Joseph Smith, and the Great West

JOSEPH SMITH, AND THE GREAT WEST The "Mormon" Stake in General Grant's Great Message at Fort Nelson of "Unconditional Surrender" By I. K. Russel, Author of "Hidden Heroes of the Rockies" VII Everybody who has noted the facts of the Civil War is aware that the fierce earnestness of the Southern generals, such as Stonewall Jackson, James Longstreet, and Robert E. Lee, gave the North some very bad reverses before the Northern fighters really got their spirit up. The North took a whipping at Bull Run, another at Harper's Ferry, and at last out of the West came a young general who faced the proud, victorious South with a riding message, "No terms except unconditional surrender can be accepted. I propose to move im- mediately upon your works." This great message was a clarion call to the North. Its writer became the hero of the hour — and he was immediately nick-named, "Unconditional Surrender Grant." He struck the note that became Lincoln's slogan from then on until the final end of the war at Appomattox Court House. At the time Grant uttered this great slogan, Brigham Young, out in Utah, was just sensing a relief from the heavy hand of Federal action through Johnston's army operations. He was pledging Lincoln that "Utah had not seceded," and was organizing troops to guard the overland mail route. Grant spoke on February 16, 1862. That the "Mormons" in Utah had a vital stake in that message from the North' si first success- ful general, at the moment he was about to strike for his first notable victory, we are likely to remain ignorant of, — that is, unless we re-read the whole story of American progress to find the roles played in it by those who aided, and those who greatly hindered and thwarted "Mormon" growth. The message was not one that Grant sent out of a mere sense of vainglory. He wasn't that kind of a soldier. There was a man in the fort he was about to attack whom he especially wanted to capture — and capture alive. He was a man Grant did not want to kill in battle. He was a man Grant called a "traitor." In Washington he was a man known as a fugitive awaiting trial. He was, in short, the worst enemy the "Mormon" people had had since their Prophet was martyred in Illinois, and they had fled for peace and relief to the midst of the Rocky Mountains. Every early citizen of Utah knew his name, for Camp Floyd, the camping ground of Johnston's army, was named after him. Later

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST 477 the name was taken away by order of the U. S. Government, for Floyd, for whom the name was given, was considered unfit to be honored by his Government.1 It just happens that of all the charges brought against the "Mor- mon" people; the charges that Brigham Young was disloyal and traitor- ous in assulting an army of the United States, when sent to garrison Utah, a part of the Union, has been the most persistent. Last year a "best seller," biography of Brigham Young,2 appear- ed in which this charge was most heavily presented. And all manner of fun was poked at Brigham Young, for "twiddling his fingers at Uncle Sam." It just happens, also, that the best witness for Brigham Young, and the claim of the "Mormon" people that the charges on which Johnston's army was sent to Utah were fabricated, and con- stituted a "smoke screen" to disguise a deeper motive, is General U. S. Grant. Pages 308 to 312 of Grant's Memoirs, Volume I, clear up the record of Brigham Young's actions as no other witness could. Grant wanted that same Floyd who sent Johnston's Army to Utah when he demanded the unconditional surrender of Fort Donelson. Floyd was its commander. Right back of him, commanding the next great force of Southern soldiers was General guess who? Gen- eral Albert Sidney Johnston. Grant did not get Floyd. Floyd slunk away in the night — a personal fugitive and left another to attend to the surrender. But Grant pressed on after Floyd, and Floyd's com- mander, and in seven weeks he had met Floyd's commander at Shiloh and had brought his life to an end in battle. We have insisted in this series that when Joseph Smith looked to the Great West as a potential part of America, he looked at the country the South had dedicated to slavery as it had dedicated Missouri. Let us trace some of these lines of pro-slave policy right through from the martyrdom of Joseph Smith to the cry of General Grant, "Unconditional Surrender," as it was aimed at Secretary of War Floyd, of Buchanan's cabinet, who sent Utah her Johnston's army, to seat a southern governor in Brigham Young's place. First of all there was the Illinois situation. It was all in a muddle to slavery. Governor Ford, who alternated friendship and betrayal in his policy towards Joseph Smith, was a Northern politician of a group friendly to the South. He was forever honoring Missouri writs, and it was the policy of his group to "stand in with Missouri." His was the same group of pro-slave sympathizers that gave us President Buchanan and a cabinet which approved the sending of an army off to Utah. Other hatreds lent vigor to the storm that formed about the head of Joseph Smith. But the chief molestation was the "Missouri writ" business. When the Prophet said he could see "peace in the West," that idea was as abhorrent to Governor Boggs of Missouri as Joseph Smith's idea of settling Missouri with New Englanders had been.

