from mark twain's 1870 "roughing it" ~ appendix "A" ~

+++

mormonism is only about forty years old ~

but its career has been full of stir and adventure from the beginning and is likely to remain so to the end ~

its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of the country to the other ~

and the result is that for years they have hated all "gentiles" indiscriminately and with all their might ~

joseph smith, the finder of the book of mormon and founder of the religion, was driven from state to state with his mysterious copperplates and the miraculous stones he read their inscriptions with ~

finally he instituted his "church" in ohio and brigham young joined it ~

the neighbors began to persecute, and apostasy commenced ~

brigham held to the faith and worked hard ~

he arrested desertion ~

he did more ~

he added converts in the midst of the trouble ~

he rose in favor and importance with the brethren ~

he was made one of the twelve apostles of the church ~

he shortly fought his way to a higher post and a more powerful ~

president of the twelve ~

the neighbors rose up and drove the mormons out of ohio, and they settled in missouri ~

brigham went with them ~

the missourians drove them out and they retreated to nauvoo, illinois ~

they prospered there, and built a temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace and achieved some celebrity in a section of country where a brick court-house with a tin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with reverential awe ~

but the mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors ~

all the proclamations joseph smith could issue denouncing polygamy and repudiating it as utterly anti-mormon were of no avail ~

the people of the neighborhood, on both sides of the mississippi, claimed that polygamy was practiced by the mormons, and not only polygamy but a little of everything that was bad ~

brigham returned from a mission to england, where he had established a mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him several hundred converts to his preaching ~

his influence among the brethren augmented with every move he made ~

finally nauvoo was invaded by the missouri and illinois gentiles, and joseph smith killed ~

a mormon named rigdon assumed the presidency of the mormon church and government, in smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two ~

but a greater than he was at hand ~

brigham seized the advantage of the hour and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will, hurled rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself ~

he did more ~

he launched an elaborate curse at rigdon and his disciples; and he pronounced rigdon's "prophecies" emanations from the devil, and ended by "handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of satan for a thousand years" ~

probably the longest term ever inflicted in illinois ~

the people recognized their master ~

they straightway elected brigham young president, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their devotion to him from that day to this ~

brigham had forecast ~

a quality which no other prominent mormon has probably ever possessed ~

he recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved ~

by his command the people gathered together their meager effects, turned their backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the wilderness, and on a bitter night in february filed in sorrowful procession across the frozen mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare from their burning temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired ! ~

they camped, several days afterward, on the western verge of iowa, and poverty, want, hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did their work, and many succumbed and died -- martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might have been ~

two years the remnant remained there, while brigham and a small party crossed the country and founded great salt lake city, purposely choosing a land which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of the hated american nation ~

note that ~

this was in 1847 ~

brigham moved his people there and got them settled just in time to see disaster fall again ~

for the war closed and mexico ceded brigham's refuge to the enemy ~

the united states ! ~

in 1849 the mormons organized a "free and independent" government and erected the "state of deseret," with brigham young as its head ~

but the very next year congress deliberately snubbed it and created the "territory of utah" out of the same accumulation of mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general desolation ~

but made brigham governor of it ~

then for years the enormous migration across the plains to california poured through the land of the mormons and yet the church remained staunch and true to its lord and master ~

neither hunger, thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the mormons from their faith or their allegiance; and even the thirst for gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nations was not able to entice them ! ~

that was the final test ~

an experiment that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it somewhere ~

in b 4 ~ ibid ~

The brief sketch - simplified.

Wherever Mormons went they alienated and all by telling them they were wrong and God would take their lands and belongings and give them to the Mormons.

Here is Mr. Clemens' description of polygamy:

>>Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.

>>I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely" creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I said, "No--the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure--and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his presence and worship in silence."

SL Cabbie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here is Mr. Clemens' description of polygamy:
>
> >>Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two
> days, and therefore we had no time to make the
> customary inquisition into the workings of
> polygamy and get up the usual statistics and
> deductions preparatory to calling the attention of
> the nation at large once more to the matter.
>
> >>I had the will to do it. With the gushing
> self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge
> in headlong and achieve a great reform here--until
> I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My
> heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward
> these poor, ungainly and pathetically "homely"
> creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous
> moisture in my eyes, I said, "No--the man that
> marries one of them has done an act of Christian
> charity which entitles him to the kindly applause
> of mankind, not their harsh censure--and the man
> that marries sixty of them has done a deed of
> open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations
> should stand uncovered in his presence and worship
> in silence."

Fireside Style Youtube https://youtu.be/6k6KLQM6yec

When I was in high school, Hal Holbrook was doing his one-man show as Mark Twain. My parents enthusiastically took me to a performance. All was fun and laughter until Holbrook launched into Twain's thoughts on Mormons. Dad was steaming as we drove home. "He knew he was in Utah. He could've left that part out as an act of courtesy, but I think he did it on purpose, to make fun of us!"