The birth of Utah is a multidimensional story of intrigue, political maneuvering, false accusations and power struggles among the period's most notable American leaders.
It was played out against a national backdrop of conflict with Mexico, civil strife that ultimately led to war on the slavery question, a period of dramatic American colonization and the opening of the vast, rich resources of the West.The story of how How Congress named Utah and formed its territorial forerunner in 1850 is not pretty and may be understood by few. Among the many hurdles placed in the way of official recognition of Utah were:
- Attacks by anti-Mormon elements, who told Congress that Mormon colonizer and church president Brigham Young and other Salt Lake pioneer leaders were murderers, rapists and swindlers. Outspoken critics wanted the Army sent to bring them to trial.
- The opposition of the president of the United States, who believed the anti-Mormon stories. President Zachary Taylor vowed that only over his dead body would the Mormon pioneers be given a voice in their own government. (Ironically, he soon died.)
- Determination by many powerful congressmen to block use of the name "Deseret" for the proposed state because of its religious overtones as a Book of Mormon word for "honeybee." In the end, one powerful senator, the same whose famed debates with Abraham Lincoln are well-known historically, took it upon himself to dump "Deseret" for the more secular "Utah."
Faced with these and other challenges, the evolution of Utah became a powerful story of how Mormon lobbyists in Washington pulled off political miracles to neutralize the critics' attacks, win powerful friends and have Brigham Young appointed as the first territorial governor against all odds.
Immediate opposition
An 1849 petition to Congress for official recognition of the "State of Deseret" ran into immediate opposition. The toughest - and quickest - came in a Dec. 31 memorial to Congress from excommunicated LDS apostle and patriarch William Smith, the younger brother of Joseph Smith, founder and first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
William Smith and Isaac Sheen claimed to be the legitimate leaders of the church, and wrote that Salt Lake Mormons were applying for statehood "by false representations and fallacious presentations."
Joseph Smith's successor, Brigham Young, sought "to unite church and state; and whilst the political power of the Roman pontiff is passing away, this American tyrant is endeavoring to establish a new order of political popery in the recesses of the mountains," they wrote.
They charged that Salt Lake Mormons had taken a secret blood oath to avenge the murder of Joseph Smith and to forever seek hostilities against the U.S. government.
Young had tried to assassinate him, William Smith charged. He said Brigham Young and others were guilty of "murders, treason, adultery, fornication, robbery, counterfeiting, swindling, blasphemy and usurpation of power both political and ecclesiastical; and we would beseech your honorable body to send an armed force to bring them back from their hiding-place, that they may be legally tried."
Among other charges William Smith made was that Young swindled members of the Mormon Battalion, who served in the Mexican War, "out of their bounty money, and spent it in riotous living with their harlots. . .. The Salt Lake settlement is like Sodom and Gomorrah."
Dr. John Bernhisel, an LDS physician representing the Mormon cause in Washington at the time, later wrote to Brigham Young that William Smith's "wholesale calumny" of charges "created quite a sensation in both wings of the Capitol."
Reply from the West
With such accusations flying and thousands of miles between the accused and their accusers, it fell to Bernhisel to counter the charges made by William Smith and Sheen. He sought meetings with key members of Congress, some of whom he already had contacted to lobby for Deseret. A persuasive man, he made many friends among America's foremost politicians.
One of the first people he visited was Sen. Joseph Underwood of Kentucky, who had formally presented and read William Smith's memorial to Congress, because Smith was then living in Kentucky.
In a report to Brigham Young, Bernhisel said he told Underwood that "the church had furnished him (William Smith) with the means of living; and added that his brother (Joseph Smith) and we had long borne with him; that he had greatly injured the church by the immorality of his conduct; and that he was finally excommunicated" and refused to change his behavior to allow his readmission to the church.
He added that if - as William Smith charged - "we entertained sentiments of hostility toward the government, we should not be here soliciting admission into the Union."
Bernhisel reported that as he was ready to leave Underwood, the senator remarked that he thought it was wonderful that Mormons had managed to make a settlement in such a remote spot.
Capitalizing on the sympathetic remark, Bernhisel asked the senator if he thought it possible "for a body of so depraved, vicious and abominable wretches as we were represented to be, to perform such wonders . . . and maintain a spirit of peace." Underwood said "No."
Bernhisel liked the effect of those arguments so much that he wrote them out and had them published in Washington newspapers.
About the same time, Bernhisel received letters from California emigrants who praised their treatment by Mormons and other complimentary writings by papers in the West. "I thanked God," he said, and had them published in Washington papers as well.
He later wrote, "These letters have removed mountains of prejudice. Some now believe us to have been greatly misrepresented and grossly slandered."
But William Smith continued to write critical memorials in months to come, as did other church enemies, to keep up pressure against statehood or appointment of Mormons to office.
