13 Newspaper War

During the fall of 1869, when everyone was talking about the New Movement and the reformers still hoped to take over the leadership of the Mormon church, the Utah Magazine announced that it would become a weekly newspaper. It was hoped that a newspaper would reach a wider audience and popularize the forthcoming reform. Harrison and Godbe promised their readers that the new periodical would continue the Utah Magazine’s goal of “advocating freedom of speech and mental liberty.” In addition, the newspaper, named the Mormon Tribune, would champion the “highest facts of science,” the “noblest truths of religion,” and the “widest sentiments of charity.” This paper would demonstrate that the Mormon community was willing to “look any truth in the face, whether it may have belonged to our original belief or not.”1

Thus began another Godbeite legacy—an impassioned and sometimes colorful newspaper war. The legacy had begun with the writing of Tullidge and Harrison in the Millennial Star and had continued with the Peep O’Day and the Utah Magazine. Next came the weekly Mormon Tribune, which in turn had its own offspring, including the ably managed and written daily newspaper the Salt Lake Tribune. Nineteenth-century Mormonism would have few foes more determined than the Salt Lake Tribune. Rising to the challenge of the New Movement press were newspaper opponents from across the spectrum of Utah society. One of these was the short-lived but popular Keep-A-Pitchinin, Utah’s first illustrated humor periodical. The Keep-A-Pitchinin may have been flippant and superficial and at times trivial, but it charted Godbeite fortunes and contributed to their decline.

In introducing the Mormon Tribune, the Godbeites showed their usual idealism—and presumption. The title, which showed the New Movement members’ care with words, said everything: the newspaper was to be a tribune of the people, defending their interests and protecting them.2 To fulfill these promises, the newspaper called on the best of Godbeite talent—many of whom had already worked for the Utah Magazine. Harrison and Godbe were officially the newspaper’s proprietors, though the latter, showing his faith by his funds, was the actual patron. Harrison and Tullidge served as editors, Kelsey as advertising and business manager, and Daniel Camomile as canvassing agent. These men were later joined by Shearman and Perris. The project was delayed by a shortage of paper, but finally, during the night of 1 January 1870, the newspaper began its first run.3 The anxious and historically minded Godbeites wanted the first issue to bear the date of the first day of the new year, even though the newspaper did not appear on the streets until the next day. Such things were important when proclaiming a new era.

The newspaper reflected the Godbeites’ usual high standards. Even Brigham Young conceded that “it was a good sized sheet of 8 pages,” though he fumed over the paper’s obvious alliance with old church enemies.4 The early issues extolled the events and program of the religious reform—explaining, persuading, debating. The obvious hope was to provide another forum, besides the Church of Zion’s public meetings, to educate Utah’s public. As such, the paper bore the stamp of the New Movement: it was literate, high-toned, and principled. It could also be wordy—and at times tedious. Some editions rolled off the press with little actual news to report; its columns were instead devoted to theological and philosophical questions.

One of the reasons for the new format must have been financial. The Utah Magazine had consistently lost money. Hoping to reverse this trend, Godbe and Harrison believed that a newspaper could contain more advertising and thereby defray costs and perhaps produce a profit. The resulting advertisements that the Tribune secured showed the Godbeites’ new orientation. Most notices came from the community’s non-Mormon and anti-Mormon merchants, who bought advertising in part to subsidize an opposition press.

Godbe wanted the Tribune to be first class. At considerable expense, he established on Main Street a modern newspaper plant, which was described as “metropolitan” in “arrangement, size, and comfort.” In fact, no newspaper outside the “great cities of the country” could equal it, its proprietors boasted. With the new facility came a vow: “We shall increase until the Tribune shall become the most popular, influential and widely-circulated newspaper of the mid-continent.”5

In April 1871 the newspaper itself was completely reworked. The Mormon Tribune became a daily newspaper and, abandoning its Godbeite origins, it secured a new name, a new focus, and a new editorial management. The Salt Lake Daily Tribune and Utah Mining Gazette promised to be a “purely secular” journal, devoted to the commercial and mineral interests of the territory. This meant breaking down the old Mormon and non-Mormon trade barriers, opening up the territory to the outside world of commerce, and covering the news of Utah’s mushrooming mining camps. On political and social questions, the newspaper promised to uphold the national government and oppose the Mormon church’s alleged “interference” in civil and legislative matters. Further, it wanted a “free ballot,” which meant putting an end to the current system of numbering and registering ballots. Miners, in particular, complained that Mormon authorities used this device to limit their voting.6

To effect these changes and put the newspaper on an expert footing, Godbe summoned Oscar G. Sawyer from New York City to act as editor. Sawyer had had ten years’ experience with the New York Herald, having served as a European and Civil War correspondent and apparently as a staff writer and editor at the home office as well. Stenhouse, who advised Godbe on the Tribune’s retooling, had recommended Sawyer. If the Tribune were to succeed, it was thought that the amateur Godbeite editors had to be replaced with professionals.7 To this point, the Tribune was as unprofitable as the old Utah Magazine.

