Y. X. Company, 1856-1857 (Arrington)

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Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company (Y. X. Company)

(From Leonard Arrington, "Great Basin Kingdom," 1958, pages 162-170)

(Arrington's notes are provided for anyone wishing to pursue additional research.)

The first of these ventures was the Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company, more commonly known by contemporaries as the Y.X. Company. As the largest single venture yet tackled by the Mormons in the Great Basin, the Y.X. Company was a bold and well-conceived enterprise, which, if "war" had not been its outcome, would undoubtedly have changed the whole structure of Mormon, and perhaps Western, economic development. Designed to provide way stations for handcart companies and other immigration, to carry the United States mail between the Missouri Valley and Salt Lake City, and to facilitate the movement of passengers and freight between Utah and the East, the Y.X. Company anticipated the Pony Express, the Ben Holladay Stagecoach line, and the Russell, Majors and Waddell freight trains of the late 1850s and early 1860s.

Several factors prompted the formation of such a company. [1: Brigham Young sermons of April 6, July 5, 1857, Deseret News, April 15, July 15, 1857, April 1, 1857; "The Express and Carrying Company," Brigham Young to Orson Pratt, March 1, 1857, Millennial Star, XIX (1857), p.363]

First, there was a need for way stations and supply depots to accommodate the handcart companies and other overland migration of Latter-day Saints. The suffering of the Willie and Martin companies could have been avoided if a series of stations had been established along the way to provide food, clothing, lodging, equipment, repair and other services. Second, an overland passenger line was needed to provide speedy and comfortable transportation of Mormon immigrants who were able to pay their own way, and to garner income from the regular overland-to-California traffic. The establishment of a passenger route would also induce "Priests, Editors, and the great ones of the earth who are so much concerned about the affairs of Utah," to travel to Mormon Country to "learn the truth relative to the Latter-day Saints and their institutions." [2: Brigham Young to Orson Pratt, March 1, 1857, Millennial Star, XIX (1857), p.410]

Third, since the failure of the Great Salt Lake Valley Carrying Company, an overland freight line was needed to provide the expanding Kingdom with an increasing supply of merchandise, machinery, tools, and equipment at reasonable rates. The smaller merchants would welcome a specialized freighting line, and the larger consumers and business houses could avoid the "excessive charges" of merchants by placing orders with a carrying company which could easily deliver merchandise, it was believed, for one-third less than the typical charge by such firms as Livingston & Kinkead. If this eliminated the big wholesale merchant, the Mormons reasoned, so much the better. Something needed to be done to correct the situation in which "so many" of the brethren were "working so hard for a bare pittance and spending their strength to enrich a set of ostentatious, proud and epicurean gentiles." [3: Henry Lunt to Albert Carrington, October 7, 1856, Deseret News. April 8, 1857.]

Finally, there was need for a regular and dependable mail service. Utah had received poor mail service throughout the 1850s, and the Mormons became more and more convinced that they could carry the mail for Utah and the West at substantially less than the government was paying and with substantially better service. A four-year contract to carry a monthly mail between Independence, Missouri, and Salt Lake City had been awarded by federal authorities to W. M. F. Magraw (and J. M. Hockaday, a partner) in 1854 for $14,440 a year, later increased by Congress to $36,000. Upon further application by Magraw, Congress granted an additional $17,750 indemnity, but directed the Postmaster General to cancel the contract in August 1856. [4: Hafen, The Overland Mail, pp. 60-61; Neff, History of Utah, pp. 325-326]

(Link to Neff's "History of Utah, 1847-1869," at HathiTrust; Y.X. Company covered on pages 327-333)

The contract was finally annulled in October 1856, giving the Mormons the opportunity of bidding on the new mail contract.

Plans for the establishment of an overland express and carrying service began in November 1855, when Brigham Young proposed the establishment of a water freight line up the Missouri to Fort Union, in Dakota Territory, and down the Yellowstone River to present-day Yellowstone Park, from whence goods could be freighted to some point along the Mormon Trail, perhaps Fort Bridger. [5: The proposal is outlined in a lengthy letter from Brigham Young "To Those Who Are Engaged in Freighting on the Western Waters," Deseret News, November 21, 1855.]

