Sec. 9. That all the registration and election offices of every description in the Territory of Utah are hereby declared vacant, and each and every duty relating to the registration of voters, the conduct of elections, the receiving or rejection of votes, and the canvassing and returning of the same, and the issuing of certificates or other evidence of election in said Territory, shall, until other provision be made by the Legislative Assembly of said Territory as is hereinafter by this section provided, be performed under the existing laws of the United States and of said Territory by proper persons, who shall be appointed to execute such offices and perform such duties by a board of five persons, to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and not more than three of whom shall be members of one political party, and a majority of whom shall constitute a quorum. The members of said board so appointed by the President shall each receive a salary at the rate of $3,000 per annum, and shall continue in office until the Legislative Assembly of said Territory shall make provision for filling said offices as herein authorized. The secretary of the Territory shall be the secretary of said board, and keep a journal of its proceedings, and attest the action of said board under this section. The canvass and return of all the votes at elections in said Territory for members of the Legislative Assembly thereof shall also be returned to said board, which shall canvass all such returns and issue certificates of election to those persons who, being eligible for such election, shall appear to have been lawfully elected, which certificate shall be the only evidence of the right of such persons to sit in such Assembly: Provided, That said board of five persons shall not exclude any person otherwise eligible to vote from the polls on account of any opinion such person may entertain on the subject of bigamy or polygamy, nor shall they refuse to count any such vote on account of the opinion of the person casting it on the subject of bigamy or polygamy; but each house of such Assembly, after its organization, shall have power to decide upon the elections and qualifications of its members. And at or after the first meeting of said Legislative Assembly whose members shall have been elected and returned according to the provisions of this act, said Legislative Assembly may make such laws, conformable to the organic act of said Territory and not inconsistent with other laws of the United States, as it shall deem proper concerning the filling of the offices in said Territory declared vacant by this act.
John R. McBride writing in the February number (1882) of The International Review, gives an interesting and correct view of the obstacles which the Mormons have erected against the enforcement of United States laws in the Territory. It requires acquaintance with these facts to fully comprehend the difficulties in the way of what seems to most minds a very plain and easy task. Mr. McBride says: Their first care on arriving in Utah was to erect a “free and Independent State,” called the “State of Deseret.” It included in its nominal limits, not only all of Utah as it now is, but one-half of California, all of Nevada, part of Colorado, and a large portion of four other Territories now organized. Brigham Young was elected Governor, and its departments, legislative and judicial, were fully organized and put into operation. Its legislative acts were styled “ordinances,” and when Congress, disregarding the State organization, instituted a Territorial Government for Utah, the legislative body chosen by the Mormons adopted the ordinances of the “State of Deseret.” Many of these are yet on the statute book of Utah. They show conclusively the domination of the ecclesiastical idea, and how utterly insignificant in comparison was the power of the civil authority. They incorporated the Mormon Church into a body politic and corporate, and by the third section of the act gave it supreme authority over its members in everything temporal and spiritual, and assigned as a reason for so doing that it was because the powers confirmed were in “support of morality and virtue, and were founded on the revelations of the Lord.” Under this power to make laws and punish and forgive offenses, to hear and determine between brethren, the civil law was superseded. The decrees of the courts of this church, certified under seal, have been examined by the writer, and he found them exercising a jurisdiction without limit except that of appeal to the President of the church. That the assassinations of apostates, the massacres of the Morrisites at Morris Fort and of the Arkansas emigrants at Mountain Meadows, were all in pursuance of church decrees, more or less formal, no one acquainted with the system doubts. This act of incorporation was passed February 8, 1851, and is found in the latest compilation of Utah statutes. It is proper also to observe that, for many years after the erection of the Territorial Government by Congress, the “State of Deseret” organization was maintained by the Mormons, and collision was only prevented because Brigham was Governor of both, and found it unnecessary for his purpose to antagonize either. His church organization made both a shadow, while that was the substance of all authority. One of the earliest of their legislative acts was to organise a Surveyor-General’s Department,[[41]] and title to land was declared to be in the persons who held a certificate from that office.