Women of Mormonism
Chapter 20 - What Are You Going to do About It?
THE WOMEN OF MORMONISM:
or
THE STORY OF POLYGAMY
As Told by the Victims Themselves.
Edited By
JENNIE ANDERSON FROISETH
Editor of the Anti-Polygamy Standard, Salt Lake City,
PUBLISHED BY
C.G.G. PAINE, DETROIT, MICH.
1886
Copyright, 1881 and 1882
By Jennie Anderson Froiseth
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?
BY THE LATE REV. LEONARD
BACON, D.D., LL.D.*
Something Now.-Thirty
Years’ Compromise.- National Sovereignty.-People Unfit for Self Government.-No State
Rights.-The First of Human Right.-Jim Fisk
THERE are indications that
the Mormon question is coming to the front. It has been trifled with too long, as if it
were of no urgent importance. One House of Representatives after another has permitted a
notorious criminal, reeking with the filth of his so-called “plural marriages,”
to sit as the delegate from Utah. The
presence of that man in that place, drawing his pay and mileage as a member of Congress,
has been an insult to the people of the United States and a defiance of their moral sense.
But
This unfinished article is the last
work of Dr. Bacon’s pen. It is published just as he left it. A letter from his son,
Rev. L. W. Bacon, to The Christian Union, N.Y.,
in which the paper was first printed says:-
“He
wrote to the end of the line, wrote beneath the last line the word ‘[over],’ and
laid his pen beside the paper, having first entered in his pocket diary, ‘Utah
article nearly finished.’
“Then he
spent the evening in bright, cheerful conversation with his family, taking great delight
in talking with his youngest son, just returned from the Rocky Mountains, and went to bed
at the usual hour. He woke at six o’clock on Saturday morning to a few minutes of
consciousness, and not apparently of extreme distress, and then fell asleep.“We all
hope that these earnest pages may; be the more seriously heeded for being his last words
to his fellow-citizens.Ever truly yours, L.W. BACON”
[304] There are indications that the people will endure the insult
not much longer. Something must be done not merely with the delegate from the Territory of
Utah, but with the Territory itself, and with the malignant enemies of the United States
and of Christian civilization who have been permitted to govern it. Every Representative
in Congress, and every Senator, will do well to consider carefully, not how to evade the
question in the hope that something will turn up, but how to grapple, at once and
effectively, with the hideous barbarism which is already the reproach of our country
throughout the civilized world.
You have had more than enough of the wisdom, which, being in high
places of responsibility for the nation, was amiably confident that Mormonism (or at least
its beastly coordination of the sexes) would die out of itself. The men are already old
who can remember that marvelous stroke of policy when Millard Fillmore, acting as
President of the United States, appointed (with the advice and consent of the Senate)
Brigham Young as Governor of Utah. Mr. Fillmore knew perfectly well at that time, and
every Senator who advised and consented to the appointment [305] knew, and every citizen
of ordinary intelligence knew, that Brigham Young was nothing better than a consummate
scoundrel. But Mr. Fillmore, and others like him, in that day when compromise with wrong
was thought to be statesmanship, had a pleasing opinion that if the lying and lecherous
prophet of the Mormons would consent to become an office-holder under the government of
the United States, all would go smoothly, civilization would somehow displace polygamy,
and instead of the prophet's cruel despotism there would be liberty. More than thirty
years have passed, and Mormonism is today stronger, more defiant, and more dangerous to
the nation, than ever.
What can we do? A feeling is abroad that the time has come for a more
vigorous policy in regard to this great moral and political danger. It was hoped that the
transcontinental railroad would do great things by bringing travel and trade to that great
metropolis of despotism by the sea of Sodom. It has done great things. It has added millions to the wealth of the Mormon
chiefs; it has facilitated the going forth of emissaries from Salt Lake City to the ends
of the earth and the coming in of wretched dupes by thousands to swell the Mormon
population and the Mormon vote, not only in Utah but in the neighboring Territories. There
was hope that acts of Congress against po1ygamy, and prosecutions before United States
Judges for marrying more wives than one,
would break up the harems of the hierarchy, and open the way for Christian civilization
[306] to displace the bastard Mohammedanism invented by Joseph Smith. But Mormonism laughs
at such expedients, like leviathan at the shaking of a spear.
