On Sunday, March 20, 1853, a meeting, orderly in every respect, which the Gladdenites were holding in front of the Council House, was dispersed by the city marshal, and another, called for the next Sunday, was prohibited entirely. Then Alfred Smith, a leading Gladdenite, who had accused Young of robbing him of his property, was arrested and locked up until he gave a promise to discontinue his rebellion. On the 27th of March Young made the Gladdenites the subject of a large part of his discourse in the Tabernacle. What he said is thus stated in the church report of the address:—

"I say to those persons: You must not court persecution here, lest you get so much of it you will not know what to do with it. Do not court persecution. We have known Gladden Bishop for more than twenty years, and know him to be a poor, dirty curse.... I say again, you Gladdenites, do not court persecution, or you will get more than you want, and it will come quicker than you want it. I say to you Bishops, do not allow them to preach in your wards." (After telling of a dream he had had, in which he saw two men creep into the bed where one of his wives was lying, whereupon he took a large bowie knife and cut one of their throats from ear to ear, saying, "Go to hell across lots," he continued:) "I say, rather than that apostates should flourish here I will unsheath my bowie knife and conquer or die." (Great commotion in the congregation, and a simultaneous burst of feeling, assenting to the declaration.) "Now, you nasty apostates, clear out, or judgment will be put to the line and righteousness to the plummet." (Voices generally, "Go it," "go it.") "If you say it is all right, raise your hand." (All hands up.) "Let us call upon the Lord to assist us in this and every good work." *

This was the practical end of Gladdenism.

Young's dictatorship was quite as broad and determined in things temporal as in things spiritual. He made no concealment of the fact that he was a money-getter, only insisting on his readiness to contribute to the support of church enterprises. The canyons through the mountains which shut in the valley were the source of wood supply for the city, and their control was very valuable. Young brought this matter before the Conference of October 9, 1852, speaking on it at length, and finally putting his own view in the form of a resolution that the canyons be placed in the hands of individuals, who should make good roads through them, and obtain their pay by taking toll at the entrance. After getting the usual unanimous vote on his proposition, he said: "Let the Judges of the County of Great Salt Lake take due notice and govern themselves accordingly.... This is my order for the judges to take due notice of. It does not come from the Governor, but from the President of the church. You will not see any proclamation in the paper to this effect, but it is a mere declaration of the President of the Conference."* The "declaration," of course, had all the effect of a law, and Young got one of the best canyons.

Very early in his rule Young defined his views about the property rights of the Saints. "A man," he declared in the Tabernacle on June 5, 1853, "has no right with property which, according to the laws of the land, legally belongs to him, if he does not want to use it.... When we first came into the valley, the question was asked me if men would ever be allowed to come into this church, and remain in it, and hoard up their property. I say, no." *

Another view of property rights was thus set forth in his discourse of December 5, 1853:—

"If an Elder has borrowed [a hundred or a thousand dollars from you], and you find he is going to apostatize, then you may tighten the screws on him. But if he is willing to preach the Gospel without purse or scrip, it is none of your business what he does with the money he has borrowed from you." *

Addressing the people in the trying business year of 1856, when his own creditors were pushing him hard, Young said:

"I wish to give you one text to preach upon, 'From this time henceforth do not fret thy gizzard.' I will pay you when I can and not before. Now I hope you will apostatize if you would rather do it."*

Kimball, in giving Young's order to some seventy men, who had displeased him, to leave the territory, used these words: "When a man is appointed to take a mission, unless he has a just and honorable reason for not going, if he does not go he will be severed from the church. Why? Because you said you were willing to be passive, and, if you are not passive, that lump of clay must be cut off from the church and laid aside, and a lump put on that will be passive." *

With this testimony of men inside the church may be placed that of Captain Howard Stansbury, of the United Stated Topographical Engineers, who arrived in the valley in August, 1849, under instructions from the government to make a survey of the lakes of that region. The Mormons thought that it was the intention of the government to divide the land into townships and sections, and to ignore their claim to title by occupation. In his official report, after mentioning his haste to disabuse Young's mind on this point, Captain Stansbury says, "I was induced to pursue this conciliatory course, not only in justice to the government, but also because I knew, from the peculiar organization of this singular community, that, unless the 'President' was fully satisfied that no evil was intended to his people, it would be useless for me to attempt to carry out my instructions." The choice between abject conciliation or open conflict was that which Brigham Young extended to nearly every federal officer who entered Utah during his reign.

