San Francisco Alta California, June 2, 1867
EDITORS ALTA: The Mormons were holding a grand pow-wow at Keokuk, when I was there a week ago, the object of which was to devise ways and means of ousting Brigham Young from office and putting young Joe Smith in his place. Four hundred of the Saints were present, from various places in Missouri and Illinois, and young Joe, a simple, well-meaning, and very dull preacher was with them. They came to town dressed in homely jeans, and bringing horns, and cymbals, and trumpets and all the ungodly paraphernalia of their choir service as I used to hear it performed in the Mormon Church in St. Louis years ago. They are good, honest people, believe thoroughly in their religion, and are earnest in their hope of getting Joe Smith placed at the head of the whole Church. They say they will accomplish it. They call Brigham a wicked imposter and his new-fangled Mormonism a swindle. They claim that polygamy is not a tenet of genuine Mormonism.
It is strange how this lost tribe has kept its faith through so many years of sorrow and disaster. These are people who were scattered in tents for miles and miles along the roads through Iowa when the Mormons were driven out of Nauvoo with fire and sword, twenty-five years ago. Their heavy misfortunes appealed so movingly to the kindly instincts of the Iowa people that they rescued them from starvation, and gave them houses and food and employment, and gradually they became absorbed into the population and lost sight of - forgotten entirely, in fact, till this Convention of young Joe's called them out, and then from every unsuspected nook and cranny crept a Mormon - a Mormon who had for many a year been taken for a Baptist, or a Methodist, or some other kind of Christian.
But young Joe had better look out, for it has been a well credited rumor in Keokuk for two years or more that Brigham has set a price upon his head and keeps a destroying angel or so on his track all the time, ready to kill him when the opportunity offers. And they say that if these Mormons were to start to Salt Lake, young Joe would never get out of sight of Council Bluffs alive.