Under the Prophet in Utah

urch began a progressive course of submission to the civil law, and the nation received each act of surrender with forgiveness. The previous defiance's of the Mormo

hould go back, beyond the period of this composit

ake clear the situation in Utah, and to introduce to you, in advance, some of the leaders of the distracted community, so that you might understand the condit

ence of the Church endorsed the President's pronouncement as "authoritative and binding." And let me point out that it was the first and only law of the Mormon Church ever so sustained by triple sanctiti

en, there, of the completeness and finality of the submission. And the good faith of the covenant was at last admitted by the non-Mormons of Utah and endorsed by their trust. I do not know of any change in human affairs dependent on human will-more speedy, effective and comprehensive than this recession. Within the space of a few days a revolution was completed that had been sought by the power of our nation and of the civilized

f inferiority. The patriotic reading of my boyhood had made the American republic, to me, the noblest administration of freemen in the history of government and the exercise of its franchise literally the highest dignity of human privilege. I would have been as proud-I was as proud when the day came-to vote for the Pre

e to interfere with its members in the exercise of their citizenship. For this reason, when I was notified that I had been selected as a member of the advisory committee of the People's Party (the Church party), I went at once to my father and told him that I would not take the place; that I intended to work, personally, and through my news

must be set free to perform our duty to the country solely as citizens of the country, before we could expect to be given the right to perform it at all. And, f

y to march in between. I argued in reply that we must divide at some time, and the sooner the better, since every year was increasing the Gentile population. They would never split as long as we remained sol

usly with whom I expected to affiliate, since he knew of no one who was likely to go with me; but I could see that he was pleased with my independence and

we organized a Republican Club at Ogden, my intimate friend, Ben E. Rich, and another friend named Joseph Belnap, were the only Mormons, s

ocrat. Among the young men of the Church there had been occasional attempts to form Democratic Clubs. Mr. John T. Caine, delegate in Congress from the territory, was a Democrat. My father had sat on the Democratic side of the House. Almost

nds with "the persecutors of the Prophets." When I came out, now, as an advocate of Republicanism, I was met everywhere with this charge-that I had joined the enemies of the Church, that I was assisting the persecutors of my father.

kers of the fields or of the mines to come and hear us in the evening, and watching them fall asleep in the light of our borrowed kerosene lamps while we talked. They came eagerly. Indeed, my own ambition for citizenship-for a right to parti

e to listen to this man, and I hope we will be guided in all our reflections by the Spirit of God and that we wi

ers brought their babies. Surely in no other American community did politics ever have such a homely and serious consideration

uld give and my credulity accept, I proclaimed religiously as a political salvation to our people. I built up an ideal, and then judged the party thereafter according to the measure of that ideal. When I found that some of the charges against the Republican party were true-charges which I had indignantly repelled-I was as shocked as any pious worshipper who ever found that his idol had feet o

It was about this time, I imagine, that they conceived the idea of using the gratitude of the Mormons in order to carry Utah and the surrounding states in which the Mormon vote might constitute a balance of political power. I know that the idea was old and established when I came upon it, in 1894, during the campaign for statehood. As I also found, still later, the Republican leaders and the business interests with which they were in relation, had their eyes on a distant prospect of f

it was on this principle that I appealed for the support of both. I was so sure of winning with it

ant and trusted defenders of the Church as Franklin S. Richards, Chas. C. Richards, Wm. H. King, James H. Moyle, Brigham H. Roberts and Apostle Moses Thatcher; and a group of abler advocates could not have been found in any state in the Union. It was against the sentiment of the Mormon people, vi

rion Lyman, in his religious ministrations, counselled leading brethren to withhold themselves from the Democratic party unless they had gone too far to retreat. Men of ecclesiastical office in various part

at Church headquarters would lead to a strife in the Church that might be carried into our politics; and I knew how small would be the hope of preserving any political independence, if once it were involved in the intrigues of priests and their rivalries for a s

other parts of the territory; but I found that I was not "satisfactory" to some of the Mormon leaders, and in the convention (1892) Apostle John Henry Smith and my cousin George M.

e was a great lawyer, a staunch Democrat, and wonderfully popular. There followed one of the swiftest and most exciting campaigns ever seen in Utah. The whole people rose to it with enthusiasm. Our party chairma