The Mormons of Utah started in to assert their independence of the government of the United States in every way. The rejection of the constitution of Deseret by Congress did not hinder the elected legislature from meeting and passing laws. The ninth chapter of the "ordinances," as they were called, passed by this legislature (on January 19, 1851) was a charter for Great Salt Lake City. This charter provided for the election of a mayor, four aldermen, nine councillors, and three judges, the first judges to be chosen viva voce, and their successors by the City Council. The appointment of eleven subordinate officers was placed in the Council's hands. The mayor and aldermen were to be the justices of the peace, with a right of appeal to the municipal court, consisting of the same persons sitting together, and from that to the probate court. The first mayor, aldermen, and councillors were appointed by the governor of the State of Deseret. Similar charters were provided for Ogden, Provo City, and other settlements.

As soon as Salt Lake City was laid off into wards, Young had a Bishop placed over each of these, and, always under his direction, these Bishops practically controlled local affairs to the date of the city charter. Each Bishop came to be a magistrate of his ward,* and under them in all the settlements all public work was carried on and all revenue collected. The High Council of ten is defined by Tullidge as "a quorum of judges, in equity for the people, at the head of which is the President of the state."

These men did not hesitate to attempt a currency of their own. On the arrival of the Mormons in the valley, they first made their exchanges through barter. Paper currency was issued in 1849 and some years later. When gold dust from California appeared in 1849, some of it was coined in Salt Lake City by means of homemade dies and crucibles. The denominations were $2.50, $5, $10, and $20. Some of these coins, made without alloy, were stamped with a bee-hive and eagle on one side, and on the reverse with the motto, "Holiness to the Lord" in the so-called Deseret alphabet. This alphabet was invented after their arrival in Salt Lake Valley, to assist in separating the Mormons from the rest of the nation, its preparation having been intrusted to a committee of the board of regents in 1853. It contained thirty-two characters. A primer and two books of the Mormon Bible were printed in the new characters, the legislature in 1855 having voted $2500 to meet the expense; but the alphabet was never practically used, and no attempt is any longer made to remember it. Early in 1849 the High Council voted that the Kirtland bank-bills (of which a supply must have remained unissued) be put out on a par with gold, and in this they saw a fulfilment of the prophet's declaration that these notes would some day be as good as gold.

Another early ordinance passed by the Deseret legislature incorporated "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints," authorizing the appointment of a trustee in trust to hold and manage all the property of the church, which should be free from tax, and giving the church complete authority to make its own regulations, "provided, however, that each and every act or practice so established, or adopted for law or custom, shall relate to solemnities, sacraments, ceremonies, consecrations, endowments, tithing, marriages, fellowship, or the religious duties of man to his Maker, inasmuch as the doctrines, principles, practices, or performances support virtue and increase morality, and are not inconsistent with or repugnant to the constitution of the United States or of this State, and are founded on the revelations of the Lord." Thus early was the ground taken that the practice of polygamy was a constitutional right. Brigham Young was chosen as the trustee.

The second ordinance passed by this legislature incorporated the University of the State of Deseret, at Salt Lake City, to be governed by a chancellor and twelve regents.

The earliest non-Mormons to experience the effect of that absolute Mormon rule, the consequences of which the Missourians had feared, were the emigrants who passed through Salt Lake Valley on their way to California after the discovery of gold, or on their way to Oregon. The complaints of the Californians were set forth in a little book, written by one of them, Nelson Slater, and printed in Colona, California, in 1851, under the title, "Fruits of Mormonism." The general complaints were set forth briefly in a petition to Congress containing nearly two hundred and fifty signatures, dated Colona, June 1, 1851, which asked that the territorial government be abrogated, and a military government be established in its place. This petition charged that many emigrants had been murdered by the Mormons when there was a suspicion that they had taken part in the earlier persecutions; that when any members of the Mormon community, becoming dissatisfied, tried to leave, they were pursued and killed; that the Mormons levied a tax of two per cent on the property of emigrants who were compelled to pass a winter among them; that it was nearly impossible for emigrants to obtain justice in the Mormon courts; that the Mormons, high and low, openly expressed treasonable sentiments against the United States government; and that letters of emigrants mailed at Salt Lake City were opened, and in many instances destroyed.