Harrison left his post as chief editor with grace. His valedictory cited three years of “arduous editorial toil” and the need for a rest.8 Perhaps some of this was true: the past months must have taken their toll on the high-strung Harrison. Godbe eased his friend’s pain at being removed by giving Harrison one thousand shares of stock in the transformed newspaper.9 Moreover, a weekly Tribune was to be retained under Shearman’s separate editorship. For this second publication, it was expected that Harrison and other Godbeite leaders would occasionally write New Movement editorials that would accompany a reprinting of some of the daily Tribune’s news.

At first, Sawyer styled the Tribune as a peacemaker. He promised that the newspaper would no longer make the usual “Mormon” and “Gentile” distinctions. Instead, he promised that the newspaper’s goal lay in ending partisanship, encouraging charitable feeling, and promoting “better acquaintance.” In short, the daily Tribune aspired to be a Salt Lake City newspaper in every sense of the word—for Mormons, non-Mormons, and even anti-Mormons.10

That resolve quickly vanished. Within days of becoming editor, Sawyer began to attack the Mormon establishment. One frequent victim was his rival, the Deseret Evening News. The writers of the church organ News were “splendid antiquarians,” went one passage. They told readers about Abraham, Jacob, and Noah, but nothing of Lincoln, Grant, or the United States. “Would it not be well for them to enter upon a study of modern history, beginning with the Christian Era?”11 Another object of criticism, of course, was President Young, who was described as Utah’s money-grubbing “Boss Tweed.” When the construction of a church-owned railroad spur to Provo was announced, the Tribune had faint praise for the Mormon leader: “That’s better business than ‘loafing round the throne’ or preaching inflammatory sermons against the gentiles and the Government.” Other Sawyer sallies were aimed at Young’s commercial boycott, ZCMI, the People’s Party, Utah’s “fanatical population,” and the Mormon political and religious theocracy, which was described as “bigoted and unrepublican.” When the 1871 election was over and the votes were counted, the Tribune tried to explain the Liberal Party catastrophe: “We doubt not [that] mules and cattle voted,” it said caustically.12

The Tribune had equally strong words for the Corinne reconstructionists, who had split the party in July at the Liberal Institute. These men were “brawling demagogues,” with no “higher object in view than the elevation of themselves.”13 In hurling these charges, Sawyer and the other editorial writers of the newspaper suspected what later proved true. Toohy’s unyielding attacks on the New Movement reformers were attempts not just to drive the Godbeites out of the Liberal Party, but to weaken the Tribune—Toohy wanted to transfer his own newspaper to the Utah capital. With Corinne’s fortunes clearly in decline, Toohy was looking for a new field of action, and he hoped to position himself and his newspaper as the champion of the most extreme gentile demands.14

Sawyer’s position was difficult. He was open to attack on the left by radicals like Toohy. On the right were the more conservative Godbeites and the property-owning Gentile merchants, who nervously wanted to avoid social and political disorder, in part because of their business holdings. Beset on both sides, the Tribune behaved erratically, sometimes embracing the position of one Liberal Party faction only later to shift to another.

There was one constant: Sawyer endorsed the acts of James B. McKean, a Republican stalwart who had been recently appointed as Utah’s chief justice. McKean came west hoping to enact many of the provisions of the Cullom Bill by judicial ruling and, in the process, to force an end to the Mormon commonwealth. To achieve his ends, soon after arriving in the territory McKean worked out a public relations alliance with Sawyer, now the most powerful gentile journalist in the territory. In exchange for favorable publicity, McKean began secretly to feed his new ally material supporting his judicial actions. Some charged that McKean actually ghostwrote editorials; others said he merely provided “background briefings.” Tullidge believed that McKean even leaked confidential grand jury information to the Tribune editor.15

Some of the Godbeites, aware of McKean’s misconduct, were willing to look beyond it. Whatever his excesses, McKean was viewed as “a good man at heart,” which meant that his ends covered the impropriety of his means. However, Harrison was less forgiving—particularly of Sawyer, who used McKean’s material. Both Sawyer’s “Bohemian” ways and his biting anti-Mormon editorials grated on Harrison, and the Mormon reformer began to respond to Sawyer’s conduct in the Weekly Tribune. Sawyer tried to explain the deepening and embarrassing rift between the two Salt Lake City newspapers, each bearing the same name. The Weekly Tribune was a religious publication, while the daily Tribune was “free, independent, [and] secular,” said Sawyer. His newspaper was not Godbeite, but served the interests of the whole territory.16

