Brian Whitney, and Brett Dowdle—have helped to find the letters, transcribe
them, verify the transcriptions, and have performed research and drafted
annotation. Financial and institutional support and encouragement have
been provided by Harris and Amanda Simmons, the University of Southern
Indiana, and the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. We thank Reid L. Neilson and Richard E. Turley Jr. for
their encouragement and reading of the manuscript. Archivists at the Church
History Library and at the L. Tom Perry Special Collections have graciously
helped find relevant material. We are particularly indebted to David Whittaker,
who as an archivist at BYU oversaw the acquisition of the magnificent Kane
collection, its organization, and the writing of its terrific register. Finally, we are grateful to our wives, Alyssa and Nelani, for their support, encouragement,
and patience during this multi-year endeavor.
1
Young to Kane, August 2, 1846
On the day the U.S. government declared war on Mexico—May 13,
1846—Thomas L. Kane attended a meeting of the Mormons in Philadelphia.
With the war beginning and the Mormon trek in progress, he saw a chance
for idealism and ambition. Perhaps he could help the Mormons while begin-
ning a military or political career in California, the rumored stopping place
of the Saints. During the weeks that followed, Kane became acquainted with
Mormon leaders in the east, most importantly Jesse C. Little, with whom he
began to work closely. Kane and Little were soon lobbying for the Mormons
in Washington, D.C. Kane had the advantage of the connections of his pow-
erful father, federal district judge John K. Kane, which gave him access to
Democratic Party chieftain Amos Kendall; cabinet secretaries James Buchanan
(State), William L. Marcy (War), and George Bancroft (Navy); Vice President
George M. Dallas; and President James K. Polk.1
These consultations led to the approval of a Mormon battalion for Mexican
War service. Polk and other government officials gave Kane a letter of rec-
ommendation and several dispatches. Polk wrote that the young man bore
“information of importance” and instructed U.S. officers to assist him.2 Kane
later returned his government dispatches to Washington, and they have never
resurfaced.3
1. J
esse C. Little, journal, July 6, 1846, cited in Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter Journal History), CHL; Kane to Elisha K. Kane, May 29, 1846, APS; Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 47.
2. James K. Polk to Kane, June 11, 1846, Kane Collection, BYU.
3. Kane to John K. Kane and Jane K. Kane, July 3, 1846, APS, and Thomas L. Kane to George Bancroft, July 11, 1846, Bancroft Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, in Donald Q. Cannon, ed., “Thomas L. Kane Meets the Mormons,” Brigham Young University Studies 18 (Fall 1877): 127–128.
16
the prOphet and the refOrmer
In early June, Kane and Little left Philadelphia for the Mormon camps in
Iowa to inform the Saints about the battalion. After traveling to Pittsburgh via
the railroad, the men traveled down the Ohio River to Cincinnati, Louisville,
and St. Louis.4 They then separated, with Little traveling the Mississippi
River to Nauvoo, stopping at the old Mormon headquarters before taking the
Mormon trail across Iowa. Kane took the Missouri River to Fort Leavenworth
in present-day eastern Kansas. After outfitting there, Kane planned to go north
and meet Little and the Mormon vanguard in western Iowa.
Kane had come west hoping to secure a field command in the war, but,
when he arrived at Fort Leavenworth, Colonel Stephen W. Kearny, commander
of the Army of the West, offered him nothing. Moreover, Kearny told Kane that
he had already ordered Captain James Allen to muster the Mormon troops.
Kane had hoped to do this himself and gain the favor of Brigham Young and
other church leaders. Furthermore, Kearny told Kane that the Mormons had
been delayed in Iowa and would not reach California in 1846; at the time, Kane
and almost everybody else assumed that the Mormon exodus would terminate
in California. As an alternative to commanding troops, Kane had hoped to get
to California with the Saints and use their votes to get in on the ground floor
of California’s politics, perhaps as governor or U.S. senator. Along the way, he
Swallowing hard on his disappointment, Kane continued on to the Mormon
camps. His first effort was a disaster. Traveling alone along the Missouri River
toward Iowa, he encountered searing summer heat, heavy rains, and what he
called “physical nostalgia” brought on by the “staring silence of the prairie.”6
He had gone less than a third of the way when his horse pulled up lame, and
he turned back to Leavenworth. Another misfortune took place several days
later, when a thief stole his wallet, which contained about $100.7 “Adieu, book,
honour, money—everything I hoped,” he wrote home. For a day or two, Kane
thought he would give up all his western ambitions and return to Philadelphia
“the same worthless invalid I have been—but in debt.”8
4. J
ohn K. Kane to Elisha K. Kane, July 6, 1846, Elisha K. Kane Papers, APS.
5. Grow, Liberty to the Downtrodden, 56–58.
6. Thomas L. Kane, The Mormons: A Discourse Delivered Before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: King & Baird, Printers, 1850), 24–25.
