Year: 1866




The Condition OF Utah-The Radical
Party on the Twin Relics Of Barbarian.


We publish to-day some interesting corre-
spondence concerning the state of affairs in
Utah Territory. A party who says that he has
fesided there for some time denies the accounts
Of frequent murders said to be committed by
the Mormons. Tho stories of assassination
which we published the other day attracted the
attention also of General Sherman, who sent
cautionary despatch to Brigham Young on the
subject. The Mormon leader answers by tele-
graph that there is no foundation for the
reports except that soldier, not Mormon
shot q man in the streets of Great Salt Lake
City, and that Mormon, whose wife had been
seduced by Gentle, shot the offender. Seve-
raj citizens of Utah have also assured General
Sherman that Brigham's statement is correct.
We give all these documents in another column;
but they do not prove that violence and an
utter disregard of the rules of Christian society
and the laws of the land do not exist in Utah.
Brigham Young says that the Mormon commr-
nifty is not responsible for these two murders;
but we have not heard of coroner's jury fixing
the responsibility upon any one, nor of the law
having been vindicated in any way. The fact
that the Mormon institution is permitted to
exist at all within the jurisdiction of the United
States is disgrace to our form Of government


The first plank laid in the platform OF the
republican party adopted at the Pittsburg
Convention of 1856 was the destruction of
what the leaders then denominated "the
twin relics of barbarism m"--slavery and po-
iygamy With this motto Inscribed upon their
banner large portion Of the people rallied
around them and formed powerful and finally
dominant party. Have The pledges been re-
deemed? AS far as slavery is concerned the
war settled that question. Slavery is no longer
in existence. But the republican party seem
to have forgotten the other relic Of barbarism,
polygamy, against which they proposed to
mike war and to utterly exterminate Every
thing still thrives in Utah. Brigham Young
and his thirty-fve wives are in hourshing
condition. A standing army of respectable
proportions has just been fully organized in
Salt Lake City with n view to resist any en-
crOachment upon their territory or any inter
ference with their peculiar moral or immoral
code by the Gentiles. This grossest vice known
in the catalogue of sins is practsed in por-
ton Of tn, American domain, under shelter Of
the law and wat have the republicans done
to prevent it, after ali their promises to uproot
polygamy! They admit delegate from the
Territory Of Utah, a representative Of one Of
the "twin relics of barbarism" to
seat in Congress, while they deny the
same right to representatives from the Southern
States which have ratified, by the enactments
oftheir Legislatures, the constitutional abolition
of the other twin relic Of barbarism, slavery.
The Southern States have given evidence of
their conscientious adherence to the law by
abandoning, freely and cheerfully, an insttu-
ton which was as much part of their system,
from the time that they had existence as colo
MES or States, as the brain or the heart are part
Of the human system; but the Mormons Of Utah
Territory have ma de no concession. They are
as audacious as ever in their adherence to poly
gamy. Whatever sins the South may have COM
mitted in the recent attempt to break up the
Union, it is willing to make amends for. Blood
shed, desolatOn, ruined homes, intolerable tax
alton, and the thousand other evils that have be-
fallen the South, have wiped away the stain of
slavery and made penitental offering for the
crime of rebellion; but polygamy, the other
relic of barbarism which the republican party
pledged itself to wipe out, still boldly defcs
both the Christian code and the law of the land.
II is certain that reports OF murders and other
fearful atrocities are common IN Utah, and the
radicals in Congress have no measure to propose
or they are not willing to introduce any measure
to suppress the evil which they denounced at
the Pittsburg Convention. But the most curious
features in the conduct Of the republican
party in connection with slavery are the facts
recently developed by the operation Of the
Freedmen's Bureau. Slavery in worse form
than ever existed under the old institution has
officials of this Bureau. These parties, many
of them New England clergymen, who no
doubt have been dcnouncing slavery from the
pulpit for many years, are cuitivating cotton
plantations and compelling freedmen to work
upon them under system Of treatment more
inhuman than was ever known in the days of
Southern slavery, which we have abolished.
What is the conclusion to be drawn from
all this? That the radical faction is a humbug.
That selfshness and avarice and fraud lie at
the bottom of oil their action. The people are
beginning to see this and q few more develop
ments Of the workings OF the Frecdmen's
Bureau will convince them OF the complete
demoralization of the hypocritical faction
which Is throwing obstacles IN the way Of the
reconstruction of the country.


The FREEpNEN's BUREAU AND ITS WORKINGS
We published yesterday note from General
Howard Commissioner of the Frccdmen's Bu-
reau, in which he states, in reference TO an
| article in the HERALD on the subject Of the
! Bureau, that certain officers he names "are
men who have for years sustained the highest