I was unwilling to add to the number of those who had annoyed the Prophet by domestic allusions and therefore have no direct knowledge of the extent to which he carries polygamy. Some Gentiles allow him seventeen, others thirty-six, out of a household of seventy members; others, an indefinite number of wives scattered through the different settlements. Of these, doubtless many are but wives by name, such for instance as the widows of the late Prophet, and others are married more for the purpose of building up for themselves spiritual kingdoms than for the normal purpose of matrimony. When treating of Mormon polygamy, I shall attempt to show that the relation between the sexes as lately regulated by the Mormon faith necessitates polygamy. I should judge the Prophet’s progeny to be numerous from the following circumstance: On one occasion, when standing with him on the belvedere, my eye fell upon a new erection; it could be compared externally to nothing but an English gentleman’s hunting stables with their little clock tower, and I asked him what it was intended for. “A private school for my children,” he replied, directed by Brother E.B. Kelsey. The harem is said to have cost $30,000.
On the extreme west of this block, backed by a pound for estrays which is no longer used, lies the Tithing House and Deserét Store, a long, narrow, upper-storied building with cellars, storerooms, receiving rooms, pay rooms, and writing offices. At this time of the year, it chiefly contains linseed and rags for paper making; after the harvest, it is well stuffed with grains and cereals, which are taken instead of money payment. There is nothing more unpopular among the American Gentiles, or indeed more unintelligible to them, than these Mosaic tithes, which the English converts pay from habit without a murmur. They serve for scandalous insinuations, viz. that the chiefs are leeches that draw the people’s golden blood, that the imposts are compulsory, and that they are embezzled and peculated by the principal dignitaries. I have reason to believe that the contrary is the case. The tithes, which are paid into the Treasury of the Lord upon the property of a Saint on profession and afterward upon his annual income or his time or by substitute, are wholly voluntary. It sometimes happens that a man casts his all into the bosom of the Church; in this case, the all is not refused, but may I ask, by what Church body, Islamitic, Christian, or pagan, would it be? If the Prophet takes anything from the Tithing House, he pays for it like other men. The writers receive stipends like other writers and no more; of course, if any one clerk or lawyer wishes to do the business of the Church gratis, he is graciously permitted, and where, I repeat, would he not be? The Latter-Day Saints declare that if their first Presidency and Twelve Apostles, of whom some, by the by, are poor, grow rich, it is by due benevolence, not by force or fraud. Much like the primitive college and most unlike their successors in this modern day, each apostle must have some craft, and all live by handiwork, either in house, shop, or field, no drones being allowed in the social hive. The tithes are devoted in part to Church works, especially to building up temples or otherwise beautifying and adorning Zion as they may be directed from on high, and in part to the prosperity of the body politic, temporal and spiritual, by aiding faithful and needy emigrants and by supporting old and needy Saints. Perhaps the only true charge brought by the Gentiles against this, and indeed against all the public funds in the Mormon City, is that a large portion finds its way eastward and is expended in outside influence, or to speak plain English, bribes. It is believed by Mormons as well as Gentiles that Mr. Brigham Young has, in the States, newspaper spies and influential political friends who are attached to him not only by the ties of business and the natural respect felt for a wealthy man, but by the strong bond of a regular stipend. And such is their reliance upon this political dodgery, which, if it really exists, is by no means honorable to the public morality of the Gentiles, that they deride the idea of a combined movement from Washington ever being made against them. In 1860, Governor Cumming proposed to tax the tithing fund, but the Saints replied that as property is first taxed and then tithed, by such proceeding it would be twice taxed.
