forum.mormonentum.de – Das Exmo-Diskussionsforum

Das Exmo-Diskussionsforum

Letzter Beitrag von 10 Beiträgen.

Seite erstellt am 19.4.24 um 18:11 Uhr

der Beitrag:

Verfasser: Gunar

Datum: Sonntag, den 4. Juli 2004, um 23:44 Uhr

Betrifft: Ein weiterer Mord der Daniter

Will Bagley berichtet heute von einer "Tat der ’zerstÃ¶renden Engel’ oder genauer gesagt der Polizei" in Salt Lake City im Jahre 1866 und wie dieser Mord das unerbittliche juristische Vorgehen eines ortsansÃ¤ssigen Anwalts gegen solch religiÃ¶s motivierte KriminalitiÃ¤t herauf beschwor. Letztlich sei die Zivilisierung Utah wesentlich seinem Engagement zu verdanken.

History Matters: A lone feisty lawyer helped the ’Americanization’ of Utah

Will Bagley
Salt Lake Tribune columnist

Given Utah’s colorful and controversial history, the decision to remember the Sabbath day in preference to celebrating Independence Day on July 4 is no surprise. To commemorate America’s centennial in 1876, Salt Lakers had to go to Ogden, historian Richard Poll pointed out, because "the territorial capital had no official celebration."
In 1971, BYU professor Gustive Larson argued that the "Americanization" of Utah took place during the 1890s, long after the first settlers arrived. Larson wrote that to get statehood, Utah had "to make certain concessions as to mixing church and state," Charles Peterson observed. Whether that compromise endured is open to debate, but no one did more to Americanize Utah than Robert N. Baskin, a red-haired Harvard Law School graduate.
In his memoirs, Baskin recalled settling in Salt Lake in 1865 because Utah’s extensive mines made it "a very desirable location for any attorney." Like most newcomers, Baskin found the city’s neatness and good order made it hard to believe tales of the "evils of Mormonism." That changed when physician John King Robinson wanted to build Utah’s first hospital on land he claimed despite territorial laws designed to prevent the ownership of private property.
After city police demolished a shack Robinson built at Warm Springs, he hired Baskin to defend his claim. Baskin never completed the case, because Robinson was brutally murdered in October 1866.
"The Gentiles are Panic Stricken," Gen. Patrick Connor wrote the next morning, "and dare not express opinions of the foul deed." Like Connor, they blamed the crime on the "destroying angels," or more specifically, the police.
While looking at his client’s butchered corpse, Baskin resolved to use the power of the law "to punish the perpetrators of such heinous crimes." Mormon theocracy had found an implacable enemy, and Baskin set out to destroy its political power.
He personally drafted many of the laws Congress passed affecting Utah Territory, persuaded a grand jury to indict Brigham Young for "lewd and lascivious cohabitation," and helped convict George Reynolds, the first "polygamous martyr," whose case became a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. Baskin prosecuted John D. Lee for murder and took "Danite Chief" Bill Hickman’s statement that revealed most of the crimes in his published confession, "but in more minute detail."
Hickman recalled, "Baskin was a man that did not know the word fail." The men arrested on Hickman’s suspect testimony got off on a technicality, but Baskin believed "a rigid cross-examination" would have convinced the public Wild Bill’s charges were true.
Journalistic hacks called Baskin "lean, lank, rather dirty and frowsy," but he won the grudging respect of his rivals, who conceded he was "a lawyer of shrewdness and coolness." He was "one of the worst enemies the people had," Mormon apostle George Q. Cannon told Congress. "I did not think him innocent," Cannon went on, and "after acting as he had done he ought to be afraid." But Baskin was fearless.
Apostle Orson Whitney denounced him as "the human mainspring of nearly every anti-Mormon movement" in the territory. Baskin wrote that he only wanted a Utah where every man had a chance "to attain the highest social, political and business advancement without having to lay his manhood down at the foot of the priesthood, or kiss the great toe of some pretended prophet."
Such bitter conflicts would seemingly open lifelong wounds, but remarkably, Baskin and the Mormons ultimately made peace. He was elected Salt Lake City’s mayor in 1892, Over the next four years, his administration installed the first water and sewer system, paved downtown streets and built the City-County Building.
"From being one of the most unhealthy cities in the country," The Salt Lake Tribune noted, our metropolis became one of the cleanest. Utah elected him chief justice of the state Supreme Court in 1898.
On Brigham Young’s 100th birthday, LDS authorities invited Baskin to speak at Saltair. "I never enjoyed a little speech more in all my life," commented future LDS Church President Heber J. Grant. He praised the judge as an "honest, straight-forward man who was once very much opposed to the Latter-day Saints, who today takes pleasure in bearing testimony as to the honor and integrity of the Mormon people."
Not only was Young a great leader, Baskin said, he was also a fine judge of men, "and never made a mistake in selecting those who were to carry out his will."
Baskin appreciated his ironic life. "Though not a prophet," he wrote not long before he died in 1918, "I have been profitable to the masses of the Mormon people."

Quelle