Mr. Slater's book furnishes the specifications of these general charges.

CHAPTER VII. — THE "REFORMATION"

Young soon had occasion to make practical use of the dictatorial power that he had assumed. The character which those members of the flock who had migrated from Missouri and Illinois had established among their neighbors in those states was not changed simply by their removal to a wilderness all by themselves. They had no longer the old excuse that their misdeeds were reprisals on persecuting enemies, but this did not save them from the temptation to exercise their natural propensities. Again we shall take only the highest Mormon testimony on this subject.

One of the first sins for which Young openly reproved his congregation was profane swearing. He brought this matter pointedly to their attention in an address to the Conference of October 9, 1852, when he said: "You Elders of Israel will go into the canyons, and curse and swear—damn and curse your oxen, and swear by Him who created you. I am telling the truth. Yes, you rip and curse and swear as bad as any pirates ever did."*

Possibly the church authorities could have overlooked the swearing, but a matter which gave them more distress was the insecurity of property. This became so great an annoyance that Young spoke out plainly on the subject, and he did not attempt to place the responsibility outside of his own people. A few citations will illustrate this.

In an address in the Tabernacle on June 5, 1853, noticing complaints about the stealing and rebranding of cattle, he said: "I will propose a plan to stop the stealing of cattle in coming time, and it is this—let those who have cattle on hand join in a company, and fence in about fifty thousand acres of land, and so keep on fencing until all the vacant land is substantially enclosed. Some persons will perhaps say, 'I do not know how good or how high a fence it will be necessary to build to keep thieves out.' I do not know either, except you build one that will keep out the devil."* On another occasion, with a personal grievance to air, he said in the Tabernacle: "I have gone to work and made roads to get wood, and have not been able to get it. I have cut it down and piled it up, and still have not got it. I wonder if anybody else can say so. Have any of you piled up your wood, and, when you have gone back, could not find it? Some stories could be told of this kind that would make professional thieves ashamed."**

Young made no concealment of the fact that men high in the councils of the church were among the peculators. In his discourse of June 15, 1856, he said: "I have proof ready to show that Bishops have taken in thousands of pounds in weight of tithing which they have never reported to the General Tithing Office. We have documents to show that Bishops have taken in hundreds of bushels of wheat, and only a small portion of it has come into the General Tithing Office. They stole it to let their friends speculate upon."*

The new-comers from Europe also received his attention. Referring to unkept promises of speedy repayment by assisted immigrants of advances made to them, Young said, in 1855: "And what will they do when they get here? Steal our wagons, and go off with them to Canada, and try to steal the bake-kettles, frying-pans, tents, and wagon-covers; and will borrow the oxen and run away with them, if you do not watch them closely. Do they all do this? No, but many of them will try to do it."* And again, a month later: "What previous characters some of you had in Wales, in England, in Scotland, and perhaps in Ireland. Do not be scared if it is proven against some one in the Bishop's court that you did steal the poles from your neighbor's garden fence. If it is proven that you have been to some person's wood pile and stolen wood, don't be frightened, for if you will steal it must be made manifest." ** J. M. Grant was quite as plain spoken. In an address in the bowery in Salt Lake City in September, 1856, he declared that "you can scarcely find a place in this city that is not full of filth and abominations."***

Young's denunciations were not quietly accepted, but protests and threats were alike wasted upon him. Referring to complaints of some of the flock that his denunciation was more than they could bear, he replied, "But you have got to bear it, and, if you will not, make up your minds to go to hell at once and have done with it." * On another occasion he said, "You need, figuratively, to have it rain pitchforks, tines downward, from this pulpit, Sunday after Sunday." On another occasion, alluding to letters he had received, warning him against attacking men's characters, he said, "When such epistles come to me, I feel like saying, I ask no advice of you nor of all your clan this side of hell."**

When mere denunciation did not reform his followers, Young became still plainer in his language, and began to explain to them the latitude which the church proposed to take in applying punishment. In a remarkable sermon on October 6, 1855, on the "stealing, lying, deceiving, wickedness, and covetousness" of the elders in Israel, he spoke as follows:—

