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Show 252 an's Blunder" and the "Contractor's War" in some accounts. Neither the press nor the people were becoming pro-Mormon, but they were becoming increasingly impatient with the president's policy of conducting an expensive and corruption-ridden military campaign against a people they had no proof were rebelling and with whom they had not attempted a peaceful adjustment. The New York Daily Times lashed out against the administration on December 24, 1857: There were undoubted disorders in the affairs of the territory; but it has never yet been shown that they were such as could only be remedied by fire and sword.... The whole Utah business has been mismanaged in the most extraordinary manner from the beginning; and if it does not end in open bloody rebellion, it is not likely to be saved from that issue by any special wisdom on the part of the general government. Senator Sam Houston, of Texas, another frequent critic of the administration's handling of the Utah problem, suggested that had an investigation of the facts been made, "I am sure that he £tbe president] would never have recommended ,.11 war. Mormon church leaders also correctly estimated the public reaction to their policy of abandoning the northern cities. News of the exodus from Salt Lake City, although received in the East too late to have effected tbe peace plan, struck a passionate chord with several editors of major newspapers and proves the great psychological effect of the Mormon plan. "Whatever our opinions may be of Mormon morals or Mormon manners," declared the New York Times of June 17, there can be no question that this voluntary and even cheerful abandonment by 40,000 people of homes created by wonderful industry, in the midst of trackless wastes, after years of hardship and persecution, is something from which no one who has a particle of sympathy with pluck, fortitude, and constancy can withhold his admiration. Right or wrong, sincerity thus |