Turbulence outside was accompanied by turbulence within. Schisms occurred. Branches were broken off from the Church. The great temporal power and wealth to which, owing to the obedience and docility of the rank and file, the leaders had fallen practically sole heirs, had gone to their heads. The Mormon Church gave every indication of breaking up into disorganized smaller units, when fortunately for it the prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by a mob. This martyrdom consolidated the church body once more; and before disintegrating influences could again exert themselves, the reins of power were seized by the strong hand of a remarkable man, Brigham Young, who thrust aside the logical successor, Joseph Smith's son.
Young was an uneducated man, but with a deep insight into human nature. A shrewd practical ability and a rugged intelligence, combined with absolute cold-blooded unscrupulousness in attaining his ends, were qualities amply sufficient to put Young in the front rank of the class of people who composed the Mormon Church. He early established a hierarchy of sufficient powers so that always he was able to keep the strong men of the Church loyal to the idea he represented. He paid them well, both in actual property and in power that was dearer to them than property. Furthermore, whether or not he originated polygamy, he not only saw at once its uses in increasing the population of the new state and in taking care of the extra women such fanatical religions always attract, but also, more astutely, he realized that the doctrine of polygamy would set his people apart from all other people, and probably call down upon them the direct opposition of the Federal Government. A feeling of persecution, opposition, and possible punishment were all potent to segregate the Mormon Church from the rest of humanity and to assure its coherence. Further, he understood thoroughly the results that can be obtained by coöperation of even mediocre people under able leadership. He placed his people apart by thoroughly impressing upon their minds the idea of their superiority to the rest of the world. They were the chosen people, hitherto scattered, but now at last gathered together. His followers had just the degree of intelligence necessary to accept leadership gracefully and to rejoice in a supposed superiority because of a sense of previous inferiority.
This ductile material Brigham welded to his own forms. He was able to assume consistently an appearance of uncouth ignorance in order to retain his hold over his uncultivated flock. He delivered vituperative, even obscene sermons, which may still be read in his collected works. But he was able also on occasions, as when addressing agents of the Federal Government or other outsiders whom he wished to impress, to write direct and dignified English. He was resourceful in obtaining control over the other strong men of his Church; but by his very success he was blinded to due proportions. There can be little doubt that at one time he thought he could defy the United States by force of arms. He even maintained an organization called the Danites, sometimes called the Destroying Angels, who carried out his decrees.[5]
[5: The Mormon Church has always denied the existence of any such organization; but the weight of evidence is against the Church. In one of his discourses, Young seems inadvertently to have admitted the existence of the Danites. The organization dates from the sojourn of the Mormons in Missouri. See Linn, The Story of the Mormons, pp. 189-192.]
Brigham could welcome graciously and leave a good impression upon important visitors. He was not a good business man, however, and almost every enterprise he directly undertook proved to be a complete or partial failure. He did the most extraordinarily stupid things, as, for instance, when he planned the so-called Cottonwood Canal, the mouth of which was ten feet higher than its source! Nevertheless he had sense to utilize the business ability of other men, and was a good accumulator of properties. His estate at his death was valued at between two and three million dollars. This was a pretty good saving for a pioneer who had come into the wilderness without a cent of his own, who had always spent lavishly, and who had supported a family of over twenty wives and fifty children—all this without a salary as an officer. Tithes were brought to him personally, and he rendered no accounting. He gave the strong men of his hierarchy power and opportunity, played them against each other to keep his own lead, and made holy any of their misdeeds which were not directed against himself.
The early months of 1846 witnessed a third Mormon exodus. Driven out of Illinois, these Latter-day Saints crossed the Mississippi in organized bands, with Council Bluffs as their first objective. Through the winter and spring some fifteen thousand Mormons with three thousand wagons found their way from camp to camp, through snow, ice, and mud, over the weary stretch of four hundred miles to the banks of the Missouri. The epic of this westward migration is almost biblical. Hardship brought out the heroic in many characters. Like true American pioneers, they adapted themselves to circumstances with fortitude and skill. Linn says: "When a halt occurred, a shoemaker might be seen looking for a stone to serve as a lap-stone in his repair work, or a gunsmith mending a rifle, or a weaver at a wheel or loom. The women learned that the jolting wagons would churn their milk, and when a halt occurred it took them but a short time to heat an oven hollowed out of the hillside, in which to bake the bread already raised." Colonel Kane says that he saw a piece of cloth, the wool for which was sheared, dyed, spun, and woven, during the march.
After a winter of sickness and deprivation in camps along "Misery Bottom," as they called the river flats, during which malaria carried off hundreds, Brigham Young set out with a pioneer band of a hundred and fifty to find a new Zion. Toward the end of July, this expedition by design or chance entered Salt Lake Valley. At sight of the lake glistening in the sun, "Each of us," wrote one of the party, "without saying a word to the other, instinctively, as if by inspiration, raised our hats from our heads, and then, swinging our hats, shouted, 'Hosannah to God and the Lamb!'"
Meantime the first emigration from winter quarters was under way, and in the following spring Young conducted a train of eight hundred wagons across the plains to the great valley where a city of adobe and log houses was already building. The new city was laid off into numbered lots. The Presidency had charge of the distribution of these lots. You may be sure they did not reserve the worst for their use, nor did they place about themselves undesirable neighbors. Immediately after the assignments had been made, various people began at once to speculate in buying and selling according to the location. The spiritual power immediately anathematized this. No one was permitted to trade over property. Any sales were made on a basis of the first cost plus the value of the improvement. A community admirable in almost every way was improvised as though by magic. Among themselves the Mormons were sober, industrious, God-fearing, peaceful. Their difficulties with the nation were yet to come.
Throughout the year, 1848, the weather was propitious for ploughing and sowing. Before the crops could be gathered, however, provisions ran so low that the large community was in actual danger of starvation. Men were reduced to eating skins of slaughtered animals, the raw hides from the roofs of houses, and even a wild root dug by the miserable Ute Indians. To cap the climax, when finally the crops ripened, they were attacked by an army of crickets that threatened to destroy them utterly. Prayers of desperation were miraculously answered by a flight of white sea-gulls that destroyed the invader and saved the crop. Since then this miracle has been many times repeated.
It was in August, 1849, that the first gold rush began. Some of Brannan's company from California had already arrived with samples of gold-dust. Brigham Young was too shrewd not to discourage all mining desires on the part of his people, and he managed to hold them. The Mormons never did indulge in gold-mining. But the samples served to inflame the ardor of the immigrants from the east. Their one desire at once became to lighten their loads so that they could get to the diggings in the shortest possible time. Then the Mormons began to reap their harvest. Animals worth only twenty-five or thirty dollars would bring two hundred dollars in exchange for goods brought in by the travelers. For a light wagon the immigrants did not hesitate to offer three or four heavy ones, and sometimes a yoke of oxen to boot. Such very desirable things to a new community as sheeting, or spades and shovels, since the miners were overstocked, could be had for almost nothing. Indeed, everything, except coffee and sugar, was about half the wholesale rate in the East. The profit to the Mormons from this migration was even greater in 1850. The gold-seeker sometimes paid as high as a dollar a pound for flour; and, conversely, as many of the wayfarers started out with heavy loads of mining machinery and miscellaneous goods, as is the habit of the tenderfoot camper even unto this day, they had to sell at the buyers' prices. Some of the enterprising miners had even brought large amounts of goods for sale at a hoped-for profit in California. At Salt Lake City, however, the information was industriously circulated that shiploads of similar, merchandise were on their way round the Horn, and consequently the would-be traders often sacrificed their own stock.[6]