Events climaxed in November. The heavily vexed Harrison, who was still a principal shareholder in the publishing corporation, demanded a meeting of the Tribune’s board of directors. Condemning the lack of scruples that allowed Sawyer to accept McKean’s anonymous writing, Harrison also criticized the daily’s stream of abuse. The newspaper, he said, was never meant to be an enemy to the Mormon people. Harrison’s censure apparently was passionate, determined, and ultimately successful. As others in the room joined his criticism, Sawyer finally realized that he must resign.17

When announcing his resignation to readers, Sawyer cited “journalistic incompatibility.” He said nothing about the McKean embarrassment, which remained a private chagrin among insiders. With Sawyer gone, the newspaper published a series of formal resolutions that the directors claimed would be the newspaper’s new policy. In the future “the Mormon question” would be discussed only with “moderation and kindness,” it was promised. Moreover, the newspaper would avoid partisanship. Its voice would be “Free, Liberal, [and] Independent,” devoted to the interests of the “entire people of Utah.”18 Harrison’s victory seemed complete.

The directors’ promises, however, proved difficult to keep. The new, bland editorial policy appealed to neither Mormons nor Liberals. Without a natural constituency or readership, the newspaper continued to bleed cash—perhaps as much as two to three hundred dollars weekly.19 Unable to shoulder the burden any longer, Godbe, who had not attended the board meeting that fired Sawyer, broadened the newspaper’s ownership. In August 1871 he transferred one thousand shares of his stock to Lawrence, probably to repay his friend’s past subsidies to the newspaper. About the same time, the Tribune corporation raised cash by issuing six thousand new shares to a half-dozen additional investors. Six months later the corporation apparently diluted the stock still further.20 By early 1872, the transfer of ownership was complete. The newspaper informed its readers that neither Godbe nor Harrison controlled its editorial policy—or for that matter, the publishing corporation. Instead, the Tribune was a large stock company, owned by “leading businessmen” who wanted the paper to be independent of party interests.21

But still the newspaper did not prosper. During 1871 and much of the following year, Godbeites Crouch, Tullidge, and Perris played leading roles at the newspaper, with “Mr. Slocum,” a prominent California spiritualist, lending support. But the men were unable to give the paper a consistent editorial policy. “It was an ‘opera bouffe’ affair,” said a critic harshly. “To-day it would be spiritualistic, tomorrow violently anti-Mormon, the next day, perhaps, running foul of christian orthodoxy. . . . It was everything by turns and nothing long.”22

And expenses continued to mount. After two and a half years of heavy losses, the Tribune owners transferred the paper to Kansas newspapermen George F. Prescott, A. M. Hamilton, and Frederick Lockley, formerly of the Leavenworth Commercial, with the following agreement: the new owners pledged to maintain a “moderate” journalistic tone and to make no new financial demands on the paper’s old shareholders.23 It was a fire sale bargain. The Kansas group secured the newspaper by assuming whatever liability lay in continuing its operation. The newspaper’s old owners, at all costs, did not want the embarrassment of seeing the Tribune go under.

The new owners pared expenses and dropped nonpaying subscribers and advertisers. Responding to the new owners’ energy, the old cadre of Tribune supporters reemerged to help. Chislett, “a fluent and easy writer,” contributed articles. Godbe also gave suggestions, while Stenhouse was “unstinted” in his help. Others were free with advice: Liberal reconstructionists and miners bluntly told Lockley that they didn’t want a nonpartisan journal. Put off by the alleged “arrogance and assumption of the Mormon priesthood,” they wanted a “fearless and outspoken organ.”24

These pleas had their effect. When first taking over the newspaper, Lockley pledged the reconstituted Tribune would be a family newspaper. Even the “most sensitive and delicate” readers would feel perfectly comfortable in receiving future copies, he had said.25 Within several weeks, however, Lockley reversed course and was publishing a “pitch-in” paper that exceeded even Sawyer’s malignity. The Tribune’s columns, while “bright” and “newsy,” were “virulent” and often “brutal,” wrote Mormon historian Orson F. Whitney in his turn-of-the-century History of Utah. “Everything that the Mormons held sacred was derided, burlesqued and defamed.” Mormon women were called “mistresses, procuresses, ‘old hens,’ ‘conks,’ or concubines.” When challenged about the tone of his opposition, Lockley reportedly explained that “decent language would not do justice to the subject they assailed.”26 More likely Lockley was in the business of selling newspapers.

