The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901 Part 42

When Smith was killed, Strang at once came forward with a declaration that the prophet's revelations indicated that, at the close of his own prophetic office, another would be called to the place by revelation, and ordained at the hands of angels; that not only had he (Strang) been so ordained, but that Smith had written to him in June, 1844, predicting the end of his own work, and telling Strang that he was to gather the people in a Zion in Wisconsin. Strang began at once giving out revelations, describing visions, and announcing that an angel had shown him "plates of the sealed record," and given him the Urim and Thummim to translate them.

Although Strang's whole scheme was a very clumsy imitation of Smith's, he drew a considerable number of followers to his Wisconsin branch, where he published a newspaper called the Voree Herald, and issued pamphlets in defence of his position, and a "Book of the Law,"

explaining his doctrinal teachings, which included polygamy. He had five wives. His Herald printed a statement, signed by the prophet's mother and his brother William, his three married sisters, and the husband of one of them, certifying that "the Smith family do believe in the appointment of J. J. Strang." Among other Mormons of note who gave in their allegiance to Strang were John E. Page, one of the Twelve (whom Phelps had called "the sun-dial"), General John C. Bennett, and Martin Harris.

Strang gave the Mormon leaders considerable anxiety, especially when he sent missionaries to England to work up his cause. The Millennial Star of November 15, 1846, devoted a good deal of s.p.a.ce to the subject. The article began:--

"SKETCHES OF NOTORIOUS CHARACTERS: James J. Strang, successor of Sidney Rigdon, Judius Iscariot, Cain & Co., Envoy Extraordinary and a Minister Plenipotentiary to His Most Gracious Majesty Lucifer L, a.s.sisted by his allied contemporary advisers, John C. Bennett, William Smith, G. T.

Adams, and John E. Page, Secretary of Legation."

Strang announced a revelation which declared that he was to be "King in Zion," and his coronation took place on July 8, 1850, when he was crowned with a metal crown having a cl.u.s.ter of stars on its front. Burnt offerings were included in the programme.

This ceremony took place on Beaver Island, in Lake Superior, where in 1847 Strang had gathered his people and a.s.sumed both temporal and spiritual authority. Both of these claims got him into trouble. His non-Mormon neighbors, fishermen and lumbermen, accused the Mormons of wholesale thefts; his a.s.sumption of regal authority brought him before the United States court, (where he was not held); and his advocacy of the practice of polygamy by his followers aroused insubordination, and on June 15, 1856, he was shot by two members of his flock whom he had offended, and who were at once regarded as heroes by the people of the mainland. A mob secured a vessel, visited Beaver Island, where Strang had maintained a sort of fort, and compelled the Mormon inhabitants to embark immediately, with what little property they could gather up. They were landed at different places, most of them in Milwaukee. Thus ended Strang's Kingdom.*

* "A Moses of the Mormons," by Henry E. Legler, Parkman Club Publications, Nos. 15-16, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 11, 1897; "An American Kingdom of Mormons," Magazine of Western History, Cleveland, Ohio, April, 1886.

Another leader who "set up for himself" after Smith's death was Lyman Wight, who had been one of the Twelve in Missouri, and was arrested with Smith there. Wight did not lay claim to the position of President of the church, but he resented what he called Brigham Young's usurpation. In 1845 he led a small company of his followers to Texas, where they first settled on the Colorado River, near Austin. They made successive moves from that place into Gillespie, Burnett, and Bandera counties. He died near San Antonio in March, 1858. The fact that Wight entered into the practice of polygamy almost as soon as he reached Texas, and still escaped any conflict with his non-Mormon neighbors, affords proof of his good character in other respects. The Galveston News, in its notice of his death, said, "Mr. Wight first came to Texas in November, 1845, and has been with his colony on our extreme frontier ever since, moving still farther west as settlements formed around him, thus always being the pioneer of advancing civilization, affording protection against the Indians."

After Wight's death his people scattered. A majority of them became identified with the Reorganized Church, a few gave in their allegiance to the organization in Utah, and others abandoned Mormonism entirely.

CHAPTER XVII. -- BRIGHAM YOUNG

Brigham Young, the man who had succeeded in expelling Rigdon and establis.h.i.+ng his own position as head of the church, was born in Whitingham, Windham County, Vermont, on June 1, 1801. The precise locality of his birth in that town is in dispute. His father, a native of Ma.s.sachusetts, is said to have served under Was.h.i.+ngton during the Revolutionary War. The family consisted of eleven children, five sons and six daughters, of whom Brigham was the ninth. The Youngs moved to Whitingham in January, 1801. In his address at the centennial celebration of that town in 1880, Clark Jillson said, "Henry Goodnow, Esq., of this town says that Brigham Young's father came here the poorest man that ever had been in town; that he never owned a cow, horse, or any land, but was a basket maker." Mormon accounts represent the elder Young as having been a farmer.

