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Government of the Mormons. But we shall find as we proceed that this state of things was succeeded by serious troubles with the Washington authorities. In the meanwhile, the community was preparing for conflict in the future. Mormonism is in more than one sense a Church Militant. As early as 1846, Brigham Young furnished five hundred men to the American army in Mexico. In 1852, the militia of Utah consisted of 8,000 men. Fourteen years later, it had probably increased to 20,000. But the Saints always professed a desire to live at peace with their neighbours, if their neighbours would live at peace with them. What they chiefly wished to effect was the propagation of the faith, with the consequent increase of the Mormon colony. To this end they organised, in 1849, a Perpetual Emigration Fund, for enabling the poorer converts to reach the land of promise; and by 1853, when Mr. Franklin Pierce succeeded to the Presidency, they had become a formidable power, which the Federal Government was beginning to regard with some uneasiness.

Such was the rise, and such the early development, of the Church of the Latter-day Saintsthe most remarkable religious body of modern times. To call this extraordinary movement a phenomenon, is to do little or nothing towards explaining its nature, its origin, or its tendencies; yet a phenomenon it still remains, after all has been said in the way of comment that ingenuity can suggest. It derived its first strength, possibly, from that feeling of vague unrest in matters of faith which so strongly characterises our day, and which prompts a certain class of minds, not few in number, nor always devoid of intellectual capacity, to seek a refuge from doubt in any church which seems to speak with a voice of authority and power. The same motive that determines one man towards the Church of Rome may determine another towards the Church of Utah. The moral character of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and the other Mormonite leaders, has very little to do with the question. Moral weakness has never stood in the

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way of a prophet, if his message has been such as to waken an echo in the hearts of men. Mormonism spoke to the poor and struggling, and they are a large constituency. It was a social, as well as a religious movement, and it had, at the back of its revelations, its promises, and its threats, the argument of the great unpeopled desert, with its boundless capacities of living. Had Mormonism been shut in any old city or old State, it could not have It is the religion of a new people

up long survived. It and a new land.

How far Joseph Smith was sincere, is a very perplexing question. Nothing is easier than to say, on the one hand, that he was a miraculously-inspired teacher, or, on the other, that he was simply a vulgar impostor and self-seeking knave. The facts do not agree with either conclusion. A philosophical observer cannot readily suppose, after all this man did and suffered for the faith, after his extraordinary success in moving the hearts of numerous people, and after the perpetuation of his system under adverse circumstances, that he was wholly wanting in some honest belief in the genuine character of his mission. It is equally difficult to imagine that he credited all he alleged. He and Brigham Young were both brought up in an atmosphere of religious excitement and visionary reverie. They may have thought they were appointed to some great work, and may have considered themselves entitled to help it forward by pious frauds. Such combinations are not unknown to the history of religious fanaticism, nor inconceivable when we consider the infinite complexity of human motives. But, in the end, the element of falsehood must prove the destruction of Mormonism. It cannot ultimately withstand a collision with the modern forces of the world. Already it is withering before the Pacific Railway; and when its peculiar commonwealth is sufficiently leavened with "Gentile" population, Utah will cease to be distinctively Mormonite, as Pennsylvania, by the same process, has long ceased to be distinctively Quaker.

sentatives, and in the Senate, and was known as an ardent supporter of the Democratic party, and of the class of views which found their most distinguished champion in General Jackson. Though a lawyer by profession, he served with the army during the war with Mexico, acting as a Brigadier under General Scott. His inauguration on the 4th of March was attended by a greater amount of military display than is usual on these occasions; but the most interesting circumstance of the day was the presence among the spectators of the venerable George Washington Parke Custis, a grandson of Mrs. Washington by her first husband, and the adopted son of the illustrious Revolutionary leader. This gentleman had been present at the inauguration of every President of the United States since the formation of the Federal Government in 1789. He was one of the executors of the will of Washington, and in 1853 had still some years of life before him. In forming his Cabinet, the new President appointed Mr. William L. Marcy Secretary of State; Mr. James Guthrie Secretary of the Treasury; Mr. Robert McClelland Secretary of the Interior; Mr. Jefferson Davis (a name destined to become disastrously famous in a few years) Secretary of War; Mr. James C. Dobbin Secretary of the Navy; Mr. James Campbell Postmaster-General; and Mr. Caleb Cushing AttorneyGeneral.

The country was in a state of tranquillity when Mr. Pierce succeeded to power; but a misunderstanding with Mexico soon threatened a renewal of the war which had been concluded in 1848. The subject of disagreement was the boundary line between the Mexican province of Chihuahua and New Mexico, then a Territory of the United States. Both Powers claimed the Mesilla valley, a tract of land of considerable extent, and so productive as to be worth contending for. Santa Anna was once more President of Mexico, and his hostile feelings towards the United States were well known. In 1854 he even went so far as to seize the province in question; but the dispute was at length settled by negotiation, which confirmed to the United States the possession of the coveted valley. The disturbed condition of the Mexican Republic, in which one revolution succeeded another with exhausting frequency and wearisome sameness, was a constant trouble to the Washington Cabinet, and a constant incentive to the American people to regard the whole of Mexico as reserved for themselves at some future period. A disagreement with Austria also arose in 1853. A Hungarian refugee, named Martin Koszta, who since his arrival in the United States had become a naturalised American citizen,

was seized at Smyrna, on the Mediterranean, by order of the Austrian consul-general, and taken on board an Austrian brig, to be conveyed to Trieste as a rebel. His restoration was at once demanded by Captain Ingraham, of the United States sloop-ofwar, St. Louis; and, on this being refused, the American officer, on the 2nd of July, cleared his decks for action, and threatened to fire into the brig if Koszta were not shortly given up. Upon this, the Austrian so far yielded as to place the man in the custody of the French consul at Smyrna. In the end, Koszta was suffered to return to America; but the Austrian Minister at Washington demanded an apology or other redress, which was of course refused. Captain Ingraham was much applauded for his spirited and successful conduct.

