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The Mormon Question: Shall we Admit Into the Union An Anti-Christian and Barbarous State?
Christian and Advocate Journal
19 July 1855
This is a question which must be determined without further delay. We have trifled with the serious affair of Utah Territory until it has grown monstrous, and can be trifled with no longer; and it is incumbent upon us seriously to determine what we will do to prevent the fearful consummation of an evil we have encouraged by neglect, if not by positive countenance and support.
Our readers are familiar with the history of the Mormon imposture. They know the story of Joseph Smith and the goldern Bible; of the organization of the fanatical and licentious vagabonds that gathered around the impostor; the attempt to establish a military despotism over them, and wield an imperium in imperio in Missouri and Illinois; of the robberies, murders, and domestic strife that ensued, and the expulsion of the intolerable gang beyond the limits of civilization. We need not relate the disgusting history of the social life of these people. If ever there was a religion devised for the kingdom of hell on earth, Mormonism is that religion. It is a religion which restrains nothing but virtue, encourages nothing but vice. Ituses the tremendous sanction of the Holy Name to tear down all defences from innocence, to destroy whatever may remain of conscience, to give free rein to riotous lust, and to complete man in the image of the devil. The world has before experienced, in many instances, the wickedness of nations who forget God; in one the frightful abandonment of a nation who defied God: but in the Mormons we are witnessing, and to witness, the horrible depravity of a people who blaspheme the purity of God, by proclaiming him the instigator and rewarder of their abominations - the special patron of their putridity. Wickedness has an energy in which it is terrible. The lawless lusts of men, under the full impulse of the diabolical afflatus, are unspeakably dreadful. Every day we see the frightful destruction, the intolerable misery, which can be accomplished by the instrumentality of a single individual moved by a power like this. The Mormons are yet to exhibit to us the horrible works of an armed nation of such men, sweeping in furious and unrestrained license over a wide and defenceless country.
We do not apprehend that their march will be toward our own frontiers. The leaders of the Mormons are neither ignorant nor fanatical, they are merely wicked and daring. In a contest with the people of the United States they would be swept away as chaff before the wind. The first murder committed by their invading force would be the signal for the extermination of the whole gang; they would be destroyed with as little compassion as a nest of hornets. The Mormons know this well enough. But to the south-west of us spreads out a wide and fertile, and yet opulent country, termptingly inviting the spoiler. A mixed race of people, which seems to have inherited but the weaker points of both progenitors, occupies Mexico and Central America. Without intellectual cultivation, or religious elevation, indolent from the combined action of bad government, climate, hereditary constitution, and deficient civilization; unwarlike, disunited; they are thinly scattered over a country singularly uncompact, and defenceless by central sovereignty. This country, seized by a warlike and disciplined force, acting upon a common principle of selfishness, with just fanaticism enough to sanctify their ferocity, would be helpless prey to brutality and avarice. Here might be established a power, which, entrenched in the natural fastnesses of so defencible a country, would invite to itself the able-bodied wickedness of Europe and America. That such a power would grow by vast accessions of adventure, is as certain as that hordes followed Attila and Alaric. All Central and South America would be before them; horde after horde would pour over these devoted lands, and a vast military domination, resting upon and defending a moral condition and social state vastly worse than Mohammedanism, would be established from California to Cape Horn. Let no one suppose that the absurdity of their creed and the grossness of their immorality will prove a sufficient preventive to their expansion. Absurdity is not necessarily disagreeable. If it involves practical advantages, it will be accepted with eagerness. Let a Christian minister and a Mormon missionary stand side by side, and compete for disciples among the workmen of Manchester, or the rabble of Paris; let the one preach repentance, the other emigration; the one exhort to self-denial, the other proffer unrestricted license; the one promise heaven, the other a free farm on the prairies, and an eternity of sensuality hereafter, and there can be no doubt which would be the msot successful. As to the immorality of the Mormons, so far from repelling men, it is the most powerful attraction to them. Any religious scheme which offers indulgence to vice, and impunity to sin, will be considered very reasonable. If, in addition, it secures a good living, with little toil, it will be exceedingly successful in winning proselytes. No scheme can be more ridiculous, more grossly shocking to common sense, than Mormonism, but none has been more successful. We do not know the numbers of these people; but they are numerous enough to send out and support several hundred missionary agents, all of whom are busily at work to procure emigrants to one chosen place of assemblage, where, covered from the public eye by distance and an interposing wilderness, they are maturing means and plans in entire security.
