Letter to Brigham Young Jr., 19 December 1888
Salt Lake City, Utah, .
Elder Brigham Young,
Salt Lake City,
Dear Brother: Our attention has been repeatedly
called to the apathy and indifference of our people in regard to their political
rights; while, on the other hand, our enemies were never so well organezed, so thorough
and united, nor more determined in their opposition than now.
The experiences that we have had in the "irrepressible conflict" between the
Church and Kingdom of God and the world, from the days of Ohio, Missouri and Illinois
down to the recent experiences of our disfranchised people in Idaho, proves beyond
doubt that the "price of liberty", to us, "is eternal vigilance", and implicit reliance
upon the protection and mercy of Almighty God.
The malignant animus and the wicked purposes of our relentless foes were not
more apparent in the mobbings and drivings from Missouri, or the martyrdom of our
Prophets and the expulsion of the Saints from Illinois than they were in the infa-
mous propositions embodied in the Edmunds and the Edmunds-Tucker laws, the appoint-
ment of the Utah Commission and other Territorial and local officers to rule over us,
the confiscation of our property, and many other things open to the view of all the
people, which are in themselves mild and humane in comparison to measures which have
been proposed to Congress for the destruction of our rights and liberty, as Latter-
day Saints, and the subjugation of the Church of God, which have not as yet crystaliz-
ed into penal statutes against us. Among them the proposition to compel wives to
testify against their husbands, and to make the status of polygamy, as well as the act
a crime punishable with excessive penalities, to disfranchise all Mormons and the utter