"Live on here, then, you poor miserable curses, until the time of retribution, when your heads will have to be severed from your bodies. Just let the Lord Almighty say, Lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet,* and the time of thieves is short in this community. What do you suppose they would say in old Massachusetts should they hear that the Latter-day Saints had received a revelation or commandment to 'lay judgment to the line and righteousness to the plummet'? What would they say in old Connecticut? They would raise a universal howl of, 'How wicked the Mormons are. They are killing the evil doers who are among them. Why, I hear that they kill the wicked away up yonder in Utah.'... What do I care for the wrath of man? No more than I do for the chickens that run in my door yard. I am here to teach the ways of the Lord, and lead men to life everlasting; but if they have not a mind to go there, I wish them to keep out of my path."**

From this time Young and his closest associates seemed to make no concealment of their intention to take the lives of any persons whom they considered offenders. One or two more citations from his discourses may be made to sustain this statement. On February 24, 1856, he declared, "I am not afraid of all hell, nor of all the world, in laying judgment to the line when the Lord says so."* In the following month he told his congregation: "The time is coming when justice will be laid to the line and righteousness to the plummet; when we shall take the old broadsword and ask, Are you for God? And if you are not heartily on the Lord's side, you will be hewn down."** Heber C. Kimball was equally plain spoken. A year earlier he had said in the Tabernacle: "If a man rebels, I will tell him of it, and if he resents a timely warning, HE IS UNWISE.... I have never yet shed man's blood, and I pray to God that I never may, unless it is actually necessary."*** Sultans and doges have freely used assassination as a weapon, but it seems to have remained for the Mormon church under Brigham Young to declare openly its intention to make whatever it might call church apostasy subject to capital punishment.

Out of the lawless condition of the Mormon flock, as we have thus seen it pictured, and out of this radical view of the proper punishment of offenders, resulted, in 1856, that remarkable movement still known in Mormondon as "The Reformation "—a movement that has been characterized by one writer as "a reign of lust and fanatical fury unequalled since the Dark Ages," and by another as "a fanaticism at once blind, dangerous, and terrible." During its continuance the religious zealot, the amorous priest, the jealous lover, the man covetous of worldly goods, and the framers of the church policy, from acknowledged Apostle to secret Danite, all had their own way. "Were I counsel for a Mormon on trial for a crime committed at the time under consideration, I should plead wholesale insanity," said J. H. Beadle. It was during this period that that system was perfected under which the life of no man,—or company of men,—against whom the wrath of the church was directed, was of any value; no household was safe from the lust of any aged elder; no person once in the valley could leave it alive against the church's consent.

The active agent in starting "The Reformation" was the inventor of "blood atonement," Jedediah M. Grant.* That his censure of a Bishop and his counsellors at Kayesville was the actual origin of the movement, as has been stated,** cannot be accepted as proven, in view of the preparation made for the era of blood, as indicated in the church discourses. Lieutenant Gunnison, for whom the Mormons in later years always asserted their friendship, writing concerning his observations as early as 1852, said:—

"Witnesses are seldom put on oath in the lower courts, and there is nothing known of the 'law's delay,' and the quibbles whereby the ends of truth and justice may be defeated. But they have a criminal code called 'The Laws of the Lord,' which has been given by revelation and not promulgated, the people not being able quite to bear it, or the organization still too imperfect. It is to be put in force, however, before long, and when in vogue, all grave crimes will be punished and atoned for by cutting off the head of the offender. This regulation arises from the fact that without shedding of blood there is no remission."*

Gunnison's statement furnishes indisputable proof that this legal system was so generally talked of some four years before it was put in force that it came to the ears of a non-Mormon temporary resident.

