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Show Page 195 Fillmore outlining conditions in Utah from the Mormons' point of view. The memorial, thirty pages long, was dispatched during the summer; but this was only part of Brigham Young's strategy- He determined that it would be best to make the doctrine public and then immediately petition Congress for admission to the Union as a state, which would stymie federal interference in Utah's internal affairs. He also settled on Orson Pratt's stout qualities of persuasion to effect all of this. General Conference met the last week in August so that mission calls could be given out before the snows flew. Brigham was determined to spread the Mormon network literally world-wide, and missions were announced to the excited Saints for India, China, South America, and the islands of the sea. Orson stood afterwards and said, "When I see so many of my brethren ...going forth to the different nations, I almost feel as though I wanted to go to all these different places at the same time myself." He was not to wait long for satisfaction. The next morning, Heber C. Kimball shouted the conference to order in the new rectangular tabernacle, with the overflow crowd under a canopy of dusty rushes, and promptly moved that Orson Pratt "take a mission to Washington to preach and preside over the Saints in the United States, Upper and Lower Canada, and the British Provinces in North America." Orson Pratt was then called upon to speak. He made no recorded reference to the mission call, but proceeded directly into his text: "Marriage." The house was "exceedingly crowded," for the Saints knew that this conference would mark a fateful turning for the entire Church. Orson began to talk about the Bible, about the ancient patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the privileges and blessings they enjoyed. He asked the congregation why the Lord had permitted these former worthies to take more than one wife - the answer he gave himself. This was the |