"What would be your feelings if the United States wanted to have the honor of driving us from our homes, and bringing us subject to their depraved standard of moral and religious truth? Would you, if necessary, brethren, put the torch to your buildings and lay them in ashes and wander houseless into these mountains? I know what you would say and what you would do."
President Brigham Young.--"Try the vote."
Elder Taylor.--"All you that are willing to set fire to your property and lay it in ashes rather than submit to their military rule and oppression, manifest it by raising your hands."
The congregation, numbering more than four thousand, unanimously raised their hands.
Elder Taylor.--"I know what your feelings are. We have been persecuted and robbed long enough; and in the name of Israel's God, we will be free!"
President Young.--"I say amen all the time to that."
Elder Taylor.--"I feel to thank God that I am associated with such men, with such people, where honesty and truth dwell in the heart--where men have a religion that they are not afraid to live by, and that they are not afraid to die by; and I would not give a straw for anything short of that."
Captain Van Vliet's surprise was little short of astonishment. He was not prepared to expect such unanimity of sentiment nor such determination of purpose. He admired their courage, but trembled for their safety in a conflict with the government. He pointed out the fact that if they successfully resisted the army then on their borders, the next year would see an overwhelming force sent to suppress and punish them. His remonstrance was answered:
"We know that will be the case; but when these troops arrive they will find Utah a desert; every house will be burned to the ground; every tree cut down and every field laid waste. We have three years' provisions on hand, which we will cache, and then take to the mountains and bid defiance to all the powers of the government."
The captain returned to the army on Ham's Fork deeply impressed with the seriousness and perhaps with the absurdity of the government's movement against Utah. Moreover he had become the friend of the Mormon people, and his report to the Secretary of War, made at Washington the November following, did much, doubtless, in paving the way for an amicable adjustment of the Utah difficulties.