The District Court commenced its spring term at Fort Bridger the same day. In his charge to the grand jury, Judge Eckels was explicit on the subject of polygamy, instructing them substantially as follows: That among the Territorial statutes there was no act legalizing polygamy, nor any act affixing a definite punishment to that practice as such; that, consequently, whether the old Spanish law or the Common Law constituted the basis of jurisprudence in the Territory, the definition of marriage recognized by both was to be received there, which limited that institution to the union of one man with one woman, and also the definition of adultery common to both, by which that crime consisted in the cohabitation of either the man or the woman with a third party; that among the Territorial statutes there was an act affixing a definite punishment to adultery, and accordingly that it was the duty of the grand jury to inquire whether that act had been infringed by parties liable to their inquisition.[A] No indictment, however, was returned for the offence; neither were any proceedings had upon the indictments for treason. The business of the court was restricted to such crimes as larceny, and assault and battery, among the heterogeneous mass of camp-followers.
[Footnote A: As this charge has become of great importance in the affairs of the Territory, we subjoin the precise language of that portion of it which refers to polygamy:—
"It cannot be concealed, gentlemen, that certain domestic arrangements exist in this Territory destructive of the peace, good order, and morals of society,—arrangements at variance with those of all enlightened and Christian communities in the world; and sapping as they do the very foundation of all virtue, honesty, and morality, it is an imperative duty falling upon you as grand jurors diligently to inquire into this evil and make every effort to check its growth. It is well known that all of the inhabited portion of this Territory was acquired by treaty from Mexico. By the law of Mexico polygamy was prohibited in this country, and the municipal law in this respect remained unaltered by its cession to the United States. Has it been altered since we acquired it? After a most diligent search and inquiry, I have not been able to find that any such change has been made: and presuming that this law remains unchanged by legislation, all marriages after the first are by this law illegal and void. If you are then satisfied that such is the fact, your next duty is to inquire by what law in force in this Territory are such practices punishable. There is no law in this Territory punishing polygamy, but there is one, however, for the punishment of adultery; and all illegal intercourse between the sexes, if either party have a husband or wife living at the time, is adulterous and punishable by indictment. No consequences in which a large proportion of this people may be involved in consequence of this criminal practice will deter you from a fearless discharge of your duty. It is yours to find the facts and to return indictments, without fear, favor, affection, reward, or any hope thereof. The law was made to punish the lawless and disobedient, and society is entitled to the salutary effects of its execution.">[
At the distance of a few miles from Fort Bridger, the Governor and Mr. Kane were received by a Mormon guard. At various points on their journey squads of militia were encountered, and in Echo Cañon there was a command of several hundred. The Big Mountain, which the road crosses twenty miles from Salt Lake City, was covered so deep with snow, that the party was obliged to follow the cañons of the Weber River into the Valley. Upon arriving at the city, on the 12th of April, the Governor was installed in the house of a Mr. Staines, one of the adopted sons of Brigham Young, and was soon after waited upon by Young himself, in company with numerous ecclesiastical dignitaries. The Territorial seal was tendered to him, and he was recognized to his full satisfaction in his official capacity. He remained more than three weeks. Except fugitive statements in newspapers, the only connected account of his proceedings is from his own pen, and consists of two official letters,—one addressed to General Johnston, under date of April 15th, the other to the Secretary of State at Washington, dated May 2d. The former merely announces his arrival, reception, and recognition, transmits charges against Dr. Hurt, of having excited the Uinta Indians to acts of hostility against the Mormons, and suggests that he should desire a detachment of the army to be dispatched to chastise that tribe, but a requisition for that purpose was made neither then nor subsequently. The letter to Secretary Cass states that his time was devoted to examining the public property of the United States which was in the city,—the records of the courts, the Territorial library, the maps and minutes of the Surveyor General,—and exculpates the Mormons, in great part, from the charge of having injured or embezzled it.
During his stay, information was communicated to him, that there was a number of persons who were desirous of leaving the Territory, but unable to do so, considering themselves restrained of their liberty. Accordingly, on the following Sunday, he caused notice to be given from the platform in the Tabernacle, that he assumed the protection of all such persons, and desired them to communicate to him their names and residences. During the ensuing week, nearly two hundred persons registered themselves in the manner he proposed, and a greater number would undoubtedly have been glad to follow their example, but were deterred by the surveillance to which they were subjected by certain functionaries of the Church before being admitted to his presence. Those who were registered were organized into trains, with the little movable property they possessed, and dispatched towards Fort Bridger. They arrived there in the course of May,—as motley, ragged, and destitute a crowd as ever descended from the deck of an Irish emigrant-ship at New York or Boston. The only garments which some possessed were made of the canvas of their wagon-covers.
Many were on foot. For provisions, they had nothing except flour and some fresh meat. It is a fact creditable to humanity, that private soldiers, by the score, shared their own abridged rations and scanty stock of clothing with these poor wretches, and in less than a day after their arrival they were provided with much to make them comfortable.
