Excerpt from Brigham Young and His Mormon EmpireThe man who could achieve these things, even with some aid from fortune, was a man of no common calibre. Without a day of military training, he be came a very efficient general-in - chief to his people, Without an hour's reading of law, he made himself judge and Iawgiver - and in the main a just one - for a whole community. Where his own knowledge was deficient, he had skill to use the ability of others, and to this day, the finances, the government, the merchan dising, the architecture, the social life, and even the agriculture of the Mormon community bear the stamp put upon them by Brigham Young.He matched his wits against the might of the United States government, and did not come off second best. He yielded in outward seeming to federal power, but in reality he was emperor of his little realm to the hour of his death, and his subjects never doubted his supremacy. He drove federal appointees in disgrace from his kingdom, and took their positions for himself and his favourites. No matter how over whelming the power with which he was dealing, Brigham Young never was a suppliant. He stormed, bullied, lied, intrigued, finessed, cajoled, he never pleaded for mercy nor owned himself in need of mercy. He met chastisement with fresh provocation. Knowing polygamy to be the most offensive of his sins in the eyes of the nation, he lived openly with a score of wives, sent his most honoured polygamous apostle to Congress as a territorial delegate, and per mitted his subordinate priests to debate with Christian clergymen on the divinity of plural marriage.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.