While uncomfortable with many of Lockley’s flourishes, many Godbeites understood that the man had probably “saved” the newspaper—and had rescued them from having one of their movement’s most tangible “successes” become an item of public ridicule. But the scrupulous Harrison could not so easily swallow his sense of fair play. In a turbulent scene, he confronted Lockley in the Tribune office. Harrison’s “eyes glared, he gesticulated wildly, and gave my desk a blow with his clenched fist, that set its contents dancing,” Lockley remembered. He later complained to Lawrence of Harrison’s behavior, but Lawrence passed the matter off lightly. Harrison meant well, Lawrence assured, though he was not always able to control himself.27

Lawrence’s weak defense of his friend was symptomatic. Unlike the earlier episode when Harrison had forced Sawyer’s resignation, this time Harrison would not have his way. “Realism” now reigned: the principled cofounder of Godbeitism was firmly told not to bother Lockley further and to stay away from the Tribune office.28

For a while Harrison fought a rearguard action. When the Tribune had been handed over to Lockley and his Kansas associates, Harrison had been allowed to continue to publish the Weekly Tribune, now rechristened the Leader. As before, it was expected that the new periodical would reprint the most important news columns of the Tribune, while at the same time providing scholarly and spiritualistic editorials, thus preserving the flavor of Godbeite journalism that had begun with the Peep O’Day and the Utah Magazine.

One of the first editorials explained the new name of the new enterprise. The name “Leader,” Harrison wrote, was taken from a classical English journal that had the reputation of courteous discussion of prominent political, social, and reform issues. This approach Harrison hoped to emulate. “The solidity of argument[,] the fairness of spirit, the ability of style manifested in that paper years ago, . . . make us desire to establish one like it.”29

Harrison was once more doing what he clearly enjoyed—writing. He had not contributed to the weekly or daily Tribune for over a year. During that time he may have tried to establish a magazine of his own. Whatever the nature of this earlier effort—only a brief reference remains of its possible title, the Western Star—Harrison hoped to make the Leader the finest “weekly in the West.”30

He faced the usual difficulty of securing an audience among Utah’s frontier, leisure-and-resource-meager citizens. There was the additional challenge of including in his publication Lockley’s strongly worded copy. After two months of publication, Harrison acknowledged his newspaper’s split personality: its editorials, he told readers, said one thing, and its columns another. Two weeks later, Harrison further dissociated himself from Lockley. “Within the past few months, the management of the Daily Tribune, as a financial experiment had been placed in the hands of the present managers,” he wrote with disdain. But the Kansas managers had violated their agreement to write in “consonance” with the views of the old board of directors, of which he was a part. Whatever the attitude of the other directors, Harrison wanted the public to know that Lockley’s writing did not have his endorsement.31

The statement infuriated Lockley. Privately the Tribune editor spoke of Harrison’s lack of energy; Harrison could not even “rustle for his own living.”32 The reference undoubtedly was to Godbe’s willingness to support his friend’s various publishing enterprises—and to Harrison’s willingness to accept such largess. Lockley’s public statements about Harrison were as scathing. In a rejoinder to Harrison’s most recent editorial, Lockley wrote a Tribune column that called Harrison an ineffectual busybody and compared him to the proverbial gnat who, resting on a bull’s horn, offered to fly away if his presence was tiring. “I did not know you were there,” the newspaper had Taurus responding.33

Harrison shot back. He accused the Kansas journalists of taking the Tribune’s former “dignified, manly and conscientious opposition to political Mormonism” and of making it a platform for “low, scurrilous abuse . . . [against] any and every prominent individual in the Mormon Church.”34 This, however, was a war that Harrison had no chance of winning. Events had passed him by. The Gentile and Godbeite backers of the two newspapers, wearied by their losses and not unopposed to Lockley’s forceful and more profitable style, no longer had a use for Harrison. He was told to close up shop.

Once more he retired with dignity. In his farewell editorial, he insisted that for the most part the Leader had been on the “increase” and seemed to have a promising future. However, because of his dispute with Lockley and his “radical disagreement” with current Tribune policy, he had been denied access to the Tribune’s presses, and the Leader could no longer be printed. Then, in closing, Harrison summoned several old Godbeite images. The Leader had sought the “peaceful harmonization of affairs in Utah” and “untrammeled thought.” Harrison predicted that “scores of powerful agencies” would come forward to continue this reform agenda. An “army of free thinkers”—those who had “already changed the face of affairs in Utah”—would continue to expand their ranks and influence.35 At least that was Harrison’s hope.

This, of course, was stouthearted talk in the face of overwhelming personal defeat. As from the beginning, Harrison had in his arsenal chiefly words. Now they seemed suddenly frail—the expression of a man whose talent and views no longer seemed important. To make the point even more certainly, Godbe made Harrison’s valedictory possible by paying the Tribune to print the Leader’s final issue and by persuading the reluctant Lockley to do so.

