DIED. -- In Hartwick, on the 6th ult., Zeviah, wife of Capt. Jerome Clark, in the 67th year of her age. The deceased, in all the relations of a wife and mother, performed her duties well, and has gone to her final account with the most affectionate remembrances of her husband and children and the respect of all her acquaintances and friends. -- Com.


Note: Zeviah Lyon Clark, a cousin of Matilda Sabin Spalding, was born in 1783, probably in Connecticut, where she evidently married Jerome Clark in about 1805. Zeviah did not leave this world much before the demise of her husband. See the Journal of May 25, 1850 for Jerome Clark's death notice.

DIED. -- In Cherry Valley, on the 16th inst., Capt. JEROME CLARK, aged 95 years. Capt. Clark entered the service of his country at the breaking out of the Revolutionary War, and participated in some of the most sanguinary battles. He served under Gen. Putnam at the battle of Bunker Hill, helped demolish the statue of George the Third, in the city of New York, and participated in the battle of White Plains. After the close of the war, he returned to the peaceful occupations of civil life and was among the first settlers of this village. He afterwards removed to Cherry Valley, where he died. In 1841 there were but nine survivors of the Battle of Bunker Hill, of which Mr. Clark was one. He therefore was one of the last, if not the very last, of that Patriot band. He was born at Lebanon, Connecticut.


Note: Jerome Clark, the son of Benoni Clark and Ruth Carpenter Clark, was born Jan 14, 1755 in Lebanon, New London Co., Connecticut. He married Zeviah Lyon in about 1805, probably in Connecticut. Some records show him being previously married to Anna Waldo Ripley.

MORMONISM.

We make the following extracts from the speech of Mr. John Thompson of this state, delivered in the House of Representatives, Jan. 27.:

"Mormonism, as a religious system, had its origin in a romance, written about the year 1810 by Solomon Spalding, a native of Connecticut, who had been educated for the ministry, but followed a mercantile employment, removed to Cherry Valley, N. Y., where he amused his leisure hours by weaving a book entitled by him, "The MSS. Found," the notion entertained or suggested by some writers that the American Indians are the descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel. -- Hence, he starts them from Palestine, invents for them various fortunes by flood and field, wars, quarrels, turmoils, strifes, separations, until they people this continent, and leave behind them the vestiges of mounds, tumuli, fortifications, sculpture, and cities dilapidated, which are discovered in Northern and Central America. It is written somewhat in Scriptural style, and uses the machinery of the Jewish economy throughout. He read his manuscript to various persons, who yet remember it, but was not successful in procuring its publication. Somewhere, about the year 1823, this manuscript fell into the hands of Jo Smith, a native of Windsor County, Vt. Smith was about twenty years of age, and already exhibited that singular compound of genius and folly, of cunning and absurdity, of indolence and energy, of craft and earnestness, which distinguished him to the end of his career.

"Under the new-light preachers of that day, Smith became imbued with all the wild and extravagant notions of seeing sights, hearing voices, receiving revelations, meeting and fighting the devil in bodily form, which indicate a diseased imagination and want of all solid instruction and fixed principles on religious subjects. Enthusiasm ran mad through the whole region where he dwelt, and Smith was one of its most brilliant exemplifications, ultimately having a revelation that all existing systems of religion were wrong, and that he should be made the prophet of a new faith. For more than five years he vibrated between his caution and his enthusiasm, giving out occasionally dark hints about certain mysterious plates to be dug up by him, containing a new revelation. Part of his time was spent in lying, swindling and debauchery, and the remainder in visions and repentance -- the vulgar habits of the brute contending with the higher functions of the prophet. At length he pretended to dig out the plates from the side of a hill in Palmyra, Wayne County, N. Y., placed himself behind a curtain, permitting no one to enter, from which sanctum he translated from the plates the book of Mormon to an amanuensis, reading it all from Spalding's manuscript in his possession, one hundred and eighteen pages of it having been stolen by Martin Harris. -- With this new Koran our modern Mohammed started upon his career.

"On the 5th of May, 1829, John the Baptist came back to earth to baptize Smith; and on the 6th of April, 1830, the first church of Latter-Day Saints was organized at Manchester, New York, consisting of four Smith and two converts out of the family -- Pratt, Rigdon, Kimball, and Young joining afterward. The Bible, unlike that of the Christian or Mussulman, purports to be chiefly historical, and does not enunciate or enforce a system of moral and religious truth in a philosophic or didactic form; all its incidental lessons upon life or manners being derived from current doctrines of this day. It is consequently incapable of comparison with any other extant form of religious faith. One might as well compare the Christian religion with Fenelon's Telemachus, or one of Jame's novels.

