The taking of Mexico was the crisis of the war. But though the enemy’s capital was in the hands of the Americans, they made use of their conquest for no other purpose than to establish peace. In vain Santa Anna endeavoured to carry on the war; his power was gone for the present, and in October, being abandoned by his troops, he once more became a fugitive. In the following February a treaty was laid before congress, and on the 29th of May, the treaty being signed between the two nations, peace was declared to the American army in Mexico.
The stipulations of the treaty were, that Mexico should be evacuated within three months, prisoners on each side released, and Mexican captures made by the Indians within the limits of the United States were to be restored. These limits, as they affect Mexico, begin at the mouth of the Rio Grande, and proceed thence along the deepest channel of that river to the southern boundary of New Mexico. From thence to the Pacific they follow the river Gela and the southern boundary of Upper California. The United States might, however, navigate the Colorado below the entrance of its affluent the Gela. If it were found practicable and judged expedient to construct a canal, road, or railway along the Gela, both nations were to unite in its construction and afterwards to participate in its advantages. The navigation of the river to be obstructed by neither nation. Mexican citizens within the limits of the relinquished territories of New Mexico and Upper California to be allowed a year to make their selection whether they would continue Mexican citizens and remove their property, for which every facility was to be furnished, or whether they would remain and become citizens of the United States. The United States stipulated to restrain the incursions of all the Indian tribes within its limits against the Mexicans, and to return all Mexican captives hereafter made by the Indians. In consideration of territory gained, the United States government agreed to pay to Mexico 15,000,000 dollars, and also to assume her debts to American citizens to the amount of 3,500,000 more. Three millions were paid down to Mexico at once, congress having the preceding winter placed that sum in the hands of the president in anticipation of this arrangement.
Thus was the contest ended, to the incalculable advantage of America, and of Mexico likewise, though her benefit will lie in the nearer proximity of a more enlightened government, free institutions, and an advancing people.
The territory of Wisconsin was admitted into the American Union as a state, in May, 1850.
A vast extent of country, as we have already said, fell into the hands of the United States government, in consequence of its Mexican conquests. An important portion of this was Utah, so called from the tribe of Indians inhabiting it, and which was formed into a territorial government as early as 1850. But this remarkable country, with its vast mountain chains, its deserts, its affluent valleys, and its great Salt Lake, together with its extraordinary people, the Mormons, deserve more than a mere summary mention. The Rocky Mountains on the east and the Sierra Nevada on the west, form the boundaries of Utah; besides these, two lofty chains intersect the country from north-east to south-west. The Great Basin, a considerable portion of which is sandy desert, is an elevated valley, composing the western portion of Utah; it is in circuit about 12,000 miles, and lies about 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. The great valley of the Colorado, on the east, although not fully explored, is said to be wonderfully fertile, abounding in wood, and admirably fitted for the purposes of agriculture. Its northern portion, and the whole district of the Great Salt Lake, are full of natural beauties, and abundantly repay cultivation.
The Great Salt Lake is perhaps the most singular feature of Utah. Its form is irregular, in extent it is about seventy miles, and contains many islands. It is extremely salty, and so shallow as not to be available for the purposes of navigation. Its western banks, intersected by rivulets impregnated with salt and sulphur, are totally devoid of vegetation, excepting such small shrubs as spring up among the glittering saline particles, and here the mirage frequently displays its fantastic show, as in the deserts of the East. Fresh water and green turf are unknown through an extent of one hundred miles, while a coating of solid salt incrusts the earth, upon which the mules pass as upon ice. This lake never freezes. The river Utah, or the Jordan as it is called by the Mormons, is a small river of fresh water which unites Lake Utah to the Great Salt Lake. Lake Utah, thirty-five miles long, receives the waters of a great number of fresh-water streams which descend from the mountains, and keep the waters of this lesser lake fresh, although on its southern limits a considerable vein of salt has been found imbedded in the clay.
These lakes are about 4,000 feet above the level of the sea.
Lake Utah, as well as the rivers which flow into it, abounds with excellent fish, which with the chase furnish a subsistence to the Indians of this district.[[84]]
Into this singular region, with its snow-capped mountains, its elevated valleys, its sandy deserts, and salt and sulphurous waters, came, in the year 1848, a people whose social and religious system forms as singular an anomaly in the midst of modern civilisation as the country itself which they chose amid the more ordinary aspects of nature. These, as is well known, are the Mormons.
The commencement of this sect was only eighteen years previous to the great emigration westward, and has become an historical event. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, a man of low origin, a native of Palmyra in the state of New York, pretended to have found written plates of gold, which he also pretended to translate by miraculous inspiration, and gave forth as the book of Mormon, representing himself to be a great prophet of the latter day, a new Moses or Mahomet. The character of Smith appears from his youth upwards to have been that of a religious enthusiast, if not impostor. When only fourteen, during one of those periods of religious excitement called revivals, he declared that he had been favoured with a heavenly vision, in which two angelic personages freed him from the power of the Enemy and forbade him to join himself to any Christian sect. As he approached manhood he pretended to a knowledge of the occult sciences, and used the divining rod in the discovery of gold, at which period he was known as “Joe the Money-Digger.” The greatest treasure, however, which came into his hand, whether by occult knowledge or by angelic revelation, was, he said, the Book of Mormon, though no one ever saw the golden plates on which he asserted that it was written. As regards this so-called Book of Mormon, it is now generally supposed to have been the production of one Solomon Spalding, a Presbyterian minister, who, after various unsuccesses, wrote a tedious work of fiction on the History of the North American Indians, as the descendants of the patriarch Joseph, from the reign of Zedekiah to the fifth century of the Christian era, and which purported to have been buried by Mormon, its original compiler. This work, which never found a publisher, some years after its author’s death fell by some means into the hands of Sidney Higdon, an associate of Smith’s. The Book of Mormon was published, and Joe Smith was impudently announced by it to be a second Prophet and Saviour of mankind, who should establish a great Zion in America. Ill-founded and absurd as his pretensions were, he soon obtained an immense influence over the ignorant, not only in America but in England, and his sect increased not by hundreds but thousands. The principles of this sect are as yet but imperfectly understood. If, however, they are to be inferred from their bible, they will be found based on Christianity, whatever extravagances and impurities they may have engrafted upon it. This book is said to contain, in the first place, the whole of the Christian Bible, to which are added the writings of later prophets, of whom Meroni and Mormon are asserted to be the last. These give a more definite prophecy of Christ, but still adhere to the details of his life as related by the Evangelists, but in no instances propound any new religious doctrines or theory. The sect asserts, however, that Joe Smith, being directly descended from these later prophets, not only inherited their divine gifts, but was endowed with the spiritual privilege of divine communication, which he had the power of imparting to others; and that by means of these divine and miraculous gifts he and his followers are brought into closer communication with Christ than any other body of Christians.