*     *     *

Godbeite opponents met the succession of New Movement magazines and newspapers with their own press. For a half-dozen years before the outbreak of Godbeitism, the Mormons had defended themselves and circulated the news with two very different kind of newspapers. The Deseret Evening News was the church’s sober-minded publication. It printed sermons, presented Latter-day Saint news and views, and incidentally spoke of the world at large. Somnolent and heavy, it was not suited to challenge the debate-eager Godbeite reformers. This task was made more difficult by President Young’s policy of letting New Movement activities pass without comment.

Normally, Stenhouse’s secular but church-committed Telegraph would have defended the Saints’ interests during the dispute. But Stenhouse’s personal failings and Young’s apparent growing discontent with them had seriously undermined the Telegraph. Stenhouse’s indecision before the School of the Prophets was the final wound. Two months later, during the first week of 1870, the newspaper finally ended its publication.

During the summer of 1870, the Telegraph was reborn as the Salt Lake Herald. It had a new owner and editor, but its personality was very much in the image of its predecessor. It remained a sister publication to the Deseret Evening News, supporting the local community and printing the secular news. None of these LDS newspapers—the Deseret Evening News, the Telegraph, or the Herald—gave much attention to the New Movement, either through policy or because of their publication calendar: the Telegraph had suspended publication prior to the founding of the Church of Zion and the Liberal Party, while the Herald had not yet begun.

There was, however, an LDS publication on the scene to challenge Godbeitism. Salt Lake City’s short-lived humor magazine, the Keep-A-Pitchinin (pronounced “keep a pitchin’ in”) was the unlikely vehicle seeking to fill this gap. Its chief editor, “Uno Hoo” (his editorial assistants were “Ubet Urlife” and “B.I.Z. Ness”), explained the paper’s origin. “Everything was dull, dark and torpid,” Uno Hoo wrote. “The world needed waking up.”36 In truth, the periodical and its goal of the “arousing of humanity” owed a great deal to the New Movement. The Keep-A-Pitchinin had started as early as 1867 as an occasional advertising broadside, but only in the first months of 1870 after the Godbeite movement began did the publication become a regular bimonthly. At this point, Godbeite leaders and events became regular victims of the paper’s satire.

Although started and run by individual Utahns, the periodical had semiofficial sanction. The News recommended it. The church-owned press printed it. And men closely associated with church leaders wrote for it.37 It is even possible that LDS authorities provided financial aid. Although the periodical floundered before the Godbeite revolt and failed after it, during the first months of 1870 when the dissenters were proclaiming their revolt, the Keep-A-Pitchinin enjoyed a surprising stability, given its limited advertising.

The identities of “Uno Hoo” and most of his editorial assistants were not hard to determine. The Keep-A-Pitchinin’s editor and publisher was George J. Taylor, eldest son and sometime business manager of John Taylor, apostle and later LDS president. George Taylor had impressive LDS credentials. He had been baptized by Joseph Smith and later served as a member of the Salt Lake Stake High Council, as a University of Deseret regent and instructor, as a Salt Lake City councilman, as editorial writer for the Deseret News, and as county coroner. In addition, George Taylor was an illustrator, art instructor, and music composer, and he had been a member of Utah’s first debating club—along with a youthful William Godbe. As a bachelor, George Taylor was a timid man who avoided marriage—a Mormon anomaly. But timidity did not subdue his humor.38

The rest of the Keep-A-Pitchinin staff members were cut from the same cloth. Their pseudonyms—“Marrowfat,” “Resurgam,” “Viator,” and “Saxey”—were as colorful as Taylor’s “Uno Hoo.” Charles Savage and George M. Ottinger, who provided cartoons and articles, were partners in a photography business. Savage, a native of Great Britain, had been converted to Mormonism by Stenhouse, and the two men had later served together in the ministry. Savage later received national attention as territorial Utah’s premier photographer. Ottinger had joined Mormonism after spending several years on the sea, and although he served as the Salt Lake superintendent of waterworks and as the fire department chief, his consuming ambition was to succeed as a painter of fine art.39

Equally talented were Joseph C. Rich and Heber J. Richards, sons of Elders Charles C. Rich and Willard Richards, members of the Quorum of Twelve. In his lifetime, Joseph Rich served as a surveyor, missionary, journalist, telegraph operator, merchant, lawyer, judge, and politician. Before contributing to the Keep-A-Pitchinin, he had proven his mettle as a humorist by creating, in his words, that “wonderful first class lie—‘The Bear Lake Monster,’” Utah’s transplant from Loch Ness. Richards was one of the territory’s first young men to receive medical training in the East.40 But of all the periodical’s contributors, the most eminent and certainly the most anonymous was Orson Pratt, perhaps the Godbeites’ most admired LDS apostle. George Taylor described the Keep-A-Pitchinin staff as a “brilliant array.” In fact, most were among the ablest of Utah’s coming generation.41

