PRESIDING UNDER DIFFICULTIES—GENERAL EPISTLE—AN INFAMOUS CRUSADE—HOMES INVADED—JUDICIAL LEGISLATION—COHABITATION—PRESIDENT TAYLOR'S DEPORTMENT.

From his places of retirement among the Saints, President Taylor continued to preside over the Church, and under God to shape its policy and direct its movements. Prevented by the mistaken zeal of the United States officials and the vigilance of their myrmidons—the spotters and spies—from attending the public meetings and conferences of the Church, he, with his counselors, addressed general epistles to the Saints in which they imparted such counsel and instruction as they considered necessary and suited to the conditions by which they were environed.

These papers are remarkable for their conservative tone and wisdom; for the total absence of anger or vindictiveness, as also for the scope and variety of the subjects they treated upon. They compare favorably with the wisest and best state papers ever issued by kings or presidents, ministers of state or cabinet councils. The flock of Christ, therefore, was not left without the counsel of heaven or the care of the shepherds.

Still those were dark days. The seats reserved and usually occupied by the leaders of Israel in the public assemblies were either vacant or filled by comparative strangers. The recent enactments of Congress infamous in themselves, were still more infamously enforced. The courts and United States officials in Utah seemed utterly reckless in their methods of executing the law. Men who at the most were guilty of what the law defined to be a misdemeanor, punishable by six months imprisonment and three hundred dollars fine, were hunted as if they were guilty of the grossest crimes which could endanger the peace and safety of the community.

Frequently, and I may say usually, deputy marshals in the night would surround the houses suspected as being the places where their victims were to be found, and then in the morning, before the inmates were astir, would pounce upon them in the most unceremonious and brutal manner. No place was so sacred in the homes of the people but these minions under the color of law would force their way into it. Even the bed chambers of modest maidenhood were rudely entered before the occupants could dress, and in some instances the covering of their beds stripped from them in the pretended search for violators of the law; and they the while compelled to listen to their low blasphemies.

In proof of these allegations, which may seem too hard for belief as time with its ever-moving wheels carries us away from the years in which these acts of petty tyranny were perpetrated, I insert a few statements of parties who suffered them. These statements are to be found in a memorial addressed to Congress by the women of Utah, presented in the Senate on the 6th of April, 1886, by Senator Blair of New Hampshire, and ordered printed by that body:

"On January 11th, 1886, early in the morning, five deputy marshals appeared at the residence of William Grant, American Fork, forced the front door open, and, while the inmates were still in bed, made their way up stairs to their sleeping apartments. There they were met by one of the daughters of William Grant, who was aroused by the intrusion and, despite her protestations, without giving time for the object of their search to get up and dress himself, made their way into his bedroom, finding him still in bed and his wife en deshabille in the act of dressing herself."

Mrs. Easton, of Greenville, near Beaver, relates the following:

"About seven a. m. deputies came to our house and demanded admittance. I asked them to wait until we got dressed, and we would let them in. Deputy Gleason said he would not wait, and raised the window and got partly through by the time we opened the door, when he drew himself back and came in through the door. He then went into the bedroom; one of the young ladies had got under the bed, from which Gleason pulled the bedding and ordered the young lady to come out. This she did, and ran into the other room, where she was met by Thompson. I asked Gleason why he pulled the bedding from the bed, and he answered, 'By God! I found Watson in the same kind of a place.' He then said he thought Easton was concealed in a small compass, and that he expected to find him in a similar place, and was going to get him before he left."

Miss Morris, of the same place, says:

"Deputy Gleason came to my bed and pulled the clothing off me, asking if there was any one in bed with me. He then went to the fireplace and pulled a sack of straw from there and looked up the chimney. One of them next pulled up a piece of carpet, when Gleason asked Thompson if there was anyone under there. Thompson said 'No,' and Gleason exclaimed, 'G—d d—it, we will look, any way.' They also looked in cupboards, boxes, trunks, etc., and a small tea chest, but threw nothing out."

Deputy Thompson, referred to in the above, is the man who, a few months afterwards, December 16th, 1886, killed Edward M. Dalton at Parowan by shooting him down in the street under the plea that Dalton was trying to escape arrest for unlawful cohabitation. The testimony of eye witnesses to the whole transaction, however, does not bear out the claims of the man upon whose hands will be found innocent blood when he shall stand before that tribunal where there is no shuffling—where the action will be seen in its true light—where the guilty man himself, even in the teeth and forehead of his offending, must give in the evidence.

