HISTORIAN AND RECORDER’S OFFICE.One of my favorite places of visiting was the Historian and Recorder’s Office, opposite Mr. Brigham Young’s block. It contained a small collection of volumes, together with papers, official and private, plans, designs, and other requisites, many of them written in the Deserét alphabet, of which I subjoin a [copy].[216] It is, as will readily be seen, a stereographic modification of Pitman’s and other systems. Types have been cast for it, and articles are printed in the newspapers at times; as man, however, prefers two alphabets to one, it will probably share the fate of the “Fonetik Nuz.” Sir A. Alison somewhere delivers it as his opinion that the future historian of America will be forced to Europe, where alone his material can be found; so far from this being the case, the reverse is emphatically true: every where in the States, even in the newest, the Historical Society is an institution, and men pride themselves upon laboring for it. At the office I used to meet Mr. George A. Smith, the armor-bearer to the Prophet in the camp of Zion, who boasts of having sown the first seed, built the first saw-mill, and ground the first flour in Southern Utah, whence the nearest settlements, separated by terrible deserts, were distant 200 miles. His companions were Messrs. W. Woodruff, Bishop Bentley, who was preparing for a missionary visit to England, and Wm. Thomas Bullock, an intelligent Mormon, who has had the honor to be soundly abused in Mrs. Ferris’s 11th letter. The lady’s “wicked Welshman”—I suppose she remembered the well-known line anent the sons of the Cymri—
“Taffy is a Welshman, Taffy is a thief”—
is no Cambrian, but an aborigine of Leek, Staffordshire, England, and was from 1838 to 1843 an excise officer in her majesty’s Inland Revenue; he kindly supplied me with a plan of the city, and other information, for which he has my grateful thanks.
[216] See next page.
| THE DESERÉT ALPHABET. | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VOCAL SOUNDS. | The sounds of the letters  ,fit, ,net, ,fat, ,cot, ,nut, foot.are heard in the words  ,chee-se, ,ga-te, ,s-eth, ,the, fl-esh.are heard in the words  is like ir in st-ir; are is made by the combination of ; is heard in l-eng-th.Learn this Alphabet and appreciate its advantages. | |||||||
| Long. | Double. | | Ga | |||||
 | E |  | I |  | F | |||
 | A |  | Ow |  | V | |||
 | Ah |  | Woo | | Eth | |||
 | Aw |  | Ye | | The | |||
 | O | Aspirate. |  | S | ||||
 | H | |||||||
 | Oo | Articulate Sounds. |  | Z | ||||
| Short. |  | P | | Esh | ||||
| - | (This column of letters are the short sounds of the above). |  | B |  | Zhe | ||
|  | Т | | Ur | ||||
|  | D |  | L | ||||
| | Che |  | M | ||||
|  | G |  | N | ||||
|  | K | | Eng | ||||
At the office, the undying hatred of all things Gentile-federal had reached its climax; every slight offered to the faith by anti-Mormons is there laid up in lavender, every grievance is carefully recorded. FEDERAL OFFICIALS.There I heard how, at a general conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, in September, 1851, Perry E. Brocchus, a judge of the Supreme Court, having the design of becoming Territorial delegate to Congress, ascended the rostrum and foully abused their most cherished institution, polygamy.[217] He was answered with sternness by Mr. Brigham Young, and really, under the circumstances, the Saints behaved very well in not proceeding to voies de faits. Mr. Brocchus, seeing personal danger, left the city in company with Chief Justice L. C. Brandenburg and Mr. Secretary Harris, whom the Mormons very naturally accused of carrying away $24,000, the sum appropriated by Congress for the salary and the mileage of the local Legislature, thus putting a clog upon the wheels of government. I also heard how Judge Drummond, in 1856, began the troubles by falsely reporting to the federal authority that the Mormons were in a state of revolt; that they had burned the public library, and were, in fact, defying the Union—how, bigotry doing its work, the officials at Washington believed the tale without investigation, and sent an army which was ready to renew the scenes of St. Bartholomew and Nauvoo. The federal troops were rather pitied than hated; had they been militia they would have been wiped out; but “wretched Dutchmen, and poor devils of Irishmen,” acting under orders, were simply despised. Their fainéantise was contrasted most unfavorably with the fiery Mormon youth that was spoiling for a fight; that could ride, like part of the horse, down places where no trooper dared venture; that picked up a dollar at full gallop, drove off the invaders’ cattle, burned wagons, grass, and provisions, offered to lasso the guns, and, when they had taken a prisoner, drank with him and let him go—how Governor Cumming, after his entry, at once certified the untruthfulness of the scandal spread by Judge Drummond, especially that touching the library and archives, and reported that no federal officer had ever been killed or even assaulted by the Saints—how the effects of these misrepresentations have been and still are serious. In 1857, for instance, the mail was cut off, and a large commercial community was left without postal communication for a whole year: the ostensible reason was the troubled state of the Territory; the real cause was the desire of the Post-office Department to keep the advance of the troops