Chapter V



On the Road to Freedom



In any discussion of the public affairs that make the subject matter of this narrative, a line of discrimination must be drawn at the year 1890. In that year the Church began a progressive course of submission to the civil law, and the nation received each act of surrender with forgiveness. The previous defiance's of the Mormon people ceased to give grounds for a complaint against them. The old harshnesses of the Federal government were canceled by the new generosity of a placated nation. And neither party to the present strife in Utah should go back, beyond the period of this composition, to dig up, from the past, its buried wrongs.

In relating, here, some of the events of 1888 and 1889, I have tried neither to justify the Mormons nor to defend their prosecutors. I have wished merely to make clear the situation in Utah, and to introduce to you, in advance, some of the leaders of the distracted community, so that you might understand the conditions from which the Mormons escaped by giving their covenant to the nation and be able to judge of the obligations and responsibilities of the men who gave it.

I, have described the promulgation and acceptance of "the manifesto" with such circumstance and detail, because of what has since occurred in Utah. Let me add that some two weeks later the General Conference of the Church endorsed the President's pronouncement as "authoritative and binding." And let me point out that it was the first and only law of the Mormon Church ever so sustained by triple sanctities - "revealed" as a command from God, accepted by the prophets in solemn fraternity assembled, and ratified by the vote of the entire "congregation of Israel" before it was declared to be binding upon men.

At first, because of the somewhat indefinite promise of the message itself, many of the non-Mormons of Utah remained suspicious and in doubt of it. But it was recognized by Judge Zane, in court - on the day following the close of the Conference - as an official declaration, "honest and sincere." The newspapers throughout the whole country so received it. The Church authorities sent assurances to Washington that convinced the statesmen, there, of the completeness and finality of the submission. And the good faith of the covenant was at last admitted by the non-Mormons of Utah and endorsed by their trust. I do not know of any change in human affairs dependent on human will - more speedy, effective and comprehensive than this recession. Within the space of a few days a revolution was completed that had been sought by the power of our nation and of the civilized world, for a generation, with stripes and imprisonment, death, confiscation and the ostracism of the country's public contempt. It had been obtained, I knew, chiefly by the sagacity of the First Councilor using the pressure of circumstances to enforce the persuasions of diplomacy. I felt that a miracle of change had been brought to pass. He had placed us on the road to freedom; and I trusted his guidance to lead us to our goal.

That goal, to me personally, was the honor of American citizenship - an ambition that had been an obsession with me from my earliest youth. I had never heard a man on a railroad train talk of how he was going to vote in a national election, without feeling a pang of shamed envy; for my lack of citizenship seemed a mark of inferiority. The patriotic reading of my boyhood had made the American republic, to me, the noblest administration of freemen in the history of government and the exercise of its franchise literally the highest dignity of human privilege. I would have been as proud - I was as proud when the day came - to vote for the President of the United States as he could have been to take his oath of office. I do not believe that any poor serf, escaped from the tyranny of Russia, ever saw the American shore with a more grateful eye than I looked to the prospect of being admitted, with the citizens of Utah, into the enfranchisement of the Republic.

But it was evident that the Church's recession from polygamy would not be enough to free us, so long as its control of politics remained. Its other practices had flourished and been sheltered under its political power; and now that the Church had ceased to be a lawbreaker, our friends in Washington were properly expecting that it would cease to interfere with its members in the exercise of their citizenship. For this reason, when I was notified that I had been selected as a member of the advisory committee of the People's Party (the Church party), I went at once to my father and told him that I would not take the place; that I intended to work, personally, and through my newspaper, for the political division of Utah on the lines of the national parties. He held that until Gentile solidarity was dissolved, it would be dangerous to divide the allegiance of the Mormons; but he did not stand against my protest; he contented himself - diplomatically - with sending me to consult with President Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith.

To them, I argued that the political emancipation of the Mormon people from ecclesiastical direction was as necessary as the recession from polygamy had been. We must be set free to perform our duty to the country solely as citizens of the country, before we could expect to be given the right to perform it at all. And, for my part, the only action I would consent to take as a member of the advisory committee of the People's Party would be to vote for the dissolution of the party.

President Woodruff referred me to my father, and advised me to be guided by him. Joseph F. Smith urged that a division of the Mormon people on national party lines would enable the Liberal (the Gentile) party to march in between. I argued in reply that we must divide at some time, and the sooner the better, since every year was increasing the Gentile population. They would never split as long as we remained solid. And if we were ever to be permitted to nationalize ourselves, it would not be until we had dissolved the party organizations whose very names were a proof of the continued rule of the Church in politics.

