Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 89, Number 4, 2021

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276 Senator Elbert D. Thomas and the Fate of European Jewry

By W. Raymond Palmer

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Salt Lake City Penny Stocks The Wolves of Main Street

By Rod Decker

305 Communicating in Code Brigham Young, Thomas L. Kane, and the “Lost” Utah War Message of July 1858

By Kenneth L. Alford and William P. MacKinnon

323 Saving the Governor’s Bacon Thomas L. Kane’s Political Defense of Alfred Cumming, 1859

By William P. MacKinnon

346 Provisioning Camp Floyd An Analysis of Faunal Remains

By Kayla Reid

DEPARTMENTS 275 352 359 360

In This Issue Reviews Contributors Utah In Focus

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REVIEWS 352 In a Rugged Land Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953–1954

By James R. Swensen Reviewed by Brad Westwood

353 The Commissioners of Indian Affairs

By David H. DeJong Reviewed by Robert S. McPherson

The Lost World of Reconstruction Politics

By David Prior Reviewed by Angela Diaz

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354 Between Freedom and Progress

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The United States Indian Service and the Making of Federal Indian Policy, 1824 to 2017

356 Tiny You A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement

By Jennifer L. Holland Reviewed by Kathleen A. Kelly

NOTICES

274 358 From San Francisco Eastward Victorian Theater in the American West

By Carolyn Grattan Eichin

358 Empire’s Tracks Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad

By Manu Karuka

358 The Saints Abroad Missionaries Who Answered Brigham Young’s 1852 Call to the Nations of the World Edited by Reid L. Neilson and R. Mark Melville

358 Hill Air Force Base

By George A. Larson

Our second article examines the growth and regulation of penny stock fraud in twentieth-century Utah. The state has a reputation for shady financial deals, arising especially from “affinity fraud,” but Rod Decker argues that this isn’t the whole story. Rather, Salt Lake City’s mining market and the uranium boom of the 1950s created an infrastructure that eased the way, beginning in the late 1960s, for investment shops that peddled in cheap stocks and made the most of loopholes. Part of the appeal for a few was a louche, downtown lifestyle full of parties and quick deals. Finally, in the 1980s, state and federal regulators began to squelch the penny stock trade. Today, investment fraud

Note 1.

“Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2020,” ADL, accessed June 22, 2021, adl.org/audit2020#executive-summary.

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The concluding pieces in this issue consider the Utah War—that long-simmering affair of the 1850s and beyond—from a number of angles. First, Kenneth Alford and William MacKinnon relate how an encrypted letter sent from Brigham Young to Thomas Kane in July 1858 was finally decoded in December 2020. It is a story of provenance, cryptography, and the digital tools that allowed an international group of thinkers to untangle the code. Second, MacKinnon carries the action into 1859 with an analysis of the tactics used by various actors in the conflict, including Young, Kane, and George Q. Cannon. Behind the scenes and before an audience, Kane shrewdly defended Alfred Cumming’s public image in order to keep someone at least friendly to the Latter-day Saints in office as Utah’s territorial governor. Together, the two articles also provide perspective on Elizabeth Kane, who originally deciphered communications sent to her husband and who had strong opinions about the political machinations of her day. Finally, Kayla Reid utilizes an entirely different methodology—zooarchaeology—to reconstruct part of the physical world of the Utah War. Reid examines the animal bones excavated from Camp Floyd, the installation that housed soldiers sent to Utah, to understand the nutritional well-being of the army.

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of course remains a problem, facilitated as it is by the Internet. This article provides important details in understanding the nuances of fraud in Utah.

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At this writing, in mid-2021, the United States and the world have witnessed a disturbing rise in acts of hatred against Jews, as well as denial of the Holocaust. The Anti-Defamation League recorded 2,024 instances of anti-Semitic vandalism, harassment, and assault in America in 2020.1 In Salt Lake City this May, shamefully, a swastika was engraved on a synagogue. Anti-Semitism has deep roots, but one can also find those who fought against the persecution of Jews. An example of such advocacy comes in the career of Senator Elbert Thomas, who represented Utah from 1933 to 1951. For moral and religious reasons, Thomas used his position to champion the cause of European Jews and actively work for their rescue during the years of the Nazi ascendency. In so doing, he collaborated with Jewish groups across the political spectrum, a fact that later damaged the senator’s career. Yet Thomas’s words and actions stand as an example of the support people can lend to each other, as W. Raymond Palmer establishes in this issue of Utah Historical Quarterly.

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In This Issue

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Senator Elbert D. Thomas and the Fate of European Jewry

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Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1883, Elbert Duncan Thomas was raised by parents who immigrated to Utah before 1865. Immersed in his faith as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Thomas served as a missionary in Japan from 1907 to 1912. He grew to love the Japanese people, learned the language, and even translated a Latter-day Saint religious tract into Japanese; his time in Japan was instrumental in him becoming an internationalist.1 The political scientist Frank Jonas described Thomas as “soft-spoken and mild-mannered,” and the Mormon Democrat from Utah served in the United States Senate from 1933 to 1951.2 Although Thomas had a small Jewish constituency, consisting of approximately 1,400 people, he had developed a sympathetic outlook toward Jewry some twenty years earlier, following a 1912 visit to Palestine.3 Senator Thomas was an intriguing person: he was an ardent Zionist, and he frequently championed Jewish causes. A backer of the New Deal who was generally loyal to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), Thomas supported an increase in the number of refugees admitted into the United States, even though FDR and many members of Congress were more reserved or opposed such measures. During his tenure in the Senate, Thomas became an outspoken advocate for European Jews and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. An approachable senator, Thomas occupied a seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for his entire term of service. This proved to be a good omen for several Jewish organizations. He was also an internationalist, a factor that influenced his views on Jewry.

Although a dearth of published literature exists on Thomas and the Holocaust, both Israeli and American scholars have written about him.

They generally conclude that Thomas’s religious and moral convictions, as well as political considerations, motivated him to help Jewish peoples.4 These scholars note that the United States responded inadequately to the Holocaust and that Thomas advocated for stronger actions, favoring rescue and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. For example, Thomas supported Hillel Kook’s nonsectarian pressure group

Edna Harker Thomas and Elbert D. Thomas, pictured with their three daughters. Elbert Thomas was a professor at the University of Utah, a major in the Utah National Guard, a president of the LDS Japanese Mission, and a United States senator. Utah State Historical Society, photograph 13947.

because of its commitment to rescue. He also backed the American Zionist Emergency Committee because it advocated for the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine.5 I agree with these arguments for Thomas’s underlying motivations and build upon them by highlighting the senator’s public actions on behalf of European Jews. This article thus begins to fill the scholarly gap on Thomas and the Holocaust: examining his 1934 travel to Germany; his association with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, the president of the American Jewish Congress (AJC) and cofounder of the World Jewish Congress (WJC); his interaction with groups such as Ambijan, the Jewish People’s Committee, and the New Zionist Organization of America;

In the summer of 1934, Senator Thomas visited Germany as an Oberlaender Fellow, under the auspices of the University of Utah Extension Division and with the blessing of FDR. Thomas and his wife, Edna, arrived in Berlin on July 20, 1934.6 The visit played a key motivational role in what Thomas attempted to do for Jews during his tenure as a senator.

While attending a luncheon at the residence of the US Ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, on August 2, 1934, Thomas met the non-Zionist rabbi Morris S. Lazaron. Lazaron was a rabbi at the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and was also the president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, an organization that promoted interfaith dialogue between Christians and Jews. He and Thomas discussed the situation in Germany and the United States; they agreed to meet and talk in the future. This initial meeting was significant, as Thomas established a working relationship with a Jewish leader of national stature. The senator began developing Zionist views when visiting Palestine in 1912. While visiting Jerusalem, he came to believe that a Jewish state should be established there—an opinion, which, according to Thomas, was rooted in his religious beliefs.7 His time with Lazaron also demonstrated that his Zionism did not prevent him from cultivating friendships with those who did not share that view.8

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and his reaction to the formation of the State of Israel. The piece also adds to the growing body of literature on the response of the United States to the Holocaust. I ask, in particular, why Thomas—a New Dealer and Roosevelt loyalist—sided with many of FDR’s opponents in advocating the rescue of European Jewry, and why Thomas chose to align himself with an ideologically diverse group of Jewish organizations. His cooperation with Jewish leadership in the push for the formation of a Jewish state in Palestine is integral to this article. Organized groups typically recruited public figures, such as Senator Thomas, to speak at their events. These issues lead to a broad assessment of Thomas’s quest to assist in efforts made by American Jewish organizations on behalf of their European to provide aid for those being oppressed by the Nazi regime.

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A map of Birobidzhan in eastern Russia, from a 1929 report about the region. Joseph Stalin designated the area as the Jewish Autonomous Region within the Soviet Union in 1928. Creator, Boris L’vovich Bruk. Courtesy Library of Congress, 2018692339.

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When Thomas returned to Utah he gave a series of speeches at the University of Utah and Brigham Young University, drawing several conclusions. He did not think Hitler would be in power for a significant length of time but condemned the persecution of the Jews.

Thomas thought the Jewish boycott against German-owned businesses was a mistake because it could ultimately push Germans to unite against their Jewish countrymen. His position differed from that of Wise who, ultimately, supported the boycott. Thomas also believed that the German people knew what was occurring in their country but would not speak openly about it. Furthermore, he argued that any action against Germany would eventually turn the tables in its favor.9 The views voiced by Thomas were not unique because many Americans, public servants and private citizens alike, held similar opinions.

During the 1930s, Thomas also spoke before several left-wing Jewish organizations that were affiliated with the US Communist Party, a decision that had negative political consequences many years later. His association with the Jewish left has received minimal attention in scholarly literature.10 He commenced involvement with the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidzhan, or Ambijan, in early 1936. Ambijan had been operating in the United States since the beginning of 1935, garnering support for a proposed Jewish

settlement in the Birobidzhan region of the Soviet Union. Ambijan held a dinner in the honor of the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Alexander A. Troyanovsky, on March 11, 1936, in order to raise funds for the Birobidzhan project. Thomas spoke alongside dignitaries such as James Waterman Wise, the son of Stephen S. Wise, and New York State Supreme Court Justice Mitchell May at Ambijan’s inaugural event.

Although a record of Thomas’s remarks has not been found, his participation at the dinner is important because it was the beginning of his relationship with Ambijan.11 The leadership of Ambijan suspended its activities in 1939 largely due to the Soviet–Nazi alliance.

Senator Thomas also gave support to the Jewish People’s Committee (JPC). The JPC, a front for the US Communist Party, originated in 1936 when the AJC and WJC refused to admit representatives of known radical groups. A representative of the JPC approached Thomas and asked him to participate in a conference held on November 19, 1937. The gathering took place at the National Press Club and its participants objected to the oppression of Jews in Poland. Thomas spoke at the conference, although the text of his remarks has not been found. Several conference delegates, escorted by Thomas, met with and presented a petition to Secretary of State Cordell Hull. JPC representatives urged Hull to ask Polish leaders to guarantee the rights of their Jewish citizens.12 While many JPC leaders held

Thomas responded to Wise by describing the situation in Poland as “tragic.” The senator wished Wise well in the upcoming gathering and gave a brief statement. According to Thomas:

The prominent Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, as pictured in 1921 in New York City. Photographer, Underwood and Underwood. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIGanrc-14228.

If we all press for citizenship on the basis of place of birth and overcome the archaic notion that citizenship follows the blood of parents, perhaps we should have the strongest legal means of overcoming our great problem of minorities. All thoughtful Americans will sustain you in that.17 Thomas took a stand in support of immigrants, minorities, and the question of citizenship

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On January 12, 1937, Wise wrote a letter to Thomas asking for a comment on behalf of the embattled Jews of Poland. Polish anti-Semitism became radicalized during the 1930s, often being patterned after Nazism. Many anti-Semites rallied around the “army, nationalism and Catholicism” banner. Pogroms were not uncommon in Poland during the mid- to late 1930s as the persecution of Jews escalated.15 Approximately 3,500,000 Jews lived in Poland then, but the Polish government claimed that the country could only support 500,000.

Nearly 3,000,000 Polish Jews, therefore, were threatened with expulsion. Wise told Thomas that “the plight of Polish Jewry [was] unparalleled in its misery and exceed[ed] by far the tragedy of the Jews of Nazi Germany.” Wise wanted to present a statement from Thomas at an AJC conference held on January 31, 1937.16

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While Thomas worked with more radical groups, he also maintained ties with the influential Stephen S. Wise. Rabbi Wise sought congressional support for issues of importance to him and the AJC, which he led, and he was also a staunch supporter of FDR and the New Deal.13 Thomas was one of many members of Congress with whom Wise corresponded.

Since Wise likely knew of Thomas’s sympathy for Jewish causes and Zionism, the Utah senator was a logical contact. Thomas, who was a strong believer in human rights, may have seen Wise’s overtures as an opportunity to express his own views in public forums. Yet Thomas also took into consideration the potential political fallout from commentaries given to Wise, as evidenced by his refusal to make a statement on the situation in Romania (explored below).

More often than not, however, Thomas complied with Wise’s requests. A picture of his attitude toward European Jewry begins to emerge through these public statements.

Wise contacted Thomas in 1936 requesting a statement from the senator on Palestine that Thomas provided.14 An ardent Zionist and probably the most influential Jewish leader in America, Wise was close to FDR and frequently lobbied congressional leaders on Jewish matters. Wise and several other mainstream Jewish leaders were reluctant to make their own public statements concerning persecution and the Holocaust. They believed that their comments could contribute to an increase in anti-Semitism in the United States. Instead, Wise sought out non-Jews such as Thomas. He consulted with Thomas on a variety of issues but expressed particular concern about Jewish persecution in Germany and Poland.

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radical views, humanitarian motives—not political considerations—were key factors in Thomas’s decision to participate in a JPC function.

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when doing so was controversial. Similar situations are present in society today.

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Wise contacted Thomas again in November 1937 concerning another AJC conference that was to be convened later that month. Topics open for discussion at the parley included anti-Semitism and the persecution of Jews in Eastern and Central Europe. Wise wanted to present “a united, democratic front for the purpose of devising a new and more comprehensive program for the safety of our fellow Jews and the security of our American institutions.”

He asked Thomas to provide “a message of encouragement and support.”18 Thomas complied and provided the following message that was, indeed, presented at the conference. He declared: I am an American who believes thoroughly in democracy. Therefore, I am in favor of stressing man, his rights, his privileges and his duties. I am opposed to an anti-Semitic movement as I would be to an anti-Catholic, anti-Negro, anti-Japanese or anti-Chinese movement. Hate begets hate and when you hate a man it generally results in hating many men. When you hate a group of men it generally results in hating all men.19 In this instance, Thomas mentioned the pitfalls associated with forming opinions of people on the basis of race and religion.

Parliamentary elections took place in Romania on December 20, 1937. Provisions in the Romanian constitution required King Carol II to invite an individual to form a government following the elections. He chose the rightwing nationalist Octavian Goga of the National Christian Party for political reasons. This did not bode well for Romanian Jews. By February of 1938, an increase in anti-Semitism and oppression threatened some 758,000 Jews in Romania. Wise wrote to Thomas describing the conditions that Jews faced under the Goga government. Moreover, Wise asked the senator to assist him in an effort to raise the level of awareness concerning Jewish persecution in that country. As a mechanism for doing this, Wise suggested that Thomas deliver an address on the floor of Congress. The Goga government

fell shortly after Wise sent the missive on Romania. Under those changing circumstances, Thomas thought it would be “unwise to say anything” relating to the issue.20 By the middle of 1938, many Jews in America had attempted to create a united front against anti-Semitism. In connection with that movement, Wise contacted Thomas again requesting a statement, telling the senator that an expression of sympathy from a prominent national leader would benefit the cause. Thomas considered the matter carefully and made the following remarks: Every American who has faith in this great experiment of attempting to bring many races, many religions and many environments together in a cooperative life for the good of all on a basis of living and letting live must remember that he has both an active and a passive attitude to maintain in all of his reactions. Our efforts should be put forth in the emphasis of likes, not in the condemnation of differences. We should learn to appreciate one another, not merely to tolerate each other. An anti-Semitic movement in America would grow into an anti-movement of many kinds, and before we would know it, it would be aimed at ourselves.21 Thomas’s association with Wise played a role in establishing him as a leading critic of anti-Semitism in the Senate. No known correspondence exists between Wise and Thomas during the war and postwar years. While the reasons for this are unclear, there is a possibility that Thomas’s cooperation with representatives of the Revisionist movement troubled Wise.

Even though Thomas’s correspondence with Wise apparently dropped off in the 1940s, the senator continued his involvement with other Jewish groups, including left-wing ones such as Ambijan, which had reinvented itself in 1941.

Thomas participated in one Ambijan event during 1941, but little is known about what he said on the occasion. He was among the speakers at a dinner in honor of Soviet Consul General Victor Fediushine that took place in New York on December 3, 1941. According to a New

York Times article, attendees donated $5,000 toward the purchase of a mobile x-ray machine for the use of the Soviet Union.22

Hillel Kook, the Lithuanian-born Zionist who was known as Peter Bergson in the United States.

Photographer, J. Stara. Courtesy Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, photograph 4158.

Ambijan held a national conference in New York on November 25–26, 1944; Thomas participated. Congressman Emanuel Celler, a New York Democrat, delivered a speech as well.

Postwar reconstruction was the theme of the event, with Thomas giving a presentation in the context of Soviet-American relations. Although the text of Thomas’s remarks has not been found, the main thrust of the speech appears in a New York Times article. During a session in honor of Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko, the senator complimented the Soviets for maintaining a “national minority policy of equality of all races.”24 Gromyko would eventually serve as the Soviet minister of foreign affairs (1957–1985) and chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1985–1988). Thomas’s praise of the USSR at the Ambijan events likely occurred because he believed that Jews enjoyed favorable treatment there. In reality, he may have been unaware of the harsh treatment that minorities and perceived “enemies of the state” received under the Stalin regime.

In Thomas’s support and advocacy for Jews during this time period, his relationship with the Bergson Group stands out—Revisionists whose style and methods were more provocative than those of mainstream Jewish leaders like Wise. His association with this organization started in 1942 when he came out publicly in support of the formulation of a Jewish army.

Involvement with the Bergson Group strengthened his relationship with the American Jewish community. It did so by providing access to national leaders as well as an organizational structure to channel his passion and desire to help European Jews. Thomas supported the New Zionist Organization of America (NZOA) as well, which served as the arm of the New Zionist Organization (NZO) in the United States.

The Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky played a key role in the formation of the NZO during 1935. In 1939, a group of NZOA operatives, led by Benzion Netanyahu, arrived in America. The NZOA had two primary objectives, namely, to advance their campaign for a

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Ambijan sponsored a dinner commemorating the tenth anniversary of Birobidzhan that took place at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on May 16, 1944. Thomas participated in the event and received a warm reception from the more than one thousand attendees. Thomas’s opponent in the 1938 senatorial race, Brigham Young University president Franklin S. Harris, spoke as well. The festivities netted more than $27,000 in donations for Ambijan. In his keynote address, Thomas spoke highly of the USSR because he held the belief that the alliance between the United States and USSR should continue following the war. In his opinion, such an alliance would ensure “lasting peace.” Thomas also said that the Soviet army had “covered itself with undying glory” during the war. Then, he declared that in the USSR, “anti-Semitism [was] severely punished as treason against the entire nation.” Thomas stated that “implement[ing] the equal rights of the Jewish people” was one of the objectives of Birobidzhan. To that end, Ambijan did extensive work on behalf of orphans, which Thomas deemed “worthy of the great generosity of the American people.”23

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Jewish army and to paint a picture of the British as anti-Zionist.25

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Hillel Kook—a Lithuanian-born activist who went by Peter Bergson in the United States— led a faction of the Irgun Zvai Leumi that was based in the United States. The Bergson Group consisted of five nonsectarian committees that functioned between 1938 and 1948. The American Friends for a Jewish Palestine actively raised funds in the United States and sought public support for illegal Jewish immigration into Palestine. The Committee for a Jewish Army (CJA) was established in 1941 to create a Jewish army to fight alongside the Allies in World War II. The emphasis of the CJA began to shift toward the rescue of European Jews in late 1942. To that end, Bergson formed the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe in July 1943. In 1944, Bergson created the Hebrew Committee for National Liberation and the League for a Free Palestine. Providing support for a “Hebrew” revolt against British forces in Palestine was the objective of both committees.26 During the war, the underlying objective of the Bergson Group was to push either FDR or Congress or both into acting on the “Jewish problem” in Europe. They conducted an extensive public relations campaign and lobbied Congress in an effort to increase public awareness for causes they supported. Despite what appeared to be a well-intentioned effort, mainstream Jews in the United States despised Bergson’s organization. Thomas’s old friend Rabbi Wise was particularly vocal in this regard. He believed that Bergson’s “attack” ads increased anti-Semitism in the United States.

Wise also claimed that the Bergsonites did not represent American Jewry as a whole.

Thomas’s past association with Wise did not prevent him from supporting individuals and organizations that the latter opposed. When Thomas joined the CJA is unclear, but he is listed as a CJA supporter in a February 20, 1942, advertisement.27 Prominent public figures who were members of the Bergson committees typically agreed to have their names and titles placed in the full-page, so-called attack advertisements that were published in major American newspapers. Through this print media campaign, they wanted to increase public

support for Bergson’s proposals. Many of the ads criticized FDR and the State Department, as well as the American Jewish organizations, for failing to take steps to rescue European Jews.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu had persuaded Thomas to speak at a joint meeting of the NZOA and the Jewish State Party. The event took place at the Manhattan Center in New York on November 17, 1942. Reiterating his support for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, Thomas held the belief that any Jew who wished to settle in the proposed locale should be able to do so. Thomas clearly stated that the time had come for the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration, the 1917 statement of Britain’s support for the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.28 Thomas’s comments reaffirmed his longheld position as a Zionist.

Senator Thomas was one of the signatories on the “Proclamation on the Moral Rights of the Stateless and Palestinian Jews,” sponsored by the CJA and published in the New York Times on December 7, 1942. Created by CJA chairman Pierre van Passen, the objective of the advertisement was to publicize Bergson’s proposal for a Jewish army, thereby pushing Congress and the White House into action. Palestinian and stateless European Jews would fight the Nazis alongside Allied forces if the organization emerged. The CJA looked toward America to take the lead and stop the destruction of the Jews of Europe.29 In May 1943, Thomas received an invitation on CJA letterhead to “extend [his] support to the cause of the forgotten 5,000,000 Jews of Europe.”30 One month later, word reached Thomas that the Bergson Group had organized an Emergency Conference to “serve as a basis for constructive plans for immediate and practical steps to save European Jewry from imminent slaughter.”31 The Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe was founded at that conference. Thomas actively supported the conference, as well as the subsequent committee and its objectives.

On October 1, 1943, Thomas contacted Secretary of State Cordell Hull, proposing the creation of an agency to assist in the rescue of the Jews of Europe. Thomas acted on behalf of the

The State Department position toward the proposed resolution became clear when Long wrote that “to create a new governmental agency to deal with the refugee problem composed of military, economic and diplomatic experts would appear unwarranted and liable to duplicate functions [that were] being carried out by the [State] Department.” Long concluded his missive to Thomas by stating that “the creation of a new refugee agency at this time would interrupt the relationships already established with the Intergovernmental Committee and might affect adversely the contribution this Government can make towards a solution of the refugee problem.”35 While Long commented on “relief and rehabilitation” in the letter, he never mentioned actions concerning rescue, which was the major issue raised in the proposition made by Thomas.

On November 9, 1943, identical resolutions were introduced in the US House of Representatives and Senate advising FDR to create a separate agency to manage the refugee

The Gillette-Rogers resolution played a role in the decision made by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau to discuss the possibility of relieving the State Department of its responsibility for refugee matters with FDR. Morgenthau’s conference with the president gave rise to the issuance of an Executive Order creating the War Refugee Board (WRB) on January 22, 1944.38 Some three months after FDR’s announcement, Thomas said he believed the WRB would have difficulty rescuing large numbers of Jews unless Palestine became available as a haven.39 This idea was clearly consistent with his Zionist views.

While Thomas advocated Bergson Group rescue initiatives, he also strongly supported their proposals that sought to open Palestine to largescale Jewish immigration. This was largely due to the Zionist approach to Jewish issues that he had developed early in his career.

The likelihood of the Allies attempting to rescue substantial numbers of refugees was slim unless a safe haven could be found for them.

The British and, more often than not the US State Department, cited the lack of sufficient transportation and an absence of suitable areas for settlement as reasons for not pursuing rescue opportunities. In the opinion of Bergson

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Hull did not respond to Thomas directly. Instead, he referred the matter to Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long, who coordinated refugee policy for the State Department. A controversial figure, Long was accused by contemporaries, as well as by a number of subsequent scholars, of being unsympathetic— even anti-Semitic—toward Jews.33 In a letter to Thomas, Long contended that the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, having been formed at the Evian refugee conference in 1938, was in place “for the purpose of bringing all immediate and practicable relief and rehabilitation to the oppressed peoples of Europe.”34

crisis. Proposed by Senator Guy Gillette (Iowa, Democrat) and Representative Will Rogers Jr. (California, Democrat), the resolution was commonly referred to as Gillette-Rogers. Thomas cosponsored the Senate version, which was similar to the document he had sent to Hull a month earlier.36 The House Foreign Relations Committee held hearings on the resolution because committee chairman Solomon Bloom (New York, Democrat) wanted to kill it and silence State Department criticism.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Senator Tom Connally (Texas, Democrat) did not think hearings were necessary, and he had reservations about the full committee voting on the matter. Connally was ill near the conclusion of the term and agreed to call a special executive session to permit the Foreign Relations Committee to vote on Gillette-Rogers, one day prior to the adjournment of the Senate. In his absence, Thomas brought the matter before the committee, and the result was a unanimous vote in the affirmative.37

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Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe. The proposed agency had been discussed at the Emergency Conference that created the committee in July 1943. The document sent to Hull argued that certain measures needed to be taken to rescue European Jewry.

To formulate and coordinate rescue, a new organization composed of “military, economic and diplomatic experts” was required. While the document was written as a resolution that could be introduced in Congress, Thomas asked Hull if an agency could be created by executive order instead.32 Thomas’s query foreshadowed FDR’s forthcoming action in this regard.

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Group leaders, Palestine provided a logical locale for the settlement of large numbers of Jewish refugees. To that end, they created the American League for a Free Palestine. One of its objectives was to gain the support of the American public for “the freedom and independence of Palestine that constitutes the life and death struggle of the Hebrew nation.” Bergson and his lieutenants asked Senator Thomas to support the organization. He wholeheartedly accepted.40

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The United States Senate approved a resolution introduced by Bergson Group supporter Senator Gillette on February 15, 1944. The legislation, which was originally presented on February 11, 1943, urged the US government to provide food for children in several Axis-occupied countries. Children in Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and France would benefit most from the proposed program. Thomas supported the resolution from its infancy, and Bergson sent Thomas a telegram thanking him for his assistance.41 The Jewish playwright Ben Hecht and Gabriel Wechsler, the national secretary for Bergson’s Emergency Committee, contacted Thomas on March 29, 1944, concerning a British proposal to prohibit the entry of Jews into Palestine.

That people would be excluded from Palestine based solely on “religious belief” was the primary concern Hecht and Wechsler expressed.

They asked Thomas to make a “statement for national release” on the matter. He declined, saying, “A statement from me will not add much to the many others—I think it is better to let me do what I can—my own way.”42 In this instance, Thomas refused to make a public statement on a politically charged issue. Instead, he preferred working behind the scenes.

An address to the Second Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe, held on August 8, 1944, provides an example of this behind-the-scenes work. In the address, Thomas made several controversial statements that were censored. His remarks were broadcast via radio since he could not attend the meeting, but the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) suppressed several pertinent comments. For instance, CBS deleted a reference Thomas made to Jews in Hungary, holding visas for entry into Palestine, in which he had remarked:

This creates an entirely new situation in which the responsibility is thrown on our shoulders, and more particularly, on the shoulders of the British government. As an American and as a Christian, I venture to suggest to the British government, as the mandatory for Palestine, that it is their inescapable moral duty to answer the Hungarian government—through the International Red Cross—that every Hebrew will be admitted into Palestine.43 Clearly, this statement could have been perceived as problematic because of Thomas’s direct attack on British policy.

The censor struck Thomas again in the radio broadcast when he made a reference to the opening of Palestine to largescale Jewish immigration as stated in the Republican and Democrat party platforms. He said: “This represents the will of practically the entire American nation. Certainly, we are all, therefore, for the immediate establishment in Palestine of emergency rescue shelters.”44 The shelters, also referred to as “free ports,” would serve as locations where refugees could reside for the remainder of the war. After the war, they would be absorbed into a future Jewish state in Palestine or resettled elsewhere. This comment might have been deleted because it suggested considerable support in America for increasing Jewish immigration into Palestine.

CBS also omitted a statement concerning Thomas’s long-standing support for a Jewish army. Thomas remarked that the United Nations (UN) should allow the “Hebrew guerilla bands, who are today fighting the enemy in Europe, together with the 30,000 Hebrews in the Palestinian Regiments, be given a chance to fight in their own name and under their own banner in a Hebrew army.”45 The United States and Great Britain had opposed the creation of a Jewish army since the origination of the concept several years earlier. That stance might have prompted the deletion of this portion of Thomas’s speech.

Senator Thomas attempted to assist Hungarian Jews in the summer of 1944 as well. The Hungarian government had enacted anti-Jewish

On August 24, 1944, Thomas introduced a Senate resolution to complement the ACPC proposal. He suggested “the immediate establishment of mass emergency rescue shelters in the mandated territory of Palestine.”48 Gillette and other supporters of the Bergson Group sponsored the resolution. The maneuver’s objective was to “define how . . . rescue” of Jews in Hungary could “be best accomplished.”49 Thomas and the resolution sponsors stressed that it was “a humanitarian measure [and had] nothing to do with the political status of [Palestine].”50 Despite good intentions, Thomas and his colleagues had acted too late. Use of customary immigration routes out of Hungary to Palestine was impossible because of the Soviet offensive taking place about the time Thomas brought his resolution before Congress. The Germans removed Horthy from office on October 18, 1944, for announcing that Hungary had signed an agreement with Russia and was withdrawing from the war. In spite of these deep disappointments and the cruel injustices

What Thomas saw troubled him spiritually.

This led him to become philosophical in a radio address he delivered on June 30, 1945, following his return: “Ignorance and oppression, wherever they exist, should be rooted out, for they are a threat to freedom.”52 Thomas also reflected on the servicemen returning to the states. He hoped they always remembered what they had seen in Europe and that the United States would not become an isolationist nation following the war. Thomas concluded his radio address by saying: “Let us hope that we can demonstrate to others the kind of faith in man that makes democracy a living thing.”53 Thomas continued to support Jewish organizations in their push to create a Jewish state following the war. To that end, he made a speech before the Mizrachi Zionist Organization of America, an Orthodox group, on June 2, 1946. In a reference to Nazi Germany, Thomas

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Thomas was one of twelve representatives and senators who toured Europe for sixteen days in April and May of 1945. General Dwight D. Eisenhower and General George C. Marshall requested the visit because of the horrific conditions found by Allied forces at the end of World War II, particularly the concentration camps. Thomas and the delegation visited Buchenwald, Nordhausen, and Dachau.

They confirmed the atrocities that newspapers had reported for several years. Representative Dewey Short (Missouri, Republican) described the conditions of the camps visited by the group in vivid detail. Short demanded the punishment of all those involved and stated that he would remember “the bestiality that he found in Germany.”51

I

Senator Thomas’s support for the European Jews remained firm following the war. He toured Europe between April 22 and May 7, 1945, and witnessed the atrocious conditions endured by those imprisoned in concentration camps. Following his return, Thomas continued to push for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Despite some concerns, he supported the UN partition proposal for Palestine.

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against European Jews in World War II, Thomas remained steadfast in his advocacy of their plight and the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

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legislation in prior years, primarily to appease the Nazis. German forces entered Hungary on March 19, 1944, with orders to ghettoize and deport the Jewish population to Auschwitz.

Deportations started on May 15, 1944. Consequently, Hungary lost more than 400,000 of its Jews in less than sixty days. On July 9, 1944, the Hungarian Regent Miklós Horthy issued an order halting the deportations. He took this action despite pressure from Germany to do otherwise. By the middle of July 1944, the Hungarian government decided to allow the departure of 7,800 Jews holding immigration visas for Palestine. The proposition was commonly referred to as the Horthy Offer. About one month later, representatives of the American Christian Palestine Committee (ACPC) sent telegrams to Hull and FDR urging them to act in support of the Jews in Hungary.46 The British government, however, opposed any alteration of its immigration policy for Palestine, which cast doubt upon any possible successes that the proposal might have. Members of the Halutz movement successfully evacuated several hundred of the Jews included in the offer to Romania. Despite no direct involvement, the Bergson Group supported the Hungarian government’s approach.47

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declared that nations that persecute their minority groups “do not thrive.” He then strongly stated, “the Jewish people must have a homeland.” Speaking as a senator, not as a private citizen, Thomas clearly communicated that the United States would “not evade the responsibility of civilization towards the Jewish people.”

Furthermore, he reported that America stood “four-square for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.”54

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Thomas’s comments in the summer of 1946 underscored his commitment to Zionism. On June 12 of that year, British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin issued a belated response to President Harry S. Truman’s proposal of July 2, requesting that Britain immediately admit 100,000 displaced European Jews into Palestine. Bevin suggested that the United States made the proposition because it did not want the refugees in New York. The assertion infuriated Thomas. Bevin also cited security concerns as a factor in his opposition to largescale immigration into Palestine. The foreign minister also hinted at the impending need for American troops in Palestine. In response, Thomas said that if a formal request for troops came it should be denied and referred to the UN. He also argued that if the British could not maintain security in Palestine “it [was] proof of her unfitness to continue to hold the Mandate, and indeed another reason for quickly relieving Britain of her trusteeship . . . over Palestine.”55 Thomas’s commitment to Zionism was evident, and he clearly believed that creating a Jewish state in Palestine was essential.

