* * * * *

THE UTAH EXPEDITION: 

ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.

[Continued.]

In the mean while Congress had assembled.  The agitation on the subject of Slavery, far from being suppressed, or even overshadowed, burned more fiercely than ever before.  The Pro-slavery faction in Kansas, stimulated by the constant support of the National Administration, was engaged in a final effort to maintain a supremacy over the affairs of that Territory which the current of immigration from the Free States had been steadily undermining.  Against the will of nine-tenths of the population, it had framed, with a show of technical legality, a Constitution intended to perpetuate Slavery, which the Administration indorsed and presented to Congress with an urgent recommendation for the admission under it of Kansas as a State.  In the commotion which these events excited throughout the country, the transient gleam of importance which had attached to the Mormon War was almost extinguished.  The people of the States no longer felt a much more vital interest in news from that remote region than in tidings from the rebellion in India or of the wars in China.  Their attention, sympathies, and curiosity—­were all fastened upon the action of Congress with respect to Kansas,—­for therein, it was believed, were contained the germs of the political combinations for the Presidential election of 1860.  The same listlessness with regard to affairs in Utah pervaded the Cabinet.  All its prestige was staked on the result of the impending struggle in the House of Representatives over the Lecompton Constitution, and its energies were abstracted from every other subject, to be concentrated upon that alone.

Just at this time, Mr. Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania,—­son of the late Judge of the United States District Court for that State, and brother of the late Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer,—­solicited the Administration for employment as a mediator between the Mormons and the Federal Government.  Mr. Kane was one of the few persons of education and social standing who were well acquainted with Mormon history.  He had visited them at Winter Quarters, in Iowa, during their exodus from Nauvoo, in the capacity of a commissioner to enlist the Mormon battalion which served in the Mexican War.  During an illness which attacked him there, he was treated with an unremitting kindness, for which his gratitude has been proportionate.  Belonging to a family whose members have been distinguished by strong traits of individuality, not to say eccentricity, from that moment forward he displayed a practical interest in the welfare of the sect.  It is said that he became a convert to the religious doctrines of Mormonism.  Whether this be true at all, and, if so, to what extent, it would he profitless at the present time to inquire.  For the purposes of this narrative, it is sufficient to assert only, what is unchallenged, that he was a sincere admirer of the Mormons as a people, and for a long series of years had defended them from every reproach with a zeal which many of his friends thought inordinate.