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THE QUESTION OF THE MORMONS
Harper's Weekly
4 July 1857
If evidence were wanting to show the peculiar difficulties which environ the Mormon question, the speech of Senator Douglas, delivered a few days since, would supply the deficiency. In that speech — which bears evidence of being the fruit of mature reflection — the Senator states that the Mormons were erected into a Territory of the United States on the erroneous impression that they were citizens owing allegiance to this Government; that it turns out they are alien enemies; and that the natural course to take with regard to them is to repeal the Territorial Act, resume possession of the Territory in the name of the United States, and hold the Mormons liable to the laws of the United States in the nearest District Courts, namely, those of California.
This violent cutting of the Mormon knot has afforded the political opponents of Senator Douglas a plausible opportunity of charging him with renouncing his well-known doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty. And no wonder; for really it is stretching the facts rather far to interpret them as constituting a deliberate renunciation by the Mormons of their allegiance to the United States Government — or rather, to find in them evidence that the Mormons never became or intended to become citizens, but have been always and are still alien enemies.
The facts, as established on reliable evidence, will bear no such construction, justify no such assumption. For years the Mormons have undoubtedly been self-confessed and tolerably peaceable citizens. They have never pretended, nor has any one ever charged them with owing allegiance to any other authorities than those of their Territory and those of the United States. Until latterly they invariably spoke of the United States Government as loyal citizens should. Brigham Young accepted a commission from the President, which he has never resigned, and under which he still holds over. Other United States officers have for years exercised their functions in the Territory without disturbance. Till the late riots, no single occurrence in the history of the Salt Lake settlement can be said to have shaken the bond which united that Territory to the Union. Where, then, is the evidence of alienage? Where the ground for disfranchising these people?
This scheme of repealing Territorial Acts is open to grave objections. Suppose a new Territory carved, in any future year of grace, out of New Mexico, and organized on the basis of the Kansas and Nebraska acts; suppose that Territory peopled with slaveholders, and prepared for admission to the Union with a Slave Constitution; and suppose a Congress strongly imbued with hostility to the extension of slavery; how convenient a precedent this scheme of Senator Douglas's would be for the passage of an Act repealing the Territorial Act of the new Territory, and leaving the offending slaveholders in the attitude of "alien enemies!"
If this Confederacy is to last, the blessing can only be secured by unswerving adherence to the great principle of local self-government which underlies all our institutions. Once violate the principle—once concede to the higher authority the right of encroaching upon the inferior, and overstepping the fixed limits of its administrative sphere to make itself sovereign — and the tie which connects the commonwealths of this continent will be weakened and ultimately severed. Neither cities, nor Territories, nor States will adhere to a Confederacy which costs them their independence; the most that can be expected of them is just that degree of subordination to the general authority which is compensated by the benefits of the Confederation.
The Mormons, there is reason to believe, are in contumacy. They have assaulted our officials; let us hear their story before we condemn them utterly. They marry several wives; let us teach them better. It is said they are plotting sedition; let us guard against this by sending a few soldiers to keep guard at the new Governor's door. But this lately popular idea of crushing out the Mormons, and dashing furiously upon them with horse and foot, because sensation stories have been published about Brigham Young's wives, is not up to the mark of the common sense of the age. Such absurdities as polygamy in a country where men outnumber the women, and the poorest can afford to marry, only need, to explode them, a little time and plenty of fresh air. As to rebellion against the United States, we suspect the bulk of the Mormon community have far too much to do to make an honest living to have time for such foolery. They are thinking a great deal more of the grasshoppers than of Uncle Sam's troops. So far as we can judge, on the facts as known at present, though the new Governor of Utah will undoubtedly have a hard task to perform, the ultimate difficulties of Mormonism may be surmounted by a temperate exercise of discretion and firmness, and by the effect of time, without violating any such vital principle as the inherent sovereignty of the people of each and every separate community within the United States.
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