Critical Woodcuts/Brigham Young
MY devotion to American biography has been rewarded and exhilarated by Mr. M. R. Werner's "Brigham Young."
In the production of a classical work, we are told, everything depends on the choice of a subject. This is Mr. Werner's subject: An impecunious Vermont boy with only a few weeks of schooling rises to be prophet, priest and king, head of a church, general of an army, governor of a territory, possessor of an estate worth $2,000,000, husband of twenty-seven wives and father of fifty-six children. I should like to say that this subject is of "epic sweep"; but since critics have got the habit of describing every midwestern novel which shows a section of cornland under cultivation as of "epic sweep," the phrase has become a little colorless. What one has in mind about Mr. Werner's subject is, that it begins in Vermont, ascends to heaven, descends to western New York, and traversing the great West to the Rocky Mountains presents such events as the councils of God, the revelation of laws to man, the founding of cities, the martyrdom of saints, the building of temples, the waging of wars, the massacre of infidels and the establishment of civilization in the wilderness.
To whom hitherto have most "Gentiles" been indebted for their conception of Mormon leaders and Mormon civilization? To Congressmen viewing with subconscious envy the efficiency of the theocratic "machine" in Utah and the Oriental prerogatives of the Mormon "boss." To lone, lorn hysterical women, without even a thirtieth share in a husband, seeking to free the Mormon wives from "bondage." To clergymen diverting their minds from domestic troubles by proposing a foreign war—like the Rev. De Witt Talmage, who, as Mr. Werner reminds us, paused in interpreting the Gospel of Christ one Sunday morning in 1877 to suggest to the national government that the time was ripe, now that Brigham Young had died, to send Phil Sheridan to Utah and to confiscate as much of the rich Mormon lands as would pay for their subjugation. To comic journalists like Artemus Ward and Mark Twain, who in quest of copy and a national guffaw, interviewed the Governor of Utah, and led off with such questions as this: "'You air a married man, Mister Yung, I bleeve?' sez I."
We are officially under obligation to think of a man with a non-monogamous mind as a monster. But deep in the sinful heart of man lurks a kind of atavistic sympathy and curiosity regarding the private life of Brigham Young: he had a human experience so rich and so varied. He had the wisdom possible only to one who has the comparative point of view. While this subject is before us it should be said that Mr. Werner goes into it as carefully as one can desire in three really instructive chapters on "Puritan Polygamy," "Brigham Young and His Wives" and "Polygamy and the Law."
In the palmy days of plurality Heber Kimball, eminent saint, declared in the pulpit: "For a man of God to be confined to one woman is small business." Kimball was a sincere man; he married forty-five wives. Brigham Young and his associates believed that a man "cannot be saved without a woman at his side." Young avowed that he was a "great lover of good women." He liked them plain and honest, clean and chaste, with their hair parted in the middle and combed smoothly back from the forehead. He said, I think honestly, that there were "few men who care about the private society of women as little as I do.
Everything that he did bears that out: his marrying three or four on the same day, his assembling them in large numbers so that the intimacy of his family life was less like a solitude à deux than a church social. With much justice he contended, in that great vacant territory, that the purpose of matrimony was to replenish the earth with saints. Mr. Werner notes that in 1851 Brigham Young became a father in January, February, March and April, and in 1852 in March, April and May. He seems to have been a "natural born" father. There is something heroic in the way he faced the consequences of his beliefs. There was little romantic sentiment about him. To women who whined for love he said in effect: "What difference does it make?" If they had a child, they ought to be content, and to exclaim with joy: "Hallelujah! I am a mother—I have borne an image of God."