4 78 IMPROVEMENT ERA If the South had a policy of taking California, would it not, then, follow the martyrdom of Joseph Smith by pushing on before the "Mormon" idea, of going west, could be reorganized and put into action? Boggs off to the West Well it happens the South did precisely this. And the agent used in the business was this same Governor Lilburn W. Boggs of Missouri. As soon as the prairie trails were passable, after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, Colonel Stephen W. Kearny received a queer message at Fort Leavenworth. It was signed by Lilburn W. Boggs. It stated that he, Boggs, was putting off for California, and that he had been informed that he was to be met at the crossing of the Kansas by an armed force of "Mor- mons" determined to use him up. The arms had even been specified to be brass knuckles and pistols. Boggs was told to quiet his fears — that the armed protection asked for could not be given. There was a big farewell party in Independence, Missouri, and Boggs pushed off for the West coast. He took a considerable party with him. Some members of this party preceded the "Mormons" into Utah, but they passed right on with maledictions on its harsh sterility. There remains a splendid narrative by one who saw Bogg's farewell in Independence, and who had a hard time working his way into Utah by way of Ogden canyon. He was thwarted and had to turn back. He retreated until he found a frightened Indian who fled on his approach. But at last he found an Indian trail and won the valley of the Great Salt Lake via Weber canyon. He passed on to the desert and gained California while some immediately following became victims of a blizzard in the Sierras. This narrator of his own and the Bogg's journey is Edwin Bryant, whose book, Adventures in California is a classic account of the Fremont rebellion and the con- quest of the Mexicans, as well as of the Boggs' expedition. Boggs was not able to organize California for slavery. The gold rush overwhelmed him. So many whites came that they did not want to see negroes digging for gold beside them, and even Southerners turned against the slavery idea to protect their gold digging operations. Boggs died there before the state government really got under way. The Mormon Battalion Call There occurred the call for the "Mormon Battalion." It was a curious call, until one reads it in the knowledge that the president who made it was determined to have a big pro-slave majority in the Far West. "You are authorized to enlist 'Mormons,' " wrote W. L. Marcy, Secretary of War, to Colonel Kearny, "but not, however, to a number exceeding one third of your entire force."3

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST 479 We know where General Kearny got the two non- "Mormons" for every "Mormon." He gained one regiment from Missourians and put them under command of General Sterling Price. He gained another regiment from the same old mobbers of the "Mormons" and put them under command of General Doniphan. Both these generals had figured in the expulsion of the Saints from Missouri and both were to give General Grant a great deal of trouble in the Civil War. In fact Sterling Price's raids were the final worry of Grant as he surrounded Lee before Richmond. General Doniphan was captured earlier in the war and became an unfortunate victim of prison life. Letters from him to my father in Utah many years later tell of his humiliation at having to be body servant to a Northern soldier, while a prisoner of war. Doniphan's soldiers became too involved about Santa Fe to care about marching on to California. Price pursued Indians down the Rio Grande Valley. The "Mormon Battalion" alone marched on as "The Army of the West" and reached its final destination. An incident in Santa Fe showed the way mobocratic hatreds still pursued it. General Kearny left an order behind him on his departure with a handful of dragoons for California from Santa Fe, pertaining to the "Mormon Battalion." It was that a dragoon escort be furnished the Battalion. This order was issued because it was contrary to all principles of war for a battalion of -infantry to be sent off by itself into enemy country. The only mounted men in Santa Fe were the mounted men of Col. Price's Missouri regiment. Would these mounted Missourians of previousi mobocrat experience, serve with the Mormon Battalion? The young lieutenant of Kearny's staff, who conveyed the order to Col. Price, records in his diary that he was met by such sour countenances that he marked the order, "im- possible of fulfilment." Thus the Mormon Battalion was left to pursue its lonesome, uncolleagued way, into the Far Western deserts.2 The Battalion had other "buddies" in this war. It had Robert E. Lee, an enthusiastic supporter of the war as a means of expanding slave territory. It had U. S. Grant, a harsh critic of the war, because he did not wish America to gain slave territory. It had William T. Sherman, who was later to become commissary officer for part of it in a march from San Diego to Monterey, on which march he was to learn the art of subsisting off the country without any wagon train. Application of what he learned with the Mormon Battalion was later to make his great march to the sea of triumph. And the man who credits the lessons learned with the Mormon Battalion for the success of that master campaign of the Civil War is no less an authority than Sherman himself.4 Members of the Mormon Battalion made their way from Cali- fornia back to Utah and it seemed that peace had come to them as to the rest of the "Saints," They learned how to till the desert and