The United States are nursing on their territories a brood of serpents, which will soon be too formidable to be crushed. We say nursing, for we have not only permitted them to occupy our land, but have countenanced them by actually appointing the chief of the tribe governor of the territory, and thus investing his denomination with the authority of our sovereignty, and one of their dirty clan has been permitted to sit in Congress. We have been entirely patient under their insults. We have permitted them to drive away our officers, and at this day they reign in undisputed sovereignty over a large and fertile territory of this Union, and are impudently inviting the vagabonds of all countries to make their home there. Most of these people are fugitives. It is impossible that they can have any loyalty to the American Union, and it is shameful that they should have ever been recognized as a lawful community.
But the Mormons will apply to the next Congress for admission into the Union. We are asked to take into the fellowship of the State a Mormon sovereignty; to admit to entire equality with us an assemblage of the worst men ever combined for evil; to complete which the very offal of European and American beastliness has been carefully scraped together. We are asked to take into a union of Christian states, another state, worse than heathenish; to bring into a confederacy of people, united for the lawful purposes of life, a set of reckless conspirators against all social good; an armed band, strengthening themselves for plunder; a people among whom perjury, robbery, adultery, murder, and treason, are the fruits of faith; the violation of every commandment of God, compatible with a good conscience; and common decency, the most uncommon of all accidents.
It is strange that say man, not himself a Mormon, can desire such a union as this. We are confederated for strength, but what strength will these abominables bring with them? Could we trust them in war, even if we had battles to fight? We are confederated for counsel, for the interchange of feeling, for the expansion of civil and religious liberty; in short, for all great political, social, and humane purposes. What advantage would an alliance with a mass of moral corruption be to us?
But it is said that we have no right to exclude them. That is, that any horde of ruffians from any quarter of the world may sit down upon our unoccupied lands, appropriate the inheritance of our children, establish themselves in opposition to all that we hold sacred, and after having grown numerous by attracting the floating blackguardism of the world, may demand to be recognized as a sovereign state, with full power to regulate its domestic concerns; nay, establish polygamy, ordain "cyprian saints," trample American women to the utmost depth of degredation; in short, may outrage all decency before God and man, and we must yet call them brethren, and sit in counsel with them, own them before the world as our countrymen, and defend them against the insulted honour of mankind! This is sheer nonsense. The constitution of the United States gives Congress the right to admit new states; it does not require Congress to do it. It leaves it to the judgment and feelings of the country to determine whom we will admit into our partnership. No people have any right to be admitted into the Union; it is a valuable boon which we can grant or refuse at will.
The Christian religion is the acknowledged religion of this country. Our fathers did not make this an article fo the constitution. They would not have degraded the national faith in God by making it even apparently depend upon an instrument subject to change. They no more thought of recognizing God by statute, than they did the sun, or earth, the sea, or sky. The existence of the national faith was a truism, upon which the constitution itself was to be maintained. Yes, by the fear of God men were to be sworn to keep it inviolate. In those days the man who would have questioned whether this were a Christian nation, would have been treated as a fool. He would at most have been pointed to the times of the date of the instrument, "in the year of our Lord," and asked the meaning of those words. As a Christian nation can we consent to take anti-Christian states into the Union? The object of the Union is our own good. In the preamble to the constitution, it is declared to be its purpose to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." When we can do these things by admitting a Mormon state, let us admit them, but not until then.
It will be well for us always to remember the precepts of Washington, and among them this passage of his farewell address:
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensible supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labour to subvert these great pillars of human happiness; these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public liberty. Let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution induldge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles. It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. ... Who That is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
If these things be so, Mormonism must be directly hostile to the institutions of this country, and if we have hitherto "looked with indifference upon their attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric," we surely need not take these blasphemers of God and traitors to man into our political Fellowship and social Union.
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