After the condemnation of the Kayesville offenders and their rebaptism, the next move was the appointment of missionaries to hold services in every ward, and the sending out of what were really confessors, appointed for every block, to inquire of all—young and old—concerning the most intimate details of their lives. The printed catechism given to these confessors was so indelicate that it was suppressed in later years. These prying inquisitors found opportunity to gain information for their superiors about any persons suspected of disloyalty, and one use they made of their visitations was to urge the younger sisters to be married to the older men, as a readier means of salvation than union with men of their own age. That there was opposition to this espionage is shown by some remarks of H. C. Kimball in the Tabernacle, in March, 1856, when he said: "I have heard some individuals saying that, if the Bishops came into their houses and opened their cupboards, they would split their heads open. THAT WOULD NOT BE A WISE OR SAFE OPERATION." *

Some of the information secured by the church confessional was embarrassing to the leaders. At a meeting of male members in Social Hall, Young, Grant, and others denounced the sinners in scathing terms, Young ending his remarks by saying, "All you who have been guilty of committing adultery, stand up." At once more than three-quarters of those present arose.* For such confessors a way of repentance was provided through rebaptism, but the secretly accused had no such avenue opened to them.

One of the first victims of the reformers was H. J. Jarvis, a reputable merchant of Salt Lake City. He was dragged over his counter one evening and thrown into the street by men who then robbed his store and defiled his household goods, giving him as the cause of the visitation the explanation that he had spoken evil of the authorities, and had invited Gentiles to supper. His two wives could not secure even a hearing from Young in his behalf.* This, however, was a minor incident.

That Young's rule should be objected to by some members of the church was inevitable. There were men in the valley at that early day who would rebel against such a dictatorship under any name; others—men of means—who were alarmed by the declarations about property rights, and others to whom the announcement concerning polygamy was repugnant. When such persons gave expression to their discontent, they angered the church officers; when they indicated their purpose to leave the valley, they alarmed them. Anything like an exodus of the flock would have broken up all of Young's plans, and have undone the scheme of immigration that had cost so much time and money. Accordingly, when this movement for "reform" began, the church let it be known that any desertion of the flock would be considered the worst form of apostasy, and that the deserter must take the consequences. To quote Brigham Young's own words: "The moment a person decides to leave this people, he is cut off from every object that is desirable for time and eternity. Every possession and object of affection will be taken from those who forsake the truth, and their identity and existence will eventually cease."*

The almost unbreakable hedge that surrounded the inhabitants of the valley at this time, under the system of church espionage, has formed a subject for the novelist, and has seemed to many persons, as described, a probable exaggeration. But, while Young did not narrate in his pulpit the tales of blood which his instructions gave rise to, there is testimony concerning them which leaves no reasonable doubt of their truthfulness.

CHAPTER VIII. — SOME CHURCH-INSPIRED MURDERS

The murders committed during the "Reformation" which attracted most attention, both because of the parties concerned, the effort made by a United States judge to convict the guilty, and the confessions of the latter subsequently obtained, have been known as the Parrish, or Springville, murders. The facts concerning them may be stated fairly as follows:—

William R. Parrish was one of the most outspoken champions of the Twelve when the controversy with Rigdon occurred at Nauvoo after Smith's death, and he accompanied the fugitives to Salt Lake Valley. One evening, early in March, 1857, a Bishop named Johnson (husband of ten wives), with two companions, called at Parrish's house in Springville, and put to him some of the questions which the inquisitors of the day were wont to ask—if he prayed, something about his future plans, etc. It had been rumored that Parrish's devotion to the church had cooled, and that he was planning to move with his family—a wife and six children—to California; and at a meeting in Bishop Johnson's council house a letter had been read from Brigham Young directing them to ascertain the intention of certain "suspicious characters in the neighborhood,"* and if they should make a break and, being pursued, which he required, he 'would be sorry to hear a favorable report; but the better way is to lock the stable door before the horse is stolen.' This letter was over Brigham's signature.** This letter was the real cause of the Bishop's visit to Parrish. At a meeting about a week later, A. Durfee and G. Potter were deputed to find out when the Parrishes proposed to leave the territory. Accordingly, Durfee got employment with Parrish, and both of them gave him the idea that they sympathized with his desire to depart. One morning, about a week later, Parrish discovered that his horses had been stolen, and efforts to recover them were fruitless.

Meanwhile, Parrish, unsuspicious of Potter and Durfee,* was telling them of his continued plans to escape, how constantly his house was watched, and how difficult it was for him to get out the few articles required for the trip. Finally, at Parrish's suggestion, it was arranged that he and Durfee should walk out of the village in the daytime, as the method best calculated to allay suspicion.

