John Stevens' Courtship: A Story of the Echo Canyon WarGates, Susa Young
General
John Stevens' Courtship: A Story of the Echo Canyon War
Gates, Susa Young
Latter Day Saints -- Fiction; Utah Expedition (1857-1858) -- Fiction
The captain proceeded as delicately as he could to convey the
information that a new governor had been appointed for the Territory,
who was with the main body of the troops, and would enter the Territory
and assume his office as soon as circumstances would permit. He was a
wise and prudent man, this new governor, by name Cumming, and he would
be a friend to the people, and a support to all concerned--so the
captain endeavored to assure the assembled council.
"I am the governor of this Territory," answered Brigham Young, "and as
such, shall take the proper measures to insure the life and liberty
of the patient, peaceful inhabitants of these valleys. You may tell
your commander that we, as a people, have been robbed and murdered,
our wives outraged, and our men massacred, being driven from state
to state, until we came out to this desert wild, and here, by the
blessings of God, we have made the desert to blossom like the rose and
the wilderness to gush forth. We have asked no help from the United
States save that given to any other distant territory. After we came
here, we planted the flag of our country upon our Ensign Peak within
twenty-four hours, thus taking formal possession of this country in
the name of the United States; and from that hour we have held out our
welcoming arms to the honest and peaceable of all nations and tongues.
We love our country and would take up arms in her defense, as our own
'Mormon' Battalion has so well shown, but we shall never submit to
being murdered and pillaged by a lot of cut-throats and out-laws, for
we will die, ourselves, before we submit to such indignities again."
A low murmur of approval went round the assembled council, and it was
some moments before the officer could be heard, explaining that the
United States had no intention whatever of committing any depredations
or offering the least violence to any person or set of persons.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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