According to their standard of
morality and taste, the rites of the Endowment are devoid of immodesty.
In their political bearing, however, they are more important, and justly
liable to the severest censure. It is established beyond question, that
the initiated, clad in the preposterous costume before described, take
an oath, in the presence of their Spiritual Head, to cherish eternal
enmity towards the government of the United States until it shall have
avenged the death of their prophet, Joseph Smith. And this ceremony is
not a mere empty form of words. It is an oath, the spirit of which the
Endowed carry into their daily life and all their relations with
the Gentile world. In it lies the root of the evasion, and finally
subversion, of Federal authority which occasioned the recent military
expedition to Utah.
When the Territory was organized in 1850, the government at Washington,
acting on an imperfect knowledge of the nature of Mormonism, conferred
the office of Governor upon Brigham Young. For this act Mr. Fillmore has
been unjustly censured.
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