Erastus Snow

“ That the early history of the Latter-day Saints fitted its leaders for governing, for organizing and controlling society, and moulding it for the best interest of the whole, will be admitted by the impartial historian of future ages, when the religious bigotry of the hour shall have spent its fury, and the stupid, blind ignorance of demagogues shall have been lost and drowned in the common sense of the people. ”

“ I am well aware that the excuse for all this is the unity of our people—the fact that they are not so greatly distracted by the efforts of aspiring demagogues and political satraps—and that their own common sense teaches them the necessity, under existing circumstances, to consider well and ponder the paths of their feet, and unite in the wisest and best measures, and in the choice of reliable honorable men to fill the various offices within the gift of the people, rather than divide and admit into power aspiring demagogues. ”

“ Herein Utah sets an example in this arid region to the rest of the world, and the future history of this great interior country will award all due honor to the wise legislation of Utah, and the wise counsels of her leaders, and deprecate the folly of the surrounding States and Territories in not following their example in this respect. But the Lord has blessed the labors of the people of Utah in diverting the mountain streams over the arid plains, and opening farms, orchards and vineyards, and building villages, towns and cities, organizing governments, and establishing a commonwealth. ”

“ If left to ourselves, unbelied, unscoffed at; if treated with any degree of fairness and liberality, and freedom to enjoy the rights and immunities of citizenship, unmolested, unpersecuted, I fear that we should soon begin to learn the ways of the wicked around us, or of the foolish of other countries, and the heedless, the thoughtless, and the ignorant among us would soon be following political demagogues. ”

“ We have shown to the world what could be done, or, I will say, rather, the Lord our God—the God of the Latter-day Saints—has shown to us and to all the world what could be done in this hitherto barren region when His blessing rested upon it. ”

“ We, as a people, have adopted the motto, that the office should seek the man, instead of the man seeking the office, and have invariably administered to the office seekers this quiet rebuke, a ticket-of-leave to stay at home. ”

“ My election means the continuation of your liberties; the election of my opponent means your disfranchisement as a whole people, the abolishment of your Legislative Assembly, the reducing of you to a colony governed, absolutely, as a conquered race. ”

“ But the honorable men and the honorable women who had entered into sacred vows with each other, and had sacredly observed these vows, and were rearing their families to honor and respect their parents and to be good citizens in society, teaching them to fear God, and honor the Patriarchs of old, and flee fornication, and look upon whoredom and adultery as the greatest of all crimes, next to the shedding of innocent blood—all these fathers and mothers must be disfranchised! ”

“ The wisdom of their wise men has perished, and the understanding of their prudent men has been hid. No more in any former examples than in their last effort—the Edmunds law, so called—which is the result of the combined efforts and labors of a nation, begotten by the hireling priests, a conclave that met in Ogden, the representatives of all the sectarians in Utah. ”

“ Two-thirds of the Senate and two-thirds of the House of Representatives can pass any measure over the veto of the President of the United States. The same may be said of all the legislatures in every State in the Union; a two-thirds vote of the Legislature suffices to pass any measure over the veto of the governor, and this is the rule obtaining in the territories, as well as the States, with the exception of Utah and New Mexico. ”

“ Had they been honestly working in the interest of morality, would they merely have made the effort to exclude those that were in plural marriage, and embrace in their arms the libertine, the adulterer, the whoremonger, the fornicator, and every lewd person of every class in the land outside of the marriage relation? ”

“ The one-man power exercised by a stranger appointed to Federal office, and sent among the people as a Governor; the one-man power that puts forth his ipse dixit to nullify the acts of a great people through their representatives in the Legislative Assembly, and to dictate to the people, or their representatives, what they may do with their taxes, or what they must not do with them—all these things, I say, will be referred to by the future historian as very, very black marks upon their history ”

“ In the providence of God His people are located in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains, midway between the oceans, occupying the position of a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. It was the providences of God around about His people which brought them to this land, which led them out of—what shall I say? ”

“ But it seems to be one of the providences of God, that there should be sufficient opposition from without—that is, from those who are not of us—to bind us together and enable us to see our only true interest in seeking to become one. ”