[[42]] Having instituted their own system of government and taken possession of the land, and assumed to distribute that in a system of their own, the next step was to vest certain leading men with the control of the timbers and waters of the country. By a series of acts granting lands, waters and timber to individuals, the twelve apostles became the practical proprietors of the better and more desirable portions of the country. By an ordinance dated October 4, 1851, there was granted to Brigham Young the “sole control of City Creek and Cañon for the sum of five hundred dollars.” By an ordinance dated January 9, 1850, the “waters of North Mill Creek and the waters of the Cañon next north” were granted to Heber C. Kimball. On the same day was granted to George A. Smith the “sole control of the cañons and timber of the east side of the ‘West Mountains’.” On the 18th of January, 1851, the North Cottonwood Cañon was granted exclusively to Williard Richards. On the 15th of January, 1851, the waters of the “main channel” of Mill Creek were donated to Brigham Young. On the 9th of December, 1850, there was granted to Ezra T. Benson the exclusive control of the waters of Twin Springs and Rock Springs, in Tooelle Valley; and on the 14th of January, 1851, to the same person was granted the control of all the cañons of the “West Mountain” and the timber therein. By the ordinance of September 14, 1850, a “general conference of the Church of Latter Day Saints” was authorized to elect thirteen men to become a corporation, to be called the Emigration Company; and to this company, elected exclusively by the church, was secured and appropriated the two islands in Salt Lake known as Antelope and Stansberry Islands, to be under the exclusive control of President Brigham Young. These examples are given to show that the right of the United States to the lands of Utah met no recognition by these people. They appropriated them, not only in a way to make the people slaves, but indicated their claim of sovereignty as superior to any. Young, Smith, Benson and Kimball were apostles. Richards was Brigham Young’s counselor. By an act of December 28, 1855, there was granted to the “University of the State of Deseret” a tract of land amounting to about five hundred acres, inside the city limits of Salt Lake City, without any reservation to the occupants whatever; and everywhere was the authority of the United States over the country and its soil and people utterly ignored.
Not satisfied with making the grants referred to, the Legislative Assembly entered upon a system of municipal incorporations, by which the fertile lands of the Territory were withdrawn from the operation of the preëmptive laws of Congress; and thus while they occupied these without title, non-Mormons were unable to make settlement on them, and they were thus engrossed to Mormon use. From a report made by the Commissioner of the General Land Office to the United States Senate,[[43]] it appears that the municipal corporations covered over 400,000 acres of the public lands, and over 600 square miles of territory. These lands[[44]] are not subject to either the Homestead or Preëmption laws, and thus the non-Mormon settler was prevented from attempting, except in rare instances, to secure any lands in Utah. The spirit which prompted this course is well illustrated by an instance which was the subject of an investigation in the Land Department, and the proofs are found in the document just referred to. George Q. Cannon, the late Mormon delegate in Congress, was called to exercise his duties as an apostle to the Tooelle “Stake” at the city of Grantville. In a discourse on Sunday, the 20th day of July, 1875, Mr. Cannon said:[[45]] “God has given us (meaning the Mormon people) this land, and, if any outsider shall come in to take land which we claim, a piece six feet by two is all they are entitled to, and that will last them to all eternity.”
By measures and threats like these have the Mormons unlawfully controlled the agricultural lands of the Territory and excluded therefrom the dissenting settler. The attempt of the United States to establish a Surveyor-General’s office in Utah in 1855, and to survey the lands in view of disposing of them according to law, was met by such opposition that Mr. Burr, the Surveyor-General, was compelled to fly for life. The monuments of surveys made by his order were destroyed, and the records were supposed to have met a like fate, but were afterwards restored by Brigham Young to the Government. The report of his experience by Mr. Burr was instrumental in causing troops to be sent in 1857 to assert the authority of the Government. When this army, consisting of regular troops, was on the way to Utah, Brigham Young, as Governor, issued a proclamation, dated September 15, 1857, declaring martial law and ordering the people of the Territory to hold themselves in readiness to march to repel the invaders, and on the 29th of September following addressed the commander of United States forces an order forbidding him to enter the Territory, and directing him to retire from it by the same route he had come. Further evidence of the Mormon claim that they were independent is perhaps unnecessary. The treasonable character of the local organization is manifest. It is this organization that controls, not only the people who belong to it, but the 30,000 non-Mormons who now reside in Utah.
