In reporting affairs in Utah to the Secretary of State, Governor Cumming made the following observations:
“Persons unbiased by prejudice who have visited this Territory will, I think, agree in the opinion that a community is seldom seen more marked by quiet and peaceable diligence than that of the Mormons.
“After the passage of the army, hundreds of adventurers were attracted to these valleys, and met here some congenial spirits. Banded together for rapine and acts of violence, they have stolen large herds of horses and mules. Many of these men, maddened by intemperance, or rendered desperate by losses at the gaming table, or by various other causes, have shed each other’s blood in frequent conflicts, and secret assassinations. These lawless and bloody deeds are committed by them almost daily with impunity, and when their atrocity and frequency shock the public mind, it has become the custom with a certain set of people to exclaim against the people of Utah; but it is an injustice to impute the acts of these desperadoes to the community in general. With an equal show of justice might they be attributed to the inhabitants of the States and Territories whence these men have so recently emigrated.”
The New Federal Officers
Chief Justice Delano R. Eckels and the new secretary of the territory, John Hartnett, arrived in Utah with the army. Jacob Forney, the superintendent of Indian affairs, arrived with the peace commissioners, and Judge Charles E. Sinclair and Attorney Alexander Wilson came near the end of July. The third judge, John Cradlebaugh, did not arrive until November. None of these officers were members of the Church.
After he had taken the oath of office, Chief Justice Eckels took up his residence at Camp Floyd and Judge Sinclair made his headquarters in Salt Lake City. Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court in Provo in March, 1859, although the seat of his district was Fillmore.
“Progress of Civilization”
The majority of the government officials sent to Utah during territorial days came obsessed with the idea that the “Mormons” were an unpatriotic and ignorant class of people, bound by blind obedience to the will of a set of knaves who presided over them. When a new government appointee came to Utah, usually he felt it incumbent upon him to begin his labors with a lecture to the people on loyalty and morality, and advise them to cast off the yoke of ignorance which bound them. These would-be reformers at times gave expression to the thought that they had brought civilization among the “Mormons” and were endeavoring to reform them. At the time of the return to the east in 1858, of one official— who had been notoriously corrupt and immoral in his conduct while in Utah —a number of the civil and military officers and some non-“Mormon” merchants tendered him a dinner. In the course of their hilarity they expressed the satisfaction he would feel in joining his “family and friends in a moral and civilized community.”
Such expressions as this led President Brigham Young, who was a sorrowful witness of the scenes of debauchery and crime practiced by some of these “reformers,” to say to another retiring official who was about to depart: “When you get back to the states, no doubt you will be asked many questions about me. I wish you would tell them that I am here, watching the progress of civilization.”
That some of these individuals were sincere, there can be no question, and they should have credit for honest conviction. However it was impossible for them to see the situation from the “Mormon” viewpoint. They came with pre-conceived ideas regarding the doctrines and practices of the Latter-day Saints, and were greatly prejudiced against them. Their prejudice stood in their own light so that they took no trouble to investigate or try to understand. In most cases it was sufficient to know that the “Mormons” were a peculiar people with a strange belief, in conflict with the doctrines of other people.
Many of these officers, however, were insincere. They were guilty of the very sins with which they accused the Latter-day Saints, and yet they brazenly sat in judgment and condemned the Saints, while they, themselves, were guilty of revolting crimes.