1854-12-02-New York Tribune-Things in Utah
Things in Utah
New York Tribune 2 Dec 1854, p. 5
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We passed half an hour yesterday in the company of two very intelligent representatives of the "Latter-Day Saints" in Utah—Messrs. John Taylor and N. H. Felt. These gentlemen represent affairs in Utah in a very flattering light. The Saints are rapidly surrounding themselves with the various comforts and many of the luxuries of civilization. Immigration and natural increase are adding daily to their numbers, and the day is not very far in the future when Utah will be "knocking" for admission into the family of States, or preparing to devend and independent sovereignty of her own, in the mountain fastnesses, by the hardest kind of "knocks." The crops of the past season had been somewhat injured by the grasshopper; but still, our informants assured us, there would be the greatest abundance harvested for the use of the Saints and a surplus for the constantly arriving emigrants, as well as for those who may take Salt Lake in their way to California. Messrs. Taylor and Felt are on their way to New-York for the purpose of establishing a paper in that City, to be devoted to the propagation of the doctrines held by the "Saints," and for the purpose of "carrying the war into Africa," whenever and wherever provocation thereto may be offered. Mr. Taylor, in addition to the dignity of the "Apostleship,"—and a jolly, rubicund, wide-awake "Apostle" he is—brings to the Editorship of The Mormon a mainifold experience in the profession, and we doubt not its columns will be eagerly and satisfactorily perused by the "Saints" into whose hands it may fall. Gentile though we be, we shall look for it with some interest ourselves, and our readers will doubtless be delectated with occasional excerpts from its columns touching on the polity, politics and domestic institutions of the "Saints," as the same may be developed to the world. The object in establishing and organ in New-York, Mr. Taylor assures us, is two-fold. First, to defend the people of Utah from the misrepresentations of lying letter-writers and designing politicians; and secondly to minister to the wants of the "Saints" scattered throughout the States. the mischief growing out of the two causes above-named has tended much to hinder the spread of Mormonism in the States, and greatly vexed and scandalized the pious souls who play the shepherd over the sheep collected in Salt Lake Valley. Our informants assured us that the people of the State have been led into many erroneous opinions touching the light in which executive appointments for Utah are looked upon. They desire competent and discreet men—nothing more. Men of this character, they say, they have among themselves, more than sufficient to fill all the offices, and they think the President would only be carrying out his own doctrine of popular sovereignty, were he to so far respect the popular wish of the people of Utah as to select his appointees from among them. Nevertheless, they say, any competent, well-behaved man will be well received there, as a territorial officer, if he will devote himself to the legitimate business of his office, and let other matters alone. But the trouble has been, with a very few exceptions, that while the appointees were notoriously incompetent for the duties of their office, they also intermedled with the institutions and domestic relations of the "Saints" in a manner quite extra official, and carried things in a style of lordly superiority over those who considered themselves their equals in every respect. This is what they complain of. They want no tenth-rate lawyers placed over them, and they are by no means desirous that Utah should be made a Botany Bay of, for the banishment of broken-down political hacks, who have sunk their character and captial in the States. We inquired of them about the Governorship of the Territory. Their answer was, that the people of the Territory preferred Brigham Young in that capacity to any other living man. But they would not contend on this point. They would receive any competent man President Pierce might send out to them as Governor. As for brother Brigham himself, he did not want the office—would prefer not to be incumbered with it—had his head, hands and heart full of other and more important matters. The rumors recently circulated respecting this matter, they said, originated at Washington, and were put afloat for political effect. The people of the Territory care but very little about the matter one way or the other.
As respects Slavery in the Territory we were assured that there was but little of it there—yet it is there. Some slaves had been liberated by their owners since they were taken to Utah; others still remain slaves. but the most of those who take slaves there pass over with them in a little while to San Barnarding—a Mormon settlement in California, some 700 or 800 miles from Salt Lake City. How many salves are now held there, they could not say, but the number, relatively, was by no means small. A single person had taken between 40 and 50, and many had gone in with smaller numbers.