When the Keep-A-Pitchinin began regular publication in March 1870, the four-page bimonthly was warmly greeted by its serious sister journals. The News recommended the magazine to its readers, and the Herald found its fun “pretty good to take.” Even the Mormon Tribune attempted to reply in kind by complimenting the “Orthodox party . . . on their ‘New Move,’” borrowing the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s waggish epithet for the Godbeite “New Movement.”42 In April the humor periodical announced that three printings of its first regular issue had been exhausted, and when an actor of the Salt Lake Theatre ad-libbed a comment concerning the Keep-A-Pitchinin, the audience roared with approval. The paper had gained a following.43

The Keep-A-Pitchinin used many of the comic conventions of its day. Like much of American nineteenth-century humor, especially that of the frontier, the paper’s spirit frequently was gargantuan, filled with brag, overstatement, and mocking self-deprecation. “The first number of this paper, which caused such a revolution in the newspaper world, was issued in 1867,” the editor declared in 1870 when the little magazine actually first began a regular publishing schedule. “Since then, it has been issued regularly to the minute according to the prospectus. There may be isolated individuals among our subscribers who have failed to receive all their numbers. This we attribute to the irregularities of the males.”44 The paper also reflected the nineteenth-century American delight for spelling and grammatical gaucherie, especially misspelled names. Harrison, Godbe, Tullidge, Salisbury, and Kelsey were rechristened, often with a touch of aptness, “Harrassing,” “Goodboy,” “Gullidge,” “Sourberry,” and “Ye Lie Kelsey,” while Vice President Colfax became “Coldfacts.” The woodcuts of the paper obviously owed a debt to the political cartoons of the day. Relatively prolix and complicated by modern standards, the illustrations were considered “wonderful” at the time.45 These provided the Keep-A-Pitchinin with a distinction: the magazine was Utah’s first illustrated journal.

While the Keep-A-Pitchinin satirized much in Utah society, Godbeitism was a staple in issue after issue. Under the headline of “New Lights for the City,” the humor magazine responded to the dissidents’ unending claims of further “light and truth.” “We learn that the City Fathers design pulling down the recently erected lampposts and substituting a few personages of the New Move. That’s as it should be,” the paper lampooned. “The people require light, and while there is so much of it in the Movement, why not utilize it? This new gas does not equal the old in brilliancy, but this is made up in quantity.”46

Taylor and his staff repeatedly mimicked the Godbeite use of words, which usage at times seemed more suited to specialized treatises than to persuading the common man or woman. Edward Tullidge’s praise for the announced revelations of Harrison and Godbe, first published in the Mormon Tribune, became an irresistible object of attack. The Keep-A-Pitchinin article parodied Tullidge’s tone and even borrowed an occasional word from the Godbeite revelations. The result was gobbledygook:

The idiosincrasies of peculiar individualities, indicate the very incarnation of those inherent intellectual qualities, so natural to those of spiritual organic quality; giving to the whole being an impressible, inspirational tone which constitutes the divine essence of those lofty aspirations which permeate the circumambient atmosphere and lead to etherial constituents. Such susceptible embodiments of the sublimest conceptions venture into an infinitude of glorious periphery of thought; leaving the mundane circumstances of the terrestrial world they inhabit far beneath them, in their lofty flight in search of those heavenly gems of truth which were exemplified in the life of “the good Queen Bess.” Triumphant! Triumphant!

“Uno Hoo’s” postscript promised that a key to this treatise would be published “in the ensuing number of the Tribune.”47 The Godbeites, however, failed to comply.

The Keep-A-Pitchinin also satirized the Church of Zion’s difficulty in finding leaders. “Wanted Immediately,” said one classified advertisement, “1 competent Bishop and 1 1st Counselor.” According to the Keep-A-Pitchinin, “faith [was] not much of an object, provided . . . [the candidates] like[d] spirits and don’t believe in the d——l.”48 Taylor repeatedly mocked the reformers’ inability to secure a president—the long-promised but mysterious “Coming Man.” The journal’s edition of 1 May contained a letter from “T. H. E. Gullidge” that explained the virtue of not having “a head.” Two weeks later, another correspondent, “Gessoo Smith,” reported that he had inquired of a Sister Williams, via a spiritualistic planchette, for a “Zionific solution” to an “obstetrical wonder.” How could an embryo grow arms but no head? The answer: “a false conception.”49

The Keep-A-Pitchinin’s doubts about the Godbeites’ head were not resolved by the ascension of the voluble Amasa Lyman. In one cartoon, the former apostle, dressed in a blacksmith’s apron, was working hard to weld “universalism” and “spiritualism.”50 The humor magazine also contrasted the contemporary Amasa with his biblical namesake. The latter was a warrior who dealt in blows. In comparison, “the son of Roswell” found strength “in pretty words.” A supposed sketch of Lyman’s youth, full of nineteenth-century oratorical clichés, even accused the Church of Zion president of developing his skills by “reading novels whenever he could.”51 Novel reading in nineteenth-century Utah society was not usually a matter for praise.