" It gave a picture of Joseph Smith, the original Prophet, on the first page and a picture of me on the last one. (They issued also a certificate, obtained by Joseph F. Smith and given out by him, that I was a Mormon "in good standing.") As soon as I heard of the matter, I wired Chairma

y lines; and it was evident that the people would choose the party that made the best showing of principles and candidates. "Nuggets of Truth" left us with a nasty sense that at no hour were we assured of safety from eccle

riests from politics was sincere and permanent. Accordingly, the organization formally met some months later, and formally dissolved; and, by that act, the last great obstacle to unite

s than one-third of the population, they had two-thirds of the political power. They held all the Federal offices, including executive and judicial positions. They had the Governor, with an absolute veto over the acts of the Mormon legislature. They had the

bernacles to teaching its people to hold in detestation the very, names of these men who saved us? Was it to be suspected that the political power surrendered by them would ever be used as a persecution upon them?-th

hat it required a cessation of all plural marriage living, and that it was being obeyed by the Mormon people. These facts were recited in a petition for amnesty forwarded to President Harrison in December, 1891, accompanied by signed statements from Chief Justice Zane, Governor Thomas and other non-Mormons who pledged themselves that the petitioners were sincere and that if amnesty were granted good faith would be kept. "Our peop

the genuineness of our political division, and the sanctity with which we regarded the promise to obey the laws. The Utah Commission, a non-Mormon body, favored amnesty in a

at they shall in the future faithfully obey the laws of the United States... and not otherwise." The proclamation concluded: "Those who fail to avail themselves of the clemen

e escheated Church property and for the passage of an Enabling

tions to propose to the Congress. Governor Prince of New Mexico replied, to our plea for a share in the resolution, that he did not intend to damn New Mexico by having her mixed up with Utah. We appealed to the Congress, and we were saved by a speech made by Thos. M. Patterson of Colorado, subsequently senator from Colorado, who carried the day for us. At a recent Trans-Mississippi Congress held in Denver, I sat with ex-Senator Patterson to hear Mr. Prince still proposing

at the Church had fourteen million dollars in secret funds with which to help build a railroad to the coast as soon as statehood should be granted. They cited the number of the Church's adherents in all the states and territories of the Pacific Coast and as far east as Iowa and Missouri, and predicted that the gratitude of these people to the Republicans who were helping

of the Republican lobbyists who had been soliciting his personal favor and his almost controlling influence. "Now, Mr. Cannon," he said, in

aders of the Church. But human nature is very much the same in Utah as it is in Connecticut. Here and there, no doubt, a man feels that he's under an obligation to keep his covenant with his plural wives in preference to the covenant of his accepted amnesty; and there and here, possibly, in the future, some man will break the law and defy the orders of the Church and take a plural wife. But the leaders of the Church do not countenance eithe

and down the room. "That's it! That's just it. These people have been telling us that you were obeying the law-all of you-in every instance-and would always obey it. And now

ng you to recognize that the tendency imparted to a whole community is more important than any one man's breach of the law. Believe me, if you grant us our statehood, there will never be any lawbr

tly, how the polygamists had

n, and in all other ways acted as the guardian and protector of the household. In a few cases men had gone, to an extreme. For instance, my uncle, Angus M. Cannon-president of the Salt Lake "stake of Zion," a man of most decided chara

could be no general law-breaking among the Mormons, and that gradually the polyga

, I might have been alarmed. The lobbyist's concern was almost comic. As soon as we were out of hearing of the Senator's apartment, shaking both fists frantically at me, he cried: "

n Utah's statehood with lies I don't want it. Senator Platt has been generous

sation with him, because it was a type of many had with such men as he. Fred T. Dubois, delegate in Congress from the territory of Idaho and subsequently Senator from that state, had been perhaps the strongest single opponent, in Washington, of the Mo

y polygamists in Utah claim that there was a "tacit understanding," between the statesmen in Washington and the agents of the Church, to the effect that the polygamists of that time might continue to live with their plural wives. This is not true. There never was any such understanding, to my knowledge. And there could not have been one, in the circumstance

sident Woodruff too well to doubt the pellacid character of his mind and purpose. I knew from my father's personal assurance-and from his constant practice from that time to the day of his death-that he was acting in go

16, 1894, it, too, provided that "polygamous or plural marriage" was forever prohibited. A constitutional convention was held at Salt Lake City under the provisions of that act, and a constitution was adopted in which it was provided that "polygamous or plural marriages" were forever prohibited, that the territorial laws agains

gratitude. By it, ten thousand children were taken from the outer darkness of this world's conventional exclusion and placed within the honored relations of mankind. It was a tribute to the purity and sincerity of the Mormon women who had borne the cross of plural marriage, believing that God had commanded their suffering. It recognized the