Whereas the Territory of Utah was settled by certain emigrants from
the States and from foreign countries who have for several years past
manifested a spirit of insubordination to the Constitution and laws
of the United States. The great mass of those settlers, acting under
the influence of leaders to whom they seem to have surrendered their
judgment, refuse to be controlled by any other authority. They have been
often advised to obedience, and these friendly counsels have been
answered with defiance. The officers of the Federal Government have been
driven from the Territory for no offense but an effort to do their
sworn duty; others have been prevented from going there by threats of
assassination; judges have been violently interrupted in the performance
of their functions, and the records of the courts have been seized and
destroyed or concealed. Many other acts of unlawful violence have been
perpetrated, and the right to repeat them has been openly claimed by the
leading inhabitants, with at least the silent acquiescence of nearly all
the others. Their hostility to the lawful government of the country has
at length become so violent that no officer bearing a commission from
the Chief Magistrate of the Union can enter the Territory or remain
there with safety, and all those officers recently appointed have been
unable to go to Salt Lake or anywhere else in Utah beyond the immediate
power of the Army. Indeed, such is believed to be the condition to which
a strange system of terrorism has brought the inhabitants of that region
that no one among them could express an opinion favorable to this
Government, or even propose to obey its laws, without exposing his life
and property to peril.

After carefully considering this state of affairs and maturely weighing
the obligation I was under to see the laws faithfully executed, it