United States Government

The United States Government appears in the novel as the federal power that brought Utah under the laws of the Union and challenged the authority of its Mormon leadership. Its actions are presented as a contested exercise of rule: the narrator describes the government’s success in subduing an independent community, while Elder William Hitch portrays the same process as persecution and injustice.

Federal Authority in Utah

The government had, the narrator says, succeeded with difficulty in reducing the independent Mormons to its rule. It made itself master of Utah and subjected the territory to the laws of the Union. The account establishes a conflict between federal authority and a community that had maintained its independence; it does not, however, detail the laws’ administration or the terms under which federal control was established.

Brigham Young and Resistance

The government imprisoned Brigham Young on charges of rebellion and polygamy. The narrator describes the imprisonment and the hardships endured by the Mormons, while Elder Hitch presents Young as their chief and condemns his detention as unjust. After federal authority was imposed, the prophet’s disciples redoubled their efforts and resisted Congress’s authority verbally. The episode thus distinguishes the government’s effective political control from the continued opposition of those who disputed its legitimacy.

The Government in Elder Hitch’s Account

Aboard the train, Elder Hitch turned the federal conflict into an appeal for converts. He attributed Congress’s hostility to jealousy and invoked the Union soldiers’ entry into Utah and Young’s imprisonment as grievances. His audience dwindled as he spoke: after several listeners left, only ten remained, and eventually Passepartout was his sole auditor. Hitch invited him to join the community; Passepartout refused and left the car. The scene gives the government’s actions a public, argumentative afterlife: federal power is not shown only through control of territory and imprisonment, but also through the resistance and proselytizing that those measures provoke.