7. Kane to Robert Patrick Kane, July 2, 1846, Thomas L. Kane Papers, APS; Kane, journal, July 2, 1846, Thomas L. Kane Papers, Stanford University.
8. Kane to John K. Kane, June 29, 1846, APS.
Young to Kane, August 2, 1846
17
Kane soon regained his balance. While his “selfish” dream of becoming
“the man of the Western West” was now gone, he wrote his father that he
could still be useful by helping enroll the Mormon troops, and perhaps by
easing the Mormons’ anger over how they had been treated and strengthening
their loyalty. Rumors were circulating that the Saints were secretly negotiating
with the British over a possible British–Mormon colony on Vancouver’s Island
in Canada, which might muddle American claims to the Pacific Northwest.
Kane’s inventory of his remaining possibilities brought him to a hopeful con-
clusion: “My main objects prosper,” he wrote home; only “my subordinate and
selfish ones . . . are thwarted.”9
Once again Kane left Fort Leavenworth for Iowa, but this time he took a
steamboat up the Missouri River, landing near Council Bluffs, not far from
where the Saints’ forward wagons were getting ready to cross the river. Kane
could see cattle by the thousands—the Mormons’ last sizable asset. He also
saw the rising smoke of a thousand camp fires and the immigrants’ white can-
vas tents set against the morning sky (for Kane’s sketch of one of the camps a
few weeks later, see Figure 1.1).10 Kane made his way to “Council Point,” near
the steamboat landing, where Indian trader Peter Sarpy kept a trading post
and rooms-for-hire. There Kane met 22-year-old Mormon Henry G. Boyle,
who remembered Kane arriving on July 7
. Reflecting the Saints’ mistrust for
outsiders, Boyle thought Kane might be a government official “spying out our
liberties.” But Kane had a letter of introduction from Little, which he but-
tressed with his constant assurances. “I soon found that his sympathies and
good feelings were all in our favor,” said Boyle.11
After spending several days at Sarpy’s trading post, Kane bought a rid-
ing outfit and, along with Boyle, started out for the Mormons’ main camp
about a dozen miles away. On their journey they met Apostle Orson Pratt,
who escorted them the final few miles.12 Mormon policeman Hosea Stout,
who was at headquarters when Kane arrived, described Kane as “uncommonly
small and feminine.” Indeed, by Kane’s own reckoning, he weighed only 93 ½
9. Kane to W
illiam Leiper, ca. July 1846, APS.
10. Kane, Mormons, 25–26.
11. Henry G. Boyle, “A True Friend,” The Juvenile Instructor, March 1, 1882, 17:74; Henry Green Boyle, Autobiography and Diary, July 1846, BYU. On the Mormon camps, see
Richard E. Bennett, Mormons at the Missouri, 1846–1852 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).
12. Kane to William Leiper, ca. July 1846, APS.
18
the prOphet and the refOrmer
figure 1.1 Thomas L. Kane drew this sketch of the Mormon camps in his notebook: “My waggon—the first camp of the distant prairie of the Platte.”
Source: Reproduced by permission from L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.
pounds.13 Yet, despite his fragility and youth, within twenty minutes Kane was
in a serious meeting with leading Mormon officials, which went on for three
and a half hours.14
Brigham Young was not at headquarters. Nine days earlier he had received
Kearney’s emissary, Captain Allen, and heard the government’s offer to mus-
ter troops. Young had immediately agreed. The camps were full of hunger and
disease, and he desperately needed money to buy supplies for the Mormon
exodus. At the same time, a battalion of soldiers could help prove the loyalty of
his people to a doubting American public. Young soon headed east to recruit
soldiers from the strung-out camps and did not return to headquarters until
July 12, the day after Kane arrived. The first meeting of the two men probably
13. J
uanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844–1861, 2 vols.
(Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press and Utah State Historical Society, 1964), 1:177. For Kane’s weight, see Thomas L. Kane, letter to unidentified recipient, June/July 1846, Kane Papers, Stanford.
14. Kane to John K. Kane and Jane D. Kane, July 20–23, 1846, APS.
Young to Kane, August 2, 1846
19
took place on the day Young got back, and they were clearly interacting by the
following day.15 Kane said little about Young at first. One of his first memories
of Young was seeing him driving his own ox team and carrying a sick child
in his arms.16 Young already knew a great deal about Kane: while acting as
a “recruiting sergeant” in the eastern camps he had talked with Jesse Little,
fresh from Nauvoo, who told him about Kane and his lobbying in Washington.
Young rode out on the prairie where Kane was apparently camping. It
rained heavily that morning and Young and Kane huddled in Apostle Wilford
Woodruff’s carriage, either for shelter or privacy. The two spoke about “the
state of the nations,” including the Mormons’ deep affection for the U.S.
Constitution. In addition, Young spoke of the uncertain times that lay ahead.
