History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

494
THE GOVERNMENT IN ARMS.
punishment prescribed by statute; but after a brief
imprisonment, the culprits made their escape, or, as
some declare, were allowed to escape. 37
On the sabbath after the colonel's departure, Brigham
repeated in the tabernacle the remark which he
had made two years before, commencing, "I am and
will be governor;" adding on this occasion: "I do not
know what I shall say next winter if such men make
their appearance here as some last winter. I know
what I think I shall say : if they play the same game
again, so help me God, we will slay them." 28
Such phrase, deliberately uttered at the place and
on the day of public worship, at a time when Utah
sought admission as a state, was certainly, from an
outside standpoint, injudicious, and boded ill for the
saints. At this period the slavery question was the
all-absorbing topic throughout the country. The sedition
in Utah, grave though it was, passed for a time
almost unheeded, except by a section of the republican
party, which, while criticising the theories of Senator
Douglas, added to the venom of its sting by coupling
slavery and polygamy as the twin relics of barbarism.
After the presidential election of 1856, however, matters
assumed a different phase. There was now a
temporary lull in the storm which a few years later
swept with all the fury of a tornado over the fairest
portions of the Union, and the nation had leisure to
turn its attention to the Mormon question. 29
27 Judge Drummond, in his letter to Mrs Gunnison, in Gunnison's The Mormons,
ix.-x., says that those who were convicted were old, crippled, and partially
blind, while the able-bodied warriors were acquitted, and that Judge
Kinney, before whom the trial took place, was so much mortihed at the finding
of the jury that he at once adjourned the court. He also states that Col
Steptoe, Gen. Holman, the government attorney, Garland Hurt, Indian agent,
and others were of opinion that those who were found not guilty were acquitted
by order of the church. The statement as to the escape of the three who
were convicted rests mainly on the authority of Capt. Rufus Ingalls, the quartermaster
of Col Steptoe's regiment. In his report to the quartermaster-general,
in House Ex. Doc, 34th Cong. 1st Sess., i. pt ii. p. 167, he says that
they were at large when lie left the valley.
28 Again, in a discourse delivered at the tabernacle June 17, 1855, he saya:
'Though I may not be governor, here my power will not be diminished. _ No
man they can send here will have much influence with this community.*
Journal of Discourses, ii. 322.
2 »In Doctrine and Covenants (ed. 1876), 278-9, is given a remarkable revela-