(Fort Union was at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri rivers, near the Montana-North Dakota line.)

Young estimated that the 1855 commercial freight from Council Bluffs to Salt Lake City amounted to 513 tons, which, at the race of seventeen cents a pound, amounted to $174,420. Involved in this traffic were 304 wagons and 3,210 oxen. In addition, he pointed out, there was "the large amount annually required by the Trustee in Trust" which was not included in the commercial statistics. If a steamboat concern would agree to undertake do business," Young said, "Utah interests would build a fort and warehouse at the head of navigation to receive the goods.

When it appeared that nothing would come of this proposal, the president then advanced a new land-freighting proposal to the territorial legislature, which was holding its sessions in Fillmore (the official capitol of Utah, 1851-1856). William Chandless, who was in Fillmore at the time, wrote that the chief topic of discussion was a proposal to establish a daily line of stages from the Missouri River, through Salt Lake City to California; the journey to be made in fifteen days — three or four days quicker from New York than by the Panama route:

The difficulties of the plan, the vast expense of providing animals for nearly 2000 miles' coaching, the necessity of establishing inns of some kind every ten or fifteen miles, the danger from Indians, and the clear impossibility of continuing the line through the winter, were set forth by one party; others demonstrated the certain profit from the scheme as a business, the advantages to the country of an influx of wealth, the probability of their carrying the United States mails, and receiving a good fat sum for the work, etc. [6: William Chandless, A Visit to Salt Lake. (London, 1857), p. 277.]

On January 17, 1856, the territorial assembly passed an act incorporating the Deseret Express and Road Company, which was assigned the responsibility of constructing a road from South Pass on the eastern border of the territory to Carson Valley on the California border. [7: "Acts, Resolutions and Memorials. 1852-1861," pp. 177-178, MS., Utah State Historical Society. The following prominent Mormon merchants, freighters, and explorers were listed as incorporators: Jesse C. Little, Leonard W. Hardy, Orrin Porter Rockwell, Franklin Neff, Almon W. Babbitt, William H. Hooper, Thomas S. Williams, Joseph L. Heywood, Albert P. Rockwood, Orson Hyde, Enoch Reese, Judson Stoddard, George D. Grant, William H. Kimball, John S. Fullmer, Parley P. Pratt, and William A. Hickman.]

A number of mass meetings were held, and the legislature memorialized Congress for $200,000 with which to construct the road and asked for a daily mail. Brigham Young, presumably as trustee-in-trust, offered to furnish 300 miles of the route if a daily express were provided. [8: Deseret News, February 6, 1856; Journal History, February 14, 1856.]

Although men were appointed to study and make plans to forward the enterprise, the appropriation was not forthcoming, and it was clear that the Mormons would be left to their own devices.

The principal problem was to obtain the United States mail contract. Brigham Young recognized that the government would never give the contract to himself or to the Mormon Church; therefore, when bids were called for, an application was submitted in the name of Hiram Kimball. [9: The Postmaster General's advertisement for bids, dated May 31, 1856, appeared in the Deseret News for August 6, 1856. Brigham Young wrote that "the best course to secure the contract" was to do so in Kimball's name. Brigham Young to H. S. Eldredge, correspondence, April 1, 1857, typescript, Utah State Historical Society.]

The Mormon bid was for $23,000 — considered to be a low price, and explainable by the fact that the church expected to engage in the passenger and freight business using the same employees, stations, animals, and equipment. A four-year contract for a monthly mail between Independence and Salt Lake City was awarded to Kimball on October 9, 1856, to cover the period December 1, 1856, to November 30, 1860. [10: House Exec. Doc, No. 96, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 353.]

