New York Times vol. 7 no. 1959

              PROGRESS OF THE UTAH EXPEDITION. 
Interesting Dispatches from Col. Johnston. 
DEFICIT LETTERS FROM BRIGHAM YOUNG. 
Important Mormon Dispatches Inter-cepted. 
Special Dispatch to the New-York Times. 
WASHINGTON, Monday, Dec. 28. 
Secretary CASS denounces the arrest of WALKER and his men by Commodore PAULDING as illegal, in-excusable and unauthorized. 
Commodore PAULDING will doubtless be Court-mar-tialed immediately. 
The Commodore's instructions were intended only direct him to prevent WALKER'S landing. A copy of the following circular—the same sent to the Dis-trict-Attorneys and Marshals—was transmitted to him :
 SIR: From information received at this Depart-ment, there is reason to believe that lawless persons Cure now engaged within the limits of the United States in setting on foot and preparing the means for military expeditions, to be carried on against the territories of Mexico, Nicaragua and Costa Rica—Republics with whom, the United States are at peace—in violation of the sixth section of the act of Con-gress approved 20th April, 1818. And under the eighth section of the said act it is made lawful for the President, or such persons as he shall empower, "to employ the land and naval forces of the United States, and the militia thereof, for the purpose of preventing the carrying on of any such ex-pedition or enterprise from the Territories or jurisdiction of the United States." I am, therefore, directed by the President to call your atten-tion to the subject, and to urge you to use ill due diligence, and to avail yourself of all legiti-mate means at your command to enforce these and all other provisions of the said act of 20th of April, 1818, against those who may be found to be engaged m setting on foot or preparing military expeditions against the territories of Mexico, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, so manifestly prejudicial to the national character, and so injurious to the national interest. And you are, also, hereby instructed promptly to communicate to this Department the earliest infor-mation you may receive relative to such expeditions. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
[Signed] LEWIS CASS. 
The Commodore was directed to consider these instructions as addressed to himself, and to act ac-cordingly. 
Additional instructions, of the same tenor but more in detail, were sent by the steamer of the 21st inst., but these, of course, he could not have received. 
The Administration is very emphatic in repudiating the action of Commodore PAULDING, and denouncing it as a violation of the sovereignty of Nicaragua and of the American Constitution. Our power over the filibusters, it is held, ceased the moment they had entered upon the jurisdiction of a foreign power. 
There is no d that Commodore PAULDING will be at once ordered home for trial. S.
WASHINGTON, Monday, Dec. 28—10 P.M. 
WALKER'S friends express the conviction that Commodore PAULDING acted under secret instruc-tions. In proof of this, they cite the fact that it has been repeatedly predicted that England and the United States would pursue him upon Nicaraguan soil. 
I learn, also, that a week ago the British Minister, in conversation with a gentleman, suggested as a sup-posititious case, precisely what has happened through PAULDING'S act—at the same time agreeing that ii would be a violation of international law, but saying that Nicaragua would not complain. 
Nevertheless, the Administration positively de-nounces PAULDING'S course, denying that it was even anticipated. 
Marshal RYNDERS is expected here to-morrow, with WALKER in charge. On his arrival he will be official ly informed that he has no color of authority to hold him, and will be directed to discharge him imme-diately. 
The Southern men are very violent in their denan-ciation of PAULDING, denying his right to decide that WALKER is a citizen of the United States, and claim-ing it to be the duty of the Government to send him and his men back in a national vessel. S. 
[FROM THE REPORTER FOR THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.] 
WASHINGTON, Monday, Dec. 28. 
The instructions to Commodore PAULDING were necessarily general in their nature, it being impossi-ble for the Government to anticipate every state of circumstances, and not until his official dispatch shall have been considered, will it be determined whether or not he was justified in arresting General WALKER. 
The War Department to-day received official dispatches from the head-quarters of the Army of Utah, dated Black Fork, three miles below the mouth of Ham's Fork, Nov. 5. 
Col. JOHNSTON states that Col. SMITH, with his com-mand and the numerous trains guarded by it, reached here Nov. 3. The march was slow and tedious, averaging eleven miles a day. Although the road was excellent and the weather fine, it was not possi-ble to make more rapid progress, on account of the broken-down condition of the draft animals. The trains, including the sutlers and merchants, destined for Salt Lake, which he would not allow to go on, occupied as close an order as they could be made to travel for the space of from five to six miles. 
