"Five years after the United States had established the Territory of Utah its people were in armed rebellion because the government dared to send a Gentile governor and national troops to Utah."
Nor does she spare the United States in its responsibility for these crimes. "The United States to-day," said Miss Field, "is responsible for thirty years' growth of polygamy, with its attendant degradation of woman and brutalization of man." As an illustration of this conclusion, she told a most interesting story of which Governor Harding of Utah, Brigham Young, Benjamin Halliday, Postmaster General Blair, Abraham Lincoln and William H. Seward were the characters. The story is a dramatic and significant bit of Mormon history, related for the first time. It led up to an earnest and eloquent peroration of which the final words were: "'I'll believe polygamy is wrong when Congress breaks it up; not before!' exclaims a plural wife. Men and women of New England! You who forge public opinion; you who sounded the death knell of slavery, what are you going to do about it!"
William Lloyd Garrison used to tell his friends that it was worth an admission fee just to see Kate Field on the platform, as she made so lovely a picture. Her attitudes--for they are too spontaneous and unconscious to be termed poses--are the impersonation of grace, and, aside from the enjoyment of the intellectual quality and searching political analysis of her lectures, is that of the artistic effect. She gave a course of three lectures on this "Mormon Monster." They were efforts whose invincible logic, graphic presentation and thrilling power held spellbound her audience. They were a drama of social and political life, and almost unprecedented on the lyceum platform was this eloquence and splendor of oratory, combined with the trained thought, the scholarly acquirement, and the finished eloquence of its delivery. This course of lectures finished there was a popular call for Miss Field to repeat one at Tremont Temple which, by invitation of Governor Robinson, the Mayor and a number of distinguished citizens, she consented to do. The triumph was repeated. From Boston she was invited to lecture in Brooklyn, Philadelphia and Washington. Press and people were alike enthusiastic. It is to the work of Miss Kate Field more than to any other cause, that the present disintegration of Mormon treason is due. Other travellers in Utah have made but the briefest stays, and have been ready to gloss over the tale. Miss Field is telling the truth about it, and she does it with a courage, a vigor, an honesty, and a power that renders it one of the most potent influences in the national life of the times. Kate Field holds to-day the first place on the Lyceum platform of America. She has a rare combination of judicial and executive qualities.