On that same Sunday, the Governor made a speech to the congregation, being introduced by Brigham Young. He reviewed the relations of the Mormons to the Federal government; assumed that General Johnston and the army were under his control; pledged his word that they should not be stationed in immediate contact with the settlements; and gave assurances, also, that no military posse should be employed to arrest a Mormon until every other means had been tried and had failed. At the close, he invited any of their number to respond. Various persons immediately addressed the audience in almost frantic speeches, concerning the murder of Joseph and Hiram Smith at Carthage, the persecution of the Saints in Missouri and Illinois, the services rendered by the Mormon Battalion to an ungrateful country during the Mexican War, the toils and perils of the migration to Utah, and the character of the Federal officers who had been sent to rule the Territory. Personal insults were heaped upon the Governor, and a scene of the wildest confusion was the result, which was quieted with great difficulty by Young himself. It was manifest that the mass of the people, overconfident of their capacity to resist the troops, were not fully prepared for the capitulation the leaders were willing to make to save their own necks from the halter; and, at a second meeting during the afternoon, Young yielded somewhat to the popular clamor.
All this while, a movement of a most extraordinary character was being carried on, which had commenced before the Governor entered the Valley. The people of the northern settlements, along the base of the Wahsatch Mountains, including Salt Lake City, were deserting their homes, abandoning houses, crops, and their heavier furniture, and migrating southward. Long wagon-trains were sweeping through the city every day, accompanied by hundreds of families, and droves of horses and cattle. A fair estimate of the entire Mormon population of Utah is about forty-five thousand. Of this number, ten thousand is the proportion of the towns north of Salt Lake City, and upward of fifteen thousand that of the city itself and the settlements in its immediate neighborhood. Considerably more than half the people of the Territory, therefore, shared in this emigration. What was its object and what its destination are still mysteries; but it was probably directed toward the mountain-ranges in the southwestern portion of the Great Basin, of the topography of which region—hitherto unvisited by Federal explorers—the Mormons undoubtedly possess accurate information. At any rate, it was initiated and conducted under the direction of the Church, and Young and Kimball were among the first to lead the way. Commencing late in March, it continued until June, and before the beginning of May more than thirty-five thousand people were concentrated on the western shore of Lake Utah, chiefly in the neighborhood of Provo, fifty miles south of Salt Lake City. Such a scene of squalid misery, such a spectacle of want and distress, was never before witnessed in America. More than half this multitude could not be accommodated in the towns, and lodged in board-shanties, wigwams, mud-huts, log-cabins, bowers of willow-branches covered with wagon-sheets, and even in holes dug into the hill-sides. The most common quarters, however, were made by removing a wagon-body from its wheels, placing it upon the ground, and erecting in front of it a bower of cedars. It is needless to dwell on the exasperation which animated all who submitted to these sacrifices. In the history of the Albigenses hunted through Languedoc, or of the Jews writhing under the Spanish Inquisition, a record of similar bitterness of feeling may be found, but its parallel does not exist outside the annals of religious persecution.
Governor Cumming returned to Fort Bridger during the second week in May, still accompanied by Mr. Kane, and also by a party of Mormons who intended to escort the latter to Missouri. Upon his arrival, he addressed a letter to General Johnston, stating, officially, that the people of Utah had acknowledged his authority, and that the roads between the camp and Salt Lake City were free for the transit of mails and passengers, the Mormon forces having withdrawn from the cañons, and none of the Territorial militia remaining under arms except with his consent and approbation. A day or two later, Mr. Kane bade him farewell and started toward the States, his mission having been completed.
It may be well to pause here and estimate its precise results. It had secured delay. The herds on Henry's Fork had thriven better than was expected, and toward the close of April the number of mules in working condition was sufficient to have dragged a train of two hundred wagons. The dragoon-horses which survived could have been assigned to the artillery-batteries, and the regiment have served as infantry. With this equipment, slight though it may appear, a rapid movement upon the Valley was possible; and whatever may have been the opinion during the previous autumn, it was the universal opinion in the spring that the force at Camp Scott could have routed any body of militia that might have opposed its advance, although, perhaps, it was not sufficient to subjugate the Territory, in case the Mormons should flee to the mountains. Provisions, also, were running low in the camp. The ration of flour had been further reduced. All the cattle had been slaughtered, and there was every prospect of recourse to mule-meat before the first of June. Everything, therefore, favored the plan of an early march toward the city; and it is certain that it would have been commenced without awaiting reinforcements from the States, had not the Governor's scheme for pacification intervened. Distrustful of its expediency or propriety though General Johnston might have been, he deemed it his duty to await its result. Neither he nor the Governor being supreme in the direction of affairs, it was the duty of each to defer so far as might be to the action of the other.