PROVO, Utah — Thomas L. Kane not only befriended the Mormons but helped
fight slavery, helped women gain their rights and fought to get rid of
the death penalty.
He saw his mission as almost a holy war, said Matthew Grow, an
assistant professor of history from the University of Southern Indiana,
speaking at Brigham Young University March 12.
Grow's was the seventh and last in a series of lectures about Kane, whose
collection of papers is a recent purchase and addition to the BYU
Harold B. Lee Library.
Grow discussed Kane and his place in 19th-century America.
He said Kane spent his life defending the Mormons but never joined
the church, explaining to Brigham Young that his influence was greater
as an outsider.
A slight, wiry man with a judge for a father and a scholarly mother,
Kane distinguished himself as a crusader for the downtrodden, which
included the Mormons.
His family worried about his association "with such a disreputable
group," but Kane saw not only a chance to be a humanitarian but a chance
to gather information that he could publish.
Grow said he didn't disguise the fact that he was willing to help
himself in the process of helping others. However, after spending a
summer in 1846 among the refugees in a Mormon camp, his quest became
more fervent.
"I became convinced of the Mormons' sincerity," reads an entry from one of his journals.
Kane asked for and received a patriarchal blessing from the Prophet
Joseph Smith's uncle and was told his name would be held in honor among
the LDS people.
Following his four decades of service, Kanesville, Iowa, was named after him — as was a county in Utah.
Former President Wilford Woodruff said Kane was an instrument in the hands of God.
Former President George Albert Smith invited members of the church to
recognize Kane's sacrifices and devotion and asked Kane to speak in a
general conference.
"It was very rare to have a non-Mormon speaker," Grow said. "He was an outsider, a gentile, a 19th-century champion."Grow said Kane was actually a paradox, a man of inconsistencies. He was
a peace lover who became a Civil War general. He was an abolitionist
who feared the mixing of the races. "He was a Democrat and not a Whig
who despised evangelism," said Grow, and "a romanticist who declared war on
human suffering."
Raised in a wealthy, influential family, Kane felt the call to cast
aside customs and limitations. He threw himself with youthful fervor
into politics.
Ralph Waldo Emerson described Kane as a man who marched to his own music, an original who was sensitive to injustice.
At 31, he married a 16-year-old woman who said he often said what
his mother wanted to hear. At one point, Elizabeth Kane shut down some
of his craziest of ideas, Grow said.
Kane's father sentenced him to prison at one point for his denouncement of the Fugitive Slave Law. (The judgment was overruled.)
He publicly denounced slavery and privately participated in helping slaves escape via the Underground Railroad.
He instinctively turned to newspapers to get his ideas out to the
people. He would write articles in which sometimes he quoted himself,
Grow said.
He raised the Mormon Battalion, mediated the "Utah War," lobbied for
the Mormon people in Congress and helped prepare the legal documents
that led to the creation of the university that would become BYU.
"He picks up on the romanticism of the day. He was more tactician
and politician than anything else, always cautious about maintaining
his image as an outsider (to the Mormons)," Grow said. "The Democratic Party was basically his faith."
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