Brigham Young's uxoriousness can be overemphasized, his philoprogenitiveness, not. But let us pass to other matters by way of a quotation from Young's "Journal of Discourses," giving the public reflections of the Governor on Gentile curiosity relating to his domestic arrangements. I make this extended quotation to emphasize my own chief discovery about Brigham Young, namely, that he is a great stylist, as John Bunyan was a stylist. He is an unhesitating master of the colloquial idiom. He is invariably vigorous, direct, candid, racy, often gross, often astonishingly eloquent, sometimes, as here, scathing:
Having wives is a secondary consideration; it is within the pale of duty, and consequently, it is all right. But to preach the Gospel, save the children of men, build up the Kingdom of God, produce righteousness in the midst of the people; govern and control ourselves and our families and all we have influence over; make us of one heart and one mind; to clear the world from wickedness—this fighting and slaying, this mischievous spirit now so general, and to subdue and drive it from the face of the earth, and to usher in and establish the reign of universal peace, is our business, no matter how many wives a man has got, that makes no difference here or there. I want to say, and I wish to publish it, that I would as soon be asked how many wives I have got as any other question, just as soon; but I would rather see something else in their minds, instead of all the time thinking, "How many wives have you?" or "I wonder whom he slept with last night?" I can tell those who are curious on this point. I slept with all that slept, and we slept on one universal bed—the bosom of our mother earth, and we slept together. "Did you have anybody in bed with you?" "Yes." "Who was it?" It was my wife, it was not your wife, nor your daughter, nor sister, unless she was my wife and that too legally. I can say that to all creation, and every honest man can say the same; but it is not all who are professed Christians who can say it, and I am sorry to say, not all professed "Mormons" can say this.
Professor Young is descended from "a pioneer of 1847," and is related to the Patriarch. He is also a member of the First Council of Seventy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and head of the department of Western History in the Pniversity of Utah. He looks back to 1847 as historians in Cambridge look back to 1620. Incidentally he looks back from a city which Rebecca West recently declared one of the most beautiful in the world. Whether he gazes out over the wide valley with its vast blue inland sea from the commanding height of the University on its mountain bench, or whether he strolls under the bright stimulus of the mountain air through the clean wide green avenues and parks of Salt Lake City, inevitably he judges his ancestors "by their fruits." They made the desert blossom like the rose, the pioneers of 1847, not by praying for rain but by introducing the first extensive irrigation system in the United States. It is impossible, if I may judge by my own experience, to visit Salt Lake City without a thrill of pride in the Mormons.
Professor Young's book is charming. It glows with affection and pride in the state, based upon intimate extensive acquaintance with it. It is free from offensive chauvinism: one-fourth of it is devoted to the history of the Great Basin before the Mormons entered it. It begins with an account of Rocky Mountain sunshine, flowers and topography and proceeds in successive chapters to a generous appraisal of the native Indians, the Cliff-dwellers, the Spanish adventurers, the fur-traders, the scientific explorers, who made the old trails and endowed the territory with ancient and romantic human associations. Then, as an integral part of the general westward migration, comes the tale of the Mormon colonization, made rich and vivid by many choice excerpts from the letters and journals of the pioneers, illustrating their trials and adversities, their courage, industry and enterprise. In all this Brigham Young figures largely.
Two silences are impressive: there is no mention of Joseph Smith or of polygamy. For all account of Mormon religion, Professor Young says: "The leaders of this religious people were men whose ancestors had lived in the pioneer districts of New England, and were Puritans and Methodists in belief." Incidents like the Mountain Meadows massacre are passed over quickly as among the things mainly attributable to the Indians, "which we wish had never happened." The object of Mormon missions is described as "the conversion of the Indians to Christianity." Professor Young leaves the impression that political, religious, ethical ideals in the state to-day are democratic and idealistic and essentially indistinguishable from those of any other enlightened American commonwealth. He concludes his narrative with a picture of "Utah To-day" as a highly civilized state, with a notably low percentage of crime, insanity, pauperism, and illiteracy, but with high school attendance, flourishing agriculture, manufactures and mines and lively interest in the arts and sciences.
Professor Young has liberally whitewashed the founding of Utah. But I doubt whether he has whitewashed it a whit more than the average non-Mormon historian whitewashes the foundation of Massachusetts when he prepares a book for the use of Boston schools.
