History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

456 UTAH AS A TERRITORY.
Indian affairs was given to Brigham, 36 and it is probable
that no better selection could have been made.
It is at least certain that if any other had been made,
the rupture which occurred a few years later between
the Mormons and the United States government
would have been hastened. B. D. Harris of Vermont
was chosen secretary; Joseph Buffington of Pennsylvania,
chief justice; Perry E. Brocchus of Alabama
and Zerubbabel Snow of Ohio, associate judges ;
M. Blair of Deseret, United States attorney;
Seth
and
Joseph L. Heywood of Deseret, United States marshal.
As Buffington declined to serve, Lemuel H.
Brandebury was selected to fill his place. 37
Snow,
Heywood, and Blair being Mormons, the government
patronage was thus fairly distributed between saints
and gentiles. Although these appointments were
made on the 20th of September, 1850, none of the gen-
tile officials arrived in Salt Lake City until the following
summer, and all were not assembled until the
first week in August. With them came Aim on W.
Babbitt, who was intrusted with the sum of $20,000
appropriated by congress toward the building of a
state-house. Harris also brought with him $24,000
for the expenses of the legislature.
The authorities were kindly received by the saints
and had they been men of ability and discretion, content
to discharge their duty without interfering with
the social and religious peculiarities of the people, all
would have been well; but such was not their character
or policy. Judge Brocchus especially was a vain
and ambitious man, full of self-importance, fond of intrigue,
corrupt, revengeful, hypocritical. Between
36 Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, 275, says that Brigham owed his appointment
to the recommendation of Kane. He took the oath of office Jan.
3, 1851. On the same day a special session of the county court was held, and
a grand jury impanelled for the first time. The prisoners, who were emigrants
en route for California, were convicted of stealing, and sentenced to
hard labor, but were afterward pardoned by the executive, and sent out of the
country. Hist. B. Young, MS., 1851, 28.
37 Brandebury was assigned to the first district, Snow to the second, and
Brocchus to the third. Utah, Jour. Legist., 1851-2, 161.
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