Mormonism.
The New Orleans Picayune Las the following interesting article:
"I am and will be Governor, and no power can hinder me until the Lord Al-mighty says 'Brigham, you need not be Governor any longer.' "
So said Brigham Young when the President of the United States sent Colonel Steptoe (1854) with an inade-quate force to install a new Governor. At that time Brigham was about six years the ruler of the Mormon colony as its high priest and temporal chief magistrate. He carried his point and Col. Steptoe withdrew his troops, and for two or three years more the civil functions of the Head of the Latter Day Saints were not questioned. It has been pretty hard to convince the proph-et that there is any power in the United States to which his own is subordinate, nor was it until the noble and gallant Albert Sidney Johnston, in 1857, in-vaded Utah with a competent force, that the great hierarch was willing to ac-knowledge even the concurrent juris-diction of Congress and the President. By a mixture of heroic firmness, wise policy and charitable forbearance, the armed representatives of Federal au-thority brought Brigham and his fol-lowers to reason. A civil Governor of the Territory was installed, a United District Court was placed in authority, and everything was so quieted that Johnston was enabled to withdraw his command in 1860.
Brigham Young was the son of a farmer of Whittingham, Vermont, and the grandson of a Revolutionary soldier a Green Mountain Boy, who fought under Ethan Allen and through the en-tire war. In 1832, when thirty-one years old, he turned up at Kirtland, Ohio, and there united his fortunes with the Mormon sect, who had a colo-ny and temple at that place. He studied theology, was ordained as an elder, and appointed one of the Twelve Apostles of the Saints. He has adhered steadily te the brethren from that time. He stood at the right hand of Joseph Smith in all the Mormon troubles in Ohio and Missouri, whence the growing sect were violently expelled in 1838 by the mili-tia, under the orders of the Governor. When Smith found himself unable to cover with a "gore of blood" all the country between the Atlantic and the Rocky Mountains, as he had threaten-ed, he withdrew his seven hundred dis-ciples to Illinois, whither Young, his fidus Achates, followed him, sharing with him his splendid speculations in the town lots of Nuavo—by which Smith made a million and the chief saints very handsome sums.
It was here that the chief troubles of the Mormons originated. Before the walls of the Nuavoo temple were reared polygamy was no part of Mormon faith and practice. It was there added by Smith as a spiritual revelation, at the same time that unlimited power, spirit-ual and temporal, was assumed and conceded. The Prophet, puffed up with pride and rejoicing in his wealth, defied the local authorities, parading his Nau-voo Legion against the constabulary of Illinois; but he was at last arrested, and while in jail, killed by a mob, supposed to be from Missouri.
The mantle of Smith fell upon no second-rate man. Smith was narrow-minded and ignorant, of base stock, a drunken, thievish, illiterate, thriftless, lazy vagabond in his youth, deluding his followers by cunning devices, and at last ruining them by forcing upon them a dogma invented to shield his own bestial inquity. Young was a man of culture and varied talent, and soon acquired all the ascendency that he needed. He planned the transfer of the growing colony from Nuavo to Dese-ret (Land of the Honey Bee), sent out pioneers, had corn and vegetables and stored aIong the route, pro-vided relays of draft animals, planted crops in Utah, and managed the whole transfer of 10,000 followers through many hundred miles of uninhabit-ed prairie and wilderness without loss or suffering, thus performing a feat of I which the ablest military general might well be proud of. His government since his exodus (1848) has been char-acterized by great sagacity. He has not only secured a fortune of several millions for himself (a prudent share of which is funded in British consols) but he has made his colony prosperous. In 1850, two years after the settlement, the Mormons numbered 11,380. In 1860 the census gave the Territory 40,-273, although the census ordered by Young gave a much greater number. The census for 1870 gives a population of 87,786, a part of which consists of gentiles. The wealth of the Mormons has increased in a greater proportion still. They live within their own re-sources; they are cut off from the means of luxurious indulgencies; they are drilled in the precepts and practice of industry, and they labor under the di-rection of capable men.
But whether prosperous or in tribu-lation, Brigham Young has held con-tinued autocratic sway over Mormons, but few at any time disputing or re-sisting his mandates of mingled spirit-ualism and temporality. But it seems as if the voice had said "Brigham, you need be Governor no longer.'' A law of Congress prohibits polygamous prac-tices in all our Territories, and Young will be made to feel that he cannot bid defiance to our Government.