Mr. Werner's book ends with the death of Brigham Young in 1877, but as he has envisaged his biographical problem, the scope of his work and its larger purpose are not very different from Professor Young's. That is to say he too is interested in the founding of Utah, and he sees the divisions of his hero's life as steps in that long epical process. Before he is done with it he makes a nationally important and most impressive figure of Brigham Young. If he came to scoff he remained to quote respectfully Seward's remark that "America had never produced a greater statesman."
Unlike the Mormon historian, however, Mr. Werner does not suppress Joseph Smith. He appears to believe that Smith was a drunkard, a profligate, and, what was worse in the circumstances, a very poor business man, even when God had carefully revealed the plans for Smith's financial campaigns and had dictated in extraordinary detail the organization of his stock company. Smith's religious leadership, he holds, originated with deliberate humbug and childish flummery; but he suspects that after long imposing on others Smith finally imposed on himself. But Mr. Werner does, I think, make an honest and fruitful effort to understand and explain the man as a "product" of his times and of the rather weedy Puritan culture of the New England village.
The prophet-martyr was born, without any celestial notification or portent, in Sharon, Vt., in 1805, to an old and poverty stricken but fertile American family—there were eventually nine children—with epileptic tendencies on both sides, and various relatives subject to religious visions. Both his parents were visited, as all Puritans from the time of Wycliffe to the present day have been, by dreams assuring them that none of the existing churches was truly representative of Jesus Christ and the ancient Apostles.
The old people didn't know what to do about it. Old people in Vermont never know what to do about anything. For example, old people in Vermont have abundant streams of pure water flowing from the mountains past their back doors—have had for three hundred years. But old Vermont villagers still pump their water from driven wells, a teaspoonful at a time. That is the way the Vermont mind works on its native heath. It is only when the Vermonter is transplanted to southern latitudes that he is transformed into a Yankee Mahomet. Utah is in the latitude of Virginia and Spain. There is hope for young Vermonters if they migrate early.
Joseph Smith, like his parents, had visions; unlike them, he had ingenuity and considerable "creative imagination." In one of these visions he was visited by two mysterious presences. One of them proved to be God, for "pointing"—probably in the rustic village manner, by way of introduction—to the other stranger, he said: "This is my beloved son, hear him." At this interview God bore it in upon Joseph's mind that He had no true church in the world, and confided various other matters which were not then, as Mr. Werner puts it, "released for publication."
Joseph, for a time, went on with the ungodly life of a Vermont villager. But he meditated on these things. He also, it is reported, studied the memoirs of the itinerant clerical scalawag, Stephen Burroughs, and the autobigraphy of Captain Kidd. Kidd seems to have set his mind running on buried treasure, and Burroughs on the undeveloped resources of heaven, open to exploitation by an enterprising Yankee. When his family moved to western New York, then the asylum of footloose religions, he went out on a treasure hunting expedition. On Cumnorah Hill, near Palmyra, in 1830 he dug up the famous gold plates, subsequently returned to heaven, on which the book of Mormon was written. Together with them he found the "celestial spectacles," called Urim and Thummim, with the aid of which he was able to translate the "Reformed Egyptian" of the original "caractors" into somewhat broken Elizabethan English. God directed him to get the book printed and to offer it for sale at $1.75, but later advised that the price be lowered to $1.25.
Non-Mormon analyists of this book and of Joseph Smith's other translations from the "Reformed Egyptian" writings of Abraham, etc., regard them on the whole as very puerile flummery, full of ignorance, superstition and absurd anachronisms. I think they are. They were written before the Mormons had done any thing notable. The true sacred books of the Mormons are their own chronicles. They have histories comparable with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus. They lived in "bondage," they suffered ferocious persecution, they wandered in the wilderness, they entered "the land of Canaan," they built a tabernacle to their God, and the story of these deeds is a moving, heroic and often majestic portion of our national narrative, which deserves all the reverence due to any great chapter in the tearstricken, blood-stained annals of mankind.