His circ.u.mstances permitted him to give his children very little education, and, when sixteen years old, Brigham seems to have started out to make his own living, working as a carpenter, painter, and glazier, as jobs were offered. He was living in Aurelius, Cayuga County, New York, in 1824, working at his trade, and there, in October of that year, he married his first wife, Miriam Works. In 1829 they moved to Mendon, Monroe County, New York.

Joseph Smith's brother, in the following year, left a copy of the Mormon Bible at the house of Brigham's brother Phineas in Mendon, and there Brigham first saw it. Occasional preaching by Mormon elders made the new faith a subject of conversation in the neighborhood, and Phineas was an early convert. Brigham stated in a sermon in Salt Lake City, on August 8, 1852, that he examined the new Bible for two years before deciding to receive it. He was baptized into the Mormon church on April 14, 1832.

His wife, who also embraced the faith, died in September of that year, leaving him two daughters.

Young married his second wife, Mary A. Angel, in Kirtland on March 31, 1834. His application for a marriage license is still on file among the records of the Probate Court at Chardon, now the s.h.i.+re town of Geauga County, Ohio, and his signature is a proof of his illiterateness, showing that he did not know how to spell his own baptismal name, spelling it "Bricham."

Young began preaching and baptizing in the neighborhood, having at once been made an elder, and in the autumn of 1832, after Smith's second return from Missouri, he visited Kirtland and first saw the prophet.

Mormon accounts of this visit say that Young "spoke in tongues," and that Smith p.r.o.nounced his language "the pure Adamic," and then predicted that he would in time preside over the church. It is not at all improbable that Joseph did not hesitate to interpret Brigham's "tongues," but at that time he was thinking of everything else but a successor to himself.

Young, with his brother Joseph, went from Kirtland on foot to Canada, where he preached and baptized, and whence he brought back a company of converts. He worked at his trade in Kirtland (preaching as called upon) from that time until 1834, when he accompanied the "Army of Zion" to Missouri, being one of the captains of tens. Returning with the prophet, he was employed on the Temple and other church buildings for the next three years (superintending the painting of the Temple), when he was not engaged in other church work. Having been made one of the original Quorum of Twelve in 1835, he devoted a good deal of time in the warmer months holding conferences in New York State and New England.

When open opposition to Smith manifested itself in Kirtland, Young was one of his firmest defenders. He attended a meeting in an upper room of the Temple, the object of which was to depose Smith and place David Whitmer in the Presidency, leading in the debate, and declaring that he "knew that Joseph was a prophet." According to his own statement, he learned of a plot to kill Smith as he was returning from Michigan in a stage-coach, and met the coach with a horse and buggy, and drove the prophet to Kirtland unharmed. When Smith found it necessary to flee from Ohio, Young followed him to Missouri with his family, arriving at Far West on March 14, 1838. He sailed to Liverpool on a mission in 1840, remaining there a little more than a year.

In all the discords of the church that occurred during Smith's life, Young never incurred the prophet's displeasure, and there is no evidence that he ever attempted to obtain any more power or honor for himself than was voluntarily accorded to him. He gave practical a.s.sistance to the refugees from Missouri as they arrived at Quincy, but there is no record of his prominence in the discussions there over the future plans for the church. The prophet's liking for him is shown in a revelation dated at Nauvoo, July 9; 1841 (Sec. 126), which said:--

"Dear and beloved brother Brigham Young, verily thus saith the Lord unto you, my servant Brigham, it is no more required at your hand to leave your family as in times past, for your offering is acceptable to me; I have seen your labor and toil in journeyings for my name. I therefore command you to send my word abroad, and take special care of your family from this time, henceforth, and forever. Amen."

The apostasy of Marsh and the death of Patton had left Young the President of the Twelve, and that was the position in which he found himself at the time of Smith's death.