On the extreme west of this block, backed by a pound for estrays which is no longer used, lies the Tithing House and Deserét Store, a long, narrow, upper-storied building with cellars, storerooms, receiving rooms, pay rooms, and writing offices. At this time of the year, it chiefly contains linseed and rags for paper making; after the harvest, it is well stuffed with grains and cereals, which are taken instead of money payment. There is nothing more unpopular among the American Gentiles, or indeed more unintelligible to them, than these Mosaic tithes, which the English converts pay from habit without a murmur. They serve for scandalous insinuations, viz. that the chiefs are leeches that draw the people’s golden blood, that the imposts are compulsory, and that they are embezzled and peculated by the principal dignitaries. I have reason to believe that the contrary is the case. The tithes, which are paid into the Treasury of the Lord upon the property of a Saint on profession and afterward upon his annual income or his time or by substitute, are wholly voluntary. It sometimes happens that a man casts his all into the bosom of the Church; in this case, the all is not refused, but may I ask, by what Church body, Islamitic, Christian, or pagan, would it be? If the Prophet takes anything from the Tithing House, he pays for it like other men. The writers receive stipends like other writers and no more; of course, if any one clerk or lawyer wishes to do the business of the Church gratis, he is graciously permitted, and where, I repeat, would he not be? The Latter-Day Saints declare that if their first Presidency and Twelve Apostles, of whom some, by the by, are poor, grow rich, it is by due benevolence, not by force or fraud. Much like the primitive college and most unlike their successors in this modern day, each apostle must have some craft, and all live by handiwork, either in house, shop, or field, no drones being allowed in the social hive. The tithes are devoted in part to Church works, especially to building up temples.
This people, a term reiterated at Great Salt Lake City usque ad nauseam, declares its belief in being subject to kings, queens, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law. They are not backward in open acts of loyalty—I beg America’s pardon—of adhesion to the Union, such as supplying stones for the Washington Monument and soldiers for the Mexican War. But they make scant pretension of patriotism. They regard the States pretty much as the States regarded England after the War of Independence and hate them as the Mexican Criollo does the Gachupin, very much also for the same reason. Theirs is a deep and abiding resentment which time will strengthen, not efface; the deeds of Missouri and Illinois will bear fruit for many and many a generation. The federal government, they say, has so far from protecting their lives and property, left them to be burned out and driven away by the hands of a mob far more cruel than the red-coated minions of poor King George; that Generals Harney and Johnston were only seeking the opportunity to act Burgoyne and Cornwallis. But more galling still to human nature, whether of saint or sinner, they are despised, treated in fact as nobodies, and that last of insults, who can bear? Their petitions to become a sovereign state have been unanswered and ignored. They have been served with small-fry politicians and one-horse officials; hitherto the phrase has been, “Anything is good enough for Utah.” They return the treatment in kind.
The Old Independence, the glorious 4th of July ‘76, is treated with silent contempt; its honors are transferred to the 24th of July, the local Independence Day of their annus mirabilis 1847, when the weary pioneers, preceding a multitude which, like the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, left country and home for conscience’ sake, and led by Captain John Brown, whose unerring rifle saved them from starvation when the Indians had stampeded their horses, arrived in the wild waste of valley. Their form of government, which I can describe only as a democratic despotism with a leaven of the true Mosaic theocracy, enables them to despise a political system in which, they say, quoting Hamilton, that every vital interest of the state is merged in the all-absorbing question of who shall be the next president. There is only one Yankee gridiron in the town, and that is a private concern. I do not remember ever seeing a liberty pole, that emblem of a tyrant majority, which has been bowed to from New York to the Rhine. A favorite toast on public occasions is, “We can rock the cradle of Liberty without Uncle Sam to help us,” and so forth. These sentiments show how the wind sets. In two generations hence, perhaps New Zion has a prophet making air; the Mormons, in their present position, will, on their own ground, be more than a match for the Atlantic and, combined with the Chinese, will be dangerous to the Pacific States.
The Mormons, if they are anything in secular politics, are Democrats. It has not been judged advisable to cast off the last rags of popular government, but as will presently appear, theocracy is not much disguised by them. Although not of the black or extreme category, they instinctively feel that polygamy and slavery are sister institutions, claiming that sort of kindness which arises from fellow feeling, and that Congress cannot attack one without infringing upon the other. Here, perhaps, they may be mistaken, for nations, like individuals, however warmly and affectionately they love their own peculiar follies and prejudices, sins and crimes, are not the less—indeed, perhaps they are rather more—disposed to abominate the follies and prejudices, the sins and crimes of others. The establishment of slavery, however, though here it serves a humanitarian rather than a private end, necessarily draws the Mormons and the Southern States together. Yet the Saints preferred as President the late Mr. Senator Douglas, a Northern Democrat, to his Southern rival, Mr. Breckinridge. They looked with apprehension at the rise to power of the Republican party, which, had not a weightier matter fallen into their hands, was pledged to do them harm. I cannot but think that absolute independence is, and will be until attained, the principal end and aim of Mormon haute politique, and when the disruption of the Great Republic shall have become a fait accompli, that Deseret will arise a free, sovereign, and independent state.
