A Memorial to Congress was adopted also, which was transmitted to Washington, and received there and laid before the two Houses on the 16th of March.  This document charged that the action of the National Government towards Utah was based upon the statements of “lying officials and anonymous letter-writers”; it rehearsed the history of the Mormons,—­their persecutions in Missouri and Illinois,—­and declared that the object of the Utah expedition was to inflict similar outrages.  “Give us our constitutional rights,” it said; “they are all we ask; and them we have a right to expect.  For them we contend, and feel justified in so doing.  We claim that we should have the privilege, as we have the constitutional right, to choose our own rulers and make our own laws without let or hindrance.”  Although this Memorial was nothing more than an infuriated tirade, it was honored in both Houses by reference to the Committees on Territories, from which it received all the consideration it deserved.

Indifferent and inactive as this review shows Congress and the President to have been concerning Utah, a similar apathy was impossible in the War Department.  Not only the welfare, but the lives even, of the troops at Fort Bridger, depended on its action.  Transactions of such magnitude had not been incumbent on its bureaus since the Mexican War.  The chief anxiety of General Johnston was for the transmission of supplies from the East as early as possible in the spring.  The contractors for their transportation during the year 1857 had wintered several trains at Fort Laramie, together with oxen and teamsters.  The General entertained a fear that so great a proportion of their stock might perish during the winter as to cripple their advance until fresh animals could be obtained from the States.  Combined with this fear was an apprehension for the safety of Captain Marcy.  A prisoner, whom the Mormons had captured in October on Ham’s Fork, escaped from Salt Lake City at the close of December, and brought news to Camp Scott that they intended to fit out an expedition to intercept the command and stampede the herds with which that officer would move from New Mexico.  The dispatches in which these anxieties were communicated to General Scott, together with suggestions for their relief, were intrusted in midwinter to a small party for conveyance to the States.  The journey taught them what must have been the sufferings of the expedition which Captain Marcy led to Taos.  Reduced at one time to buffalo-tallow and coffee for sustenance, there was not a day during the transit across the mountains when any stronger barrier than the lives of a few half-starved mules interposed between them and death by famine.  All along the route lay memorials of the march of the army, and especially of Colonel Cooke’s battalion,—­a trail of skeletons a thousand miles in length, gnawed bare by the wolves and bleaching in the snow, visible at every undulation in the drifts.