"I know of nothing that would do Bostonians so much good as a prolonged trip across this continent, giving themselves sufficient time to tarry at different points and study the people. For myself—about half a Bostonian—I became so ashamed of sailing east year after year, that last summer I made up my mind to hitch my wagon to the star of empire and learn as much of my own country as I knew of Europe. I started from New York in July, expecting to be absent three months, and in that period obtain an intelligent idea of the far West. After passing two months and a half in wonderful Colorado and only seeing a fraction of the Centennial state, I began to realize that in two years I might, with diligence, get a tolerable idea of this republic west of the Mississippi. Cold weather setting in, and the fall of snow rendering mountain travelling in Colorado neither safe nor agreeable, I came to Utah over the wonderful Denver & Rio Grande railroad, intending to pass a week prior to visiting New Mexico and Arizona. My week expired on the 22nd day of October and still I linger among the 'saints.' I am regarded as more or less demented by eastern friends. If becoming interested in a most extraordinary anomaly to such an extent as to desire to study it and to be able to form an intelligent opinion therein is being demented, then I am mad indeed, for I've not yet got to the bottom of the Utah problem, and if I lived here years, there would still be much to learn. Despite this last discouraging fact, I have improved my opportunities and am able to paragraph what has come under my own observation or been acquired by absorption of Mormon and Gentile literature. If the commissioners sent here by Congress to investigate the Mormon question, at an annual expense of forty thousand dollars per annum, had studied this question as earnestly as I have, they never would have told the country that polygamy is dying out. One or two members of that commission know better, and sooner or later they must tell the truth or stultify their own souls."
This extract reveals how deeply the anomaly of Mormon life had at once impressed her. Miss Field was too keen and cultivated an observer not to see beneath the surface of this phase of living a problem whose roots struck deep into national prosperity and safety. The distinguished essayist and critic, Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, said of her study of Mormonism:—
She undertook a perfectly original method of arriving at the truth, by intimate conversations with Mormon husbands and wives, as well as with the most intelligent of the "Gentiles." She discarded from her mind pre-conceptions and all prejudices which discolor and distort objects which should be rigidly investigated, and looked at the mass of facts before her in what Bacon calls "dry light." Cornelius Vanderbilt, the elder, was accustomed to account for the failures and ruin of the brilliant young brokers who tried to corner the stocks in which he had an interest, by declaring that "these dashing young fellars didn't see things as they be." Miss Field saw things in Utah "as they be." She collected facts of personal observation, analyzed and generalized them, and, by degrees, her sight became insight, and the passage from insight to foresight is rapid. After thorough investigation, her insight enabled her to penetrate into the secret of that "mystery of iniquity" which Mormonism really is; while her foresight showed her what would be the inevitable result of the growth and diffusion of such a horrible creed.
The winter lapsed into spring and still she lingered in Salt Lake City. She relinquished all pleasure for the real work of studying deeply the anomaly of a Polygamous hierarchy thriving in the heart of the Republic. Every facility was accorded to her by United States officials, military officers, leading Gentiles and Apostates. Prominent "Latter Day Saints" offered her marked courtesy. She pursued this research unremittingly for eight months and when, at last, she left Salt Lake City, the leading Gentile paper, the Tribune, devoted a leading editorial to Miss Field's marvellously thorough study of Mormon conditions, and, on her departure, said:—
"Miss Field is probably the best posted person, outside the high Mormon church officials, and others who have been in the church, on this institution, in the world, and its effects upon men, women and governments. With a fixedness of purpose which nothing could swerve, and with an energy which neither storm, mud, snow, cold looks, the persuasions or even the loss of friends, could for a moment dampen, she has held on her course. In the tabernacle, in the ward meeting house, in the homes of high Mormons, and, when these were closed to her, in the homes of the poor, she has worked upon the theme, while every scrap of history which offered to give any light upon the Mormon organization she has devoured. Mormonism has been to her like a fever. It has run its course and now she is going away. If she proposes to lecture, she ought to be able to prepare a better lecture on Mormonism than she has ever yet delivered; if a book is in process of incubation it ought to be of more value than any former book on this subject. Lecture or book will be intense enough to satisfy all demands. The 'Tribune' gives the world notice in advance that Miss Field has a most intimate knowledge of the Mormon kingdom."
Returning to the East she stopped on the way in Missouri and at Nauvoo, Illinois, looking up all the old camping-grounds of Mormonism, and meeting and interviewing people who had been connected with it, including two sons of Joseph Smith, Miss Field opened her course of lectures on this subject in Boston last November, before a brilliant and distinguished audience, including the Governor and other officials of state, Harvard University professors, and men and women eminent in art, literature and society. She dealt with the political crimes of the Mormons, arguing that the great wrong was not, as many had believed, polygamy, but treason! Polygamy, though "the cornerstone of the Mormon church," was not inserted in its printed articles of faith and was not taught until the unwary had been "gathered to Zion." The monstrosity of the "revelation" on celestial marriage; the tragic unhappiness of Mormon women; the elastic conscience of John Taylor, "prophet, seer and revelator" to God's chosen people, were vividly depicted. Her extracts from Brigham Young's sermons, and from those of his counsellors, are forcible arguments on the Gentile side. Indeed, throughout her entire discourse, Miss Field clinches every statement with Mormon proof, rarely going to Gentile authorities for vital facts connected with her subject. The lecturer's sense of humor betrayed itself now and then, when, with fervor, she related an incident in her own experience, or quoted a "Song of Zion." The refrain of one of these songs still rings in our ears:
Then, oh, let us say
God bless the wife that strives
And aids her husband all she can
To obtain a dozen wives!