“The New Movement”
In the fall of 1869 a number of prominent elders were excommunicated for apostasy, by the high council of the Salt Lake Stake. Among the number were William S. Godbe, Elias L. T. Harrison, Eli B. Kelsey, and later Henry W. Lawrence, Thomas B. H. Stenhouse and others. Mr. Godbe was a merchant, and a prominent member of one of the quorums of Seventy as was also Mr. Harrison, whose business was that of an architect. Eli B. Kelsey had performed good and faithful service in the mission field abroad, until through immoral transgression he lost the spirit of the work. These men had become disaffected for various causes and now opposed many of the policies of President Young. They accused him of trying to set up in the Church a “Young dynasty,” and of being guilty of “one man power,” and they rebelled against his teaching regarding the opening of the mines and the establishment of mercantile institutions. Mr. Harrison, a gifted writer, had been editing the Utah Magazine which now became the organ of the disaffected brethren. These men still claimed to believe in much of “Mormonism” but centered their attack on President Young, publishing articles reflecting upon him by comparison and innuendo. At first they declared they would set up an organization of their own—a new Church—retaining all the good features of “Mormonism” and discarding all that were bad. A presiding officer and apostles were to be chosen, and the Church was to be “redeemed” from the sad condition into which these disaffected persons claimed it had fallen. This attempt at “reformation” is known in history as “the New Movement,” or the “Godbeite Movement,” because of the prominent part William S. Godbe played in it; but they called it “The Church of Zion.” For a time they held meetings in the Thirteenth Ward, by permission of President Young; but the organization which was without a head, and as Elder Whitney says, “with very little body,” soon passed away.
Organization of the Liberal Party
Desiring some organization in which “Mormonism” might be opposed, these excommunicated members joined with the anti-“Mormons” of the territory in the formation of a political party, the object of which was to fight the Church. “The Liberal Political Party,” as it was called, was organized in February, 1870. From that time forth until the organization was dissolved in the nineties, it carried on an unscrupulous warfare against the Church. Those who controlled its destiny were guilty of the most bitter and relentless actions that could be imagined. Misrepresentation, falsehood and deceit were the chief weapons of attack; and by such methods the name of the Church was maligned and its officers placed in a false light before the world. The history of this political organization is almost without a parallel, at least nothing like it has ever occurred elsewhere in free republican America; only as it has been produced by those opposed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in these valleys of the mountains. Nothing like it would be tolerated anywhere else in all the world.
The Salt Lake Tribune
In January, 1870, the “Godbeites” commenced publishing a paper which they called the Mormon Tribune; it was the Utah Magazine, transformed, and was published in the interest of their movement. Dropping the word “Mormon” it became the organ of the Liberal Party, and the following year passed into other hands more vicious. “Its only principle, apparently, was hatred of everything Mormon,” writes Historian Whitney, “in pursuance of which it spared neither age, sex nor condition; emptying the vials of its venom upon all who dared to differ from it, misrepresenting their motives, assailing their characters, and libeling and lampooning both the living and the dead. Its columns were not only filled habitually with falsehood, but often with vulgar and obscene scandals. Many who helped to sustain the paper either from sympathy with its assaults upon Mormonism, or from fear of being abused by it and called ‘Jack-Mormons’ if they withheld their support, were careful to have it delivered at their down-town offices, and would not have it in their homes for their wives and daughters to read, so filthy at times were its contents. The Nauvoo Expositor was holy writ compared with the Salt Lake Tribune.[3] It had been justly said of this sheet that it was “brought into the world to lie and was true to its mission.”
Notes
[1. ] The Gentile merchants were scarcely complimentary to the intelligence of President Young when they made this proposition to withdraw from the Territory on the conditions named by them. If the Gentile claim that there was utter incompatibility between Mormon and non-Mormon in Utah could have been emphasized by a spectacular exodus of Gentile merchants from Utah, however brought about, it doubtless would have given occasion for another Utah expedition to the Territory or such other military display as would have inured to the benefit of speculators, contractors, and merchants, or to the long-hoped-for further prescription of the Latter-day Saints. Surely the Gentile merchants should have known if their action had such motive as this, that Brigham Young would have detected it; and if not, if their proposed exodus was honest and meant only that they intended to withdraw from an unpleasant situation, to end merely in their personal advantage, then they should have known that Brigham Young would know that the people of the United States would read into the facts of the exodus all the evidence they would need of the alleged incompatibility, to justify, from their viewpoint, all the coercive measures against the Mormon community for which their enemies were clamoring. Brigham Young could not fail to apprehend the danger, and accordingly avoid it (History of the Mormon Church, ch. 106, p. 464, B. H. Roberts).
[2. ] As early as 1864 a co-operative movement was inaugurated in Brigham City by Elder Lorenzo Snow. It was attended with success and grew into a flourishing institution which existed for a number of years. Other ventures preceding the establishment of Z.C.M.I.—as the great parent institution is generally called—were established at Lehi, American Fork and other towns, in 1868.
[3. ] History of Utah, vol. 2:380–1.