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THE MORMONS
Harper's Weekly
25 April 1857
The Mormon Question is assuming a shape that will not permit its solution to be much longer delayed.
It seems that, indignant at the hesitation of the government of the Union to admit their Territory of Utah as a State, the settlers there have broken into the public offices of the United States, destroyed the records, driven out the judiciary, and set the Federal authorities at defiance. This outbreak, not, perhaps, excessively serious in its character—taking into consideration the turbulent nature of our border population—is still, however, quite grave enough to induce the Federal Government to take the whole subject into serious consideration, and to examine the principles on which the Mormon question is to be settled.
We say principles—for it is always to be kept in mind, that this government pretends and aspires to be one of principle, and not one of mere shifting and temporary expediency. As Mr. Burke said, in 1773, in that wonderful speech on Conciliation, which contains a description of our people as true, in many respects, as if they sat for the picture last year: "In other countries the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil , and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance, and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze." As Mr. Webster said twenty years ago: "We went to war on a principle—we took up arms on a Declaration."
In other words, we have, in regard to the general policy of this country, laid down certain rules, or principles of action, to which we have generally adhered with great and commendable fidelity.
The only considerable departure from this line of conduct that can by any mode of reasoning be charged against us, has been in regard to the questions embarrassed by diversity or disparity of race; and in regard to these, our efforts to pursue the path of expediency and compromise have been beset by its usual difficulties and perplexities.
But in regard to the dominant white race of this country, we have, from the laying of the corner-stone of the Confederacy to the present hour, adhered with infinite tenacity to certain great cardinal principles, upon which we assert and believe liberty to depend. Among these the most prominent are—first, the rule of absolute and universal religious freedom; and secondly, the doctrine of local sovereignty, carried to its utmost practical extent in the administration of the affairs of the different members of the Confederacy. Both these principles are evidently involved in the solution of the Mormon question.
Now let us observe some of the difficulties in the case. The Constitution says, "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." This MAY has always been held, in practice, to imply a command or a compact to admit to the Territories as States so soon as their population warrants it. It is wholly foreign to our ideas to keep a Territory in a proconsular state of subjection after it is in a condition numerically, with reference to its population, to be admitted as a State.
Again: the principle of leaving each town, county, State, to regulate its own municipal affairs, is one of those most deeply implanted in the American mind. It is the principle of decentralization, of freedom—as opposed to centralization, authority, and despotism. This doctrine frequently called that of Local Sovereignty, has been carried to its extrememost limit in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
The general idea of our system is, therefore, to secure to our people universal religious freedom; to give them, whether in the States or Territories, entire control of their local municipal affairs —including, of course, their law of marriage and their criminal law— and to admit the Territories as States as soon as their population calls for it.
Now what qualification is there to this? There is, or as yet has been, but one - "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government." In other words, the States must have a Republican form of Government. Now what is a Republican form of Government? Lafayette called the organization of 1850 "a monarchical throne surrounded with Republican institutions." This, however, was in France, from which we can not derive much aid on either the theory or the practice of Constitutional freedom. How is it here, by the lights of our own experience?
Domestic servitude is not anti-Republican, that is clear—for three-fourths of the States allowed it when the Constitution of 1787 was framed. Freehold qualifications for suffrage are not anti-Republican, for many of the States retained them till a very recent period. Titles of nobility, hereditary offices, are undoubtedly anti-Republican; but neither of these help us to a solution of the Mormon problem.
Whatever sanctity we attach to the institution of marriage, can it be pretended, with any degree of legal or logical accuracy, that the Christian marriage is a Republican institution?
But it may be said that marriage, as we understand it, is a Christian rite, and that we are a Christian people; and that no abomination like polygamy can be tolerated in a Christian country. Is it, however, so certain that, in the cold, clear eye of the Law and of the Constitution, we are a Christian people? On this subject the doctors do very widely disagree. Sometimes it has been held that Christianity is a part of the common law, which we have inherited from England; at other times, it has been declared that, though not legally incorporated into our institutions, it is, in some sense, interwoven and blended with them; and, finally, in some of the States, like Ohio, it has been very solemnly adjudged, that under our Constitutional declarations of absolute toleration and indifference, Christianity is, in no sense whatever, any part or portion of our institutions. But whether it be or not, it is very certain that the Constitution of the United States, in no article or clause, enjoins Christianity as a condition upon admission to the Confederacy.
Now let us see how the question stands. The Mormons say: We have the population required by usage and practice for admission as a State. We have formed a Republican institution. True, we have a religion of our own; but the corner-stone of your Confederacy is Religious Freedom. True, we hold polygamy no crime; but our municipal institutions, according to the settled law of America, are under our control, and we claim no more than is conceded to the older States. New York might to-morrow abolish the punishment of bigamy, and re-establish polygamy. Why, how, on what principle, do you deny us admission to the Union? We demand it in the name of Religious Freedom and Local Sovereignty; of Universal Toleration, and of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
We believe we have thus stated the argument fairly in behalf of the Mormons, and have given them the benefit of every article in our Constitution, and every principe of our Government to which they can appeal; and we now proceed to show why, and on what grounds, we are of opinion that the judgment of the American people will very certainly be given against them.
