sect, men and women, old people and children, numbering in all
about eighty thousand souls, set forth into the desert.

It was a miserable journey. They were attacked by Red Indians, and
decimated by sickness; they strayed into wrong paths where no food was
to be found; they were buried in snowdrifts; and many of them perished.
But the others, sustained by an invulnerable faith, and by the undying
courage of their leaders, pushed on ever further and further, until in
the summer of 1847, after the cruel hardships of a journey on foot over
nearly three hundred leagues of salt plains, the head of the column
reached the valley of the great Salt Lake. Here Brigham Young's
strategic vision beheld a favourable situation for the re-establishment
of the sect. He himself, with a hundred and forty-three of his
companions--the elite of the church--directed the construction of the
beginnings of the colony, and then returned to those who had been left
behind, bringing back a caravan of about three thousand to the spot
where the New Jerusalem was to be built.

It was given the name of Utah, and Filmore, the President of the United
States, appointed Brigham Young as governor. The latter, however,
desired to become completely autonomous. He was soon in conflict with
those under him, and his open hostility to the American constitution
caused him to be deposed. His successor, Colonel Stepton, finding the
situation untenable, resigned almost at once, and the Mormons,
recovering their former militancy and independence, then sought to free
themselves altogether from the guardianship of America, and to be sole
masters in their own territory. In order to reduce them to submission,
President Buchanan sent them a new governor in 1857 with some thousands
of soldiers. The Mormons resisted for some time, and finally demanded
admittance into the Union. Not only did Congress refuse this request,
but it passed a law rendering all polygamists liable to be brought
before the criminal courts. The War of Secession, however, interrupted
the measures taken against the sect, which remained neutral during the
military operations of the North and South. Brigham Young, who had
remained the Mormons' civil and religious head, occupied himself only
with the economic and worldly extension of his church, until in 1870,
five years after the termination of the war, the attention of Congress
was once more directed towards him. For the second time the Mormo