ficers 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. In the lull
which succeeded the election, Mr. Buchanan had leisure, at Wheatland, to
draft a programme for his incoming administration. His paramount idea
was to gag the North and induce her to forget that she had been robbed
of her birthright, by forcing on the attention of the country other
questions of absorbing interest. One of the most obvious of these was
supplied by the condition of affairs in Utah. It had been satisfactorily
established, that the Mormons, acting under the influence of leaders
to whom they seemed to have surrendered their judgment, refused to be
controlled by any other authority; that they had been often advised to
obedience, and these friendly counsels had been answered with defiance;
that officers of the Federal Government had been driven from the
Territory for no offence except an effort to do their sworn duty, while
others had been prevented from going there by threats of assassination;
that judges had been interrupted in the performance of their functions,
and the records of their cour