The Commissioners had reached the city on the 7th. They were received there by the Mormon officers who commanded the few companies of militia which constituted the garrison, and were conducted to a restaurant, where meals were provided for them, but no lodgings; and accordingly they slept in their ambulances. The place was deserted by everybody except the garrison and a few individuals who were busily removing their property. Besides these, the only beings visible in the streets were here and there groups of half-naked Indian boys paddling in the gutters. Almost the only sound audible was the gurgling of the City Creek. Through the chinks of the heavy wooden portal of the Temple square, workmen were to be seen engaged in demolishing the roofs of the buildings within the inclosure. Over the windows of all the houses boards were nailed; the doors were locked; the gates closed; and in many of the gardens, crops of weeds were beginning to choke the flower-beds. From some of the houses of the more enthusiastic Saints all the wood-work was removed, leaving nothing standing except the bare adobe walls, while a few had been burned to the ground. In front of the tithing-office, a train of wagons was loading with grain for removal to Provo.
The Governor arrived on the 8th, and was conducted at once to the quarters he had occupied on his previous visit. The next day, he, together with the Commissioners, held an interview with the two messengers who had been sent up from Provo by Brigham Young. They returned to Lake Utah that same night, and on the 10th, about noon, Young, Kimball, and Wells, together with the Twelve Apostles, and twenty or thirty Bishops, High Priests, and Elders, embracing almost all the influential characters in the Church, rode into the city. Brigham's mansion was thrown open and the party dined there. They called afterwards in a body upon the Governor and the Commissioners, and made arrangements for a conference on the following day.
The President's pardon had reached the Mormon settlements along Lake Utah on the 6th, and the manner in which it was received by the populace showed that they were not satisfied with the position of their leaders. It was read from the steps of the tithing-offices, and at the street-corners, to crowds who denounced in the fiercest language the recital of facts set forth in its preamble. The excitement, which had been steadily fostered by Young and Kimball ever since the commencement of the rebellion, had amounted to a frenzy which no authority less potent than such a hierarchy as theirs could possibly have controlled. Nevertheless, the morning Brigham rode into Salt Lake City, the capitulation had been preordained.
The conferences lasted through the 11th and 12th, the inflexibility of the Commissioners securing decency of language from the Mormons, if not decency of demeanor. All the participants, including Young himself, expressed their sentiments in turn. The opening speech was made by one of the Apostles, named Erastus Snow, who forgot for the moment that he was not addressing a congregation of his brethren on a Sunday morning, and indulged in a strain of obscene and profane remark which was checked at once by Senator Powell. Some of the speakers broke into savage tirades like those with which Governor Cumming was once greeted in the Tabernacle; but these were checked by Young. There were two subjects on which the Mormon leaders were particularly anxious, all fear of their own trial for treason being removed. They dreaded that the army should be quartered upon their settlements, and that the policy inaugurated by Judge Eckels in his recent charge to the grand jury at Fort Bridger should be pursued against polygamy. No assurances were given by the Commissioners upon either of these subjects. They limited their action to tendering the President's pardon, and exhorting the Mormons to accept it. Outside the conferences, however, without the knowledge of the Commissioners, assurances were given on both these subjects by the Governor and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, which proved satisfactory to Brigham Young. The exact nature of their pledges will, perhaps, never be disclosed; but from subsequent confessions volunteered by the Superintendent, who appears to have acted as a tool of the Governor through the whole affair, it seems probable that they promised explicitly to exert their influence to quarter the army in Cache Valley, nearly a hundred miles north of Salt Lake City, and also to procure the removal of Judge Eckels. The news of the issue of the order for the advance of the army reached the city on the 12th, and accelerated the result of the conferences, which concluded that evening with a pledge on the part of Young and his associates to submit unconditionally to the Federal authority. During the next few days, the Commissioners, accompanied by the Governor, travelled southward, and addressed large audiences at Provo and Lehi, specially exhorting the people to return to their homes in the northern settlements, assuring them that the troubles were ended, and that they need fear no molestation of person or property.
Whether all these proceedings—which were legitimate results of Mr. Buchanan's policy—were consistent with the honor of the country, the public can judge for themselves. The Commissioners certainly conducted themselves with dignity and credit; but it is doubtful whether they ever would have accepted their appointment, had they anticipated the nature of the duties they would be required to perform.
