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The Mormon War
It is now well understood that we are to have a Mormon War. The next thing to consider is, how shall it be conducted? Shall we successively send out against the Mormons, only such bodies of men as separately they can easily overcome? This were voluntarily to do at Utah, walled in by high mountains, and flanked around by wide deserts, that Nerxes was compelled to do at the pass of Thermopylae. Or shall we on the contrary, send a force sufficient to accomplish the work in a single campaign, and sweep at one blow the treason and the inquiries of Mormonism from the face of the earth?
That a vigorous and energetic policy is the true one, (says the Virginia Sentinel) we have no question. The Mormons have incited the Indian population to arms; and the whole vast expanse of our Western territories is to smoke with massacres. If we have to maintain an Indian war over this immense and distant area, and if the barbarous bands are to have at once a place of refuge and supply in the Mormon fastness, no one can estimate the sacrifice of blood and treasure which we must suffer. The only way to quell this savage uprising is to intimidate it by swift, sudden, and severe retribution. A reverse to us, in the beginning, however temporary or slight or unimportant in itself, would be a disaster in its effects, from which it might take us years to recover.
Energetic action is best for Mormons and Indians in combination as well as for each separately.
The Mormon war may thus be ended in a campaign and at no enormous expense. If it be not thus ended, it will harass us for long years; and the dream of some writer that it will cost us four hundred millions of dollars may prove a reality.
We understand that Californians now in Washington say, that a volunteer force, amply sufficient for the work, is ready to respond in California to the call of the government; and these men would go to Utah with a will, and finish the work in a season. We trust that their adventurous propensities and their real interest in the question will be profited by, - and that Congress and the administration will not by half way, compromising measures, make an enormous difficulty out of a serious one.