When he had no more arguments to advance, he gave a reluctant assent to mine. I reported back to my father and he approved of my plans. He asked me humorously with whom I expected to affiliate, since he knew of no one who was likely to go with me; but I could see that he was pleased with my independence and hoped I might succeed in doing something to break the deadlock-grapple of Mormon and Gentile that held Utah apart from the rest of the country in politics.

His humorous idea of my undertaking gave its color to my beginnings. It was rather a spirited adventure, as I look back upon it now. When we organized a Republican Club at Ogden, my intimate friend, Ben E. Rich, and another friend named Joseph Belnap, were the only Mormons, so far as I know, who joined me in becoming members. Outside of us three, I did not know of another Mormon Republican in the whole territory.

Indeed, the status of the Mormon people, in their fancied relation to the two great parties of the country, was almost identical with that of the people of the South after the Civil War. Practically every Mormon believed himself to be a Democrat. Among the young men of the Church there had been occasional attempts to form Democratic Clubs. Mr. John T. Caine, delegate in Congress from the territory, was a Democrat. My father had sat on the Democratic side of the House. Almost all the men who had braved the sentiments of their own states, to speak for us in Congress, had been Democrats. And, of course, the administration of the laws that had been so cruel to the feelings of the Mormons had been in Republican hands.

Two years earlier, in Ogden, I had spoken in a meeting of Republicans that had been called to rejoice over the election of Benjamin Harrison to the Presidency; and I was still being taunted by my Mormon friends with having clasped hands with "the persecutors of the Prophets." When I came out, now, as an advocate of Republicanism, I was met everywhere with this charge - that I had joined the enemies of the Church, that I was assisting the persecutors of my father. The fact that my father approved of what I was doing, relieved the seriousness of the situation for me; and the humorous assistance of Ben Rich in our political evangelism gave a secret chuckle to many of the incidents of our campaign.

We went from town to town, from district to district, up the mountain valleys, across the plains, into mining camps and farming communities - using the meeting-houses, the school-rooms, the town halls - taking the afternoon to coax the tired workers of the fields or of the mines to come and hear us in the evening, and watching them fall asleep in the light of our borrowed kerosene lamps while we talked. They came eagerly. Indeed, my own ambition for citizenship - for a right to participate in the affairs of the nation - was probably no keener than theirs; and they had an innocent curiosity about the questions of national politics, of which they had never before been invited to know anything. They listened almost devoutly.

"Brethren and sisters," a bishop exhorted them at a meeting in which one of our party was to speak, "we have come to listen to this man, and I hope we will be guided in all our reflections by the Spirit of God and that we will do nothing to offend that Spirit. Let there be no commotion, no whispering, and, above all, no hand clapping."

In a life that had as few diversions as theirs, a political meeting was an exciting event. The whole family came, and the mothers brought their babies. Surely in no other American community did politics ever have such a homely and serious consideration. Certainly no other community would have so quickly understood the theories of the two parties or accepted them so implicitly.

But it was all theory! I recognize, now, that I preached a Republicanism that was an ideal of what it should be, rather than any modern faith of the "practical politician." I had gathered it from my reading, from hearing the speeches in Congress, from sympathetic conferences with the great men who were responsible for the dogmas of the party; and every assurance of grace that their ability could give and my credulity accept, I proclaimed religiously as a political salvation to our people. I built up an ideal, and then judged the party thereafter according to the measure of that ideal. When I found that some of the charges against the Republican party were true - charges which I had indignantly repelled - I was as shocked as any pious worshipper who ever found that his idol had feet of clay. Our people, having accepted the faith with as simple a hope as it was offered, were as easily turned from it when they found that it was false. The political moods of Utah, for its first few years of statehood, were a puzzle to the "practical" leaders of the parties; but to us who understood the impulses of honesty that moved the changes, things were as clear as they were encouraging.