Whatever doubts casuists may raise, or legal doctors promulgate, we have no doubt that this is a Christian country. The amiable controversies of the Church have, indeed, rendered it a task somewhat more than human to determine what Christianity is. But we suppose, notwithstanding the bickerings, and feuds, and religious wars, and auto da fes of eighteen hundred years, still that there are certain notions, and principles, and tenets common to the Ultramontanists of Rome and the Universalists of America—to Archbishop Hughes and Mr. Theodore Parker—which distinguish Christianity from Paganism, from Buddhism, from Mormonism. These notions and principles we suppose to lie at the basis of our whole system.
Of these principles there is perhaps no one more vitally important than the institution of marriage. If it is permitted to us, miserable mortals, to pass judgment on the relative value or weight of the words of Supreme Wisdom, we should be tempted to say that the Divine Lawgiver pronounced no words so important to the future of the race as when he said, "They twain shall be one flesh." These words created the wife and ennobled the mother; they have softened, elevated, purified the husband and the father; they have turned the seraglio into a home, and have enabled freedom and civilization to supplant patriarchal and governmental despotism. So far as Christianity is the only religion which has defended, defined, in fact created the institution of marriage as we understand it, we believe that this is very certainly a Christian country.
In regard to religious freedom, toleration by a majority is one thing; the introduction of tenets or practices fatal to the substantial rights or dearest feelings of a whole class of the community is quite another. The legalization of polygamy is fatal to the institution of marriage. Christianity will be practically excluded from every State which Mormonism is allowed to rule; and with Christianity marriage perishes. We permit Judaism, we have even allowed Buddhism to raise its unclean temple at San Francisco; but, as we say, to tolerate a minority is one thing—to allow a small and insignificant local minority to affect the manners and morals of a whole nation is a very different manner.
For be it observed, a wife in one State is, in many senses, a wife in another State. Whether a marriage can be made with one woman, as in New York, or with a dozen, as in Utah, the legal relation of husband and wife, if established in one State, must be recognized in the others. There lurks in the Constitution a little provision decreeing that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States." This diminutive clause is likely soon to assume colossal dimensions, and in no aspect would it be more formidable than in regard to Mormonism. If the citizen of New York would be protected in Utah in his position of husband as regards his one wife, it would be very difficult to show that Mr. Brigham Young had not the same "privileges and immunities" in New York as to his baker's dozen; and thus polygamy in Utah would be polygamy in New York.
We have thus far considered the matter on legal and constitutional grounds; but, in fact, this question will not be determined on any nice constitutional argument. It will be determined on feeling and sympathy, or, rather, on hatred and disgust. The people of this country never would, and never will, tolerate a set of obscene, licentious wretches as their fellows and equals. They never would, and never will, permit a horde of creatures, in every respect worse than Turks, to defy our habits, our tastes, our feelings, and our civilization.
The question has been already, indeed, twice settled. Our border population are certainly not over-squeamish, and they are possessed of a very strong, rough sense of equality and justice, and of sympathy with people of their own condition and education. Twice, within twenty years, in two distinct States—one a Free State, the other a Slave State—twice these miserable fanatics have been hunted and harried out of their houses and homes by an indignant people that would not bear their proximity. Nothing but their remote and inaccessible situation has preserved them in their present place of refuge.
In truth, the women of our country are quite equal to the settlement of the case. The women of America too well comprehend their position to tolerate the introduction, however partial, of any institution fatal to them, fatal to their true honor and real dignity; and there are too many proud and confiding husbands, too many devoted sons among us, to permit wives and mothers to be insulted and outraged by the much longer toleration of this infamous abomination.
It is, in every sense, an abomination. There seems to be no redeeming feature about it. That they are beastly polygamists is only a part, and a small part, of their offenses. They are ignorant beyond any conception that we have of ignorance. In what other part of the Union would the rhapsodical stuff and fustian of Brigham Young be tolerated for half an hour? That they are to the last degree lawless and brutal is proved. That they are at heart treasonable in their purposes, that they are at least hostile in spirit to the Union, is evident in all their actings and doings.
The matter has, in fact, passed beyond the line of argument, and it is time at once for the Government of the United States to interpose. We do not call for fire or slaughter. No Highland clan sort of operation—no Glencoe massacre. But, at whatever cost, the United States must declare and vindicate its supremacy— it must protect its judiciary and its records. It must declare Christianity to be the religion of the country. While it proclaims toleration, it must not permit our dearest domestic relations to be undermined or overthrown. It must denounce polygamy as a crime, and while it treats resistance on the part of the leaders with unflinching severity, it must, with a firm and at the same time wise hand, lead the mass of the misguided Mormons back to the fold of the republic, of sound morals, and of Christianity. "I valued myself," says the delightful Vicar, "upon being a strict monogamist."
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