"The history of this fanaticism is soon told. The church was organized in 1830. In August, 1831, they commenced a settlement at Independence, Jackson County, Missouri -- revealed to Smith as the site of the "New Jerusalem." Smith wavered long between this place and Kirtland, Ohio, where in '33, they commenced building their first temple, which was finished in 1836, at a cost of about $50,000. In '39 they relaid the foundations of their temple in Missouri. They left this region again for Nauvoo, in Illinois, where another temple was soon erected. Jo Smith's life and labors ended together in Carthage Jail, where, on the 27th of June, 1844, he was shot by a gang of Border Ruffians from Missouri.

"In '45 they turned their eyes westward -- to Vancouver's Island, to Texas, to California, and finally to a valley in the Rocky Mountains. In 1843 [sic - 1846?], as the young grass was peering from the sod and the buds were bursting into flowers, in the month of May, the exodus to Utah commenced.

"From that day Young has reigned supreme, and thousands and tens of thousands have flocked to his standard. The unsettled religious sentiment of the lower grades of mind gravitate to Salt Lake. It is the Botany Bay of the world! There it stands, rampant and defying -- a despotism consummate, wearing the show of popular approval, and bending willingly to the nod of a tyrant. -- There it stands -- it is before you in your path to the Pacific -- it will not [sway] at your bidding; a huge, ugly, stubborn fact, which no ignorance can disregard and no political fatuity despise.

"What will you do with it? Will you turn despot and saber 60,000 souls because they believe in Brigham Young and polygamy? -- Will you meet the fanaticism and folly and fraud by the fanaticism of extermination? -- Will you make the city a desert and the region a howling wilderness on the one hand; or, will you suffer this moral cancer, inflaming political treason, to grow on untouched until it becomes to vast to handle? Will you permit an independent and defiant despotism, organized in the very heart of this continent and embracing the vilest and most intractable elements of which a community can be composed, to compact and strengthen its defenses, to train its battalions, to call home its forces, and light a fire at your threshold which all the forces of the Republic cannot subdue?

"I know some think we should let them alone, and that the system must soon fall to pieces. But how long has Mohammedanism lasted? How much reliable is the fanaticism of to-day than that of ten centuries ago? What element of this structure gives signs of impotence or decay? What limb of this hale giant is already smitten with moral paralysis, and gives tokens that its energies are spent or even wearied? Sir, we have let them alone, and from a contemptible handful, they have grown into a nation! The citizens of Illinois and Missouri could eject them without aid; but now they stand behind a wall of ten thousand bayonets, and dare you to the encounter. The unorganized fanaticism of the world gravitates to Utah, and there it is molded into armies. Eight tenths at least of these elements are foreign, uneducated by and unaccustomed to our institutions, with no love for Democracy, and no reverence for national law; restless masses, impatient of restraint, and fraternizing only on the lust of license and the hope of power."

---

==> Mr. Bernheisel, delegate from Utah, has had several conferences with the President recently. He proposes that the troops be withdrawn and a Commission dispatched to the territory to arrange for the settlement of present difficulties. Mr. Bernheisel speaks in the name of the people of Utah, not pursuance to instructions from Brigham Young. The President turns a cold shoulder to his proposition.


Note 1: See the New York Hornellsville Tribune of Feb. 11, 1858 for a similar report on Representative Thompson's speech. The article is one of the very few known to have been printed in the Otsego County press, in which Solomon Spalding's ostensible connections to the Book of Mormon were outlined. Since this text was reprinted in a Cherry Valley paper, and since it makes mention of Spalding's early residence in Cherry Valley, it is surprising that the Gazette editor appended no local comments, nor subsequently published any follow-up items concerning Solomon Spalding at Cherry Valley. Certainly, as late as 1858, there must have yet been living a few old Otsego Co. pioneers who recalled Spalding's c. 1795-1809 stay in the area (at which time he served briefly as the Headmaster of the noted Cherry Valley Academy). Representative Thompson presents the intriguing nation -- that Spalding began his fictional writings on the subject of lost Israelite tribes, while living in Cherry Valley. However, the most that can be said about the local response to this assertion, is that there was no known refutation forthcoming from Otsego's old settlers.

Note 2: An earlier news report (probably first published in Otsego County, about the beginning of October, 1850) gave some interesting information that was soon after reprinted in the Boston New England Puritan: [At a public meeting lately held in Cherry Valley, Judge Campbell said:] ... "Rev. Solomon Spaulding, one of the earliest preceptors of the Academy of Cherry Valley, was the actual composer of most of what is known as the Mormon Bible. He wrote it during a period of delicate health to beguile some of his weary hours, and also with a design to offer it for publication as a romance. Dr. Robert Campbell, late of Cherry Valley, and foster father of the first Mrs. Grant, of the Nestorian mission, calling some years since upon Mr. Spaulding, had the manuscript of this notable book to be shown to him, and was also informed by Mr. Spaulding that he had hopes of reaping some pecuniary advantage from it for himself and family. Mr. Spaulding has been dead for some years, though it is believed that his wife is still living in the United States. How it passed from the possession of his family into the hands of Joe Smith it is probable that Mrs. Spaulding could tell."

