The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864

By incredible labor, bringing down rivulets from the snow-peaks of the Wahsatch range and distributing them over the levels by every ingenious device known to artificial irrigation, the Mormon farmers have converted the bottoms of the cañons through which we approached Salt Lake into fertile fields and pasture-lands, whose emerald sweep soothed our eyes wearied with so many leagues of ashen monotony, as an old home-strain mollifies the ear irritated by the protracted rhythmic clash or the dull, steady buzz of iron machinery. Contrasting the Mormon settlements with their surrounding desolation, we could not wonder that their success has fortified this people in their delusion. The superficial student of rewards and punishments might well believe that none but God's chosen people could cause this horrible desert, after such triumphant fashion, to blossom like the rose.

The close observer soon notices a painful deficiency in these green and smiling Mormon settlements. Everything has been done for the farm,—nothing for the home. That blessed old Anglo-Saxon idea seems everywhere quite extinct. The fields are billowing over with dense, golden grain, the cattle are wallowing in emerald lakes of juicy grass, the barns are substantial, the family-windmill buzzes merrily on its well-oiled pivot, drawing water or grinding feed, the fruit-trees are thrifty,—but the house is desolate. Even where its owner is particularly well off, and its architecture somewhat more ambitious than the average, (though, as yet, this superiority is measured by little more than the difference between logs and clapboards,) there is still no air about it of being the abode of happy people, fond of each other, and longing after it in absence. It looks like a mere inclosure to eat and sleep in. Nobody seems to have taken any pride in it, to feel any ambition for it. Woman's tender little final touches, which make a dear refuge out of a mud-cabin, and without which palatial brownstone is only a home in the moulding-clay,—those dexterous ornamentations which make so little mean so much,—the brier-rose-slip by the doorstep, growing into the fragrant welcome of many Junes,—the trellised Madeira-vines,—the sunny spot of chrysanthemums, charming summer on to the very brink of frost,—all these things are utterly and everywhere lacking to the Mormon inclosure. Sometimes we passed a fence which guarded three houses instead of one. Abundant progeny played at their doors, or rolled in their yard, watched by several unkempt, bedraggled mothers owning a common husband,—and we could easily understand how neither of these should feel much interest in the looks of a demesne held by them in such unhappy partnership. The humblest New-England cottage has its climbing flowers at the door-post, or its garden-bed in front; but how quickly would these wither, if the neat, brisk house-mistress owned her husband in common with Mrs. Deacon Pratt next door!

The first Mormon household I ever visited belonged to a son of the famous Heber Kimball, Brigham Young's most devoted follower, and next to him in the Presidency. It was the last stage-station but one before we entered Salt Lake, situated at the bottom of a green valley in Parley's Cañon (named after the celebrated Elder, Parley Pratt); and as it looked like the residence of a well-to-do farmer, I went in, and asked for a bowl of bread and milk,—the greatest possible luxury after a life of bacon and salt-spring water, such as we had been leading in the mountains. A fine-looking, motherly woman, with a face full of character, gray-haired, and about sixty years old, rose promptly to grant my request, and while the horses were changing I had ample time to make the acquaintance of two pretty young girls, hardly over twenty, holding two infants, of ages not more than three months apart. Green as I was to saintly manners, I supposed that one of these two young mothers had run in from a neighbor's to compare babies with the mistress of the house, after our Eastern fashion, universal with the owners of juvenile phenomena. When the old lady came back with the bread and milk, and both of the young girls addressed her as "mother," I was emboldened to tell her that her daughters had a pretty pair of children.

"They are pretty," said the old lady, demurely; "but they are the children of my son"; then, as if resolved to duck a Gentile head and heels into Mormon realities at once, she added,—"Those young ladies are the wives of my son, who is now gone on a mission to Liverpool,—young Mr. Kimball, the son of Heber Kimball; and I am Heber Kimball's wife."

A cosmopolitan, especially one knowing beforehand that Utah was not distinguished for monogamy, might well be ashamed to be so taken off his feet as I was by my first view of Mormonism in its practical workings. I stared,—I believe I blushed a little,—I tried to stutter a reply; and the one dreadful thought which persistently kept uppermost, so that I felt they must read it in my face, was, "How can these young women sit looking at each other's babies without flying into each other's faces with their fingernails, and tearing out each other's hair?" Heber Kimball afterwards solved the question for me, by saying that it was a triumph of grace.