dark. The Mormons complain that they have ever been made a subject of political capital. President Van Buren openly confessed to them, “Gentlemen, your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you; if I took your part I should lose the vote of Missouri.” Every grievance against them, they say, is listened to and readily believed: as an example, a Mr. John Robinson, of Liverpool, had lately represented to her Britannic majesty’s Secretary for Foreign Affairs that his mother and sister were detained in Utah Territory against their will; the usual steps were taken; the British minister applied to the United States Secretary of State, who referred the affair to the governor of the Territory; after which process the tale turned out a mere canard. This sister had been married to Mr. Ferguson, adjutant general of the Nauvoo Legion; the mother had left the City of the Saints for Illinois, and had just written to her son-in-law for means by which she could return to a place whence she was to be rescued by British interference. To a false prejudice against themselves the Mormons attribute the neglect with which their project of colonizing Vancouver’s Island was treated by the British government, and the active opposition to be expected should they ever attempt to settle in the Valley of the Saskatchewan. And they think it poor policy on the part of England to “bluff off” 100,000 moral, industrious, and obedient subjects, who would be a bulwark against aggression on the part of the States, and tend materially to prepare the thousand miles of valley between the Mississippi and the Pacific for the coming railway.
[217] On the 5th of April, 1860, the Chamber of Representatives at Washington passed a projected law to repress polygamy by a majority of 149 to 60. Fortunately, the Committee of the Senate had no time to report upon it, and the slave discussion assumed dimensions which buried Mormonism in complete oblivion.
CHILDREN OF THE SAINTS.At the office I also obtained details concerning education in Great Salt Lake City. Before commencing the subject it will be necessary to notice certain statements relating to the ingenuous youth of Utah Territory. It is generally asserted that juvenile mortality here ranks second only to Louisiana, and the fault is, of course, charged upon polygamy. A French author talks of the mortalité effrayante among the newly-born, while owning, anomalously, that the survivors sont braves et robustes. I “doubt the fact.” Mr. Ferris, moreover, declares that there is “nowhere out of the Five Points of New York City a more filthy, miserable, and disorderly rabble of children than can be found in the streets of Great Salt Lake City.” As far as my experience goes, it is the reverse. I was surprised by their numbers, cleanliness, and health, their hardihood and general good looks. They are bold and spirited. The Mormon father, like the Indian brave, will not allow the barbarous use of the stick; but this is perhaps a general feeling throughout the States, where the English traveler first observes the docility of the horses and the indocility of the children. But, as regards rudeness, let a man “with whiskers under his snout,” i. e., mustaches, ride through a village in Essex or Warwickshire, and he will suffer more contumely at the hands of the infant population in half an hour than in half a year in the United States or in Utah. M. Remy, despite a “vif désir” to judge favorably of the Saints, could not help owning that the children are mostly grossiers, menteurs, libertins avant l’âge; that they use un langage honteux, comme si les mystères de la polygamie leur avaient été révélés dès l’âge de raison. Apparently since 1855 cette corruption précoce has disappeared. I found less premature depravity than in the children of European cities generally. Mr. J. Hyde also brings against the juvenile Saints severe charges, too general, however, not to be applicable to other lands. “Cheating the confiding is called smart trading;” the same has been said of New England. “Mischievous cruelty, evidences of spirit;” the attribute of Plato’s boys and of the Western frontiers generally. “Pompous bravado, manly talk;” not unusual in New York, London, and Paris. “Reckless riding, fearless courage;” so apparently thinks the author of “Guy Livingstone.” “And if they outtalk their fathers, outwit their companions, whip their schoolteacher, outcurse a Gentile, they are thought to be promising greatness, and are praised accordingly. Every visitor to Salt Lake will recognize the portrait, for every visitor proclaims them to be the most whisky-loving, tobacco-chewing, saucy, and precocious children he ever saw.” This is the glance of the anti-Mormon eye pure and simple. Tobacco and whisky are too dear for childhood at the City of the Saints; moreover, twenty years ago, before Tom Brown taught boys not to be ashamed of being called good, a youth at many an English public school would have been “cock of the walk” if gifted with the rare merits described above. I remarked that the juveniles had all the promptness of reply and the peremptoriness of information which characterizes the Scotch and the people of the Eastern States. A half-educated man can not afford to own ignorance. He must answer categorically every question, however beyond his reach; and the result is fatal to the diaries of those travelers who can not diagnostize the disease.