No molestation whatever was attempted by the Mormons, which may be attributed to the presence of cavalry, and the judicious dispositions and vigil-ance of Colonel SMITH. 
On the 16th Colonel JOHNSTON was to march on Fort Bridger, and dislodge any force he might find there, and await the appearance of Colonel COOK, when, as the approach of Winter was too near to attempt the passage of the Wasach range of moun-tains with a probability of success, he would seize upon the district mentioned in his letter from the South Pass, and occupy it until an advance shall be practicable. 
The communication from BRIGHAM YOUNG to Col. ALEXANDER, and Elders—and TAYLOR to Capt. MARCY, and the orders of D. WELLS, Commander of the Mormons, which Col. JOHNSTON incloses, and the acts of the Legislative Assembly at the last session, show, he says, a matured and settled de-sign on the part of the Mormons to bold and occupy the Territory, independent of and irrespective of the authority of the United States, occupying as they do the attitude of rebellion and open defiance of the Government connected with numerous overt acts of treason. Colonel JOHN-STON has ordered that whenever they are met with in arms they may be treated as enemies, and he reiter-ates the necessity for prompt and vigorous action, or the United States must submit to the usurpation of their territory. 
The conduct of the Mormons, he says, results from a settled determination on their part not to acknowl-edge the authority of the United States nor any other outside of their church. He adds: 
"A supply of subsistence must be forwarded early in the Spring. It should reach the army by the 1st of June." 
Should a long time elapse without hearing from him, (SCOTT,) Colonel JOHNSTON says it must be attri-buted only to the difficulty of sending expresses the mountains in the Winter months. Officers and men are reported to be in fine ardent desire to dis- 
In a postscript Col. JOHNSTON says the army has made one day's march since the 5th, and that on the 7th they were awaiting the arrival of the trains de-layed the day before by a storm. "Our trains" he adds, "occupy in as close an order as they eau travel the road from thirteen to fourteen miles—therefore the rear cannot move till late in the day."
Among the documents transmitted is a letter from BRIGHAM YOUNG, dated Oct. 16, in which, replying to Colonel ALEXANDER, he says: 
"If you come here for peaceful purposed you have no use for weapons of war. We wish, and ever have wished, for peace, and have ever sued for it all the day long, as our bitterest enemies know full well; and though the wicked, with the Administration now at their head, have determined we shall have no peace except it be to be down in death, in the name of Israel's God we will have peace, even though we be compelled by our enemies to fight for it. If you per-sist in your attempts to permanently locate an army in this Territory, contrary to the wishes and constitu-tional rights of the people therein, thus aiding the Administration in their unhallowed efforts to palm their corrupt officials upon us and protect them, the black-legs, black-hearted scoundrels, whoremasters and murderers, as was the sole intention in sending you and your troops here, you will have to meet a mode of warfare against which your tactics furnish you no information. In regard to myself and certain others, having placed ourselves in a position of rebellion and hostility to the Government of the United States, I am perfectly aware, and we understand our true and most loyal position far better than our enemies can inform us. We, of all people, are endeavoring to preserve and perpetuate the genius of the Constitu-tion and constitutional law, while the Administration and the troops they have ordered to Utah are in fact themselves the rebels, and in hostility to the General Government; and if GEORGE WASHINGTON was now living and at the helm of our Government, he would bang the Administration as high as he did ANDRE, and that, too, with a far better grace and to a much great-er subserving of the best interests of the country."
After much similar defiant language. YOUNG says : 
"By virtue of my office as Governor of the Terri-tory of Utah, I command you to marshal your troops and leave this Territory, for it can be of no possible benefit to you to waste treasures and blood in prosecuting your course upon the side of a rebellion against the General Government by its administrators. You have had and still have plenty of time to retire within reach of supplies at the East, or to go to Fort Hall. Were you and your fellow-officers as well acquainted with your men as I am with mine, and did they understand the work they are now engaged in as well as you may under-stand it, you must know that many of them would immediately revolt from all connection with so un-godly, illegal, unconstitutional and hellish a crusade against an innocent people ; and if their blood is shed it shall rest upon the heads of their commanders. With us it is the kingdom of God or nothing." 