Such another triumph was Mrs. Heber Kimball herself. She was a woman of remarkable presence, in youth must have been very handsome, would have been the oracle of tea-fights, the ruling spirit of donation-visits, in any Eastern village where she might have lived, and, had her home been New York, would have fallen by her own gravity into the Chief Directress's chair of half a dozen Woman's Aid Societies and Associations for Moral Reform. Yet here was this strong-minded woman, as her husband afterward acknowledged to me, his best counsellor and right-hand helper through a married life reaching into middle-age, witnessing her property in that husband's affections subdivided and parcelled out until she owned but a one-thirtieth share, not only without a pang, but with the acquiescence of her conscience and the approbation of her intellect. Though few first wives in Utah had learned to look concubinage in the face so late in life as this emphatic and vigorous-natured woman, I certainly met none whose partisanship of polygamy was so unquestioning and eloquent. She was one of the strangest psychological problems I ever met. Indeed, I am half inclined to think that she embraced Mormonism earlier than her husband, and, by taking the initiative, secured for herself the only true wifely place in the harem,—the marital after-thoughts of Brother Heber being her servants rather than her sisters. She was most unmistakably his favorite.

One day in the Opera-House at Salt Lake, when the carpenters were laying the floor for the Fourth-of-July-Eve Ball, Heber and I got talking of the pot-pourri of nationalities assembled in Utah. Heber waxed unctuously benevolent, and expressed his affection for each succeeding race as fast as mentioned.

"I love the Danes dearly! I've got a Danish wife." Then turning to a rough-looking carpenter, hammering near him,—"You know Christiny,—eh, Brother Spudge?"

"Oh, yes! know her very well!"

A moment after,—"The Irish are a dear people. My Irish wife is among the best I've got."

Again,—"I love the Germans! Got a Dutch wife, too! Know Katrine, Brother Spudge? Remember she couldn't scarcely talk a word o' English when she come,—eh, Brother Spudge?"

Brother Spudge remembered,—and Brother Heber continued to trot out the members of his marital stud for discussion of their points with his more humble fellow-polygamist of the hammer; but when I happened to touch upon the earliest Mrs. Heber, whom I naturally thought he would by this time regard as a forgotten fossil in the Lower Silurian strata of his connubial life, and referred to the interview I had enjoyed with her on the afternoon before entering the city, his whole manner changed to a proper husbandly dignity, and, without seeking corroboration from the carpenter, be replied, gravely,—

"Yes! that is my first wife, and the best woman God ever made!"

The ball to which I have referred was such an opportunity for studying Mormon sociology as three months' ordinary stay in Salt Lake might not have given me. Though Mormondom is disloyal to the core, it still patronizes the Fourth of July, at least in its phase of festivity, omitting the patriotism, but keeping the fireworks of our Eastern celebration, substituting "Utah" for "Union" in the Buncombe speeches, and having a ball instead of the Declaration of Independence. All the saints within half a day's ride of the city come flocking into it to spend the Fourth. A well-to-do Mormon at the head of his wives and children, all of whom are probably eating candy as they march through the metropolitan streets in solid column, looks to the uninitiated like the principal of a female seminary, weak in its deportment, taking out his charge for an airing.

Last Fourth of July, it may be remembered, fell on a Saturday. In their ambition to reproduce ancient Judaism (and this ambition is the key to their whole puzzle) the Mormons are Sabbatarians of a strictness which would delight Lord Shaftesbury. Accordingly, in order that their festivities might not encroach on the early hours of the Sabbath, they had the ball on Fourth-of-July eve, instead of the night of the Fourth. I could not realize the risk of such an encroachment when I read the following sentence printed on my billet of invitation:—

"Dancing to commence at 4 P.M."