Presidential mistrust
Among those apparently persuaded by the attacks was President Zachary Taylor. Bernhisel had met with him a week before William Smith's first memorial arrived, and Taylor told him the issue of statehood would be handled entirely by Congress - and that he would not be involved.
Later, Bernhisel wrote, "Since my first interview with him, he has been somewhat prejudiced against us by the slanderous reports in circulation."
Albert Carrington, a Mormon who helped Bernhisel and Almon W. Babbitt with lobbying, wrote in his diary that a member of Congress from New York warned him in a casual meeting that, "Gen. Taylor was opposed to the Mormons having any recognized government."
Babbitt checked out the statement and then wrote to leaders in Utah that Taylor "did say before two members of Congress that he would veto any bill passed, state or territorial, for the Mormons."
The president said Mormons "were in the pack of bad laws and had been driven out of two states and were not fit for self-government," Babbitt reported.
Babbitt went directly to the president to ask him about it. Of that meeting, he reported: "He owned that he had so said and tried to reason with me of the absurdity of the Mormons trying for a government. My opinion is that no government will be given us at this session."
But Taylor died the following July - two months before the Utah Territory Act passed Congress. His opposition disappeared with him.
Millard Fillmore, the vice president who succeeded Taylor, had been friendly with Bernhisel and as Senate president even allowed the Mormon spokesman floor privileges to make it easier for him to visit senators at their desks.
Bernhisel and Babbitt also wrote that Fillmore wanted deeply to be re-elected - and hinted that they may have persuaded him that Mormons would be very grateful if he would support them and appoint Brigham Young as governor.
The slavery issue
The pioneers' petition for statehood also became embroiled in the looming battle over slavery. It was impossible for the Utah lobbyists to please both sides.
"The (Deseret) Constitution is highly approved by the South because it contains no clause inhibiting the introduction of slavery, but the Free Soilers and many other northern members object to it on that ground," Bernhisel wrote.
He tried to remain neutral, with some success. "I made it a point . . . not to make slavery or politics a point; and I am happy to be able to inform you that this course has met approbation and sanction of our best friends," he wrote Young.
On another front, Bernhisel found that powerful Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky "was still writhing under the infliction" of a letter from Joseph Smith in 1844, when both were candidates for president. Clay, however, assured Bernhisel that he had no prejudices that would prevent him from doing justice for Mormons.
Col. Thomas L. Kane, a non-Mormon adviser to the Mormons, warned church leaders (according to a diary of then-LDS apostle Wilford Woodruff) that Missouri Sen. Thomas Hart Benton, whose son-in-law, John Fremont, mapped much of the West, "has been an inveterate enemy and still may be." Kane also suggested that Stephen Douglas of Illinois (Lincoln's opponent in the 1860 presidential election) "is going down with a certain class connected with him (Benton)."
But as Douglas also was chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, which would oversee the statehood debate, Bernhisel approached him. He found the senator to be surprisingly candid and helpful to Mormons.
Soon, he was describing Douglas as an "ardent friend." The senator did much of the pushing for a government that would include Mormons.
Still, Douglas had several problems with the proposed State of Deseret. One was that it was too big and he wanted to trim it.
"He says he would not be able to justify himself to his constituents" if its size were not reduced, Bernhisel wrote. "He also remarked that if they should grant us the whole of the territory, others not of our faith would settle among us, and trouble us, and their excuse would be that we had the whole territory and they had no other place to settle."
Under Douglas' prodding, the territory was reduced to roughly the size of present-day Utah and Nevada.
Home rule or ruin?
The Mormon lobbyists found little support for statehood, rather than territory status, because of the area's small population and concerns generated by church enemies. Most congressmen wanted to make the area a territory - which meant the president would choose local officers, rather than allowing local elections.
Kane had warned them, as Woodruff recorded in his diary, "You are better off without any government from the hands of Congress than with a territorial government. The political intrigues of the government officers will be against you. You can govern yourselves better than they can govern you."
When Mormons lobbyists considered withdrawing their petitions to prevent creation of a territory, Bernhisel wrote that Douglas warned "withdrawing our application would not make any difference, for Congress deemed it their responsibility to organize the territories." The senator felt it was a key to achieving the Compromise of 1850. The compromise allowed states coming into the Union to determine independently if they would allow slavery and forestalled the Civil War for a time.
Bernhisel and Babbitt fought for assurances that Brigham Young and other Mormons would be appointed as leaders if a territory were created, or that legislation would allow local elections in the territory.
They found a key ally in Sen. Truman Smith of Connecticut, considered a top political expert of the day and the strategist behind the elections of Taylor and Fillmore.
Truman Smith told Bernhisel, "As you have been badly and unjustly treated, I want to do the handsome and generous thing for you, though I cannot agree with your religion."
