Joseph Smith, and the Great West

JOSEPH SMITH, AND THE GREAT WEST When Alfred dimming, Once Governor of Utah Tasted War's Bitterest Woes. By I. K. Russell, Author of "Hidden Heroes of the Rockies" VIII In our former article, in this series, we promised that the in- teresting chapter of Joseph Smith's connections with the Civil War should be left behind us, while we turned to a study of the British conflict for America's Far West, which preceded the "Mormon" thrust for its possession. We cannot keep the promise then made. The reason is a fascinating book of 402 pages that goesi by the title of A Diary from Dixie. It was published in 1905 in New York, and gives the finest picture I have yet encountered of life in the South while Stonewall Jackson, Sheridan, Johnston, Lee, Sherman, Stuart and Grant were fighting out the Civil War to its sad conclusion. The Diary from Dixie was written by Mary Boykin Chestnut, and its pages bring back to life many old Utah friends, whose careers touched deeply both the lives of Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. There is important new light in this diary on the most serious charge ever brought against the loyalty of the "Mormon" people. So we must pause with Mrs. Chestnut for a time. She was the wife of a brigadier general of the South, who at first was an aide on the^ staff of President Jeff Davis of the Confederacy. She lived close to the capitol, dined at the Jeff Davis table, led in the social life of the President's family group, and finally fled from Richmond in a box car with Mrs. Jeff Davis, keeping up an intimacy with her to the end. One of the most interesting characters Mrs. Chestnut brings back to life for Utahns, after the Civil War had swallowed him up, is none other than our own good Colonel Thomas L. Kane, from whom Kane county, Utah, is named. He was the man who saved Utah from the sword and fire intended for it by Johnston's army. Mrs. Chestnut noted his arrival in Richmond at the head of a detachment of Pennsylvania, Zouaves. He arrived a captive of Stonewall Jackson's, having been taken in battle valiantly fighting on Lincoln's side of the war. Another character Mrs. Chestnut presents to us in a new light is John Floyd, the same from whom our Camp Floyd, in Utah, took its name. In our former sketch we told how General U. S. Grant won his first conspicuous honors on the field by investing

JOSEPH SMITH, AND THE GREAT WEST 561 Fort Donelson and calling for its unconditional surrender when at last its commander came out to offer terms-. We told how Grant wanted to capture the Southern commander for reasons connected with the Johnston's army affair. We told how Grant informed Buckner, the Southern Commander who came out in Floyd's place, that he would not have openly approached Donelson the way he did, except that he counted on Floyd's "bad conscience, which would make him a poor fighter" in a pinch. Grant left us the picture of Floyd becoming a fugitive in the night and fleeing from Donelson without giving battle. He had utterly won Grant's contempt, and the con- tempt, even, of the Southern commander who took his place. For Buckner felt compelled to tell Grant that there would have been no surrender except that Floyd, before running <jway, had made such a mess of it that Buckner was in no condition for more of a fight. Floyd as Viewed in the South It is from this point on that Mrs. Chestnut takes up the story of Floyd. She pictures the shame and the charge in the South felt at the cowardly conduct of this soldier and former Governor. She notes that Jeff Davis removed him from command for cowardice, and his total failure to protect Southern interests at the Donelson affair. Al- bert Sidney Johnston, the immediate superior of Floyd, was up for removal at the same time for the same cause. But it was finally decided to give him one more chance. He got that chance at Shiloh, and now we know that furious charge he led upon Sherman's force was a charge of personal desperation. He had to redeem himself from the cowardice of his troops, under Floyd, or he would follow Floyd into disgraceful elimination. He fought — and seemed to win, but bled to death from a tiny bullet through his foot. And so won a perpetual enshrinement in Southern sentiment. . But what a picture we get of Floyd — as- a background from which to read his vicious and vigorous assault upon the good name of the people of Utah as a preface to sending them Johnston's army to use them up. Here we have him despised in the North as one who was not faithful to his trust as a Cabinet member — and despised in the South as a coward under fire and a quitter, unworthy of holding a command, because he would not fight it when most he ought to. There are other characters of Utah interest. One of them is Howell Cobb, who just missed by one vote being president of the Confederacy in place of Jeff Davis. Howell Cobb played his role in Utah affairs, for one of the major scandals of Buchanan's time was the way money was lavished on the Utah expedition. Howell Cobb's Odd Fate It is now well established that the real purpose of the expedition was to dissipate Northern arms, munitions, and trained men, against

