| OCR Text |
Show UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR ELECTION OF 1856 one of his men had been brutally attacked, Map of the United States showing and a full recovery was in doubt. The beating the election results in 1856. had “high author ity,” Bur r said, which implied Young’s responsibility. 58 Indian Agent Garland Hurt told Washington that Young’s “boasted policy” toward the local Indians had been “conducted at the sacrifice of the lives and property of a deluded populace, who were groaning in poverty and distress.”59 Hurt also joined the chorus accusing saints of alienating the Indians from the government, making them Mormon vassals. William M. F. Magraw’s letter to Franklin Pierce, written in October, was another piece of Gentile anti-Mormonism. Magraw was a former U.S. mail contractor and Utah surveyor, and he shared the negative feelings of many of the territorial officers about Utah and the saints, especially after he lost his mail contract to Utahns and a local court imposed a costly settlement against him for a breach of contract to Mormon apostle Erastus Snow. “There was much warmth and feeling on this occasion,” said Magraw’s attorney after the court decision had been handed down by the Mormon jury.60 Perhaps in pique and certainly because of his strong opposition to all things that were Mormon, Magraw complained that “there is left no vestige of law and order, no protection for life and property” in Utah, as the local 58 David H. Burr to Thomas A. Hendricks, August 30 and September 20, 1856, “The Utah Expedition,” Message from the President of the United States, 35th Congress, House of Representatives, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 71, 115-6, 117-8. 59 Garland Hurt to George W. Manypenny, November 20, 1856, “The Utah Expedition,” Message from the President of the United States, 35th Congress, House of Representatives, 1st Session, Ex. Doc. No. 71, 182. 60 Hosea Stout, On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1861, edited by Juanita Brooks, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 1964), July 2, 1855, August 5, 1856, and September 15, 1856, 2:557-8, 599, and 600. 125 |