Let us understand the situation. The Territories, whether before or
after being inhabited, are the property of the States, and under their united sovereignty.
When Brigham Young, with his accomplices and the horde of their duped marched into the
Territory now known as Utah, neither he nor they acquired any rights there save such as
were given them by the laws of the United States. The Constitution gives to Congress
"power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regulations concerning the
territory or other property belonging to the United States, " for the very purpose of
enabling the States, as represented in Congress, to determine in what method civil society
should be organized, and what sort of new States should be founded on the soil which is
their common property. In a State of this Union there is a divided sovereignty. Each
State, by consenting to the Constitution, has ceded a portion of its sovereignty,
carefully guarding the remainder. But in a Territory the sovereignty is undivided; the
inhabitants, till they shall have been admitted into the Union as a State, are simply
under the sovereignty of the United States. In that sovereignty they have no
participation. They must shape their social order and morality, their notions of right and
wrong, their entire civilization, in such a fashion as shall be [307] acceptable, not to
the King of Ashantee, nor to the Sultan at Constantinople, but to the sovereign people of
the United States.
The government, then, of Utah is under the control of Congress so
long as Utah is a Territory. No rule or regulation can have any legitimate force there,
otherwise than as it derives force from an act of Congress. Whatever regulations have been
made for the temporary government of the Territory may be rescinded by Congress whenever
experiment has proved that they are inefficient, and that they give no adequate promise of
raising up a civilized State, fit for admission to the Union.
For thirty years we have been making the experiment of a Territorial
government in Utah, and it is manifestly unsuccessful. It has not answered the purpose for
which Territorial governments are established. We, the people of the United States, have
never yet acknowledged that the number of inhabitants is the only thing to be considered
in receiving a new State into our Union. The question is not merely, How many are they?
but also, Of what sort are they? Are they a civilized people? If they are in some sense
civilized, then in what sense? Are they as a people capable of self-government? If they
become a State, will that State be a fit partner in
the sovereignty of the United States? Will it be a disgrace and a danger to the Union? The
population of Utah is at this moment numerous enough for a State; but notoriously that
population, taken as a whole, is unfit to be
invested with the dignity and [308] power of a State in this Union; and there is no
reasonable hope of its becoming fit under the present Territorial organization.
Already a plan has been proposed for a different method of
Territorial government in Utah. Without discussing the details of the plan, I may say it
looks in the right direction, inasmuch as it proposes that Utah shall be governed not by
the Mormon hierarchy but by the United States; and that instead of a Territorial
legislature and Territorial courts, (whether called Probate courts, or by any other name),
there shall be in that Territory such a representation of the national sovereignty as will
cause the laws of the United States to be respected and obeyed. The emergency may come in
which it will be necessary to proclaim martial law in the strongholds of Mormon power. In
one way or another, the sovereign people of the United States, acting through their
Government at Washington, can guard their own Territory of Utah against an organized barbaric despotism, and can make effectual
arrangements there for the establishment of a civilized and self-governing State, fit to
become a partner their united sovereignty. Will they not do it? Not to do it would be a
base surrender of the trust which they hold for their posterity and for the world.