The Keep-A-Pitchinin constantly ridiculed the New Movement’s attraction to spiritualism. Announcing a solicitude for the rising number of Utah spiritualists, the paper promised a spiritual column to be written by Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and a “few choice spirits who seem to have nothing better to do.” Not much came of the promised feature, although the “transcendentally mediumistic” Wilkins Micawber did write from “Hot Springs, Purgettory” on “June 41th, 1870,” to affirm the presence of “His Sul-furious Majesty.” This, of course, was another barb at the Godbeite denial of Satan. When some Salt Lake City citizens claimed the existence of a mediumistically attained “spirit photograph,” the paper confirmed the event by saying that “the spirit was in everybody’s mouth.” It employed the same play on words after Howard’s Liquors moved into the old Church of Zion meeting hall on Main Street. The change, noted the Keep-A-Pitchinin, marked the trading of one kind of spirits for another.52

Uno Hoo and his staff showed the same serenity when discussing politics. Rather than getting angry over the Cullom Bill “Hum-bug,” the staff printed a possible amendment to the proposed law that was once more written in the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s dense and misspelled prose:

And be it furthermore, whereas, be it nacted notwitstanding howsever that them 40,000 trupes whats goin tu Utah tu keep peeple from marying their granmother, which is horrible and hadn’t ought to be done ony in cases of extreme peril tu the nashun—cases where the popilation is going to Abrahams bosom faster than the law allows,—without any reciprocity treaty, be and the same trupes is hereby orthorized before tha start over the planes to clean out Washington, New York Shekargo, Bosting, and Sensinatty, eethr of wich has more law brakers than Utah, and the same trupes is by these presents orthorized too stop prostertution in all them places and to konfiskate all the property in them a fore said towns fur the benefit of the sitizens of the United Staits.

The Keep-A-Pitchinin was uncertain about the success of the new provision—too many respectable citizens might be disturbed by an attack on eastern “prostertution.” On the other hand, Utah was an inviting field. Its small population meant that only a “few” people might be “exterminated” by an invasion of “40,000 trupes.”53

The periodical denied the extravagant rumors being printed in the United States press about a Mormon insurrection. There was nothing in history like the current crisis, ridiculed Uno Hoo, excepting that occasion when “The king of France, with forty thousand men, / Marched up a hill, and then marched down again.” To be sure, some Mormons were “up in arms” over the Cullom provisions, admitted Keep-A-Pitchinin, which then showed a cartoon of two children being held in the arms of a Cullom-Bill-distressed Mormon mother.54

After the bill lost momentum and the public outcry on the Mormon question temporarily lost force, Dr. J. P. Newman peremptorily traveled to Salt Lake City to challenge Brigham Young to debate the issue of plural marriage. Newman, who was President Grant’s personal pastor, served as chaplain to the Senate and minister of the Methodist Metropolitan Church in the national capital. If Young refused to debate, bachelor Taylor and the Keep-A-Pitchinin were ready. However, Taylor’s terms for the proposed debate were unique:

The Dr. to try polygamy for six months, in order that he may get a practical knowledge of it, and we to enter into monogamy for the same length of time; at the end of which period, should the Dr. survive, we are to discuss the matter in the presence of our wives, socially, intellectually, physically, spiritually, morally, practically, syllogistically, somatically, materially, theoretically, temporally and eternally; neither to speak more than six hours at a time; and should the Dr. prefer it, we furthermore agree to occupy his pulpit in Washington, and edify his congregation there as much as he possibly could and draw his salary, as close as he dare to, while he takes our place in this city and draws our salary. We also intend to challenge the Pope of Rome and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, should they fail (as we fully expect) to come to time, we shall publish them to the world as recreant poltroons and cowardly vagabonds.55

When Governor Shaffer took control of the Utah militia and ordered an end to all drilling, two members of the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s staff became involved in the ensuing controversy. Savage and Ottinger, along with others, violated the governor’s sweeping orders by drilling in the Twentieth Ward with mock guns. The heavy-handed Shaffer had them arrested for “treason.” But the Keep-A-Pitchinin refused to be thrown off balance. It described Savage and Ottinger’s crime as: “one of the most daring and desperate attempts on the peace and safety of a nation ever recorded in the annals of crime. . . . The mind of man faints, staggers and falls back in its vain attempts to grasp the savage diabolism projected by these fiends in human form. Had they been successful, they would undoubtedly have slain the inhabitants, destroyed the nation and emptied the debris into the Gulf of Mexico.”56 A grand jury failed to indict any of the men involved in the “wooden-gun” rebellion, and Savage and Ottinger were set free.