When unofficial reports reached Utah in February 1857 that the contract had been awarded to Kimball, Brigham Young quickly got Kimball to agree to transfer the contract to the trustee-in-trust, or, at least, to hold it subject to his "orders and counsel." [11: Brigham Young to Feramorz Little, February 5, 1857, cited in Neff, History of Utah, p. 329; also Brigham Young to Orson Pratt, March 1, 1857, Millennial Star, XIX (1857), 362-363. The contract was not received in Salt Lake City until March 24, 1857. On the books of the company, Kimball was given $1,000 credit as "compensation for contract." "Express and Carrying Co.'s Ledger," MS., Church History Office]

This furnished precisely the opportunity desired. The Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company was organized, and the first mail carried by the company left Salt Lake City for the east on February 8, 1857, and arrived in Independence twenty-six days later. The Independence mail was picked up on May 1 and delivered to Salt Lake City in twenty-eight days. [12: Deseret News, May 20, June 3, 1857]

Regular deliveries took place thereafter. Mail service between Independence and Fort Laramie was placed under the direction of John Murdock and William A. Hickman; that between Laramie and Salt Lake City was under the charge of Porter Rockwell.

The plan of the Y.X. Company was to institute immediately what was called a "swift pony express" to carry the mail; to prepare a wagon line to haul freight by the summer of 1857; and to establish a stagecoach line to carry passengers by the fall of the same year. The pony express mail line was expected to deliver mail between Independence and Salt Lake City regularly in less than twenty days; freight and passengers might require a few days longer, hut service was regularly planned for winter as well as summer and would be available by "express" at higher rates. [13: "Journal of John Pulsipher," Utah Humanities Review, II (1948), 376; Brigham Young to Feramorz Little, February 5, 1857, cited in Neff, History of Utah, p.329]

The stations which the Mormons had already established at Fort Supply and Fort Bridger in 1854 and 1856 were to be strengthened. Additional stations were to be established at the head of the Sweetwater River, near Rocky Ridge; at Devil's Gate, east of South Pass; at La Bonte; at Deer Creek in the Black Hills; at Horseshoe Creek, thirty miles west of Fort Laramie; and at Beaver Creek (Genoa), 100 miles west of Florence, Nebraska, not far from the juncture of the trails west from Florence and north from Independence, (Most of these stations were subsequently maintained by the Pony Express.) At each of these stations a mile-square village settlement was to be laid out, grain and vegetables were to be planted, and each settlement was to be equipped with mills and shops, storehouses, corrals, and other requirements of village life. In addition, supplies of food were to be freighted from Utah to supply the workmen and immigrants until the first crop could be produced. Ultimately, stations were to be established every fifty miles or so, in order that there would be a station for every day's travel. The proximity of stations would also permit emigrants to walk from station to station and "have [their] supplies renewed at every such place." Remembering the needs of the handcart pioneers, the company (or the church, through the company) hoped to make it unnecessary for walking emigrants to carry all the supplies they would need on their journey across the Plains. [14: Brigham Young to Orson Pratt, March 1, 1857, Millennial Star, XIX (1857), pp.362-363]

As for freight, Brigham Young offered to carry all the freight wanted by Salt Lake City merchants at the rate of 12-1/2 cents per pound. "Eventually," Young ventured to hope, "this may destroy the merchants' trade, for who will give 40 cents per pound for sugar and coffee, when they can send on their means and orders, and have it delivered here for 25 or 26 cents, and other things in proportion." [15: Brigham Young to Orson Pratt, March 1, 1857, Millennial Star, XIX (1857), p.363]

Indeed, company agents J. M. Groesbeck, in Independence, and Horace S. Eldredge, in St. Louis, were advised to "keep a clear eye upon the markets, and when Sugar is abundant in the markets, and but few purchasers, and prices in consequence fall, then take advantage and purchase at the lowest figures, and so with other staple commodities that we need." A warehouse was to be built in Independence for the storage of these commodities until convenient to ship. [16: Brigham Young to H. S. Eldredge, February 25, 1857.]

