Posted by:
dalebroadhurst
(
)
Date: October 30, 2014 09:24PM
Below you will find a set of six "Mormon Sketches" compiled by the noted 19th century, round-the-world
correspondent, Charles Carleton Coffin (1823-1896).
I was cleaning out a filing cabinet recently and came across the article xeroxes -- transcribed a few
years back -- I don't recall previously seeing Carleton's 1868-69 reporting mentioned on the web.
He was the last of the great investigative reporters to arrive in Salt Lake City, and to comment
extensively upon the situation there, just prior to the coming of the transcontinental railroad to Utah.
The result was a rare, detailed and insightful correspondence, sent to the _Boston Journal_ by a
careful and experienced reporter. Carleton got a few of his supposed "facts" wrong, but the overall
quality of his pen "sketches" remains remarkably accurate and informative
Enjoy...
Uncle Dale
=========== from the Boston Daily Journal. Jan. 2 to Feb. 13, 1869 ====================
[[published January 2]]
ROUND THE WORLD SKETCHES.
BY
"CARLETON."
----
_AMONG THE MORMONS._
-----
Enterprise and Prosperity
of the Saints.
-----
SCENES IN SALT LAKE CITY.
-----
NO. 1.
From the top of an overland stage-coach we have our first look at the chief city of the Latter Day Saints as we approach it from the west. We behold a beautiful panorama. Northward
is the Great Salt Lake, calmly reposing beneath an autumnal sky, not a ripple on its surface, not a living thing in its transparent waters; a solitude as profound as that brooding over
the Dead Sea of Palestine. Eastward rises a mountain wall, white with snow at the top, with hues like the ever-changing aniline dyes upon the slopes and in the ravines and gorges.
Southward is the Salt Lake valley, through which flows the Jordan, -- not the stream dear to the Church Universal, but the Jordan of this Latter-Day Church, flowing through a valley
ten or fifteen miles wide.
THE CITY
The city lies before us on the eastern edge of the valley. We cross the river upon a substantial trestle bridge, meet men with farm wagons -- long, lumbering affairs, common throughout
the West. Every farmer has a wife and children with him -- the women wearing shaker bonnets -- the children robust, chubby-faced, curly-headed, pictures of health.
We enter a broad street -- houses of one story on both sides, built of bricks dried in the sun. A stream of pure water flows down the street. The gardens are green with cabbages
and turnips. We look out upon peach orchards -- the leaves falling earthward with every passing breeze. Rosy-cheeked apples are still hanging on bending branches. Along the street
are rows of locust and ailanthus, with changing foliage.
A half dozen men are at work upon the highway, with ball and chain attached to their legs -- paying the penalty for crime. We turn into the main street of the city and behold a lively
scene -- wagons in from the country with produce, grain, apples, garden products, loads of wood, brick and stone; px teams, horses and mules. Farmers who have sold their produce
are making purchases for their families. In almost every wagon we see a new cradle or a bedstead, or chairs -- evidence of increasing population. The streets are already populous
weith children. Babies abound. Scores of women are on the sidewalk trundling baby carriages, or with children in arms.
We whirl past the Church store, before which are the public scales. A second team, loaded with grain, is waiting its turn. This is the tithing office, where one-tenth of the gross receipts
of every Saint is paid over to the church.
Brigham Young, with his one wife and numerous concubines, lives on this street at our left hand, as we whirl on to the stage office. We will take a look at his establishment by and by
when we draw another sketch.
We are in the heart of the city, gazing upon spacious stores. We have been five days and nights in the desert, looking out upon barren wastes, upon scarred mountains, breathing
alkali air, drinking bitter water, riding hundreds of miles without seeing a green leaf and it is like a vision of Paradise to behold such outward signs of thrift, prosperity, care and
comfort, happiness and peace.
With cracking whip and horses upon the gallop, we roll on to the stage office and descend from our high perch. We gaze astonished upon surrounding scenes. In this jewelry store
we may buy the best of Waltham watches. We may fit ourselves with a broad cloth suit of clothes in a store large enough to do credit to Washington street. Here is the great
wholesale house of Walker Brothers, who are reported to be worth half a million. Prints, by the cord, cotton by the hundred bales, goods of every description are to be had. Do you
want a draft on an Eastern city, or on the Barings of London, here are brokers who will accommodate you. Three hotels offer accommodation to weary travelers. One block distant
is the Townsend house, where we sit down to excellent fare, and take a long sleep between clean sheets after our five days and nights in the stage.
RETROSPECTIVE.
Let us lay aside all prejudice, forget, if we can, that the inhabitants of this city and of this valley, are polygamists, that we may see what virtues are theirs.
In the spring of 1847 Brigham Young, with 143 pioneers, started from Missouri to find a place far from civilization, where the church established by Joseph Smith might have room for
its full development. They arrived in this valley on the 24th of July, the same year. They were one thousand miles from the nearest Gentile. Beyond them was the great unexplored
desert, and still beyond was the Sierra Nevada, and beyond that was California. Gold had not then been discovered, or if discovered the news had not reached the Eastern States.