Should this event ever happen, it will make the regions about Great Salt Lake as exclusive as Northern China or Eastern Tibet. The obsolete rigors of the sanguinary Mosaic code will be renewed in the middle of the nineteenth century, while the statute crime bigamy and unlimited polygamy will be legalized. Stripes or, at best, fine and imprisonment will punish fornication, and the penalty of adultery will be death by lapidation or beheading. As it is, even under the shadow of the federal laws, the self-convicted breaker of the seventh commandment will, it is said, offer up his life in expiation of his crime to the Prophet, who under present circumstances dismisses him with a penance that may end in the death which he has legally incurred. The offenses against chastity, morality, and decency are exceptionally severe.
The penalty attached to betting of any kind is a fine not exceeding $300 or imprisonment not exceeding six months. The importation of spirituous liquors is already burdened with an octroi of half its price, raising cognac and whisky to $12 and $8 per gallon. If the state could make her own laws, she would banish poteen, hunt down the stills, and impose a prohibitory duty upon everything stronger than lager beer.
On the saddest day of the year for the bird which has lost so much good fame by condescending to appear at table aux choux, I proceeded with my fidus Achates, save the self-comparison to pious Æneas, on a visit to Mr. W.W., alias Judge Phelps, alias the Devil. He received me with great civility and entered without reserve upon his hobbies. His house, which lies west of Temple Block, bears on the weathercock Job xxxviii 35: Adsumus (Here we are). Besides Hebrew and other linguistic studies, the judge is a meteorologist and has been engaged for some years in observations upon the climate of the Territory. An old editor at Independence, he now superintends the Utah Almanac and gave me a copy for the year 1860, being the 31st year of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It is a small duodecimo, creditably printed by Mr. J.M. Knight, Utah, and contains thirty-two pages. The contents are the usual tables of days, sunrises, sunsets, eclipses, etc., with advertisements on the alternate pages, and it ends with the denominations and value of gold and silver coins, original poetry, scientific notes concerning the morning and evening stars, a list of the United States officers at Utah, the number of the planets and asteroids, diarrhoea and moral poetry, and an explanation of the word almanac, concluding with the following observation:
“A person without an almanac is somewhat like a ship at sea with a compass; he never knows what to do nor when to do it.”
“So Mormon, other sects, and Quaker, Buy Almanacs and pay the maker.” - K.J.
The only signs of sanctity are in the events appended to the days of the week. They naturally record the dates of local interest and the births and deaths of prophets, patriarchs, presidents, and apostles. Under the head of “Time,” however, some novel information is provided for the benefit of the benighted chronologist.
TIME. There is a great mystery about time as recorded in the Bible. Authors differ as to what length of time this world has occupied since it came into being. Add 4004 to 1860, and we have 5864 years.
Again, some authors allow before the birth of the Savior 5509 years, which added to 1860 gives 7369 years since the beginning.
The book of Abraham, as translated by Joseph Smith, gives 7000 years for the creation by the gods, one day of the Lord being a thousand years of man’s time, or a day in Kolob. This important revelation of 7000 years at first shows 5960 years since the transgression of Adam and Eve and 40 years to the next day of rest if the year 1900 commences the return of the ten tribes and the first resurrection, or 13,000 years since the gods said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, so that the fourteen thousandth year will be the second Sabbath since creation.
A day of the Moon is nearly thirty of our days, or more than ten thousand of Earth’s time. Verily, verily:
“Man knows but little, Nor knows that little right.”