In other matters, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held hearings concerning the UN International Refugee Organization (IRO) on March 1, 1947. The proposed resolution allowed Truman to accept membership in the IRO on behalf of the United States. The package also included an appropriation. Thomas acted as an advocate for Jewish Displaced Persons during the hearing. While questioning Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, Thomas asked if the IRO would “help or hinder” the situation relating to the Jews in Germany and what it would have to do with the “Palestine question.”

Acheson replied that the IRO would find places to resettle displaced persons and refugees.

However, the IRO did “not deal directly with

the Palestine problem.” Thomas continued pushing Acheson. He wanted to know specifically if the agreement creating the IRO would assist getting people to Palestine. Acheson answered that the proposal would “not open the door of Palestine.” Consequently, Thomas reacted by stating that the IRO would “not settle or help the Jewish question.”56 Acheson denied that allegation. In a letter to Zionist leader Emanuel Neumann, Thomas apologized for his “complete failure” at the hearings on the IRO, referring to his failed attempt to use the IRO as a mechanism for the immigration of refugees into Palestine. Nonetheless, Neumann thanked him for his continuing efforts.57 The problems relating to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine were turned over to the UN in the spring of 1947. This international organization created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on May 13, 1947, to develop a partition plan.

Following weeks of discussion, the UNSCOP submitted a proposal to the UN General Assembly that created an Arab state comprising 4,500 square miles and populated by 804,000 Arabs and 10,000 Jews. The proposed Jewish

Elbert D. Thomas. Utah State Historical Society, photograph 13945.

The full UN General Assembly ratified the UNSCOP plan on November 29, 1947. The final vote was thirty-three in favor and thirteen opposed. All members dissenting were from Asian or Muslim-majority nations, with the notable exceptions of Cuba and Greece.63 In the months following passage of the partition, the State and Defense departments, as well as the intelligence community, asked Truman to withdraw support. They believed that Arab opposition, lack of cooperation from the British, and likely hostilities in Palestine could damage US interests in the region.64 Thomas opposed the idea. He argued that the viability of the UN was at stake if the United States did not stand by its word. He also was concerned that if nations could not cooperate with each other on the Palestine question, the chance of a future solution appeared unlikely. Thomas therefore advocated no retractions of pledged support for the partition.

In summation, Thomas’s 1912 visit to Palestine and subsequent trips to Germany were crucial, and he became a staunch Zionist after 1912. The persecution that he saw in Germany in 1934 and further reports from Wise became motivational factors in the statements of support he made for the embattled Jews of Europe. There is also some wisdom in Bergson’s assessment of Thomas: “this was a religious thing . . . he felt a kind of moral-religious duty to do this.”67 Thomas believed at an early stage that Palestine was the best location for the resettlement of Jewish refugees. His support for Bergson Group rescue initiatives and proposals to find safe haven for refugees played a role in his Zionist view. He was an advocate for increased Jewish immigration into Palestine during the war. Moreover, he continued to support the founding of a Jewish state after seeing the conditions confronting refugees in Europe following the war.

Senator Thomas spoke out against hate, oppression, racism, anti-Semitism, and bigotry.

He believed that embracing those mindsets posed a threat to basic human rights. He also mentioned the importance of charity. These viewpoints were in alignment with Thomas’s religious convictions.

Thomas supported an ideologically diverse group of individuals and organizations,

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Despite his concerns, Thomas lobbied members of several key undecided UN delegations in an effort to win support for the proposed partition. He and many of his colleagues believed that failure to approve it would leave Palestine in “anarchy and Arab-Jewish conflict.”61 Additionally, Thomas thought that such a scenario was likely regardless of the outcome of the impending vote in the UN. Public opinion in the United States solidly favored partition.

Members of the Senate told undecided ambassadors there would be a “deep appreciation to . . . favorable action in support of [the] Palestine partition.” Finally, the senators appealed to the sense of “international responsibility” that was confronting the undecided ambassadors.62

I

The proposed partition troubled Senator Thomas. He thought it “may and undoubtedly will bring trouble.”59 To that end, he suggested that the United States should control arms sales to both Jews and Arabs. Thomas held grave concerns about war in Palestine after the partition. In the event his fears materialized, he advised Truman that America should remain neutral, not taking sides in any conflict that might occur.60

Armed conflict between Jews and Arabs contributed to the abandonment of the partition plan. The British chose to end their mandate on May 14, 1948. Following this, David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency, announced the formation of the State of Israel. Thomas described the establishment of Israel on May 15, 1948, as “the fulfillment of the desire of nations” at a rally that took place at the Polo Grounds in New York.65 He also expressed his hope for what Israel could become. Thomas said that Israel “should give the world an example of how freedom should work and what it can do.”66 He made his remarks alongside Andrei Gromyko, Soviet ambassador to the UN, who received a warm reception from the audience. While the event had radical overtones, Thomas participated despite being asked to do otherwise by representatives of the American Jewish League Against Communism. A cause for which Thomas had fought long and hard for had finally come to fruition.

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state was 5,500 square miles in area and would have a population of 538,000 Jews and 397,000 Arabs.58

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particularly during the pre-war and war years.

He worked with the Zionist Rabbi Wise, as well as the non-Zionist Rabbi Lazaron. Speaking before Communist Front groups, such as Ambijan and the JPC, did not pose a problem for him. Thomas had a high level of involvement in Revisionist groups, namely the NZOA and the committees operated by Bergson. It should be noted that Wise had a certain level of hostility toward Bergson. Yet a desire to assist the European Jews was something that these groups and individuals had in common. Ideological differences did not appear to be relevant to Thomas in this situation. His motive for supporting such a variety of groups lies in the fact that he and they shared a yearning to do what was possible to aid the embattled Jews of Europe. It is worth noting that Thomas lost his Senate seat to Republican Wallace F. Bennett in 1950. His connection to known Communist groups proved to be a decisive factor in his defeat.68 Thomas’s rebuke of Ernest Bevin in 1946 shows his steadfast wish for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Despite feeling uncomfortable regarding the proposed partition of Palestine, Thomas actively campaigned for its passage. When the military and intelligence community advised Truman to rescind US support for partition, Thomas’s endorsement was unwavering. His continued commitment to the Zionist cause played a role in his opposition to forces in the US government who opposed partition. Surely, Senator Thomas was an outspoken supporter of Jewry and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The formation of the State of Israel proved to be the culmination of Thomas’s work to promote ideas touted by an array of Jewish organizations, and the efforts that he made to assist European Jews are admirable and important.

Notes 1.

Haruo Iguchi, “Senator Elbert D. Thomas and Japan,” Journal of American and Canadian Studies 25 (January 2007): 75–105.

2. Frank H. Jonas, Politics in the American West (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1969), 361.

3. “Elbert D. Thomas, U.S. Official, Dead,” New York Times, February 12, 1953, 27.

4. Yehudit Even-Haim, “Senator Elbert D. Thomas and his Efforts on behalf of European Jewish Refugees and the Establishment of the State of Israel, 1932–1948” (PhD diss., Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 2009), i–

xiv [Hebrew]. Even-Haim devoted much of her 2009 thesis to describing why Thomas advocated for Jewish peoples. First, she asserted that Thomas’s activity was politically motivated. Thomas did not wish to offend FDR or “jeopardize his political status” and therefore considered the potential political consequences of his actions. He adopted a “liberal approach” and had “a profound internal moral awareness and recognition of the connection between the Mormon and Jewish religions.” She further argued that throughout the 1930s and 1940s, the senator’s “deep religious belief” drove him to assist Jews.

5. Sharon Kay Smith, “Elbert D. Thomas and America’s Response to the Holocaust” (PhD diss., Brigham Young University, 1991), 87, 197; David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941– 1945 (New York: Pantheon, 1984); Douglas F. Tobler, “The Jews, the Mormons and the Holocaust,” Journal of Mormon History 18, no. 1 (1992): 59–92.

6. Edna Harker Thomas, Diary, July 20, 1934, box 3, Papers of Elbert D. Thomas, Mss B 129, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah.

7. Smith, “Elbert D. Thomas,” 70–71.

8. William E. Dodd Jr. and Martha Dodd, ed. Ambassador Dodd’s Diary, 1933–1938 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1941), 135–36, 138; Morris S. Lazaron to Elbert D. Thomas, September 13, 1934, and Lazaron to Thomas, September 28, 1934, box 8, fd. 15, Morris S. Lazaron Papers, MS-71, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, Ohio.

9. Three newspaper clippings summarizing Thomas’s speeches at the University of Utah, August 27, October 5, 1934, and undated, box 33, fd. 4, University of Utah Extension Division Records, 1912–1955, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah; Thomas to Lazaron, October 7, 1934, box 8, fd. 15, Lazaron Papers; “Senator Thomas to Lecture on Germany Oct. 5,” Utah Daily Chronicle, October 4, 1934, 1; “Thomas Speaks at Assembly,” Provo (UT) Evening Herald, October 31, 1934, 1; “Thomas Discusses European Matters,” Salt Lake Telegram, November 1, 1934, 22; Franklin S. Harris, Diary, October 31, 1934, vol. 3, 864, MS 1611, LDS Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

10. Thomas’s association with Communists emerged during the 1938 senatorial campaign without mention of specific groups or individuals. See Linda Muriel Zabriskie, “Resting in the Highest Good: The Conscience of a Utah Liberal” (PhD diss., University of Utah, 2014), 174–83.

11. Henry F. Srebrnik, Dreams of Nationhood: American Jewish Communists and the Soviet Birobidzhan Project, 1924–1951 (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2010), 29– 52, and “An Idiosyncratic Fellow-Traveler: Vilhjalmur Stefansson and the American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidzhan,” East European Jewish Affairs 28, no.1 (1998): 40–42; Ambijan Committee, Birobidjan: A New Hope for Oppressed European Jews (New York: American Committee for the Settlement of Jews in Birobidjan, 1936), 14–19; “Jews’ Plight Laid to Trade Crisis,” New York Times, March 12, 1936, 15; Program from a Dinner in Honor of Alexander A. Troyanovsky, March 11, 1936, box 39, fd. 85, Papers of Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Mss-196, Rauner Special Collections Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

12. “Hull Gets Plea for Jews,” New York Times, November 21, 1937, 7; “U.S. Urged to Curb Pogroms in Poland,”

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18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

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36.

37.

38.

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diss., University of New Hampshire, Durham, 1994), 32, 38–43.

Judith Tydor Baumel, The “Bergson Boys” and the Origins of Contemporary Zionist Militancy, trans. Deana Ordan (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005); Monty Noam Penkower, “In Dramatic Dissent: The Bergson Boys,” American Jewish History 70, no. 3 (1981): 281–309. For an analysis of the Committee for a Jewish Army and its origins, see Monty Noam Penkower, “Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky, Hillel Kook-Peter Bergson and the Campaign for a Jewish Army,” Modern Judaism 31, no. 3 (2011): 332–73.

New York Herald Tribune, February 20, 1942.

M. I. Wheeler to M. W. Beckelman, November 19, 1942, ProQuest History Vault, O.S.S. Collection, file 001717– 018–0100–0012, accessed July 2, 2019, hv.proquest. com; “Zionists Demand National Status,” New York Times, November 18, 1942, 17; Rafael Medoff, Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1926–1948 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002), 82.

New York Times, December 7, 1942, 14; Monty Noam Penkower, The Holocaust and Israel Reborn: From Catastrophe to Sovereignty (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 66.

Peter Bergson to Thomas, May 13, 1943, and Thomas to Bergson, May 15, 1943, box 51, Thomas Papers.

Edwin C. Johnson to Thomas, June 5, 1943, box 51, Thomas Papers.

Thomas to Cordell Hull, October 1, 1943, State Department Decimal File 840.48 Refugees/4521, National Archives microfilm, M1284, roll 36, Department of State Central Files, RG 59, National Archives and Record Service, Washington, DC. Rafael Medoff, Blowing the Whistle on Genocide: Josiah DuBois, Jr., and the Struggle for a U.S. Response to the Holocaust (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2009), 22–23; David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, A Race Against Death: Peter Bergson, America, and the Holocaust (New York: The New Press, 2002), 151. For a balanced view of Long, see Richard Breitman and Alan Kraut, American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 1933–1945 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 126–45. For another assessment of Long, see Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995), 171–75.

Breckinridge Long to Thomas, undated, 840.48 Refugees/4521, M1284, roll 36.

Breckinridge Long to Thomas, undated.

For the text of the resolution, see Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 1st sess., 1943, 89, pt. 8, 10932.

Minutes of the Washington Emergency Committee, December 20, 1943, Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, HT 11–6/2, Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, accessed June 14, 2016, jabotinsky. org; Monty Noam Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 139; Wyman, Abandonment, 201.

For detailed accounts of Gillette-Rogers, see Wyman, Abandonment, 193–206; Penkower, The Jews Were Expendable, 137–39; Wyman and Medoff, A Race Against Death, 141–55; and Sarah E. Peck, “The Campaign for an American Response to the Nazi Holocaust, 1942–1945,” Journal of Contemporary History 15, no. 2 (1980): 381–85.

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13.

Daily Worker, November 22, 1937, 2; “Jewish Group Hears Coffee’s Tolerance Plea,” Washington Post, November 20, 1937, 17.

Rafael Medoff, The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2019); David Kranzler, “Stephen S. Wise and the Holocaust,” in Reverence, Righteousness and Rahamanut: Essays in Memory of Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung, ed. Jacob J. Schacter (London: J. Aronson, 1992), 155–92; Melvin I. Urofsky, A Voice That Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982).

Thomas to Stephen S. Wise, March 28, 1936, box 27, Thomas Papers.

Leo Cooper, In the Shadow of the Polish Eagle: The Poles, the Holocaust and Beyond (New York: Palgrave, 2000), 64–81; William W. Hagen, “Before the ‘Final Solution’: Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Anti-Semitism in Interwar Germany and Poland,” Journal of Modern History 68, no. 2 (1996): 351–86; Nechama Tec, “Polish Anti-Semitism and the Rescuing of the Jews,” East European Quarterly 20, no. 3 (1986): 301.

Wise to Thomas, January 12, 1937, box 27, Thomas Papers.

Thomas to Wise, January 15, 1937, Wise to Thomas, February 11, 1937, and Wise to Thomas, June 1, 1937, box 27, Thomas Papers.

Wise to Thomas, November 12, 1937, box 27, Thomas Papers.

Thomas to Wise, November 19, 1937, box 27, Thomas Papers.

Wise to Thomas, February 10, 1938, box 27, Thomas Papers. For information on the Goga government see, Jean Ancel, The History of the Holocaust in Romania, trans. Yaffah Murciano (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2011), 25–34; Paul A. Shapiro, “Prelude to Dictatorship in Romania: The National Christian Party in Power, December 1937–February 1938,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 8, no. 1 (1974): 45–88.

Wise to Thomas, April 25, 1938, and Thomas to Wise, May 19, 1938, box 37, Thomas Papers.

Ambijan Board of Directors to Albert Einstein, October 30, 1941, box 54, fd. 8, Stefansson Papers; “Jews Make War Aid Gifts,” New York Times, December 5, 1941, 2.

Vihljalmur Stefansson to Franklin Harris, April 12, 1944, box 61, fd. 20, Stefansson Papers; Malcolm M. Davis to Henry H. Balos, memorandum, May 17, 1944; Press release, May 16, 1944; Public Meeting Report, Office of Strategic Services, Foreign Nationalities Branch, Number M-192, May 26, 1944, all in ProQuest History Vault, O.S.S. Collection, file 001717-033-2600-003, accessed July 2, 2019, hv.proquest.com; Harris, Diary, vol.

5, 1371–72; “Senator Thomas Praises Russians,” New York Times, May 17, 1944, 7; Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 2nd sess., 1944, 90, pt. 9, A2627–A2628; Srebrnik, Dreams of Nationhood, 108.

Ambijan National Conference on Emergency Aid and Reconstruction for the Victims of Nazism (New York: Ambijan Committee, 1944), box 61, fd. 20, Stefansson Papers; “Equality Is Urged for All Minorities,” New York Times, November 26, 1944, 26; Srebrnik, Dreams of Nationhood, 110.

Joanna Maura Saidel, “Revisionist Zionism in America: The Campaign to Win American Public Support” (PhD

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39. Text of an address given by Elbert D. Thomas, April 29, 1944, Jabotinsky Institute, Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, HT 11–5/6, Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, accessed September 10, 2018, jabotinsky.org.

40. Johan J. Smertenko to Thomas, January 14, 1944, box 71, Thomas Papers.

41. Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 2nd sess., 1944, 90, pt. 2, 1652; Bergson to Thomas, February 16, 1944, box 71, Thomas Papers.

42. Ben Hecht and Gabriel Wechsler to Thomas, March 29, 1944, box 71, Thomas Papers.

43. Text of an address by Elbert D. Thomas, August 8, 1944, Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, HT 11–1/3, Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, accessed December 22, 2018, jabotinsky.org; Bergson to Thomas, August 9, 1944, box 71, Thomas Papers; Newspaper clipping from the New York Post, August 9, 1944, box 71, Thomas Papers. A CBS executive vice president said that the deletions were suggested by an unnamed employee for “reasons that [were] not clear.” “CBS Regrets Editing of Thomas Address,” New York Times, August 10, 1944, 7.

44. Text of an address by Elbert D. Thomas, August 8, 1944.

45. Text of an address by Elbert D. Thomas, August 8, 1944.

46. Howard M. LeSourd to Thomas, August 22, 1944. Copies of proposals submitted to Cordell Hull, August 22, 1944, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 18, 1944, were sent to Thomas, box 71, Thomas Papers.

47. Deborah S. Cornelius, Hungary in World War II: Caught in the Cauldron (New York: Fordham University Press, 2011), 292–314; Thomas L. Sakmyster, Hungary’s Admiral on Horseback: Miklós Horthy, 1918–1944 (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994), 343–60; Asher Cohen, The Halutz Resistance in Hungary, 1942–1944, trans. Carl Alpert (Boulder: Social Science Monographs, 1986), 100–103; Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 1113–18; Bela Vago, “The Horthy Offer: A Missed Opportunity for Rescuing Jews in 1944,” in Contemporary Views on the Holocaust, ed. Randolph Braham (Boston: KluwerNijhoff, 1983), 23–46.

48. Congressional Record, 78th Cong., 2nd sess., 1944, 90, pt. 5, 7261; Guy Gillette to Thomas, telegram, August 24, 1944, box 71, Thomas Papers.

49. Statement by Senator Thomas and authors of a resolution on Emergency Rescue Shelters, August 24, 1944, Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe, HT 11–1/6, Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, accessed December 23, 2018, jabotinsky.org.

50. Statement by Senator Thomas and authors of a resolution on Emergency Rescue Shelters, August 24, 1944.

51. Quoted in Nancy Beck Young, Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of World War II (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2013), 162.

52. Transcript of a radio address by Elbert Thomas, June 30, 1945, box 78, Thomas Papers; see also, Louis Finkelstein, ed., Thirteen Americans: Their Spiritual Autobiographies (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), 155–56.

53. Transcript of a radio address by Elbert Thomas, June 30, 1945.

54. Congressional Record, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., 1946, 92, pt. 11, A3326.

55. Radio address by Elbert Thomas, June 18, 1946, American League for a Free Palestine, HT 12–5/1, Jabotinsky Institute in Israel, accessed November 7, 2018, jabotinsky .org.

56. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, S.J. Res. 77, A Joint Resolution Providing for Membership and Participation by the United States in the International Refugee Organization and Authorization of an Appropriation Therefor, 80th Cong., 1st sess., March 1, 1947, 24, 25, 26.

57. Thomas to Emanuel Neumann, March 18, 1947; Neumann to Thomas, March 27, 1947, box 114, Thomas Papers.

58. Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Knopf, 2007), 279–92.

59. Thomas to Harry S. Truman, November 15, 1947; Truman to Thomas, November 19, 1947, box 114, Thomas Papers. For an analysis of Thomas’s Zionist views in the context of the Thomas–Truman correspondence see Zabriskie, “Resting in the Highest Good,” 246–47.

60. Thomas to Truman, November 15, 1947, box 114, Thomas Papers 61. Thomas and other senators to the UN delegations of Haiti, Greece, France, Luxembourg, Argentina, Columbia, China, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, Philippines and Paraguay, undated, box 114, Thomas Papers; V. K. Wellington Koo to Thomas, November 28, 1947; Gonzalo Restrepo Jaramillo to Thomas, November 28, 1947, box 114, Thomas Papers.

62. Thomas and other senators to the UN delegations.

63. Sachar, A History of Israel, 292–95.

64. Zvi Ganin, “The Limits of American Jewish Political Power: America’s Retreat from Partition, November 1947–March 1948,” Jewish Social Studies 39, no. 1–2 (1977): 1–36; Kenneth Ray Bain, The March to Zion: United States Policy and the Founding of Israel (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1979), 182–97; Evan M. Wilson, Decision on Palestine: How the U.S. Came to Recognize Israel (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1979), 129–46.

65. Congressional Record, 80th Cong., 2nd sess., 1948, 94, pt. 11, A 3055; see also, “Wallace Hails Polo Grounds Palestine Rally,” Daily Worker, May 14, 1948, 3; “40,000 Say ‘Mazeltov’ to Israel at Rally Here,” Daily Worker, May 17, 1948, 3, 7.

66. “Rally Here Marks New Jewish State,” New York Times, May 16, 1948, 17.

67. Wyman and Medoff, A Race Against Death, 93.

68. Frank H. Jonas, “The Art of Political Dynamiting,” Western Political Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1957): 374–86; Frank H. Jonas, ed., Political Dynamiting (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1970), 83–108. While Jonas wrote about Thomas’s association with Communist groups as a factor in the outcome of the 1950 Senatorial election, his involvement with radical groups that supported Jewish causes is not mentioned.

“I’d do it again,” said John Worthen of his penny-stock career, a surprising assertion considering “hustling penny stock” landed him twice in federal prison, once for transporting stolen securities across state lines and a second time for tax evasion.1 When he was interviewed in 2019, Worthen was seventy-eight, hale, with a short, grizzled beard, a long jaw, and a lupine grin. His graying hair was brushed straight back and hung irregularly below the collar of his black, crew-necked sweater and the golden chain around his neck. Worthen often laughed and enjoyed telling stories from a career of dubious legality. “I had seventy or eighty companies in my time,” he said.2 He began in penny stocks in the 1970s, and a case involving Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims for $12 million in taxes from a Worthen scheme finally concluded in 2018.3 Worthen’s escapades came near the end of more than a century of lowpriced stock promotion and trading in Salt Lake City. This article sketches the history of Salt Lake stocks from 1873 through the uranium boom that ended in 1956; it then focuses on the Salt Lake City penny-stock market that flourished from the 1960s into the late 1980s, when it was killed by regulation and prosecution. For their first ninety years, Salt Lake securities centered on Utah mining ventures. But the penny-stock industry after the 1960s specialized in “going public by the back door,” that is, in “shells” or “blind pools” that took advantage of loopholes in the law to offer cheaper, easier ways to obtain the legal registration required before a stock could be publicly sold. In addition, many companies sold penny stocks in Salt Lake City to raise capital for businesses, mostly nonmining businesses. Many issues and people in the Salt Lake penny-stock business were honest, but the market also harbored criminals and capers and contributed to a lasting reputation for Utah as a fraud capital.

In July 1873, a small report in the Salt Lake Herald Republican told of a “large enthusiastic” meeting in Captain Joab Lawrence’s office to found a Salt Lake Stock Exchange. The paper named fifty men who would be members.4 The next month, four Salt Lake Daily Tribune stories reported trading.5 Investors bought and sold shares in mines, three proposed Utah

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The Salt Lake Stock and Mining Exchange, as seen in April 1922. Utah State Historical Society, photograph 21696.

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railroads, a smelter, and shares in the Salt Lake Daily Tribune. After the four articles, there was no notice of demise, but the exchange was not mentioned again.

Boosters might have attempted to create a second exchange in 1888, but if so, it also died quickly.6 In 1896, however, the Salt Lake Stock and Mining Exchange opened, prospered, and endured.7 At the end of 1899, a full-page advertisement in the Salt Lake Herald boasted that mining ventures listed on the exchange had paid $3,743,750 in dividends that year, and fifty-one-million shares changed hands for a total of $16,999,927.8 In 1909 the Exchange moved into a new building on what is now Exchange Place but was then Cactus Street. Samuel New­ house, who had made a fortune in Bingham Canyon copper, donated the land. Already he had erected the city’s two tallest buildings, the Boston and the Newhouse, on Cactus Street, and he soon gave another lot to the Salt Lake Commercial Club. The three-story, stone Exchange Building had a large room with a horseshoe-shaped brass railing, a dais, and a blackboard, where members auctioned shares, and additional rooms for brokers’ offices.9

The Salt Lake Exchange was one of more than twenty-five American regional stock exchanges, almost all of them now defunct.10 They all sought to raise money for local business ventures and so reflected the character of their local economies. In Utah, mines needed venture capital, and some found their financing on the exchange. The Salt Lake Stock Exchange never counted much in the national economy. In 1959, the SEC reported the value of Salt Lake stocks were .03 percent of the total value of stocks in America.11 Utah first regulated securities with a blue sky law in 1919.12 Blue sky was securities slang for worthless, as in selling “so many feet of blue sky.”13 Utah joined a trend for blue-sky laws that began in Kansas in 1911 and moved from state to state.14 In 1918, questionable oil stocks were being sold in Utah from out of state. Salt Lake City passed a blue sky ordinance and temporarily stopped such sales in the city.15 The Utah Democratic Party called for state regulation at its convention, and the Democratically controlled legislature passed a blue sky bill and created a state securities commission by large majorities in 1919.16

Trading on the floor of the Salt Lake Stock Exchange, January 1955. Utah State Historical Society, photograph 28515–5.

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Accusations of sharp Wall Street practice after the crash of 1929 led a New Deal Congress to pass the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and soon made securities America’s most regulated industry.19 The Salt Lake Exchange registered with the SEC, but federal regulators concentrated on high finance and barely noticed Utah.

The Salt Lake Exchange was quiet during the Depression but had some of its best years when World War II drove up the price of metals and Utah mines prospered.20

On March 24, 1954, more shares of stock traded in Salt Lake City than in New York City. The uranium boom was the peak of Utah’s stock industry. The federal government offered big money for the uranium needed to make bombs. In response, more people spent more hours searching for uranium than people had ever spent prospecting for all other minerals combined, according to the Atomic Energy Commission.21 Uranium companies sprouted in Salt Lake City, and most of them raised money for mines and mills by selling stock for a penny or a few cents a share. Before the boom, Salt Lake City had twenty brokerage houses with fewer than one hundred salesmen. By 1955, eighty brokerages employed 467 salesmen, many of them selling uranium shares.22 The SEC opened a Salt Lake City branch office. Tales of adventures, riches, and misfortunes in uranium fill books and articles.23 In contrast, few stories of the later penny stock market have been recorded.24 New investors, enticed into the uranium market, were left with losses in 1956 when the government said it had enough of the metal and cut payments. Subsequent congressional hearings revealed financial bad practice and fraudulent promotions. But as the law professor Wallace Bennett wrote, “Throughout the entire uranium boom and its aftermath of investor disillusionment . . . not one criminal case was carried to trial and conviction for violation of securities law.”25 Wrongdoing tarnished Utah’s reputation, but the rule-breakers went free.

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The new Utah Securities Commission soon ran into trouble. In 1922, commissioners licensed Great Western Coal Company to sell $1.5 million in stock, and the commission secretary signed a letter saying the company owned leases to 60 million tons of coal, worth $6 million.

The company showed the letter to potential stock buyers. Legislators investigated in 1925, and found that when the letter was written, Great Western had no coal leases. As another part of its sales pitch, the company featured world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, who sat on the board of directors. Dempsey and his manager had invested no money but received 20 percent commissions on stock sales.

Great Western was the chief example, but legislators found other bad cases too.17 The 1925 state legislature changed the law to stop the abuses.18

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On the Salt Lake City board, On the Salt Lake City board, Buy a block of penny stock, Buy all you can afford.26

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That ditty, repeated nationally with no author named, announced the resurgence of Salt Lake penny stocks a decade after the uranium bust.

The SEC sent a special team to Salt Lake City in 1969 to investigate “wild penny-stock action.”

Old uranium stocks, most of which had been out of business for years, were selling at figures “astronomically higher than their ascertainable values,” the New York Times reported.27 One stock sold at forty-five times its original price.

Another rose from three cents to fifty cents a share. The new penny market adapted old mining-stock ways to new, nonmining companies.

A company called Ammon was said to have a phone attachment that would display the numbers of incoming callers. Its stock rose from ten cents to twelve dollars a share, before the number-revealing device proved just a rumor and the stock became worthless.28 Uranium stocks, and by extension Utah penny stocks, still had a bad reputation from the uranium bust. Established New York brokers didn’t want to deal in them. Merrill Lynch ruled that a broker would receive no commission for trading a stock priced under three dollars; F. I. DuPont’s New York headquarters checked the Salt Lake City office daily to make sure penny transactions remained a small percentage of total business.

Brokers who dealt with customers were required to caution any client who wanted to buy a penny stock.29 Salt Lake brokers felt caught between their bosses and their customers.

“They don’t want a lecture. They want me to make a buy order,” one broker said of his clients.30 To serve the business shunned by New York brokers, new local brokerages specializing in penny stocks opened in Salt Lake City.

The number of licensed broker-dealers in Utah rose from eighty-two in 1966 to 185 in 1969.31 Frank Langheinrich went to work for Prince-Covey and Company, one of the new brokerages, soon after he graduated from high school in 1968. “I may have been the youngest licensed broker in the country,” he said. Penny stocks offered young people opportunity. The owners of Prince Covey were in their twenties, and “They were the ‘old guys,’” Langheinrich

recalled. “I asked my relatives to buy stock, and I made cold calls”; that is, he called people he didn’t know and offered to sell them penny stock. He was paid a commission, and he earned from $10,000 to $12,000 a year, a high income for a young man in those days. Langheinrich later opened his own brokerage but was shut down by the SEC for failing to maintain sufficient cash reserve. He left the securities business and became a winning high school debate coach.32 Carl Teel worked as a broker for Universal Underwriters while he was going to college. “I was fairly aggressive,” he remembered. “I took all the Bs in the Bountiful phone book, and sent them a letter, introducing myself. I met with people in their homes. I’d look at their portfolio and do research on their stocks, and tell them which ones to sell and which ones to keep.”

Teel was studying business at the University of Utah, including how to evaluate a company’s worth. He thought that was what brokers did.

“I took it more seriously than it was intended to be,” he said of his job. “I really didn’t understand the business.” Teel did not make much money, and one time he sold stock to a customer who failed to pay—leaving Teel to make up the company’s loss. Worse, he got mixed up with some promoters of a new offering.

The promoters kept most of the stock themselves and offered a minority of the stock to the public. “They urged people to mortgage their homes to put money in the stock. Then when the stock went up, they dumped all their stock and crashed the market,” Teel said. “I realized I’d been a cog in that machine, and damaged people’s lives. Ethically, I couldn’t deal with it.”

Teel quit the brokerage and eventually opened The Piano Shop in Bountiful.33 Penny stocks bypassed the old Salt Lake Stock Exchange. Beginning in the uranium boom, more stocks were sold over the counter, and after the uranium bust, the exchange declined over thirty years toward demise. In 1959, the exchange listed ninety companies, but thirty-nine of them were inactive shells. Ted C. Poulsen, the exchange secretary, complained that to list on the exchange a company had to register with the SEC, and registration rules filled nineteen pages of small print. So many new companies avoided the exchange and traded over the

Besides selling over the counter, Prince-Covey “made a market” in some stocks. To make a market, a brokerage firm traded the stock in its own account and tried to keep the market “liquid.” That is, if someone wanted to buy or sell, the brokerage would use its own inventory to oblige, at a profitable price. Prince-Covey had a trading room with thirty to forty telephones, each a direct line to another brokerage that made a market in stocks. The trading room also had a daily copy of the Pink Sheets, which listed most of the 13,000 over-the-counter stocks trading nationally, a recent price for each, and a telephone number to a brokerage making a market. A trader might take an order from a customer, look the stock up in the Pink Sheets, call the market maker, and negotiate a trade. But that was not usual. “A good trader knew where he could get stock. He knew the market,” said David Nelson, part owner and trading manager at Prince-Covey. Traders acted quickly to buy

Of the thirty or so Salt Lake brokerages founded to trade penny stocks, only Wilson-Davis remained in 2020. “I don’t know why we were the only one to survive,” said Lyle Davis, who started the firm more than fifty years before.40 “We tried to adapt to the market,” added Byron Barkley, who worked for the company since it opened.41 Besides trading stock, Wilson-Davis sometimes underwrote new companies that wanted to sell penny-stock shares. They tried to pick companies with a good chance of success. On Wall Street, underwritings are “firm”; that is, the underwriter guarantees to sell all the shares and to raise a specific sum. But in the penny-stock market all underwritings were “best effort.” The underwriter offered the stock but with no guarantees. Lawyers were hired to write a prospectus of financial and business information on the new company. “We’d have a meeting of all our salesmen,” said Lyle Davis. The assembled sales force would be told about the company and its prospects, and then managers asked “how much stock the salesmen thought they could sell.” Each salesperson would then be assigned an allotment of the new shares. The salespeople would call their customers and sell the stock. Sometimes other brokerages would join Wilson-Davis in

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Although the Salt Lake Stock Exchange did not grow with penny stocks, it provided the soil for their growth. Three cities led the nation in penny stocks: Denver, Salt Lake City, and Spokane, Washington. All three had old mining-stock exchanges. Decades of trading on the exchanges built “infrastructure,” according to former Utah state securities director Wayne Klein.37 Those cities had transfer agents, lawyers who knew security law, accountants skilled in new issues, and promoters who knew how to bring a company to market. Many members of that infrastructure made money when cheap stocks thrived, and in lean years they waited and looked for ways to revive the trade.38

or sell. The difference between the price a trader paid to buy a stock and the price at which he sold it to the customer was called the “spread.”

Traders were paid no salaries, but they kept half the spread on every transaction. The brokerage house kept the other half. “Traders who were any good were gamblers,” Nelson said. “They made most of their money selling short.” That is, a customer would call to buy at a price quoted in the newspaper or the Pink Sheets, and the trader would often fill the order at the lowest price he could find someone offering the stock, even though he hadn’t bought the stock. He believed he could find someone later to sell the stock at an even lower price. If he succeeded, he kept half the difference. But if he couldn’t buy at a lower price, he had to buy at a higher price than he had sold the stock for, and then he paid half the loss. “It was highly incentivized,” Nelson recalled, smiling in remembrance of frantic calls to find shares sold but not owned.

