In July, 1851, four of the Federal officers arrived in Great Salt Lake City and waited upon his Excellency Governor Young. They were Lemuel G. Brandebury, Chief Justice, and Perry E. Brocchus and Zerubbabel Snow, Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the Territory, and B. D. Harris, the Secretary.
Governor Brigham Young, United States Attorney Seth M. Blair, and United States Marshal Joseph L. Heywood were all residents of Great Salt Lake City.' At this time there had not been any session of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory under the Organic Law. The newly arrived Federal officers enquired the reason why the legislature had not been organized, upon which they were informed that there were no mails from the States during the winter season, and that the official news of the passage of the Act did not reach this city till March, of that year. Soon after their arrival Governor Young issued a proclamation, as provided in Section 16 of the Organic Law, defining the judicial districts of the Territory, and assigning the judges to their respective districts. His other proclamation, calling for an election in August, brought the Legislature into existence, and the two branches of the Territorial Government were thus duly established.
Early in the following September, a special conference of the Mormon Church was held in Great Salt Lake City, one of the purposes of which was to send a block of Utah marble or granite as the Territorial contribution to the Washington Monument at the Capital. It was the first time that the Federal officers had found the opportunity to appear in a body before the assembled citizens, as the representatives of the United States, since the organization of the Territory. An excellent occasion surely was this, in the design of the leaders of the community, who called that special conference, and there can be no doubt that harmony and good will were sought to be encouraged between the Federal officers and the people.
Chief Justice Brandebury, Secretary Harris and Associate Justice Brocchus were honored with an invitation to sit on the platform with the leaders of the community. This association of Mormon and Gentile on the stand was very fitting on such an occasion, considering that Governor Brigham Young, Associate Justice Zerubbabel Snow, United States Attorney Seth M. Blair, and United States Marshall Joseph L. Heywood, though Mormons, were also their Federal colleagues.
But it seems that one of their number—Associate Justice Brocchus—had chosen this as a fitting time to correct and rebuke the community relative to their peculiar religious and social institutions. The following correspondence, which subsequently took place between Governor Young and Judge Brocchus is most important and relevant to the entire history of this city and territory, as it is the commencement of that long controversy which has existed between the people of Utah and the Federal Judges, and in which, in the latter period, Congress and the Governors of the Territory have also taken an active part:
B. YOUNG TO P. E. BROCCHUS.
"Great Salt Lake City, Sept. 19, 1851.
Dear Sir.—Ever wishing to promote the peace, love and harmony of the people, and to cultivate the spirit of charity and benevolence to all, and especially towards strangers, I propose, and respectfully invite your honor, to meet our public assembly at the Bowery, on Sunday morning next, at 10 a.m., and address the same people that you addressed on the 8th inst., at our General Conference; and if your honor shall then and there explain, satisfy, or apologize to the satisfaction of the ladies who heard your address on the 8th, so that those feelings of kindness that you so dearly prized in your address can be reciprocated by them, I shall esteem it a duty and a pleasure to make every apology and satisfaction for my observations which you as a gentleman can claim or desire at my hands.
"Should your honor please to accept of this kind and benevolent invitation, please answer by the bearer, that public notice may be given, and widely extended, that the house may be full. And believe me, sir, most sincerely and respectfully, your friend and servant, Brigham Young.
"Hon. I'. E. Brocchus, Asste. Justice'
"P. S.—Be assured that no gentleman will be permitted to make any reply to your address on that occasion. B. Y."
P. E. BROCCHUS TO GOVERNOR YOUNG.
"Great Salt Lake City, Sept. 19, 1851.
Dear Sir:—Your note of this date is before me. While I fully concur in, and cordially reciprocate, the sentiments expressed in the preface of your letter, I must be excused from the acceptance of your respectful invitation, to address a public assembly at the Bowery to-morrow morning.
"If, at the proper time, the privilege of explaining had been allowed me, I should, promptly and gladly, have relieved myself from any erroneous impressions that my auditors might have derived from the substance or tone of my remarks.
But, as that privilege was denied me, at the peril of having my hair pulled, or my throat cut, I must be permitted to decline appearing again in public on the subject.
"I will take occasion here to say, that my speech, in all its parts, was the result of deliberation and care—not proceeding from a heated imagination, or a maddened impulse, as seems to have been a general impression. I intended to say what I did say; but, in so doing, I did not design to offer indignity and insult to my audience.
"My sole design, in the branch of my remarks which seems to be the source of offence, was to vindicate the Government of the United States from those feelings of prejudice and that spirit of defection which seemed to pervade the public sentiment. That duty I attempted to perform in a manner faithful to the government of which I am a citizen, and to which I owe a patriotic allegiance, without unjustly causing a chord to vibrate painfully in the bosom of my hearers.
Such a duty, I trust, I shall ever be ready to discharge with the fidelity that belongs to a true American citizen—with firmness, with boldness, with dignity— always observing a due respect towards other parties, whether assailants or neutrals.
"It was not my intention to insult or offer disrespect to my audience; and "farthest possible was it from my design, to excite a painful or unpleasant emotion in the hearts of the ladies who honored me with their presence and their respectful attention on the occasion.
"In conclusion, I will remark that, at the time of the delivery of my speech, I did not conceive that it contained anything deserving the censure of a just-minded person. My subsequent reflections have fully confirmed me in that impression.
"I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant, Perry E. Brocchus.
'' To His Excellency Brigham Young.''
BRIGHAM YOUNG TO P. E. BROCCHUS.
"Great Salt Lake City, Sept. 20, 1851.
Dear Sir:—The perusal of your note of the 19th inst. has been the source of some sober reflections in my mind, which I beg leave to communicate in the same freedom with which my soul has been inspired in the contemplation.
With a war of words on party politics, factions, religious schisms, current controversy of creeds, policy of clans, or State clipper cliques, I have nothing to do; but when the eternal principles of truth are falsified, and light is turned into darkness by mystification of language or a false delineation of facts, so that the just indignation of the true, virtuous, upright citizens of the commonwealth is aroused into vigilance for the dear-bought liberties of themselves and fathers, and that spirit of intolerance and persecution, which has driven this people time and time again from their peaceful homes, manifests itself in the flippancy of rhetoric for female insult and desecration, it is time that I forbear to hold my peace, lest the thundering anathemas of nations born and unborn should rest upon my head when the marrow of my bones shall be illy prepared to sustain the threatened blow.
"It has been said that a wise man foreseeth evil, and hideth himself. The evil of your course I foresee, and I shall hide myself—not by attempting to screen my conduct, or the conduct of this people from the gaze of an assembled universe, but by exposing some of your movements, designs, plans, and purposes, so that the injury which you have designed for this people may fall upon your own head,