History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

CANNON FOR CONGRESS. 665
portion of McKean's term of office there were no
funds wherewith to defray expenses, and the so-called
administration of justice was openly burlesqued. In
1872 the removal of the chief justice was urged by
the legislature. 26
This was not yet to be ; but after
some further judicial blunders, 27 he was finally superseded
in March 1875 by David T. Lowe. 28
For ten years William H. Hooper had been delegate
to congress, and was in need of rest. He had
done his duty faithfully; more acceptably, perhaps, to
members of congress than any of his predecessors,
and it was no easy task to fill his place. George Q.
Cannon was the man selected, although an apostle
and a practical polygamist. The election of Cannon
was contested by George R Maxwell, registrar of
the land-office, 29 who in 1870 had received a few hundred
votes, as against 2G,000 in favor of Hooper; but
in that year and again in 1874 had no well-grounded
hope of success, save his reliance on popular prejudice.
At the first session of the forty-third congress
he prevailed on one of the members from New York
to introduce a resolution embodying a number of
charges against the apostle. The reading of his certificate
was then demanded, in which it appeared that
he had a majority of 20,000 votes, and thereupon he
was admitted. 30
26 Utah Jour. Legist, 1872, p. 231.
27 In his charge to the grand jury, October term, 1874, McKean, afterquoting
Montesquieu, 'I shall first examine the relation which laws have to the
nature and principle of each government,' 'and if I can but once establish it,
the laws will soon appear to How from thence as from their source,' stigmatizes
the Mormons in more vile and insulting phrase than had been used even
by judges Brocchus and Drummond. See Deseret News, Oct. 14, 1874; Millennial
Star, xxxiii. 550.
28 Harrison's Crit. Notes on Utah, MS., 38. See, for opinions of press on
McKean's removal, Millennial Star, xxxvii. 282-5; for message of the president
on judicial administration in Utah, Sen. Doc, 42d Cong. 3d Sess., no. 44;
for act in relation to judiciary, Home Ex. Doc, 46th Cong. 3d Sess., xxvi. 997.
29 Maxwell entered the union army when 17 years of age, and at 21 was a
brigadier-general. During the war he had both legs broken, his right arm
fractured, lost three fingers of his left baud by a sabre-cut, and had his collarbone
broken by grape-shot, besides receiving several flesh wounds. Woods'
Recollections, MS., 39-40.
30 For further particulars as to the Caunou-Maxwell contest, see House Misc.