Amid the seclusion of the mountains, at the heart of the continent, with room for expansion to Mexico on the South, the Pacific on the West, the frigid zone on the North, with the
Rocky Mountains, that would be forever a barrier between them and those whom they deemed persecutors, the Saints determined to build a church and establish the State of Deseret,
a religion and government both diverse and antagonistic to any existing ecclesiastical organization or republican order of Government.
It was a forbidding prospect. This was a verdureless valley. The wild artemisia, which feeds on alkali, was the only growth of the plains. Along the river there were a few willows. Up in
the mountains there was lumber, and when the spring rains came there was grass on the hillsides; but the heats of July and August parched the ground and baked it into solid cake.
Swarms of grasshoppers came from the sands and devoured all vegetation. But streams trickled from the mountain sides, and the settlers saw that they could be turned to account
for irrigation. Ditches were dug, potatoes planted, bricks molded and baked in the sun, cabins reared, a city laid out. Food became scarce, wolves, foxes, fish, sage [sic - sego?] roots,
seeds of the mountain pine, were consumed. The first grain crop was a failure. It was not more than six inches high, and the grasshoppers devoured it. Many settlers became
discouraged and returned to Missouri. Some died. Then came the rush of overland emigrants to California. The gold fever took away some of the settlers, but others came to take their
places. Those who remained had strong faith and zeal.
They had covenanted at Nauvoo never to cease their efforts nor relax their zeal till every man, woman, and child who wished to come should have the means of reaching Salt Lake.
It was the great army of emigrants to California in '49 and '50, and subsequent years, that gave them rapid advancement. Here the emigrants rested, left money, purchased whatever
the settlers had for sale. A missionary fund was established, and missionaries went out in 1850 to England, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and thousands of converts came trooping
to this land.
A beehive was adopted as the emblem and symbol of the church. We see it on the walls of houses, over the entrance to stores, above the gateway leading to the grounds of Brigham
Young -- a golden hive. It is the business of the Saints to fill it with honey. Work is the duty enjoined by the church.
In foreign lands the persecution which the Saints had in Missouri was the stock in trade of the missionaries. Their mission was to the ignorant. Christ and the apostles were persecuted,
and so were the latter day saints, for righteousness sake. Sympathy lent a willing ear.
The missionaries went to the poor, the toiling, the hopeless. In this far-off valley there was no moneyed power to oppress them; no laws to grind them down. Here was freedom, work,
plenty, comfort, -- a blessed future for time, and in the bosom of the church bliss for eternity. They preached the new revelation. God had not withheld communication to his children.
Revelation had not died out with the apostles, but it was still continued through the servant of the Lord Jesus, that holy apostle and head of the church on earth, Brigham Young.
Come and hear the tidings, be baptized for the remission of sins! Accept the bliss!
WHY THE CHURCH HAS PROSPERED.
Is it any wonder that willing ears and consenting hearts were found when the attractiveness of this new Zion was preached to the poor, toiling, ignorant people of Europe? England at
once became the grand recruiting-ground. Thousands who wished to come to America found that the church of the Latter Day Saints had the machinery of emigration in operation --
agents to help, steamships to carry them. The Church was ready to advance money to enable them to reach the land blessed of the Lord.
Benefits for this life and special blessing for the life eternal were strong forces. The Welsh miner, who had groped for years in darkness in the collieries of England, here might walk
over his own green acres. The men of Denmark, who found it hard work to keep soul and body together on the marshes of their native land, here could find ease and comfort in a
genial clime.
And if there were men with strong passions anywhere in the wide world, here, in the bosom of the Church, they could religiously gratify all carnal desire, and serve God acceptably
while so doing. They might become patriarchs under the new revelation and work out for themselves a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory!
Religious error is always as zealous, self-sacrificing and denying as religious truth. The zeal of Paul was as earnest, vehement and sincere when he was a persecutor as when an
apostle. The Hindu wife, giving her body to be burned with the body of her husband, and the Mormon women, accepting marriage from a man already counting his concubines by
the score, alike are moved by religious fanaticism. The Mormon woman stifles the instincts of the soul, accepts the repulsive, because it is more blessed to herself and of greater
benefit to the Church, and more for the glory of God to take for a husband a man with many concubines, than to remain single.
Religious zeal, superstition and fanaticism have been strong elements toward building up this church. But the prosperity of the community is due to other causes. It is an industrious
community. It recruits mainly have been from the classes accustomed to labor. The teachings of the Mormon preachers are that labor is acceptable to the Lord, that by labor the
new Zion is to be established. Men are industrious here, as a general rule, but there are idlers here as well as in other lands. There are men who oversee things while their wives work
The isolation of the community -- so far from the States -- has contributed greatly to its prosperity. This city has been the chief trading point between St. Louis and San Francisco,
supplying all the country between New Mexico and Oregon. The discovery of gold in California, followed by the discoveries in Colorado, then Nevada, Idaho, Montana, then in Wyoming,
brought a rush of fortune hunters. The long lines of emigrant trains all tended in this direction.