The Y.X. enterprise obviously required a large investment in labor and property. The building of the many stations, the fencing of yards and pastures, the manning of each station, the horses and mules and wagons, feed for the animals, and, above all, provisions and supplies for employees and passengers — the supplying of all these constituted a major undertaking. This was within the realm of financial possibility, however, since most of these items were to be found within the territory and could be obtained from consecrations. [17: Deseret News, April 1, 1857]

Feramorz Little was directed to go east to buy harness and carriages; Horace Eldredge was instructed to buy scythes, grindstones, mill irons, and materials for blacksmith and machine shops for each of the stations; and William A. Hickman and Lewis Robison were authorized to buy animals from the previous contractors, Magraw and Hockaday. [18: Brigham Young to Feramorz Little, February 5, 1857, cited in Neff, History of Utah, p. 329; Brigham Young to Lewis Robison, February 6, 1857, ibid.; Brigham Young to H. S. Eldredge, April 1, 1857]

Other animals, equipment, provisions, and labor were supplied by Utahans, or by Mormon immigrants on their way to the West. The church's technique was to induce individuals in the territory to contribute labor, animals, and equipment as a matter of duty to the church and Kingdom, but to handle the enterprise on a partial business basis so that if and when profits accrued, those who participated would share in the dividends according to the investment made. Participating church members were told that none should ask, "how much shall I have for my labor?" Nor should those donating animals, wagons, flour, and other property expect immediate payment, although an arrangement was made with two merchants, Levi Stewart and W. H. Hooper, whereby they would "pay a fair price, in merchandise, for horses and mules that will fill the requirements." [19: Deseret News, April 1, 1857. Hooper and Stewart were repaid by the church in 1858 with Deseret scrip which was later redeemed with horses.]

The ledger book of the company reflects the mammoth nature of the project. In response to the appeals of apostles and other appointed solicitors, an estimated four hundred persons contributed labor, livestock, provisions, and supplies. [20: The company's ledger contains 454 separate accounts, of which a few are duplications. "Express and Carrying Co.'s Ledger."]

Wealthier Mormons donated horses, wagons, and, in some cases, complete outfits. The leather makers in the territory, Jennings and Winder, Golden and Raleigh, and Philip Pugsley, were engaged to furnish boots and shoes, harness leather, saddles, and cushions. Butchers, blacksmiths, flour mill operators, and others devoted their efforts during the late winter and spring of 1857 to furnishing the company. "Aunt" Laura Kimball contributed "1 pair socks" for some grateful driver, while Joseph Busby furnished "2 old bridles." A $6.00 quilt by Sister Elizabeth Foss, a $75.00 grey horse by John Bagley, a $20.00 revolver by Heber C. Kimball, a wagon cover by Marriner W. Merrill worth $3.50, and $50.00 worth of "tithing office pay" by Joseph Horne are representative items, all of which were strictly accounted for on the company's ledger. Likewise, the major merchants of the territory contributed supplies and equipment in exchange for donations of butter, eggs, grain, and other produce by workers in the Kingdom or in exchange for "tithing pay" by the church. Virtually all the available resources in the territory were tapped to make the enterprise a going concern within a matter of a few weeks. The total value of all contributions to the Y.X. Company between February and July 1857 amounted, by actual count, to approximately $107,000.

The church's own financial involvement is indicated in a steadily mounting debt during the first half of 1857. Some $12,000 in credit, for example, was obtained from the firm of Livingston & Kinkead, through which eastern accounts were settled. A frantic call was made in June 1857 for donations of cattle to redeem the debt and to replenish that part of the church's public works stock which had been applied on the debt. The call was "liberally" met — some 200 head of cattle were collected — and the church's public works and other activities were continued, despite the strain imposed by the operations connected with the Carrying Company. [21: Journal History, June 11, 1857; Brigham Young sermons, June 7, 14, 1857, Deseret News, June 17, 24, 1857; also Journal History, June 16, 1857; Millennial Star, XIX (1857), 557]

Nearly all Mormon villages sent men to assist with the enterprise. The vast majority of these were called to the work as missionaries. Each man called to build and maintain the stations was told that he would be expected to stay "until his place can be conveniently supplied by a suitable person from the East on his way to Utah, or otherwise." [22: Deseret News, April 1, 1857]

