THE BUCHANAN SPOILS SYSTEM AND THE UTAH EXPEDITION:

Careers of W. M. F. Magraw and John M. Hockaday

BY W I L L I A M P . M A C K I N N O N

You may give a man an office, but you cannot give him discretion. Words may show a man's wit, but actions his meaning.

Poor Richard's Almanac

In March of 1857, James Buchanan became the fifteenth President of the United States. Within two months after taking office, he had committed the army to the most expensive and mismanaged American military venture to precede the Civil War. Buchanan had decided to resolve the "Mormon Prob­lem" by intervening in Utah Territory with federal troops.

Critics of Buchanan's military policy have long contended that this decision was based on biased evidence, ulterior political motives, and a desire to enrich personal and commercial friends of the new Democratic Administration rather than on a sound analysis of conditions in Utah. Although widely held, especially in Utah, few of these theories have been adequately substantiated. The purpose of this article is (1) to present a small but highly important collection of docu­ments bearing on the Utah Military Expedition, and (2) to analyze their sig­nificance in terms of both Buchanan's judgment and his relationships with political associates engaged in western business activities. This analysis deals extensively with the character and activities of two of Buchanan's associates, W. M. F. Magraw and John M. Hockaday.

Following Buchanan's decision to garrison Utah, Lieutenant General Win-field Scott marshalled 2,500 troops of the 5th and 10th Infantry Regiments, 2nd Dragoons and 4th Artillery at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory, in preparation for the march to Salt

This article is based in part on Mr. MacKinnon's Senior Honors Essay at Yale University where it received the Walter J. McClintock Prize in 1960. Additional research was done while he completed work on a master's degree at the Harvard Grad­uate School of Business Administration in 1962.

fames Buchanan (1791-1868), was Presi­dent of the United States from 1856 to 1860.

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Lake City. By mid-July of 1857, most of these units had left Leavenworth for Utah, even though many had been seriously weakened by a wave of desertions attributable to the Kansas heat and the grim prospect of a march across the Great American Desert.1

Although not a large force by Civil War standards, the Utah Military Ex­pedition, or Army of Utah as the War Department designated it, was nonethe­less an important one. The Expedition included more than one-sixth of the nation's army and was to involve a full complement of such prominent military and frontier figures as Albert Sidney Johnston, Randolph B. Marcy, William S. Harney, Ben McCulloch, Phillip St. George Cooke, and Jim Bridger. Further­more, the movement of troops to Utah involved significant policy decisions pertaining to the defense of the Trans-Mississippi West, for it left Kansas Ter­ritory inadequately garrisoned during an explosive summer of Indian uprisings and civil strife over the slavery issue.

The Buchanan Administration justified its military plans for Utah on grounds that the Mormons, led by Brigham Young, were engaged in open re­bellion against federal authority. Young was then both governor of Utah Terri­tory and president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Buchanan himself charged that " . . . for several years, in order to maintain his independence . . . [Young] had been industriously employed in collecting and fabricating arms and munitions of war." In his first Annual Message the President sternly de­clared: "This is the first rebellion which has existed in our territories, and hu­manity itself requires that we should put it down in such a manner that it shall be the last." 2

Secretary of War John B. Floyd echoed Buchanan's sentiments in accusing the Mormons of secessionist activities.3 Floyd's staff at the War Department in turn informed the initial commander of the Utah Expedition, Brigadier General William S. Harney, that "The community, and in part, the civil government of Utah Territory are in a state of substantial rebellion against the laws and au­thority of the United States." Harney was ordered to use his troops to maintain law and order in Utah when so directed by the man that Buchanan had just appointed to succeed Young as territorial governor.4

During the spring and summer of 1857, Buchanan's decision to intervene in Utah was a popular one among non-Mormons. Public feeling in the East was

'For the text of Scott's General Circular, May 28, 1857, see LeRoy R. and Ann W. Hafen, eds., The Utah Expedition 1857-1858: A Documentary Account . . . (Glendale, 1958), 27-29, or U. S., Congress, House, The Utah Expedition, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 1857-58, House Ex. Doc. 71, Serial 956, pp. 4-5.

2 "First Annual Message of President Buchanan," Messages and Papers of The Presidents 1789-1897, James D. Richardson, compil. (Washington, 1897), V, 455-56.

3 U.S., Secretary of War, Report of the Secretary of War, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 1857-58, House Ex. Doc. 2, Serial 943, p. 7.

4 Lieutenant Colonel George W. Lay to Brevet Brigadier General William S. Harney, June 29, 1857, Utah Expedition, House Ex. Doc. 71, p. 71.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN UTAH 129

then running high over alleged Mormon "outrages" involving the disloyalty of Utah's Indian tribes, the polygamy issue, and the maltreatment of federal ap­pointees serving as territorial officials. The New Yor\ Times ventured that "The affairs of Utah have reached a crisis which can no longer be evaded. . . . A new Governor should be sent at once to Great Salt Lake City — backed by an impos­ing military force — to tender the Constitution with one hand, while a drawn sword is held in the other." 5 The prospect of a federal force in the territory seemed to satisfy the public's desire to punish a people it considered basically alien and libidinous.

As Congress was not in session during the summer of 1857, there was no legislative opposition to the President's military policy. Neither was there criti­cism or protest from Utah itself during most of this period, for Buchanan had elected not to inform the Mormon population of his military preparations and had severed postal communications with the territory once General Scott began to issue orders for the formation of the Expedition.