Bierstadt, myself, and three gentlemen of our party were the only Gentiles whom I found invited by President Young to meet in the neighborhood of three thousand saints. Under these circumstances I felt like the three-thousandth homoeopathic dilution of monogamy. Morality in this world is so mainly a matter of convention that I dreaded to appear in decent polygamic society, lest respectable women, owning their orthodox tenth of a husband, should shrink from the pollution of my presence, whispering, with a shudder, "Ugh! Well, I never! How that one-wifed reprobate can dare to show his face!" But they were very polite, and received me with as skilfully veiled disapprobation as is shown by fashionable Eastern belies to brilliant seducers immoral in our sense. Had I been a woman, I suppose there would have been no mercy for me.

I sought out our entertainer, Brigham Young, to thank him for the flattering exception made in our Gentile favor. He was standing in the dress-circle of the theatre, looking down on the dancers with an air of mingled hearty kindness and feudal ownership. I could excuse the latter, for Utah belongs to him of right. He may justly say of it, "Is not this great Babylon which I have built?" His sole executive tact and personal fascination are the key-stone of the entire arch of Mormon society. While he remains, eighty thousand (and increasing) of the most heterogeneous souls that could be swept together from the by-ways of Christendom will continue builded up into a coherent nationality. The instant he crumbles, Mormondom and Mormonism will fall to pieces at once, irreparably. His individual magnetism, his executive tact, his native benevolence, are all immense; I regard him as Louis Napoleon, plus a heart; but these advantages would avail him little with the dead-in-earnest fanatics who rule Utah under him, and the entirely persuaded fanatics whom they rule, were not his qualities all coordinated in this one,—absolute sincerity of belief and motive. Brigham Young is the farthest remove on earth from a hypocrite; he is that grand, yet awful sight in human nature, a man who has brought the loftiest Christian self-devotion to the altar of the Devil,—who is ready to suffer crucifixion for Barabbas, supposing him Christ. Be sure, that, were he a hypocrite, the Union would have nothing to fear from Utah. When he dies, at least four hostile factions, which find their only common ground in deification of his person, will snatch his mantle at opposite corners. Then will come such a rending as the world has not seen since the Macedonian generals fought over the coffin of Alexander,—and then Mormonism will go out of Geography into the History of Popular Delusions. There is not a single chief, apostle, or bishop, except Brigham, who possesses any catholicity of influence. I found this tacitly acknowledged in every quarter. The people seem like citizens of a beleaguered town, who know they have but a definite amount of bread, yet have made up their minds to act while it lasts as if there were no such thing as starvation. The greatest comfort you can afford a Mormon is to tell him how young Brigham looks; for the quick, unconscious sequence is, "Then Brigham may last out my time." Those who think at all have no conjecture of any Mormon future beyond him, and I know that many Mormons (Heber Kimball included) would gladly die to-day rather than survive him and encounter that judgment-day and final perdition of their faith which must dawn on his new-made grave.

