In regard to the unholy crusade periodically waged against the "Mormons" by godless men, and specially revived at every recurring Congressional session for the purpose of provoking proscriptive anti-Mormon legislation, the following forcible and faithful word-picture (which is as true as photography, and to which over 150,000 Utonians can make oath), drawn by the Honorable Thomas Fitch, ex-United States Senator, unmistakably illustrates the motives which inspire every such wicked ringocratic movement.
At the constitutional convention held in Salt Lake City, February, 1872, Mr. Fitch, United States Senator from Nevada, said;
There is no safety for the people of Utah without a State government; for under the present condition of affairs, their property, their liberties, and their very lives are in constant and increasing jeopardy. James B. McKean (United States Chief Justice in Utah) is morally and hopelessly deaf to the most common demands of the opponents of his policy, and in a case where a Mormon or a Mormon sympathizer, or a conservative Gentile, be concerned, there may be found rulings unparalleled in all the jurisprudence of England or America. The mineral deposits have attracted here a large number of restless, unscrupulous and reckless men, the hereditary foes of industry, order and law. Finding the courts and federal officers arrayed against the Mormons, with pleased lacrity this class have placed themselves on the side of courts and officers. Elements ordinarily discordant blend together in the same seething cauldron. The bagnios and hells shout hosannas to the courts; the altars of religion are infested with the paraphernalia and the presence of vice; the drunkard espouses the cause of temperance; the companion of harlots preaches the beauties of virtue and continence. All believe that license will be granted by the leaders in order to advance their sacred cause, and the result is an immense support from those friends of immorality and architects of disorder who care nothing for the cause, but everything for the license. These constitute a nucleus of reformers and a mass of ruffians, a centre of zealots and a circumference of plunderers. The dramshop interest hopes to escape the Mormon tax of $300 per month by sustaining a judge who will enjoin a collection of the tax, and the prostitutes persuade their patrons to support judges who will interfere by habeas corpus with any practical enforcement of municipal ordinances. Every interest of industry is disastrously affected by this unholy alliance, every right of the citizen is threatened, if not assailed, by this ungodly combination.
Your local magistrates are successfully defied, your local laws are disregarded, your municipal ordinances are trampled into the mire, theft and murder walk through your streets without detection, drunkards howl their orgies in the shadow of your altar; the glare and tumult of drinking saloons, the glitter of gambling hells, and the painting flaunt of the bawd plying her trade, now vex the repose of streets, which beforetime heard no sound to disturb their quiet save the busy hum of industry, the clatter of trade, and the musical tingle of mountains streams. In prosecuting Mormons the prosecution have tried their cases beforehand on the streets, in the newspapers, by public meetings, by petitions, and over the telegraph wires, by means of their leading adviser, the Salt Lake agent of the Associated Press. There is no evidence so base or worthless but is sufficient to indict a Mormon; there is no evidence sufficiently damning to indict a man who would swear against a Mormon. In support of these statements a volume of details of acts of injustice and tyranny might be compiled from the official records. One instance will suffice. Brigham Young, an American citizen of character, of wealth, of enterprise; an old man who justly possesses the love and confidence of his people, and the respect of those who know and comprehend him, has been sent to prison upon the uncorroborated oath of one of the most remarkable scoundrels that any age has produced, a man known to infamy as William A. Hickman, a human butcher, by the side of whom all malefactors of history are angels; a creature who, according to his own published statement, is a camp follower without enthusiasm, a bravo without passion, a murderer without motive, an assassin without hatred.
The religious and secular leaders of Utah, men who are respected by many honest, earnest people who are not of their faith, men who are believed to be innocent by many influential and independent journals not of their way of thinking, men who are held fast in the embrace of a hundred thousand hearts, men who have filled the land with monuments of industry and progress and human happiness, are likely to be sacrificed because a manufactured and unjust public sentiment demands their conviction.
I say deliberately, that with the history of the past behind me, with the signs of the present before me; I say with sorrow and humiliation that the Mormon charged with crime who now walks into the courts of his country goes not to his deliverance, but to his doom; that the Mormon who in a civil action seeks his rights in the courts of his country goes not to his redress, but his spoliation. The Mormons have been joined each year by a few desperate outcasts, men who were outlawed for crime as the Mormons were outlawed for religion. Such men followed the tide of Mormon immigration; they attached themselves to Mormon trains; they professed belief in the Mormon faith and devotion to the Mormon leaders. It was impossible to know their histories, it was impossible to fathom their motives. They were given food, given shelter, given employment, although seldom trusted. Let such men be tempted by assured promises and they will swear their crimes upon others whose lives and hearts contrast with theirs as the white snow contrasts with the mire it covers. How many such men are there in Utah? Convicted liars, professional thieves, confessed assassins, trembling perjurers, who have hung for years upon the outskirts of the little societies which gathered together and built themselves up amid these mountain fastnesses. One such man has served to accuse and caused to be imprisoned several of your most honored citizens. Half a dozen such, instigated by cowardice and avarice, with savage hearts filled with a lust of rapine, would crowd every jail in the Territory.
The Mormons are judged abroad, not by their thousands of deeds of charity and kindness, but by a few deeds of blood unjustly accredited to their leaders. You will never hear how tens of thousands of people have been brought from famine and hopeless toil to lives of peace and plenty, of the thousands of passing emigrants who have been fed and sheltered and succored.
Your antagonist is hydra-headed and hundred-armed. Whether by bigoted judges, by packed juries, by partisan officers, by Puritan missionaries, by iron-limbed laws, by armies from abroad, or by foes and defections at home, the assault is continuous and unrelenting, though unprovoked.
Now, in order to preserve the thrift, the industry, the wealth, the progress, the temperate life, the virtues of Utah from spoliation and devastation and ruin; in order to save a hundred noble pioneer citizens and this honest, earnest, calumniated people from outlawry, or the gibbet, or incarceration, you must have a State government. Every other refuge of good men, every other protection of innocent men is closed in your faces. A State government means juries impartially selected from all citizens, and judges chosen by a majority of the people, and officers of your own selection; it means honest, economical government; it means peace and security, and exemption from persecution.