the voice of Brigham was as the voice of God, and who did not hesitate to let their heresy be known. A stream of these came and went—trouble-mongers who despised and insulted the Saints, and returned to Washington with calumnies on their lips. It was true that Brigham had continued, as was right, to be the only power in the Territory; but the narrow-minded appointees of the Federal government persisted in misconstruing this circumstance; refusing to look upon it as the just mark of Heaven’s favour, and declaring it to be the arrogance of a mere civil usurper.
Under such provocation Joel Rae longed more than ever to be a Lion of the Lord, for those above him in the Church endured too easily, he considered, the indignities that were put upon them by these evil-minded Gentile politicians. He would have rejected them forthwith, as he believed the Lord would have had them do,—nay, as he believed the Lord would sooner or later punish them for not doing. He would have thrust them into the desert, and called upon the Lord for strength to meet the storm that would doubtless be raised by such a course. He was impatient when the older men cautioned moderation and the petty wiles of diplomacy. Yet he was not altogether discouraged; for even they lost patience at times, and were almost as outspoken as he could have wished.
Even Brigham, on one notable occasion, had thrilled him, when in the tabernacle he had bearded Brocchus and left him white and cowering before all the people, trembling for his life,—Brocchus, the unworthy Associate Justice, who had derided their faith, insulted their prophet, and slandered their women. How he rejoiced in that moment when Brigham for once lost his temper and let his eyes flash their hate upon the frightened official.
“But you,” Brigham had roared, “standing there white and shaking at the hornets’ nest you have stirred up—you are a coward—and that is why you praise men that are not cowards—why you praise Zachary Taylor!”
Brigham had a little time before declared that Zachary Taylor was dead and in hell, and that he, Brigham, was glad of it.
“President Taylor you can’t praise,” he had gone on to the gradually whitening Brocchus. “What was he? A mere soldier with regular army buttons on—no better to go at the head of troops than a dozen men I could pick up between Leavenworth and Laramie. As to what you have intimated about our morals—you miserable cringing coward, you—I won’t notice it except to make my personal request of every brother and husband present not to give your back what your impudence deserves. You talk of things you have on hearsay since you came among us. I’ll talk of hearsay, then—the hearsay that you are mad and will go home because we can’t make it worth your while to stay. What it would satisfy you to get out of us it wouldn’t be hard to tell; but I know it’s more than you’ll get. We don’t want you. You are such a baby-calf that we would have to sugar your soap to coax you to wash yourself on Saturday night. Go home to your mammy, straightaway, and the sooner the better.”
This was the manner, thought Joel Rae, that Federal officials should be treated when they were out of sympathy with Zion—though he thought he might perhaps have chosen words that would be more dignified had the task been entrusted to him. He told Brigham his satisfaction with the address when the excited congregation had dispersed, and the alarmed Brocchus had gone.
“That is the course we must take, Brother Brigham—do more of it. Unless we take our stand now against aggression, the Lord will surely smite us again with famine and pestilence.” And Brigham had answered, in the tones of a man who knows, “Wait just a little!”
But there came famine upon them again; in punishment, declared Joel Rae, for their ungodly temporising with the minions of the United States government. In ’54 the grasshoppers ate their growing crops. In ’55 they came again with insatiate maws—and on what they left the drought and frost worked their malignant spells. The following winter great numbers of their cattle and sheep perished on the range in the heavy snows.