Many traders lost money and left the business.

Most who stayed bet rightly most times. “Traders made a lot of money,” Nelson said.39

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counter.34 In 1972, with only forty-nine companies listed, the name was changed to the Intermountain Stock Exchange. Members hired a public relations firm and invited Japanese companies, among others, to come and trade, but exchange fortunes continued to fall.35 The handsome building that Samuel Newhouse had subsidized was sold, and exchange members divided the proceeds. Trading was then limited to an hour a day in the brokerage office of Robert P. Woolley, exchange president. The SEC asked for higher enforcement standards, and unable to afford that expense, members voted to disband in 1986. “It’s a sad thing,” Woolley said of the closure.36

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a syndicate, and those brokers would also take an allotment of shares. Wilson-Davis and other penny-stock houses sold new issues through their established networks of salespeople, customers, and other brokerage houses.

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In 1977, Stephen L. Hunsaker studied all the new penny-market issues he could find between 1970 and 1977, 138 in all.42 He tried to track each stock for two years, but some never appeared in trading records and others came and went.

Twenty-two stocks vanished and twenty-seven lost money, but eighty-two of the stocks gained in value, and a few made big gains: Metro Urban was initially offered at one-tenth-of-a-cent per share in 1971 and was sold at three-cents per share in 1974, multiplying an investment thirtyfold. Another stock went from one cent to twenty-five cents a share. An investor who had bought every one of the 138 new Salt Lake City issues would have made a high return. Hunsaker’s study showed that in the early 1970s, more money seems to have been made than lost in new penny stocks, at least on paper.

Paper gains, however, could not always be turned into cash. When he was a broker, Carl Teel found a company selling for a few cents a share. “I think it was called Guardian something,” he recalled. The only Guardian asset Teel could find was a duplex in Price, Utah, but the company had a small “float.” That is, few shares were owned by the public, and they traded at a low price. A small float made a stock price easier to manipulate, so Teel thought this stock might become a target for “pump and dump” by a promoter. He bought some and recommended that his customers buy some too. A few days later, senior members of his firm came to him and asked if he had Guardian stock. They were considering a pump and dump. “I knew enough to fib—actually lie—and I said, ‘I’m flat.’ That’s what we said when we were out of a stock.”

The members of Teel’s firm, however, said they abandoned their pump-and-dump plan. After he left the penny-stock business, Teel went into another brokerage, and asked a young woman broker the price of his Guardian stock. The bid was fifty cents a share. At that price, Teel’s holdings were worth $25,000. As Teel had foreseen, someone had pumped the price of the stock. Teel asked how much he could sell, was told about $1,000 worth, and promptly sold

the stock. When he came back five days later to get the check, the price had fallen to twenty-five cents a share. Teel believed his sale had contributed to the falling price. “I hit the bid again,” he said, meaning he sold more of his stock at twenty-five cents, “and I kept hitting it.” Teel kept selling stock and, “they could not sustain the bid”; the price kept falling, but still, “I walked away with a nice chunk of change,” about $5,000. Though Teel had not made much money when he worked as a broker, “I remember thinking I’d pretty much been rewarded for my time in the business,” he said. “That was a lot of money to me in those days.”43 The story shows a stockholder could not always sell his penny stock at the listed price. Teel understood the business and sold his stock as fast as he could but still finally received only 20 percent of the highest price of the stock, and he was happy to get that. Penny stocks were “thinly traded,” and one big sale might drive the price down. Penny-stock studies, such as Hunsaker’s, used quoted prices and often showed impressive gains. But sometimes it might have been hard to cash out those gains.

While some new penny-stock companies went public through underwriting, others “went public through the back door.” They used a “shell” to get the needed government registration. Shells were old corporations, now defunct. They had no assets and did no business, but under an unusual Utah law, they remained legally alive and registered unless an order from a court killed them. A promoter could buy up the worthless shares and control the company.

“It was called a box job,” said Lyle Davis, “because the promoter would have a boxful of old stock certificates sitting in his office.”44 A company that wanted to sell shares to the public could buy the shell from the promoter, merge the working company with the non-working-but-legally-registered shell, and assume the shell’s legal registration more cheaply and quickly than it could go through the registration process. “The merger business was a good business,” said Davis. Thousands of shells were left over from the uranium boom, and Utah was the chief national source of shells and the leading site of the “shell game.”45 Buying shells and merging them to get around the registration process was legal, but regulators and New York stockbrokers thought it a questionable

Worthen also used fraudulent “wash trades.”

For example, a promoter who held a million shares of a company selling for one cent a share might give a colleague money to buy 10,000 shares from him at two cents, then another colleague at a nickel, and a third at ten cents. The promoter was using false fronts to buy stock from himself, so neither money nor stock actually changed hands; it was a “wash.”

But the fake sales would be sent to newspapers and the Pink Sheets, and the price of the stock would appear to zoom from one to ten cents.

Other investors might then buy the “hot” stock, and the promoter would pump and dump, selling as many shares at the pumped-up price as he could. In addition, Worthen secretly

Most of Worthen’s shell companies came to market with a story. The New York Times noted penny-stock operators’ “uncanny ability to market the latest investment fads.” When inflation was high in the 1970s, penny-stock companies had gold mines, or in one case, a secret process to refine gold from black sand on Costa Rican beaches.48 “These days bioengineering, superconductivity, AIDS research and pollution are the buzzwords,” the Times reported in 1990.49 Strong Point said it would be the first public company to own brothels, including the famous Mustang Ranch in Nevada.50 Another company claimed to own a string of gay bathhouses.

George I. Norman Jr. was Utah’s most notorious penny-stock promoter in the early 1970s.

He conducted business at Thelma’s Café in Holladay, where he plugged a phone into a jack at his reserved booth. He was convicted of swindling a bank and sentenced to two years in prison by a federal judge in Denver in 1973. The judge gave Norman a few hours to get things in order before reporting to the marshals. Norman called an old friend who was a justice on the Colorado Supreme Court, borrowed his car, and escaped in the judge’s car. “It was embarrassing,” said his lawyer, Orrin Hatch, who defended Norman before winning a Senate seat.

Norman was at large for twenty-three years.

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Shells were central to John Worthen’s business. “You could buy control of them, and trade them. These were moribund or dead, and I’d revive them, whatever,” he said. He had learned the penny-stock business from promoters he met and befriended at the Iron Horse, a private club on Salt Lake City’s Main Street. He looked for companies in which one or a few stockholders owned most of the stock. He bought out the major stockholders so he owned most of the stock but didn’t try to get all the stock in the company. “I didn’t care if some other guys owned a few shares. I could roll over them,” Worthen said. Often he would change the company name and devise a story explaining what business it would do and why it would make money. Sometimes he would divide the shares, so there would be more stock to sell. When he put a revived shell on the market, “people lined up at my office to buy,” he claimed. Those buyers were mostly penny-stock veterans, who understood that the stock had no intrinsic value but believed the price would rise. “They were all in it for the ride, like a lottery. There was no real deception,” Worthen stated. And in fact, “the stocks usually doubled in the first few days after they were released,” he said.47

owned part of a brokerage house that would make a market in his stocks, and the brokers there would tout his fast-rising issues to their customers. Worthen also secretly had a share of Financial News Network in Los Angeles, where commentators would speak favorably of his stocks. (He sold out of Financial News Network. “I was taking some heat from the law,” he said, “and we couldn’t let the heat get into the company.”) Worthen made money and so did some of his early inside buyers, but eventually some investors were left with worthless shares in a company that had never been more than a shell, a story, and an inflated price. Legitimate companies sell stock to raise money for a business that makes money by producing goods or services. Worthen’s shells had a story but at best vague intentions to actually do any business. “We always hoped it would be a real deal, but it never was,” Worthen said, grinning ruefully.

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practice. Salt Lake penny-stock brokers held a meeting to agree on rules to keep the shell business honest. They said they did business in shells only because “government agencies had made it too difficult for a new business to incorporate itself and get authorization to sell stock, so it was easier to buy a defunct company that already had this authorization.”46

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When finally caught by federal marshals in 1996, he was selling penny stock to members of a Texas country club.51 He told them the company was drilling for oil in Pakistan. Esquire magazine called Norman “America’s greatest living criminal genius.”52 Before Norman was convicted, John Worthen went to Thelma’s to try to get in business with him but was unsuccessful. He says he did serve as a front and sold stocks while Norman was on the run. Norman called him, saying “John, I gotta move some paper.” Worthen took stock certificates from Norman, sold the stock as if it were his own, and delivered the money to Norman. When asked if he was paid some of the money, he grinned and said, “Of course, of course, that’s the way it worked.” Worthen, who was himself a federal fugitive for two years, admired Norman’s elusiveness: “He did a good job. He was out twenty-three years.”53 Because shell corporations were used in stock fraud, Utah tried to change its law to kill old shells. In 1971, the Utah Public Service Commission asked for a new law to reduce the number of shells, but the legislature refused to pass it.54 Utah’s attorney general also asked for a change so defunct corporations could be dissolved administratively without going to court, but that bill also failed.55 State Senator Paul Rogers voted against anti-penny stock bills. “We had no venture capital structure, and this was a viable way to go public and raise capital without a lot of front-end expense,” he explained. “Some people used them to deceive investors,” he admitted. “I still have some penny-stock certificates. I was the sucker in those deals.” But he added, “They were used in an affirmative way, too.” Rogers and his colleagues thought that, on balance, the penny-stock industry might help Utah’s economy grow.56 After an antishell bill failed, Attorney General Vern Romney said his office would take three thousand Utah shells to court for dissolution, and he succeeded in driving stakes through the hearts of some longdead shells. Eventually, the legislature made dissolution easier.57 The bad reputation penny stocks inherited from uranium stocks grew worse in the new penny market. Salt Lake City was “the stockfraud capital of the West,” said the Wall Street Journal in a front-page story early in 1974.58 The

story upset Utahns and made them fear their reputation would repel investors and retard the state’s economy. The phrase “stock-fraud capital” stuck and was used of the Salt Lake market for decades. People interviewed for this article forty-five years after the story knew of the Journal article and remembered the phrase “stock fraud capital.” In addition, Business Week, Newsweek, Forbes, the New York Times, and others published stories—usually multiple stories—about fraud in the Salt Lake City penny market.59 Salt Lakers said the Wall Street Journal article was unfair, and the penny trade was mostly honest.60 Wilson-Davis brokerage survived through caution and keeping customers out of scams. At Prince-Covey, “We weren’t a bucket shop,” Frank Langheinrich insisted.

“I don’t think we ever knowingly did a shell.”

If a customer called wanting to buy stock in a shell company, Prince-Covey would fill the order. However, its brokers did not recommend shells, the brokerage would not make a market for them, and Prince-Covey underwrote only companies that had good prospects to found a profitable business. For example, Prince-Covey underwrote Instant Hot Water, formed to produce a device that could quickly make one or two cups of hot water, say for coffee on a camping trip. The stock rose vertiginously, but the device cost about fifty dollars: too much, the company failed. But Langheinrich says the promoter sold stock to raise capital, built a prototype, and contracted with Litton Industries to manufacture the product. “He did what he said he’d do,” Langheinrich says.61 “I think the investor got a fair shot.” Penny-stock advocates point to successful companies they say began with low-priced stocks: Nordstrom, European Health Spa, Jiffy Lube, and many others.62 Although most penny-stock people worked within the law, the wildness of their business sometimes spilled over into their lives. The Prince-Covey offices were situated over a bar called D. B. Coopers. “We lived there,” said David Nelson. “We lived at D. B. Coopers.” Every day, “we went downstairs after trading closed.”

Brokers, traders, secretaries, promoters, investors: all came to D. B. Coopers. Langheinrich went to D. B. Coopers before he was legally old enough to drink. “They taught me to drink

Both state and federal governments responded to criticism that registering new stocks was too complicated and expensive. In 1982 the SEC issued a new rule enabling simpler registration for small corporations. Utah adopted “registration by qualification,” with easier registration for companies selling their original issue of stock only in state. The new rules, together with the death of old shells, led to a shift in the 1980s from shells to newly simplified registration.63 But although the “shell game” subsided, promoters used “blind pools” as a replacement and continued to specialize in evading federal requirements. A blind pool (sometimes called a “blank check”) was a company with no business and no stated plan to do business. Like revived shells, many blind pools were looking to merge and provide registration to an established company that wanted to “go public by the back door.”64 A blind pool could be registered for $3,000 to $4,000 in legal costs, while federal registration of a company already in business might cost one-hundred times as much.65 In 1983, the year after Utah created the simplified registration process, 282 Utah corporations took advantage of the new rules and applied to register by qualification; 211 of them were blind pools. Utah was the national

In the early 1980s, the SEC investigated again, found penny stocks mostly limited to Denver, Salt Lake City, and Spokane, and concluded they were “minor league” and did not warrant federal action.71 But then a new kind of penny-stock business rose, mostly in New York, New Jersey, and Florida.72 Many of these new brokerages were “bucket shops” that acquired millions of shares of penny stock and employed in some cases thousands of salespeople to make cold calls to long lists of strangers and sell those shares at inflated prices.73 The new bucket shops used new long-distance telephone technology that enabled mass, national telemarketing of cheap stock. Worried by the surge in bucket shops, the SEC asked for new laws and

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Many out-of-state companies obtained registration by merging with a Utah blind pool, and so Utah practice affected stocks in other places.

For example, a California teenager named Barry Minkow founded ZZZZ Best (pronounced Zee Best), a carpet and drape cleaning company. He obtained registration to sell stock by merging with a Utah blind pool named Morning Star Investments. “It was quick, clean, and easy,” Minkow told the Wall Street Journal.68 The merger took three months: registration would have taken three times as long. ZZZZ Best prospered, and Minkow was hailed as a precocious business success on the Oprah Winfrey Show. But then federal prosecutors charged that he had lied and swindled the public of $60 million. Minkow went to federal prison.69 Officials said Minkow might not have been able to bilk investors if he hadn’t been able to get around regulations by merging with a Utah blind pool.70

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leader in blind pools as it had been the national leader in shells. Colorado, with only seventeen blind pools, had the second most of any state.66 Douglas Martin Shearer studied blind pools formed in 1983 for his master’s thesis. By 1985, 52 percent of the blind pools had found merger partners. Of the eighty-eight blind pools that had not merged, shares of only thirty-eight were still trading, but most of those were trading higher than their issue price. The remaining blind pools had vanished or lost money.67 Shearer’s analysis seemed to show that overall, 1983 blind pools were a good investment, at least on paper.

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daiquiris,” he said. In the 1970s cocaine invaded Salt Lake City and also the penny-stock business. “It came in pounds,” David Nelson recalled. “It was a snowstorm, a blizzard.” At D. B. Cooper’s people in the business would greet each other with a grin and the question, “Are you holding?” meaning, do you have cocaine, especially cocaine you might be willing to share? John Worthen regretted drugs more than going to prison. He had a big house in Salt Lake City and a bungalow at Aladdin’s Casino in Las Vegas, where he owned a bar called the Yellow Submarine and was a friend of show folk. Though he drank a lot, Worthen didn’t do drugs himself, but some of his employees did, and they stole from him. “Drugs ruined my business,” he says. Cocaine did not replace alcohol. “You could drink a lot more if you had coke,” Nelson said. “I drank way too much.” Drinking, drugs, and after-work gatherings contributed to his divorce. He quit drinking, and when interviewed, was lean and tan from playing golf. “I’ve been sober twenty-two years,” he said with a touch of pride.

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more enforcement. The Salt Lake market was mostly local in scope and specialized in “going public by the back door,” with shells and blind pools. Utah led in shells and blind pools, but Utah did not have bucket shops.74 Utah regulators had more experience with penny stocks than officials in other states, and so they joined in the national concern. John Baldwin, a Utah securities chief, became president of the North American Association of Securities Administrators (NAASA), made up of state regulators.

Baldwin led a national survey asking NAASA members about penny stocks in their state.

In 1987, NAASA presented a report to a Congressional committee; Baldwin testified and advocated for stricter laws, especially for the regulation of blind pools, which at that time, he believed, were Utah’s chief problem.75 The NAASA survey estimated that $2 billion a year was lost to penny-stock fraud nationwide.76 National publicity induced the FBI to strike.

Three undercover agents opened an office in Midvale, Utah, in 1988, and spent a year pretending to be penny-stock promoters. It was an elaborate sting, a “fully back-stopped, groupone, undercover operation,” according to prosecutor Stewart Walz, who spent much of his forty years with the US Justice Department fighting Utah fraud.77 FBI agents, posing as promoters, paid the Salt Laker Jerry Timothy $20,000 for an old Delaware shell, decorated with phony stockholder names found in the Latter-day Saint Genealogical Library.78 “It was a classic box job,” said Walz. They paid an accountant $10,000 for a company balance sheet that included $987,000 in nonexistent assets.

For a fee, a lawyer issued the required legal opinion that the stock, named “Protecto,” was legally tradeable. Brokers in Denver were paid to make a market and to manipulate the share price. Agents secretly videotaped the brokers discussing how false accounts would use wash trades to manipulate the price of Protecto to two dollars a share.79 When all was in place, the agents arrested their coconspirators. Prosecutors charged twelve individuals, and eleven of them either pleaded guilty or were convicted.

The Protecto case raised Salt Lake enforcement energy. Federal prosecutors, the SEC, FBI, IRS, state security regulators, and a few local prosecutors formed a stock-fraud task force that met regularly for seven years, and the US Attorney’s

Governor Scott Matheson, speaking in May 1984.

Wikimedia Commons.

office for Utah convicted thirty-five Utah swindlers during Waltz’s tenure, an unusually large number for a small office.80 Governments tightened their rules. Congress passed the Penny Stock Act of 1990, and the SEC made new regulations, mostly against cold calls from bucket shops, the national problem that had induced the federal government to act.81 Utah acted on its own penny-stock problem and toughened the rules on blind pools.

Governor Scott Matheson had assembled the Utah Securities Fraud Task Force in 1984, vowing to “meet the securities fraud problem head on and come out on top.”82 Matheson left office before he could act on the commission’s report, but as a private attorney, he lobbied for NAASA and met with his successor, Governor Norman Bangerter. State securities director John Baldwin attended the meeting. Baldwin recalled that Matheson told Bangerter, “You have to do something about the state’s reputation for stock fraud.” Matheson said Utah was seen as “the stock fraud capital of the country,” a reputation

Even so, penny-stock fraud remains “a plague on our country,” Daniel J. Wadley, the regional director of the SEC’s Salt Lake City office, said in 2020. The SEC moves against bucket shops, “but it’s like whack-a-mole.” Bucket shops pop up with a new name and location soon after they are closed.88 Purveyors of penny stocks

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Financial markets offer temptations to fraud and sharp practice, and so seem to require close government supervision. But when uranium boomed in the 1950s, both state and federal regulation proved ineffective. Dishonest promoters were neither forestalled nor punished, and in the collapse, Utah acquired a reputation for penny-stock fraud. Penny stocks revived in the 1960s, led by young entrepreneurs who opened new brokerage houses but relied on a mining-stock “infrastructure” of veterans who knew the business from the uranium boom and hoped for profit in its return. After the 1960s revival, Utah penny stocks were a miscellany.

Many raised capital for legitimate businesses. Some financed successful companies that provided products, services, and jobs. Most new Utah issues, however, were shells or blind pools that were not intended to begin new businesses but rather to merge with an existing business that wanted to sell stock. The merger provided cheap registration legally, but in a way that avoided regulatory scrutiny. Because shells evaded oversight, they could be used by promoters such as George Norman or John Worthen to offer a company that told a false story, such as drilling for oil in Pakistan, to sell worthless stock. Such promoters sometimes used wash trades or other tricks to pump the price of the stock and then dump their shares, thus defrauding investors. Some penny stocks were unclear cases. Promoters didn’t lie and avoided lawsuits or prosecution, but stock prices depended on rumors or exaggerations; promoters and many who bought the stock hoped to profit from a speculative rise in the price of the stock, while long-term plans to found a business were secondary or consigned to an indefinite future. So long as penny stocks flourished only in the old mining-exchange towns of Salt Lake City, Denver, and Spokane, federal regulators largely left them alone. But then in the 1980s, a new kind of penny-stock business arose mostly in New York, New Jersey, and Florida, that telemarketed penny stock on newly available, long-distance telephone services. State and federal governments acted

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The SEC, armed with the Penny Stock Act of 1990 and other new laws, tightened federal rules to suppress penny stocks. In 2019, Lyle Davis noted changes. Wilson-Davis brokers now cannot offer to sell penny stocks to customers nor can they give advice on any stock priced under five dollars. A broker may fill a customer’s penny-stock order but only after she has signed a form attesting that she arrived at her decision with no advice from the broker. Stock-trading has also changed. The Penny Stock Act required electronic listing of stock prices, and trading is now done by computer. Traders can no longer sell short or hope for a large spread. “It’s hard to make money as a trader anymore,” said broker Byron Barkley. In another change, most stock ownership is now recorded electronically, and paper stock certificates have become rare. In the shell days, an owner could sell her stock certificate. But now a broker may not buy a paper penny-stock certificate without an attached legal opinion saying the stock, the certificate, and the seller all meet SEC regulations. Such an opinion usually costs from $800 to $1,500, Lyle Davis said.86 Federal and state rules, in other words, strangled Salt Lake penny stocks. In 1984, 324 companies registered by qualification as specifically Utah corporations (most of them blind pools). Since 2004, there have been at most three such registrations in any year, and most years have only one or none at all.87

also prowl the internet. Sites offer advice and stock sales to potential investors.89 But Salt Lake City penny stocks are dead, brokerages closed, shells and blind pools vanished, and Utah fraudsters have found new scams.

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that deterred legitimate investment.83 Bangerter agreed, and securities director Baldwin promulgated a new rule in 1986 that required a blind pool to put 80 percent of the money from stock sales in escrow until it announced a business plan. Then stockholders could demand their money back if they didn’t like the plan.84 That rule helped kill Utah blind pools: in 1983, before the rule, Utah had 211 blind-pool stock offerings. In 1986, when the rule took effect, there were 119. And in 1987, after the rule, there were only seventeen.85

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against the new bucket shops and against Salt Lake penny stocks while they were at it. Their actions shut down the Salt Lake penny market, the honest along with the dishonest.

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Utah has a long reputation for scams. Penny stocks, which generated huge, negative, national press, were the single biggest contributor to that bad name. Although Utah penny stocks are dead, Utah notoriety survives. Fraud blogs say Utah has more than its share of Ponzi schemes and other swindles.90 Most discussions of Utah fraud mention “affinity fraud,” meaning that Latter-day Saint fraudsters use church contacts and the mutual trust within that church to prey on their coreligionists.91 But penny stocks rose from Utah mining history, which was dominated by people outside the LDS faith. The penny-stock business imitated impersonal national markets, and did not depend on trust between Latter-day Saints. Penny-stock fraud was a separate and different contributor to Utah’s reputation.

When former participants were asked about penny stocks, they smiled. Stock-people’s memories differ from media and official judgments.

Participants remember the thrill of risk, the hopes of riches, the pleasures of flouting authority, and wild, high living. “It was a good time,” said John Worthen. In offices and bars stockholders compared their luck, debated stocks and strategies, boasted of gains, and bemoaned losses. Even regulators saw the lure. “Frankly, a lot of people had a lot of fun,” said the former state securities chief John Baldwin. “It was closer than Wendover.” Almost everyone knew penny stocks were risky and harbored fraud, but that only upped the excitement. David Nelson recalled penny stocks and youthful exuberance: “It was funner than hell,” he said.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

U.S. v. John Earl Worthen, Utah, CR-74–27, October 29, 1974; see also “S.L. Man Pleads Guilty to Stock Fraud,” Deseret News, September 17, 1989; “Judge Puts Promoter of Penny Stocks on Probation,” Deseret News, December 14, 1989; “2 Utahns in Federal Court to Face Tax Evasion Charges,” Associated Press, March 22, 1998.

John E. Worthen, interview by Rod Decker, October 31, 2019; all interview notes are in possession of the author.

Memorandum decision, Central Division Arlin Geophysical Company v. United States of America, Defen-

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27.

dant and Counterclaim Plaintiff John E. Worthen and Fujilyte Corporation, 2:08-cv-00414-DN-EJF, September 26, 2018.

“Salt Lake Stock Exchange,” Salt Lake Herald, July 8, 1873, 3.

Salt Lake Daily Tribune, August 6, 13, 16, and 17, 1873.

Wallace R. Bennett, “Securities Regulation in Utah: A Recap of History and the New Uniform Act,” Utah Law Review 8 (1963): 216. Bennett has the 1888 date, but I can find no contemporary reference.

“Salt Lake Stock Market,” Salt Lake Mining Review, April 15, 1899, 11, said the exchange had been in existence for three years.

Salt Lake Herald, December 29, 1899, 12.

Chris Dunsmore, “Salt Lake Stock and Mining Exchange,” Mapping SLC, accessed November 2019, mappingslc.org/this-was-here/item/61-salt-lake -stock-and-mining-exchange.

Eugene N. White, “Competition among the Exchanges before the SEC: Was the NYSE a Natural Hegemon?”, Working Paper 18712 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, January 2013), accessed August 2020, nber.org/papers/w18712.pdf.

Reo B. Cutler, “The Salt Lake Stock Exchange: Past, Present, and Future” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1959).

Laws of the State of Utah, 1919 (Salt Lake City: F. W. Gardiner, 1919), chap. 111.

Justice Joseph McKenna used that phrase as he upheld state securities regulation in Merrick v. Haley and Co., 242 U.S. 568 (1917).

Jonathan R. Macey and Geoffrey P. Miller, “Origin of the Blue Sky Laws,” Texas Law Review 70, no. 2 (1991): 347.

“Blue Sky Knocks Oil off Exchange,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 3, 1918.

“Finding the Knots,” Salt Lake Herald, October 2, 1918, 6; “Blue Sky Bill Is Passed by Utah’s House,” Salt Lake Herald, February 20, 1919, 8.

“Report of the Special Committee,” Journal, Utah State House of Representatives, 1925, p. 504, March 7.

Laws of the State of Utah, 1925 (Salt Lake City: Arrow Press, 1925), chap. 87.

Kenneth L. Denos, “Blue and Gray Skies: The National Securities Market Improvement Act of 1996 Makes the Case for Uniformity of State Securities Law,” Utah Law Review 101 (1997): 104.

Cutler, “Salt Lake Stock Exchange,” 5.

Larry L. Meyer, “The Time of the Great Fever,” American Heritage, June–July 1980, 74–80.

Robert W. Bernick, “Action on Market Proves Salt Lake ‘Wall Street of the Uranium Stocks,’” Salt Lake Tribune, March 13, 1955.

Don Sorensen, “Wonder Mineral: Utah’s Uranium,” Utah Historical Quarterly 31, no. 3 (1963): 280–90, 1963; Kathleen Bruÿn, Uranium Country (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1955).

Raye C. Ringholz, Uranium Frenzy: Boom and Bust on the Colorado Plateau (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), has a chapter, 207–222, on veterans of uranium stock who were active in the early penny-stock market.

Bennett, “Securities Regulation in Utah,” 227.

“The Daily Investor,” El Paso (TX) Herald Post, May 9, 1968, 95.

“Wild Penny-Stock Action in West Troubles S.E.C.,” New York Times, February 23, 1969.

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56. Paul Rogers, telephone interview by Rod Decker, December 18, 2019. Rogers, Utah County Republican, is a former state representative and senator.

57. “Attorney General Moving to Dissolve 3,000 Defunct ‘Shell’ Corporations,” Salt Lake Tribune, October, 9 1971.

58. “Dubious Distinction, Salt Lake City Gains Reputation for Being a Stock-fraud Center,” Wall Street Journal, February 25, 1974.

59. “The Stock-fraud Capital Tries to Clean Up Its Act,” Business Week, February 6, 1984; “Utah, the Land of the Mormons, Has Earned Itself Another Name: the Stockfraud Capital of the Nation,” Newsweek, December 24, 1984, 31; William P. Barrett, “Fraud per Capita,” Forbes, February 8, 1999.

60. Robert Woody, “Penny Mart’s Reputation Undeserved,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 27, 1974.

61. Langheinrich, interview.

62. For promotional stories see, Peter Leeds, “Famous Companies Traded as Penny Stocks,” The Balance, updated July 30, 2020, accessed January 29, 2021, thebalance.com/famous-companies-traded-as-penny -stocks2637058.

63. Douglas Martin Shearer, “An Analysis of the 1983 Blind Pool Public Offerings in Utah” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1985), 2.

64. Leib Orlanski, “Going Public through the Back Door and the Shell Game,” Virginia Law Review 58, no. 8 (1972): 1451–87.

65. Shearer, “Blind Pool Public Offerings,” 44; estimate by Lyle Davis; see also, Orlanski, “Going Public through the Back Door,” 1452–53.

66. Report: Governor’s Securities Fraud Task Force, December 1984, 5. Governor Scott Matheson convened the task force on February 1, 1984, to investigate fraud in Utah; see also David A. Vise, “Fraud Seen Rampant in Utah,” Washington Post, December 25, 1984.

67. Shearer, “Blind Pool Public Offerings,” 10–23.

68. Leefeldt, “Blank-check Offerings Lure Investors.”

69. North American Security Administrators Association, “The NASAA Report on Fraud and Abuse in the Penny Stock Industry,” in Penny Stock Market Fraud: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, 101st Cong. (September 7, 1989), 196.

70. Dave Skidmore, “Story of ‘Boy Genius’ Gone Bad Angers Legislators,” Associated Press, January 28, 1988.

71. “NASAA Report,” 162.

72. “NASAA Report,” 163–67; see also, Valerie Schulthies, “Penny Stocks: Scams Spread Far, Far beyond S.L. and Denver,” Deseret News, August 13, 1989.

73. William H. Lash III, “Loose Change: the Campaign for Penny Stock Reform,” UMKC Law Review 60, no. 1 (1992); see also, John Baldwin, testimony, Penny Stock Market Fraud, 261.

74. Dee Benson, testimony, Penny Stock Market Fraud, Part 2, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and Finance, Committee on Energy and Commerce, 101st Cong., (April 25, 1990), 132.

75. John Baldwin, interview by Rod Decker, November 25, 2019. Baldwin was director of the Utah Division of Securities from 1985 to 1990.

76. “NASAA Report,” 154. The estimate comes from the lieutenant governor of Georgia. NASAA gave no method of derivation.

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28. “Financial Paper Labels S.L. Big ‘Fraud Capital,’” Ogden Standard Examiner, February 26, 1974.

29. Robert Woody “Dreaming Penny Stock Mart Revives, Dons Dollar Signs, Woos Quickie Profits,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 13, 1968.

30. Robert Woody, “Penny Stock Mart Booms, So Let the Buyer Beware,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 11, 1968.

31. “Annual Report of the Securities Commission of the State of Utah to the Governor,” 1966 and 1969, box 2, Series 5069, Utah State Archives and Records Service, Salt Lake City, Utah (USARS).

32. Frank Langheinrich, interview by Rod Decker, November 14, 2019.

33. Carl Teel, telephone interview by Rod Decker, November 25, 2019.

34. Cutler, “Salt Lake Stock Exchange.”

35. Robert A. Wright, “Intermountain Exchange Widening Sights,” New York Times, November 7, 1972.

36. Bruce Ingersoll, “Exchange in Utah Will End 90 Years of Trading in Fall,” Wall Street Journal, April 23, 1986.

37. Wayne Klein, interview by Rod Decker, November 25, 2019. Klein was the Idaho Securities Commissioner 1986–1995; assistant Utah attorney general for securities, 1996–2004; and director, Utah Division of Securities, 2005–2008.

38. Ringholz, Uranium Frenzy, interviewed members of the early infrastructure, 207–222.

39. David Nelson, interview by Rod Decker, November 20, 2019.

40. Lyle Davis, interview by Rod Decker, December 3, 2019.

Davis was secretary-treasurer of Wilson, Davis and Company.

41. Byron Barkley, interview by Rod Decker, December 3, 2019. Barkley was a broker.

42. Stephen L. Hunsaker, “New Issues in the Salt Lake Penny Market, 1970–1977” (master’s thesis, University of Utah). All of the stocks and their prices over time are listed on pages 11–30.

43. Teel, interview.

44. Davis, interview.

45. Ringholz, Uranium Frenzy, 216.

46. Don Woodward, “Brokers Organize New Association,” Deseret News, February 18, 1969.

47. J. R. Porter, “The ‘Hot Issues’ Market of 1980,” Journal of Business 57, no. 2, 215–40, studied penny stock issues in Denver and found that many rose quickly soon after they were issued, which supports Worthen’s claim.

48. “Investors Win Suit, But Still May Lose Shirts in Gold Scam,” AP, Salt Lake Tribune, November 28, 1991, A-12.

49. Diana B. Henriques, “Investing; the Scam Goes On,” New York Times, September 23, 1990.

50. Ed Leefeldt, “Blank-check Offerings Lure Investors: A Growing Number of Companies Sell Stock and Worry Later about Going into Business,” Wall Street Journal, June 16, 1986.

51. James Brooke, “Fugitive Financier, On the Lam since 1973, has a Court Date Today in Denver,” New York Times, December 6, 1996.

52. Ivan Solataroff, “America’s Greatest Living Criminal Genius Sends His Regards,” Esquire, August 1997.

53. Worthen, interview.

54. Jack Goodman, “Penny Stocks Boom Again,” New York Times, May 9, 1971.

55. Robert Woody, “Bill Aims at Shell Companies,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 20, 1972.

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77. Stewart Walz, interview by Rod Decker, December 9, 2019. Walz was an Assistant United States Attorney for Utah from 1980 to 2018, generally prosecuting fraud.

78. “NASAA Report,” 204.

79. Benson testimony, Penny Stock Market Fraud, Part 2, 127.

80. Walz, interview.

81. Carolyn E. Lampe, “The Penny Stock Reform Act of 1990: A Costly Solution to a Serious Problem,” George Mason University Law Review 13, no. 3 (1991): 779; Thomas E. Ricks, “SEC Seeks Change Tied to ‘Cold Calls’ for Penny Stocks,” Wall Street Journal, February 9, 1989.