The judge then showed me an instrument upon which he had expended the thought and labor of years. It was that grand desideratum, a magnetic compass, which, pointing with a second needle to the true north, would indicate variation so correctly as to show longitude by inspection. The article, which was as rough-looking as it could be, was placed upon the table, but it would not, as the inventor explained, point to the true north unless in a particular position. I refrain from recording my hundred doubts as to the feasibility of the operation and my own suspicions concerning the composition of the instrument. I presently took leave of Judge Phelps, pleased with his quaint kindness but somehow suspecting him of being a little tête montée on certain subjects.
As it was newspaper day, we passed by the Mountaineer office and bought a copy. The press is ably and extensively represented in Great Salt Lake City as in any other of its Western coevals. Mormonism, so far from despising the powers of pica, has a more than ordinary respect for them. Until lately, there were three weekly newspapers. The Valley Tan, however, during the last winter, expired after a slow and lingering dysthesis induced by overindulgence in Gentile tendencies. It was established in 1858. The proprietor was Mr. J. Hartnett, the late federal secretary. The editor was Mr. Kirk Anderson, followed by Mr. De Wolf and others. The issue was hebdomadal, and the subscription high, $10 per annum. The recognized official organ of the religion, which first appeared on the 15th of June 1850, is the Deserét News, whose motto is “Truth and Liberty” under a hive over which is a single circumradiated eye in disagreeable proximity to the little busy bee. It has often changed its size and is now printed in a small folio of eight pages, each containing four columns of close type. Sometimes articles are clothed in the Mormon alphabet. It had reached, in 1860, its tenth volume. It appears every Wednesday, costs $6 per annum in Utah, £1 13s 8d per annum in advance in England, and a single number 9d. It is superintended by Mr. Brigham Young. It is edited by Mr. Elias Smith, also a Probate judge. He is assisted by Mr. M. Knight, formerly the editor of a paper in the United States and now the author of the important horticultural, agricultural, and other georgic articles in the Deserét News. This Moniteur also contains corrected reports of the sermons spoken at the Tabernacle. An account of a number may not be uninteresting.
No. 28, Vol. X begins with a hymn of seven stanzas by C.W. Bryant. Following are remarks by President Brigham Young at Provo and in the Bowery, Great Salt Lake City. The three sermons, which occupy four and a half columns, are separated by “Modern Germany II” by Alexander Ott. There is an article from the New York Sun entitled “The Great Eastern in Court.” It is followed by nearly half a page of clippings, those little recognized piracies which make the American papers as amusing as magazines. Then come advertisements, estray notices, and others which nearly fill the third and sixth pages, and the column at the eighth, which is the conclusion. I subjoin terms for advertising. The fourth page contains “News by Eastern Mail,” “Doings of the Probate Court,” “Special Term of the Probate Court,” “Another Excusable Homicide,” “The Season,” “Imprisoning Convicts Without Labor,” “Discharge of the City Police,” “Swiss Saints Lately Arrived,” “Arrival of Missionaries at Liverpool,” “Drowned: Joseph Vest,” etc. “Deserét Agriculturing and Manufacturing Society,” “Information Wanted,” and “Humboldt’s Opinion of the United States,” comparing it to a Cartesian vortex, liberty a dead machinery in the hands of Utilitarianism, etc. The fifth and sixth pages detail news from Europe, the Sicilies, Damascus, and India, proceedings of a missionary meeting in the Bowery, and tidings from Juab and Iron County, with a few stopgaps such as an explanation of the word “Zouave” and the part conversion of the fallen Boston elm into a Mayor’s seat. The seventh page is agricultural and opens with “The American Autumn” by Fanny Kemble, four stanzas. Then comes “Sheep Husbandry No. III,” treating of change of pasture, separation of the flock, and fall management. The other morceaux are “Training the Peach Tree,” “Stick to the Farm,” an article concluding with “We shall always sign speed the plow; we shall always regard the American farmer dressed for his employment and tilling his grounds as belonging to the order of real noblemen, the less aristocratic Englander would limit himself to Nature’s gentleman. Why pork shrinks in the pot and wheat straw its value as fodder. The eighth and last page opens with correspondence and a letter signed Joseph Hall, headed “More Results of Civilization” and dated Ogden City, Sept. 8, 1860. It contains an account of occurrences resulting in the death of one John Cornwell, a discharged government teamster, and as is often the case with those Christians who are sent to civilize the Mormons of these mountains, a corrupt, profane, and quarrelsome individual who doted on belonging to the bully tribe. Then follows more news from San Pete County, “A Test of Love,” that capital story out of C.R. Leslie’s autobiography, “Siege of Magdeburg,” a hard-shell sermon preached at Oxford, England, a scrap illustrating the marvelous growth of Quincy, Illinois, and the legend of the origin of the pianoforte. The latter is followed by a valuable abstract containing a summary of meteorological observations, barometric and thermometric, for the month of August 1860 at Great Salt Lake City, Utah, by W.W. Phelps, and concluding with a monthly journal. Then follow the deaths, six in number, and after one of them is inserted “Millennial Star copy.” There are no marriages, and the Western papers, like those of the East, are still bégueules enough to consider advertising the birth of a child indelicate; at least that was the reason given to me. The last column contains the terms for advertising and the fill-up advertisements.
