BRIGHAM YOUNG. 147 



confidence, esteem, and veneration, and held an unrivalled place in 

 their hearts. Upon the establishment of the provisional govern- 

 ment, he had been unanimously chosen as their highest civil 

 magistrate, and even before his appointment by the President, he 

 combined in his own person the triple character of confidential ad- 

 viser, temporal ruler, and prophet of God. Intimately acquainted 

 with their character, capacities, wants, and weaknesses ; identified 

 now with their prosperity, as he had formerly shared to the full in 

 their adversity and sorrows ; honoured, trusted, the whole wealth 

 of the community placed in his hands, for the advancement both 

 of the spiritual and temporal interests of the infant settlement, he 

 was, surely, of all others, the man best fitted to preside, under the 

 auspices of the General Government, over a colony of which he 

 may justly be said to have been the founder. No other man could 

 have so entirely secured the confidence of the people ; and this se- 

 lection by the Executive of the man of their choice, besides being 

 highly gratifying to them, is recognised as an assurance that they 

 shall hereafter receive at the hands of the General Government 

 that justice and consideration to which they are entitled. Their 

 confident hope now is that, no longer fugitives and outlaws, but 

 dwelling beneath the broad shadow of the national aegis, they will 

 be subject no more to the violence and outrage which drove them 

 to seek a secure habitation in this far distant wilderness. 



As to the imputations that have been made against the personal 

 character of the governor, I feel confident they are without founda- 

 tion. Whatever opinion may be entertained of his pretensions 

 to the character of an inspired prophet, or of his views and prac- 

 tice on the subject of polygamy, his personal reputation I believe 

 to be above reproach. Certain it is that the most entire confidence 

 is felt in his integrity, personal, official, and pecuniary, on the part 

 of those to whom a long and intimate association, and in the most 

 trying emergencies, have afforded every possible opportunity of 

 forming a just and accurate judgment of his true character. 



From all I saw and heard, I am firmly of opinion that the ap- 

 pointment of any other man to the office of governor would have 

 been regarded by the whole people, not only as a sanction, but as 

 in some sort a renewal, on the part of the General Government, of 

 that series of persecutions to which they had already been sub- 

 jected, and would have operated to create distrust and suspicion 

 in minds prepared to hail with joy the admission of the new Terri- 

 tory to the protection of the supreme government. 