In another letter to Colonel ALEXANDER, BRIGHAM YOUNG says : 
"When the President of the United States so far degrades his high position and prostitutes the highest gilt of the people so as to make use of the military power, intended only for the protection of the people's rights, to crush the people's liberties, and compel them to receive officials so lost to self-respect as to accept appointments against the known and ex-pressed wish of the people, and so craven and de-graded as to need an army to protect them in their position, we feel that we would be recreant to every principle of self-respect, honor, integrity, and patriot-ism, to bow tamely to such high-handed tyranuy, a parallel to which is only found in the attempts made by the British Government in its most corrupt stages against the rights, liberties and lives of our forefathers. If our real enemies, the mobocrats, priests, editors and politicians, at whose instigation the present storm has been gathered, had come against us, instead of you and your command, I would not have addressed them thus. They never would have been allowed to reach the South Pass." JOHN TAYLOR, in writing a letter to Captain MARCY, says :
“I know from your personal intercourse with members of the Senate and House of Representa-tives of the United States, that there have been va-rious plans concocted at head-quarters, for some time past, for the overthrow of the Mormons. Mr. FUL-LER, of New-York, who sent you an introductory let-letter to me, informs me that you are a politician. If so, you must know that in the last Presidential cam-paign the Republican Party had opposition to Slavery and polygamy as two of the princi pal planks of their platform. You may know that Utah was picked out, and the only Territory excluded from a participation in the preemption rights to land. I might enumerate inju-ries by cores. And if these things are not so, why is it that Utah is so knotty a question? Why could DRUMMOND and a host of other mean scribblers palm their barefaced lies with such impunity, and have their infamous slanders swallowed with such gus-to? Was it not that the Administration, as their satellites, having planned our destruction, were eager to catch at anything to render specious their contemplations of blood ; or in plain terms, the Democrats advocated strongly popular sovereignty. The Republicans tell them if they join in maintain-ing inviolable the domestic institutions of the South, they must also swallow polygamy. The Democrats thought this would not do, as it would interfere with the religious scruples of many of their supporters, and they looked about for some means to dispose of the knotty question. Mr. BUCHANAN, with Messers. DOUGLAS, CASS, THOMPSON and others after failing to devise measures, hit upon the expedient of an armed force against Utah, and thus thought, by a sacrifice of the Mormons, to untie the knotty question. Yes, by destroying or killing a hundred thousand innocent American citizens, to satisfy the pious, humane and patriotic feeling of their constituents, take the wind out of the sails of the Republicans and gain to them-selves immortal honors.”
After defending the Mormons, he, in conclusion, says :
On my departure from the States, the fluctuating tide of popular opinion against us seemed to be on the wane, and by this time there may be quite a reac-tion in the public mind. If so, it may probably affect, materially, the position of the Administration and tend to more constitutional, pacific and humane measures. In such an eventt, our relative frontiers would be materially changed, and instead of meeting enemies we could meet as American citizens should—friends to one another, and united against our le-gitimate enemies. Such an issue is to be devoutly desired.
On the person of Major JOSEPH TAYLOR, who was captured, was found a letter to him from DANIEL WELLS, Lieutenant-General of the Mormons, in which the latter directs him, under date of Oct. 4, to proceed with all possible dispatch to the Oregon road, near Bear River, taking close and correct ob-servaitons of the country on his route.
“When you approach the road,” he says, “send scouts ahead to ascertain if the invading troops have passed that way. If they have passed take the con-cealed route, and get ahead of them, express to Col. BENTON, who is now on that route, and in the vicinity of the troops, and effect a junction with him, so as to operate in concert. On ascertaining the locality or route of the troops, proceed at once to annoy them in every possible way. Use every exertion to stam-pede their animals, and set fire to their trains ; burn the whole country before them an don their flank ; keep them from sleeping by night surprises ; blockade the road by felling the trees, or destroying the river fords where you can ; watch for every op-portunity to set fire to the grass on their windward, so as to, if possible, envelope their trains; leave no grass before them that can be burnt ; keep your men concealed as much as possible and guard against surprise ; keep scouts out at all times and communication open with Colonel BENTON, Major McALLISTER and O.R. ROCKWELL, who are op-erating in the same way; keep me advised daily of your  movements on every step the troops take, and in what direction. God bless you and give you suc cess. Your brother in Christ.