82. Speech prepared for task force luncheon, reel 64, Governor Matheson Correspondence, 1976–1984, Series 4468, USARS. 83. Baldwin, interview.

84. William Power, ‘Regulators in Colorado, Utah Keep Busy Policing Penny Stocks, Blank Checks,” Wall Street Journal, September 26, 1988; Baldwin, interview.

85. Benson, testimony, Penny Stock Market Fraud, Part 2, 127.

86. Davis, interview.

87. Annual Reports, State of Utah Department of Commerce, accessed January 2020, commerce.utah.gov/reports .html.

88. Daniel J. Wadley, interview by Rod Decker, January 30, 2020. Wadley was named regional director of the SEC Salt Lake regional office in 2018.

89. E.g., “No. 1 Stock to Buy Right Now,” Banyan Hill, banyanhill.com; “Retire on These 4 Stocks?,” Fool, fool. com, both accessed June 25, 2019.

90. Dennis Romboy, “Does Utah Deserve the Title ‘Fraud Capital of the United States’?” Deseret News, April 29, 2019.

91. Wadley says Utah currently has more “offering fraud” than other places, and the offering fraud is related to “trust within the LDS community,” but not more fraud in other categories. Wadley, interview.

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MAC K I N N O N

“Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”

—Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of State, 1929

During the Utah War of 1857–1858, Brigham Young’s most influential non-Mormon advisor was Thomas L. Kane, the Philadelphia philanthropist who had come to the aid of the Latter-day Saints repeatedly during the previous ten years. Yet for a variety of reasons, there were periods before, during, and after the war, when the two men were out of touch with one another and consequently unaware of each other’s thinking.

One of the strangest such gaps in communications arose in the spring and early summer of 1858 following Kane’s departure from Salt Lake City for Philadelphia on May 13 and the arrival of the army’s Utah Expedition on June 26. Young was not to hear from his chief strategist and trusted advisor for another three months, and it was even longer before Kane received any word directly from Young. This was a crucial period of high anxiety during which momentous events occurred in both Utah and Washington.1 The purpose of this article is to surface a heretofore unknown effort by Brigham Young to bridge this latter communications gap through an encrypted message he wrote to Kane on July 21, 1858, that was couriered east and delivered to Kane in Pennsylvania during late September.

During the subsequent 163 years, the existence (but not the meaning) of this coded message was known only to a handful of people. Our article outlines the process by which we recently realized there was such a message, worked to access it, collaborated with a small international community of code breakers to decrypt it, and then assessed the message’s historical context and significance.

Our intent in presenting this previously “lost” document is to shed new light on the Young-Kane relationship and the plans of these two friends

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Communicating in Code: Brigham Young, Thomas L. Kane, and the “Lost” Utah War Message of July 1858

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Figures 1 (left) and 2 (right). Brigham Young’s encrypted July 21, 1858, message to Thomas L. Kane. Encoded in Utah, couriered east by Hugh McElrath, and decrypted in Pennsylvania during September 1858 by Elizabeth Kane and again by an international collaboration of professionals in December 2020, this two-page letter communicated the essence of Young’s agenda for postwar Utah with a frankness not possible through a plain text message sent via US mail. Courtesy of Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Library, and curator George A. Miles.

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[Thomas L.] Kane was so often consulted for sensitive political advice, and in part because his correspondence had to pass through many unknown and mistrusted hands, a number of codes are associated with him.” Kane is known to have used simple substitution ciphers (where one letter is consistently substituted for another), as well as more complex transposition codes (where words or letters are transformed through a series of alterations). During the Utah War, when he was in Salt Lake City and Fort Bridger, Kane often used his wife Elizabeth to decipher coded messages he intended his father and President Buchanan to read. As Parshall concludes, “The use of codes was an expression of both vigilance and ingenuity.”4

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War and Peace, an Uncertain Future for Utah

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Readers of this journal hardly need a rehash of the Utah War’s origins and prosecution, although a reminder of its conclusion and Young’s view of the future may be helpful.

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George A. Miles, the curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana at the Beinecke Library. His predecessor, Archibald Hanna Jr., used his talents to build an extraordinary collection of documents about the West, including important materials dealing with Thomas L. Kane. Miles has taken the collection to a new level, while acquiring primary sources about nineteenth-century Utah. Courtesy David Ottenstein Photography.

for dealing with the federal government in the immediate aftermath of the Utah War’s military phase. We also want to provide a dramatic example of the value of interdisciplinary collaboration among archivists, historians, and cryptologists to enrich the historical record.

Latter-day Saints Encrypted: Context

As the historian Ardis E. Parshall has noted, the Utah War was not the first use of coded communications by Latter-day Saints.2 As early as 1835, when the first edition of the Doctrine and Covenants was published, code names appeared throughout the book replacing the names of people, places, and properties associated with the United Firm, the church’s early financial organization.3 As Parshall writes, “In part because

By late March 1858 President Young was a man beleaguered, one surrounded by existential threats, with seemingly no escape routes available. It was this encirclement, intolerable pressure to do something, and perhaps divine guidance that prompted Young to change strategy. He shifted plans from a direct military conflict with the army in the Rockies and on the Great Plains to a different, more defensive strategy. Under this stunning new thrust, the Latter-day Saints abandoned Salt Lake City and northern Utah, prepared their infrastructure for incineration, and launched a flight south— first to a gathering spot at Provo and then to a more distant haven, perhaps northern Mexico.

The Nauvoo Legion was to continue its defense of the mountain passes into the Salt Lake Valley while fighting a rearguard action if necessary to protect women and children. Involving 30,000 people, the “Move South” was the greatest flight of refugees in North America since the American Revolution.5 While leading this abrupt about-face, Young focused on Utah’s future under likely military occupation and an uncertain period of federally dictated “reconstruction.”6 Central to his thinking were the merits of yet another change in strategy. What Young began to

The opening gambit in this campaign was already in motion by the time General Albert Sidney Johnston reached Salt Lake City and even then was playing out in James Buchanan’s Executive Mansion as well as at the editorial offices of several Manhattan newspapers. In this early stage of the strategy, facilitated by a discreet flow of church cash, Thomas L. Kane was the prime mover and the shaper of a new image for Young. Young’s anxiety to keep covert his linkage to Kane, as well as the global scope of his ambitions, shows in his operating instructions to Horace S. Eldredge, his business agent in St. Louis. As Eldredge prepared to travel east, Young told him, “let your intercourse with Col. Kane be confidential, and move from place to place without attracting more than necessary notice . . . not that we think you . . . [are] apt to make any unnecessary display, but simply as a caution to be wise and discreet, and while you with our good friend [Kane], move the whole world no one will know who has done it.”8 It was within this context of strategic change and secrecy that Young’s message to Kane of July 21, 1858, took shape.

Odyssey of a Strange Message The identity of the person who helped Young to formulate and then encrypt this message

Young then faced the practical problem of how to transmit these two documents nearly two thousand miles to Kane in Philadelphia. Normally, absent snow in the Rockies and on the Great Plains, this would have required transit time of about thirty days by US mail. But for such documents, use of the federal infrastructure was out of the question in view of Young’s firmly held belief that postmasters and their contractors routinely monitored his mail. Accordingly, as Young prepared these two messages—one encoded and the other in plain text—he would have begun the search for an eastbound Latter-day Saint or a trusted non-Mormon to serve as a courier. He found the latter in Hugh McDowell McElrath, a visiting representative of the New York mercantile firm of Robertson, Hudson and Pulliam.

McElrath had arrived in a deserted Salt Lake City about June 26, which makes it likely he had traveled at least part of the way west under the protection of the Utah Expedition. The purpose of his trip was to collect for his employer a longstanding debt of $37,000 owed by Hooper and Williams, an over-extended Utah mercantile firm. Young had no direct business interest in this complex affair, but since 1855 he had

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on July 21—three weeks after the arrival of the Utah Expedition—is unknown, but, based on knowledge of Young’s penmanship, office routine, and use of clerical-stenographic help, we are confident Young did not perform this task unaided.9 Once the job was completed, Young apparently felt there were additional things he wanted to communicate to Kane that were less sensitive than those he felt the need to encrypt.

Accordingly, the next day (July 22) he dictated a four-page letter that rambled through such subjects as his discussions with Buchanan’s peace commissioners, troop movements, termination of the Move South, Indian relations, and even his outdoor excursions. In this plain text letter, Young also felt free to ask Kane’s help with the mundane task of obtaining a wide variety of reference books, including the charter and municipal laws of New York City.

Upon finishing this dictation, Young asked his correspondence clerk not to finalize the rough draft for his signature but to hold it open undated, presumably so he could add information if needed.

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conceive in Provo and continued after terminating the Move South in early July, was the notion of dealing with the United States government post-war through a comprehensive campaign of political manipulation, legal challenges, and public relations initiatives. If Carl von Clausewitz, the great military strategist, had postulated that “war is merely the continuation of politics by other means,” what unfolded in Utah during the last half of 1858 and beyond was the converse of this concept.

After June 26, armed confrontation morphed into a continuum of nonmilitary but still contentious legal, image, and political struggles.

The New York Herald’s Utah correspondent described the early stages of this transformation two weeks after the Utah Expedition marched through Salt Lake City, noting that “we do not now head our articles ‘the Mormon war’ but we may yet have to do so, for the Mormon and Gentile war is just commencing.

It will at first be in accordance with the forms of law, but may not end so.”7

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Mr. McElreth [sic] took a letter of introduction and went up to see Brigham Young, Esq. He entered the prophet’s square and soon found himself entangled in a multitude of said Prophet’s wives and children.11 They were all mixed up together in admirable confusion. The children looked

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tried to resolve it by corresponding with Robertson, Hudson and Pulliam on behalf of a hardpressed and frequently absent Captain William H. Hooper.10 When upon arrival in Salt Lake City he did not receive immediate satisfaction from Hooper, McElrath decided to press his case directly with Young, whom he had never met. He borrowed Hooper’s carriage and drove to Provo, headquarters for the Move South, with Lemuel Fillmore, a nephew of former president Millard Fillmore who was in Utah as war correspondent for the New York Herald. As Fillmore told his readers, once in Provo:

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Hugh McDowell McElrath, a courier for Brigham Young. Young entrusted this non-Mormon, southern businessman to hand carry messages to Thomas Kane several times in the 1850s. Uniformed here as a Confederate quartermaster officer before his death in 1863. Courtesy of McElrath Family Archives.

hardy and robust. At length Mr. McElreth was directed to the President’s office. Brigham is now always denominated President by the faithful; they have given over calling him Governor.

In church they frequently say Brother Brigham. Well, after waiting some time in the office the prophet entered.

He was very courteous, gentlemanly and interesting in conversation. He was honorable in regard to the business upon which Mr. McElreth called upon him. Finally, the President invited the gentleman from New York to walk up to [Sunday morning] meeting with him. When there the latter gave the former a seat [of honor] upon the preacher’s stand.12 Whatever the discussions were in Provo between Hugh McElrath and Brigham Young, they produced results. When McElrath returned to Salt Lake City on July 1 with Young and most of the senior Latter-day Saint leaders, he received payment of the entire $37,000 debt in gold coin.

It was a resolution of Hooper and Williams’s outstanding obligation on a basis far more favorable than that extended to the firm’s other creditors. With the New Yorker now obliged to him for this favor, Young obtained his agreement to serve as courier. As McElrath prepared to leave Salt Lake City in early August, probably aboard the eastbound Hockaday mail coach, Young instructed his correspondence clerk to finalize the letter he had dictated for Kane on July 22 by adding the date (August 6) as well as a postscript explaining to Kane that both documents were being carried by McElrath and introducing him as an agent of the Robertson firm. When McElrath arrived in Philadelphia in early September 1858, he learned that the Kanes were spending the summer in Elk County because, unknown to him and Young, Thomas had begun a new job as agent for a land development company in proximity to his family’s unexploited timber holdings in western Pennsylvania. Rather than backtrack several hundred miles to make the delivery in person, McElrath put the Young communications in the US mail to Elk County where they arrived on September 24, 1858, and continued on to New York. This would not be the last time Young called upon McElrath for such courier service.13

Why Archie Hanna acquired a message he could not read is another of the mysteries associated with the document since it left the Kane family’s possession. One of us (MacKinnon) first met Hanna in 1958 and was a colleague and friend until his death in 2010. MacKinnon now speculates about two likely explanations. First is the lure of encryption, an attraction that might have appealed to Hanna’s World War II experience as a Marine Corps intelligence officer specializing in translating Japanese radio intercepts. Perhaps more compelling is the likelihood that the curator saw this document as a possible complement to his collection’s substantial holdings dealing with the Utah War. Although the message had only a single phrase in plain text (the heading “Great Salt Lake City July 21, 1858”), that might have been a clue sufficient to prompt Hanna to risk a small investment on the chance that the message was war-related and could eventually be deciphered.15 And so encrypted and therefore unexploited, this document settled into nearly

Later that year, on November 17, MacKinnon telephoned Miles, as he often did, to discuss YCWA. Near the end of this conversation, there was a pause, and Miles casually commented that MacKinnon might be interested to know that the cataloguing department had recently processed one of the oddities in the YCWA long overdue for attention. He then described the coded letter in terms of what little he knew about the Luther-Hanna transaction forty-eight years earlier and the document’s brief heading in plain text.

Although neither the message’s author and recipient nor its content were then known, Curator Miles’s description was enough to immediately resonate with MacKinnon’s more than sixty years of involvement in Utah War research. When MacKinnon raised the possibility of a connection between this document and the Utah War, Miles assured him he had already shaped the new catalogue entry for what was now officially styled “WA MSS S-4203 Un21” (Undecoded cipher letter, Great Salt Lake City, Utah, 1858 July 21) so that it read, in part, “The letter may relate to the Utah Expedition.” MacKinnon asked Miles if it would be possible to scan and send this document to him electronically, which Miles did.17 As a noncryptologist, MacKinnon began the search for someone who could decode it. Later on November 17, he called genealogist,

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When Hanna retired in 1981, his successor as curator was George A. Miles. Over the next forty years, Miles continued to build the YCWA in his own way, doing so with emphasis on acquiring and preserving materials relating to the history of the Latter-day Saints and the Utah War.16 In 2020, with the stresses and changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, Miles concluded the time was appropriate for urging Yale’s library cataloguing department to come to grips with the substantial processing backlog afflicting Beinecke. Unknown to MacKinnon, among the items Miles succeeded in having catalogued was his predecessor’s enigmatic 1972 acquisition.

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half a century of benign neglect in a file labeled “Uncatalogued Western Americana Manuscript” in Yale’s elegant Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

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Young’s plain text letter dated August 6 remained with the Kane family for nearly 140 years and was then acquired by Brigham Young University (BYU), but what became of Young’s encrypted message and the decoded version created by the Kanes in September 1858 is a mystery in terms of their provenance. There is no copy of either document in the massive accumulation of documents generated and retained by Young and the members of the Kane family and now housed largely in the research collections of the Church History Library and BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library. At some point, presumably in the late 1960s or early 1970s, the encrypted version of Young’s message gravitated to Talmadge N. “Tal” Luther, a Massachusetts native who since his graduation from Yale in 1950 had become a bibliophile and antiquarian bookseller based first in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, and then Taos, New Mexico. Luther, whose collecting and selling focused on the American West, offered this document for sale in his Catalogue 63 as item 149. Luther described the document simply as “written in code” and offered the observation, “Any expert in cryptography would find of interest.”14 In February 1972, Archibald Hanna Jr., curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana (YCWA) and one of Tal Luther’s frequent customers, bought the coded letter for ten dollars. It remains at Yale today.

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historian, and friend, Ardis E. Parshall of Salt Lake City, who he knew had a longstanding interest in the use of codes by the Latter-day Saints during the nineteenth century. Upon seeing the message, Parshall’s reaction was that it had been encrypted using a code unfamiliar to her, but she agreed to help MacKinnon think through what type of code had been used. There followed several days of exchanged emails during which Parshall became increasingly convinced that what was at hand was not an example of a simple “substitution code” but rather one that used a prearranged grid, overlay, or shared key.

On December 4, MacKinnon exchanged emails with Parshall, observing: “This letter has to have been encrypted by someone in a key role in the church, army, or among the merchants, newspaper reporters, or federal appointees, yet I can’t think of a single instance of any such person using such a cipher during the Utah War in all the documents I’ve seen over the decades. All of the ‘usual suspects’ have transmitted documents/ messages that were very sensitive, but to my knowledge they were all in plain text, with security concerns being met by use of trusted couriers rather than the mails or use of cut-outs at the Salt Lake City end of the communications chain.

The person only remotely in this ballpark was Thomas L. Kane, who did use a cipher system during his sojourn in Utah to transmit dispatches to his family using a matching Bible on both ends of the message flow.”

At this juncture, MacKinnon’s mind turned to a BYU church history professor, Kenneth L. Alford, with whom he was already collaborating on a monograph about a quite different Utah War subject.18 Alford’s earlier professional career involved service as a US Army colonel, and MacKinnon’s thought was that, although not a cryptologist himself, he might have contacts familiar with that world. On December 4, 2020, MacKinnon briefed Alford on Yale’s intriguing document, asking “do you have any military friends knowledgeable about cryptology who might be willing to take a look at this document just for the fun of it?” And it turns out he did.

Professor Alford contacted Robert Simpson, Librarian of the National Cryptologic Museum, an affiliate of the National Security Agency at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, on December

7. Simpson, in turn, put Alford in touch with a German cryptologist, Klaus Schmeh, who is an international expert on the history of encryption, a prolific author, and the proprietor of Cipherbrain, a leading Internet blog focusing on this subject.19 Schmeh informed Alford that he and Elonka Dunin, an American video game developer and cryptologist, would be giving an online presentation on December 12 during the International Conference on Cryptologic History.

Fortuitously, the Schmeh-Dunin presentation was to focus on unsolved cryptographic mysteries, and they agreed to include the 1858 Salt Lake City document in their discussion.

Schmeh and Dunin graciously allowed Alford to answer questions from online attendees after their conference presentation. The previous day, Schmeh had posted images of the July 1858 letter on his website and challenged his readers to decrypt it.20 Schmeh’s invitation was accepted by Adam Sampson—an associate professor of computer science at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. After several days of guess work and experimentation, Sampson pieced together the original transpositional encryption scheme and decoded the first page. His solution was posted on Schmeh’s blog on December 28, 2020. The second page was decoded through the collaborative efforts of Matthew Brown, an amateur cryptologist living in England, and Sampson.21 Through this unpredictable chain of events, the challenge of this document moved through a variety of conventional and electronic means from Brigham Young’s office in Salt Lake City on July 21, 1858, to “stops” in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Connecticut, California, Utah, Maryland, Germany, and then, near the end of 2020, to the Internet and the arcane international community of cryptologists and computer scientists. In terms of provenance alone, it is a story replete with examples of the power of technological change, serendipity, and collaboration. At any step along the way during the course of this 162-year odyssey an interruption to these forces and events would have consigned this enigmatic message to an even longer period of obscurity. That this did not happen is a lesson worth considering within the context of the research processes used by historians and other scholars.

Based on this understanding, we believe Young used a cipher devised by Patterson, shared by him with Judge Kane, and carried to Utah by Thomas L. Kane during the winter of 1857– 1858. Before departing Utah for Pennsylvania in mid-May 1858, Thomas instructed Young or one of his confidants in the code’s use and left its key in Salt Lake City to encrypt future confidential communications.22 Here is one plausible way that the July 21 message may have been encoded. First, all spaces and punctuation were removed from Young’s plain text message. Second, guided by the key, a specific number of meaningless, nonmessage letters (“key values”) were written on each line. For example, there are 23 nonmessage letters on row 1 (“abcdlmnmopstvwxyqrsmnoj”); 10 nonmessage letters on row 2 (“lmnopqrstg”), repeated down the page. Third, the message text begins immediately after the leading nonmessage (“junk”) letters—at the 24th letter on the first line, the 11th letter on the second line, and so forth. The plain text message was then written, one letter per row, down the page (e.g., writing d on line 1, e on line 2, a on line 3). At the bottom of the page,

Page 1 Decryption Key 24 “hidden” message characters per line.

Character positions where the message text begins on lines 1–23: 24, 11, 3, 23, 9, 4, 7, 21, 22, 19, 7, 7, 20, 5, 14, 21, 7, 2, 14, 24, 21, 10, 17

Page 2 Decryption Key 8 “hidden” message characters per line.

Character positions where the message text begins on lines 1–25: 14, 21, 21, 5, 5, 21, 17, 13, 17, 20, 21, 4, 4, 16, 3, 2, 9, 4, 8, 24, 21, 7, 16, 21, 9 It may be worth noting that as none of the key values exceed twenty-six, the decryption key may have originally been based on a shared book or document, such as the first letters of verses in a specified chapter in the Bible, for example.

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The encoding process was the same on page 2, with three exceptions. First, the second page used different key values to determine how many meaningless characters begin each line.

Second, there are only 8 message characters per line, instead of 24. And third, there are 25 lines on the page instead of 23. The decryption key Young and Kane possessed included two essential elements: the number of meaningful message characters on each line (24 on page 1 and 8 on page 2) and the varying character position where the message text begins on each line. Therefore, we infer that the decryption key may have looked something like this.25

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The solution to determining the code’s origins and use by Young in July 1858 lies in an understanding of the coded messages Kane sent to his family from Salt Lake City and Fort Bridger earlier that year that were decrypted in Philadelphia and then couriered to President Buchanan. As those letters have survived only in plain text (decrypted) form, we were dependent for an understanding of their origins on a description of them contained in an unpublished manuscript, “Mother of the Regiment,” Elizabeth Kane wrote in the late nineteenth century to describe the role she and her husband played in the Civil War. In that document Elizabeth devoted a chapter to husband Thomas’s 1858 Utah mission and made clear that the code they used during the Utah War was one devised in the early 1800s by Dr. Robert Patterson, a prominent Philadelphia mathematician-cryptographer and relative by marriage of Judge John K. Kane, Thomas’s father. The judge was to name his fourth son Robert Patterson Kane in honor of the mathematician.

the scribe returned to the top line and continued the process until each line “hid” 24 letters of the original message. The first two words in the message, for example, are “Dear Colonel.”23 The resulting message text “hidden” on the first line of page 1 is “delnthdediesenritfhilpfa.” (See figures 1 and 2.) Finally, a varying number of nonmessage letters were added at the end of lines that were too short, such as “vvwymnopghijk” added on the second line of page 1.24

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Encrypting and Decoding Brigham Young’s Message: 1858 and 2020

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Figures 3 and 4. Transcriptions of page 1 (left) and page 2 (right) of Young’s letter, highlighting the hidden message text.

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Figure 5. The reassembled text of the original message. The letters in column 1 (“delnthdediesenritfhilpfa”) are the same as the hidden message text on line 1 from page 1. Column 2 is the same as line 2 and so forth.

Elizabeth Kane recorded in her journal the arrival of the coded communication from Brigham Young: “On Friday,” September 24, 1858, “came a letter and cipher from B.Y. wh[ich] I spent the evening in making out.”26 Even though she was surely in possession of the key, it would have taken her several hours to reassemble the intended message from the coded letter. The first page has pencil marks on most lines that were presumably made by Elizabeth Kane as

she labored to decipher the letter. Most pencil marks are correctly placed, but curiously some are not (such as lines 2 and 4). Elizabeth also crossed out characters on several lines (3, 6, 13, 15, and 16) to correctly identify the beginning of the encoded text on those lines. Interestingly, there are no pencil marks on the second page.

Perhaps she was sufficiently comfortable with the decoding process by that point to make their use unnecessary.

Meanings

With this background we now turn to the plain text of Brigham Young’s relatively brief message and our analysis of its significance and meaning.

Given the fact that one day later Young wrote a much longer letter in plain text to Thomas Kane and that both communications were couriered east by Hugh McElrath in early August, historians may be tempted to discount the value of the encrypted message as somehow superseded by the second message. To do so would, in our view, be a mistake. The substance

The stock driven from the command last fall were offered to, received, and receipted for by the quartermaster, a sad mistake by the General.28 Gov. Cummin[g] is bold for law and the rights of the people, and Sec. Hartnett and Suprtdnt. Forney stand by him.29 The pageboys commissioners talked much and handed us the pardon, which we accepted as far as burning wagons and driving stock were concerned.30 The rest you know. There is some contention between the law-abiding and the camp followers. Can you aid us in the removal of the troops? Officers, soldiers, and camp followers feel themselves completely whipped.31 A petition for the appointment of certain men has been forwarded [y] to President Buchanan with the approval of Gov. Cumming and Doctor Forney. A duplicate is enclosed to you.32 Can you induce a favorable action thereon? We shall change our delegate. Who shall we send? Give us a name. Yours would look splendid. [lymdgwrs]33 Stripped of Utah’s governorship, beset by apprehensions of assassination and accountability for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and embarrassed by the unfulfilled bravado of his quixotic pursuit of a “Sebastopol strategy,” creation of the Army of Israel, and execution of the Move South, by the time the Utah Expedition marched through Salt Lake City Young had withdrawn to the safety and isolation of his walled, heavily guarded compound. He

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Dear Colonel,

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Great Salt Lake City July 21st 1858

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Deciphering the second page proved more difficult because Elizabeth Kane left no pencil marks to serve as breadcrumbs in pursuing the encryption trail that started in Salt Lake City.

Encoding shortcuts taken in the summer of 1858, though, provided significant clues to solving the puzzle in 2020 because the scribe who created the letter was apparently lazy or bored or both. The much shorter width of the message text on page 2 (only 8 letters versus 24) meant the scribe had to add more nonmessage characters on each line. The last twelve lines on page two contain increasingly long sequences of the same consecutive letter (i, g, h, j, y, a, m, w, r), which enabled Sampson and Brown to identify where the coded message text ended on each line. Through a process of trial and error, they determined the width of the message text on the second page and were able to reconstruct the original message in its entirety.

of the two documents is complementary rather than duplicative, and to marginalize the shorter, encoded message is to miss its importance at a critical juncture in Utah’s history as a distillation of Young’s priorities for the territory’s future. Here is a focus that provides historians (as it did Thomas L. Kane) with a summary glimpse into Young’s thinking free of the distractions of the rambling style that often shaped his prolix office dictations (such as that of July 22, 1858) as well as his sometimes hours-long Sunday discourses.

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Without the benefit of the original key, cryptologists faced a more daunting challenge to decipher the letter in 2020 than Elizabeth Kane did in 1858. After several false starts, Kane’s pencil marks provided an essential insight into how the code might have been constructed. As Professor Sampson, who cracked the code, observed, “On both pages, the runs of alphabetic sequences and repeated characters do not continue across line breaks, which suggested that the line structure was important, and the runs were probably filler. There are also some pencil marks that look like they are dividing the lines into sections. This turned out to be right . . . each line has a variable amount of junk at the start and the end, and on the first page there are 24 meaningful characters on each [line].”27

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cancelled worship services and other public appearances.34

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Yet by the third week in July, Young’s resilience had returned. Although still sequestered and subdued, he resumed his ongoing efforts to shape the Latter-day Saints’ future. By July 19, his old combativeness flared to the point of a near clash in his office with army guide Ben Ficklin when Ficklin took umbrage over a casual reference Young made about Secretary of War John B. Floyd, a fellow Virginian.35 Only two days later, his encrypted message of July 21 set forth for Kane’s use Young’s agenda for a new life—one in uncomfortable proximity to the US Army while beset by the continued burden of unwanted federal political appointees.

Aside from its value as a colorful example of Latter-day Saint use of codes, the primary significance of this document rests with the way in which it signaled two of Young’s most important priorities: the removal or significant reduction in the new federal military presence in Utah, and a wholesale purge of the federal officials President Buchanan had appointed not much more than a year earlier.

The matter of troops in the territory was especially sensitive because of the longstanding perception by Latter-day Saints that the federal government had earlier failed to provide military protection in the face of persecution in Missouri and Illinois. Equally if not more important was the fact that when Buchanan ordered the Utah Expedition to garrison the territory in the spring of 1857, there was no permanent federal military presence in Utah. In this sense, the place was quite unlike every other state and territory that surrounded it. The result was that Governor Brigham Young soon grew accustomed to operating 2,000 miles from Washington without the restraining influence that often came with proximity to army posts and military commanders with an independent reporting relationship to the government’s Executive Branch.

Thus, by the commencement of the Utah War, the stage was set for a determined effort by Young to bar federal troops from entering the territory. On September 15, 1857, he took formal action on this intent by issuing an

unprecedented gubernatorial proclamation of martial law. This decree described the approaching Utah Expedition and its thousands of camp followers as “a hostile force . . . an armed mercenary mob” and prohibited “All armed forces of every description from coming into this Territory under any pretence whatever.” As weather conditions and harassment by the Nauvoo Legion forced Johnston’s troops into winter quarters two months later at Fort Bridger, just inside Utah’s northeastern border, a beleaguered Young worried about their likely move on the Salt Lake Valley in the spring. As that time came, he also experienced recurring nightmares of armed assaults on his person by Johnston and other army officers. In early May, Young made his priority explicit by instructing his covert agent on the staff of New York’s Herald that “the objects to be first moved for are the prevention of any re-enforcement to the troops now in our borders and the withdrawal of those troops at the earliest date upon which it can [be accomplished].”36 How Thomas L. Kane reacted in September 1858 upon decoding Young’s July plea for aid “in the removal of the troops” is unclear, but action indeed took place to bring partial, if not complete, relief. This result came from two forces in play during the summer of 1858 in addition to lobbying by Kane and others: the staggering, unsustainable cost of the Utah Expedition in the midst of the nation’s worst economic downturn in twenty years, and the impact of Indian outbreaks in both the Pacific Northwest and in the Southwest.37 Consequently, even as McElrath carried Young’s messages east, the war department diverted regiments already in Utah and others on the march from Kansas Territory to meet these unexpected needs. Much of the enormous force of infantry and artillery units westbound on the Oregon Trail under General William Harney was halted in Nebraska Territory and ordered back to Fort Leavenworth.

Unknown to Young, the day before he encrypted his priorities to send east, Kane rose from his sick bed and dictated a memorandum to be couriered west in which he too touched on troop levels. Kane treated the matter as an

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If ridding Utah of US troops headed Young’s priorities in the immediate aftermath of the Utah War, what rivaled it was the need to replace or marginalize the most objectionable civilians holding federal office in the territory.

As Young saw it, both thrusts were essential to

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important one, but he ranked it behind the achievement of statehood in his priorities for Utah. Not gripped with apprehension of summary execution as Young was, Kane was almost relaxed about ridding Utah of a federal military presence: “As for the late War—it will end for good with the withdrawal of the present forces from the [Great] Basin.—Get them, out quietly— let me have a few sound facts and arguments [to] spread before the nation, and, my word for it, you have seen your last soldier marched across the plains—have heard your last forever of all such wickedness and folly.”38 Notwithstanding Kane’s optimism, it took nearly three more years and the advent of the Civil War for Young to free Utah entirely of US troops. Once accomplished, this respite lasted only slightly more than a year.

Elizabeth D. W. Kane. Judge Kane taught Elizabeth to use the code created by a relative, Robert Patterson.

She decrypted messages sent east first by her husband and then by Brigham Young. Photo taken May 12, 1858, her twenty-second birthday. Courtesy of HBLL, BYU.

freeing Utah from its quasi-colonial status as a ward of Congress during its uncertain political passage toward statehood. Young’s critics perceived such priorities as simply his way of shaking loose from the inhibitions of federal oversight and supervision.

In his encrypted message to Kane, former governor Young mentioned several among the incumbents whom he considered reasonably friendly to the Latter-day Saints and also referred to the development of a petition urging removal of other office holders. Neither comment was a casual one; both signaled to Kane the importance in Young’s thinking of an integrated, two-pronged strategy he had launched to defend Utah during her long post-war period of political and societal reconstruction.

Thomas L. Kane, confidant of Brigham Young. Photo, reflecting his continuing ill health, taken by Elizabeth Kane ca. 1859. Courtesy of HBLL, BYU.

The first of these thrusts, conceived nearly two months before the Utah Expedition marched through Salt Lake City, was one of divide and

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Brigham Young, his church’s president, circa 1855–1865. Although no longer Utah’s governor or superintendent of Indian affairs, he was still the territory’s acknowledged ruler, shaping its relationship with the US government during Utah’s long period of “reconstruction.” Courtesy of Library of Congress, LCBH82-4714.

conquer. This was not Young’s terminology, but it aptly describes his effort, with Kane’s help, to befriend and then dominate his successor, Alfred Cumming. Tactics used by both men were a combination of flattery, intimidation, and possible blackmail.39 At the same time, Young worked to draw into his orbit as many as possible of the other federal appointees. Those officials unwilling to accept such an alignment assumed the status of so-called antis, perhaps with their safety in jeopardy.

A comprehensive description of the means by which Young accomplished such a split is available elsewhere and need not be rehashed here.40 Suffice it to say that by the time he encrypted his message to Kane, the former governor was well on the way to dividing Utah’s federal establishment, with more polarization to come as the rest of the new officials arrived in Salt Lake City.