During the previous summer in Washington, I had met General James S. Clarkson, then president of the National League of Republican Clubs; and now, on his invitation, in the Spring of 1891, Rich and I went to Louisville to speak before the national convention of the league. Through the kindness of General Clarkson, I was given the official recognition of a perfunctory place on the executive committee of the league's national committee, and came into touch with many of the party leaders. It was about this time, I imagine, that they conceived the idea of using the gratitude of the Mormons in order to carry Utah and the surrounding states in which the Mormon vote might constitute a balance of political power. I know that the idea was old and established when I came upon it, in 1894, during the campaign for statehood. As I also found, still later, the Republican leaders and the business interests with which they were in relation, had their eyes on a distant prospect of fabulous financial schemes in which the secret funds of the Church were to help in the building of railroads and the promoting of other enterprises of associated capital. But at the time of which I am writing, I had not had sufficient experience to suspect the motives of the men who encouraged our work in Utah; and I accepted in good faith their public declarations that the sole aim of the party was to serve the needs of the people of the United States - and therefore of the people of Utah!

It seemed to me that such a noble principle should win the support of Mormon and Gentile alike, and it was on this principle that I appealed for the support of both. I was so sure of winning with it that I resented and fought against the aid of the Church that came to us as our campaign succeeded.

The People's Party (the Church Party) had been dissolved (June, 1891) by the formal action of the executive committee, under the direct instruction of the leaders of the Church. The tendency was for its members to organize themselves immediately as a Democratic party. They were led by such brilliant and trusted defenders of the Church as Franklin S. Richards, Chas. C. Richards, Wm. H. King, James H. Moyle, Brigham H. Roberts and Apostle Moses Thatcher; and a group of abler advocates could not have been found in any state in the Union. It was against the sentiment of the Mormon people, vivified by such inspiring Democracy as these men taught, that our little organization of Republicans had to make headway; and an anxiety began to show itself among the Church authorities for a less unequal division, and consequently a greater appearance of political independence, among the faithful.

Apostle John Henry Smith came out as a Republican stump speaker in rivalry with Moses Thatcher, the Democratic Prophet. Joseph F. Smith announced himself a Republican descendant of Whigs. Apostle Francis Marion Lyman, in his religious ministrations, counseled leading brethren to withhold themselves from the Democratic party unless they had gone too far to retreat. Men of ecclesiastical office in various parts of the territory - who were regarded as being safe in their wisdom and fidelity - were urged to hold themselves and their influence in reserve for such use on either side of politics as the future might demand.

Against this ecclesiastical direction of the people's choice, I objected again and again to the Presidency, and my objections seemed to meet with acquiescence. It required no prescience on my part to foresee that the growing dislike and distrust of Moses Thatcher at Church headquarters would lead to a strife in the Church that might be carried into our politics; and I knew how small would be the hope of preserving any political independence, if once it were involved in the intrigues of priests and their rivalries for a supremacy of influence among the people. I was resolved that not even a Church, ruling by "divine right," should interpose between my country and my franchise; and an encroachment that I would not permit upon my own freedom, I would not help to inflict upon others.

The men with whom I had been working proposed me as the candidate for Congress of the new Utah Republicans; and I was supported by a strong delegation from my own country and from other parts of the territory; but I found that I was not "satisfactory" to some of the Mormon leaders, and in the convention (1892) Apostle John Henry Smith and my cousin George M. Cannon led in an attempt to nominate Judge Chas. Bennett, a Gentile lawyer. After a bitter fight of two days and nights, we carried the convention against them, and I was nominated.

The Democrats selected, as their candidate, one of the strongest characters in the territory, Joseph L. Rawlins. He was the son of a Mormon bishop, but he had left the Church immediately upon reaching manhood. He was a great lawyer, a staunch Democrat, and wonderfully popular. There followed one of the swiftest and most exciting campaigns ever seen in Utah. The whole people rose to it with enthusiasm. Our party chairman, Chas. Crane, had a genius for organization; our speakers drew crowded meetings; and though charges of Church influence were made by both sides, the question of religion was no longer the one that divided Utah.

We were getting on famously, when an incident occurred that was at once disastrous and salutary. While I was away from headquarters, stumping the districts, Chairman Crane (who was a Gentile), Ben Rich and Joseph F. Smith, issued a pamphlet in Republican behalf called "Nuggets of Truth." It gave a picture of Joseph Smith, the original Prophet, on the first page and a picture of me on the last one. (They issued also a certificate, obtained by Joseph F. Smith and given out by him, that I was a Mormon "in good standing.") As soon as I heard of the matter, I wired Chairman Crane that unless the pamphlet were immediately withdrawn, I should return to Salt Lake City and publicly denounce such methods. It was withdrawn, but the damage was done, I was defeated, as I deserved to be - though I was the innocent victim of the atrocity - and Mr. Rawlins was elected.