The following which occurred in Idaho is also from the aforesaid Memorial:

"February 23rd, 1886, at about eleven o'clock at night, two deputy marshals visited the house of Solomon Edwards, about seven miles from Eagle Rock, Idaho, and arrested Mrs. Edwards, his legal wife, after she had retired to bed, and required her to accompany them immediately to Eagle Rock. Knowing something of the character of one of the deputies, from his having visited the house before, when he indulged in a great deal of drinking, profanity, and abuse, she feared to accompany them without some protection, and requested a neighbor to go along on horseback while she rode in the buggy with the two deputies. On the way the buggy broke down and she, with an infant in her arms, was compelled to walk the rest of the distance—between two and three miles. They could have no reason for subpoenaing her in the night, and compelling her to accompany them at such an untimely hour, except a fiendish malice or a determination to heap all the indignities possible upon her, because she was a Mormon woman, for she never attempted to evade the serving of the warrant, and was perfectly willing to report herself at Eagle Rock the next day. She was taken to Salt Lake City to testify against her husband."

After reading such atrocities—such unjustifiable invasions of the homes of the people—one instinctively asks himself if in the great republic the wheels of civil liberty have not been turning backward instead of forward. More than a century before these things transpired, the eloquent Lord Chatham announced the great doctrine for all England and her colonies, including those in America, that a man's house was his castle; that though it might be so poor that the rains of heaven could penetrate it, and the winds whistle through its crevices, yet the king of England could not cross its threshold without its owner's permission.

Not satisfied with the penalties affixed to the laws against unlawful cohabitation, the Utah courts determined to increase them by means little short of legislation itself. The trick resorted to was to decree that the time a man had cohabited with more women than one as wives, could be divided up into years, months or weeks, and separate bills of indictment be found for each fragment of time. So ruled the Chief Justice, Charles S. Zane. Judge Orlando W. Powers of the First Judicial District, carried the infamous doctrine still further, and in charging a grand jury, on the 23rd of September, 1885, said: "An indictment may be found against a man guilty of unlawful cohabitation, for every day, or other distinct interval of time, during which he offends. Each day that a man cohabits with more than one woman, as I have defined the word cohabit, is a distinct and separate violation of the law, and he is liable for punishment for each separate offense."

His definition of cohabitation was as follows:

"The offense of cohabitation is complete when a man, to all outward appearances, is living or associating with more than one woman as his wife. To constitute the offense it is not necessary that it be shown that the parties indulge in sexual intercourse. The intention of the law-making power, in enacting the law, was to protect monogamous marriage by prohibiting all other marriage, whether evidenced by a ceremony, or by conduct and circumstances alone."

So held all the courts, and under that ruling such infamies as the following were possible:

"In the case of Solomon Edwards recently accused of this offense—unlawful cohabitation—it was proved by the evidence for the prosecution that the defendant had lived with one wife only since the passage of the Edmunds act, but after having separated from his former plural wife, he called with his legal wife at the former's residence to obtain a child, an agreement having been made that each party should have one of the two children, and the court ruled that this was unlawful cohabitation in the meaning of the law, and defendant was convicted."^[1]

It is but proper to say that the Supreme Court of the United States, on an appeal being taken to it, decided against this infamous doctrine. But it held sway for a time and exhibited the venomous disposition of those entrusted with the execution of the laws in Utah.

In this crusade every effort was made to find President Taylor. His own houses, the Church offices, and the Gardo House, were well-nigh always under the surveillance of spies or deputy marshals, and the latter places were several times searched, but always in vain. That the place of his concealment was not discovered is little short of the miraculous, since the business to which he continued to give his personal attention was considerable, and required frequent communication with agents who were at liberty to act. He owed his safety, however, more to the promptings of the Holy Spirit than to the cunning of man. More than once, in obedience to its whisperings, and when to all outward appearances there was no danger to be feared, he would leave his place of temporary abode. By frequently changing his place of concealment, while running considerable risk of discovery in moving, he kept his enemies mystified as to his whereabouts.

Though driven into retirement by a malicious and perverted administration of the Edmunds law, he never allowed it to embitter his thoughts or disturb the calmness and patience of his disposition. No, not even so much as to lead him to speak evil of those who persecuted him. "God forgive them," he would say, "they know not what they do." "I pity them, with all my heart." The following letter addressed to his family that had convened to celebrate the anniversary of his birth—a custom with them for years—is the very best evidence both as to his sentiments toward his enemies and the grandeur of his soul.

Footnotes

1. Women's Memorial to Congress.