The related matter of the petition to which Young referred on July 21 likewise took shape before the army’s arrival but did not become an important part of Young’s maneuvering until slightly later than his efforts to create factionalism. By way of context, we note that Latter-day Saint petitions to the US government seeking removal of obnoxious federal appointees had a long and unhappy history. In public at least, prior to the spring of 1858 Brigham Young tended to rail against Utah’s federal appointees as a corrupt, ineffective class rather than to name worthless officials individually. Usually such criticism was accompanied by a pointed explanation that Utah’s culture and society were so isolated, expensive, and peculiar that only Latter-day Saints or perhaps those office seekers sympathetic to them could or should be induced to accept appointment in the Great Basin.41 With the army poised to resume its march on the Salt Lake Valley in the spring of 1858, the gloves came off, and obnoxious officials were identified. Perhaps alarmed by Young’s extraordinary letter to him of May 8 hinting at possible violence awaiting such appointees, Governor Cumming, with Kane’s help, drafted a long memo reciting Latter-day Saint grievances and urging the removal of chief justice Eckels, US attorney John M. Hockaday, secretary John Hartnett, and perhaps others such as Hiram F. Morrell, Salt Lake City’s postmaster, and Indian agent Garland Hurt. Cumming addressed this document to congressman James L. Orr, speaker of the US House, who, in turn, sent it to Buchanan. Kane served as the courier between Salt Lake City and Washington, then carrying it from Capitol Hill to the Executive Mansion.42 As June unfolded in Utah, Young concluded that the best way to bring about a change in the appointees who afflicted Utah was through a petition to Washington, although he understood the need for care, given the backlash produced by earlier such memorials. He would have to resolve several tactical issues to shape such a document: to whom should it be addressed; the petition’s length and tone; who should sign it; which appointees should be targeted for removal and why; who should be the presumed Latter-day Saints to replace them; and what part in this gambit should Cumming and Kane play? This was the petition Young

Not surprisingly, word that such a petition was taking shape found its way to the cadre of newspaper reporters camped in a near-empty Salt Lake City to await the army’s arrival. Early on the morning of June 26, several hours before the Utah Expedition marched into town, James W. Simonton, correspondent for New York’s Times, put his latest dispatch aboard the eastbound mail coach. After listing the officials believed to be targeted for removal and the reasons as well as their rumored successors, Simonton wrote, “We shall see now whether justice or the Mormons are strongest in their influence over the Administration of James Buchanan.” He then added a long paragraph criticizing Cumming’s role in creating and forwarding such a document, urged his recall, and described the governor as “naturally excitable, and notoriously gets steam up to an alarming point over the whisky-jug. . . . He is, withal, vain as a boy of 13, and offensively imagines himself the embodiment of all that is great and grand.”

Simonton concluded, “I suggest that Mr. Buchanan send his nomination[s] here for confirmation [by Brigham Young], rather than to the Senate of the United States.”44 The petition, transmitted to Buchanan via Cumming’s organizational superior, secretary of state Lewis Cass, was close to what

After he returned to Washington in August 1858, peace commissioner Ben McCulloch wrote Blair, his old comrade-in-arms from the Texas Rangers, “One word as to [federal] government officials in Utah; I don’t think this administration will remove any of its appointees, until they have given them a fair chance to show whether they are honest and competent. This is the opinion of your friend.”46 He was right.

Although neither Young’s coded message nor the copy of the accompanying petition to the Buchanan administration that it transmitted to Kane on an informational basis mentioned the need to keep Governor Cumming in office, that thought went without saying. His retention was indeed essential to the effectiveness of Young’s and Kane’s strategy for transforming the period of reconstruction that followed the Utah War into a nonmilitary campaign to benefit the Latter-day Saints. Increasingly, as 1858 and 1859 unfolded, such retention grew precarious as non-Mormon criticism of Cumming’s role in shepherding the petition of June 25 to Washington and perceptions that Young had, in effect, co-opted the new governor’s independence grew exponentially. To Kane fell the major responsibility for shoring up Cumming’s political viability with the Buchanan administration. How and when Kane went about doing this falls beyond the scope of this article, but it is the primary focus of the article immediately following in this journal.47

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By the last week in June 1858, with the Utah Expedition marching through the Wasatch mountains, Ferguson’s drafting had progressed to the point that in a letter to Cumming on an unrelated subject, Young added a postscript noting, “Any assistance you can render Genl. Ferguson in obtaining signatures from your friends to the petition which he bears with him as well as your own signature would be esteemed a favor.”

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With Kane’s unavailability in Pennsylvania, Young turned for a draftsman and strategist to Brigadier General James Ferguson, the Nauvoo Legion’s Belfast-born adjutant general. Because Young was in Provo leading the Move South, it fell to Ferguson to deal with Alfred Cumming in Salt Lake City once the church president determined that the governor was to be key in facilitating a favorable reception in Washington for such a petition.43

Cumming had urged Ferguson to finalize and what reporter Simonton had ferreted out of legion major Seth M. Blair, Young’s nominee to replace Judge Eckels. Here was a result Young had hoped for during the closing weeks of the Utah War and for which he, with Kane’s help, would advocate during the period of reconstruction that followed. As a matter of strategy, Cumming did not sign this document, although sixty prominent church, Nauvoo Legion, and business leaders did sign, including Young. No action was taken on these recommendations, and there is no trace of this petition in federal records. The copy that Young transmitted to Kane via his encrypted message of July 21 ultimately gravitated to Yale’s Beinecke Library but for some reason did so separately from the coded transmittal message.45

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would later copy and send to Kane via the coded message of July 21.

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Afterword

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When Thomas L. Kane departed Philadelphia to attend Brigham Young’s funeral in August 1877, he did so under an alias, much as he had as assumed the identity of “Dr. Osborne” for his 1858 mission to Utah. Twenty years later, the use of an alias may have again comforted Kane, but it failed to mislead the alert Mormon bodyguards who in 1877 swung aboard his train in search of their protectee a thousand miles east of Salt Lake City. After the funeral, Kane beheld the splendors of northeastern Utah for the last time as his eastbound Union Pacific train rocked and swayed through Echo Canyon. As the red sandstone cliffs passed, he reached for his diary to record thoughts of Young’s role in the Utah War. The meaning of Kane’s written musings remains as cryptic and enigmatic as the day he wrote them.48 We choose to believe that in September 1877 Tom Kane, a “special friend” of the Latter-day Saints heading home to Pennsylvania, would have smiled had he known of apostle John Taylor’s earlier lamentation to Brigham Young from New York: “I felt & said that I would give $500 for five minutes conversation with you.

You must here excuse me Br. Young. I may be obtuse and so may those who were with me; but however plain your words might be to yourself on this matter, neither I nor my associates could understand them.”49

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Notes

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The authors wish to express their appreciation to George A. Miles (in Connecticut), Robert Simpson (Maryland), Klaus Schmeh (Germany), Adam Sampson (Scotland), and Matthew Brown (England) for the role they each played in surfacing and successfully decoding this little-known and heretofore wholly unreadable letter from the Utah War. We are also grateful to Ardis E. Parshall of Salt Lake City for surfacing the link between Dr. Robert Patterson’s long interest in cryptology and the Kane family’s decision to safeguard its communications with Brigham Young through use of codes. Finally, posthumous thanks to Archibald Hanna Jr. (1916–2010), founding curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana, who a half-century ago had the intuition to acquire this document when Tal Luther offered it for sale.

During this period, on July 5, Kane drafted a letter to Young that began, “You cannot be more anxious to hear from me, than I am to write to you,” but for logistical reasons this message was never sent. Kane to Young, July 5, 1858, fd. 18, box 14, Kane Family Papers, Vault MSS 792, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (HBLL).

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Ms. Parshall gave a presentation on this subject at the 2006 annual conference of the Mormon History Association in Casper, Wyoming. Based on that presentation, on December 9–11, 2008, she published a three-part essay entitled “The Qmlbwpnygax Eujugec Have Not the Power to Ktgjie the Wzznlhmpygtg: Codes and Ciphers in Mormon History” on her blog Keepapitchinin, accessed April 14, 2021, keepapitchinin.org/2008/12/09/.

Robin Scott Jensen, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Riley M. Lorimer, eds., “Substitute Words in the 1835 and 1844 Editions of the Doctrine and Covenants,” The Joseph Smith Papers: Revelations and Translations—Volume 2: Published Revelations (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 708–711; David J. Whittaker, “Substituted Names in the Published Revelations of Joseph Smith,” BYU Studies 23 (Winter 1983): 103–111.

Parshall, December 9–11, 2008, Keepapitchinin.org.

Latter-day Saint leaders continued to use codes and encrypted communications after the end of the Utah War and during the American Civil War. See Kenneth L. Alford, ed., Utah and the American Civil War: The Written Record (Norman: Arthur H. Clark, University of Oklahoma Press, 2017), 119–21, 131.

Alford, “‘We have now the Territory on wheels’: Direct and Collateral Costs of the 1858 Move South,” Journal of Mormon History 45 (April 2019): 92–114; MacKinnon, “Exodus and the Utah War: Tales from the Mormon Move South,” Overland Journal, Quarterly of the Oregon-California Trails Association 34 (Fall 2016): 89–100; Richard D. Poll, “The Move South,” BYU Studies 29 (Fall 1989): 65–88.

We use the term reconstruction to describe the decades-long period of postwar turmoil in Utah Territory because of its parallels to certain aspects of the experience of the eleven states of the Confederacy during 1865–1876. The most recent discussion of this concept is W. Paul Reeve, “Reconstruction, Religion, and the West: The Great Impeacher Meets the Mormons,” Journal of Mormon History 46 (April 2020): 5–45. Earlier uses of this descriptor are Richard D. Poll, “The Political Reconstruction of Utah Territory, 1866–1890,” Pacific Historical Review 27 (May 1958): 111–26; and Clyde A. Milner II and Brian Q. Cannon, eds., Reconstruction and Mormon America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019).

[Lemuel Fillmore], “Utah Affairs,” Dispatch, July 10, 1858, New York Herald, August 9, 1858, 8/1.

Young to Eldredge, October 20, 1858, General Correspondence, Outgoing, 1843–1876, Brigham Young Office Files, CR 1234/1, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City (CHL).

See also Young to George Q. Cannon, September 7, 1858, Brigham Young Office Files, for instructions on influencing the press and interfacing with Kane. Both available online at catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org.

One possibility for the person acting as code clerk is Samuel W. Richards, who shared with Young an interest in coded communications.

Young’s correspondence with both firms during 1855 and 1856 may be found in the CHL. A reference to a fort-like quadrangle of frame cabins fabricated in Provo from lumber shipped south by wagon from the Salt Lake Valley to shelter Brigham Young’s families.

[Lemuel Fillmore], Dispatches from Provo and Salt Lake City, June 28 and July 2, 1858, New York Herald, July 30, 1858.

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omitted a g at the end of Governor Cumming’s name on line 19, which may explain the extraneous letter y that was added to the last line on page 1. Those mistakes have been corrected in figure 1.

Email, Brown to Alford, December 31, 2020.

Elizabeth Wood Kane Journal, vol. 3, 40, Kane Family Papers, HBLL. Adam Sampson, quoted by Klaus Schmeh, “The first page of the Utah war cryptogram is solved, can a reader break the second?,” December 28, 2020, Cipherbrain, accessed May 13, 2021, scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto -kolumne/the-first-page-of-the-utah-war-cryptogram -is-solved-can-a-reader-break-the-second/.

A reference to the army’s beef cattle driven off by the Nauvoo Legion in what is now southwestern Wyoming during the fall of 1857. Although hundreds of animals were stolen, Young returned only a small herd in July 1858. This was the only offense of which he was accused during the war for which Young admitted responsibility, so it is understandable that here he went out of his way to assert that he had made it right. The “General” was Albert Sidney Johnston. The meaning of “a sad mistake” is unclear.

Alfred Cumming of Georgia was Young’s gubernatorial successor; Jacob Forney was his successor as US superintendent of Indian affairs in Utah. John Hartnett of St. Louis was Utah’s territorial secretary. All three men were non-Mormons but considered by Young to be reasonably sympathetic to the Mormon cause, at least in comparison to other federal appointees.

This was a sarcastic reference to President Buchanan’s two peace commissioners, Lazarus W. Powell and Ben McCulloch, who infuriated Young by following their instructions to avoid negotiating and debating with him, instead presenting him with the presidential pardon on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

To a twenty-first-century reader the term “whipped” might seem counterintuitive, but this kind of hyperbole was frequently used by Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and other Latter-day Saint leaders for moralebuilding and public relations purposes.

Although this copy of the petition was carried east with the coded message of July 21 by McElrath, decades later it became separated from its transmittal message.

Ironically, both documents ultimately gravitated to the YCWA at different times and through purchases from different antiquarian book dealers operating in widely separated regions of the United States.

Adam Sampson notes that the final word of the message could also be read as “splendidly” (as the first two letters in the filler text that completes the message table are “ly”). Sampson to Alford, email, January 2, 2021.

This was not the first time Young broached to Kane the matter of becoming Utah’s delegate in Congress. In 1855 Kane politely deflected Young’s offer to arrange his election to this position, arguing that he could be of more help to the Latter-day Saints outside of Congress through action behind the scenes. Young to Kane and Kane to Young, October 30, 1854, and January 5, 1855, in Grow and Walker, eds., The Prophet and the Reformer, 171–83.

William P. MacKinnon, ed., At Sword’s Point: A Documentary History of the Utah War to 1858, Part 1 (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2008), 62–65.

Two differing accounts of this incident survive: a short yet remarkable one recorded by President Young’s of-

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13. In the late winter of 1859, for example, McElrath traveled to Philadelphia to hand Kane a sensitive letter dated January 14, 1859, that Young had probably sent him via the all-weather Utah-California-Panama-New York mail route. In this case, McElrath would have acted as what today’s intelligence operatives call a “cutout” as well as a courier. On the same day, apostle George A. Smith had also written Kane to describe the chronic drunkenness of one of Utah’s federal judges, a letter that probably traveled with Young’s. Matthew J. Grow and Ronald W. Walker, The Prophet and the Reformer: The Letters of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 282 and 317n17. For an understanding of McElrath’s southern roots and his subsequent Civil War career as a Confederate quartermaster officer, we are indebted to his great-great grandson, Robert “Rob” W. Melton Jr. of Portland, Oregon.

14. Our thanks to antiquarian book seller Michael Heaston for locating this rare catalog and Yale curator George Miles for relaying this information. Miles to MacKinnon, email message, April 15, 2021.

15. William P. MacKinnon, “The Curator Retires from the Old Corral: Where the East Studies the West,” Yale Alumni Magazine 45 (October 1981): 33–37.

16. George Miles, “Mormon Stories: A Librarian’s Perspective,” Journal of Mormon History 38 (Spring 2012): 47–65, and “Mormon Americana at Yale University,” in Mormon Americana: A Guide to Sources and Collections in the United States, ed. David Whittaker (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 1995), 296–304.

17. Descriptions of MacKinnon’s telephone conversations and email messages involving George A. Miles, Ardis E. Parshall, and Kenneth L. Alford are based on his retained phone logs and archived email messages.

18. William P. MacKinnon and Kenneth L. Alford, Fact, Fiction, and Polygamy—A Tale of Utah War Intrigue, 1857–1858: A. G. Browne’s “The Ward of the Three Guardians” (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, forthcoming).

19. Email, Simpson to Alford, December 7, 2020.

20. Klaus Schmeh, “Can You Decipher an Encrypted Letter from the Utah War?,” Cipherbrain, December 11, 2020, accessed April 14, 2021, scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto -kolumne/2020/12/11/can-you-decipher-an-encrypted -letter-from-the-utah-war/; emails between Schmeh and Alford, December 7, 2020, through January 2, 2021.

21. Klaus Schmeh, “Die erste Seite des Utah-Krieg-Kryptogramms ist gelöst, wer löst die zweite?,” Cipherbrain, December 28, 2020, accessed April 14, 2021, scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/the-first -page-of-the-utah-war-cryptogram-is-solved-can-a -reader-break-the-second/; emails between Sampson, Brown, and Alford, December 2020 and January 2021.

22. Elizabeth W. Kane, “The Story of the Mother of the Regiment,” vol. 2, ch, 3, fd. 1, box 31, reel 22, Kane Family Papers, HBLL. 23. Several transcriptions of the July 21 letter were created during the 2020 decryption process. The text in figure one is based primarily on Adam Sampson’s initial December 2020 transcription with some changes from a later transcription provided by Alford.

24. Young’s unknown scribe made a few mistakes during the encoding process. An extra letter was added on lines 5 and 21 of page 1—the scribe wrote “coeec” instead of “coec” on line 1, for example. The scribe also

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fice clerk in the format of a stenographic record of the repartee between Ficklin and Young; and a highly colorful narrative description that found its way onto the front page of the New York Times through a dispatch filed by the newspaper’s principal correspondent in Salt Lake City. Both accounts agree on the basics of the clash but with understandably different approaches to presenting the context and dialogue involved. Ficklin may have been spoiling for a fight when he entered Young’s office. Minutes: Brigham Young and Benjamin F. Ficklin, Office, July 19, 1858, box 48, fd. 11, reel 62, CR 1234/1, CHL; “A. B. C.” [David A. Burr], Dispatch, “Condition of Mormon Affairs,” July 24, 1858, New York Times, August 24, 1858, 1/6.

Young to T. B. H. Stenhouse, May 8, 1858, Brigham Young Office Files (qtn); Church Historian’s Office Journal, April 16, 1858, vol. 20, and May 30, 1858, vol.

21, CR 100 1, CHL. When Kane visited President Buchanan, secretary of war Floyd, and other cabinet secretaries during the third week in June he carried briefing notes indicating he was prepared to advise “the withdrawal of them all, of every soldier, without exception, within a reasonable time.” Kane, “Brief for the President,” undated draft memo, [ca. June 1858], fd. 14, Research Files on Thomas L. Kane, MS 1251, CHL. Kane to Young, July 18, 1858, Research Files on Thomas Kane, ibid.

By the time Kane left Fort Bridger on April 5, 1858, with Alfred Cumming in tow, he had intimidated the new governor to the point of subordination. See Thomas L. Kane to Robert Patterson Kane, undated ms., “In Re Mormons” File, Series IV. Thomas Leiper Kane, Kane Family Papers, Mss.Ms.Coll.115, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; George A. Smith, Church Historian’s Office Journal, April 13, 1858, vol. 20, CHL. For a description of behavior by Cumming that made him vulnerable to the possibility of blackmail, see “Acting Egregiously: The Staines Mansion as Honey Trap,” in William P. MacKinnon, ed., At Sword’s Point, Part 2: A Documentary History of the Utah War, 1858–1859 (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2016), 465–66.

See MacKinnon, ed., At Sword’s Point, Part 2, 455–58, 576, 635–42.

41. Young to Franklin Pierce, March 30, 1853, box 50, fd. 1, Brigham Young Office Files.

42. Cumming to Orr, May 12, 1858, and Orr to Buchanan, June 21, 1858, both in James Buchanan Papers, Collection 0091, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

43. Young to Cumming, June 19, 1858, and Young to Ferguson, June 27, 1858, in 1858 June 18–August, General Correspondence Outgoing, 1843–1876; Ferguson to Young, June 21, 1858, Ev–F, 1858, General Letters, 1840–1877, General Correspondence, Incoming, 1840– 1877; all in Brigham Young Office Files.

44. “S” [Simonton], “View of Mormon Affairs,” June 26, 1858, New York Times, August 1, 1858, 1/4–6, 2/1–3.

45. Cumming to Cass, June 26, 1858, Alfred Cumming Papers, RL.00273, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Petition: Citizens of Utah to James Buchanan, June 25, 1858, Thomas Leiper Kane Papers, WA MSS 279, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Yale’s records indicate the petition accompanying Young’s coded message to Kane was donated to YCWA by collector William Robertson Coe in the 1940s and that he, in turn, had acquired it from dealers Walter and Mary Benjamin of New York, whose source is unknown. Miles to Alford and MacKinnon, email message, April 25, 2021.

46. McCulloch to Blair, August 27, 1858, transcribed in Church Historian’s Office Journal, October 2, 1858, vol.

21, CHL. 47. See MacKinnon, “Saving the Governor’s Bacon: Thomas L. Kane’s Political Defense of Alfred Cumming, 1859,” Utah Historical Quarterly 89, no. 4 (2021): 322–44.

48. “Thomas L. Kane’s Account of His Journey to Salt Lake City, August 30, 1877–September 17, 1877,” Kane Family Papers, HBLL. 49. Taylor to Young, February 24, 1857, John Taylor, 1857, Letters from Church Leaders and Others, 1840–1877, General Correspondence, Incoming, 1840–1877, Brigham Young Office Files. Here the subject was not the imminent Utah War but the future of handcart operations.

MAC K I N N O N

Col. Kane, on Monday night, before the Historical Society, delivered a lecture on the “Executive of Utah.” From the title, many supposed that the lecture would be an exposition of the character of Brigham Young, and the events of the Mormon War. It proved however, to be an Eulogium of Governor Cumming, whom Col. Kane characterized as the bravest man that America had yet produced.

—New York Evening Express, March 22, 1859

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Saving the Governor’s Bacon: Thomas L. Kane’s Political Defense of Alfred Cumming, 1859

323 On June 26, 1858, the day Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston’s Utah Expedition marched triumphantly through Salt Lake City, the Utah War began to change from an active military campaign involving nearly one-third of the US Army to a territorial-federal standoff of quite different character. After a year of armed confrontation, guerrilla tactics, and atrocities, the campaign morphed into a decades-long contest of wills between civilians resembling the soon-to-follow period of Reconstruction in the American South.1 What began to unfold in Utah during June 1858 under Brigham Young’s guidance was a continuum of nonmilitary but contentious legal, political, and journalistic maneuvering that minimized further bloodshed but damaged the territory’s repeated bids for statehood and equality until 1896.

This article’s purpose is to shed light on this transformation from armed confrontation to prolonged political contest by describing an important but now little-known incident early in Utah’s reconstruction: Thomas L. Kane’s high profile, public defense of a beleaguered Governor Alfred Cumming in March 1859, the eve of his anticipated removal from office

by President James Buchanan. That Kane’s gambit played out at an improbable location far from Utah—before a lectern at the New-York Historical Society—while deftly pitting himself against the nation’s chief executive, adds to the incident’s complexity and color. So too for the behind-the-scenes involvement of George Q. Cannon, a powerful leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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“Distinguished Americans, at a meeting of the New York Historical Society,” ca. 1854. In March 1859, Thomas L. Kane spoke before a “fashionable audience” at the same institution; no depiction exists of Kane’s talk, but this image shows a likely scene amidst the society’s Victorian Gothic architecture. Engraved by T. Doney. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-pga-01061.

With the recent flow of scholarship about the Utah War of 1857–1858 and Kane’s intervention to mediate its resolution, there is no need to describe Kane’s travels or, for that matter, his complex maneuverings with President Young, Governor Cumming, and Colonel Johnston at Salt Lake City and Fort Bridger except to say that Kane did not by himself bring an end to the conflict.2 However, he did make a signal contribution to its resolution by first renewing his relationship with Young and then winning Cumming’s trust at Fort Bridger and convincing him to travel to Salt Lake City during April 1858 without an army escort. There, standing alone with Kane, Cumming claimed the governorship the Philadelphian had helped persuade Young to relinquish. He did so while 30,000 Latter-day Saints evacuated the city and northern Utah at Young’s direction to flee south toward an undisclosed haven. No one other than Kane could have managed Cumming’s ascension; it

was he who set in place the foundation for the peace process soon to follow.

In effect, without further bloodshed, Kane set the stage for the termination of the war’s military stage through other players once he returned east during May and June after learning belatedly of his father’s death on February 21.

While Kane crossed the Great Plains toward home, two official peace commissioners appointed by Buchanan without Kane’s awareness arrived in Salt Lake City. They carried a proposition for Young and the territory’s entire population to consider: agree to full restoration of federal authority (including acceptance of Buchanan political appointees like Cumming) and receive in return a blanket presidential pardon for any treasonable offenses committed. It was a take-it-or-leave-it proffer accompanied by an informal understanding that the Utah Expedition would then enter the Salt

After traveling more than 6,000 miles by ocean steamer, wagon, horseback, riverboat, and rail, Kane found himself unemployed, fatherless, mired in debt, broken in health, disillusioned with religion, and somewhat at odds with a family that did not agree with or even understand the why of what he had done in Utah.

Kane descended into depression not unlike the mood then besetting Young in the self-imposed isolation of the Lion House.5

Kane and Young, Postwar

Fortunately for Alfred Cumming and the Latter-day Saints, both Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane were resilient. Young had his unshakeable religious faith to sustain him and an enormous sense of responsibility for the

Young, in turn, emerged from depression by executing the nonmilitary strategy that he had formulated in the spring of 1858 while anticipating the army’s approach to Salt Lake City.

The extent to which Young confided to Kane the substance of this nonmilitary plan for dealing with the US government during Utah’s postwar “reconstruction” is unclear, although recent scholarship reveals that on July 21, 1858, Young wrote Kane an encrypted message containing a distilled description of his principal priorities.8 As close as the two men were, there were limits to Young’s willingness, if not ability, to communicate his thoughts and decision-making process to Kane and vice versa.

Determining where these lines of demarcation lay is open to future research and analysis.9 What started to unfold, beginning with Cumming’s arrival with Kane in Salt Lake City on April 12, was the array of thrusts conceived and directed by Young as described elsewhere.10 As many, if not all, of these nonviolent initiatives began to come on-stream, they involved Kane in the role of long-distance advisor to Young and occasionally as active participant or operative. For this reason, as Young sent two of his most trusted agents east to begin new assignments during the late summer of 1858, he

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During the late summer of 1858 Kane began to lay plans to support himself by developing his family’s timber holdings in western Pennsylvania and, despite his vow to disengage from Mormon affairs, resumed dispensing advice to Young. He counseled Young to bide his time while avoiding provocative language and actions, work patiently to have as much as possible of the army removed from Utah, continue to seek statehood, and do all that he could to ensure that Cumming remained the territory’s governor.7

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At about the same time these events played out in Salt Lake City, Kane reached Philadelphia, paused for a day, and then hurtled off to Washington. There he met with Buchanan and his cabinet in a futile effort to convince them to adopt his recommendations for forging amicable relations between the federal government and territory of Utah. With this failure, Kane returned home from Washington near the end of June, couriered a message to Young that “Buchanan’s is certainly the most corrupt administration [I have] ever had to deal with,” and collapsed from one of the many illnesses that had plagued him throughout his Utah mission.4 He vowed to withdraw from further involvement in Mormon affairs.

wellbeing of the Latter-day Saints. Kane had the love and encouragement of both his wife and her father, William Wood, to help him regain his equilibrium. Although Wood had sustained serious business reverses during the Panic of 1857, he was a staunch Protestant and optimist. He helped to pull Thomas from his low point with a perceptive reminder of both his accomplishments and the courage he had mustered to face adversity in the West on a grand scale.6

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Lake Valley without further contest and that its troops would camp some distance from Utah’s major towns. Arguing with the commissioners that the Latter-day Saints had done nothing to necessitate such a pardon, Young nonetheless agreed to its conditions on June 12, although in somewhat idiosyncratic language: “If a man comes from the moon and says he will pardon me for kicking him in the moon yesterday, I don’t care about it. I’ll accept of his pardon, it don’t affect me one way or the other.”3 The result was the Utah Expedition’s peaceful march through Salt Lake City on June 26, 1858, and subsequent establishment of its headquarters at Camp Floyd in Cedar Valley forty miles to the southwest. LDS refugees then returned to their homes from what came to be called the Move South.

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pointedly instructed Horace S. Eldredge and George Q. Cannon to seek out Kane in Philadelphia and place themselves under his direction.

Much as directors of intelligence have done over the centuries, Young extolled the merits of discretion, deception, and secrecy.11

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As early as June 1858, Kane was actively involved in the component of Young’s strategy that called for influencing New York’s press.

While in Washington that month he also continued an effort begun while in Utah on his own initiative. Independent of Young, Kane began selling to Cumming, Buchanan, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, and selected newspaper editors the notion that there was a war-peace split atop the Mormon hierarchy, with Young leading the latter faction. By implication, with a trustworthy Young at the new governor’s elbow, it would be safe for the administration to withdraw federal troops from Utah to prosecute Indian campaigns elsewhere in the West.12

Presidential Ingratitude

While these nonviolent elements of war by other means percolated in Utah, Kane’s view of the president and his administration turned negative in Philadelphia. His unsuccessful June trip to Washington was disillusioning, and the president’s insincere offer of a minor and probably undeliverable overseas patronage appointment in the Kingdom of Naples added to his disgust.

Elizabeth Kane characterized the putative appointment to Naples, declined by Thomas, as hush money.

Even more galling to Kane and his family was the fact Buchanan chose not to arrange for Tom’s reemployment in the still-open court clerkship he had resigned to go to Utah. On July 15, that clerkship, after tentatively being tendered to Buchanan’s nephew, went to another political favorite, as had a few months earlier the judgeship in the same court vacated by the death of John K. Kane.13 During his June visit to the Executive Mansion, Kane had told the president he did not intend to seek public recognition for his efforts to mediate the Utah War. As Elizabeth Kane saw it, her husband “felt as if ‘glory of men’ would sully the offering he had made to God.

He felt, very humbly and yet very proudly that God had accepted him as a[n] instrument. He could not have done what he did through his own strength alone. Let those who wanted it have the credit” (like Buchanan and his official commissioners) “—this feeling was enough for him.” Elizabeth expressed with some disdain that Kane had done the work, but Buchanan received the accolades.14 The president took Kane at his word, paying little attention to him thereafter. Kane encouraged Buchanan’s neglect by writing him on July 20 to express outrage that a Philadelphia newspaper had written that “Col. Thomas Kane will, when the proper opportunity arrives, state his case to the people, and show that he did not go to Utah without full authority, and also that the American army could never have entered Salt Lake City without his previous efforts in favor of peace.” Kane told Buchanan he would continue to keep his “seclusion,” was not medically able to vacation with him at Bedford Springs, “and, as soon as I am strong enough, I shall run away and hide myself among the mountains of Elk County.”15

Cumming’s Vulnerability and Kane’s Image Management

If during the early summer of 1858 Brigham Young and Thomas Kane were ailing medically, Alfred Cumming was politically vulnerable. As Kane lay abed in mid-July, too weak to write, he dictated a letter of warning and support for Cumming to be couriered west by his Nauvoo Legion bodyguard, Major Howard Egan. The letter Egan carried when he left Philadelphia on July 19 was intended to bolster Cumming’s morale. Kane wrote it to address a complaint at the heart of an earlier letter Mrs. Cumming had written him (with her husband’s knowledge) as the army approached Salt Lake City on June 25.

In this letter Elizabeth Cumming fumed that the cadre of New York newspaper reporters in town were ignoring the substantial contributions of Alfred and Kane to the war’s peaceful resolution.

Instead, they chose to heap praise on Buchanan’s two peace commissioners, Lazarus W. Powell of Kentucky and Ben McCulloch of Texas.16 For historians, Kane’s letter to Cumming, written in late July 1858, provides a glimpse of not only his loyalty to the governor but insight into the personal sacrifices he had been making on behalf of Latter-day Saints:

It is no longer, I imagine, the interest of the Treasury leeches to assail you; but how they hate the authors of their discomfiture you must expect to see in their hired [newspaper] organs for some time. My family keep the newspapers from me here; but I understand that if they cannot ascribe the pacification [of Utah] to Johnston, they are endeavoring at least to give the credit of it to Power [Powell] & McCullough [sic]—which gentlemen have evidently their own arrangements with the Press. Let them alone. I intend to live; and if alive next fall will [break] their wind bags and see justice done.

Meantime I have a great advantage in the strict silence I have observed with regard to my personal course to the great confusion of the Press, as you will observe—but to my great fortification, as I am mortified enough to confer with the President and his Cabinet. How I wish I were able to gratify myself by indulging in the confidence of personal friendship, and telling you the ins and outs of certain of these poor creatures—that I might seem to hear you at this distance say to your noble lady “How truly has our Friend redeemed his pledges to us!”

But I am too forcibly admonished [by Elizabeth] at this moment to close—I will still go on however to say to you that you are all right at Washington; and what is more I have Cobb’s promise to—watch jealously for any threatening fire in the rear and let me know immediately.18

In many respects, the daunting Fort Bridger– Salt Lake trek was as much Kane’s accomplishment as Cumming’s. Almost singlehandedly Kane managed to transport an unfit, fearful man across more than a hundred miles of deep snow, mountains, unbridged rivers, and canyons, while concerned that Mormons, Indians, and camp followers from Fort Bridger posed a threat.20 To Kane it was only justice to bring Cumming’s arduous trail experience to the nation’s attention in discussing his suitability for office. In the process, Kane strayed into rhetorical excesses that risked his own credibility.

As with the war-peace myth, Kane created the embryo of this heroic image while still in Utah, especially in the dispatches he wrote to Buchanan. On April 4, the eve of his departure for Salt Lake City with Cumming, Kane wrote a letter about the governor to his father who, without Thomas’s awareness, had died on February 21.

In all likelihood the son’s intent was that Judge Kane pass this note to Buchanan as he had done with his earlier letters. The note’s praise for Cumming—a virtual canonization—would

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In assuring Cumming that he would before long “see justice done,” Kane had in mind developing more fully the foundation for his postwar strategy for Utah—keeping a simpatico, non-Mormon Cumming in the governor’s chair by convincing the Buchanan administration and the American public that the new governor was a man of high character, sound judgment, and great courage. The notion of a courageous Cumming was to be grounded in his tenacity in traveling to Salt Lake City in harsh weather and terrain without a military escort to claim his office in the face of likely Mormon opposition.

Although such a heroic image was a gilding of the lily, it was not wholly inaccurate.

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Present me affectionately to Mrs. Cumming.19

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You probably received a Note from me informing you of my success at Washington.17 I kept up till somewhere about the date of it and I fancy until I had accomplished everything essential. But I then broke down. You must expect no more from me for some time to come.

I have been so completely prostrated by my fever and its consequences that I am obliged to suffer this valued opportunity of writing to you confidentially

by Mr. Egan [before he gives me] the slip. The slightest mental effort flushes me and induces suffering. I shall serve you best as I shall best serve all who count upon me, by ascertaining if I have strength enough to carry me to Bedford [Springs] or some more quiet place among our mountains and there stay in absolute repose till the hot season has passed over.

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set the stage for Kane’s defense in New York twelve months later.21

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Because the officers and troops of the Utah Expedition viewed the new governor as decidedly unheroic and feared that he and Kane might settle the conflict while depriving them of military glory, they pushed back on Kane’s efforts to burnish Cumming’s image. Soldiers and their civilian camp followers relieved the boredom of winter quarters by debating whether Cumming was a courageous public servant doing his duty or what was then called a humbug.

On April 6, Major Fitz John Porter, Johnston’s adjutant and tent mate, journalized skeptically about Kane’s maneuvering on Cumming’s behalf: “I hear today that Gov. C. went to Salt Lake, contrary to the advice of Col. Kane, and that he has given the impression that great risk is run by going. . . . Too late Governor to give the impression you are heroic. You run no more risk in going—if as you said you were invited— than I do staying here—unless injured by outsiders. To give this impression Mr. Kane you strive to hide your game—but no use—it is seen through.”22 On April 21 Elizabeth Cumming wrote to Alfred in Salt Lake to warn him of the swelling criticism in camp: “All the floating rumors against you for the last fortnight, I had hoped were only the result of a disappointment on the part of certain persons, who had hoped . . . for a chance of promotion if a war were to take place, which hope would be destroyed if you succeeded in peaceably establishing your government.

