Mr. Cleveland became more and more
interested in the Mormon people, their family life, their religion, and
their politics. He was as painstaking in acquiring information about
them as he was in performing all the other duties of his office. I might
have been discouraged by the number and apparent ineffectiveness of
my interviews with him, had not Colonel Lamont kept me informed of the
growth of the President's good feeling and of his genuinely paternal
interest in the people of Utah. It became more than a personal desire
with Mr. Cleveland to benefit politically by a settlement of the Mormon
troubles, if indeed he had ever had such a desire. His humanity was
enlisted, his conscience appealed to.

He asked me, once, if I knew anything of Mr. Sandford, and I replied
that I knew him and believed in him. He told me, at last, that he
was going to appoint Mr. Sandford Chief Justice of Utah, and added
significantly, "I suppose he will get in touch with the situation." I
accepted this remark as a permission to confer with Mr. Sandford, and
I journeyed to New York to see him and to renew the understanding I had
with him.

He was appointed Chief justice on the 9th day of July, 1888, and--as the
Mormon people expressed it--"the backbone of the raid was broken."
On August 26, 1888, he arrived in Salt Lake City. On September 17, my
father came before him in court and pleaded guilty to two indictments
charging him with "unlawful cohabitation." He was fined $450 and
sentenced to the penitentiary for one hundred and seventy-five days. His
example was followed by a number of prominent Mormons, including Francis
Marion Lyman, who is today the President of the Quorum of the twelve
Apostles and next in rank for the Presidency. It is true that not many
cases, relatively speaking, came to Justice Sandford; but the leader
whom the authorities were most eager to subjugate under Federal power
was judged and sentenced; and the effect, both on the country and on the
Mormon people, was all that we had expected.

There are memories in a man's life that have a peculiar value. One
such, to me, is the picture I have in mind of my father undergoing
his penitentiary sentence, wearing his prison clothes with an
unconsciousness that makes me still feel a pride in the power of the
human soul to rise superior to the deformities of circumstance. Charles
Wilcken (whom I have described driving us to Bountiful) was visiting
him one day in the prison office,