| 490 We were in hopes that the authorities of the city, and the church of Utah, would have disavowed the putting the flags at half-mast on the public buildings; but the city council indorsed [endorsed] the action of Marshal Phillips in the case of the city hall; the Deseret News, the church organ, also indorses [endorses] it. In the case of the court-house, Sheriff Groesbeck at once ordered the flag put at full height, as soon as he discovered that it had been so displayed. Ex-mayor Jennings has had the courage to disapprove the action at the city hall, and asked that his disapproval be placed on the council record.
To us it seems that if the action of a few city officials resulted in such an act of useless bravado as putting the flag of the Government at half mast on the public buildings of the city and county in the central city of a territory belonging to the United States, (on such a holiday as the Fourth,) will be construed to be; that action should be at once promptly disavowed by both city and the church officials. If it was the result of a few church officials consulting together and influencing the city officials, it should also be disavowed by the church. If, however, it was the result of an order direct from controlling church authorities, it must add greatly to the gravity of the crisis already pending, and makes it difficult to say what complications may arise because of it.
The attitude of the church in Utah, if the Deseret News properly represents it, is one of distress and indignant protest against the action of Congress, and the prosecution of polygamists under it; claiming that the law is unconstitutional, and the prosecution and findings of the courts are acts of oppression and persecution; and that victims convicted under the law are martyrs.
Andrew Jenson, assistant church historian of the Utah people, thus speaks of this event under date of July 24, see "Church Chronology," page 123:
Although the rabid anti-Mormons were so enraged because the Mormons of Salt Lake City raised the flag on half-mast on July 4th, and threatened direful consequences, if the act was repeated on the 24th, yet on this eventful day, all the citizens, anti-Mormons as well as Mormons, put the flag at half-mast in token of mourning over the demise of Ex-president U. S. Grant, who died at Mt. McGregor, New York, the day before (July 23).
Without departing from the proper path of historians to pass judgment upon those who must bear the responsibility for disrespect to the flag, it may with propriety be noted as a part of the historical narrative, that well-known subsequent events have proved the act to have been unwise; and the public abandonment of polygamy, evidently compelled by the enforcement of the law against which such indignation was manifested, is not one of the least of those facts.
(page 490) |