“The time would come,” Young told Kane, “when the Saints would support the
government of the U.S. or it would crumble to atoms.”17
A few hours later, Young preached to the assembled Saints on the immedi-
ate need for troops: “If there are not young men enough, we will take the old
men,” Young exaggerated, “and if there are not enough [men], we will take the
women.” After Young and the other Mormon preachers ended their exhorting,
Kane rose and briefly endorsed “all that the men of the camp had said.” His
poor health kept him from doing more.18 During the recruiting, a patriotic
American flag flew from the top of a tree mast.19
Kane had left Philadelphia wanting to like the Saints, and everything he
saw confirmed his hopes. The camp itself had “perfect order & good behavior.”
He praised their leaders to his parents as “a body of highly worthy men and
they give me their most unbroken & childlike confidence.” Kane was pleased
that he had been welcomed so heartily into the councils, as though he were
one of them: “I honestly believe that they would not disobey my advice in any
important matter unless it touched their creed.”20
He similarly liked the rank-and-file Latter-day Saints, who treated him with
friendly, simple-hearted grace. Kane learned not to accept their invitations to
eat with them because they gave him their best; later, he’d find his hostess
eating a dry crust of bread, “out of preference,” they would tell him.21 One
15. H
orace Whitney, journal, July 12, 1846, CHL.
16. Kane, Mormons, 87.
17. Willard Richards, journal, July 13, 1846.
18. Journal History, July 13, 1846.
19. Kane, Mormons, 29.
20. Kane to John K. Kane and Jane D. Kane, July 20–23, 1846, APS.
21. Kane to John K. Kane and Jane D. Kane, July 20–23, 1846.
20
the prOphet and the refOrmer
evening, Kane and Boyle strayed from a campsite and overheard a man pray-
ing in a nearby thicket. The event left a deep impression: “I am satisfied; your
people are solemnly and terribly in earnest,” he told Boyle after hearing the
prayer.22 To his family, he wrote, “For the sake of what we call impartiality, we
always like to find each party in the wrong and I have tried hard to do so. . . .
But the damndest Pilate in the world could not help saying I find no fault in
this people. . . . I love [them] more & more . . . and am determined to befriend them.” He thought he may have found “the mission of my life.”23
Kane’s first project in the camps was to help muster the troops. According
to Kane, he had arrived just in time. Colonel Allen was “fidgeting and dis-
couraged,” and on the verge of forsaking the enrollment because of Mormon
delays in furnishing the troops. Going from one Mormon camp to another
with such leading elders as Orson and Parley Pratt, George A. Smith, and
John Taylor, Kane assured the Saints of the government’s goodwill. In letters
home, he dramatically described his efforts, stating that he had put steel into
the spine of the Mormon elders and together they raised the troops. He called
the work a “personal triumph.”24
The reality was more modest. Before Kane arrived, Young had already
decided upon the battalion but hoped to raise the troops from the rear or
eastern camps. Yet Kane’s work spurred some recruiting success and the
Mormons succeeded in raising the required troops. The presence of the eager
young man flaunting his semi-official credentials was a sensation. He deliv-
ered one mustering speech still mounted on his horse and with five hundred
&
nbsp; Saints milling around.25 Horace K. Whitney wrote in his journal, “This young
man [Kane] appears to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to bring
about our salvation at the present time.”26
In Kane’s mind, his Mormon work was just beginning. Polk needed assur-
ances about the Mormons, and the Mormons needed more help from the fed-
eral government. Kane laid out his program in a lengthy letter to his father.
First, the Mormons were willing to build a string of federal “blockhouses”
or forts as they went west and hoped the government would pay them for
their work. Specifically, a fort would be necessary at Grand Island, the long
22. Boyle, “T
rue Friend,” 74.
23. Kane to John K. Kane and Jane D. Kane, July 20–23, 1846; Kane, Mormons, 27.
24. Kane to John K. Kane and Jane D. Kane, July 20–23, 1846, APS; also Kane to James K. Polk, July 21, 1846, Kane Collection, BYU.
25. Kane to John K. Kane and Jane D. Kane, July 20–23, 1846.
26. Horace K. Whitney, journal, July 12, 1846, CHL.
Young to Kane, August 2, 1846
21
island between the Wood and North Platte Rivers in Nebraska Territory where
church leaders hoped to establish a “winter quarters” for their migration.
Second, the Saints hoped to secure U.S. mail contracts, which would give
them much-needed money.27
The third item was potentially more challenging. The Saints had left Nauvoo
in February hoping to complete their journey to the far west in a single season,
but the trek across Iowa had been grueling and left the movement far behind
schedule. While Young held out hope that a small party might still reach the
Great Basin in 1846, he understood that the main camps would need to winter
along the trail. The most forward western groups might reach Grand Island
or even Fort Laramie in present-day Wyoming, but many were unlikely to get
farther than the bogged-down bivouacs of Iowa. The delay meant camping on
Pottawatomie lands already sold to the U.S. government. Unless Washington
gave its sanction, this would violate federal Indian policy.
During the first week of July the Mormons parleyed with eight American