Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1859 — The Mormon System. [ARTICLE]

The Mormon System. -----

<Peon Slavery—How the People are Held.> ----- An army correspondent of the Philadelphia <Inquirer>, writing from Salt Lake on the 20th ult., thus discloses some of the abominations of Mormondom: “It is estimated that five thousand souls design returning East this summer; twice this number wish to do so, but their indebtedness to 'the Church' prevents them. It is truly astonishing how completely has this scheme of swindle been practiced. Thousands of poor, unsuspecting people in the States, and from all parts of Europe, have been visited by Mormon missionaries, and preached into the ‘faith,’ and induced to emigrate to this distant valley called ‘Zion,’ under promises that good lands, free to all, awaited their arrival; hence, they at once accepted the proffer of the Church Emigration Society, and are brought here at Church expense, amounting to about $l20 per head for those from the States, and about $260 per head for those from England, Scotland and Wales. By this process the man with a wife and three children finds himself landed in Utah without clothes or money or provisions, and with a debt hanging over him of five or six hundred dollars to the Church. He draws on the Church fund at tithing granaries for his daily bread the first year, and in time finds himself so invalued that he and his family become <peons> (slaves) for an indefinite period; many, however, by extraordinary exertions, free themselves from this debt and collect together a yoke of oxen and a small wagon, with a supply of provisions, and make a start back for the East. They are permitted in many cases to go back, and in a day or two are followed by the 'Danites,' by order of the Church (generally issued through the 'Bishop of the stake’) or what we can best understand by ‘local preachers,’ and their oxen and wagons are taken from them on the highway, and turned over to the Church.

“This system of preventing apostates from leaving this valley has been carried on to an extreme of persecution for years past that baffles one’s ideas of humanity, and was vet followed by absolute murder, when the deprivation of the outfit proved insufficient to stop the returning apostate—the Parish murder is a case in question and serves to illustrate many others of a like nature. The dreadful ‘Mountain Meadows Massacre’ is one of the same kind, for, although not apostates trying to leave, they were emigrants passing through, and were appealed to by all of the Bishops, (including Brigham Young himself,) to stop and settle in the Valley of Utah; this they peremptorily refused to do, and moved on, and one Elder taunted them with the remark, ‘Well, if you will persist in going further and doing worse, you can go on; but mark my words,’ said he, ‘you will never reach California.’ Results show how true were Brigham’s remarks. sixteen orphan children are all that are left of that company.”