It is to be remembered, however, that Joseph Smith's "revelations" were not a substitute for the Bible in Mormon culture, but a supplement to it. They had a special work to perform in their time. They worked! They achieved their purpose. In the minds of Joseph Smith's followers, they established as flaming truths two grand propositions which were of utmost value in converting a democratic mob into a marching militant nation: that God still lived and spoke to men; and that Joseph Smith was his prophet and must be obeyed to the letter.
Mr. Werner, after expressing his skepticism of prophets, appropriately quotes Carlyle's heated assurance that no hollow quack ever founded a religion. Joseph Smith was a quack, but not hollow. He gripped with both hands two mighty principles of order: the principle of absolute authority and the principle of absolute obedience; and he held them fast, through all his vagaries, till he was assassinated in the jail at Carthage, Illinois, in 1844. His apostles recognized that Joseph had got hold of something invaluable, and they upheld him through thick and thin. On the rock of his principles, Joseph Smith built his church, organized his militia, governed his curiously chartered city of Nauvoo. If it was destined, as it now seems to have been, that several thousands of superstitious, credulous, hungry, pioneering "democrats" should be drawn out from the unruly American rabble of 1840, disciplined, drilled, welded into a firm homogeneous religious society and planted in the wilderness as the seed of a new state, then Joseph Smith was a truly "inspired" man.
He was killed at just the right time, retrospectively speaking. His work was done. His principle of authority and his principle of obedience were firmly implanted among his followers and his martyrdom sanctified his work. He turned over to his successor a political-religious machine which was in admirable running order and surpassed Tammany Hall by the inclusion of polygamy. Polygamy, though not openly promulgated in Nauvoo, was extensively practised, and so far as spiritual affairs were concerned, Brigham Young had little to do but to "carry on" and work out details. Mr. Werner draws a sharp line between the character of Joseph and that of his successor, and nearly all his admiration goes to Brigham Young. Being a very skeptical, very modern biographer, Mr. Werner, I think, rather undervalues "fire from heaven"; and consequently rather underestimates the "genius" of Joseph Smith and tends to overlook the strict adequacy of his response to his opportunity.
I share, however, Mr. Werner's admiration for Brigham Young and think him in most respects immensely Joseph Smith's superior. He was not spiritually as impressionable as Joseph, but he had a vast deal more of common sense. He was born a governor of men and women and he was always working at his job. It was said of him that he slept with one eye open and one foot out of bed. He encouraged his people to come to him with their pettiest troubles and he required them to consult on every undertaking of importance. He had at their disposal a sagacity which frequently dictated counsel of which Benjamin Franklin might have been proud. A woman rushed to him in tears to complain that her husband had told her to go to hell. Brigham Young looked at her solemnly and said, "Well, don't go; don't go." As advice it is perfect.
The outstanding virtue in Brigham Young by which he insensibly modified the entire character of Mormonism and modernized it was this: He knew how to do everything himself and he thought and preached that it was disgraceful and unmanly to ask God's assistance until one's own resources were entirely exhausted. He didn't like whining. "If you have any crying to do, wife, you can do that along with the children, for I have none of that kind of business to do." Discoursing on prayer he said: "While we have a rich soil in this valley and seed to put in the ground we need not ask God to feed us, nor follow us around with a loaf of bread begging of us to eat it. He will not do it, neither would I were I the Lord." He had received the prophetic mantle from Joseph Smith and might at any time have asked, as Joseph had done constantly, for divine revelations about the organization of his masterly exodus from Illinois and about a thousand details concerning the foundation of his city. Except on very rare occasions, and then mainly for the look of the thing, Brigham Young dispensed with special revelations. They really were not necessary, and so he could dispense, too, with flummery. He had a bland forehead and serene and humane eyes, but his head was as hard as a keg of nails and his mouth closed like a bear trap. He, too, had his vision. He gripped with both hands two vital principles, the preservation of life and the perpetuation of the species. "I am very kind," he said, "but know how to rule." Unquestionably he did.