ts seized, and either destroyed or
concealed; and, finally, that many other acts of unlawful violence had
been perpetrated, and the right to repeat them openly claimed by the
leading inhabitants, with at least the silent acquiescence of nearly
all the rest of the population. In view of these facts, Mr. Buchanan
determined to supersede Brigham Young in the office of Governor, and to
send to Utah a strong military force to sustain the new appointee in the
exercise of his authority.

The rumors of the impending expedition reached the Mormons at the very
moment they were prepared to apply to Congress for admission as a State.
A Constitution had been framed by a Convention assembled without the
sanction of an enabling act, and was intrusted to George A. Smith and
John Taylor, two of the Twelve Apostles of the Church, for presentation
to Congress. These men, both of them of more than ordinary ability,
helped to present the Mormon side of the question to the country through
the newspapers, during the winter of 1856-7. The essence of their
vindication was, that the character of some of the Federal officers who
had been sent to Utah was objectionable in the extreme; but, granting
the truth of all their statements on this subject, they supplied no
excuse for the utter subversion of Federal authority in the Territory.
Their narrative, however, formed a most spicy chapter in the annals of
official scandal. The three United States judges, Kinney, Drummond,
and Stiles, were presented to the public stripped of all judicial
sanctity;--Kinney, the Chief Justice, as the keeper of a grocery-store,
dance-room, and boarding-house, enforcing the bills for food and lodging
against his brethren of the law by expulsion from the bar in case of
non-payment, and so tenacious of life, that, before departing from the
Territory, he solicited and received from Brigham Young a patriarchal
blessing; Drummond, as an amorous horse-jockey, who had taken to Utah,
as his mistress, a drab from Washington, and seated her beside him once
upon the bench of the court; Stiles as himself a Mormon, so far as the
possession of two wives could make him one. From the early days of
Joseph Smith, his disciples have never minced their language, and they
expended their whole vocabulary now on such themes as have been cited,
proving, to the satisfaction of everybody, that, in respect to the
judiciary, they had indeed had just cause for complaint. The mission of
Smith and Ta