Every member of the territorial Legislature is a Mormon. Every county officer is a Mormon. Every territorial officer is a Mormon, except such as are appointive. The schools provided by law and supported by taxation are Mormon. The teachers are Mormon, and the sectarian catechism affirming the revelations of Joseph Smith is regularly taught therein. The municipal corporations are under the control of Mormons. In the hands of this bigoted class all the material interests of the Territory are left, subject only to such checks as a Federal Governor and a Federal judiciary can impose. From beyond the sea they import some thousands of ignorant converts annually, and, while the non-Mormons are increasing, they are overwhelmed by the muddy tide of fanaticism shipped in upon them. The suffrage has been bestowed upon all classes by a statute so general that the ballot-box is filled with a mass of votes which repels the free citizen from the exercise of that right. If a Gentile is chosen to the Legislature (two or three such instances have occurred), he is not admitted to the seat, although the act of Congress (June 23, 1874) requires the Territory to pay all the expenses of the enforcement of the laws of the Territory, and of the care of persons convicted of offenses against the laws of the Territory. Provision is made for jurors’ fees in criminal cases only, and none is made for the care of criminals.[[46]] While Congress pays the legislative expenses, amounting to $20,000 per session, the Legislature defiantly refuses to comply with the laws which its members are sworn to support. And the same body, though failing to protect the marriage bond by any law whatever requiring any solemnities for entering it, provided a divorce act which practically allowed marriages to be annulled at will.[[47]] Neither seduction, adultery nor incest find penalty or recognition in its legal code. The purity of home is destroyed by the beastly practice of plural marriage, and the brows of innocent children are branded with the stain of bastardy to gratify the lust which cares naught for its victims. Twenty-eight of the thirty-six members of the present Legislature of Utah are reported as having from two to seven wives each. While the Government of the United States is paying these men their mileage and per diem as law-makers in Utah, those guilty of the same offense outside of Utah are leading the lives of felons in convict cells. For eight years a Mormon delegate has sat in the capitol at Washington having four living wives in his harem in Utah, and at the same time, under the shadow of that capitol, lingers in a felon’s prison a man who had been guilty of marrying a woman while another wife was still living.
For thirty years have the Mormons been trusted to correct these evils and put themselves in harmony with the balance of civilized mankind. This they have refused to do. Planting themselves in the heart of the continent, they have persistently defied the laws of the land, the laws of modern society, and the teachings of a common humanity. They degrade woman to the office of a breeding animal, and, after depriving her of all property rights in her husband’s estate,[[48]] all control of her children,[[49]] they, with ostentation, bestow upon her the ballot in a way that makes it a nullity if contested, and compels her to use it to perpetuate her own degradation if she avails herself of it.
No power has been given to the Mormon Hierarchy that has not been abused. The right of representation in the legislative councils has been violated in the apportionment of members so as to disfranchise the non-Mormon class.[[50]] The system of revenue and taxation was for twenty-five years a system of confiscation and extortion.[[51]] The courts were so organized and controlled that they were but the organs of the church oppressions and ministers of its vengeance.[[52]] The legal profession was abolished by a statute that prohibited a lawyer from recovering on any contract for service, and allowed every person to appear as an attorney in any court.[[53]] The attorney was compelled to present “all the facts in the case,” whether for or against his client, and a refusal to disclose the confidential communications of the latter subjected the attorney to fine and imprisonment.[[54]] No law book except the statutes of Utah and of the United States, “when applicable,” was permitted to be read in any court by an attorney, and the citation of a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, or even a quotation from the Bible, in the trial of any cause, subjected a lawyer to fine and imprisonment.[[55]]
The practitioners of medicine were equally assailed by legislation. The use of the most important remedies known to modern medical science, including all anæsthetics, was prohibited except under conditions which made their use impossible, “and if death followed” the administration of these remedies, the person administering them was declared guilty of manslaughter or murder.[[56]] The Legislative Assembly is but an organized conspiracy against the national law, and an obstacle in the way of the advancement of its own people. For sixteen years it refused to lay its enactments before Congress, and they were only obtained by a joint resolution demanding them. Once in armed rebellion against the authority of the nation, the Mormons have always secretly struggled for, as they have openly prophesied, its entire overthrow. Standing thus in the pathway of the material growth and development of the Territory, a disgrace to the balance of the country, with no redeeming virtue to plead for further indulgence, this travesty of a local government demands radical and speedy reform.
The South American Question.
If it was not shrewdly surmised before it is now known that had President Garfield lived he intended to make his administration brilliant at home and abroad—a view confirmed by the policy conceived by Secretary Blaine and sanctioned, it must be presumed, by President Garfield. This policy looked to closer commercial and political relations with all of the Republics on this Hemisphere, as developed in the following quotations from a correspondence, the publication of which lacks completeness because of delays in transmitting all of it to Congress.