Ira N. Hinckley, who was called to go as a company blacksmith, was told by Brigham Young, "I want you to go for nothing, board yourself and turn something in." He was "set apart" or blessed for the mission by the "laying on of hands" in a religious ceremony and fulfilled his six-month mission with "characteristic willingness and promptness." [23: "Ira Nathaniel Hinckley: Some Events of His Life," p. 5, mimeographed, Huntington Library]

Many of the "express missionaries" were outfitted and supplied by wealthier and older members who were similarly promised only partial returns on their investments. [24: "I put in one yoke of oxen a saddle and bridle and some hundred weight of flour with meat, etc." Diary of Joseph Holbrook, I, 81, typescript, possession of the writer.]

The principal activity of these men, of course, was concerned with the establishment of settlements. By April 6, 1857, three companies of up to a hundred men each had been dispatched from Salt Lake City to build stations in the mountains and on the prairies. [25: Brigham Young sermon, April 6, 1857, Deseret News, April 15, 1857; Millennial Star, XIX (1857), 525. Most of the sermons in the general conference sessions of April 6 and 7, 1857 were devoted to explaining the Y. X. enterprise, and urging participation in it and contributions to it upon the basis of religious sentiment. A list of some of the men called on special missions to assist the company in locating stations and establishing settlements is found in Journal History, April 21, 1857. See also Journal History, July 24, 1857.]

Each company took long wagon trains of food, feed, and equipment, "sufficient to enable several hundred persons to winter, in case of such emergency as occurred last fall [that is, the handcart episode]." [26: Brigham Young to Orson Pratt and Ezra T. Benson, June 30, 1857, Millennial Star, XIX (1857), 556.]

With literally hundreds of men arriving and departing on Express Company business, Salt Lake City was said to be "teeming with life and activity to an unusual extent." [27: Deseret News, April 29, 1857.]

It is to be emphasized that these were not to be way stations in the sense of those used by Ben Holladay and Wells Fargo in the 1860s. They were to be settlements. In a matter of a few weeks, for example, one company proceeding west from the Missouri River established a station called Genoa, on the Beaver River, approximately 100 miles west of Omaha. Two farms, of 750 and too acres respectively, were bound with sod fences, and planted to corn, potatoes, buckwheat, and garden greens. A saw mill was set in operation and a quantity of housing lumber was prepared. A brick yard was also operating "full blast." The number of available hands led company officers to boast that they would "build a city not a whit behind any other in Nebraska." The city itself was 400 acres in size with the Mormon village plan of settlement. Like a miniature Salt Lake City, the blocks were ten acres in size, with eight lots in a block, and the wide streets ran due east-west and north-south. By July 1, the colony numbered 162 persons, largely men, and a great variety of livestock, including 42 yoke of oxen. [28: Henry J. Hudson to John Taylor, July 1, 1857, Millennial Star, XIX (1857), 607.]

Similarly, a settlement was established at Deer Creek, about 100 miles west of Laramie, Wyoming, under the direction of Nathaniel V. Jones. By July 1857, a corps of 76 men had erected a log corral 150 feet square, stocked it with 76 mules and horses, nearly completed a stockade enclosing 42 houses, and constructed a large stockyard filled with cattle. Some 123 cattle were used in building the station. A large store of provisions, including 10 tons of flour, was stored there, and another 50 tons were on the way. In addition to establishing the settlement and station, they had fenced, broken, and planted fifteen acres, constructed irrigation facilities, and put up enough hay to last the winter. [29: Journal History, July 24, 1857; John Taylor to W. I. Appleby, The Mormon (New York City), August 29, 1857.]

Other stations at Horseshoe Creek, La Bonte, Devil's Gate, and Rocky Ridge were in various stages of completion by July 1857. The interests of private parties at Rocky Ridge ("Markham's Fort") and at Devil's Gate ("Fort Simone") were purchased and 640 acres were claimed at each place. Each plot was surveyed during the summer by a church surveyor. [30: Journal History, July 24, 1857.]

