same whose defeat by the Cayuses, Spokans, and Coeur d’Alenes, last May, occasioned the Indian war in Washington Territory.  During the summer of 1855, he led a battalion overland, wintering in Salt Lake City.  It was at his option, at any time during his sojourn, to have claimed the supreme executive authority.  He did not do so, but even headed a recommendation to President Pierce for the reappointment of Brigham Young.  This was the result of his winter’s residence, during which he and some of his fellow-officers were feasted to their stomachs’ content, and entirely careless concerning the political condition of the Territory.  Late in the spring, he marched away to California, after having expressed to the President that it was “his unqualified opinion, based on personal acquaintance, that Brigham Young is [was] the most suitable person for the office of Governor.”  Brigham’s views of the winter’s proceedings, on the other hand, were expressed in a sermon preached in the Tabernacle, the Sunday after the departure of the Lieutenant-Colonel, in which he repeated his declaration of three years previous:—­

“I am, and will be, governor, and no power can hinder it, until the Lord Almighty says, ‘Brigham, you need not be governor any longer.’” And he added,—­“I do not know what I shall say next winter, if such men make their appearance here as some last winter.  I know what I think I shall say; if they play the same game again, let the women be ever so bad, so help me God, we will slay them.”

Most of the other civil officers who were commissioned about the same time with Colonel Steptoe arrived the August after he had departed.  Within eighteen months their lot was the same as that of their predecessors.  In April, 1857, before the snow had begun to melt on the mountains, all of them, in a party led by Surveyor-General Burr, were on their way to the States, happy in having escaped with life.  During the previous February, the United States District Court had been broken up in Salt Lake City.  A mob had invaded the courtroom, armed with pistols and bludgeons, a knife was drawn on the judge in his private room, and he was ordered to adjourn his court sine die, and yielded.  Indian-Agent Hurt was the only Gentile official who remained in the Territory.

In the mean while, however, a change of national administration had taken place, and General Pierce had been succeeded by Mr. Buchanan.  For nearly three years the country had been convulsed by an agitation of the Slavery question, originating with Senator Douglas, which culminated in the Presidential election of 1856.  The Utah question, grave though it was, was forgotten in the excitement concerning Kansas, or remembered only by the Republican party, as enabling them to stigmatize more pungently the political theories of the Illinois Senator, by coupling polygamy and slavery, “twin relics of barbarism,” in the resolution of their Philadelphia Platform against Squatter Sovereignty.