Bernhisel wrote that Sen. Smith said he "would exert himself to the utmost to have such persons appointed as would be acceptable to us" - and since Taylor (and Fillmore) largely owed their election to him, he expected success.
Truman Smith often accompanied the Mormon representatives to meetings with the two presidents, and his pressure may have helped win Brigham Young's appointment by Fillmore as territorial governor.
Bernhisel and Babbitt both mentioned in letters to Brigham Young that Fillmore wanted re-election badly and that they may have convinced him the Mormon vote would be his if Young were appointed. Of course, Mormons named their territorial capital - Fillmore, in Millard County - after him.
To further ensure that Young would be appointed governor, Babbitt agreed to support some friends of powerful senators for lower positions in the territorial government. They included Joseph L. Heywood (a friend of Douglas) for marshal, and Seth Blair (a friend of Texas Sen. Sam Houston) as territorial attorney.
According to Angus Crane, a Gaithersburg, Md., lawyer and amateur historian who has written about Fillmore and the Mormons, Fillmore had previously argued that local people should be appointed to such positions when possible. Also, he was unusually open to divergent religious ideas, which may have helped Brigham Young.
Deser-What?
As official recognition of the new territory became assured, selection of a name became more critical. "Deseret" was not popular in many camps.
Bernhisel wrote that Benton told him, "I do not like the name `Deseret;' it can never go on the statute books; it sounds too much like `desert,' and that sound is repulsive."
The New York Tribune wrote that Mormons "give to their new dominions the name of `the State of Deseret,' a mystical appellation derived from their religious dialect and signifying the land of the honey-bee."
Douglas told Mormon representatives that their proposals would have a better chance with a secular name, because Deseret was believed to be too closely tied to the LDS faith and the Book of Mormon.
Not surprisingly, Bernhisel wrote, "The judge (Douglas) does not admire the name Deseret and says he shall insist on the territory or state being called Utah." When Douglas brought the bill out of his committee to form a territory, he indeed had changed the name to Utah.
Archivists at the University of Chicago, where Douglas' papers are stored, said after weeks of searching that Douglas apparently never wrote down why he chose the name Utah.
Territory is born
With problems over its name and the alleged character of its residents and questions of slavery sufficiently smoothed over, Congress passed a bill to create the Utah Territory on Sept. 9, 1850.
Residents of the new territory, who had hoped for statehood, were not overjoyed. The Deseret General Assembly wanted only a state that would elect its own officers. It also wasn't excited about the name change from Deseret to Utah. A resolution it passed said, "Do they object to the name of our state? It is good enough for us, who have to wear it."
On Sept. 10, unaware that the territory status had been granted the day before, the assembly gathered in hopes of stopping the formation of the territory. They called for withdrawal of the petitions before Congress.
However, when Mormons received word that the territory had been created and that Brigham Young was its new governor, they accepted it.
Brigham Young continued to use the Deseret appellation for many church enterprises and the word remains common in Utah. For instance, the church-owned newspaper remains the Deseret News. The honeybee interpretation of the word lent itself to Utah's official nickname - the Beehive State - and to the motto of "Industry."
Mormon concerns that federal appointees in the territorial government would create problems for them were justified. The non-Mormon appointees quickly returned to Washington to complain about plural marriage and what they saw as other Mormon excesses.
However, Fillmore remained true to Brigham Young and would not remove him despite pressure. Nor did Fillmore's successor, Franklin Pierce.
But in 1857, President James Buchanan did displace Brigham Young and sent Johnston's Army to Utah, based on the false reports of rebellion spread by former appointees. Polygamy and political problems would stall statehood until 1896.
Congress wouldn't seat Babbitt, Utah's first delegate to Congress, in 1850. Some members of the House protested that Babbitt had been elected by "the State of Deseret" and not the "Utah Territory." There was not time for Babbitt to return for a new election and still be seated before adjournment.
Babbitt never sat in Congress, because Bernhisel was subsequently elected as the new delegate. Bernhisel's win upset Fillmore-appointed Justice Perry Brocchus, who wanted the seat himself. Brocchus became one of the Mormons' most fierce enemies.
And while Douglas - the man who named Utah - had been a friend of Mormons in the battle that created the territory, when he later ran for president in 1860 he was reported to have criticized Mormons as a loathsome ulcer of the body and suggested that Congress apply the knife and cut it out.
His name, regardless, was memorialized in Utah as Ft. Douglas was established in Salt Lake City so the Army could keep an eye on the Mormons during the Civil War.
Joseph Smith had once predicted Douglas would run for president and warned that if he turned his hand against Mormons he would feel the weight of the Almighty upon him. Some Mormons believe the prophecy was fulfilled by Douglas' deteriorating health after he lost the presidential bid to Abraham Lincoln. He died in 1861.