The Life of John Taylor: Third President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day SaintsRoberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
History
The Life of John Taylor: Third President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Roberts, B. H. (Brigham Henry)
Latter Day Saint churches; Taylor, John, 1808-1887
These papers are remarkable for their conservative tone and wisdom; for
the total absence of anger or vindictiveness, as also for the scope and
variety of the subjects they treated upon. They compare favorably with
the wisest and best state papers ever issued by kings or presidents,
ministers of state or cabinet councils. The flock of Christ, therefore,
was not left without the counsel of heaven or the care of the shepherds.
Still those were dark days. The seats reserved and usually occupied
by the leaders of Israel in the public assemblies were either vacant
or filled by comparative strangers. The recent enactments of Congress
infamous in themselves, were still more infamously enforced. The
courts and United States officials in Utah seemed utterly reckless in
their methods of executing the law. Men who at the most were guilty
of what the law defined to be a misdemeanor, punishable by six months
imprisonment and three hundred dollars fine, were hunted as if they
were guilty of the grossest crimes which could endanger the peace and
safety of the community.
Frequently, and I may say usually, deputy marshals in the night would
surround the houses suspected as being the places where their victims
were to be found, and then in the morning, before the inmates were
astir, would pounce upon them in the most unceremonious and brutal
manner. No place was so sacred in the homes of the people but these
minions under the color of law would force their way into it. Even
the bed chambers of modest maidenhood were rudely entered before the
occupants could dress, and in some instances the covering of their beds
stripped from them in the pretended search for violators of the law;
and they the while compelled to listen to their low blasphemies.
In proof of these allegations, which may seem too hard for belief
as time with its ever-moving wheels carries us away from the years
in which these acts of petty tyranny were perpetrated, I insert a
few statements of parties who suffered them. These statements are to
be found in a memorial addressed to Congress by the women of Utah,
presented in the Senate on the 6th of April, 1886, by Senator Blair of
New Hampshire, and ordered printed by that body:
"On January 11th, 1886, early in the morning, five deputy marshals
appeared at the residence of William Grant, American Fork, forced the
front door open, and, while the inmates were still in bed, made their
way up stairs to their sleeping apartments. There they were met by one
of the daughters of William Grant, who was aroused by the intrusion
and, despite her protestations, without giving time for the object
of their search to get up and dress himself, made their way into his
bedroom, finding him still in bed and his wife _en deshabille_ in the
act of dressing herself."
Mrs. Easton, of Greenville, near Beaver, relates the following:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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