"Horrible Massacre of Emigrants!!" The Mountain Meadows Massacre in Public Discourse

 

CRIME IN UTAH. 

The extremely and sycophantic editor of the Telegraph has been very much occupied of late in whining about the comparative purity of Utahdom contrasted with what he considers the excesses of crime in other places, and has given the most unmistakable evidence of his character by his continually wallowing in the mire of moral pollution.—The ostensible advocate and champion of Mormon ecclesiasticism, why is it he confines himself less to the rational elucidation of the tenets of his own barbaric faith than to apparently pleasurable glutting over the moral deformities of his less pretentious neighbors, as though imperfections in them would justify enormities in him and his but little more scrupulous coadjutors!

Crime may be rampant in New York and other large cities, and a greater amount of it be ferreted out and brought before the proper tribunals in proportion to the number of inhabitants than in G. S. L. City; but it is no proof it does not exist here as proportionately extensively as there. Even in those cities, money and influence free many a guilty wretch, while the poor culprit without money and friends is forced to succumb, and have his name bandied about by more guilty but unexposed villains, and an ignorant and excited populace, to his life long shame and detriment. And is it not equally or more so here. Let the records of the past answer.

It is also charged by that delectable sheet that all or nearly all of the crime committed in Utah is committed by Gentiles or "regenerators." (A name applied in ridicule to Gentile delinquents here, and sometimes used indiscriminately, but really applicable to the honorable class who are the true and only friends of Utahians in Utah.)

It requires no great effort of memory to remind us of the Mountain Meadow Massacre—of the murder of a certain Mexican shortly after the settlement of Utah in the southern part of the Territory —of the murder of a certain old man west here, of known Union proclivities, when the Mormon militia went out to stop (!) Johnson's army—of the murder of Sergt. Pike—of the murder of a certain merchant named Bowman—of the murder of the Parishes—of the murder of Forbes—of the murder of Jones and his poor old mother—of the murder of a certain wealthy emigrant at Ogden some seven or eight years since, and the accidental (!) drowning of another pushed into the Ogden River some three years since—of the murder of Joseph Morris and John Banks and two women in 1862—of the murder of a soldier in S. L. City in 1864—of the attempted murder of Brassfield in 1866—of the floating bodies in the Jordan and dead bodies in the streets during the demoniacal "reformation" (!) of 1856-8—none if which are even charged upon Gentiles; but were wholly the fiendish work of the faithful of this "most peaceable and law-abiding of all communities" during the reign of Utah Mormondom, and where the records are searched almost in vain for any criminal cause.

New York, Cincinnati, Chicago and other places at which the Telegraph fires its paper shots, make no pretensions to apostolic purity; Utah does. She boasts an almost exclusively religious population. But even in those cities the press condemns the high-handed outrages perpetrated, while in Utah, excepting only by the VEDETTE, they are either unnoticed by the press or glossed over as virtuous and approved.

There is, however, one species of bipeds in Utah, whose very frailty is published by the Utah—Mormon press—the Gentiles. It feel to our lot some few days since to see an inebriated soldier arrested on his way to camp. He had got more than two blocks towards where his crime would have been properly punished, when two policemen, either sent after him, or casually seeing him reading, him in a brutal manner, and forced him back to the lower regions of the City Hall. When on the North-west corner of the third block, he refused to go any further, the two ruffians kicked him and split open his ear. The poor fellow literally roared with pain, and finding resistance useless suffered himself to be taken back, incarcerated and fined. We saw another case: A Mormon was drunk, so drunk that he could not even sit up without propping, laying less than fifty yards from City Hall. He had attracted quite a crowd around him, when two men, one of them a city official, came up, compassionated him, told him they were his friends, and added if he would go with them, no harm should befall him. He resisted; but he was neither struck or kicked. They raised him by main force and conducted him to a private place in the City Hall, where he was kept till sober enough to go to his home. The abused soldier was honored with his name being entered on the criminal docket—the Mormon delinquent was forgotten(!).

With such a policy, till exposed, it is not a difficult matter to make comparatively innocent to appear horribly guilty, and the guilty almost impeccable. Our recently arrived Gentile friends and transient residents will please note these facts in forming their estimate of the two classes composing the population of Utah.