MORMON EDUCATION.Mormon education is of course peculiar. The climate predisposes to indolence. While the emigrants from the Old Country are the most energetic and hard-working of men, their children, like the race of backwoodsmen in mass, are averse to any but pleasurable physical exertion. The object of the young colony is to rear a swarm of healthy working bees. The social hive has as yet no room for drones, book-worms, and gentlemen. The work is proportioned to their powers and inclinations. At fifteen a boy can use a whip, an axe, or a hoe—he does not like the plow—to perfection. He sits a bare-backed horse like a Centaur, handles his bowie-knife skillfully, never misses a mark with his revolver, and can probably dispose of half a bottle of whisky. It is not an education which I would commend to the generous youth of Paris and London, but it is admirably fitted to the exigencies of the situation. With regard to book-work, there is no difficulty to obtain in Great Salt Lake City that “mediocrity of knowledge between learning and ignorance” which distinguished the grammar-schools of the Western Islands in the days of Samuel Johnson. Amid such a concourse of European converts, any language, from Hebrew to Portuguese, can be learned. Mathematics and the exact sciences have their votaries. There are graduates of Harvard, Dartmouth, and other colleges. I saw one gentleman who had kept a school in Portsmouth, and another, who had had a large academy in Shropshire, taught in the school of the 14th ward. Music, dancing, drawing, and other artlets, which go by the name of accomplishments, have many votaries. Indefatigable travelers there are in abundance. Almost every Mormon is a missionary, and every missionary is a voyager. Captain Gibson, a well-known name for “personal initiative” in the Eastern Main, where he was seized by the Dutch of Java, lately became a convert to Mormonism, married his daughter to Mr. Brigham Young, and in sundry lectures delivered in the Tabernacle, advised the establishment of a stake of Zion in the “Islands of the Seas,” which signified, I suppose, his intention that the Netherlands should “smell H—ll.” Law is commonly studied, and the practice, as I have shown, is much simplified by the absence of justice. A solicitor from London is also established here. Theology is the growth of the soil. Medicine is represented by two graduates—one of Maryland; the other, who prefers politics to practice, of New York. I am at pains to discover what gave rise to the Gentile reports that the Mormons, having a veritable horror of medicine, leave curing to the priests, and dare not arrogate the art of healing. Masterships and apprenticeships are carefully regulated by Territorial law. Every one learns to read and write; probably the only destitutes are the old European pariahs, and the gleanings from the five or six millions of English illiterati. The Mormons have discovered, or, rather, have been taught, by their necessities as a working population in a state barely twelve years old, that the time of school drudgery may profitably be abridged. A boy, they say, will learn all that his memory can carry during three hours of book-work, and the rest had far better be spent in air, exercise, and handicraft. To their eminently practical views I would offer one suggestion, the advisability of making military drill and extension movements, with and without weapons, a part of scholarhood. For “setting up” the figure, forming the gait, and exercising the muscles, it is the best of gymnastic systems, and the early habit of acting in concert with others is a long stride in the path of soldiership.
While it is the fashion with some to deride the attempts of this painstaking and industrious community of hard-handed men to improve their minds, other anti-Mormons have taken the popular ground of representing the Saints as averse to intellectual activity, despisers of science, respecters only of manual labor, and “singulièrement épris de la force brutale.” It is as ungenerous as to ridicule the proceedings of an English Mechanics’ Institute, or the compositions of an “Ed. Mechanics’ Magazine.” The names of their literary institutions are, it is true, somewhat pretentious and grandiloquent; but in these lands there is every where a leaning toward the grandiose. Humility does not pay. Modesty laudatur et alget.