The campaign proved, however, that if the Church leaders would only keep their hands off, there was ample strength in either party to make a presentation of national issues of sufficient appeal to divide the people on party lines; and it was evident that the people would choose the party that made the best showing of principles and candidates. "Nuggets of Truth " left us with a nasty sense that at no hour were we assured of safety from ecclesiastical interference - or the nefarious attempt to make an appearance of such interference - in our political affairs. But the disaster that followed, in this instance, was so prompt that we could hope it would prove a lesson.

Most important of all, the campaign had made it evident that there was now no political mission in Utah for the Liberal (the Gentile) party - assuming that the retirement of the Mormon priests from politics was sincere and permanent. Accordingly, the organization formally met some months later, and formally dissolved; and, by that act, the last great obstacle to united progress was removed from our road to statehood, and the men who removed it acted with a generosity that makes one of the noblest records of self-sacrifice in the history of the state.

They could foresee that their dissolution as a separate force meant statehood for Utah - a sovereignty in itself that would leave the Gentiles in the minority and without any appeal to the nation. Under territorial conditions, although the non-Mormons were less than one-third of the population, they had two-thirds of the political power. They held all the Federal offices, including executive and judicial positions. They had the Governor, with an absolute veto over the acts of the Mormon legislature. They had the President and Congress who could annul any statute of the territory; and they had with them almost the entire sentiment of the nation. It was in their power to have protracted the Mormon controversy, and to have withstood the appeal for statehood, to this day.

They yielded everything; they accepted, in return, only the good faith of the Mormons. Was it within the capacity of any human mind to foresee that in return for such generosity the Church would ever give over its tabernacles to teaching its people to hold in detestation the very, names of these men who saved us? Was it to be suspected that the political power surrendered by them would ever be used as a persecution upon them? - that the liberty, given by them to us, would ever afterward be denied them by us? It was inconceivable. Neither in the magnanimity of their minds nor in the gratitude of ours was there a suspicion of such a catastrophe.

During 1891, President Woodruff's manifesto had been ratified in local Church conferences in every "stake of Zion;" and a second General Conference had endorsed it in October of that year. President Woodruff, Councilor Joseph F. Smith and Apostle Lorenzo Snow went before the Federal Master in Chancery - in a proceeding to regain possession of escheated Church property - and swore that the manifesto had prohibited plural marriages, that it required a cessation of all plural marriage living, and that it was being obeyed by the Mormon people. These facts were recited in a petition for amnesty forwarded to President Harrison in December, 1891, accompanied by signed statements from Chief Justice Zane, Governor Thomas and other non-Mormons who pledged themselves that the petitioners were sincere and that if amnesty were granted good faith would be kept. "Our people are scattered," President Woodruff and his apostles declared in their petition. "Homes are made desolate. Many are still imprisoned; others are banished and in hiding. Our hearts bleed for these. In the past they followed our counsels, and while they are still afflicted our souls are in sackcloth and ashes . . . . As shepherds of a patient and suffering people we ask amnesty for them and pledge our faith and honor for their future."

At Washington, the Church's attorney, Mr. Franklin S. Richards, and delegate John T. Caine supported the petition with their avowals of the sincerity of the Church leaders, the genuineness of our political division, and the sanctity with which we regarded the promise to obey the laws. The Utah Commission, a non-Mormon body, favored amnesty in an official report of September, 1892. And when I went to Washington, in the winter of 1892-3, the changed attitude of the Federal authorities toward us was strikingly evident.

President Harrison issued his amnesty proclamation, early in January, 1893, to all persons liable to the penalties of the Edmunds-Tucker Act, but "on the express condition that they shall in the future faithfully obey the laws of the United States . . . and not otherwise." The proclamation concluded: "Those who fail to avail themselves of the clemency hereby offered will be vigorously prosecuted." Not a polygamist in Utah, to my knowledge, declined to take advantage of the mercy, by refusing the expressly implied pledge.

Meanwhile the campaign had been continued for the return of the escheated Church property and for the passage of an Enabling Act that should permit the territory to organize for statehood[1]. Joseph L. Rawlins, Democratic delegate from Utah, worked valiantly among the Democrats, and he was assisted by the influence of Mr. Franklin S. Richards and John T. Caine and others among their old associates in that party. But, in the very midst of the fight, we were advised that, unless the Republican leaders would let the Enabling Act go through, the Democratic leaders would falter in our advocacy.

