History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

504 THE GOVERNMENT IN ARMS.
ascertained that the freight trains were intended for
Salt Lake City, that Cumming had been appointed
governor, and that orders had been given that no more
mails should for the present be delivered to the Mormons.
Harnessing his fleetest animals to a light
spring wagon, Smoot immediately started homeward,
and making the distance from Fort Laramie in about
five days, found the brethren celebrating their pioneer
anniversary at Little Cottonwood Canon. 44
Thus, in part through the stubbornness of the Mormons,
but in part also through the malice of a dissolute
and iniquitous judge, the spite of a disappointed mail
contractor, the wire-pulling of birds of prey at Wash-
ington, and possibly in accordance with the policy of
the president, who, until the confederate flag had been
unfurled at Fort Sumter, retained in the valley of
Great Salt Lake nearly all the available forces in the
Union army and a store of munitions of war sufficient
to furnish an arsenal, was brought about the Utah
war.
"Give us ten years of peace, and we will ask no odds
of the United States," declared Brigham when the
pioneers first entered the valley. And now the ten
years had passed, and on the margin of a mountain
lake, seven thousand feet above sea-level, under bowers
of fragrant pine and fir, twenty-five hundred of the
saints were assembled on the 24th of July, 1857. It
was a day of feasting and recreation. Hand in hand
with little children, who had seen nothing of the great
world beyond their native valley, walked silver-haired
elders and apostles, who had passed through all the
tribulations of Kirtland and Nauvoo. Of the rest,
some were strolling among the trees, some were fishing
in the lake, some were dancing, some busied with
games. Laughter and the noise of merry-making
mingled with the songs of Zion. It was now near
even-fall, and the western sun had already crimsoned
the frosted peaks, when two dust-stained messen-
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** Letter of A. 0. Smoot.