562 IMPROVEMENT ERA the day of a coming Secession. There was something' more than arms and men dissipated by that long march to the Far West. Money was dissipated, too, from the U. S. Treasury. Even while he was in Utah consulting with Brigham Young, Captain Van Vliet, quarter- master officer of Johnston's army, was filing so many protests with Washington about ridiculous army contracts, and the vast waste of money in connection with them, that he was finally removed from his position and court-martialed for his protests. Who was spending the money recklessly, and why? Here we turn up Howell Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury under Buchanan. We know that the Secretary of the Interior of Buchanan's cabinet sur- rendered to Grant at Vicksburg, that the Secretary of War became a fugitive in both North and South after Donelson, — and now we meet with the Secretary of the Treasury. Sherman tells us about him, even before Mrs. Chestnut picks up his narrative; for on his march to the sea, Sherman settled down one cold, raw night in a negro's cabin and was conversing with an old negro woman, when told there was a better house farther along the road. He was very tired, but roused himself and went on, ordering up the headquarter's wagons and his staff members. Inside this house he stretched himself to rest in front of a log fire, when by its light he caught the name "Howell Cobb." It was embossed on the lid of a box. He made inquiries and found he was resting in the planta- tion of Buchanan's Secretary of War, and so he set fire to the whole place. He called in slaves and told them to load up on hams from the smoke house and corn from the granaries. He left orders to his own "bummers" to spare nothing, not even a fence rail. The vote that kept Howell Cobb out of the Confederate pres- idency was that of James Chestnut, whose wife maintained her watch for us on him and others who had been minglers in Utah affairs. His pathway into the Confederacy was a very direct one from Buchanan days. He had been Governor of Georgia before he served Buchanan as Cabinet member. He attended in 1861 the constitutional convention which adopted the Constitution of -the Confederacy. Thus he was with it from the start, as he had been before its start in spreading ill fame over the "Mormon" name in order to get an excuse for striking a covered blow at the North in 1857. But, even in the day it was struck, that blow was not entirely covered, despite the smoke-screen of anti- "Mormon" charges. A hundred years of loyal service, with men and treasure spent freely in all our nation's wars, attest to the folly of this charge on which Secretary of War Floyd proclaimed the departure of Johnston's Army to Utah: "From the day they settled in the territory, the aim of the 'Mormons' has been to secede from the Union; their territory is settled exclusively by 'Mormons,' and they do not preserve even a semblance of obedience to authority."