But they have increased in intensity—& now I am convinced there is a settled purpose to misrepresent you at Washington. I have heard too much from too many different sources to doubt any longer.”23 Kane was aware of the controversy thus triggered in Utah, but he pressed on to stoke this fabricated image for the new governor, doing so even after returning east. This campaign began during his visit to Buchanan during the third week of June.

While in the capital Kane gave an interview to Buchanan’s political organ, the Washington Union. The result was an editorial headed “Gov. Cumming and His Movements in Utah,” in which the newspaper reported, “We have the distinct authority of Col. Kane for saying that Gov. Cumming resolved to enter Salt Lake

City in the Spring without having made any arrangement, through Colonel Kane or otherwise, in reference to his visit. It was Governor Cumming’s intention, last Winter, to have separated himself from the army, and to go to the Mormon capital. Not only, then, does it appear that Governor C. acted with great energy.” Using Kane’s perceptions as a source, the Union’s editor described Cumming in laudatory terms as a person displaying “bold, fearless language” under pressure, “a man of a large heart and commanding intellect.” The newspaper concluded this piece with the assurance, “We regard it as fortunate that one so intelligent, firm, and sagacious as Governor Cumming is charged with the delicate duty of administering the Government of the Mormon people.”24 Cumming would need all the help he could get.

By the time the Utah Expedition marched into Salt Lake City, his jurisdictional conflicts and feuds with Johnston, as well as his growing emotional dependence on Young, were alarming the small group of non-Mormons in Utah, the military officers, and the handful of New York war correspondents accompanying them.

Among the troops in the field, Buchanan’s pardon was widely viewed as a betrayal by out-oftouch or corrupt politicians. When it became known that the new governor had personally transmitted to Buchanan a petition signed by Young and others demanding the recall of virtually every federal political appointee in Utah, indignation grew. The result was an eastward flow of personal letters from army officers and press dispatches questioning Cumming’s suitability for his position, especially in matters of evenhandedness. There were pointed calls for his removal.25 There was also damaging ridicule of the governor’s obesity and drinking habits. Discussion of the governor’s undignified appearance, while unseemly in a twenty-first-century context, began to circulate among the Latter-day Saints immediately after his arrival in Salt Lake City on April 12, 1858. At age fifty-six, Young was becoming portly, but Cumming, a year younger, was much more so. Apostle George A. Smith, a heavy man in his own right, initially had mixed reactions: “G. A. S.’s first impression when he saw Cumming was that he was a toper [drinker], but on examining him with his glasses he

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A rare image of Alfred Cumming, made during Blackfoot treaty talks along Montana’s Missouri River while he was a regional superintendent of Indian affairs. Pencil sketch by Gustavus Sohon. Courtesy of Washington State Historical Society.

concluded he was a moderate drinker and a hearty eater, he was dressed in black, ruddy face & grey hairs, his head was small round the top, would think holds more chops than brains, probably weighs about 240 pounds.” Eight months later, Smith downgraded his view: “Gov. Cumming is tub built, so that he seldom can get liquor enough aboard but that he can carry it.

At times, he may not be inaptly compared to a whiskey barrel in the morning, and a barrel of whiskey at night; his memory is frequently at fault in consequence of his inebriety.”26 Hannah Keziah Clapp interviewed the governor while passing through Salt Lake City soon after the Utah War. Wearing bloomers and sporting a revolver, the formidable Clapp took Cumming’s measure and bluntly labeled him “a superannuated, brandy-soaked, Buchanan Democrat.” In early July 1858 an unidentified non-Mormon resident of Salt Lake City complained to the New York Times that “the common epithet applied by Mormons to Gov. Cumming is ‘old swill tub’ and they boast

of having him constantly intoxicated . . . such I feel grieved to hear is the way they are able to speak of a man like Gov. Cumming.” In early August the Times ran a dispatch from its Utah correspondent, who described the governor as “naturally excitable, and notoriously gets steam up to an alarming point over the whisky-jug. He is not the man for the position, and should be replaced forthwith by some one who will command respect for himself and so be better able to exact respect for the Government he represents. He is, withal, vain as a boy of 13, and offensively imagines himself the embodiment of all that is great and grand.” Another writer’s supposedly private complaints branded Cumming “our corpulent Governor” and “almost insane” as they leaked into the pages of the St. Louis Democrat and then, by telegraph, to the New York Times and other newspapers throughout the country.27 Comments about Cumming’s alcohol intake rippled eastward along the Oregon Trail by word of mouth, titillating even the rough-hewn

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army reinforcements marching to Utah, a group not known for its temperance. Although he had never seen Cumming, did not know how to spell his name, and was hundreds of miles from Utah, Captain Lafayette McLaws of the Seventh US Infantry, a fellow Georgian, felt free to record that “Mormons (Brigham Young) & Gov. Cummings friendly. . . . Gov. Cummins regarded as Mormon & continually drunk.”28

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In a year-end letter to his business agent in St. Louis, Young commented that “the Governor though by not any means an exception to this rule [of drinking] is more compes mentus,” non compos mentis or of an unsound mind, “while under the influence of alcohol than the most of the others, and although naturally tyrannical and oppressive in his nature, still we do not wish to exchange him at present, for fear we might get a worse one.”29 Perhaps most surprising among Cumming’s non-Mormon critics was his own nephew and namesake, a West Pointer who was a company commander in the Utah Expedition’s Tenth US Infantry. No doubt burdened by his name, his proximity to his uncle, and his own struggle with alcohol, Captain Cumming wrote to his sister in Georgia, “I do not myself agree with the Gov. on many points, generally resolvable into the single one that I think he puts too much reliance in Mormon faith [trust], but I do think now, as I have ever done, that the general course of his administration is such to promote the best interest of this country and the Government.”30 As the summer wore on, Kane’s health remained poor, but he was yet convinced that some sort of published essay was needed to support Cumming in the face of mounting criticism in both Utah and the East. On July 21 T. B. H. Stenhouse, a Mormon employee of the New York Herald who had visited Kane, reported to the head of the British Mission, “He has not published anything since his return from Utah.

He may yet—I hope so. Should he give another ‘Historical Discourse about the Mormon,’ his second will far exceed his first interesting sketch of their life and sentiments.”31 Eli K. Price, a prominent Pennsylvania Democrat and close family friend, wrote at about the same time—as if to second Stenhouse’s hopes.

On July 8, Price urged Thomas to write a “narrative” describing what he had seen and done in Utah for “the truth of history.” Price was not pleading for a defense of Cumming but rather was seeking material by which Kane could more broadly establish a proper record of his own noble efforts in Utah while confronting the public accusations swirling about his motivations and actions. Initially, Kane dismissed Price’s plea by commenting, “as concerns ‘History’—I suppose it has always been written by individuals who have had an interest in composing it to suit themselves.” After confessing that he was tempted “to expose a few eminent humbugs and salt some of the leeches who drop off so slowly from their hold upon the Treasury,” he concluded that sensitive matters such as ongoing Mormon affairs required from him “the utmost quietness and circumspection.”32 As Price’s letters became longer and more insistent about Kane’s debt to history and the likelihood that the Utah controversy was apt to continue rather than fade, Kane’s replies also lengthened, revealing more of the shock over his negative reception by the Buchanan administration and his fears about what might be happening in Utah. In a reply written on July 30, Kane referred to conspiracies and the usual unnamed senior plotters in the leadership circles of Washington and Salt Lake City: If I could ever trust them [the Mormons] with my candid opinion of the persons in elevated station who have, unfortunately, still to do with their affairs—in such a case, I might more safely mention the facts which it would interest the country at large to know, but which at present would exert a depressing influence upon the still embarrassed friends of Peace in Utah, and might outrage the War Party to measures whose effect would be disastrous in the extreme. My forbearance is not shown Mr. Buchanan; but I recognize a duty to the Ruler of my nation, as long as I have not convicted him of doing public wrong. I have said enough perhaps; but I can indicate other reasons when we meet, why the public welfare may be promoted by my silence.

At about the time this piece appeared in the nation’s newspapers, Kane accelerated his gathering of source material to enable him to speak out with a higher profile. He thought about doing so through a written exposition of what had happened in Utah that would emphasize the positive contributions of Cumming and Young to offset what Kane viewed as unwarranted public credit for Johnston and the president’s peace commissioners. On August 25, Kane began his fact gathering about Cumming by writing to the governor’s older brother, William, in Georgia. Whether Kane was aware of the decades of estrangement between the brothers is unknown, but William responded on September 8 with a warm, rambling letter that advised Kane to leave the subject of defending his brother alone, lest it “brings out at once, the whole swarm of buzzing & stinging things.” Essentially, William told Kane that he knew Alfred better than his own brother did and wished him well: “I am really glad, that the whole decision rests with yourself. Your perfect acquaintance with the subject, & your sentiments towards the party chiefly concerned, are an ample guaranty that the course you adopt, will be such as he would approve.”35 As Kane envisioned it, the article or essay he intended to write might appear in the fall or after Congress reconvened in early December.

Young saw things differently, reporting in September to Kane, “Governor Cumming holds an even hand, and appears disposed to see justice extended to Utah, so far as his power and influence can accomplish that object.” With a touch of condescension, Young noted he likes exceedingly to have things his own way, but so long as his way lies generally in the right channel we can overlook some erratic flights of assumed authority &c., when they do not compromise any general interests. The kindliest relations and intercourse exist so far in all respects whatever between us and the Governor. We have not been urgent upon him to do this or that, but rather leaving him to follow the bent of his own mind. . . .

Gov. Cumming had better remain for the present, not only in office, but in the Territory. You said well, “that we could not spare him yet.”37 In late October 1858 Kane and his family returned to Philadelphia from McKean County, Pennsylvania, where they had spent several months in the mountains as Thomas began a new job as agent for a land development

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Price’s advice that he say something about his Utah experiences to enlighten the public and future historians appears to have moved Kane’s thinking. In August he took a tentative step in the direction of a publicity campaign by sending a letter to the St. Louis Republican, a paper to which he had fed the war-peace myth while passing through that city en route to Philadelphia and Washington in June. Essentially, this piece, run by the Republican and reprinted elsewhere, presented a bogus account of how Cumming happened to travel to Salt Lake City in early April. It cast Kane in the role of passive companion to the energetic, courageous governor rather than what he was—the trip’s instigator and stage manager. The letter ran unsigned and couched in the third person.34

Because of his own ill health and Cumming’s aversion to public (but not private) flattery, Kane deferred the project until the fires of controversy over Cumming’s administration banked up to a more dangerous level. He did not have long to wait. On September 27 the Army of Utah’s quartermaster shared his views with the officer at Secretary of War Floyd’s elbow, Samuel Cooper, the army’s adjutant general: “Judge Eckels left here this morning on his way to Washington, and will give all the news of importance. Affairs in the Territory are not, politically, favorable; and it is doubtful if they can be under present government. The truth is, no one supposes, for a moment that they can be cured or even remedied without an important change in high civil places.” Eckels added to this incendiary atmosphere by taking east with him letters highly critical of Cumming written

by Indian agent Garland Hurt and a prominent Mormon apostate named Mr. Vernon. The judge sent this material directly to Secretary Cass when he reached his home in Indiana early in 1859.36

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Whether such cabals existed is unknowable from this distance, but that Kane thought they did and shaped his actions accordingly, is both clear and important.33

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company in close proximity to the Kane family’s own substantial holdings of timber. While in western Pennsylvania that summer two developments impacted Kane’s thinking: he continued to receive secret communications from Young about conditions in Utah in the immediate aftermath of the Utah Expedition’s arrival, and he grew restive under the daunting challenge of supporting his family in such an unsophisticated environment. Elizabeth Kane felt otherwise, reveling in their brief freedom distant from the complexities of Kane family life in Philadelphia in the wake of Judge Kane’s death, and the pleasure of at last presiding over her own home.

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Upon their return, Thomas’s restlessness played out through thoughts of what he called the “Far West.” When Elizabeth asked him for “a definite plan” for their future, he proposed three options for 1859: buy coal lands in British Columbia’s Fraser River district to fuel Pacific steamers; move to San Bernardino, California, the former Mormon colony, to become vintners and ranchers; or relocate to the Caribbean Coast of Central America to serve as “Protector” for a colony of Latter-day Saints that Thomas hoped Young would agree to establish in Honduras and Nicaragua. Acutely aware that her husband had no other source of income and earlier that year had plunged her and their two toddlers into a precarious living situation to undertake his Utah mission, Elizabeth rejected all three undertakings out of hand, commenting that she did so “rightly.” She countered by reminding Thomas “how happy and contented we were in Elk County.” Undoubtedly a factor in her reaction was her unfamiliarity with the North American West aggravated by her substantial reservations about Mormonism, especially doubts about the reliability and character of Young.38

auditors at the navy department, but while there he twice called at the Executive Mansion in an attempt to see Buchanan. Pleading a full schedule, Buchanan declined to meet with Kane but sent him home bearing two dead canvasback ducks provided by Harriet Lane as a gift and show of respect for Kane’s widowed mother. Kane later explained to Buchanan his motives in trying to see him: “As you must have heard of my calls at the White House during my late brief visit to Washington, I ought to write that I had nothing Mormon on hand to press upon your notice. I have in my table drawer long letters recently received from Salt Lake City from Governor Cumming and the people there which to be sure ‘groan over ins and outs deemed monstrous and most very grievous’ but some of them however cannot afford to wait till Congress meets [in early December] before claiming your (now sufficiently overtasked) attention.” Having said this, Kane went on to reassure the president, “Indeed on the whole the state of things in Utah should furnish the country with cause for most sincere congratulations” and signed the letter as “faithfully your friend and servant.”39

Of Presidential Ducks and Public Humiliation: Catalysts for Reenergizing Kane

On November 19, the day after Thanksgiving, Thomas abruptly left Philadelphia to visit Washington, an absence that disturbed Elizabeth Kane because of the serious illness of their son Elisha. Ostensibly Kane’s purpose in going to the capital was to settle the financial accounts of his late brother, Elisha, with the

James Buchanan, seen here as a candidate for the presidency. Currier lithograph, from a Mathew Brady photograph. Courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIGpga-00797.

In their disappointment over Thomas’s likely exclusion from Buchanan’s annual message to Congress, the Kanes overlooked the influence of the indefatigable Eli Price, a friend of Buchanan as well as Kane. As Thomas traveled to Washington, Price wrote the president asking him to note Kane’s mission to Utah, “in your Annual Message. He has not felt at liberty to defend himself against misrepresentations, nor can we advise him to do so while it might prejudice any public interest.” With consummate tact, Price explained that he made this suggestion “fearing the pressure of important matters might occasion [your] forgetfulness of what some of us believe it would be a pleasure to you to do.”41

In her diary, Elizabeth Kane asked, “What is there in statecraft [that] can make it the duty of the Chief Magistrate of as great a nation as this to palm on the world a perverted statement of facts. He actually praises [in his message] the drunken and brutal wretches who he knows gave Tom next to as much trouble as the Mormons.”43 Buchanan’s one-sentence recognition of his Utah mission, if not his unwillingness to meet with Kane two weeks earlier, seemed to energize Kane. He shook off his vow of anonymity and disengagement from Utah affairs while finding a way to strike back at Buchanan’s ingratitude as well as to protect Alfred Cumming politically. He changed his plan to develop a published essay about the governor to a new format—that of a public lecture to be delivered in a high-profile venue. As T. B. H. Stenhouse had anticipated in July, the model Kane used was a lecture that he had delivered in 1850 in Philadelphia at the prestigious Pennsylvania Historical Society. To ensure a wider public awareness of his views, Kane had thousands of copies of that lecture printed and distributed under the title The Mormons.44 Within a week of Buchanan’s 1858 message— and perhaps because of it—Kane successfully stimulated an invitation to speak at the NewYork Historical Society in Manhattan. His

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Thus pressured by Price and aware that Kane had tried to see him with friendly intentions, Buchanan added a single sentence to his December 6, 1858, annual message to Congress, through which he simultaneously recognized and distanced himself from Kane: “I cannot in this connection, refrain from mentioning the valuable services of Colonel Thomas L. Kane, who, from motives of pure benevolence, and without any official character or pecuniary compensation, visited Utah during the last inclement winter for the purpose of contributing to the Pacification of the Territory.” It was a tip of the presidential hat so modest one Philadelphia judge later described it with embarrassment as “concisely stated.” Elizabeth Kane found Buchanan’s acknowledgment skimpy and ungenerous, comparing it unfavorably to Young’s open-handed efforts to reimburse her husband’s travel expenses. It was appreciation of a stripe characterized by Pat Kane and Buchanan’s disaffected friends as “Buck all over.”42

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Before leaving Washington on November 21, a key cabinet officer, attorney general Jeremiah S. Black, engaged Kane in what was truly one of the more bizarre episodes of the Kane-Buchanan relationship—one heretofore unknown to even Kane’s biographers. According to what Thomas later told his wife, Black—acting as Buchanan’s intermediary—offered Kane the presidency of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party machine (then in disarray). In response, Thomas declined what Elizabeth characterized as Buchanan’s attempt to “tempt” her husband, telling Black “he thought he had now done enough for the country, that he must take care of his health and fortunes—and felt no call to assume the position. His conclusion was that he would keep himself sufficiently in with the Administration to be able to watch their course in Mormon affairs, but not to pledge himself to them.” Kane may have gone so far as to tell the attorney general that with respect to the Latter-day Saints his political views were closely aligned with those of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Buchanan’s political adversary. It was a disclosure that led both Kanes to conclude that the president “will not mention his [Utah] services in the Message [to Congress] lest they should strengthen a Douglasite.” After making clear in her journal that she viewed all party politics as sordid, Elizabeth commented, “certainly I would not care to have Tom a Mayor, General, Ambassador, Prince, or President, but I would like to have his services recognised in the Message, dearly.” Thomas sent Buchanan a bread-and-butter note thanking him for the ducks.40

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lecture was to be part of a series the society was sponsoring to complete the financing for its elegant new clubhouse.

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Having approached Cumming’s brother William in August without obtaining much in the way of usable personal information about the governor, Kane now turned to his other brother, Henry H. Cumming of Augusta, Georgia.

Disingenuously implying that he was planning to write a biographical sketch rather than mount a political defense, he described it as “a lecture of which a biographical notice of your brother Gov. Cumming will form an important part.” There is no sign that Henry responded to this request for information, probably assuming that his brother William spoke for both of them when he wrote to Kane the previous September.45

Kane Strikes Back: The New York Lecture, March 1859

Throughout the winter of 1858–1859, Kane continued to suffer from the ailments that had disabled him after returning from Utah the previous spring. He and Elizabeth agonized over whether his health permitted him to write, let alone deliver, a public address in distant New York, but Thomas insisted that they press on to draft such a talk. The drumbeat of criticism from the various enemies of Cumming, Young, Buchanan, Johnston, and even Kane himself drove him to make the effort. On March 9, 1859, Johnston’s young aide de camp wrote from Camp Floyd to his sister in the District of Columbia, “I don’t know what the Government will do with the Mormons, a more atrocious set of assassins and traitors never existed, and yet they are allowed to exist as a powerful community in our midst Enjoying their heresies, and degrading institutions, alike obnoxious to morality, religion and decency—It is a fearful commentary upon the weakness and corruption of our government. . . . Mormonism has in it little that is not disgusting.”46 While these events were unfolding in Utah, Kane sent a draft of his lecture across town to his brother Pat seeking his reactions. Eight months earlier Thomas had told his brother that he, above all others, was his closest confidant. Accordingly, when Pat sent his comments on the lecture to his brother on March 12, 1859,

it could be argued that historians owe them special consideration in terms of their likely frankness, if not insight into what Thomas was seeking to accomplish. In brief, Pat Kane was positive about the draft, noting that he saw no reason why it should not be as interesting and entertaining for the audience as his brother hoped it would be. On the other hand, Pat also expressed a major criticism: that the portrait he painted of Cumming’s heroics were one-dimensional without Thomas’s discussion of other players and “antagonism of the Mormons to the Government.” As Pat saw it, his brother was not willing to include such material in the lecture because it would be in his judgment “disclosure for which, as I infer, the time has not come.” In conclusion, Pat stated: “My advice is, given upon imperfect light, to hold yourself in reserve until you can tell candidly and for the future historian, the tale of the Mormon outbreak, from its beginning to its [end].” He never mentioned the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but it is tempting to speculate that this was one of the volatile subjects for which his brother believed the public and national interest were not yet ready. It was the sort of tantalizing innuendo that permeated Thomas’s July 1858 correspondence with Eli Price, wherein he asserted that he alone was capable of determining what the public should know about Utah and what information should find its way into the historical record. What Pat in effect identified in his brother’s draft was Thomas’s affinity for ambiguous, manipulative behavior of the sort that prompted him to argue for years that a peace-loving Young was beset by a warlike opposition atop the Mormon hierarchy without ever identifying a single member of the alleged cabal.47 Elizabeth Kane served as what she dubbed the couple’s “pen” and “critic.” The day after Pat Kane wrote his critique and a week before the meeting date Thomas had negotiated with the New-York Historical Society—March 21, 1859— Elizabeth noted, “He has been much worried about his lecture but has finally concluded to deliver it. He does not think it will be a creditable literary production, but hopes that it may help to keep Cumming governor of Utah.”48 Three days before the lecture, George Q. Cannon reported to Young from Philadelphia, “Since I

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As Kane struggled in Philadelphia to complete his lecture notes, printers in Boston were preparing to bring out during the third week of February the first installment of a three-part article by which Browne transformed his own lecture into a narrative entitled “The Utah Expedition: Its Causes and Consequences.” This piece— soon the most authoritative and comprehensive non-Mormon account of the war—had been accepted for publication by James Russell Lowell’s

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Manhattan newspapers for several days, with the admission tickets priced at fifty cents, and the title announced as “The Executive of Utah.”

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saw him [Kane] previous to [my] starting west he has had another relapse, and has been quite sick, but is now up and about, though by no means strong. He is thinking of delivering a lecture before the Historical Society in New York on Monday next. Though scarcely in a suitable condition to undergo the fatigue, yet he feels that the present condition of things demands it.

It will have the effect, doubtless, to strengthen Col. or Gov. Cumming before the country and make his heroism known.” The next day Kane asked Cannon to join him in New York but to go in advance to prearrange for distribution of his talk, the text of which Cannon had not yet seen. It is a reflection of the esteem in which the Latter-day Saints held Kane that Cannon agreed to do so without question. He traveled late at night so as to arrive in Manhattan at 4:00 a.m. on Monday, March 21, the day of the lecture.49 Remarkably, this may be the first that any of the Latter-day Saint leaders were aware of what Thomas planned to do to help the imperiled Cumming, although the New-York Historical Society had advertised the lecture in the

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Charles Mettam, The New-York Historical Society, 2nd Avenue and 11th Street, New York City, 1855. Here, in 1859, Kane defended Cumming’s effectiveness in order to block his recall by Buchanan and support Young’s postwar strategy for protecting Utah. Courtesy of New-York Historical Society, X.370.

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Atlantic Monthly, the most prominent magazine in the United States. Kane did not know what to expect from Browne, but a burnishing of Cumming’s gubernatorial image at the New-York Historical Society would serve as a rhetorical backfire to counteract anticipated criticism.50

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As March 21 dawned, Kane once again rose from a sickbed on behalf of the Latter-day Saints; against his wife’s advice, he entrained for New York accompanied by his physician. Nine years earlier he had been carried into a Philadelphia hall prostrate on an unhinged door serving as a makeshift stretcher to deliver another lecture, “The Mormons.” Kane’s entrance for his New York lecture was hardly this dramatic, but it was clear to attendees that he was ill and making an extraordinary effort to bring them his views of Utah’s political leadership.

One newspaperman reported that Kane spoke “before a respectable audience.” From his lecture’s advertised title, some attendees expected to hear remarks about Young rather than his less famous successor. The same reporter characterized it as “chiefly a narrative of the journey of Gov. Cumming to Salt Lake City, and a panegyric on that officer for his labors and services in the position to which he had been called.”51 Unlike his famous Philadelphia address on Mormonism, the financially strapped Kane did not publish his New York remarks, and his reading text has disappeared. The address, however, was highly publicized when delivered, and one can reconstruct much of what Kane said from the close coverage by newspaper reporters in his audience, especially that from Horace Greeley’s Tribune.52 Under the title “Mr. Kane on the Executive of Utah,” the New-York Daily Tribune published the following on March 22, 1859: The second lecture of the series before the New York Historical Society was delivered last Monday evening by Thomas L. Kane, Esq., on the Executive of Utah. . . .

The object of this lecture, according to the speaker, was to furnish the New York Historical Society a contribution to the history of this country which would enable them to give proper prominence to an admirable char-

acter, Gov. Alfred Cumming, and the part which he had taken in the recent transactions in Utah.

Mr. Kane traced Mr. Cumming’s career as an opulent and philanthropic citizen of Augusta, (Ga.) as a hero of the Mexican war, as Western Superintendent of Indian Affairs—the friend of the red man and the fearless enemy of their spoliators and oppressors—and closed with an account of Mr. Cumming’s conduct in Utah and the circumstances attendant on his journey in advance of the army to Salt Lake City last spring.53 It has been stated, Mr. Kane said, Gov. Cumming proceeded to Salt Lake assured that his safety was provided for in terms by an agreement with Brigham Young. To this assertion he not only gave an emphatic denial, but he devoted a large portion of his lecture to a narration of facts connected with the Governor’s journey to the valley which he justly said negatived such a supposition. There were few men, he said, who would have dared to expose themselves in the face of so unanimous a protest of opposition as was raised against his taking that step; still fewer who, as he did, would have reposed their confidence in persons against whom was raised so unanimous a voice of warning.

Mr. Kane’s narrative of the real circumstances of Governor Cumming’s journey to Salt Lake was very happy; he showed up admirably the cool intrepidity for which Governor Cumming is of all men one of the most remarkable. At camp there was but one opinion on the subject of his venturing outside the lines. It was not merely that the Mormons had forbidden, under pain of death, all intercourse between our people and theirs.

From the time of the first rupture Gov. Cumming was singled out as the especial object of the animosity and invective of the Mormons, rendering him the very bull’s-eye of the target

Our people had not been exposed as much to the Mormons, or they would no doubt have suffered equally. But the week previous a man having sallied out from camp to look after some matters in the U[i]nta Mountains, some forty of the miscreants, mounted, caught sight of the luckless wight [creature], and chased him to within sight of the sentinels at Bridger.

Before the Governor had proceeded a day’s march upon his journey signs of the presence of the Indians in their vicinity became apparent. To avoid these and the Mormon banditti the Governor was obliged to pass a night of extreme cold among the rocks of the mountains, and was without food

The chief fault to be found with this lecture was the omission from the dramatis personae of Col. Thomas L. Kane. This the lecturer apologized for before reading his lecture. He was no public character, he said; he was a very private gentleman, with quite enough to do to take care of his family and limited estate. He had no literary pretensions either, as his audience might shortly say it did not become him to remind them.58 Least of all was he desirous of prolonging a connexion of his name with the concerns of Utah, which had been, for more than one reason, productive of annoyance to him. He had, therefore, declined all the invitations to lecture which had been so kindly tendered to him, and had accepted that of the New York Historical Society, he would confess, simply for the purpose of doing justice to an individual whose means of usefulness were seriously menaced by the assaults upon his character. He thought it was time for the public to know something about one man in Utah who had enemies in Washington.

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But, beside this danger and the more ordinary Mormon purlo thrumbos, there was another form which, as things turned out, there was quite as much serious ground for apprehension as any.54 The whole country lying between the Mormon and American lines was infested by bands of marauding savages—Indian Cowboys and Skinners—who occupied the neutral ground, prepared to rob and murder in the name of either party, as might best promote their purposes.55 About three weeks before they had succeeded in lifting several hundred head of cattle from the enemy in the name of the United States, killing and scalping two frontiersmen in the course of the transaction.56 Within ten days they had carried off as many as a hundred horses in another levy of the kind.

or covering for twenty-four hours.

His adventures during this time alone would have furnished some autobiographers with materials for a volume.

But the only allusion ever made to them by Gov. Cumming, in his report to the gallant Col. Johnston and the Secretary of State [Lewis Cass], is: “Arriving in the vicinity of the Spring, which is on this side of Quaking Asp Hill, after night, Indian campfires were discerned on the rocks overhanging the valley.

We proceeded to the spring, and, after disposing of the animals, retired from the trail beyond the mountains. We had reason to congratulate ourselves upon having taken this precaution, as we subsequently ascertained that the country lying below your outposts and ‘Yellow’ [Creek] is infested by hostile renegades and outlaws from various tribes.”57 “By this brevity on subjects involving self-laudation you recognize the true man,” said Mr. Kane.

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for any of their hundreds of free rifles, who lay out watching the movements of our troops, and prowling out among the windings of the mountains. Had the head men of the Valley been ever so much disposed to spare him, who could guaranty the good conduct of the wild soldiers upon the outposts? A shot from one of these, or any wandering Mormon hunter, might have laid him low before he could attain the main body of the rebel troops.

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Being warmed up by his reception, probably, the Colonel also closed with the remark that the considerate kindness of his audience prompted him to be communicative on subjects of greater interest, or to apologize to them for his not doing so. “I know,” he said, “that I have been considered devoid of spirit, because I have not been provoked by personal injustice to divulge the facts of the Mormon insurrection within my knowledge; but I am confident that there are those present capable of appreciating the higher propriety of the course I have marked out for myself, and even thanking me for adhering to it on this occasion. In the United States we all participate in the management of public affairs, and, it is true, have all an equal right to equal knowledge; but we must sometimes leave to the sworn officers of Government the responsibility of disclosing or withholding the facts upon which their opinions are based, and the means by which their ends have been accomplished.”59

Messrs. Cannon and Stenhouse: Mormon Facilitators

Among those in the audience for Kane’s lecture were two Latter-day Saints who were playing key roles in Young’s postwar campaign to influence the major Atlantic Coast newspapers: George Q. Cannon and T. B. H. Stenhouse. Neither man was involved in Kane’s decision to deliver such a presentation, but both believed with Kane and Young that it was in Utah’s best interest for Cumming to continue serving as the territory’s governor.

To that end Cannon, assisted by Stenhouse, worked at the last minute to ensure that “The Executive of Utah” would receive the widest possible newspaper coverage immediately after Kane delivered this lecture. The means for accomplishing this result were the telegraph facilities available to the Manhattan-based Associated Press (AP). Accordingly, by prearrangement, Cannon delivered a summary of Kane’s text to the AP’s office even before Kane was finished speaking so as to reach the wire service before closing.

George Q. Cannon. From late 1858, he became Brigham Young’s lifelong liaison with Thomas Kane and, soon, a highly influential apostle. Photographed ca. 1862, Cannon appears younger and more heavily bearded than in later, better-known images. Courtesy of Eugene M. and Edna L. Cannon collection, through descendants Jeffrey H. Cannon and Kenneth L. Cannon II.

Who was George Q. Cannon? At age thirty-two he was an experienced newspaperman. During the Utah War, he had served briefly as an adjutant in the Standing Army of Israel while also working on the Deseret News when that paper relocated to Fillmore, Utah, during the Move South. More importantly, he was ferociously loyal to Young and had earlier demonstrated the capacity to work resourcefully and discreetly at long distances from church headquarters in such locations as Honolulu and San Francisco. From these missions he kept Young well informed on church interests along the Pacific Rim. When Howard Egan arrived back in Young’s office on August 25, 1858, he delivered Kane’s long, dictated dispatch of July 18 urging Young to push two major priorities: statehood and the consummation of “the arrangement with the Press.”

Young responded to this cryptic advice immediately, describing his intent to Kane: “we feel now to move in these mat[t]ers, and also to attend to

Cannon left three accounts of his reactions to Kane’s lecture: a diary entry recorded within hours of the presentation; several letters to Young written during the ensuing weeks; and a memorial article published by Cannon in a Salt Lake City magazine, The Contributor, soon after Kane’s death twenty-five years later. The differences in these documents provide interesting glimpses of Cumming and Kane in the changing view of Cannon, if not the Latter-day Saints generally.

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Sunday, 20th . . . Started at 11 ¾ this evening for New York and arrived there at 4 a.m. on Monday, March 21st, 1859. On the evening of Saturday I received a note from [blank] informing me of his wishes about a lecture he was going to deliver this (Monday) evening before the N. Y. Historical Society. To carry out the part that he wished me to attend to I waited on the Telegraphic Agent of the Associated Press, Mr. [D. N.] Craig, and made arrangements with him to telegraph a report I would furnish him with. I also tried to have every thing arranged through Bro. Stenhouse with the papers for the publication of the report, but found that the Colonel had already provided for this. Attended the lecture in the evening. Its subject was “the Executive of Utah.” Its delivery was called for in the present feeble condition of the lecturer’s health by the danger in which Governor Cumming stood of being superseded, which might prove disastrous in some respects for us. For, deficient as Cumming is in many respects in many of those qualifications which we think a Governor ought to possess, yet he is a man who thus far has not sided with our enemies, and were he to be removed and another appointed, we could not hope to get a man who would do so well, and we might get a bitter and uncompromising enemy.

The lecture was intended to bolster up Cumming, to create a feeling in his favor and give prominence to the part he took in bringing about a peace; in fact to make a hero of him before the country and make it impolitic for Buchanan to remove him; it would also let the President know where the Colonel stood on this point. . . . [It] is

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Cannon was a native of Liverpool, England, while his new deputy, Stenhouse, was Scottish by birth. Like Cannon, who was two years younger, Stenhouse was a newspaperman, having worked under Taylor on the church publication in Manhattan, The Mormon. When the advent of the Utah War forced closure of that paper in the fall of 1857, Stenhouse moved next door (literally) to join the staff of the New York Herald. It was the largest-circulation newspaper in North America, owned by James Gordon Bennett, Sr. Bennett, who had hired Stenhouse to be the Herald’s science writer, became his mentor and longtime friend. Stenhouse idolized Kane, writing to the president of the British Mission during the summer of 1858, “for nearly ten years I longed to see him. . . . [T]o his labors, under God, we are saved a war, and the United States an inglorious defeat; for, most assuredly, had Colonel Kane not arrived when he did, the ‘boys’ would have wiped out the army this year, and left neither root nor branch of them.” So adulatory was Stenhouse before Cannon arrived to supplant him in the relationship, Young cautioned him to mute his published comments about Kane lest their excessiveness damage Kane’s credibility.61

Perhaps the most intriguing of the three versions presented here comes from the diary, partly because it is the most contemporaneous but also because of the richness of its detail and the fact that it did not become accessible to the public until 2016. Writing on a Sunday and Monday in late March 1859, Cannon noted:

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the opinion of the Press. To promote this object we send our Brother, Geo. Q. Cannon, as you will perceive by a letter of introduction which he will hand you. . . . [H]e is a young man who has been raised with us, and is every way confidential and reliable, and we consider of fair abilities; you can, therefore, place the most implicit confidence in him. He is a printer by trade, and, as you will doubtless remember, conducted the ‘Western Standard’ in San Francisco, therefore has some experience in matters of the Press.”60 At the same time, in addition to this responsibility with Kane, Young called Cannon to head the church’s organization in the eastern states.