Doubtless there will be talk about the rights of the inhabitants of
Utah. Let their rights be respected and guarded; but let it be remembered that those
inhabitants are not a State. They are not [309] even a body politic save by force of an
act of Congress, which Congress can repeal at any time when such repeal shall be deemed
expedient. They are citizens of the United States, as many of them as are not like the
[late?] delegate Cannon, foreigners not naturalized. They are citizens in the same sense
in which minors and inhabitants of the District of Columbia (to say nothing about women)
are citizens; but their citizenship gives them no political power. As individual citizens
they are entitled to protection by the National Government within the limits of its
jurisdiction, and any of them who pass out of a Territory into a State are entitled to the
protection of the State. As individuals they are entitled to the same protection with
other American citizens in foreign countries. Every
individual of them has a right to personal liberty, to the possession and lawful use of
the products of his lawful industry, to whatever property, whether real or personal, he
has acquired in any lawful way. But let it be remembered that there is nothing of State
rights in the case-no sovereignty or quasi sovereignty with which the United States is to
negotiate or make some compromise. The whole
matter is that in a certain Territory belonging to the United States there are (or were in
1880) 143,906 human beings to be governed by such rules and regulations as shall be deemed
just and expedient by the wisdom of the United States in Congress.
As for the rights of settlers in Utah, it is worth remembering that
the first of human rights-first in [310]
order of time, and first in importance-is not the right to govern and
vote, but the right to be governed and to be well governed,-the right, in other words, to
be protected, to be restrained, to be incited to well-doing, by the beneficent influences
of well-ordered civil society. Civil society implies government; and well-ordered society
is good government. The right to be well-governed includes and carries with it every other
civil right. Of that first and comprehensive right, the inhabitants of Utah, under
existing arrangements, are deprived. It is the duty of Congress to make other
arrangements, such as will put them under the beneficent influences of good government,
protecting them against violence and fraud, restraining them from wickedness, and inciting
them to become good citizens.
The failure, hitherto, of attempts to suppress or punish the
barbarism which Mormons call “plural marriage,” is more remarkable than
wonderful.
For the sake of showing that the fact, however remarkable, is not
wonderful, let us suppose a case elsewhere than in Utah. " The memory of the wicked
shall rot; " and there is no contradiction of the Scripture when I suggest that the
memory of a certain wicked man who was commonly called Jim Fisk remains in New York to
this day. I am not aware that he was ever married, but all who remember the occasion and
the means of his death remember that he had a concubine who lived in great splendor at his
expense, and whom it was his pride [311] to exhibit at Central Park and elsewhere. That
was a bold defiance of decent people; but will anybody please to tell me that it was an
offense against the laws of New York? Suppose, now that not being satisfied with one
harlot, he had been rich enough and shameless enough to keep thirty, having them all to
himself. Suppose him to have bought a block of houses fronting on Fifth Avenue, and to
have established one of his harlots in each house, assuring it to her as her home and the
home of her children. That would have been just about what Brigham Young did in Salt Lake
City. In such a case, what would the State of New York do? Mr. Fisk, if anybody should
remonstrate, might say, as one Mr. Tweed said on a, somewhat similar occasion, " What
are you going to do about it? "
Next: CHAPTER XXI. THE TWIN RELIC
BY HON. P.T. VAN ZILE, U.S. DISTRICT ATTORNEY FOR UTAH*
Philadelphia Convention, 1857.-No Easy Question.-Mormons Completely
Organized.-Tithes.-Polygamy not Publicly Announced at First.-Wonderful Power of
Forgetting-You Cannot Protect Me. - Proportion of Polygamists.-" Brooming a
Bishop."-Polygamists Holding the Offices.-Spiritual Exaltation.-Mormon
Jurors.-Congress Guilty.-Evil Results of Polygamy.-Laws Suggested.
Back: CHAPTER XIX. SPREAD OF MORMONISM IN
THE UNITED STATES
The People of the Nation Have the Power.-The Let-Alone Policy not Sufficient.-Steady
Influx of Foreigners.-Concealment of Second Marriages.-Mothers Will not Make Known the
Fathers of Their Children.-Mrs. Young's Letter.-Danger to the Nation.-"Danger to
Every Household in America."-Mormon Church at Covington, Ind.-Mormonism in
Michigan.-Canton, Ill.-Young Girl in Colorado.-An Appeal.-Young Lady in Indiana.-An
Infatuated Daughter in Massachusetts.-Will Another War be Needed?
Index: INTRODUCTION AND TABLE OF CONTENTS
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