JOSEPH SMITH, AND THE GREAT WEST 563 But one person, at least, wag not fooled by this camouflage of a motive, for in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 1859, a writer states: "Buchanan's idea in ordering the Utah expedition was to gag the North, and induce her to forget that she had been robbed of her birthright by forcing on the attention of the country other questions of absorbing interest." Until this whole business of pro-slave strategy for the twenty years preceding the Civil War was uncovered, real motives could not be laid bare. But when I had gathered enough data to show that keeping Utah and California for slavery was a major purpose, even before the "Mormons" went west, it became of interest to re- check all who had fought the Church, as to what became of them during the Civil War. Col. Price showed up quickly enough — as a Southern raider. Quantrill showed up as a reckless murderer and pillager. Col. Doniphan showed up as a Southern soldier and prisoner in a Northern camp, — and in fact all were accounted for, save Alfred Cumming, the Governor sent with Johnston's army to displace Brigham Young. Brocchus of Alabama If his real object was to make a pro-slave center in the Far West. he would have to be a reliably Southern man. If the "runaway judges" who came to Utah and immediately got into furious quarrels with Brigham Young were sent to provoke quarrels, they would be men picked reliably from the Southern viewpoint. With one more fleeting glance, therefore, at Howell Cobb, we can shift the center of this story for a moment to the Far West and, the capitol of Brigham Young. "We went to Congress," writes Mrs. Chestnut. "Governor Howell Cobb, who presides over that August body, put James Chest- nut in the chair, and came down to talk to us. He told us why the pay of Congressmen was fixed in secret session and never divulged — to prevent the lodging house and hotel people from making their bills of a size to cover it all." "Lawrence Keitt joined us," writes Mrs. Chestnut again on June 27, 1861. "Already he pronounces Jeff Davis a failure and his Cabinet a farce. He was fierce in his fault finding as to Mr. Chest- nut's vote for Jeff Davis. He says Howell Cobb's common sense might have saved us." But Howell Cobb's sense's did not save them, and at the end, in 18 65,- Mrs. Chestnut records dismally: "And now, ye rich men, howl for your misery is come upon you. By orders of Andy, the bloody-minded tailor, [President Andrew Johnson who succeeded Lincoln], nobody above the rank of colonel can take the benefit of the amnesty oath, nobody who owns over twenty thousands dollars, or who has assisted the Confederates. Howell Cobb has been arrested. Our

564 IMPROVEMENT ERA turn will be next, maybe. A Damocles' sword hanging over a house does not conduce to a pleasant life." Cumming of Utah and a Prison Pen That is the end of the story for Buchanan's Secretary of the Treasury. And Mrs. Chestnut has other paragraphs just as interesting. They concern Utah's one-time Governor, Alfred Cumming. Who would think, for instance, that when Alfred Cumming came into Salt Lake City, and wept because he saw Utah's people fleeing from the rigors of war, leaving Salt Lake City's houses filled with straw, ready for a burning, he would very shortly become, himself a ragged refugee like them? And that the very cause which brought him out to Utah would lead him down the stormy, rocky road to despair in the end? Yet Alfred Cumming went that way. Before reglimpsing an item or two of his Utah life — let us consider the most famous of all the "runaway judges." This man was Perry E. Brocchus. We know that immediately upon his arrival in Utah, in 1851, he assailed the morals of "Mormon" women in a tabernacle address, and generally "stirred up a row." Brigham Young called on him formally to apologize. And whence came our Brocchus? And why so anxious to break with the people he was coming to work with? We find the answer in one word. Brocchus, — ap- pointee of a pro-silave president, came from Alabama. And if you want to know just how hateful a "Northern face" was to a gentle- man from Alabama at that time, read Mrs. Chestnut's diary, as she scornfully writes of women "with hard northern faces and Yankee greed." Just as Brocchus, the agent provocateur of the pro-slave cause, was from Alabama, so the Southern Governor sent to Utah was Alfred Cumming, of Georgia. It was a great and historic move to send him, for it was the final act in the drama of pro-slave intrigue in Washington. After Brigham Young broke Johnston's army with Col. Kane's aid, there were no more gestures in Washington in that kind of politics. The North began to come to grips with the issue after that. In the meantime, Alfred Cumming reached Salt Lake, and proved him- self a man of great heart, whose humanity was touched by conditions, and whose testimony was true to the facts as he found them. When Governor Cumming gazed upon the fleeing Saints, there was a prophecy of Joseph Smith, involving his home state of Georgia, that awaited fulfilment. It was the prophecy that a disastrous war should soon be fought over the issue of slavery. With this prophecy hanging over his head, Governor Cumming wrote with a touched heart: "The roads are everywhere filled with wagons loaded with provisions,