I had been urged to go to Washington by the Presidency to do what I might to allay Republican antagonism, and I found that a number of self-appointed lobbyists (who expected political preferment's and other rewards from the Church in the event of statehood) had been using the most amazing arguments in our behalf. For example, they told some of the "financial Senators" that the Church had fourteen million dollars in secret funds with which to help build a railroad to the coast as soon as statehood should be granted. They cited the number of the Church's adherents in all the states and territories of the Pacific Coast and as far east as Iowa and Missouri, and predicted that the gratitude of these people to the Republicans who were helping to free Utah would enable the Republican party to control a balance of political power in the several states. They declared positively that plural marriages and plural marriage living had utterly ceased among the Mormons for all time. And they made such statements with great particularity to Senator Orville H. Platt, of Connecticut, who was too wise a man to credit them.

As soon as I returned to Washington, he summoned me to a private meeting, in his parlor in the Arlington Hotel, and confronted me with one of the Republican lobbyists who had been soliciting his personal favor and his almost controlling influence. "Now, Mr. Cannon," he said, in his dry way, "have the Mormons stopped living with their plural wives? And will there never be another case of plural marriage among them?"

I remembered the lesson of my interview with him at the time of the campaign against the disfranchisement bill, and I answered: "No. Not all the men of the Church have complied fully with the law. So far as I know, all the general authorities of the Church - with two or three exceptions - are fulfilling the covenant they gave; and so far as I can judge there will never be another plural marriage ceremony with the consent or connivance of the leaders of the Church. But human nature is very much the same in Utah as it is in Connecticut. Here and there, no doubt, a man feels that he's under an obligation to keep his covenant with his plural wives in preference to the covenant of his accepted amnesty; and there and here, possibly, in the future, some man will break the law and defy the orders of the Church and take a plural wife. But the leaders of the Church do not countenance either proceeding, and any man who violates the law, in either respect, offends against the revelations of the Church and, I believe, will be dealt with as an apostate. I come direct from the Presidency of the Church, and I am authorized to pledge their word of honor that they will themselves obey the law and do all in their power as men and leaders to bring their people into harmony with the institutions of this country as rapidly as possible."

Senator Platt had slowly unwrapped himself, rising from his chair to his full height of more than six feet, in a lank and alarming indignation. "There," he said, striding up and down the room. "That's it! That's just it. These people have been telling us that you were obeying the law - all of you - in every instance - and would always obey it. And now you come here and admit, openly, that some of you, to whom we have granted amnesty, are breaking your word - and that 'possibly' others, in the future, will do the same thing!"

"Senator," I pleaded, "what confidence could you have in me if I were to tell you the Mormons were so superhuman that in a single day they could eliminate all their human characteristics? I'm asking you to recognize that the tendency imparted to a whole community is more important than any one man's breach of the law. Believe me, if you grant us our statehood, there will never be any lawbreaking sanctioned or protected by the Church leaders, and just as speedily as possible the entire system will be brought into harmony with the institutions of the nation. I'm telling you the truth."

He turned on me to ask, abruptly, how the polygamists had adjusted their family affairs.

I answered that in nearly all cases within my personal knowledge, the polygamist had relinquished conjugal relations with his plural wives with the full acquiescence of them and their children. He supported them, cared for the children, and in all other ways acted as the guardian and protector of the household. In a few cases men had gone, to an extreme. For instance, my uncle, Angus M. Cannon - president of the Salt Lake "stake of Zion," a man of most decided character - had declared that he had entered into his marriage relations with his wives under a covenant that gave them equality in his regards; and in order that he might not wound the sensibilities of any, he had separated himself from all.

I reminded Senator Platt that with such examples on the part of the leaders, there could be no general law-breaking among the Mormons, and that gradually the polygamous element would accommodate itself to the demands of law and the commands of God.

He waved us away with a curt announcement that he would have to think the matter over. If I had not known the essential justice and common sense under his dry and irascible exterior, I might have been alarmed. The lobbyist's concern was almost comic. As soon as we were out of hearing of the Senator's apartment, shaking both fists frantically at me, he cried: "You've ruined everything! We had him. We had him - all right - until you came down here and let the cat out of the bag! You knew what we'd been telling him. Why didn't you stick to it?"