The Mountaineer, whose motto is “Do what is right, let the consequence follow,” is considered rather a secular paper. It appears on Saturdays, and the terms of subscription are $6 per annum. The occasional supplement is issued gratis. It formerly belonged to three lawyers, Messrs. Stout, Blair, and Ferguson. It has now passed into the hands of the two latter. Mr. Hosea Stout distinguished himself during the Nauvoo troubles; he was the captain of forty policemen who watched over the safety of Mr. Joseph Smith and afterward went on missions to India and China. Major S.M. Blair served under General Sam Houston in the Texan War of Independence and was a distinguished lawyer in the Southern States. A description of the Deserét News will apply to the Mountaineer. I notice in the issue of September 15, 1860, that a correspondent, quoting an extract from the New York Tribune, the great Republican organ and therefore no favorite with the Mormons, says outspokenly enough to please any amount of John Bull: “The author of the above is a most consummate liar; so far, so good; and a contemptible, dastardly poltroon,” which is invidious.
I passed the morning of the ensuing Sunday in a painful but appropriate exercise, reading the Books of Mormon and of Moroni the Prophet. Some writers tell me that it is the best extant imitation of the Old Testament; to me, it seems composed only to emulate the sprightliness of some parts of Leviticus. Others declare that it is founded upon a romance composed by a Rev. Mr. Spaulding. If so, Mr. Spaulding must have been like Prince Pückler-Muskau of traveling notoriety, a romancer utterly without romance. Surely there never was a book so thoroughly dull and heavy; it is monotonous as a sage prairie. Though not liable to be terrified by dry or hard reading, I was, it is only fair to own, unable to turn over more than a few chapters at a time, and my conviction is that very few are so highly gifted that they have been able to read it through at a heat. In Mormonism, it now holds the same locus as the Bible in the more ignorant Roman Catholic countries, where religious reading is chiefly restricted to the Breviary, to tales of miracles, and to legends of Saints Ursula and Bridget. It is strictly proper, does not contain a word about materialism and polygamy; in fact, more than one wife is strictly forbidden even in the Book of Doctrines and Covenants. The Mormon Bible, therefore, is laid aside for later and lighter reading. In one point, it has done something: America, like Africa, is a continent of the future; the Book of Mormon has created for it a historical and miraculous past.
At 9:45 AM, we entered the Bowery. It is advisable to go if seats within hearing are required. The place was a kind of hangar about a hundred feet long by the same breadth, with roofing of bushes and boughs supported by rough posts, and for ventilation on the sides. It can contain about 3,000 souls. The congregation is accommodated upon long rows of benches. The dais, rostrum, platform, or tribune, which looked like a long lane of boarding, was open to the north where it faced the audience and entered by steps from the east. Between the people and the platform was a place not unlike a Methodist pen at a meeting. This was allotted to the orchestra: a violin, a bass, women, and four men performers who sang the sweet songs of Zion tolerably well—decidedly well after a moment’s reflection as to latitude and longitude and after reminiscences of country and town chapels in that land where it is said, had the Psalmist heard his own psalms,
“In furious mood he would have tore 'em.”
Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints: Among the Mormons and Across the Rocky Mountains to California, p. 249-259
