se friendly counsels have been
answered with defiance. The officers of the Federal Government have been
driven from the Territory for no offense but an effort to do their
sworn duty; others have been prevented from going there by threats of
assassination; judges have been violently interrupted in the performance
of their functions, and the records of the courts have been seized and
destroyed or concealed. Many other acts of unlawful violence have been
perpetrated, and the right to repeat them has been openly claimed by the
leading inhabitants, with at least the silent acquiescence of nearly all
the others. Their hostility to the lawful government of the country has
at length become so violent that no officer bearing a commission from
the Chief Magistrate of the Union can enter the Territory or remain
there with safety, and all those officers recently appointed have been
unable to go to Salt Lake or anywhere else in Utah beyond the immediate
power of the Army. Indeed, such is believed to be the condition to which
a strange system of terrorism has brought the inhabitants of that region
that no one among them could express an opinion favorable to this
Government, or even propose to obey its laws, without exposing his life
and property to peril.

After carefully considering this state of affairs and maturely weighing
the obligation I was under to see the laws faithfully executed, it
seemed to me right and proper that I should make such use of the
military force at my disposal as might be necessary to protect the
Federal officers in going into the Territory of Utah and in performing
their duties after arriving there. I accordingly ordered a detachment
of the Army to march for the city of Salt Lake, or within reach of that
place, and to act in case of need as a posse for the enforcement of the
laws. But in the meantime the hatred of that misguided people for the
just and legal authority of the Government had become so intense that
they resolved to measure their military strength with that of the Union.
They have organized an armed force far from contemptible in point of
numbers and trained it, if not with skill, at least with great assiduity
and perseverance. While the troops of the United States were on their
march a train of baggage wagons, which happened to be unprotected,
was attacked and destroyed by a portion of the Mormon forces and the
provisions and stores with which the train was laden were wantonly
burnt. In short,