Well, we may give them this comfort without any insincerity. Let us return to where he stands gazing down on the parquet. Like any Eastern party-goer, he is habited in the "customary suit of solemn black," and looks very distinguished in this dress, though his daily homespun detracts nothing from the feeling, when in his presence, that you are beholding a most remarkable man. He is nearly seventy years old, but appears very little over forty. His height is about five feet ten inches; his figure very well made and slightly inclining to portliness. His hair is a rich curly chestnut, formerly worn long, in supposed imitation of the apostolic coiffure, but now cut in our practical Eastern fashion, as accords with the man of business, whose métier he has added to apostleship with the growing temporal prosperity of Zion. Indeed, he is the greatest business-man on the continent,—the cashier of a firm of eighty thousand silent partners, and the only auditor of that cashier, besides. If I to-day signified my conversion to Mormonism, to-morrow I should be baptized by Brigham's hands. The next day I should be invited to appear at the Church-Office (Brigham's) and exhibit to the Church (Brigham) a faithful inventory of my entire estate. I am a cabinet-maker, let us say, and have brought to Salt Lake the entire earnings of my New-York shop,—twenty thousand dollars. The Church (Brigham sole and simple) examines and approves my inventory. It (Brigham alone) has the absolute decision of the question whether any more cabinet-makers are needed in Utah. If the Church (Brigham) says, "No," it (Brigham again) has the right to tell me where labor is wanted, and set me going in my new occupation. If the Church (Brigham) says, "Yes," it further goes on to inform me, without appeal, exactly what proportion of the twenty thousand dollars on my inventory can be properly turned into the channels of the new cabinet-shop. I am making no extraordinary or disproportionate supposition when I say that the Church (Brigham) permits me to retain just one-half of my property. The remaining ten thousand dollars goes into the Church-Fund, (Brigham's Herring-safe,) and from that portion of my life's savings I never hear again, in the form either of capital, interest, bequeathable estate, or dower to my widow. Except for the purposes of the Church, (Brigham's unquestionable will,) my ten thousand dollars is as though it had not been. I am a sincere believer, however, and go home light-hearted, with a certified check written by the Recording Angel on my conscience for that amount, passed to my credit in the bank where thieves break not through nor steal,—it being no more accessible to them than to the depositor, which is a comfort to the latter. The first year I net from my chairs and tables two thousand dollars. The Church (Brigham) sends me another invitation to visit it, make a solemn averment of the sum, and pay over to that ecclesiastical edifice, the Herring-safe, two hundred dollars. Or suppose I have not sold any of my wares as yet, but have only imported, to be sold by-and-by, five hundred Boston rockers. On learning this fact, the Church (Brigham) graciously accepts fifty for its own purposes.—Being founded upon a rock, it does not care, in its collective capacity, to sit upon rockers, but has an immense series of warehouses, omnivorous and eupeptic, which swallow all manner of tithes, from grain and horseshoes to the less stable commodities of fresh fish and melons, assimilating them by admirable processes into coin of the realm. These warehouses are in the Church (Brigham's own private) inclosure.—If success in my cabinet-making has moved me to give a feast, and I thereat drink more healths than are consistent with my own, the Church surely knows that fact the very next day; and as Utah recognizes no impunitive "getting drunk in the bosom of one's family," I am again sent for, on this occasion to pay a fine, probably exceeding the expenses of my feast. A second offence is punished with imprisonment as well as fine; for no imprisonment avoids fine,—this comes in every case. The hand of the Church holds the souls of the saints by inevitable purse-strings. But I cannot waste time by enumerating the multitudinous lapses and offences which all bring revenue to the Herring-safe.

Over all these matters Brigham Young has supreme control. His power is the most despotic known to mankind. Here, by the way, is the constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism. If fear of establishing a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each of the nation's constituent sections a republican form of government,—something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than Timbuctoo. I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get to Congress again. "No," he replied, with perfect certainty; "we shall send – as our Delegate." (I think he mentioned Colonel Kinney, but do not remember absolutely.) Whoever it was, when the time came, Brigham would send in his name to the "Deseret News,"—whose office, like everything else valuable and powerful, is in his inclosure. It would be printed as a matter of course; a counter-nomination is utterly unheard of; and on election-day – would be Delegate as surely as the sun rose. The mountain-stream that irrigates the city, flowing to all the gardens through open ditches on each side of the street, passes through Brigham's inclosure: if the saints needed drought to humble them, he could set back the waters to their source. The road to the only cañon where firewood is attainable runs through the same close, and is barred by a gate of which he holds the sole key. A family-man, wishing to cut fuel, must ask his leave, which is generally granted on condition that every third or fourth load is deposited in the inclosure, for Church-purposes. Thus everything vital, save the air he breathes, reaches the Mormon only through Brigham's sieve. What more absolute despotism is conceivable? Here lies the pou-sto for the lever of Governmental interference. The mere fact of such power resting in one man's irresponsible hands is a crime against the Constitution. At the same time, this power, wonderful as it may seem, is practically wielded for the common good. I never heard Brigham's worst enemies accuse him of peculation, though such immense interests are controlled by his one pair of hands. His life is all one great theoretical mistake, yet he makes fewer practical mistakes than any other man, so situated, whom the world ever saw. Those he does make are not on the side of self. He merges his whole personality in the Church, with a self-abnegation which would establish in business a whole century of martyrs having a worthy cause.