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cheering to see a man occupying the position of Col. Kane, come forward, having just arose from his bed where he has been confined by a long and painful illness, and in the presence of a fashionable audience deliver a lecture not to make himself popular, not to favor any end in which he can be supposed to be in the least interested, but to avert evils with which we, as a people, are threatened, to befriend a people who are universally hated, and whom, if he were to partake of the prejudices of his associates by birth and education, he would heartily despise. Such instances of heroism, such love of truth and right, are extremely rare, and they will bring down from the God of truth and righteousness His blessings and reward equally rare. May he and his family be blessed in time and throughout all eternity, is my prayer.

I did not stay to hear the lecture through, as I had to take my report to the Telegraph Office before it closed.62 A little over a fortnight later, on April 6 and 14, Cannon report to Young that, I have forwarded you several of the N. Y. papers containing the report of the lecture alluded to in my last. Though the lecturer was feeble in body, yet he got through with it very well. . . . It has had the desired effect, and firmly propped up Governor C. for the present. I understand the lecturer is very well satisfied with the result; thinks he has been quite successful in accomplishing what he desired. . . .

Of late his mind has been much relieved; prospects have been more favorable. The effects which have followed the delivery of his lecture on “the Executive of Utah”—papers containing the report of which I have sent you—have cheered him; he has every reason to think Governor Cumming safe for the present, and this is a great relief to him. Matters looked critical previous to its delivery. Buchanan was

looking around for a man for Governor, and covertly instituting inquiries as to how C’s removal would be received by our friend [Kane]; but the lecture was most opportune—it was a blow, and a telling one, too, in the right spot. At the present time, the Colonel is sacrificing his feelings . . . for the purpose of keeping in with the President and thereby have more power to aid us.63 Soon after Kane died in 1883, Cannon memorialized his friend with reminiscences published in Junius Wells’s respected journal for Latter-day Saints, The Contributor. It is a fascinating essay, much of which focused on “The Executive of Utah” as a way of illustrating the deceased’s nobility. At one point Cannon argued that Kane’s lecture “had the effect to turn the scale in Cumming’s favor. President Buchanan relinquished the idea of removing him, and he remained governor until he had served out his full term.”

Cannon’s own role and that of Stenhouse all but disappear in this later telling of the story.

It is interesting to note that the author substantially mutes Kane’s original emphasis on the heroic character of Cumming’s April 1858 trek from Fort Bridger to Salt Lake City and focuses instead on Kane’s character. By the time The Contributor piece appeared, the Civil War had been fought, and, in its aftermath, there was a negative awareness of Cumming’s allegiance to Georgia and the Confederacy as well as his nephew’s prominent role as a southern brigadier general. Meanwhile Kane’s reputation had risen commensurately; when he resigned his Union Army commission after the battle of Gettysburg, he was a wounded major general—another reason in the 1880s to highlight his contributions to the Utah War’s resolution while minimizing Alfred Cumming’s role.64 Two years after Cannon’s posthumous tribute to Kane, Edward W. Tullidge, an editor in Salt Lake City, described the same scene from his own sources. He chose to emphasize the role of Cannon and Stenhouse (without names), and, like Cannon’s 1884 article, minimized Kane’s original focus on the courageousness of Cumming’s trek. Unlike Cannon, Tullidge emphasized Kane’s notion of a war-peace faction among the Latter-day Saints and the nonmonolithic character of their church: “In that

From the vantage point of 1886, Tullidge’s assessment was blunter than Cannon’s in 1859: “Governor Cumming was complimented by the gallant Colonel as a clear-headed, resolute, but prudent executive, and the very man for the trying position. Before such an endorsement, sent broadcast over the Republic, coming from the lips of the gentleman who had warded off the effusion of blood, and saved the nation from the expense and horror of a domestic war, the Cabinet of Mr. Buchanan silently bowed, but they were terribly chagrined.”67 It is not known whether the president was comforted or annoyed when his US superintendent of Indian Affairs for Utah wrote him on May 12, 1859, “the Administration of His Excellency Gov. Cumming has been productive of much good; it has

Elsewhere in the Executive Branch—in the army’s bivouacs across Utah Territory—critical reactions to Kane’s lecture and praise for Cumming were less restrained. When press coverage reached Camp Floyd, the response was outrage over what different reporters for the New York Times had at the time dubbed “a panegyric on that officer” and “an eulogium of Gov. Cumming.”70

Epilogue

With the plethora of biographies available about Brigham Young, James Buchanan, Thomas L. Kane, and George Q. Cannon there is no need to dwell on the details of the rest of their lives. In the case of Cannon, though, it is worth noting that a year after Kane’s lecture, Young secretly called him to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and that he soon rose to the First Presidency, serving there as first counselor to Young in the 1870s and to each of his three successors.

Cannon’s biographer, Davis Bitton, commented, “One can scarcely expect to understand the

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Since the prime reason for Kane’s lecture was to build a political backfire to prevent Buchanan from removing Cumming from office, it is appropriate to ask whether this gambit worked and what the president thought of this turn of events. In brief, Kane’s strategy succeeded; with his options constrained by Kane’s national publicity campaign, Buchanan permitted Cumming to retain his gubernatorial appointment. Cannon reported to Young that Buchanan wondered with anxiety what Kane said and how it accorded with his own statements regarding the roles played by Cumming and his peace commissioners “in the settlement of the difficulties.” The “Chief Magistrate” tended to overemphasize the role of his commissioners, Cannon wrote, but was relieved nonetheless at the outcome of Kane’s talk.66 Buchanan must have been pleased that Kane did not publicly discuss the volatile issues he encountered in Utah during 1858 but only hinted at in his correspondence with Pat Kane and Eli Price.

Notwithstanding these sensitivities, Kane had been skillful enough in the phrasing of his lecture and his subsequent conduct, that, while staying Buchanan’s hand vis-à-vis Cumming, he had also prompted the president to reconsider positively the value of consulting him again on Utah affairs. In June 1859, Buchanan invited Kane to return to the Executive Mansion for what Kane described as “a long interview which I enjoyed.” The two men spoke of General Johnston’s performance and that of several federal appointees, including Forney and Cumming, who the president said “aimed to put on an appearance of impartiality, and show he was no Mormon—but it is easy to see which way his sympathies were leaning.” In reporting this conversation to Young on Pioneer Day, Kane commented, “I wish poor Cumming’s habits were better. The President, as on previous occasions, put [to] me many questions about them whose direction I had difficulty in baffling—the more perhaps as I had just received from C. a foolish composition—very drunken indeed.

Governor!—‘How long’?”69

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restored peace, quiet and confidence throughout the Territory, which will be more and more confirmed if his policy be not too much interfered with by some other Civil Officers.”68

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audience were two Mormon elders listening eagerly for a sentence that might help ‘the cause’ in the West. By previous arrangement the agent of the Associated Press was to be furnished with a notice of the lecture, and thus a dispatch next morning was read everywhere throughout the Union to the effect that there was a division among the Mormons, that some were eager for strife, others for peace, but that Brigham Young was on the side of peace and order, and was laboring to control his fiery brethren.”65

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history of Mormonism without knowing George Q. Cannon. He was never president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but aside from the founding prophet, Joseph Smith, and Brigham Young, no one surpassed Cannon as a leader, shaper, and defender of nineteenth-century Mormonism.”71

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Cumming lacks a full-blown biography, although there have been articles and at least one unpublished thesis written about him.72 With the advent of the Civil War and the near-completion of his gubernatorial term, Cumming and his wife Elizabeth left Utah with Young’s good wishes and headed for Georgia. Prevented from passing through the Union Army’s lines by Abraham Lincoln, the Cummings spent the early years of the war uncomfortably in the Boston area near Elizabeth’s original home and family, with the governor occasionally sighted visiting prominent Confederate prisoners or internees confined to Fort Warren. The Lincoln administration finally permitted the Cummings to cross into the Confederacy on May 8, 1864.

There is no evidence that Alfred ever communicated with Kane after the 1859 speech, or, for that matter, that he and Young corresponded after he left Utah. However, in 1866, Young noted to Utah’s delegate in Congress, “I am gratified to hear that Governor Cumming is still living, and feels so well towards his old friends in Utah. We do not forget him, and are pleased to hear from him at any time. Should he have access to President [Andrew] Johnson, and have an opportunity of speaking in relation to our citizens, his testimony, I should think, would be likely to outweigh all the lying slanders that any number of such men as our absent Chief Justice might propagate.”73 Whether in the end Cumming realized any more than did Buchanan how much he owed Kane is unknown but, in my view, doubtful. It may all have blurred with the trauma of what the Cumming family experienced during the Civil War. After that upheaval, Cumming’s focus was probably on Reconstruction in Georgia rather than on distant Utah Territory, yet there was indeed a debt owed to Kane. During the Utah War and immediately after its military phase had morphed into a conflict of words, Kane had acted to protect the Latter-day Saints, sweeping under his aegis for several years the

non-Mormon figure of Cumming. He did so when Cumming needed something approaching a guardian angel to retain his position as Utah’s governor, if not leader.

Kane loved this role, perhaps at times more so than tending to his own biological family. Biographer Alfred L. Zobell, Jr. aptly captured this need to be a protector when using Sentinel in the East to title his study of Kane in 1968. Nearly a century before Zobell wrote, Augusta Joyce Cocheron, a resident of St. George, Utah, had also caught a glimpse of this behavior one evening as an aging, ailing Kane dramatically exited her parents’ home. “Dr. Osborne” had first met Augusta as a thirteen-year-old when passing through San Bernardino in February 1858 on his way to mediate the Utah War. In 1873, while visiting St. George with his wife and two boys, Kane paid a courtesy call to Cocheron and her parents in their new home. By the visit’s end, “it had grown very dark, and it was raining. . . . Looking from the doorway on the light within and the stormy night without, he said: ‘This looks like our political horizon. Stay you in camp, eat roast beef and rest. I will go out in the storm and stand on picket guard for you.’ He extended his hand, repeated thrice, ‘goodnight,’ and was gone.”74 If James Buchanan and Alfred Cumming had forgotten Kane at the time of their deaths in 1868 and 1873, the leaders of the Latter-day Saints did not. By early 1883 Kane had become seriously ill and virtually immobile from his multiple Civil War wounds. And so on March 4, the twenty-sixth anniversary of Buchanan’s inauguration, Cannon, the second most powerful man in the Mormon hierarchy, went out of his way en route to New York to visit Kane in Philadelphia. Although neither man knew it, this was to be their last meeting. Cannon recorded in his diary: “Called upon General Kane who had retired, but who came down upon learning it was I. Was cordially received by Mrs. Kane and children and by the General. Had a very interesting visit of two and a half hours with him.”75 With the continual tightening of the federal antipolygamy laws and Cannon himself liable for criminal prosecution, there was plenty for the two old friends to discuss, although Cannon’s diary provides no reason to believe they touched on the bad behavior of which Kane became aware in Utah and disclosed only

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

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It is unknown who first used the term reconstruction to describe the turbulent period of federal occupation and oversight between the end of the Utah War and the achievement of statehood. Among historians, early use of the label appeared more than a half-century ago. See Richard D. Poll, “The Political Reconstruction of Utah Territory, 1866–1890,” Pacific Historical Review 27 (May 1958): 111–26; Everett L. Cooley, “Carpetbag Rule: Territorial Government in Utah, “Utah Historical Quarterly 26 (April 1968): 106–29. The most recent such uses are Clyde A. Milner II and Brian Q. Cannon, eds., Reconstruction and Mormon America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2019); W. Paul Reeve, “Reconstruction, Religion, and the West: The Great Impeacher Meets the Mormons,” Journal of Mormon History 46 (April 2020): 5–45.

2. Matthew J. Grow, “Liberty to the Downtrodden”: Thomas L. Kane, Romantic Reformer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009); Albert L. Zobell, Jr., Sentinel in the East: A Biography of Thomas L. Kane (Salt Lake City: Nicholas G. Morgan, Sr., 1968); David J. Whittaker, ed., Colonel Thomas L. Kane and the Mormons, 1846–1883 (Provo and Salt Lake City: BYU Studies and University of Utah Press, 2010).

3. Brigham Young, comments, minutes of meetings in Salt Lake City, June 11–12, 1858, general church minutes, box 1, fd. 21 and 22, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (CHL); and William P. MacKinnon, ed., At Sword’s Point, Part 2: A Documentary History of the Utah War, 1858–1859 (Norman, OK: Arthur H. Clark, 2016), 534.

4. Memorandum accompanying Kane to Young, July 18, 1858, Thomas L. Kane, 1857–1859, Letters from Church Leaders and Others, General Correspondence, Incoming, Brigham Young Office Files, CR 1234/1, CHL. 5. For more discussion of Kane’s motives and his depression, see MacKinnon, “Thomas L. Kane’s 1858 Utah War Mission: Presidential Ingratitude and Manipulation,” Utah Historical Quarterly 86 (Fall 2018): 302– 303, 312n25.

6. William Wood to Kane, September 22, 1858. Three years later, with Thomas in the Union Army as a lieutenant colonel, Elizabeth Kane bolstered her husband’s morale by reminding him that Wood had also said, “I can’t help thinking that he is destined to make his mark on these times, that [his] Utah journey . . . may all have been the Maker’s preparation for a work He had on hand for him to do.” Elizabeth Kane to Thomas Kane, August 22, 1861. Both letters in Thomas L. and Elizabeth W. Kane Family Papers, Vault MSS 792, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (HBLL).

7. Kane to Young, July 18, 1858, Brigham Young Office Files.

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Kenneth L. Alford and William P. MacKinnon, “Communicating in Code: Brigham Young, Thomas L. Kane, and the ‘Lost’ Utah War Message of July 1858,” Utah Historical Quarterly 89 (Fall 2021).

For example, Young made the decision to announce the Move South to the Latter-day Saints on March 21, 1858, without consulting Kane. Earlier, on September 15, 1857, Young had proclaimed martial law in Utah without hinting at this decision in a letter he wrote Kane only three days before. During the 1860s–1870s there would be other incidents of nonconsultation as discussed in MacKinnon, review of Matthew J. Grow and Ronald W. Walker, eds., The Prophet and the Reformer: The Letters of Brigham Young and Thomas L. Kane in Journal of Mormon History 41 (October 2015): 238–47. Perhaps the most serious such lapse was Young’s surprise announcement in August 1852 of the practice of plural marriage.

For Kane’s part, at the end of 1857 he gave Young no warning that he planned to visit Utah, and it is apparent that he was similarly uncommunicative about his intent to speak publicly in defense of Cumming and about Utah affairs in New York during March 1859.

Each of these components to Brigham Young’s strategy is discussed in Alford and MacKinnon, “Communicating in Code,” and MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part 2: divide-and-conquer (455–58, 571, 610, 619, 638–39); influencing editors (384, 387–88, 458–60, 579, 581–82, 596–97, 636–37); and petitioning for recall of federal appointees (572, 575, 577–78, 583–84, 598, 637–38).

Young to Eldredge, October 20, 1858, General Correspondence, Outgoing, 1843–1876, Brigham Young Office Files.

Kane’s continuing efforts to influence the media’s view of Utah are described in MacKinnon, At Sword’s Point, Part 2, 635–37, while in the same source, Kane’s creation and marketing of a war-peace myth atop the Mormon hierarchy are discussed in 449–55, 496–97, 610–11, 648; Editorial, Baltimore (MD) Daily Exchange, July 26, 1858, 1/1–2.

MacKinnon, “Thomas L. Kane’s 1858 Utah War Mission,” 304–305, and “‘Buck All Over’: James Buchanan and a Trail of Broken Relationships,” in Michael J. Birkner, Randall M. Miller, and John W. Quist, eds., The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019), 125–27; Kane to Young, ca. March 1857, Thomas L. Kane Papers, Stanford University Libraries; Kane to Young, May 21, 1857, Thomas Leiper Kane Papers, WA MSS 279, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

Elizabeth W. Kane, “The Story of the Mother of the Regiment,” vol. 2, ch. 3, fd. 1, box 31, reel 22, Kane Papers, HBLL. Kane to Buchanan, July 20, 1858, box 14, fd. 18, reel 10, Kane Papers, HBLL. Elizabeth Cumming to Thomas Kane, June 25, 1858, box 14, fd. 18, Kane Papers, HBLL. In writing of his “success in Washington,” Kane was projecting optimism for Cumming’s benefit that he did not feel.

Howell Cobb, secretary of the treasury. Cobb might have felt a special kinship with Cumming as a fellow Georgian.

Kane to Cumming, July 1858, fd. 17, Research Files on Thomas L. Kane, MS 1251, CHL.

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to his brother in 1858. One would like to think they reminisced about Kane’s cameo appearance a quarter-century earlier at the New-York Historical Society and Cannon’s role as a facilitator in moving the highlights of Kane’s lecture across the wires of the Associated Press to save Alfred Cumming’s governorship.

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20. Dispatch, Western Weekly Platte Argus, May 14, 1858, reprinted in Baltimore Sun, May 24, 1858, 1.

21. Thomas L. Kane to Judge John K. Kane, Fort Bridger, April 4, 1858, Kane Papers, HBLL. 22. Fitz John Porter diary, April 6, 1858, box 53, Fitz-John Porter Papers, MSS 36590, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. 23. Elizabeth Cumming to Alfred Cumming, April 21, 1858, Alfred Cumming Papers, RL.00273, Duke University Libraries, Durham, North Carolina; and Elizabeth Cumming, and Ray C. Canning and Beverly Beeton, eds., The Genteel Gentile: Letters of Elizabeth Cumming, 1857–1858 (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund and University of Utah Library, 1977), 43–45.

24. Associated Press, “From Washington. Arrival of Colonel Kane,” Washington, June 20, 1858, New York Times, June 21, 1858; “Gov. Cumming and His Movements in Utah,” June 24, 1858, Washington Union, reprinted in New York Times, June 25, 1858, 1/1–2. Notwithstanding the favorable tone of the Union’s editorial, Kane felt that, to obtain justice for Cumming, he “had great difficulty in compelling the dishonest company owning that paper to publish in his favor.” Kane to Elizabeth Cumming, August 25, 1858, Thomas Leiper Kane Papers. If Kane felt that his interview with the Union and its editorial clarified Cumming’s role in ending the war, the anti-Buchanan National Era professed confusion over just where the credit truly belonged: Cumming, Kane himself, or the president’s peace commissioners?

This was a case of Kane’s excessive rhetoric becoming counterproductive. “The Utah Question,” National Era (Washington, DC), July 1, 1858, 102.

25. John Van Deusen Du Bois to mother, June 26, 1858, Du Bois, Campaigns in the West, 1856–1861: The Journal and Letters of Colonel John Van Deusen Du Bois with Pencil Sketches by Joseph Heger, George P. Hammond, ed. (Tucson: Arizona Pioneers Historical Society, 1949; repr., Arizona Historical Society, 2003), 116–17; “S” [Simonton], “View of Mormon Affairs,” June 26, 1858, New York Times, August 3, 1858, 1/4–6, 2/1–3; William Duncan Smith to N. Wallace Smith, July 22, 1858, cube 5, box 16, Simon Gratz Papers, Collection 1571, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; George Dashiell Bayard to mother, August 1, 1858, Samuel J. Bayard, Life of George Dashiell Bayard, Late captain, U. S. A., and Brigadier-General of Volunteers, Killed in the Battle of Fredericksburg, Dec. 1862 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1874), 135–37.

26. George A. Smith, Church Historian’s Office Journal, April 13, 1858, vol. 20, and January 1, 1859, vol. 22, CR 100 1, CHL. 27. Hannah Keziah Clapp to unidentified friend, July 17, 1859, Lansing (MI) Republican, in Kenneth L. Holmes, ed. and comp., Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1840–1890, 11 vols.

(Glendale, CA, and Spokane, WA: Arthur H. Clark, 1983–1993), 7:249; “A Citizen of Utah,” Salt Lake City, July 9, 1858, “The Mormons. Interesting Letter from Utah. Interior View of Mormons,” New York Times, August 10, 1858, 1/3–4; Letter, June 23, 1858, “Strange Conduct of Governor Cumming,” New York Times, August 4, 1858, 3/3.

28. Lafayette McLaws, Diary, ca. September 17 and 21, 1858, fd. 1, Lafayette McLaws Papers, Coll. 00472, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

29. Young to Horace S. Eldredge, December 30, 1858, General Correspondence, Outgoing, 1843–1876, Brigham Young Office Files.

30. Captain Alfred Cumming to Emily Cumming, November 23, 1858, Papers of the Hammond, Bryan, and Cumming Families, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.

31. Millennial Star 20 (August 28, 1858), 554–56. For the earlier Kane talk, see note 44 below.

32. Kane to Price, July 16, 1858, Kane Papers, HBLL. 33. Eli K. Price to Thomas L. Kane, July 8, 26, 1858, and Kane to Price, July 16, 30, 1858, Kane Papers, HBLL. 34. “How Gov. Cumming Got to Salt Lake City,” St. Louis Republican, repr. in Buffalo (NY) Courier, August 5, 1858, 2/4.

35. William C. Cumming to Thomas L. Kane, September 8, 1858, Kane Papers, HBLL. 36. Parmenas Taylor Turnley to Samuel Cooper, September 27, 1858, Letters Received, Records of the Adjutant General’s Office, RG 94, National Archives, Washington, DC (NARA); Eckels to Cass, with attachments, January 15, 1859, State Department Territorial Papers, Utah Series, vol. 1, 30 April 1853–24 December 1859, microfilm 491567, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

37. Young to Kane, September 10, 1858, General Correspondence, Outgoing, 1843–1876, Brigham Young Office Files.

38. Elizabeth W. Kane, Journal, vol. 3, 41–43, November 1, 1858, Kane Papers, HBLL. 39. Kane to Buchanan, ca. late November 1858, box 41, fds.

2, 3, Kane Papers, HBLL. 40. Elizabeth W. Kane, Journal, November 21, 1858; Thomas L. Kane to Buchanan, ca. late November 1858, both in Kane Papers, HBLL. 41. Price to Buchanan, November 17, 1858, Lot #1139, Nate D. Sanders Auctions, accessed June 15, 2021, natedsanders.com/Eli-K-Price-Autograph-Letter -Signed-to-President-lot13885.aspx, copy in author’s possession.

42. James Buchanan, “Second Annual Message of the President,” December 6, 1858, John Bassett Moore, ed., The Works of James Buchanan, Comprising His Speeches, State Papers, and Private Correspondence, 12 vols.

(Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1910), 10:245. When Buchanan published his memoirs in 1866, he confined his discussion of Kane’s Utah War role to a repetition of the same sentence, not even bothering to update Kane’s military title from colonel to that of major general. Buchanan, Mr. Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of the Rebellion (New York: D. Appleton, 1866), 238.

Judge John Cadwalader to Thomas L. Kane, April 19, 1869; Elizabeth W. Kane, Journal, December 5, 1858, both in Kane Papers, HBLL. 43. Elizabeth W. Kane, Journal, December 5, 1858, Kane Papers, HBLL. 44. Thomas L. Kane, The Mormons: A Discourse Delivered before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, March 26, 1850 (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1850).

45. Kane to H. H. Cumming, December 18, 1858, Thomas L. Kane Correspondence, American Historical Manuscripts Collection, New-York Historical Society, New York, New York (hereafter NYHS). William Cumming informed Kane in his earlier letter that he had conferred with his brother Henry and “his opinions coincide substantially with my own.” William Cumming to Kane, September 8, 1858, Kane Papers, HBLL.

61.

62.

63.

64.

65.

66.

67.

68.

69.

70.

71.

72.

73.

74.

75.

4 N O .

I 8 9 V O L .

60.

I

59.

had provided materials about his Mormon mission to his brother Pat in hopes that he would produce a publishable manuscript about the war in the event that Thomas became too ill to do so. None of these drafts were published by the Kanes. The holograph manuscripts are now in the collections of the American Philosophical Society and Brigham Young University.

“Mr. Kane on the Executive of Utah,” New-York Daily Tribune, March 22, 1859, 7/2. It is not clear what Kane was trying to say with this indirect phrasing. It is akin to the murky allusions to unspecified wrongdoing by unnamed people in high places that he earlier used with Eli Price and Pat Kane.

Young to Kane, September 10, 1858; the letter of introduction is Young to Kane, September 1, 1858, both Brigham Young Office Files. In introducing Cannon, Young informed Kane that “he will act entirely under your direction,” and expressed the hope that their collaboration would develop into “a mutual friendship” with the result being statehood for Utah and “ridding our fair Territory of her foreign dictators and oppressors.”

Millennial Star 20 (August 28, 1858), 554–56; see also Ronald W. Walker, “The Stenhouses and the Making of a Mormon Image,” Journal of Mormon History 1 (1974): 51–72.

George Q. Cannon, Journal, March 20–21, 1859, The Journal of George Q. Cannon, accessed April 19, 2021, churchhistorianspress.org/george-q-cannon.

Cannon to Young, April 6, 14, 1859, Brigham Young Office Files.

George Q. Cannon, “General Thomas L. Kane,” Contributor 5 (March 1884): 234–39.

Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: Star Printing, 1886), 232–33.

Cannon to Young, April 6, 1858, Brigham Young Office Files; see also MacKinnon, “Thomas L. Kane’s 1858 Utah War Mission,” 308.

Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, 232–33.

Jacob Forney to Buchanan, May 12, 1859, Letters Received from the President (1858–59), box 2, fd. 6, stack 230, row 1, compartment 30, shelf 2, Attorney General’s Papers, RG 60, NARA. Kane to Young, July 24, 1859, Thomas L. Kane, 1857– 1859, Letters from Church Leaders and Others, General Correspondence, Incoming, Brigham Young Office Files.

See John Moore to Mary Moore Kelly, May 10, 1859, GLC04194.16, John Moore Collection, Gilder Lehrman Collection, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York.

Davis Bitton, George Q. Cannon: A Biography (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1999), ix.

Benjamin Franklin Perry, “Alfred Cumming,” Reminiscences of Public Men, by Ex-Gov. B. F. Perry (Philadelphia: John D. Avil, 1883), 290–96; Charles S. Peterson, “A Historical Analysis of Territorial Government in Utah under Alfred Cumming, 1857–1861” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1958).

Young to William H. Hooper, February 8, 1866, Letterpress copybook, vol. 8, 85–88, Brigham Young Office Files.

Augusta Joyce Cocheron, “Reminiscences of General Kane,” Contributor 6 (1884–1885): 475–77.

Cannon, Journal, March 4, 1883, Journal of George Q. Cannon.

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46. Laurence A. Williams to Martha Williams, March 9, 1859, Martha Custis Williams Carter Papers, MS 6, Tudor Place Foundation, Washington, DC. 47. Robert Patterson Kane to Thomas L. Kane, March 12, 1859, Kane Papers, HBLL. 48. Elizabeth W. Kane, Journal, March 13, 1859, Kane Papers, HBLL. For additional insight into the lecture’s origins and development, see also the entries for February 27 and March 4, 5, 21, and 24, 1859.

49. George Q. Cannon to Young, March 18, 1859, George Q. Cannon, 1858–1859, Letters from Church Leaders and Others, General Correspondence, Incoming, Brigham Young Office Files.

50. “The Utah Expedition: Its Causes and Consequences,” Atlantic Monthly: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics 3 (March–May 1859): 361–75, 474–91, and 570–84.

51. New York Times, March 22, 1859, 4.

52. The most insightful and recent discussion of Kane’s lecture is in Grow and Walker, The Prophet and the Reformer, 331–32. I have searched the files of the NYHS and all of the known collections of Kane’s personal papers for this text without finding it. In 1971, descendant E. Kent Kane tried mightily to find a copy of the lecture without success, despite persistent inquiries among his contacts at the NYHS, LDS church, and Deseret News. My own first awareness of the lecture came in May 1999, and, upon querying the NYHS archivist, she responded “there is no manuscript copy in our collections.” Melissa Haley to MacKinnon, June 7, 1999.

53. Not recorded by the Tribune’s reporter was Kane’s account of the financial difficulties with which Cumming became entangled during the 1830s. New York Journal of Commerce, repr. in “Governor Alfred Cumming,” Daily Constitutionalist (Augusta, GA), March 27, 1859, 3/2.

54. Probably “Hurlothrumbo”: terror-inspiring supernatural apparitions, from a play by Samuel Johnson.

55. During the American Revolution, “cowboys” and “skinners” were Caucasian guerrillas in the South who were pro-British and pro-Independence, respectively.

Kane loved to use these terms in a variety of western contexts, as in his April 4, 1858, letter to Buchanan.

56. Apparently a muddled reference to the February 25, 1858, raid by Bannock and northern Shoshone warriors on Fort Limhi, the Mormon mission and Nauvoo Legion outpost on Oregon Territory’s Salmon River.

57. The quote is from Alfred Cumming to Albert Sidney Johnston, April 15, 1858, John B. Floyd, “Report of the Secretary of War, December 6, 1858,” Message from the President of the United States, House Exec. Doc. 2 (35–2), Serial 942, 72–73. Apparently at the lecture Kane gave the Tribune reporter his retained copy of the letter, which he had drafted in Salt Lake City for Cumming’s signature a year earlier, or he provided him with the published text which the war department released under date of December 6, 1858, as part of the secretary of war’s annual report for 1858. Quaking Aspen Hill and the spring near its summit were prominent landmarks on the Mormon Trail between Fort Bridger and Salt Lake City. Here, the Nauvoo Legion rendezvoused in secret with Kane during March 1858 while he worked at Fort Bridger to gain Alfred Cumming’s trust.

58. To the contrary, during this period and for several years thereafter, Thomas and Elizabeth Kane drafted extensive accounts of his Utah experiences, among other subjects. During the summer of 1858, Thomas

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Provisioning Camp Floyd: An Analysis of Faunal Remains

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BY

K AY L A

R E I D

From 1858 to 1862, the United States Army operated Camp Floyd, a military outpost in Utah’s Cedar Valley that, at its height, housed thousands of soldiers. Even though Camp Floyd has long since been abandoned, clues about life there can be coaxed from archaeological remains. Dale L. Berge, a professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University, and his students conducted archaeological field schools at Camp Floyd from 1982 to 1993. Most of the artifacts they recovered came from several refuse pits, and the largest collections of artifacts consist of ceramics, glass, and animal bones.1 Unfortunately, very few collections from Berge’s excavations have been analyzed. The majority of the field work was done

by Berge’s students and volunteers, and information about the project comes from student field notes, maps, and the physical artifact collection.2 The following article represents the first in-depth analysis conducted on the animal remains excavated from Camp Floyd (CF87–1).3 Bones are more than artifacts; they are clues about the diet and health of nineteenth-century soldiers, the draft animals serving as the army’s food supply, and the butchering and meat processing methods employed at Camp Floyd.4 They say an army marches on its stomach and in the case of Camp Floyd, this is historically and archaeologically true. By uncovering details about the percentage and distribution of valuable meat cuts, the quality of butchering, and the general age of animal harvest we can add to what is already known about Camp Floyd.

United States soldiers created Camp Floyd, some forty-six miles south of Salt Lake City, when they were sent there by President James Buchanan in 1857 in an attempt to expand and guard communication routes across North America and to establish federal law in Utah Territory.5 Camp Floyd was only operational for a short time, from 1858 to 1862, but it gave an early jumpstart to Utah’s economy. The outpost was heavily populated and well provisioned, despite being located in a relatively isolated area within a new, unconstructed territory.6

Lieutenant Colonel Dane Ruggles designed the camp, which was built by a combination of local residents and military prisoners; the camp headquarters, infantry and artillery units, ammunition housing, storehouses, stables, corrals, barracks, theater, and aqueduct were made from adobe, wood, and stone sourced from the Oquirrh Mountains.7 Its construction and maintenance were intertwined with the local economy, since most supplies were sourced locally or purchased from civilian companies.8 At its height, Camp Floyd was home to more than 300 buildings.9 Merchants eventually moved to Camp Floyd to join the businesses located there. The territory’s most successful merchants and bankers, the Walker Brothers, built a general store at the post in 1859.10 Because the soldiers—especially those who were lower-ranking and enlisted— had backdated salaries, most of them could not afford to shop locally and had to rely solely on the military provisions and gardens.11 The US Army often hired civilian contractors in moving their freight, and some of these contracted suppliers struggled to keep up with the flood of

The most difficult health struggle was mountain fever, a tick-borne disease, but the mortality rate from that affliction remained low.16 Soldiers generally survived on three government-issued rations a day, which consisted mainly of the ingredients for soup, stew, and hash, including vinegar. The soldiers often complained of tough meat, which suggests some dissatisfaction with their meals.17 They were supplemented with salted fish, salted pork, and occasionally salted beef. The historical record does not suggest that the army raised birds, pigs, or sheep at Camp Floyd, although these were sometimes shipped to the camp or purchased locally.18

Faunal Analysis Results

The CF87-1 collection from Camp Floyd totals 4,917 bones; not surprisingly, given the historic record for this area, the majority (4,833) belong to cattle, with lesser numbers of unidentifiable medium mammals (81), birds (2), and an unidentifiable small mammal (1). The following section is divided by species or general category type.

Cattle

The highest amount of cattle (bos taurus) remains comes from 1,397 ribs, 394 thoracic vertebrae, and 1,038 indeterminate bone fragments

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This bone, a distal tibia epiphysis from a cow, comes from faunal remains excavated from Camp Floyd.