The Keep-A-Pitchinin frequently dueled with the Godbeite magazines and newspapers. For instance, it gave the Utah Magazine what at first seemed a compliment. “We have seen some good things in that magazine,” the Keep-A-Pitchinin observed. “We once got a pound of sausages rolled up in it.” “Uno Hoo” and his associates used the same joke to explain why the magazine had been transformed into the Mormon Tribune. The Tribune’s earlier format had served butchers and fishmongers for the wrapping of butter, lard, and bacon, it claimed. “Feeling encouraged by this liberal support and realizing from past experience what it [the Utah Magazine] was most useful for, and being desirous to extend its usefulness, the proprietors immediately enlarged it to a size better adapted to the wants of the community, in papering trunks, and enclosing packages of dry goods.”57 When the Tribune condescendingly noted the receipt of a copy of the Keep-A-Pitchinin via the daily newspaper’s “hired hand,” the humor magazine secured a “hired girl” to critique its rival. The choice undoubtedly was influenced by the Tribune’s embrace of the “women’s movement.”58

Feeling disadvantaged by the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s success, some Godbeites decided to fight humor with humor. In December 1870, James Bond and Daniel Camomile, active in the New Movement, began issuing the Diogenes. Daniel Wells described the contents of the first issue of the Diogenes as “intended to be very severe” against the Mormons.59 The Corinne group however had a more positive reaction. The Daily Reporter thought that the new Godbeite humor magazine did the “work of regeneration better than all the schisms combined. . . . It keeps up a steady fire of good religious wit against the humbugs of the age.”60

The Keep-A-Pitchinin, however, refused to take the challenge seriously. Confusing the spelling of the Diogenes’s new publishing schedule, Uno Hoo commented on the intention of the new periodical to be a “weakly.” “This announcement is entirely unnecessary,” Uno Hoo mused, “as the numbers already issued sufficiently indicate its nature. It is a significant fact that the head scenter of this institution has to turn away from home to find an honest man, and that his lantern emits rays of darkness instead of light.”61

The orthodox humor paper at first rechristened its rival the “Di-agonies” and later, when rumors of its suspension spread, the “Die-agonus.”62 “If they should succeed in getting out another number or two, we suggest that putting a joke or two in each paper would help the sale of it,” said the Keep-A-Pitchinin. An alternative was to let the Diogenes “sink into that abyss of oblivion to which the ‘New Move’ is fast hastening.”63

Because no issues of the short-lived Diogenes have survived, it is impossible to assess the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s criticism of its opponent. But the Mormon periodical was right about the rapid decline of the Church of Zion, which now made the New Movement seem almost beneath the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s notice.

Yet there were several last thrusts. One Keep-A-Pitchinin cartoon had the remaining Godbeites riding in the basket of a deflating air balloon, deliberating on the plight of their failing enterprise. The boastful Keep-A-Pitchinin took full credit for the demise. “Yes, we are happy to be able to say that it [the New Movement] is about exhausted, and that the Keep-A-Pitchinin has exhausted it. . . . We shall not charge anything for the obituary notice; as we stated in the beginning we will publish the marriage or death of any of our friends or contemporaries with pleasure.”64 Six weeks later the periodical proceeded with the figurative burial of its opposition. Unable to resist a final taunt over the Godbeites’ inability to secure Joseph Smith III as their leader, the journal advertised for a stonecutter: “One who can cut a nice inspiration in granite to be placed over the sepulchre of the ‘New Move.’ No Head stone required but a simple inexpensive footboard with the following inscription[:] . . . 1871. Sacred to the memory of the ‘New Move,’ aged 1 year and six months. Requi[e] ‘scat’ in pace.”65

Perhaps the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s jubilation should have been more restrained. Denied the prime object of its humor, the journal lost its own reason for being. On 15 February 1871, after only a year of bimonthly printing, the Keep-A-Pitchinin ended its regular publishing run. Taylor produced a special Fourth of July edition in 1871, and for several years he claimed the paper would once more be published. But its obituary of the Church of Zion proved the Keep-A-Pitchinin’s obituary as well.

In 1938, Cecil Alter’s Early Utah Journalism declared that the periodical was “probably one of the longest remembered and least important of all Utah papers.”66 From today’s perspective, Alter was wrong on both accounts. While the Keep-A-Pitchinin probably had only a minor role in defeating Godbeitism as a religious and political movement, its humor had helped to chronicle the times—something the serious Mormon press had failed to do. And the satirical paper had been effective in pointing out and undermining the New Movement’s sometimes heavy pretensions. The Keep-A-Pitchinin was a perfect foil, contrasting Godbeite seriousness with Zion’s lighter side.