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Show THE MORMON MURDERERS. 495 made in a day. Men do not become utter and conscienceless villains just for one occasion. Whole communities do not suddenly turn to assassins. Starkie and Greenleaf teach a sounder philosophy of crime. The whole previous life- time of the Mormon Church was no more than enough to educate men to such action. Perhaps all these causes would not have been sufficient, but the year 1856 was full of disaster and incitements to fanaticism. The Church leaders had determined that immigrants from Europe should walk from the Missouri to Salt Lake City, and trundle hand- carts loaded with their baggage ; and the first attempt resulted in frightful suffering and three hundred deaths. This dire calamity appeared to excite an epidemic madness in Utah. The " Reformation" which had already set in, now became a verita-ble reign of terror. The doctrine of " blood atonement," or killing men to save their souls, was taught by Brigham Young, Orson Hyde, and others. In all the sermons of that period one will not find twenty quotations from the New Testament, but every page is red with the bloody maxims of the Mosaic code. Meanwhile, Parley P. Pratt, " Isaiah of the Latter- day Church," was killed in Arkansas by Hector McLean, whose wife Pratt had taken away some time before. To the Gentiles this Avoukl seem but the rash act of an outraged husband ; to the Mormons it appeared the murder of an able apostle, who had obeyed the " celestial laws/' iu taking another man's wife. The spring of 1857 found the Mormon community in a mixed state of fanatic enthusiasm, grief for the lost, zeal for the cause, and fierce anger against the whole American race. While in this state the news arrived that President Buchanan had re-moved Brigham Young from the Governorship, and determined to station a part of the army in Utah. The immediate consequences were frightful. A yell of rage and defiance sounded from one end of the Territory to the other. The few American officials who remained slipped out at once. Dr. Hurt, Indian agent, did not trust the roads, but was piloted through the mountains by the Utes. All the apostates who could do so fled at once. The rest held their peace, or outdid the orthodox in their zeal. Several frightful murders and still more frightful mutilations took place. To deprive a dangerous man of virility was regarded almost as a joke. Dozens of cases are known to have occurred between 1856 and 1863 those being the years in which the " blood atonement" doctrine was preached. All opposition silenced, and the people were hot for war. Wheat was dried and |