Emigrants, miners, traders, trappers, all have had this as their outfitting point. There has been a steady influx of emigration -- about five thousand per annum, from the old world -- men
and women, with a new life before them -- hope, aspiration, ambition awakened and quickened.
It is a community -- a machine moved by strong forces, faith and zeal -- and all its energies directed by one man, with one object in view, to build up the church. It is a despotism.
Brigham Young, more than Louis of France, can say "I am the State." One-tenth of all that a man receives during the year -- not his net receipts, but the gross -- goes into the treasury
of the church, and it goes out only under the direction of Brigham Young.
The prosperity is not due solely to industry and frugality, but circumstances have all been favorable to the accumulation of wealth. The military expedition sent out during President
Buchanan's administration, at a cost of forty million dollars, inured to the benefit of the church. The ten thousand troops -- the great army of camp followers swelling the number to
seventeen thousand -- paid ready money and the highest prices for every article of provision the Mormons had for sale. Up to that time there was a great scarcity of iron, of wagons
and carts in the Territory, but when the expedition was recalled an immense amount of material was left behind, which the Mormons obtained for nothing. The construction of the
overland stage road, the movement of the thousands of emigrants all contributed to build up the church. For a long time Brigham Young had the government of the Territory in his
hands. The Territory was organized in 1850. President Fillmore appointed Brigham Governor. He held the position until 1858; was succeeded by Governor Cumming, who held the
office for three years, but upon his resignation Brigham again came into power. Being himself the State, owing no responsibility, having all the revenues of the church at his disposal,
obeyed implicitly, accompanying circumstances favoring, religious fanaticism, zeal and sensuality, the highest and lowest of human passions brought into play, he and his people
have transformed the desert to a fruitful valley, with the sound of labor breaking the long solitude of the ages.
LAW AND ORDER.
Every visitor, upon entering the city, is struck not only by the evidence of prosperity, but with the order in the community. It is order maintained by theocratic law, under the
administration of the church. Gambling is not allowed. All drinking saloons are licensed by the church. There are four kept by Gentiles, which pay each $300 per month in
advance, and one billiard saloon, which pays also $300 per month, making a total of $18,000 per annum paid into the treasury of the church from liquor and billiards. This is
so much money from the pockets of Gentiles, for the church has its own liquor store, and as the Saints are forbidden to trade with Gentiles, inasmuch as the church has no
license to pay, the church liquor store is exceedingly profitable. The church enjoins temperance, but does not require total abstinence. Men joining this church do not lose
their taste for whisky, but if they happen to get drunk, the church justice will exhort a heavy fine, which goes into the church treasury. It is not exactly sinful, but very unprofitable
to get drunk.
ESPIONAGE AND POLICE.
The church maintains a rigid police, -- ordinary, special, and ecclesiastical. The ordinary and special police are appointed by the Mayor, Mr. Apostle Wells, Brigham Young's right-hand
man, chosen by him to administer secular affairs. The policemen hold their office at the pleasure of the Mayor. The ecclesiastical police are the bishops of the church. The city is divided
into twenty wards, each under the superintendence of a bishop, who receives his appointment from Brigham. Subordinate to the bishops, and appointed by them, are teachers, who have
each a small district. It is their duty to keep track of all that takes place; to know who comes, who goes. They make frequent visits to every family, catechize men, women, and children,
not only upon doctrine and belief, but upon worldly matters. Their reports go to Brigham.
If a Mormon is disaffected, or indulges in religious doubts, he is at once surrounded with difficulties. Merchants do not care to trade with him. If a laborer, he will not be able to find
employment. He must cast out his doubts, accept unhesitatingly the authority and dogmas of the Church, and all will be well. There is law and order in Paris and in Rome. Louis
Napoleon has his secret police, and so has the Pope. Brigham, combining the systems of Fouche, of the first Empire, and Ignatius Loyola, of the Order of the Jesuits, has law and
order in Utah.
The theocratic state is a harp of many strings, and Brigham's fingers sweep every wire; or it may be likened to an organ, Brigham at the key-board, and every pipe responsive to
his touch.
THE CHURCH TELEGRAPH.
He is laboring to make his power not only supreme but universal throughout the territory. Walk up this side street and notice the telegraph wires radiating from his private office,
connecting it with every hamlet in Utah -- a line 500 miles long. Do the commercial interests of the people require a telegraph? Are the ignorant creatures who but a few months
ago were in the mines of Wales and the alleys of English cities now engaged in business here sufficient to demand a telegraph line? It is not an educated community, but on the
contrary, one of the most ignorant of civilized lands. Yet every settlement of half a dozen houses has a telegraph office. In every settlement there is a bishop who receives his
appointments from Brigham. A corps of girls have been taught telegraphy, through whom the bishop may make instant report of all that takes place. From his private office here in
Salt Lake City, like the watchman in the fire telegraph, Brigham may give an order or ring an alarm from Idaho to New Mexico.
CARLETON