The army moved slowly forward during the progress of these negotiations. In Echo Cañon, it had an opportunity to inspect the bugbear of the previous autumn,—the Mormon fortifications. As the cañon—which is more than twenty miles long—approaches the Weber River, it dwindles in width from five or six hundred yards to as many feet. Its northern side becomes a perfect wall of rock, which rises perpendicularly to the height of several hundred feet above the road. The southern side retains the character of a steep mountain-slope covered with grass and stunted bushes. Echo Creek, a narrow streamlet, with its dense fringe of willows, fills the whole bottom between the road and the bluffs. The first indication of approach to the fortifications was the sight of piles of stones heaped into walls four or five feet high, pierced with loopholes, and visible on every projecting point of the cliffs along the northern side, from most of which a pebble could be snapped down upon the road. Just beyond, after turning a bend in the cañon, all the willows along the creek had been cut away, and through the cleared space a ditch five or six feet wide and ten feet deep was dug across the bottom. The dirt thrown from it was packed so as to form an embankment, on which logs were so arranged that it would answer for a breastwork, behind which riflemen could be posted under cover. At intervals of about a hundred yards were two similar lines of ditch and breastwork, by the first of which the road was forced to skirt the very base of a cliff which had probably been mined. The other line was constructed just above the mouths of two narrow gorges which enter the cañon, nearly opposite one another, from the north and south. By the aid of these dams the cañon might possibly have been overflowed for half a mile to the depth of several feet, but the water would have accumulated slowly on account of the insignificant size of the creek. Several dirt walls stretched also across the gorges, commanding the whole of the fortifications below. This whole system of defences possessed as little strength as merit. It served only to confirm the impression, which by this time had become general, that the capacity of the Mormons to resist the army had been greatly overrated, and that a vigorous effort to penetrate to the Valley early in the spring would inevitably have succeeded.
For nearly a mile beyond the two gorges, a chain of low hills, over which the road runs, extends below the loftier summits on the southern side of the cañon. The northern side becomes, in consequence, a deep glen, as the cliffs which form its wall rise abruptly from the level of the creek. This glen is filled with bushes, and in it, thus protected from the wind, the Mormon militia had their winter-quarters. The huts they occupied had been constructed by digging circular holes in the ground, over which were piled boughs in the same manner as the poles of an Indian lodge. Around these boughs willow-twigs were plaited, and the entire hut was finally thatched with straw, grass, or bark. Many of them had chimneys built of sod and stones, like those which had been improvised at Camp Scott. An open spot, a few hundred feet below the beginning of the glen, was the site of the head-quarters of the command. Here the huts were built around a square, in the centre of which was planted a tall pine flag-pole. The scenery at this point is exceedingly picturesque. Out of a tangle of willows, alders, hawthorn, and wild cherry-trees spring the bold sandstone cliffs, in every crevice of which cedars and fir-trees cling to the jagged points of rock. On the other side of the cañon a sheet of rich verdure, all summer long, rolls up the mountain to its very summit. Down the glen ripples the little creek underneath an arch of fragrant shrubs twined with the slender tendrils of wild hop-vines. The whole number of huts was about one hundred and fifty, and they could accommodate, on an average, fifteen men apiece.
The troops did not emerge from Emigration Cañon into the Salt Lake Valley until the morning of the 26th. In the mean while, thirty or forty civilians had reached the city from the camp, and were quartered, like the Commissioners, in their own vehicles. The Mormons favored no one, except the Governor and his intimate associates, with any species of accommodation. Their demeanor was in every respect like that of a conquered people toward foreign invaders. During the week preceding the 26th, two or three hundred of those on Lake Utah received permission to go up to the city, and they alone, of the whole Mormon community, witnessed the ingress of the army.
It was one of the most extraordinary scenes that have occurred in American history. All day long, from dawn till after sunset, the troops and trains poured through the city, the utter silence of the streets being broken only by the music of the military bands, the monotonous tramp of the regiments, and the rattle of the baggage-wagons. Early in the morning, the Mormon guard had forced all their fellow-religionists into the houses, and ordered them not to make their appearance during the day. The numerous flags, which had been flying from staffs on the public buildings during the previous week, were all struck. The only visible groups of spectators were on the corners near Brigham Young's residence, and consisted almost entirely of Gentile civilians. The stillness was so profound, that, during the intervals between the passage of the columns, the monotonous gurgle of the city-creek struck on every ear. The Commissioners rode with the General's staff. The troops crossed the Jordan and encamped two miles from the city on a dusty meadow by the river-bank.
The orders under which General Johnston was acting directed him to establish not more than three military posts within the Territory. One of these was already fixed at Fort Bridger, and the question where the others should be located was now no less important to the Mormons than to the army. The secret of the success of Mormonism is its exclusiveness, and of this fact the leaders of the sect are fully aware. Accordingly, they now put forth most strenuous efforts to secure the removal of the troops to as great a distance as possible from their settlements. But, wholly without regard to any understanding which they might have had with the Governor, General Johnston, after a careful reconnaissance, selected Cedar Valley, on the western rim of Lake Utah, separated from it only by a range of bluffs,—about equidistant from Salt Lake City and Provo,—for his permanent camp. The army moved southward from the city on the 29th, but so slowly that it did not reach the Valley till the 6th of July. Not a field was encroached upon, not a house molested, not a person harmed or insulted, by troops that had been so harassed and vituperated by a people now entirely at their mercy. By their strict subordination they entitled themselves to the respect of the country as well as to the gratitude of the Mormons.