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Comprehensive History v6 (B. Roberts)

B. H. Roberts

Copyright 1930 Deseret News Press

This volume covers the period from 1880 to 1930-fifty years. It treats the administration of four of the presidents of the church, and the administration of President Heber J. Grant-the fifth of the period-up to the sixth of April, 1930. In it is considered the great but unequal struggle of the main body of the Church of the Latter-day Saints, the saints in Utah, for the maintenance of the measure of local self-government under the organic act creating the territory; and seeking also to maintain religious freedom, the belief in and the practice of their religion; and meantime making a number of successive but futile efforts to secure statehood for Utah, which would have solved most of their community problems. It was a brave resistance to wrong they made. It was a resolute and courageous fight they persisted in for statehood. There was special and iniquitous and unconstitutional legislation enacted against the saints of Utah and in other territories in this period, under the whip and spur of excited and misinformed and deeply prejudiced public opinion. Proof for the statement here made is to be found in the fact that the supreme court of the United States declared much of this legislation and the procedure of the territorial federal courts under it, unconstitutional. There were tyrannies practiced under the guise of the administration of law, judicial crusades creating community terror; there were court-made laws by arrogant judges with self-appointed missions; the governors wielded absolute veto power over the enactments of the legislatures elected by the people, as shameful in effect as ever disgraced the British administration in the English colonies of America before the Revolution. There was a constant itching for, and sometimes the unwarranted use of, military power instead of civil authority; and the menace through many years of the abolishment of even the territorial government for a commission form of government. Excessive bail was demanded for merely alleged misdemeanors under the law; legal wives, contrary to law, were forced to testify against their husbands. There were illegal imprisonments; enforced exiles, even martyrdoms growing out of this reign of injustice and oppression in the later years of territorial existence. This period of Volume VI had its martyrs as well as previous periods of our century of history. It seems strange, does it not, to draw up an indictment such as this against judicial and administrative procedure in the Republic of the United States of America? And yet the facts of the foregoing statement, but feebly and inadequately given here, are abundantly proven in the text and citations of authorities of this volume.

Notwithstanding this disturbed period of plot and counterplot, however, and the conflict waged, I venture to name this volume Consolidation. And such was what the troubled period which it deals led to finally-Consolidation. Out of the fiery conflict waged came such settlement of questions as made clear the lines upon which procedure for the church was practical, by which is meant possible, under conditions as they existed. And hence adjustments were made, demands upon the church conceded to, so that statehood was won, deliverance from oppression obtained; the relations of church and state were slowly but surely defined and established; the cause of friction was removed; the mission and sphere of the church clarified; and everything was shaken down to a practical working basis-Consolidation; so that now there is on every side freedom of action for the church in the promulgation of her high mission of conquering the world for truth and for righteousness; and this without let or hindrance. She may now teach her truth, and perfect the lives of those who receive it, and thus prepare a kingdom of righteousness-both a place and a people-for the coming Lord in glory, which is the mission of the church, and the whole of it, and the glory of it.