THE MORMONS. -- The Council Bluffs Bugle of the 3d says: That Mr. Wingate has just arrived from Salt Lake January 25th, and reports that there is no snow in Salt Lake Valley and but little in the mountains. He came by a route known only to the Mormons -- through the mountains by which only horsemen in single file can pass. Mr. Wingate says that the Mormons are making small cannon and percussion locks and telescopic sights, which will carry a two pound ball with more certainty than a common rifles. They are also making 500 revolvers a week, and manufacturing a coarse kind of gunpowder for mining purposes. A skirmish had occurred between a party of Mormons and a picket guard of the army, in which two of the former were killed, and it is reported that four of the latter were slain. Mr. Wingate says that Brigham is willing the civil officers shall come into the Territory and enter upon their duties, but if the army attempts to enter the Valley they will be resisted. On the 24th of January Brigham Young preached to 9,000 people, all whom rose when Young told those in favor of giving the troops hell, to rise.

A letter from Capt. Marsh at Taos, January 24th, says that he was 57 days in making the trip from Fort Bridger. For 200 miles the party encountered snow from two to five feet. -- They made only 30 miles in ten days, and for eleven days lived on their starved mules. -- One man had perished on the way and many were badly frozen. Forty-four out of 66 mules which which he started, died.


Note: See the March 19, 1858 issue of the Missouri Libery Tribune for a similar, lengthier article based upon Wingate's report.

The  Mormons.

These fanatics are causing more actual disturbance to the peaceful relations, heretofore existing between the several portions of our citizens, than the agitation of even the "'exed" question of slavery. The Mormons have taken hold of Gen. Jackson's motto, with a vengeance -- "the largest liberty to the greatest number," being their cardinal creed, and believing firmly that their numbers not only consist of the visible church, but also of the heavenly host -- for Brigham says the God of Battles is with them -- they consider themselves entitled to any amount of liberty. Their liberty of speech is tolerably well exemplified in Gov. Young's celebrated sermon to his "whining women," while the unmuzzled condition of their powers of correspondence is abundantly set forth in their late memorial to the Congress of the United States. In this production of the Utah Legislature the Mormons say, if the army, in their midst, is there by authority, they should like to be informed of it. They say they will not submit to be ruled by a parcel of demagogues, and ask the Government to withdraw the troops, and give them fair play. "In spite of earth and hell," they declare that, they will maintain their religion. If they do not entertain a favorable opinion of the army, they beg blandly, to be excused. "If some of them had their deserts they would be pulling hemp by the neck, or occupying positions in prison." Some portions of this memorial, during its reading, caused great laughter, while many nervous gentlemen saw much of "hidden fire" beneath this Mormon warming pan.

These deluded mortals will fight like demons for their religion, and the best way to quell disturbances is, quietly if possible, but forcibly if needs be, to remove from their midst, the great disturbing cause, Brigham Young.


Notes: (forthcoming)

The  Press.

Mr. Greeley, in a recent letter, reported a conversation with Brigham Young. It furnishes an occasion for the Herald to talk rather harshly of Horace:

"Now it is singular how extremes meet. Horace Greeley the pot, calls Brigham Young, the kettle, black. The one, by his polygamy, degrades women below her sphere; and the other by his women's rights, degrades man and unsexes woman, throwing her out of her sphere and sending her among the clouds or to the moon. Greeley, pronouncing on YYoung and his Mormonism, is like a lunatic in one ward of an asylum pronouncing a different kind of lunatic in another ward mad. As for the Mormon chief, he has rather more method in his madness than the champion of women's rights. He has realized $259,000, which is above the capacity of Greeley. And to have fifteen wives together, some of them "old ladies," and to love and cherish them all, is not half so immoral or so injurious to society as to change wives fifteen times, the husband getting rid of each in succession, on the ground that she has no affinty for him, and seeking out some new flame more congenial to his desires. -- Brigham Young holds that "no man should ever put away his wife except for adultery." Horace Greeley holds that he should put her away if she did not, after due trial, happen to be his affinity." But when we add that, according to the Women's Rights and Free Love system, a woman may have fifty husbands in succession, all being still alive -- that, in fact, as one of the strong minded ladies declared, she has a right to choose whatever man she pleases to be the father of each of her children -- the reader will agree with us that polygamy is an honest and moral system. compared with this bestial concubinage."


Notes: (forthcoming)