THE EFFECT OF POLYGAMY.
An atrocious murder was perpetrated in Salt Lake City, Utah, on the 27th ult., the victim being Mr. S. N. BRASSFIELD, lately a resident of Nevada. He had undertaken the dangerous and fatal experiment, as it proved, of marrying a Mormon woman, the second wife of one of the polygamous saints, who was abroad. He was married to the woman by a United States Ter-ritorial Judge, who held that the man with whom she had been living having already one wife, his so-called marriage to the second was void, and the latter was at perfect liberty to contract a new matrimonial obligation. This attack upon the "religion" of the Mormon adultress seems to have aroused the latter to fury. BRASSFIELD was arrested on his wedding night, while assisting his wife to remove her goods and clothing from the house of the man whom she had lived. The charge against him then was, "resisting an officer." He was kept in prison all night, and next morning was taken before a Mormon official, holding a "Probate Court," and bound over to answer. The next day he was indicted by a Mormon Grand Jury upon two charges—one for resisting the officer, the other for the larceny of the goods which his wife was about to carry away. He was promptly put upon trial, and the case partly heard. Mean-while, the wife attempted to get the custody of two children by the Mormon father, but was resisted by the friends of the latter. The mother got a writ of habeas corpus for the children from a United States Judge, and the friends of the father had another issued by the Mormon Court. The United States writ was first executed, and the United States Marshal took possession of the children. The Mormon writ was served upon him, and he refused to obey it, and was threatened with imprisonment, for contempt, by the Mormon justices.
The hearing of the case caused great excite ment; it was not ended at the time of the ad-journment of the United States Court. BRASS-FIELD, the unfortunate husband, left the Court with the United States Marshal, and while going home he was deliberately shot down in the street by a man who was armed with a gun. BRASSFIELD died in about three-quarters of an hour. The assassin ran away and there was no attempt to arrest him by the city (Mormon) police, which it is averred might have been easily done by them if they had desired to do so. The cause of this murder was evident. BRASSFIELD had dared to attack one of the Mormon vices in a peculiarly bold manner. The issue was, whether polygamy or the laws of the United States should be supreme, and the man was sacrificed to the Mormon spirit of lust and beastliness,
It is really time that these people were put under the strict enforcement of military law. They are wicked and defiant. They stop at no crimes to carry out their abominable principles, and since they have been in Utah they have revelled in savage crime and debauchery, and are restrained by no sentiment of humanity or justice in maintaining their objects and at-taining their ends. Murder stalks abroad in Utah, and no man's life is safe who dares to assert that polygamy is a barbarism which is a stigma and a disgrace to a Christian land. The attention of the President and of Congress should be earnestly given to the adoption of such measuses as will put down the spirit of assassination which reigns without control in Utah. It has had its way too long. The past history of that Territory is a record of atro-city and crime which, if revealed in all its horrors, would astound the world.
