History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

488 THE GOVERNMENT IN ARMS.
the higher courts; and as the Mormons alleged, because
justice could not be had at the hands of the
federal officials, who were little with them and at such
uncertain times that, save for the probate courts,
they would have been practically without civil and
criminal jurisdiction. To the malevolent representations
of the latter the saints mainly ascribed the Mormon
war, and, as will presently appear, the violation
of some of their most cherished rights and privileges.
After Secretary Harris and judges Brocchus and
Brandebury had set out for Washington, taking with
them the territorial seal and the territorial funds, Zerubbabel
Snow held court, 17 with little heed to gentile
law, until succeeded in 1854 by George P. Stiles, W.
W. Drummond being appointed associate judge, as
will be remembered, and John F. Kinney chief justice,
about the same time.
Stiles, a renegade Mormon, who had been counsel
for Joseph Smith and the municipality of Nauvoo at
the time when the Nauvoo Expositor was ordered to
be suppressed as a nuisance, was assigned to the Carson
district, but soon afterward returned to Salt Lake
City, where he held several sessions of the court.
And now trouble commenced. The legislature had
appointed a territorial marshal, who was to take the
place of the United States marshal, impanel jurors,
and enforce writs when the courts were sitting as
territorial courts; while the United States marshal
claimed the right to officiate in all the United States
courts, whether they were sitting as territorial or fed-
eral courts. To the latter, the judge issued certain
writs, which it was found impossible to serve, and
when the question of jurisdiction was brought before
the court, several Mormon lawyers entered and
17 According to the provisions of 'an act concerning the judiciary and for
judicial purposes,' approved Oct. 4, 1851. A copy of it will be found in Tullidge'a
Hist. S. L. City, 93-4. Among other proceedings, Snow tried and convicted
several Mexicans for buying Indian slaves. The slaves were forfeited
and delivered into the keeping of the Mormons. Waites' Mormon Prophet, 23.