The cut of Brigham's hair led me away from his personal description. To return to it: his eyes are a clear blue-gray, frank and straightforward in their look; his nose a finely chiselled aquiline; his mouth exceedingly firm, and fortified in that expression by a chin almost as protrusive beyond the rest of the profile as Charlotte Cushman's, though less noticeably so, being longer than hers; and he wears a narrow ribbon of brown beard, meeting under the chin. I think I have heard Captain Burton say that he had irregular teeth, which made his smile unpleasant. Since the Captain's visit, our always benevolent President, Mr. Lincoln, has altered all that, sending out as Territorial Secretary a Mr. Fuller, who, besides being a successful politician, was an excellent dentist. He secured Brigham's everlasting gratitude by making him a very handsome false set, and performing the same service for all of his favorite, but edentate wives. Several other apostles of the Lord owe to Mr. Fuller their ability to gnash their teeth against the Gentiles. The result was that he became the most popular Federal officer (who didn't turn Mormon) ever sent to Utah. The man who obtains ascendency over the mouths of the authorities cannot fail ere-long to get their ears.

Brigham's manners astonish any one who knows that his only education was a few quarters of such common-school experience as could be had in Ontario County, Central New York, during the early part of the century. There are few courtlier men living. His address is a fine combination of dignity with the desire to confer happiness,—of perfect deference to the feelings of others with absolute certainty of himself and his own opinions. He is a remarkable example of the educating influence of tactful perception, combined with entire singleness of aim, considered quite apart from its moral character. His early life was passed among the uncouth and illiterate; his daily associations, since he embraced Mormonism, have been with the least cultivated grades of human society,—a heterogeneous peasant-horde, looking to him for erection into a nation: yet he has so clearly seen what is requisite in the man who would be respected in the Presidency, and has so unreservedly devoted his life to its attainment, that in protracted conversations with him I heard only a single solecism, ("a'n't you" for "aren't you,") and saw not one instance of breeding which would be inconsistent with noble lineage.

I say all this good of him frankly, disregarding any slur that maybe cast on me as his defender by those broad-effect artists who always paint the Devil black,—for I think it high time that the Mormon enemies of our American Idea should be plainly understood as far more dangerous antagonists than hypocrites or idiots can ever hope to be. Let us not twice commit the blunder of underrating our foes.

Brigham began our conversation at the theatre by telling me I was late,—it was after nine o'clock. I replied, that this was the time we usually set about dressing for an evening party in Boston or New York.

"Yes," said he, "you find us an old-fashioned people; we are trying to return to the healthy habits of patriarchal times."

"Need you go back so far as that for your parallel?" suggested I. "It strikes me that we might have found four-o'clock balls among the early Christians."

He smiled, without that offensive affectation of some great men, the air of taking another's joke under their gracious patronage, and went on to remark that there were, unfortunately, multitudinous differences between the Mormons and Americans at the East, besides the hours they kept.

"You find us," said he, "trying to live peaceably. A sojourn with people thus minded must be a great relief to you, who come from a land where brother hath lifted hand against brother, and you hear the confused noise of the warrior perpetually ringing in your ears."

Despite the courtly deference and Scriptural dignity of this speech, I detected in it a latent crow over that "perished Union" which was the favorite theme of every saint I met in Utah, and hastened to assure the President that I had no desire for relief from sympathy with my country's struggle for honor and existence.

"Ah!" he replied, in a voice slightly tinged with sarcasm. "You differ greatly, then, from multitudes of your countrymen, who, since the draft began to be talked of, have passed through Salt Lake, flying westward from the crime of their brothers' blood."

"I do indeed."

"Still, they are excellent men. Brother Heber Kimball and myself are every week invited to address a train of them down at Emigrant Square. They are honest, peaceful people. You call them 'Copperheads,' I believe. But they are real, true, good men. We find them very truth-seeking, remarkably open to conviction. Many of them have stayed with us. Thus the Lord makes the wrath of man to praise Him. The Abolitionists—the same people who interfered with our institutions, and drove us out into the wilderness—interfered with the Southern institutions till they broke up the Union. But it's all coming out right,—a great deal better than we could have arranged it for ourselves. The men who flee from Abolitionist oppression come out here to our ark of refuge, and people the asylum of God's chosen. You'll all be out here before long. Your Union's gone forever. Fighting only makes matters worse. When your country has become a desolation, we, the saints whom you cast out, will forget all your sins against us, and give you a home."