| 1052 The whole Mormon people are called in from Europe and America, so that they expect about two hundred thousand persons to congregate within one year at the bay of San Francisco! Several ships will be fitted out in England to take their people round Cape Horn, and others will sail from New York in the spring. Is not this a tempting place for an old United States officer like myself, who has been through the last war? They wish me much to join them, and I presume, if I did, I would have the first military command in the camp of the saints. They certainly require a leader with a military and mathematical head, and one who has seen active service; but I am too old to settle in the West.
The New York Sun, in its own editorial article runs as follows:
THE MORMONS.
William Smith, brother of Joe Smith, the Mormon prophet, states that it is their design to set up an independent government somewhere in the neighborhood of the Rocky mountains, or near California. That the plan has been maturing for a long time, and that, in fact, with hate in their hearts, skillfully kept up by the Mormon leaders, whose pockets are to be enriched by their toil, the mass of the Mormons will be alike purged of American feeling, and shut out by a barrier of mountains and church restrictions from any other than Mormon freedom. That the design of Brigham Young and the twelve is to build up a sacerdotal tyranny, the spirit of which will be more repugnant to the spread of republican principles than could possibly be the rule of Europe. These are William Smith's views, He is opposed to the plan of organization and its leaders. We find the following in the Mormon paper, which speaks a bitter. and in some respects, we apprehend, a true spirit in reference to their wrongs. We could not believe that in a government of laws, any sect, no matter what their faith might be, would ever have been driven out of the land vi et armis. The Mormon paper says:
"We owe the United States nothing. We go out by force, as exiles from freedom. The government and people owe us millions for the destruction of life and property in Missouri and in Illinois. The blood of our best men will preserve it till God comes out of his hiding place, and gives this nation a hotter place than he did Sodom and Gomorrah. "When they cease to spoil, they shall be spoiled," for the Lord hath spoken it."
They will become formidable enemies to the United States, either in California or Oregon; and government should look to this matter in season.
We entirely concur with the Sun in the belief that "our government should look to this matter in season." With angry and fanatical feelings such as the Mormons would carry with them, our own citizens would find them troublesome customers, let the tide of emigration be diverted to Oregon or to California.
We understand that the number of Mormons is already estimated at 57,000.-Union.
The United States will hardly be justified in the eyes of the nations, in amending the constitution, so as to prevent the Mormons from living in the confines of Democracy, or emigrating to a region without.
From the Washington Union of Saturday night.
AN INDIAN COUNCIL IN WASHINGTON.
The newly arrived delegation from the Pottawatomies held a "talk" yesterday afternoon with the Cherokee delegation which has been in this city for some time past. The meeting was requested by the former, some of whom had attended as delegates from their tribe at the last grand council held in the Cherokee nation at Tah-le-quah in the month of June, 1843.
Mr. John Ross, the head chief of the Cherokees, first spoke, expressing his gratification at meeting his brethren of the Pottawatomies in the town of their grent [great] father, the President of the United States, to which he and the rest of the Cherokees present had come, like the Pottawatomies, on business connected with the interest of their brethren in the Far West. He said it was well that the red man came to their great father for advice when they needed it; for he always stood ready to point out to them the path that led to peace among the various tribes and with their white neighbors; and that he considered it no less his duty to watch over the interests of the red man than over those of the white.
He asked the Pottawatomies what had been done by their nation to further the object for which they, with the other tribes, had assembled in council last spring, in the Cherokee nation, towards bringing about such an understanding among all the red men of the West as would keep the hatchet forever buried between them. He said his heart was very full of this subject; that it could be effected if the braves and sages of the different tribes would earnestly strive to impress its importance on their followers.
His speech was then translated into the Pottawattomie dialect by their interpreter, Pierre Le Clere, a half breed.
(page 1052) |