On July 4, 1857, Brigham Young reported that the Y.X. Company was sending out "from 40 to 65 animals every mail," and that this would be continued "until we get the road stocked with 1,800 horses and mules." [31: Brigham Young to George Q. Cannon, July 4, 1857, cited in Neff, History of Utah, p. 331.]

It is to be noted that these settlements were made upon Indian lands and that the Mormons did not seek or receive formal approval from the Indians or the government for establishing the way stations. This was an admitted weakness in the enterprise, but Brigham Young felt that the mail contract gave a kind of ad hoc blessing to the endeavor. Writing to the company's agent in St. Louis, he said:

I learn from Dr. Bernhisel [Utah's congressional delegate] and others, that the Hon. Manypenny [Commissioner of Indian Affairs] and other functionaries are very much opposed to the settling of any portion of the Indian lands, because the Indian lands are not yet bartered for and they cannot give away even by mail contract what they have neither bought nor paid for! If we should defer our wayside settlements till they had arranged these matters righteously with the "natives," how long should we wait? We do not mean to put it into the power of Gov't, to refuse our making settlements, neither do we design to make much noise in our ceaseless labors to benefit the human family, and ourselves. How long should we have waited here for a home, had we waited until U. S. extinguished the Indian claim here? [32: Brigham Young to H. S. Eldredge, May 29, 1857.]

Threatening Clouds

Just as the Mormons were well along toward realizing their goal of establishing the requisite number of settlements and equipping and stocking the route, the entire structure was demolished as if in one blow by the sudden and secret action of the government canceling the mail contract. Operatives of the Y.X. Company first got wind of this action about July 1, 1857, when the postmaster at Independence refused to hand over the mail to the company's representative. Shortly afterward they learned that the order to cancel the Mormon contract was dated June 10, and that the annulment coincided with the decision to send a large consignment of federal troops to Utah. [33: Brigham Young called the cancellation "arbitrary, unjust and illegal, a great national loss, in a financial point of view, and a great legal and moral outrage." Brigham Young to Thomas L. Kane, October 22, 1858, Utah Humanities Review, II (1948), 57-58.]

Abraham O. Smoot, the mayor of Salt Lake City, was in charge of the mail going east from Salt Lake in June, and it was he who first learned of these actions and hurried back to Utah to tell Brigham Young. Fully recognizing the urgency of the situation facing the company and the church, Smoot and other Y.X. agents ordered the company's stock and station outfits all along the route east of Fort Laramie returned to Utah. At Fort Laramie he and Porter Rockwell "hitched up two spans of our best animals to a small spring wagon" on July 18, and reached Salt Lake City on July 23, averaging more than 100 miles per day. [34: Smoot's recollections of these events are published in E. W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City, c. 1886), pp. 156-157.]

Brigham Young and several thousand associates and followers happened to be in Big Cottonwood Canyon, east of Salt Lake City, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the entrance of the pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley. It was there that public announcement was made of the government designs. [35: Mormon and Utah historians have left the impression that Brigham Young was completely surprised about the Utah Expedition. However, in a sermon delivered the preceding June 7, he revealed that "some poor, miserable people" had been telling him that the Mormon people would soon be forced to leave their Great Basin retreat. Deseret News, June 17, 1857.]

Many urgent meetings of church authorities were held, and as reports continued to come in of the boasts of some of the soldiers on the expedition, the Mormons feared a repetition of their experiences in Missouri and Illinois. With the expectation of having to fight for their lives, and certainly with the assurance that the Y.X. Company could no longer operate, Brigham Young, on August 12, 1857, issued an order confirming Smoot's action in breaking up all Mormon stations between Fort Laramie and the Missouri River. He also ordered all stations between Salt Lake City and Fort Laramie closed. The forts and farms were abandoned, all movable property was taken to Utah, and the enormous outlay of labor and materials was almost a complete loss. [36: Journal History, July 24, August 12, 1857; also sermons of Brigham Young and others in the general conference of July 26, 1857, Deseret News, August 5, 1857.]