The first year of Mr. Pierce's Administration was singularly barren of remarkable domestic events. A New York paper observed, in October, 1853, that all parties, clans, and cliques-the Democrats, the Whigs, and the Abolitionists-were split up into discordant subdivisions, and that the Women's Rights party had exceeded all others in internal dissension and quarrelsomeness. The Fugitive Slave Law continued to agitate the country, and to cause scenes of violence which betokened still worse convulsions in after years. A judicial decision in the case of a fugitive slave at Cincinnati, pronounced by a judge of the Supreme Court, attracted much attention in the early autumn. Washington M'Querry, a negro who had escaped from Kentucky, and had lived four years as a free man in Ohio, was claimed there by his former master, Henry Miller. The evidence in proof of the claim was so conclusive that it was impossible for the judge to do otherwise than order the unfortunate man back into bondage. In delivering his decision, the judge observed that the Constitution undoubtedly provided for the return of fugitive bondsmen. It could not be disputed, he said, that the term " persons held to service or labour" applied principally to persons held as slaves. Madison, while assenting to the provision, had objected to the use of the term "slave," because it expressed a thing repugnant to his sentiHe did not wish the idea that one man could hold property in another to be recognised in the organic law of his country. In the early days of Madison, however, American statesmen were much more sensitive on the score of slavery than they had since become. It was even then believed by many that negro bondage could not at once be removed, without great dangers to the social state; but men had not learned to glory in it openly, as a

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good thing in itself, and one of the safeguards of freedom. That perversion of the moral sense was reserved for a later day-for the day of Southern aggressiveness and military greed, inaugurated by General Jackson.

Nothing could surpass the barbarity with which the Fugitive Slave Law was enforced. Negroes were hunted with bloodhounds, remorselessly shot down in trying to escape, and left to die in the woods if they proved to be fatally wounded. When secured, a vindictive punishment awaited them on their return to the State whence they had fled. They often, however, presented so threatening a front to their pursuers that the latter withdrew, in mortal dread of the pistol or the bowie-knife. The sympathy of the masses in the Northern States was by this time almost uniformly on the side of the fugitive. The black man making for the frontiers of Canada was helped in every possible way, though to render such help was penal. He was provided with food, with money, with places of concealment, with modes of conveyance. The officials on the railways, the hands employed on board the lake steamboats, were ready and willing to assist. Many fugitives passed through the State of New York concealed in railway cars, with the connivance of the officials; others were hidden away in the lower parts of steam-vessels. A worthy Quaker from North Carolina had many years before combined with others in establishing a secret service for getting escaped slaves into the Northern States, or into Canada, to which organisation was given the name of the Underground Railroad.* Everywhere, the spirit of the North was roused; everywhere, a passionate determination was formed to resist the law which had cast so much discredit on the Union, and which threatened the liberties of a large number of men who had settled down into habits of peaceful industry in reliance on the protection of the Free States.

The chief non-political events of 1853 were, the sending out of an expedition of four armed vessels and a supply-ship to survey the eastern coast of Asia; the starting of several overland expeditions across the continent, with a view to determining the best route for the long-contemplated Pacific Railway; and the opening of a Great Exhibition of the industry of all nations in New York, in emulation of that which, two years before, had attracted so much attention in London. An additional expedition towards the Pacific was fitted out at his own expense by Colonel Fremont,

See "Reminiscences of Levi Coffin" (1876), in which many singular incidents of slave-life are recorded.

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who, late in the autumn, started with a number of men to explore the Cochatope Pass, and to ascertain whether during the winter the snows were so deep as to make railway travelling impracticable. The sufferings of this party were extreme. Brought to the very verge of starving by the exhaustion of their stores, they were for forty-five days compelled to live on the flesh of their mules, which were eaten, even to the very entrails. The explorers were saved by a relief party on the 19th of February, 1854. In 1848-9, Fremont had suffered in a similar way during an expedition to California across the Rocky Mountains. Another of the exploring parties in 1853 met with disastrous fortunes. The Indians of the Wasatch Mountains, in Utah, attacked the band under Captain Gunnison, and killed the leader and several of his men. Great hardships were endured by all the expeditions; but a vast tract of country was surveyed, and recent years have seen the successful working of a line of rail connecting the Pacific with the Atlantic Ocean, the opening of which took place on the 12th of May, 1869.

Congress re-assembled on the 6th of December, 1853. The President, in his Message, referred with satisfaction to the peaceful relations of the Republic with foreign lands, and, with reference to piratical expeditions against Cuba, declared that, should any such movement again take place, all the means at the command of the Government should be vigorously exerted to repress the attempt. Alluding to the Koszta affair, Mr. Pierce said that the Hungarian refugee was illegally seized, and wrongfully detained on board the Austrian ship-of-war; that at the time of his seizure he was clothed with the American nationality; that the acts of the American officers under the circumstances were justifiable, and that they were fully approved. Compliance with the subsequent demands of Austria had been refused, and the principles maintained by the American Secretary of State, in his correspondence with the Austrian Minister, would on all similar occasions be applied and enforced. The Treasury Report, the general results of which were recapitulated by the President, showed a surplus for the fiscal year of 32,000,000 dollars, out of which about 13,000,000 of the public debt had been paid, leaving the existing debt of the United States at 56,000,000 dollars. It was recommended that further progress should be made towards extinguishing the national obligations. The navy was declared to be in an inefficient state, and measures for its improvement were suggested; and an increase in the army was also considered necessary, especially on the frontiers.