I replied with equal warmth: "You may lie all you please; but if we have to win Utah's statehood with lies I don't want it. Senator Platt has been generous to us in our time of need, and I don't intend to deceive him - or any other man."

As a matter of fact, this was not only common honesty; it was also the best policy. Senator Platt was, from that time to the day of his death, a good friend and wise counselor of the people of Utah. And I wish to lay particular stress upon this conversation with him, because it was a type of many had with such men as he. Fred T. Dubois, delegate in Congress from the territory of Idaho and subsequently Senator from that state, had been perhaps the strongest single opponent, in Washington, of the Mormon Church; he took our promises of honor, as Senator Platt did, and he pacified Senator Cullom, Senator Pettigrew and many others among our antagonists, who afterwards told me that they had accepted the pledges given by Senator Dubois in our behalf.

They recognized that the Church and the community ought not to be held responsible for a few possible cases of individual resistance or offense, so long as there should be a strict adherence by the Church and its leaders to their personal and community covenant. I emphasize the nature of this generous appreciation of our difficulties, because the present-day polygamists in Utah claim that there was a "tacit understanding," between the statesmen in Washington and the agents of the Church, to the effect that the polygamists of that time might continue to live with their plural wives. This is not true. There never was any such understanding, to my knowledge. And there could not have been one, in the circumstances, without my knowledge. For though I did not know what delegate Rawlins, and former delegate Caine, and our attorney, Mr. Richards, were saying in their private interviews with senators and congressmen, I know that in all the frequent conversations I had with them I never heard an intimation of any "tacit understanding" beyond the one which I have defined.

For my part I was more than eager to have all our political disabilities removed, the Church property restored, and the right of statehood accorded - believing implicitly in the sincerity of the Mormon leaders. I knew President Woodruff too well to doubt the pellacid character of his mind and purpose. I knew from my father's personal assurance - and from his constant practice from that time to the day of his death - that he was acting in good faith. I knew that the community was gladly following where these men led. I saw no slightest indication that any reactionary policy was likely to be entered upon in Utah, or that our people would accept it if it were.

The Church's personal property was restored by an Act of Congress approved October 25, 1893, but it was stipulated in the Act that the money was not to be used for the support of any church buildings in which "the rightfulness of the practice of polygamy" should be taught. Similarly, when the Enabling Act was approved, in July 16, 1894, it, too, provided that "polygamous or plural marriage" was forever prohibited. A constitutional convention was held at Salt Lake City under the provisions of that act, and a constitution was adopted in which it was provided that "polygamous or plural marriages" were forever prohibited, that the territorial laws against polygamy were to be continued in force, that there should be "no union of church and state," and that no church should "dominate the state or interfere with its functions." Upon no other basis would the nation have granted us our statehood; and we accepted the grant, knowing the expressed condition involved in that acceptance.

But there was one other gift that came to us from the nation - by Congressional enactment and later by Utah statute as a consequence of statehood; and that gift was the legitimizing of every child born of plural marriage before January, 1896. The solemn benignity of the concession touched me, as it must have touched many, to the very heart of gratitude. By it, ten thousand children were taken from the outer darkness of this world's conventional exclusion and placed within the honored relations of mankind. It was a tribute to the purity and sincerity of the Mormon women who had borne the cross of plural marriage, believing that God had commanded their suffering. It recognized the holy nature and honorable intent of the marriages of these women, by according their children every right of legal inheritance from their fathers. If all other covenants could be forgotten and their proof obliterated, this should remain as Utah's pledge of honor - sacred for the sake of the Mormon mothers, holy in the name of the uplifted child.



[1] Statehood seemed still very faraway. There was a Trans-Mississippi Congress held at Ogden in 1892, and though the delegates - coming from all the states and territories "west of the river," were the guests of the people of Utah, so hopeless was our status in the consideration of mankind that the delegates from the territories of New Mexico and Arizona would not let our names be joined to theirs in a resolution for statehood which we wished the committee on resolutions to propose to the Congress. Governor Prince of New Mexico replied, to our plea for a share in the resolution, that he did not intend to damn New Mexico by having her mixed up with Utah. We appealed to the Congress, and we were saved by a speech made by Thos. M. Patterson of Colorado, subsequently senator from Colorado, who carried the day for us. At a recent Trans-Mississippi Congress held in Denver, I sat with ex-Senator Patterson to hear Mr. Prince still proposing resolutions in support of statehood for New Mexico. Twenty years later!