"I might enumerate injuries by the score--not to say anything about thousands of our letters detained at the post office at Independence--and if these things are not so, why is it that Utah is so _knotty a question?_ If people were no more ready to interfere with us and our institutions than we are with them and theirs, these difficulties would vanish into thin air. Why, again I ask, could Drummond and a host of other mean scribblers, palm off their bare-faced lies with such impunity and have their infamous slanders swallowed with such gusto? Was it not that the administration and their satellites having planned our destruction, were eager to catch at anything to render specious their contemplated acts of blood? Or, in plain terms, the Democrats advocated strongly popular sovereignty. The Republicans tell them that if they join in maintaining inviolate the domestic institutions of the south, they must also swallow polygamy. The Democrats thought this would not do, as it would interfere with the religious scruples of many of their supporters, and they looked about for some means to dispose of the knotty question. Buchanan, with Douglas, Cass, Thompson and others of his advisers, after failing to devise legal means, hit upon the expedient of an armed force against Utah, and thus thought by the sacrifice of the Mormons to untie the knotty question; do a thousand times worse than the Republicans ever meant,--fairly out-Herod Herod, and by religiously expatriating, destroying or killing a hundred thousand innocent American citizens satisfy the pious, humane, patriotic feeling of their constituents, take the wind out of the sails of the Republicans, and gain to themselves immortal laurels. Captain, I have heard of a pious Presbyterian doctrine that would inculcate thankfulness to the all-wise Creator for the privilege of being damned. Now, as we are not Presbyterians nor believers in this kind of self-abnegation, you will, I am sure, excuse us for finding fault at being thus summarily dealt with, no matter how agreeable the excision or expatriation might be to our political, patriotic, or very pious friends. We have lived long enough in the world to know that we are a portion of the body politic, that we have some rights as well as other people, and that if others do not respect us, we at least have manhood enough to respect ourselves.