Up to the date of our visit to Utah, such had been the Territorial record.  The Territorial government established there had been a hopeless failure, and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land.  He was an absolute monarch—­a monarch who defied our President—­a monarch who laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital—­a monarch who received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the United States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives.

B. THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.

The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long—­and which they consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves —­they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay.  The now almost forgotten “Mountain Meadows massacre” was their work.  It was very famous in its day.  The whole United States rang with its horrors.  A few items will refresh the reader’s memory.  A great emigrant train from Missouri and Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City and a few disaffected Mormons joined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for their escape.  In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by the Mormon chiefs.  Besides, these one hundred and forty-five or one hundred and fifty unsuspecting emigrants being in part from Arkansas, where a noted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and in part from Missouri, a State remembered with execrations as a bitter persecutor of the saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here were substantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers.  And finally, this train was rich, very rich in cattle, horses, mules and other property—­and how could the Mormons consistently keep up their coveted resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the “spoil” of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly “delivered it into their hand?”

Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite’s entertaining book, “The Mormon Prophet,” it transpired that—­

“A ‘revelation’ from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee or God, was dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and J. D. Lee (adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to raise all the forces they could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles (so read the revelation), attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of the Almighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale; and if they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians as their allies, promising them a share of the booty.  They were to be neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the mandate of Almighty God.”