JOSEPH SMITH, AND THE GREAT WEST 565 and household furniture, the women and children, often without shoes or hats, driving their flocks they know not where * * * I shall follow these people and try to rally them." It was just a little glimpse of war to try his heart. And now let us follow Governor Cumming back to Georgia and through the affairs of the Civil War. Mrs. Chestnut writes), on March 24, 1864, when the end was drawing near: "Yesterday we went down to the Capitol grounds in Richmond to see our returned prisoners. We walked slowly up and down until Jeff Davis was called upon to speak. There I stood, almost touching the bayonets, when he left me. I looked straight into the prisoners' faces, poor fellows. They cheered with all their might, and I wept for sympathy. These men were so forlorn, so dried up, so shrunken, with such a strange look in some of their eyes; others so restless and wild looking; others again placidly vacant, as if they had been dead to the world for years. A poor woman was too much for me. She was searching for her son. She said he was taken prisoner at Gettysburg. She kept going in and out among them with a basket of provisions she had brought for him to eat. It was too pitiful. The anxious dread, expectation, hurry, and hope which led her on showed in her face." It is a dramatic situation in which Mrs. Chestnut brings our Utah's governor before our notice again. Here are glimpses pf the time, the place, and the mood: "Somebody counted fourteen generals in church today, and suggested that less piety and more drilling of the commands would suit the tip better. There were Lee, Longstreet, Morgan, Hoke, Clingman, Whiting, Pegram, Elzey, Gordon and Bragg. "Old Mrs. Chestnut is dead. A saint is gone. I gave $375 for my mourning, which consisted of black alpaca dress and crape veil. With bonnet, gloves, and all it came to $500. Before the blockade such things as I have would not have been thought fit for a chambermaid. Went out to sell some of my dresses. "Mrs. Davis is utterly depressed. She says the fall of Richmond must come. We begged her to come to us with her children if it should. And into the midst of this situation comes marching — Alfred Cumming of Georgia and Utah. The story is recorded thus: "Maggie Howell and I went down to the river to s:e an exchange of prisoners. Our party were the Lees, Mallorys, Mrs. Buck Allan Mrs. Ould. I had seen no genuine Yankees before: prisoners of the North: prisoners, well or wounded, had been German, Scotch, or Irish. Among our men coming ashore were many wounded and some were maimed for life. They were very cheerful. "Governor Cumming, a Georgian, late Governor of Utah was among the returned prisoners. He had been in prison t two years. His wife was with him. He was a striking looking person, huge in size, and with snow white hair, fat as a prize ox, with no sign of Yankee starvation or barbarity about him." Joseph Smith had prophesied there would be a disastrous war over slavery. And he said his people would become a mighty people in the Rocky Mountains. Governor Cumming came to the Rocky

566 IMPROVEMENT ERA Mountains to take a hand in the guidance of those people. Above is shown how God shaped his destiny and that of his own folks. And to what depths did despair in Richmond come, while the "Mormons" were spreading out through the Rockies and building the Far West into a fine part of America's commonwealth? Mrs. Chestnut records, on April 19, 1865: "Just now Mr. Clay dashed up stairs pale as a sheet, saying, 'General Lee has surrendered.' Quite beside herself, Mary shrieked, 'Now we be- long to the negroes and Yankees. We will stay here. Why fly further? The Yankees are everywhere, like red ants. * * * Of our coun- try we try not to speak at all.' " President Neff at. a Noted Luncheon This picture was taken at a Pan-Pacific Club luncheon, January 25, which was given in honor of Supreme Abbot Sonyu Ohtani, head of the Shinto Buddhist sect in Japan, which sect is said to number ten million or more adherents. Honolulu, from its position as "the cross-roads of the Pacific," is continually enjoying the visits of world-wide celebrities, and the Pan-Pacific Club, an organization composed of the business men of Honolulu, and other dignitaries, do the entertaining. PREST. EUGENE J. NEFF, HAWAIIAN MISSION, WITH PAN PACIFIC CLUB In the front row we have: President Eugene J. Neff of the Latter-day Saints Mission; Consul General Aoaki; Judge Sanford B. Dole, former president of the Hawaiian Republic; Supreme Abbot Sonyu Ohtani, and Doctor Philip Allen Swartz, Pastor of the Central Union Church (Calvinist) . President Neff is a leading member of the club, and through his con- nection with the same, the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ is receiving much desirable publicity. ,