One of the first subjects which Young had to decide concerned "revelations." Did they cease with Smith's death, or, if not, who would receive and publish them? Young made a statement on this subject at the church conference held at Nauvoo on October 6 of that year, which indicated his own uncertainty on the subject, and which concluded as follows, "Every member has the right of receiving revelations for themselves, both male and female." As if conscious that all this was not very clear, he closed by making a declaration which was very characteristic of his future policy: "If you don't know whose right it is to give revelations, I will tell you. It is I."* We shall see that the discontinuance of written "revelations" was a cause of complaint during all of Young's subsequent career in Utah, but he never yielded to the demand for them.

* Times and Seasons, Vol. V, pp. 682-683.

At the conference in Nauvoo Young selected eighty-five men from the Quorum of high priests to preside over branches of the church in all the congressional districts of the United States; and he took pains to explain to them that they were not to stay six months and then return, but "to go and settle down where they can take their families and tarry until the Temple is built, and then come and get their endowments, and return to their families and build up a Stake as large as this." Young's policy evidently was, while not imitating Rigdon's plan to move the church bodily to the East, to build up big branches all over the country, with a view to such control of affairs, temporal and spiritual, as could be attained. "If the people will let us alone," he said to this same conference, "we will convert the world."

Many members did not look on the Twelve as that head of the church which Smith's revelations had decreed. It was argued by those who upheld Rigdon and Strang, and by some who remained with the Twelve, that the "revelations" still required a First Presidency. The Twelve allowed this question to remain unsettled until the brethren were gathered at Winter Quarters, Iowa, after their expulsion from Nauvoo, and Young had returned from his first trip to Salt Lake valley. The matter was taken up at a council at Orson Hyde's house on December 5, 1847, and it was decided, but not without some opposing views, to reorganize the church according to the original plan, with a First Presidency and Patriarch.

In accordance with this plan, a conference was held in the log tabernacle at Winter Quarters on December 24, and Young was elected President and John Smith Patriarch. Young selected Heber C. Kimball and Willard Richards to be his counsellors, and the action of this conference was confirmed in Salt Lake City the following October. Young wrote immediately after his election, "This is one of the happiest days of my life."

The vacancies in the Twelve caused by these promotions, and by Wight's apostasy, were not filled until February 12, 1849, in Salt Lake City, when Lorenzo Snow, Erastus Snow, C. C. Rich, and F. D. Richards were chosen.

CHAPTER XVIII. -- RENEWED TROUBLE FOR THE MORMONS--"THE BURNINGS"

The death of the prophet did not bring peace with their outside neighbors to the Mormon church. Indeed, the causes of enmity were too varied and radical to be removed by any changes in the leaders.h.i.+p, so long as the brethren remained where they were.

In the winter of 1844-1845 charges of stealing made against the Mormons by their neighbors became more frequent. Governor Ford, in his message to the legislature, p.r.o.nounced such reports exaggerated, but it probably does the governor no injustice to say that he now had his eye on the Mormon vote. The non-Mormons in Hanc.o.c.k and the surrounding counties held meetings and appointed committees to obtain accurate information about the thefts, and the old complaints of the uselessness of tracing stolen goods to Nauvoo were revived. The Mormons vigorously denied these charges through formal action taken by the Nauvoo City Council and a citizens' meeting, alleging that in many cases "outlandish men" had visited the city at night to scatter counterfeit money and deposit stolen goods, the responsibility for which was laid on Mormon shoulders.

It is not at all improbable that many a theft in western Illinois in those days that was charged to Mormons had other authors; but testimony regarding the dishonesty of many members of the church, such as we have seen presented in Smith's day, was still available. Thus, Young, in one of his addresses to the conference a.s.sembled at Nauvoo about two months after Smith's death, made this statement: "Elders who go to borrowing horses or money, and running away with it, will be cut off from the church without any ceremony. THEY WILL NOT HAVE SO MUCH LENITY AS HERETOFORE."*

* Times and Seasons, Vol. V, p. 696.

A lady who published a sketch of her travels in 1845 through Illinois and Iowa wrote:--

"We now entered a part of the country laid waste by the desperadoes among the Mormons. Whole farms were deserted, fields were still covered with wheat unreaped, and cornfields stood ungathered, the inhabitants having fled to a distant part of the country.... Friends gave us a good deal of information about the doings of these Saints at Nauvoo--said that often, when their orchards were full of fruit, some sixteen of these monsters would come with bowie knives and drive the owners into their houses while they stripped their trees of the fruit. If these rogues wanted cattle they would drive off the cattle of the Gentiles."*

* "Book for the Married and Single," by Ann Archbold.

A trial concerning the t.i.tle to some land in Adams County in that year brought out the fact that there existed in the Mormon church what was called a "Oneness." Five persons would a.s.sociate and select one of their members as a guardian; then, if any of the property they jointly owned was levied on, they would show that one or more of the other five was the real owner.