“ We know full well, that the devil, as well as the Lord, can utter some truths, and sometimes is allowed to fulfill his predictions. Wicked men do this as well as righteous men. But there is one decree that has gone out from days of old, that whatever may be the result of a few skirmishes here and there, and now and then, through the generations of men the great and last battle shall result in the utter overthrow of his Satanic Majesty ”

“ The school of experience through which the early leaders and families of Israel had passed for a period of sixteen years had fitted them for those trying scenes and for the work which they were destined to perform in these mountains, in grappling with the difficulties of a new country, of a barren waste, of an untried region, a region supposed to be utterly uninhabitable. ”

“ The good sense of the people has led them to seek out honorable and non-aspiring men and call them to duty, to fill the offices in the interests of the people, not for plunder and pelf, but for the reward of a good conscience and the approbation of an honest, discerning and approving people. ”

“ It is this assurance underlying the faith of the Saints, that enables them to go forward, onward and upward, relying upon the arm of Jehovah, and the ultimate triumph of truth and righteousness in the earth. That those men who have laid these schemes to abridge our liberties and immunities as citizens ”

“ He told us of the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and pointed out especially the valley, which he termed the valley of the Utah outlet—the valley that spread between the fresh water lake of Utah and the Great Salt Lake—as the most probable place in all of this great interior country to raise grain, at the same time supplementing his account of the land with the opinion that it was impossible to raise grain, and as a clincher to his opinion offered $1,000 as a premium for the first ear of corn that should be raised in this valley. ”

“ For the time cometh saith the Lord of Hosts, when all they that fight against Zion shall be as a dream of a night vision. "It shall even be as when an hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty ”

“ In the short space of seven years they had increased to tens of thousands, and established several Stakes of Zion on both sides of the Mississippi, with the beautiful city of Nauvoo as the centre of their operations and the site of the new temple. It was here that the ire of the people both of Illinois and Missouri was aroused against the Saints—especially the ire of the surrounding counties, both in Illinois and Iowa—until it became evident that the Saints must again take up the line of march to some other unsettled region. ”

“ And that oneness has not been the oneness of blindness, a blind following of the blind, but has been the result of. Seers and Prophets and wise men and sages and fathers of the people foreseeing the evil and pointing it out in that way and manner that all have been able to view and see it for themselves. ”

“ In rising before you, brethren and sisters, this afternoon, I desire to commit myself unto the Lord, invoking His blessing upon the congregation, and that the Holy Spirit may dictate that which may be spoken to our edification and encouragement in well-doing. ”

“ Have the men who made. this country, who organized government therein, who established order, preserved peace, and tamed the savage—who were the mountain police for all this great interior country for 30 years—have these tamely submitted to these arbitrary rulings and decisions without protest, and because there was no power to withstand? ”

“ In short, the cold shoulder was turned towards the Saints from every quarter, and immediately in front was the combined mob of nine counties, waging war against them, backed up secretly by the powers of the State—or at least there was no effort on the part of the State to restrain the actions of the mob. President Young and other Elders and the people were harassed continually by vexatious law suits. They were pressed on every hand. Their enemies desired to involve them in trouble. They sought to imprison our leading men. ”

“ But notwithstanding all this, they say secretly among themselves, and in the national and state councils: "This will never do. A people multiplying and increasing like this will over-run the land." They say, as did Pharaoh of old, "We must do something to stop this increase." Pharaoh devised means of secretly checking it, by charging his midwives, and making a decree, that every male child born in Israel should be put to death. ”

“ The great arid belt bordering on the Rocky Mountains, extending for some hundreds of miles eastward of the Rocky Mountains, and across the great basin of the American desert, was supposed to be absolutely unproductive—incapable of producing cereals, vegetables and fruits necessary to civilization. ”

“ Both acted in their sovereign capacity in organizing their State government and adopting their State constitution. It did not need any special act of Congress extending liberty to them so to do; for in both instances the people of California and Utah acted in virtue of their inalienable rights as free men entitled to the enjoyment of free government, and under the general institutions of our country, that recognize the right of the people to local self-government. Each State organized a State government, adopted a State constitution ”

“ We are not disposed to imitate these examples, nor to drink in the pernicious doctrine once uttered in Plymouth Church by the noted Henry Ward Beecher—that it was a positive evil to increase families in the land beyond a limited extent, and the ability of the parents to properly educate and maintain them, sustaining the idea of small families ”