480 IMPROVEMENT ERA irrigate it. They reared homes. Captain Davis founded Davis county. And then Johnston's army came. With it came much powder, much shell, much artillery. Why? They said it was rebellious Brigham Young. History must record the fact that it was part of a conspiracy to get shot and shell and powder out of Northern arsenals against a day that would fulfil a prophecy concerning a Civil War that Joseph Smith had uttered. And with Johnston's army came a young teamster — incon- spicuous at the time, but whose name in another four yearsi was to become the terror of all the Middle West. He was to make Independence, Mo., more notorious even than it had become for the expulsion of the "Mormons," for it was to become the center of origin for the bloody raids that gave us "Bleeding Kansas." In Independence the Civil War was well under way long before Fort Sumpter was fired on, with a Johnston's army teamster as its terrorist leader. This teamster wrote two letters home to his mother from Great Salt Lake City, and one from Camp Floyd. They are treasured today in Kansas archives as the only glimmer of human sympathy and love that William C. Quantrill, the terror of Independence, ever showed. Quart trill in Utah There came a time in the life of Quantrill when he rode into Lawrence, Kansas, setting fire to houses, and killing men and women who came to the doors of their homes to see what it was all about. It sounds like Independence action; the crime of the Kansas inhabitants was that of being Free Staters. One of the three letters that show a streak of humanity in this predecessor of Jesse James, as gang leader in Missouri, has this para- graph in it: Great Salt Lake City, Oct. 15, 1858. Dear Mother: — I arrived here about two weeks ago and I was never so sur- prised in my life as I was to find a people living here in large cities and towns and farming lands here, which without their untiring labor, would be a desert producing neither grass nor timber, nothing but a few stunted weeds; but they have converted it into fine farms and gardens, by ditching from the mountain streams and watering the whole country. You go to their towns and cities and you find the purest and clearest of spring water coming from the snow capped mountains. They are an industrious people and all hold to their religion in a manner which shows no hyprocrasy, and I think their morals are as good as any people I have met with in my travels. I have not seen Brigham Young yet, he has to keep indoors since the war. Of course, they have no religious services and therefore I have no chance to learn much of their religion. * * * The soldiers are camped 45 miles south from the city, in Cedar Valley. * * * "Your son, "W. C. Quantrill." Ouite a message to go back to Missouri, wasn't it? For the rest of the story of Quantrill in Jackson county and his

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST 481 career of murder, arson and pillage "for the innate love of lawlessness, robbery, and plunder," readers are referred to a splendid volume by William E. Connelley state historian of Kansas. Mr. Connelley entitled his volume, Quanttill and the Border Wars. An hour spent in reading this volume concerning the life lived in Jackson county and especially in Independence, after the "Mor- mons" were expelled, will convince any friend of the "Mormon" people that they made a splendid move when they left Jackson county to the ravages of Civil War affairs. Quantrill rode, in his blood-strewn path, through Missouri and Kansas, General Albert Sidney Johnston blew up the munitions he brought to Utah and marched away, Secretary of War Floyd fled Washington, Sumpter was fired upon, the North was placed in dead- ly fear lest Washington would be captured, — and then came Gen- eral Grant to Fort Donelson. Grant on Floyd He faced, first Floyd, at Donelson, and then Albert Sidney Johnston, just behind him at Nashville. As he went into camp on the eve of his first noteworthy victory, General Grant thought of Floyd, and of Johnston — these two special foes of the "Mormon" people. And in his memoirs he reached this view of them: "The outer line of rifle pits was passed, and the night of the fifteenth. 'General Smith, with much of his division, bivouacked with the lines of the enemy. There was now no doubt that the Confederates must sur- render or be captured the next day. "There seems from subsequent accounts to have been much consterna- tion, particularly among the officers of high rank, in Dover on the night of the 15th. "General Floyd, the commanding officer, who was a man of talent enough for any civil position, was no soldier and, possibly, did not possess the elements of one. He was further unfitted for command for the reason that his conscience must have troubled him, and made him afraid. As Secretary of War he had taken a solemn oath to maintain the Constitution of the United States and to uphold the same against all its enemies. He had betrayed that trust. As Secretary of War he was reported through the northern press to have scattered the little army of the country so that most of it could be picked up in detail when cecession occurred. About a year before leaving the Cabinet he had removed arms from the northern to southern arsenals. He continued in the Cabinet of President Buchanan until about the 1st of January. 1861, while he was working vigilantly for the estab- lishment of a confederacy made out of United States territory. Well may he have been afraid to fall into the hands of National troops. "He would no doubt have been tried for the misappropriation of public property, if not for treason, had he been captured." That is Grant's testimony on behalf of Brigham Young and the judgment of Brigham Young that all was far from right in the com- ing of Johnston's army. With the army in Utah and a southern Governor in Brigham Young's place, the South was making its last desperate stand to hold the West for slavery. It failed. Now Albert