The checkered cuts on it suggest that soldiers might have used it as a game piece. Accession Group CF87–1, 2001.15.265.4.

Camp Floyd quickly grew to be the third-largest city in Utah. With the help of Major Fitz John Porter, the post adjutant and engineer, and Ruggles, who oversaw the post garbage, the soldiers were generally in good health.14 The sterile soil proved to be a difficult breeding ground for soil-borne diseases that would have negatively impacted the soldiers, gardens, and cattle, and clean, fresh water surrounded the camp. Camp Floyd housed nearly forty acres of gardens, and nearby local gardens provided extra fruits and vegetables.15

4

new business and the delivery of supplies across thousands of miles.12 The freighting company of Russell, Majors and Waddell took on the immense task of supplying the post. They had to raise equipment, men, and money to ship the supplies that the army required—up to sixteen million pounds of freight at one time, which included, flour, sugar, beans, rice, coffee, ammunition, clothing, saddles, and perishables.13

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Table 1. Faunal Remains by Element Element Accessory carpal

14

Astragalus

32

Atlas

37

Caudal vertebra

17

4

Femur

Medium mammal NISP 1

1

Calcaneus

Cervical vertebra

85

Humerus

123

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I U H Q

348

Indeterminate carpal

5

3

27 244

Lumbar vertebra

125

18

Metacarpus

1

1

Metatarsus

2

Patella

27

1

Pelvis

121

7

Radial carpal

95

Radius

125

3

1,397

7

Sacrum

28

Scapula

187

Second phalanx Sternum Thoracic vertebra

Medium mammal

Calcined

243

2

Sawed

1,531

42

Sawed and snapped No evidence

1,038

Indeterminate vertebra

Rib

Bos taurus

509

21

2,502

1

292

17

89 245

Fused central and fourth tarsal

Indeterminate bone fragment

Butchering evidence

Snapped 3

I

N O .

Bos taurus NISP

Table 2. Evidence of Butchering

7

1 98 394

Tibia

211

3

Ulna

81

2

(see table one). The lowest number of elements comes from 98 sternum bones and 162 waste products.

Out of the total, 243 bones are burned (or calcined), which indicates an attempt to dispose of the trash, but the evidence for this is generally low. 1,531 are sawed; 509 are snapped with no other butcher marks; 2,502 are sawed and snapped, meaning that they were broken and had cut marks; and 292 bones show no evidence of human interaction, are intact, or both. Table

two shows the level of butcher experience for the collection.

The categories for cut of meat are 161 waste, 0 short plate, 411 round, 1,791 rib, 1 neck, 125 loin, 1,282 indeterminate, 275 hind shank, 270 fore shank, 347 chuck, and 98 brisket. If we discount the indeterminate bones and ribs, the chuck cut rises to 16 percent of the collection and the chuck to 19 percent. This raises the most distributable meat to 35 percent (see table two).

Indeterminate bones were unidentifiable by cut of meat. The round and chuck are nearly tied, combining at 16 percent of the cattle bones, even though some of the ribs could also go into the chuck cut of meat. Round and chuck possess the most usable stew and ground meat and can go the farthest. In certain cases the fore and hind shanks would also be used as stew and ground beef, which combine at 12 percent of the collection.

Cattle were killed off-site and taken to the mess hall kitchens for preparation; this explains why the CF87–1 collection contains no identifiable skull fragments, teeth, horns, or hooves, and only one surviving atlas, out of a total of 4,833 bones. The high percentage of flank, chuck, round, and rib indicates that the people who used the kitchens and disposed of the bone waste were trying to distribute the meat as far as possible. Brisket and loins are the most desired cuts of meat but have the lowest percentage of cattle bone waste in the collection. Only a small number of the bones that would provide evidence for these cuts exist in CF87–1; they consist of the sternum, distal humerus, proximal radius and ulna, some ribs, the pin bone, and a percentage of the pelvis bones (depending on the targeted cut of meat).

347

11

Fore shank

270

4

Hind shank

275

7

1,282

11

Loins

125

18

Neck

1

Indeterminate

Rib Round

1,791

15

411

13

161

2

4,761

81

Short plate Waste Total

Finally, the collection contains only a single soup bone. This seems odd, considering that stew and various forms of soup were a staple for the army. Bone broth is not only a key ingredient in these recipes but also a valuable source of nutrients that apparently was not used much at Camp Floyd.

Medium Mammal

The faunal remains in this collection contain far fewer bones from midsized mammals than from cattle. The medium mammal remains were unidentifiable by species, but the possible animals include sheep, pigs, and goats. One metacarpus and all three tibias in the collection are distinctly from herbivores.19 There is no evidence of carnivores in the collection.

Medium Mammal Elements. Out of the collection’s 4,917 bones, 81 (2 percent) total elements come from medium-sized mammals (see table one). As with the cattle remains in CF87–1, only a small percentage is made up of waste bones (6 bones or 7 percent). The highest bone count is tied among 7 scapula, 7 ribs, and 7 pelvis fragments, totaling nearly 9 percent of the collection, each.

Medium Mammal Butchering Evidence. Out of the 81 medium mammal bones, 2 are calcined, 42 are sawed, 21 are snapped, 1 is sawed and snapped, and 17 show no evidence of human use or remained intact (table two).

Even though the overall percentage of medium mammal bones is low, these remains are significant. Soldiers were given pig and other meat sources already salted and preserved in their rations.20 This means that such meats would only have come from local purchasing.

In contrast to the cattle results, the medium mammal quantities show a much higher and more dominant quantity for desirable cuts of meat. Since the only evidence for a loin cut is lumbar vertebrae, this means that in order for this cut to dominate the assemblage it would take multiple animals and in this case, the lumbar vertebrae has the highest element count.

Calcined evidence is also low in this section.

The highest percentage of medium mammal bones are sawed, and the lowest percentage are sawed and snapped. The evidence here indicates that the medium mammals were butchered with more experience and accuracy than the cattle.

Small Mammal

The CF87–1 collection contains only one small mammal bone, a scapula, which also shows no evidence of being butchered. It was likely a rabbit, since it is too large to be a rodent, but it could have been hunted or naturally deposited.

Birds

There are two distinctly avian bones in the Camp Floyd collection, which most likely came from a locally sourced bird or were hunted. No evidence exists of butchering because the humerus (wing cut) and tibiotarsus (drumstick) present are completely intact.21 gh The previous historical research about Camp Floyd explains how the army contracted, organized, and executed the delivery of supplies at this large installation. The faunal remains and medical reports provide evidence that the army’s efforts seemingly succeeded. A study of

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Chuck

N O .

98

I

Brisket

8 9

Medium mammal NISP

V O L .

Bos taurus NISP

I

Cut of meat

Medium Mammal Cut of Meat. The medium mammal collection includes 2 waste remains, 13 round, 15 rib, 18 lumbar vertebrae, 11 indeterminate, 7 hind shank, 4 fore shank, and 11 chuck (table three).

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Table 3. Cuts of Meat

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350

These two cattle bones—respectively, a cleanly sawed proximal humerus epiphysis and a snapped distal humerus— show evidence of different butchering types. Accession Group CF87-1, 2001.15.88.2 and 2001.15.269.3.

the soldiers’ medical records reports no serious or nutrition-related diseases; and accounts that discuss cattle storage, food orders, transport, combined with a lack of evidence thus far of widespread disease in the cattle bones, all indicate that the soldiers of Camp Floyd had enough provisions to survive and that they possessed enough access to protein and vegetables to be generally healthy.22 The lack of deer, elk, and rabbit bones suggests that the residents of Camp Floyd did not need to hunt locally to supplement their food supply. This also indicates that the newly founded supply chains and travel routes were succeeding even in the unfamiliar political and environmental climates. This is important because, during this time, even a bout of bad weather could slow down a train or destroy supplies, delaying delivery for weeks. A sudden increase in nutrition-related diseases or remains from local game could show this.

split up his cattle as needed across the land and stored hay and agricultural surplus to ensure the soldiers and cattle were healthy and fed, given the new challenges that Utah’s climate brought during the five months that growing, grazing, and sometimes even supply transport stopped.

Johnston created a military reserve to ensure that Camp Floyd’s cattle had land to graze. By the spring of 1859, forty acres of soil had been seeded and irrigated to support local agriculture.

All of this was done in an effort to support the 7,000 lives who inhabited Camp Floyd.23 It does appear that Camp Floyd was well provisioned and that its inhabitants overcame the challenges that presented themselves in Utah, a place new and unfamiliar to them.

The health of the cattle could also directly affect the health of the soldiers; there was little to no evidence of disease in this assemblage.

This could be because, during the first year of the camp’s construction, General Albert Sidney Johnston secured contracts to herd livestock. He

2.

Notes 1.

Jennifer L. Elsken, “The Historical Ceramics of Camp Floyd” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 2002), 15.

Very few collections from Berge’s Camp Floyd excavations have been analyzed, and there is not yet a comprehensive site report for the excavations; however, some literature on it does exist. Jeffrey A. Rust’s 1999 master’s thesis focused on the influence that rank had on aspects of the social, economic, cultural, and political state of the United States Army in 1858 by analyz-

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

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13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

I

12.

8 9

10.

11.

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9.

Ball, Army Regulars, 170; Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect,” 36.

Alexander and Arrington, “Camp in the Sagebrush,” 6; Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect.”

Alexander and Arrington, “Camp in the Sagebrush,” 8.

Ball, Army Regulars, 170; Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect,” 152–53.

Thomas J. Caperton and LoRheda Fry, Old West Army Cookbook, 1865–1900 (Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico, 1974), 3.

Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect,” 37.

Godfrey, “A Social History,” 78, 101.

Godfrey, “A Social History,” 108–110 Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect,” 61.

Godfrey, “A Social History,” 114; Caperton and Fry, Old West Army Cookbook, 3–5.

Caperton and Fry, Old West Army Cookbook, 3–5; Godfrey, “A Social History,” 101, 109.

April M. Beisaw, Identifying and Interpreting Animal Bones: A Manual (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2013); Jack M. Broughton and Shawn Miller, Zooarchaeology and Field Ecology: A Photographic Atlas (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016); Simon J. M. Davis, The Archaeology of Animals (London: Routledge, 2016); Diane L. France, Human and Nonhuman Bone Identification: A Color Atlas on DVD (Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2009); Hillary Jones, Elizabeth Hora-Cook, Anastasia Lugo Mendez, and David Byers, “Artiodactyl Identification for Archaeologists” (ms. on file, Utah State University, Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology, 2014).

Caperton and Fry, Old West Army Cookbook.

Beisaw, Identifying and Interpreting; Davis, Archaeology of Animals; France, Human and Nonhuman; Jones et al., “Artiodactyl Identification.”

Caperton and Fry, Old West Army Cookbook, 3–5; Godfrey, “A Social History,” 114; Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect,” 61.

Alexander and Arrington, “Camp in the Sagebrush”; Ball, Army Regulars; Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect”; Rust, “Camp Floyd.”

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ing the buildings at the Camp Floyd post. Jennifer L. Elsken’s 2002 thesis considered historical ceramics at the camp. Most of the work that has been done to analyze the assemblages has been limited to undergraduate students sorting and classifying artifacts for student projects. Finally, this portion of the faunal collection was originally organized but not analyzed by the BYU Museum of People and Cultures in 2001. Elsken, “Historical Ceramics,” 15; Jeffrey A. Rust, “Camp Floyd: The Influence of Rank at a U.S. Army Post, an Archaeological View” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1999); see also, Audrey M. Godfrey, “A Social History of Camp Floyd, Utah Territory, 1858–1861” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 1989), 37.

3. Camp Floyd (42UT14) Collection, Accession Group CF87–1, Fairfield, Utah, located at the Fort Douglas Military Museum, Salt Lake City, Utah.

4. Rust, “Camp Floyd”; Danny N. Walker, ed., Archeology at the Fort Laramie Quartermaster Dump Area, 1994– 1996, Division of Cultural Resources Selection Series, no. 13 (Denver: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Rocky Mountain Region, 1998). For a similar study, see David Colin Crass and Deborah L. Wallsmith, “Where’s the Beef? Food Supply at an Antebellum Frontier Post,” Historical Archaeology 26, no. 2 (1992): 3–23.

5. Don Richard Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect” (master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1959), 5; Donald R. Moorman, with Gene A. Sessions, Camp Floyd and the Mormons: The Utah War (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1992).

6. Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect,” 178–79; Moorman, Camp Floyd and the Mormons; Rust, “Camp Floyd,” statement of civilian contracts.

7. Thomas G. Alexander and Leonard J. Arrington, “Camp in the Sagebrush: Camp Floyd, Utah, 1858– 1861,” Utah Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1966): 7; Durwood Ball, Army Regulars on the Western Frontier, 1848–1861 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 166; Mathis, “Camp Floyd in Retrospect,” 38; Rust, “Camp Floyd.”

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REVIEWS

In a Rugged Land: Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and the Three Mormon Towns Collaboration, 1953– 1954

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By James R. Swensen

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Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, in cooperation with the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, 2018. 432 pp.

Paper, $34.95

With In a Rugged Land, James Swensen offers the big backstory for the work of Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams as they pursued the “Three Mormon Towns” project for Life magazine in 1953 and 1954. He does so via a set of concentric contexts, including subject biographies; national, regional and local history; art history and criticism; and literary, aesthetic, and intellectual history. Although Lange and Adams were longtime friends, these two famous photographers approached their work very differently. Dorothea Lange focused on human-centered, very personal images, blending documentary photography with Life magazine–like photojournalism; while Ansel Adams offered breathtaking, human-less landscapes that he prepared with the highest of technical artistry in his darkroom. As Swensen details, both artists fought against these labels, and each pushed the other to work differently. The relationship between Lange and Adams—warm in the long term but sometimes strained—is carefully described in this book.

The two photographers—Lange mostly, but also Adams—were committed to documenting everyday life, with a good deal of focus on women, children, senior citizens, and couples; pioneer homes, outbuildings, community celebrations, religious services, and street scenes; and gender-based divisions of labor; and too the towns’ or church’s leading men. Finally, their focus on human topography, via close-up portraiture— hands, shoes, and everyday clothing—created all together a body of photographic documentation of life in mid-twentieth-century rural Utah that is unsurpassed. Swensen adds to this deep personal engagement by tracking down

and interviewing Lange and Adams’s surviving subjects.

Swensen explains the ideological frameworks that informed Lange and Adams work, including the interest of Paul Taylor (the University of California Berkeley economist married to Lange) in studying and encouraging the Jeffersonian ideal of the independent farmer, amid a self-sustaining village. The photographers wanted to document what they saw as the closing vestiges of the Mormon village—which had survived amid scarcity, was committed to community cooperation, and whose people were bound in their common beliefs. This anthropological impulse, as Swensen describes, was informed by the early proponents of studying Utah more scientifically, particularly the practitioners of Mormon village studies from the 1920s to 1950s. Those who advised the photographers included Lowry Nelson, Wallace Stegner, Juanita Brooks, and Edward C. Banfield, all of whom saw this unique institutional pattern as worthy of study. Swensen’s explanation of these ideological contexts are some of the most contributing aspects of his book.

At the same time, Swensen contextualizes the world of the people who lived in those three Utah villages. He describes, for instance, the advice given to Lange and Adams, which they carefully followed, to secure approval at the offices of the LDS church First Presidency before committing to the project. Concurrently, the small-town Mormon bishops confirmed these arrangements with the same church leaders, demonstrating just how powerful, even in regards to private actions, the LDS church was in midcentury, rural Utah.

Although a social science framework undergirded “Three Mormon Towns,” Lange and Adams were inescapably driven by nostalgia and a romantic ideal—a sense of loss felt in the mid-twentieth century, just after the majority of Utah’s population began to trend urban and after scores of small Utah towns began a depopulation slide. This was only a decade after

In a Rugged Land walks a careful line between audiences. Swensen is inescapably a Utahn who understands the social and intellectual world of Utah, and regional readers will appreciate his book, but it is also a work of national importance, equally attuned to broader audiences. This monograph also bests the Utah photographic histories that were written in the 1970s and 1980s, when the works of Utah’s nineteenth-century photographers first garnered attention. Other photographic history books have come out since then but none make the national and regional contribution In A Rugged Land has accomplished.

Archives and museums across the interior West are brimming with works of nineteenth

By David H. DeJong Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020. xvii + 305 pp.

Cloth, $75.00; Paper, $40.00

In July 2020, the US Supreme Court, in a five to four decision (McGirt v. Oklahoma), removed from eastern Oklahoma state criminal jurisdiction over offenses committed within what has now been determined to be Muscogee Creek reservation land. Few people saw this coming.

That same month, the Washington Redskins officially changed its name to the Washington Football Team. And the Bears Ears National Monument continues to be the focus of five Indian tribes—Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, and Northern and Ute Mountain Utes—who are petitioning the restoration of the Obama-era 1.35 million acres, following the Trump-era decrease to 15 percent of its original size. What these three seemingly unrelated issues in today’s newspapers have in common springs from the historical context provided in The Commissioners of Indian Affairs by David H. DeJong.

Between 1824 and 2018, there have been fifty-six commissioners and assistant secretaries of Indian Affairs, charged with overseeing the federal government’s relationship with the tribes within the continental United States and Alaska. DeJong outlines the contributions of each of these men (and two women) in an often brief, occasionally lengthy explanation

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The Commissioners of Indian Affairs: The United States Indian Service and the Making of Federal Indian Policy, 1824 to 2017

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If there is anything lacking in Swensen’s book, it is a more thorough examination, perhaps a cautionary discussion, regarding the impact of nostalgia on these photographers. In some respects, the work of Lange and Adam at midcentury was not unlike the work of the photographer Edward Curtis, during the first decades of the century, wherein he sought to capture completely the nation’s Indigenous people or “vanishing race.” The preloaded themes requested by financial underwriters, as well as Lange and Adams’s own preloaded themes, and their effects on the product, could have been studied more. Also the photographers’ composing and even staging of photographs for optimum authentic effect, to comply with rural stereotypes, might have been explored more fully. This, however, is minor in comparison to the vast contribution In a Rugged Land has had and will continue to have, on the history of twentieth-century Utah in general, along with social and cultural history, and the book’s primary art and photographic history.

and twentieth-century photographers, much of which justifies scholarly attention. It is my hope that Swensen will inspire other to study and analyze these “deep in the archives” caches of predigital visual artifacts. Finally, this book—with its large format, balanced layout of image to text, and generous margins—is a pleasure to read and to consume visually. And the history Swensen writes holds up wonderfully next to iconic photographic work he analyzes.

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Utah’s extended Great Depression years had ended, and just after wartime military investments and industries had surpassed Utah’s agricultural industry. The mechanization of farms, the car culture explosion, the soon-tobe-built Interstate Highway System, the influence of television, and the nuclear fallout from Nevada (which Swensen explains well in this story): all of these developments speak to the slipping away of small-town, agrarian life.

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(John Collier netted ten pages), depending upon their length of service and amount accomplished. For scholars writing and researching Native American topics, this book becomes a handy reference that provides details behind these official policymakers, their general beliefs, practices, and reason for their political appointment. Their success was varied—some being hacks with zero knowledge of Indian people and their needs, while others came to the task with high principle and understanding (or at least good will) for their charges. Twenty-six of them were either Native American or Iñupiat.

DeJong organizes what could be a blizzard of personalities, events, and shifting philosophies into two main “braids” of action. “The first was the social and political integration of American Indians,” which over two-and-a-half centuries manifested itself in “civilization (1776 to 1817), emigration [removal] (1817 to 1848), reservations (1848 to 1870), assimilation (1870 to 1929), acculturation (1929 to 1950), termination (1950 to 1968), and consumerism (1969 to present)” (x–xi). The second braid concerns land policy, the general theme of which has been to take as much land as possible along with resources to feed the economic growth and expansion of a land-hungry United States population. This was accomplished, depending on the period of history, through treaties, agreements, land cessions, the General Allotment Act (1887), fee patents, termination, relocation, and other means that relinquished government responsibilities to protect Indian lands. Every tribe has its story. Missing from the general narrative, however, is the use of the presidential executive order, which actually added territory to tribal holdings between 1855 and 1919. In Utah, for example, executive orders under three different administrations created the vast majority of Navajo reservation lands in southeastern Utah.

The same is true in other parts of the West.

The Commissioners is a carefully crafted work based on the annual reports written by those serving in that office, as well as a myriad of other primary sources. Each chapter is heavily documented, with endnotes ranging between seventy-five and 223 entries; the prose is clear and direct. This work is an excellent source for information often buried in government

documents; it also provides an abbreviated outline of federal Indian policy and the people who ran it. The author is sympathetic to those people who have had to live through the shifting beliefs and historical winds that have blown so many of the tribes about.

A final word. DeJong has laid out the facts and feelings of those serving in what is now called the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA or Office of Indian Services) over the years. As he points out, even with those who were well-intentioned, there has been no satisfying “solution” to many of the questions raised over the centuries. Just as there are differing points of views concerning the recent decision in eastern Oklahoma or in the Bears Ears discussion, strong polarization arises as to what should be done.

When Chief Justice John Marshall introduced the term “domestic dependent nation” in his 1831 Supreme Court decision, he paved the way for two-and-a-half-centuries of dispute over interpretation. In spite of all the legislation that has been passed, there is no clear path forward.

Native American tribes (573 as of 2018) insist on sovereign nation status, with more applying for federal recognition each year. Yet economically, educationally, and legally they often lack the wherewithal to be truly independent. Termination in the 1950s was a failed experiment.

Regardless of which side of the fence one sits when discussing the government’s role, there will be just as many on the other side calling for a different approach. The Commissioners provides a good starting point, so that at least the mistakes of the past can be considered.

—Robert S. McPherson Utah State University, Emeritus

Between Freedom and Progress: The Lost World of Reconstruction Politics

By David Prior Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019. ix + 258 pp. Cloth, $45.00

Over the past decade, historians have worked to put the Civil War era in broader continental, transnational, and even global contexts.

Much of this work centers on the antebellum

—Angela Diaz Utah State University

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The book offers a fascinating view of aspects of political discourse and fantasies in the Reconstruction era. At the same time that the Republican Party and a Republican-led Congress was trying to navigate the United States and the South through Reconstruction at home, they were hoping to promote similar principals abroad and link events around the world to their own struggles. The Democratic Party also saw in the events afield further evidence of northern Republicans’ hypocrisies and overstepping. Prior deftly interweaves ideas about race in with others that examine how different groups and nations were judged by these parties. At times it is difficult to see how all of these concepts knit together to form a cohesive whole with the more familiar side of Reconstruction politics and discourse. That said, what Prior has done is truly uncover the different parts of this lost world of politics.

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The book begins with the Cretan Insurrection, when Greeks in Crete rose up against the Ottomans. This uprising halfway around the world provided an early postwar battleground for what Prior refers to as “Reconstructions’ Partisans.” They debated concepts such as progress and barbarism. Northern Republicans connected Greek efforts to throw off Turkish Ottoman rule to what they saw as the global struggle for republicanism over despotism and civilization over barbarism. Democrats, Prior argues, also viewed themselves as more in-line with the Cretan Insurrection against the Turks but used more racialized ideas than northern Republicans. The successive chapters follow somewhat similar dichotomies. Prior follows the Cretan Insurrection by delving into the story of Paul du Chaillu’s expedition to Africa, the figure of the gorilla, and how they both became a part of partisan discourse. Prior discusses other globe trotters whose trips demonstrated that steam technology was knitting the world together under the banner of western progress as well as

Prior’s final chapter examines how Democrats and northern Republicans used critiques of the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-day Saints and polygamy. Northern Republicans viewed polygamy as one of the “twin barbarisms,” alongside slavery. They also viewed Mormonism as tantamount to a foreign culture, outside the bounds of American culture, and often eschewed or downplayed any successes that the church had in Utah. Democrats, Prior argues, with their more relaxed views on white immigrants, used those views, at times, to lend support to Latter-day Saints. At other times, they rejected Mormonism and polygamy as similar to their racist notions of African American men in the South. Members of both political parties viewed LDS men as not adhering to mid-nineteenth-century gender norms. The anxiety of northern Republicans over the state of Utah society signaled that their overall “postbellum optimism” was coming to an end in an ever-increasing international and national ambiguity.

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potentially being changed by the nations that began using steam-powered transportation.

He also addresses the Black American press, which debated the global meanings of progress, republicanism, and civilization alongside more domestic issues.

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and Civil War periods. However, we know less about Reconstruction in these contexts. This is where books like David Prior’s Between Freedom and Progress provide a genuine contribution to this ever-growing field of study. Prior’s book covers the period of Reconstruction, just after the Civil War, and aims to recover the “lost world” of Reconstruction-era political discourse that bridges domestic politics with that of the outside world and the American West. He examines the many ways that northern Republicans and Democrats interpreted events across the world and in parts of the United States. Prior uses a series of different instances in which northern Republicans and Democrats debated concepts such as freedom, progress, republicanism, and civilization alongside the two-part question at the heart of Reconstruction: what to do with the South and how to unify the nation? Between Freedom and Progress uncovers “a world part real and part fantasy that Reconstruction’s partisans imagined themselves in as they struggled with each other over the nature of their post-Civil War, postslavery settlement. It was a world made possible by the remarkable technological and commercial transformation centered on Europe and North America during the middle of the nineteenth century” (23).

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Tiny You: A Western History of the Anti-Abortion Movement

By Jennifer L. Holland

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In her thought-provoking study of the United States anti-abortion movement, historian Jennifer L. Holland presents a compelling and, until now, underexplored account of the grassroots campaign against legalized abortion. Anchored by meticulous research, twenty-eight oral histories, and a sharp analysis of the cultural history of postwar social movements, Tiny You unearths how abortion became the singular issue for so many conservative Americans.

Her work, like that of other notable scholars, argues that women are the backbone of the anti-abortion movement. But more importantly, Holland broadens the contours of anti-abortion activism, what she terms intimate activism, and provides readers with “a history of the gendered political culture of the anti-feminist movement” (6).

Part 1 overviews the historical foundations of what became the anti-abortion movement. As Holland persuasively asserts, the women’s and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly the campaigns against birth control and pornography, developed a set of political tools that anti-abortion activists—most white and Christian—would later hone and invert to suit their movement. As her research demonstrates, the anti-abortion movement’s prevailing political idea was that fetuses were akin to fully formed human beings; therefore, like women and African Americans, they have full political rights. Furthermore, “through this civil rights movement for fetuses, regular white people could be both victims of modernity and potential saviors” (5). As white activists tied their own identities to fetal victimhood, white conservatives too became victims. In this ideology, the political became personal—an inversion of secular feminist ideology, which promoted a woman’s right to choose whether to see to term or terminate a pregnancy.

As Holland documents, by the 1970s, American Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, and evangelical churches became the first important sites of anti-abortion activism, especially in the Four

Corners states of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah. Significantly, in these places of worship, the graphic objects of this ideology—fetal pins, fetal dolls, and other ephemera— galvanized the movement’s moral crusade.

Activists integrated pro-life politics in rituals of faith, and for many white Americans, particularly evangelicals, “pro-life belief became central to their religious identities” (101).

Of particular import to Utah history, when the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution was sent to the states for consideration, the LDS church was plunged into a “decade-long acrimonious debate over whether the Mormon tradition sanctioned equality for women or a special, different place for women in families and in society” (97). As Holland tells it, “the church eventually opposed the ERA, helping secure its national defeat,” and reiterated the LDS stance that “motherhood was a woman’s sacred role in society” (97). Furthermore, the US Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortion in Roe v. Wade prompted a more explicit opposition to legal abortion among conservatives. Although most twentieth-century Mormons disapproved of abortion in most cases, until the 1970s their opposition had been largely unspoken, except within the confines of the church. However, “in the 1970s . . . opposition to abortion became a regular part of Mormon leaders’ speeches and testimonies.

Between 1971 and 1973, leaders of the church discussed abortion 12 times in their public addresses, and between 1973 and 1980, 43 times” (98).

With the church president’s blessing, many pro-lifers, including women active in the LDS Relief Society, the primary LDS women’s group, brought their activism into religious forums. In one oral history, Holland takes up the case of Sandra Allen, a Mormon woman living in Las Vegas who felt exhilarated by her interactions with pro-life non-Mormons but, when she had to enter sexually liberal spaces, often felt physically cold, subsumed by a “spirit of darkness” (99). For Allen, the Divine sanctioned her politics: “shades of darkness and light, sensations of cold and warmth differentiated the upright from the unprincipled” (99).

As Holland argues in Part 2, by the 1980s and 1990s, “activists argued abortion threatened

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abortion’s ever-evolving and embattled legal standing in the United States.

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not just fetal lives but also Christianity, womanhood, the haven of childhood, and the ‘traditional family’” (5). In crisis pregnancy centers across the country, the New Right took hold, traditional family values were extolled, and white anti-abortion activists decided that fetuses were not victims enough but rather that the “traditional,” Christian family was endangered, an innocent bystander and victim of secular feminism. Casting children as “survivors” of abortion, the family values movement gained a political and cultural stronghold that continues to permeate reproductive rights and

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NOTICES From San Francisco Eastward: Victorian Theater in the American West

application of theory to show the disruptions Indigenous and Chinese peoples experienced.

By Carolyn Grattan Eichin

The Saints Abroad: Missionaries Who Answered Brigham Young’s 1852 Call to the Nations of the World

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Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2020. 291 pp. Cloth, $60.00

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In From San Francisco Eastward, Carolyn Grattan Eichin presents her years of research on theater in the American West. Eichin’s title aptly describes her thesis: that in the West, the business of Victorian-era theater radiated outward and eastward from San Francisco into smaller communities and rural hinterlands. As she puts it, “Victorian theater was ultimately a capitalist endeavor focused on cultural forms; thus economics ruled the theater, while culture shaped its importance” (1). Eichin also uses the perspectives of race, class, and gender to understand professional theater in the era. Maps and illustrations are a notable feature of this book, many of them depicting performers of the day and coming from the author’s own collection.

Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad

Edited by Reid L. Neilson and R. Mark Melville Provo: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, and Deseret Book, 2019. xxvii + 380. Cloth, $29.99

In 1852, Brigham Young planned a special missionary conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Saints Abroad is a collection of letters from eight missionaries who went to the church’s global missions following that conference. The letter-writers include well-known individuals, such as Dan Jones in Wales, to those less familiar, like Chauncey West in India. Biographical information on the actors involved and contextualizing information about the missions accompany the letters. This work will be of special interest to those looking for primary sources on the 1852 effort and the global LDS church.

By Manu Karuka

Hill Air Force Base

Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019. xv + 297 pp.

Paper, $29.95

George A. Larson

Manu Karuka’s Empires Tracks offers a bold challenge to the history of railroads in the American West. Using a theoretical framework that situates railroad expansion within the forces of capitalism, militarism, and the state, Karuka argues that colonialism dispossessed Indigenous peoples from their lands and exploited Chinese railway workers.

To illustrate the stark differences between railroad interests and their Indigenous counterparts, Karuka shapes the social dynamics of Lakota, Pawnee, and Cheyenne communities through “modes of relationship.” He contrasts Indigenous ideals of interdependence with capitalist values of resource extraction. Karuka extends this lens to Chinese rail workers. The strength of Empire’s Tracks lies in its careful

Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2021. 127 pp. Paper, $21.99

With Hill Air Force Base, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Larson has provided a photographic history of a major force in northern Utah. Larson briefly traces Hill Air Force Base’s (HAFB) origins in 1920 to its current position as employer of nearly 26,000 people, with an annual payroll of $1.43 billion. The book is then richly illustrated with images from the 75th Air Base Wing historian, the National Parks Service, the US Air Force, the Historic Wendover Airfield, the author’s own collection, and other repositories. Larson divides the book into sections on the Ogden Ordnance Depot, the Utah Test and Training Range, HAFB after World War II, the Ogden Air Logistics Center, the 388th and 419th Fighter Wings, and the Hill Aerospace Museum. Hill Air Force Base is sure to be enjoyed by aviation and military aficionados.

ROD DECKER’S book, Utah Politics: The Elephant in the Room, was published in July 2019 by Signature Books. He studied at the University of Utah, University of Chicago, and Harvard, was a soldier in Vietnam and a Utah political reporter, married the late Judge Christine Decker, and has three children and six grandchildren.

KENNETH L. ALFORD is an Honorary Life Member of the Utah State Historical Society, a professor of Church History and Doctrine at Brigham Young University, the current Ephraim Hatch Teaching and Learning Faculty Fellow, and a retired colonel in the US Army.

Prior to BYU, he was a professor of computer science at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York, and a department chair and professor of strategic leadership and organizational behavior at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He resides in Springville, Utah.

KAYLA REID graduated from Weber State University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology. During her studies, she chose to focus on Zooarchaeology, which is where the Camp Floyd Faunal collection found her.

Reid is currently finishing a master’s degree in Zooarchaeology at the University of Exeter, where her thesis focuses on the Camp Floyd collection. As of June 2021, Reid is completing an analysis of the remainder of the collection and updating her ideas about what it means.

Her continued work on the collection has been generously funded by a grant from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. The Utah Division of State History and the Fort Douglas Military Museum have also supported her research.

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WILLIAM P. MACKINNON is a Fellow and Honorary Life Member of the Utah State Historical Society. Since 1963 his articles, essays, and book reviews have appeared in eighteen issues of Utah Historical Quarterly. He has been presiding officer of the Mormon History Association, the Santa Barbara Corral of the Westerners, Yale Library Associates, and Children’s Hospital of Michigan. He is an alumnus or veteran of Yale College, Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, General Motors Corporation, and the US Air Force. He resides in Montecito, California.

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W. RAYMOND PALMER is a research affiliate at the Max and Tessie Zelikovitz Centre for Jewish Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He also operates a small historical research business. At present, Dr. Palmer is actively engaged in a book project on the activities of the London office of the World Jewish Congress during the Holocaust.

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An image from a series of photographs taken in the spring of 1943 for the Salt Lake Tribune.

Simply labeled “U.S.O.—Jewish,” these photographs document a feast for Jewish soldiers from across the nation, apparently hosted by the United Service Organization and a group of women willing to take care of the crowd, as this candid shot demonstrates. Since the first

decades of Euro-American settlement, members of Utah’s small but vibrant Jewish community have played an active role in public life and have included such luminaries as Simon Bamberger and Maurice Abravanel. World War II proved to be an especially busy time for Jewish women. Utah State Historical Society, photograph 9203.