As these companies made their way back to Zion, the Deseret News bitterly reported that their return had "saved our enemies the trouble of clearing the road of American citizens lawfully occupying American soil." [37: Deseret News, September 23, 1857.]

A settlement with those who had furnished horses, mules, wagons, harness, and other property was made in December 1857, after which Brigham Young estimated the total loss at "probably nigh $200,000." [38: Deseret News, December 9, 1859; Brigham Young to Thomas L. Kane, October 22, 1858, Utah Humanities Review, II (1948), 57. In speaking to the Utah legislature, Young said the enterprise had involved an immediate expenditure of "upwards of $125,000," Deseret News, December 23, 1857. The company's ledger showed total debits of $106,810. This did not include all the "volunteer" labor.]

While some of the stations were later used as stations on the overland telegraph line, and others were used by Holladay and others connected with the overland mail and express, the Mormons realized nothing financially from these uses. A gigantic enterprise — one which, as Stenhouse wrote, might have been the means of placing Utah in daily intercourse with the rest of the world a full decade before that desired end was accomplished by the railroad — died a-borning. [39: Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, p. 346.]

The Utah War

While the Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company was engaged in dismantling its stations in July 1857, the United States Army was on the march to Utah. Originally named to head the expedition was Brevet- Brigadier General W. S. Harney, commander at Fort Leavenworth. But when it appeared that Harney was "indispensable" in Kansas, and perhaps a little too anxious to "put down the Mormon rebellion," he was replaced by Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston. [40: According to Sir Richard Burton, Harney had boasted that he would "hang Brigham first and try him afterward." The City of the Saints (New York, 1862), p.558]

The first of 2,500 troops left Fort Leavenworth on July 18, 1857, and the entire force was on the way within two months. Including civilian teamsters, wagon-masters, suppliers, and other employees and hangers-on, the total expeditionary force totaled about 5,000 men.

These troops had been ordered to Utah by John B. Floyd, Secretary of War in the administration of President James Buchanan.

[page 172]

Whatever the immediate and ultimate motives for appointing a new and non-Mormon governor and sending the Utah Expedition, three facts emerge as being of particular significance. The first is that, ironically enough, the activities of the Brigham Young Express and Carrying Company in carrying out the mail contract and in performing other economic chores for the church figured prominently among the factors which led to the actions taken. The letter of W.M.F. Magraw, for example, would appear to have been almost exclusively an outgrowth of his determination to wreak vengeance on his Mormon competitors. Indeed, the next government mail contract after the cancellation of the Kimball contract, was awarded in May 1858 to Magraw's erstwhile partner, John M. Hockaday and company, and provided for a weekly service between Salt Lake City and Independence paying $190,000 a year. Moreover, Magraw was a principal subcontractor in supplying the Utah Expedition. [51: Creer, Utah and the Nation., pp. 123, 232; Cannon, "The Abstracted Indian Trust Bonds,” p. 431]

In the same vein, the letter of Thomas Twiss alleged that the stations established by the Y.X. Company in Nebraska Territory were upsetting Indian relations on the Plains, and that the ultimate intention of the church was "to monopolize all the trade with the Indians and whites within, or passing through, the Indian country." This view was seconded by Twiss' superior, George Manypenny, who reported that the Mormons had "studiously endeavored to impress on the minds of the Indians" that there was a difference between the Mormons, on the one hand, and the “citizens of the United States,” on the other. The Mormons tried to convince the Indians, the federal commissioner said, that the "Mormonee" were their friends and that the "Mericats" were their enemies. [52: Letter of November 11, 1857, Messages and Documents, 1857-1858, Part I serial 942, cited in Neff, History of Utah, p. 441. See also Alban W. Hoopes, Indian Affairs and their Administration with Special Reference to the Far West, 1840-1860, pp. 131-159. (Philadelphia, 1932)]

Thus, the bold design of the Y. X. Company itself, and the suspicion of Mormon aims and methods in relation thereto, had much to do with the cancellation of the contract, of the Utah Expedition, and it also compelled the abandonment of the enterprise.

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