The Washington union. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1857-1859, 1858-07-08


fetal unofficial, has On ever has had. authority
from the President to limit his constitutional power
to dispose of the army wherever his duty to the
laws and to the public service require and we ven
ture to affirm that this point has been expressly and
zealously protected in all instructions that have been
issued in regard to Utah.
The President could not himself consent, under
any circumstances TO diyest himself of the right to
order the army wherever his constitutional obliga-
tions might require him to march or station ii
and il is not possible that he should have allowed
any agent whatever to pledge him to such an
unconstitutional and preposterous stipulation that
now pretended by the partisans who are determined
to cavil at his policy in Utah. We do not believe
for moment that any officer of the United States in
that Territory has undertaken to pledge him to any
such stipulation; nor do we believe that even DR..
Kane, mere private citizen without power or au.
thority of any sort, has made any promises ON his
individual responsibility to such effect But if
DR.. Kane has made any pledge of the sort, it was
wholly unauthorized and inadmissible. The mission
of DR.. Kane purely personal and individual
made at his own impulse and on his own response
Dulty. he Wdb pclSOHdl dC9uduGtnceO OF tne IreSi-
dent and possessed his esteem, and hence, we be-
eve took with him letters of introduction to officers
of the army from Mr.. Buchanan as from an indi-
vdual.
But he went neither as agent of the President nor
as officer of the government neither as secret agent
nor as public officer; but simply on individual,
selfmposed mission, private citizen, phanthro-
.barn f he hat
He took no message from the President, other than
the President had publicly announced, in regard to
the Mormons and whatever assurances he may have
given the Mormon leaders of the pacific intentions
Of the President, were such as were publicly adver-
tsed by the President in his official proclamation
such any other person from the States might have
given the Mormons with equal confidence and au-
thority.
1t is therefore the baldest pretenson in the world
to magnify. any conferences that may have oc-
Cured between DIR. Kane and Brigham Young
into pledges, of the dignity of treaties, between
great equal and contendng powers, in order to con-
vert the march of an American army upon American
soil, under the orders of an American President into
an infamous and outrageousproceeding Batno pre-
tension Of the kind is too preposterous and stupid for
the Times.
I The card of Mr.. Bernhisel is important however
as conclusive Mormon evidence against all the out
cry and palaver with which the Times and its black
republican coadjutors have been boring the country
for months past on the subject of this Mormon re-
bellion.
It has been their hvorite policy to represent the
whole notion of the Mormon .rebeIlionu ae G,t;o,
and political trick, designed to reconcile the country
to the huge and costly OUTLAWS that have been incur
red for the Mormon expedition They have ridi.
culed the thought of serious rebellion, and de-
nounced the large preparations that have been made
for its suppression in unmeasured terms of censure
as uncaled for, unnecessary, and ridiculous.
The Times has now the simplicity however, to
publish this card of the Mormon delegate, in which
he speaks of the Mormon troops who were on
hostile march, boasts that our army was at their
mercy and confesses to their ample preparations
and plans for defence" This letter is itself sufi-
cient proof of the wisdom of the Utah expedition as
the result has demonstrated it's success. Of course
other shift is left to the Times but to impute
that success to trick and unfair diplomacy which was
the product of resolute, bold firm, measures taken
in the face Of The world and proclaimed from the
housetops.