While the Mormons continued to send abroad glowing pictures of the prosperity of Nauvoo, less prejudiced accounts gave a very different view. The latter pointed out that the immigrants, who supplied the only source of prosperity, had expended most of their capital on houses and lots, that building operations had declined, because houses could be bought cheaper than they could be built, and that mechanics had been forced to seek employment in St. Louis. Published reports that large numbers of the poor in the city were dependent on charity received confirmation in a letter published in the Millennial Star of October 1, 1845, which said that on a fast-day proclaimed by Young, when the poor were to be remembered, "people were seen trotting in all directions to the Bishops of the different wards" with their contributions.

We have seen that the gathering of the Saints at Nauvoo was an idea of Joseph Smith, and was undertaken against the judgment of some of the wiser members of the church. The plan, so far as its business features were concerned, was on a par with the other business enterprises that the prophet had fathered. There was nothing to sustain a population of 15,000 persons, artificially collected, in this frontier settlement, and that disaster must have resulted from the experiment, even without the hostile opposition of their neighbors, is evident from the fact that Nauvoo to day, when fifty years have settled up the surrounding district and brought it in better communication with the world, is a village of only 1321 inhabitants (census of 1900).

Politics were not eliminated from the causes of trouble by Smith's death. Not only was 1844 a presidential year, but the citizens of Hanc.o.c.k County were to vote for a member of Congress, two members of the legislature, and a sheriff. Governor Ford urgently advised the Mormons not to vote at all, as a measure of peace; but political feeling ran very high, and the Democrats got the Mormon vote for President, and with the same a.s.sistance elected as sheriff General Deming, the officer left by Governor Ford in command of the militia at Carthage when the Smiths were killed, as well as two members of the legislature who had voted against the repeal of the Nauvoo city charter.

The tone of the Mormons toward their non-Mormon neighbors seemed to become more defiant at this time than ever. The repeal of the Nauvoo charter, in January, 1845, unloosened their tongues. Their newspaper, the Neighbor, declared that the legislature "had no more right to repeal the charter than the United States would have to abrogate and make void the const.i.tution of the state, or than Great Britain would have to abolish the const.i.tution of the United States--and the man that says differently is a coward, a traitor to his own rights, and a tyrant; no odds what Blackstone, Kent or Story may have written to make themselves and their names popular, to the contrary."

The Neighbor, in the same article, thus defined its view of the situation, after the repeal:--

"Nor is it less legal for an insulted individual or community to resist oppression. For this reason, until the blood of Joseph and Hyrum Smith has been atoned for by hanging, shooting or slaying in some manner every person engaged in that cowardly, mean a.s.sa.s.sination, no Latter-Day Saint should give himself up to the law; for the presumption is that they wilt murder him in the same manner.... Neither should civil process come into Nauvoo till the United States by a vigorous course, causes the State of Missouri and the State of Illinois to redress every man that has suffered the loss of lands, goods or anything else by expulsion. ...

If any man is bound to maintain the law, it is for the benefit he may derive from it.... Well, our charter is repealed; the murderers of the Smiths are running at large, and if the Mormons should wish to imitate their forefathers and fulfil the Scriptures by making it 'hard to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks' by wearing cast steel pikes about four or five inches long in their boots and shoes to kick with, WHAT'S THE HARM?"

Such utterances, which found imitation in the addresses of the leaders, and were echoed in the columns of Pratt's Prophet in New York, made it easy for their hostile neighbors to believe that the Mormons considered themselves beyond the reach of any law but their own. Some daring murders committed across the river in Iowa in the spring of 1845 afforded confirmation to the non-Mormons of their belief in church-instigated crimes of this character, and in the existence and activity of the Danite organization. The Mormon authorities had denied that there were organized Danites at Nauvoo, but the weight of testimony is against the denial. Gregg, a resident of the locality when the Mormons dwelt there, gives a fair idea of the accepted view of the Danites at that time:--

"They were bound together with oaths of the most solemn character, and the punishment of traitors to the order was death. John A. Murrell's Band of Pirates, who flourished at one time near Jackson, Tennessee, and up and down the Mississippi River above New Orleans, was never so terrible as the Danite Band, for the latter was a powerful organization, and was above the law. The band made threats, and they were not idle threats. They went about on horseback, under cover of darkness, disguised in long white robes with red girdles. Their faces were covered with masks to conceal their ident.i.ty."*