They carried out this plan, and when they got to a stream called Dry Creek, Parrish asked Durfee to go back to the house and bring his two sons, Beason and Orrin, to join him. When Durfee returned to the house, at about sunset, he found Potter there, and Potter set off at once for the meeting-place, ostensibly to carry some of the articles needed for the journey.

Potter met Parrish where he was waiting for Durfee's return, and they walked down a lane to a fence corner, where a Mormon named William Bird was lying, armed with a gun. Here occurred what might be called an illustration of "poetic justice." In the twilight, Bird mistook his victim, and fired, killing Potter. As Bird rose and stepped forward, Parrish asked if it was he who had fired the unexpected shot. For a reply Bird drew a knife, clenched with Parrish, and, as he afterward expressed it, "worked the best he could in stabbing him." He "worked" so well that, as afterward described by one of the men concerned in the plot,* the old man was cut all over, fifteen times in the back, as well as in the left side, the arms, and the hands. But Bird knew that his task was not completed, and, as soon as the murder of the elder Parrish was accomplished, taking his own and Potter's gun, he again concealed himself in the fence corner, awaiting the appearance of the Parrish boys. They soon came up in company with Durfee, and Bird fired at Beason with so good aim that he dropped dead at once. Turning the weapon on Orrin, the first cap snapped, but he tried again and put a ball through Orrin's cartridge box. The lad then ran and found refuge in the house of an uncle.

The outcome of this crime? The arrest of ORRIN and Durfee as the murderers by a Mormon officer; a farcical hearing by a coroner's jury, with a verdict of assassins unknown; distrusted participants in the crime themselves the object of the Mormon spies and would-be assassins; the robbery of a neighbor who dared to condemn the crime; a vain appeal by Mrs. Parrish to Brigham Young, who told her he "would have stopped it had he known anything about it," and who, when she persisted in seeking another interview, had her advised to "drop it," and a failure by the widow to secure even the stolen horses. "The wife of Mr. Parrish told me," said Judge Cradlebaugh, when he charged the jury concerning this case, "that since then at times she had lived on bread and water, and still there are persons in this community riding about on those horses."

The effort to have the men concerned in this and similar crimes convicted, forms a part of the history of Judge Cradlebaugh's judicial career after the "Mormon War," but it failed. When the grand jury would not bring in indictments, he issued bench warrants for the arrest of the accused, and sent the United States marshal, sustained by a military posse, to serve the papers. It was thus that the affidavits and confessions cited were obtained. Then followed a stampede among the residents of the Springville neighborhood, as the judge explained in his subsequent speech, in Congress, the church officials and civil officers being prominent in the flight, and, when their houses were reached, they were occupied only by many wives and many children. "I am justified," he told the House of Representatives, "in charging that the Mormons are guilty, and that the Mormon church is guilty, of the crimes, of murder and robbery, as taught in their books of faith."*

Charles Nordhoff, in a Utah letter to the New York Evening Post in May, 1871, said: "A friend said to me this afternoon, 'I saw a great change in Salt Lake since I was there three years ago. The place is free; the people no longer speak in whispers. Three years ago it was unsafe to speak aloud in Salt Lake City about Mormonism, and you were warned to be cautious.'"

Another of the murders under this dispensation, which Judge Cradlebaugh mentioned as "peculiarly and shockingly prominent," was that of the Aikin party, in the spring of 1857. This party, consisting of six men, started east from San Francisco in May, 1857, and, falling in with a Mormon train, joined them for protection against the Indians. When they got to a safer neighborhood, the Californians pushed on ahead. Arriving in Kayesville, twenty-five miles north of Salt Lake City, they were at once arrested as federal spies, and their animals (they had an outfit worth in all, about $25,000) were put into the public corral. When their Mormon fellow-travellers arrived, they scouted the idea that the men even knew of an impending "war," and the party were told that they would be sent out of the territory. But before they started, a council, held at the call of a Bishop in Salt Lake City, decided on their death.

