Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston : His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.

[222] be, he always manifested the deepest interest in carrying out their policy. When they were expelled from Nauvoo he had delivered lectures to excite popular sympathy on their behalf; he is said to have procured Brigham Young's first appointment as Governor from Mr. Fillmore on the representation that he was not a polygamist, and he now offered himself as a volunteer agent to secure the submission of the Mormons. The President gave him a guarded letter of recommendation, sufficient, however, to accredit him unofficially to both Brigham Young and the United States officers. Armed with this he started about New Year, and made his way through California to Salt Lake City, where he arrived early in March.

When Colonel Kane arrived, Brigham Young was already virtually conquered. The army, which his prophecies had doomed to certain destruction, had neither been overwhelmed by avalanches, nor starved with hunger and cold, nor entrapped in the cafions and scattered by the sword of Gideon. On the contrary, it lay in its mountain-lair silent, stern, and collected. The enthusiasm of the saints had cooled, and their courage had waned in the long season of inaction, and in the presence of a power that made no mistakes. Brigham Young, for the first time, felt himself opposed by moral forces with which he could not cope. He was already suggesting flight as a possible contingency. Colonel Kane's arrival, therefore, was a godsend to him as a means to abate his high pretensions, and to avail himself of some decent pretext for submission. So far it may have been fortunate for both the Government and the Mormons; but it was not a happy conception in Mr. Buchanan to intrust, in any manner, the interests or honor of the United States to the hands of a person so closely identified with the enemy.

Colonel Kane, after receiving the inspiration for his mission in a full consultation with the Prophet, appeared suddenly in camp. He affected a certain mystery in his movements, and left his escort of Mormons in such an equivocal position that he was under apprehensions, unfounded but not unreasonable, that they had been fired on by the picket.

Brigham Young, whether as a measure of diplomacy and conciliation or as an act of insolence, having “just learned,” as he said, “through the southern Indians that the troops are very destitute of provisions,” offered through Colonel Kane to send in 200 head of cattle and 15,000 or 20,000 pounds of flour, “to which they will be made perfectly welcome, or pay for, just as they choose.” General Johnston replied to Colonel Kane, March 15th:

sir: President Young is not correctly informed with regard to the state of the supply of provisions of this army. There has been no deficiency, nor is there any now. We have abundance to last until the Government can renew