cal right, every
personal independence, every freedom of opinion, every liberty of act.

I do not believe that Smith fully foresaw the policy which he has since
undoubtedly pursued. I believe now, as I did then, that in betraying my
brother into polygamy Smith was actuated by his anger against my father
for having inspired the recession from the doctrine; that he desired
to impair the success of the recession by having my brother dignify
the recrudescence of polygamy by the apostolic sanction of his
participation; and that this participation was jealously designed by
Smith to avenge himself upon the First Councillor by having the son be
one of the first to break the law, and violate the covenant. I saw that
my brother's death had thwarted the conspiracy. Smith was so obviously
frightened--despite his pretense of defiance--that I believed he had
learned his needed lesson. And I accepted the incident as a private
tragedy on which the final curtain had now fallen.

Chapter VIII. The Church and the Interests

Meanwhile, I had been taking part in the Presidential campaign of 1896,
and I had been one of the four "insurgent" Republican Senators (Teller
of Colorado, Dubois of Idaho, Pettigrew of South Dakota and myself)
who withdrew from the national Republican convention at St. Louis, in
fulfillment of our obligations to our constituents, when we found
that the convention was dominated by that confederation of finance in
politics which has since come to be called "the System." I was a member
of the committee on resolutions, and our actions in the committee had
indicated that we would probably withdraw from the convention if
it adopted the single gold platform as dictated by Senator Lodge of
Massachusetts acting for a group of Republican leaders headed by Platt
of New York, and Aldrich of Rhode Island. At the most critical point of
our controversy I received a message from Church headquarters warning me
that "we" had made powerful friends among the leading men of the nation
and that we ought not to jeopardize their friendship by an inconsiderate
insurgency. Accordingly, in bolting the convention, I was guilty of
a new defiance of ecclesiastical authority and a new provocation of
ecclesiastical vengeance.

President Woodruff spoke to me of the matter after I returned to Utah,
and I explained to him that I thought the Republican party, under the
leadership of Mark Hanna and the flag of the "interests," had forgot