Four of the party were attacked in camp by their escort while asleep; two were killed at once, and two who escaped temporarily were shot while, as they supposed, being escorted back to Salt Lake City. The two others were attacked by O. P. Rockwell and some associates near the city; one was killed outright, and the other escaped, wounded, and was shot the next day while under the escort of "Bill" Hickman, and, according to the latter, by Young's order. *

A story of the escape of one man from the valley, notwithstanding elaborate plans to prevent his doing so, has been preserved, not in the testimony of repentant participants in his persecution, but in his own words.*

Frederick Loba was a prosperous resident of Lausanne, Switzerland, where for some years he had been introducing a new principle in gas manufacture, when, in 1853, some friends called his attention to the Mormons' professions and promises. Loba was induced to believe that all mankind who did not gather in Great Salt Lake Valley would be given over to destruction, and that, not only would his soul be saved by moving there, but that his business opportunities would be greatly advanced. Accordingly he gave up the direction of the gas works at Lausanne, and reached St. Louis in December, 1853, with about $8000 worth of property. There he was made temporary president of a Mormon church, and there he got his first bad impression of the Mormon brotherhood. On the way to Utah his wife died of cholera, leaving six children, from six to twelve years old. Welcomed as all men with property were, he was made Professor of Chemistry in the University, and soon learned many of the church secrets. "These," to quote his own words, "opened my eyes at once, and I saw at a glance the terrible position in which I was placed. I now found myself in the midst of a wicked and degraded people, shut up in the midst of the mountains, with a large family, and deprived of all resources with which to extricate myself. The conviction had been forced upon my mind that Brigham himself was at the bottom of all the clandestine assassinations, plundering of trains, and robbing of mails." The manner, too, in which polygamy was practised aroused his intense disgust.

He married as his second wife an English woman, and his family relations were pleasant; but the church officers were distrustful of him. He was again and again urged to marry more wives, being assured that with less than three he could not rise to a high place in the church. "This neglect on my part," he explained, "and certain remarks that I made with respect to Brigham's friends, determined the prophet to order my private execution, as I am able to prove by honest and competent witnesses." Loba adopted every precaution for his own safety, night and day. Then came the news of the Parrish murders, and there was so much alarm among the people that there was talk of the departure of a great many of the dissatisfied. To check this, when the plain threats made in the Tabernacle did not avail, Young had a band of four hundred organized under the name of "Wolf Hunters" (borrowed from their old Hancock County neighbors), whose duty it was to see that "the wolves" did not stray abroad.

Loba now communicated his fears to his wife, and found that she also realized the danger of their position, and was ready to advise the risk of flight. The plan, as finally decided on, was that they two should start alone on April 1, leaving the children in care of the wife's mother and brother, the latter a recent comer not yet initiated in the church mysteries.

At ten o'clock on the appointed night Loba and his wife—the latter dressed in men's clothes—stole out of their house. Their outfit consisted of one blanket, twelve pounds of crackers, a little tea and sugar, a double-barrelled gun, a sword, and a compass. They were without horses, and their route compelled them to travel the main road for twenty-five miles before they reached the mountains, amid which they hoped to baffle pursuit. They were fortunate enough to gain the mountains without detention. There they laid their course, not with a view to taking the easiest or most direct route, but one so far up the mountain sides that pursuit by horsemen would be impossible. This entailed great suffering. The nights were so cold that sometimes they feared to sleep. Add to this the necessity of wading through creeks in ice-cold water, and it is easy to understand that Loba had difficulty to prevent his companion from yielding to despair.

Their objective point was Greene River (170 miles from Salt Lake City by road, but probably almost 300 by the route taken), where they expected to find Indians on whose mercy they would throw themselves. Two days before that river was reached they ate the last of their food, and they kept from freezing at night by getting some sage wood from underneath the snow, and using Loba's pocket journal for kindling. Mrs. Loba had to be carried the whole of the last six miles, but this effort brought them to a camp of Snake Indians, among whom were some Canadian traders, and there they received a kindly welcome. News of their escape reached Salt Lake City, and Surveyor General Burr sent them the necessary supplies and a guide to conduct them to Fort Laramie, where, a month later, all the rest of the family joined them, in good health, but entirely destitute.

They then learned that, as soon as their flight was discovered, the church authorities sent out horsemen in every direction to intercept them, but their route over the mountains proved their preservation.*

The Messenger, the organ of the Reorganized Church in Salt Lake City, said in November, 1875: "While laying the waste pipes in front of the residence of Brigham Young recently the skeleton of a man—a white man—was dug up. A similar discovery was made last winter in digging a cellar in this city. What can have been the necessity of these secret burials, without coffins, in such places?"