482 IMPROVEMENT ERA Sidney Johnston was facing his doom, in front of Grant and Sherman. Grant prepared for the assault which meant the end of Floyd's command. Before daylight on the 16th, Grant received a letter. It was from Floyd, the commander. Floyd had fled, a personal fugitive. He had left the fort in the hands of S. B. Buckner, whom Grant considered the only soldier in the high command. Buckner asked for terms. He received them, in the reply: "No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately on your works." The North was not used to generals who talked like that. Came the immediate answer: "The distribution of the forces under my command, incident to the un- expected change of commanders, compels me to accept the ungenerous and unchivalrous terms which you propose. "S. B. Buckner, Brig. Gen. C. S. A." General Grant met Buckner "and in the course of the conversa- tion he told me," records General Grant, "that if he had been in command I should not have got up to Donelson as easy as I did. I told him that if he had been in command I should not have tried in the way I did: I had invested their lines with a smaller force than they had to defend them; / had relied very much on their com- mander to allow me to come safely up to the outside of their Works. He told me that Floyd had left during the night." Floyd left. Nashville, commanded by Johnston was next in Grant's victorious path. And then came Shiloh. General Johnston drove Grant from the field. But a minnie ball pierced his foot. He bled to death. Grant reorganized, drove back, and turned defeat into victory, on the second day. General Sherman took the terrible pounding from Albert Sidney Johnston that Brigham Young would have taken in 1858, had not better councils prevailed in Washington as Southern influence waned. Sherman described how he stood on the field at Shiloh and saw his army shattered, — and at last saw the grey lines waver, so that he ordered a charge — and won. The wavering marked the death of Johnston. He had inspirited his last charge. "God must have meant the Northern cause to win," wrote an aged Southern veteran to Sherman years afterwards, "else why did a little minnie ball bring death to General Johnston at the moment of victory?"5 God's ways are unscrutible. Joseph Smith predicted his people would find peace in the Far West. He pleaded with America to solve the slavery problem and avert this terrible war. And this is the path that great actors in the "Mormon" drama took on the way to the grave. The "Mormon" destiny and America's destiny were predicted to be one and the same. To make it so, "Mormon" affairs have

JOSEPH SMITH AND THE GREAT WEST 483 had to touch many vital moments in American history, and here at Donelson and again at Shiloh, it happened just so. In the next article in this series we will pass from slavery to the British interests in the Great West. For Joseph Smith's policies were as vital to their affairs there as they were to the affairs of the pro-slave party. References *01d timers talked incessantly thirty-five years ago in Utah of the blowing up of the Johnston army munitions in Utah and of the government's action against Floyd incident to the outbreak of the Civil War. Floyd was the son of a Virginia governor and came from a long line of Virginia pro-slave leaders. His uncle, in 1824, made the first speech in Congress in favor of taking the Far West. In it he described the Navajo Indians, the Snake river salmon, and the easy approach through the South Pass. 2Werner's Brigham Young. Webb, in the Mystery of Mormonism builds up as strong a case as Werner's salacious volume; in fact Werner almost copies Webb throughout with the ornamental trimmings that make best-seller material. sIt is significant of the way key-items to the real situation become lost, that practically all historians ignore the orders to General Kearny to call a "Mormon Batallion," but content themselves with quoting Kearny's orders to Captain Allen to proceed to the "Mormon" camp and recruit troops. Secretary of War Marcy's orders to Kearny providing that two non-"Mormons" be called for each "Mormon" are said to have been dictated by Senator Benton of Missouri. President Polk had at first decided to call one thousand soldiers from the "Mormon" camp, and had so notified Elder Little in Washington. Marcy's orders were obtained from the War Department files. They are mentioned in Stenhouse's History of Salt' Lake City. ^Sherman's Memoirs, Vol. 1. 5Appendix to second edition, Sherman's Memoirs. Washington Behold the name of Washington, The true, the brave, the hallowed one, The noble, gracious, honored son Of sacred liberty. The stars will never cease to shine But that his loyalty so fine Will ever be a memoried shrine Through all eternity. Old Father Time will add long years, Ere his fond memory disappears — The name of Washington endears To freedom's constant prayer; Though empires crumble in decay, And serried ages roll away, His soul remains a genial ray Of hope and strength and care. Huntington, Utah LAMONT JOHNSON