The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 78, April, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Porter Rockwell is a man whom my readers must have heard of in every
account of fearlessly executed massacre committed in Utah during the
last thirteen years. He is the chief of the Danites,--a band of saints
who possess the monopoly of vengeance upon Gentiles and apostates. If a
Mormon tries to sneak off to California by night, after converting his
property into cash, their knives have the inevitable duty of changing
his destination to another state, and bringing back his goods into the
Lord's treasury. Their bullets are the ones which find their unerring
way through the brains of external enemies. They are the Heaven-elected
assassins of Mormonism,--the butchers by divine right. Porter Rockwell
has slain his forty men. This is historical. His probable private
victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and
done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. He has a face full
of bull-dog courage,--but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait
in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his
society greatly,--though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut
my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead
of an author. But he would have felt no unkindness toward me on that
account. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the
pleasantest murderers I ever met. He was mere executive force, from
which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in
the hand of Brigham. He was everywhere known as the Destroying Angel,
but he seemed to have little disagreement with his toddy, and took his
meals regularly. He has two very comely and pleasant wives. Brigham has
about seventy, Heber about thirty. The seventy of Brigham do not include
those spiritually married, or "sealed" to him, who may never see him
again after the ceremony is performed in his back-office. These often
have temporal husbands, and marry Brigham only for the sake of belonging
to his lordly establishment in heaven.
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