BIBLE OWNED BY INSTIGATOR OF THE 1857 UTAH WAR BETWEEN MORMON SETTLERS AND THE US GOVERNMENT

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: Translated Out of the Original Tongues. New York: E. and J. White for the American Bible Society, 1819.

Large 8vo , 5 1/2 x 8 3/4 in. Tooled speckled calf gilt. Rebacked, original speckled calf boards gilt, original gilt-lettered calf spine laid down. Modern silk moire endpapers. 

6 pages of Family Records (both printed and manuscript) before the New Testament, 2 pages (exclusively manuscript) on rear free endpapers. Fascinatingly, portions of the Family Record material have been printed, a flourish only the relatively affluent would indulge, consistent with the fine speckled calf binding.

An important piece of Utah history closely related to the Utah War and westward expansion. The family bible of William M.F. Magraw and his wife Elizabeth Side's family. The very first entry to the "Family Record" is their marriage in 1843.

William M. F. Magraw (1827-1864), originally from Maryland, was an aggressive and, as it turns out, vindictive businessman whose commercial interests and anti-Mormon activism precipitated the Utah War (May 1857 - July 1858).

Seeking business opportunities in the West, Magraw won the bid for the Post Office mail contract to deliver mail from Independence, Missouri, to Salt Lake City for an annual salary of $14,400. John M. Hockaday joined him as a silent partner, and together, they immediately convinced Congress to raise their compensation to $30,000 annually. Magraw rode into Salt Lake City on 31 July 1854.

Tensions were high between Magraw-Hockaday and the Utahns almost immediately. The citizens accused Magraw of slow deliveries and ignoring or mishandling the "Indian incursions" on the postal route. Mail service was a high priority for Mormons, and indeed all settlers in the western frontier, who were eager to be connected to family still living in the East. In June 1856, Salt Lakers gathered at a public assembly to issue a formal complaint about Magraw's administration of the mail. Congress, eager to avoid additional conflicts on the frontier, especially with rising tensions over the expansion of slavery in Kansas and Missouri, canceled Magraw's contract and paid him for his losses.

Albert Carrington, editor of the Deseret News, penned a glib farewell to Magraw underlining the boiling resentment of Utahns, in part “that the large amount of government funds, paid to him, for getting in the way of those who would have [the job]...may prove as little of a gratification and benefit to him as his mail-course has been to us.” 

The angry and frustrated Magraw submitted another bid and anxiously awaited the outcome. President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Utah Territorial Governor Brigham Young (1801-1877), however, was eager for the contract and engaged fellow Mormon Hiram S. Kimball to submit a low bid of $23,000 — half of Magraw’s new proposal. The Post Office Department awarded the contract to Kimball in early October.

Enraged at being outmaneuvered, Magraw became obsessed with revenge against the Latter-day Saints. He wrote to President Franklin Pierce on 3 October 1856 about “the Mormon country,” arguing that Utah Territory had “no vestige of law and order” and that the “so-styled ecclesiastical organization” was “despotic, dangerous and damnable.” This letter was followed up three days later with one by John Hockaday’s brother, Isaac, complaining to Pierce that “the entire Territory of Utah is under the complete control of a most lawless set of knaves and assassins who trample under foot the rights of those not belonging to their so-called religious community.”

The letters amplified the antagonistic anti-Mormon sentiments, especially concerning plural marriage, of the time. That same year, the Republican Party had adopted a presidential platform plank calling for the eradication in the territories of “those twin relics of barbarism—Polygamy, and Slavery.”

War was becoming ever more likely, and Magraw would ensure he was a part of bringing it to Utah. This was accelerated when James Buchanan, a friend of the Magraw family, was elected President of the United States in 1856. He made his way to the White House on a train furnished by William's brother, Robert Magraw (1811-1866), the president of the Baltimore, Carrol, and Frederick Rail Road.

On 6 January 1857, Utah legislators approved provocative written memorials to be delivered to Washington, D.C., arguing for the rejection of federal officials who did not reflect local values. As historian Brent M. Rogers has argued, “The question of sovereignty—or determining who possessed and could exercise governing, legal, social, and even cultural power—is at the crux of Utah Territory’s history.”

The memorials arrived in Washington on 17 March, the same day the New York Herald called for “immediate and decisive action” on Utah and Kansas. Two days later, Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson called the memorials “a declaration of war.” By April, John M. Bernhisel, Utah’s territorial delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives, had written to Governor Brigham Young that “the clouds are dark and lowering...that the Government intended to put [polygamy] down,” and that federal troops might be sent to overturn the perceived rebellion.

On 21 April, The Washington National Intelligencer printed a lengthy diatribe almost certainly written by Magraw under the pseudonym "Verastus" that called for a federal force of 5,000 troops to deal with Young and the Mormons. Under his pseudonym, Magraw was described as “a respectable citizen, who lately spent twelve months in the Salt Lake Valley, engaged in business connected with the transit of the mails throughout the territory.”

Two days later, President Buchanan appointed Magraw superintendent of the newly approved Pacific Wagon Road from Fort Kearny to South Pass to Honey Lake; thus, Magraw would triumphantly return to Utah Territory. At the end of the month, Robert Tyler (1816-1877), one of Buchanan’s closest advisers and the son of President John Tyler, recommended a plan to help the nation “forget Kansas” and to replace “Negro-Mania” with “the almost universal excitements of an Anti-Mormon Crusade.”

In May, while Congress was adjourned, Buchanan ordered 2,500 U.S. soldiers to escort and install a new territorial governor of Utah and the newly appointed chief justice of Utah’s territorial Supreme Court, Delana R. Eckels. To aid the army, but without authorization, the bitter and drunken Magraw loaned $15,000 worth of wagons, mules, and employees to the new Utah Expedition. He gladly funded the military that would be set against "Mormonism." The fires had been lit. Just after the president sent Magraw-funded U.S. troops to Utah Territory, the Post Office Department annulled the mail contract on 10 June. Senator Stephen A. Douglas argued
on 12 June that “when the authentic evidence shall arrive,” Congress would see fit to “apply the knife and cut out this loathsome and disgusting ulcer.” Thus began the Utah War.

As the final insult to Utah, after months of campaigning during the Utah War, Magraw’s former partner, John Hockaday, secured the lucrative mail contract, now worth $190,000.

[Western Americana, Western History, Western Expansion, Wild West] [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Mormons, Mormon History, Church History, Utah War, Utah Expedition, Utah Campaign, Buchanan's Blunder, Mormon War, Mormon Rebellion]

Short tear and some dampstaining to later pages. 

Recent professional rebacking with original binding components laid down.