By the end of 1857, efforts of the Army of Utah to restore order among the Mormons had been notably unsuccessful. The Expedition had in fact been un­able to reach its chief objective, Salt Lake City. Mormon harassment accounted for much of this failure; as the Expedition had marched westward through Kansas during the late summer of 1857, Brigham Young had organized a mili­tary force of his own and had blocked the mountain passes into Utah Territory. Without inflicting or sustaining casualties, Mormon raiders carried off large herds of the Expedition's livestock, destroyed much of its supply line, and burned natural forage that the federal troops needed desperately for their draft animals and cavalry mounts. Heavy snows in October and November finally forced the Expedition into winter quarters in a desolate area just within the eastern boundary of Utah. Inadequately supplied and encamped in Mormon controlled territory, the Army of Utah had settled into an embarrassing and nearly untenable position. As news of the army's difficulties trickled eastward, it became painfully apparent to the country that the Expedition had been hastily conceived and ill-prepared. Increasingly, doubts were raised as to whether the Mormons had in fact been engaged in a rebellion during the spring of 1857 and whether formation of the Expedition had been a necessary or wise solution to what may only have been "political unrest" in Utah. Attuned to these doubts, the Times changed its tack of the previous spring and asked for a full explana­tion as to why " . . . a hostile army was sent against Utah at the outset. There were undoubted disorders in the affairs of the Territory: — but it has never yet been shown that they were such as could only be remedied by fire and sword."6

5 New York Times, May 11, 1857. 6 Ibid., December 24, 1857.

130 U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Congress shared this somewhat truculent mood when it reconvened in December of 1857. The cost of supporting the Army of Utah was proving to be an intolerable drain on the country's economic resources, which had already been severely weakened by a financial panic that fall.7 The possibility of a humiliating military defeat at the hands of Mormon irregulars also dampened congressional enthusiasm for Buchanan's Expedition. The House of Representa­tives voiced its doubts by passing a resolution which asked the President to fur­nish ". . . the information which gave rise to the military expedition ordered to Utah Territory . . . throwing light upon the question as to how far said Brigham Young and his followers are in a state of rebellion or resistance to the Govern­ment of the United States." 8

Challenged by the House to prove that a Mormon rebellion had in fact existed in the spring of 1857, Buchanan ordered the members of his cabinet to search their files for relevant material. On February 3, 1858, Secretary of State Lewis Cass reported back to the President tha t " . . . the only document on record or on file in this department, touching the subject of the [House] resolution, is the letter of Mr. W. M. F. Magraw to the President, of the 3d of October last, a copy of which is here unto annexed." 9 Leland H. Creer maintains that Magraw's letter was one of three reports on Utah that most influenced Bu­chanan's initial decision to form the Expedition.10

Although Creer fails to substantiate this point, it is obvious that the Magraw letter is one of the significant documents associated with the history of the Utah Expedition. Of the approximately 250 printed pages of correspondence that Buchanan submitted to the House on February 8, 1858, Magraw's contribution was clearly the most dramatic and vitriolic and, hence, was perhaps the most damaging indictment of Mormon activities in Utah. Magraw had written as follows:

Independence, Missouri, October 3, 1856.

Mr. President: I feel it incumbent upon me as a personal and political friend, to lay before you some information relative to the present political and social condi­tion of the Territory of Utah, which may be of importance.

There is no disguising the fact, that there is left no vestige of law and order, no protection for life or property; the civil laws of the Territory are overshadowed and neutralized by a so-styled ecclesiastical organization, as despotic, dangerous and damnable, as has ever been known to exist in any country, and which is ruining

' For a description of the panic and its effects on public attitudes, see Samuel Rezneck, "The Influence of Depression Upon American Opinion 1857-1859," The Journal of Economic History, II (May, 1942), 1-23.

8 Resolution of the House, January 27, 1858, Utah Expedition, House Ex. Doc. 71, p. 1. 9 Lewis Cass to James Buchanan, February 3, 1858, Utah Expedition, House Ex. Doc. 71, pp. 1-2.

Magraw's full name was William Miller Finney Magraw. He signed it in several different ways. 10Leland Hargrave Creer, Utah and the Nation (Seattle, 1929), 123. Creer claims that the other two

documents are the resignation of Utah's Associate Justice W. W. Drummond and a report by Indian Agent Thomas A. Twiss.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 131

not only those who do not subscribe to their religious code, but is driving the moderate and more orderly of the Mormon community to desperation. Formerly, violence committed upon the rights of persons and property were attempted to be justified by some pretext manufactured for the occasion, under color of law as it exists in that country. The victims were usually of that class whose obscurity and want of information necessary to insure proper investigation and redress of their wrongs were sufficient to guarantee to the perpetrators freedom from punishment. Emboldened by the success which attended their first attempts at lawlessness, no pretext or apology seems now to be deemed requisite, nor is any class exempt from outrage; all alike are set upon by the self-constituted theocracy, whose laws, or rather whose conspiracies, are framed in dark corners, promulgated from the stand of tabernacle or church, and executed at midnight, or upon the highways, by an organized band of bravos and assassins, whose masters compel an outraged com­munity to tolerate in their midst. The result is that a considerable and highly re­spectable portion of the community, known from the Atlantic to the Pacific, whose enterprise is stimulated by a laudable desire to improve their fortunes by honorable exertions, are left helpless victims to outrage and oppression, liable at any moment to be stripped of their property or deprived of life, without the ability to put them­selves under the protection of law, since all the courts that exist there at present are converted into engines and instruments of injustice.

For want of time I am compelled thus to generalize, but particular cases, with all the attendant circumstances, names of parties and localities are not wanting to swell the calendar of crime and outrage to limits that will, when published, startle the conservative people of the States, and create a clamor which will not be readily quelled; and I have no doubt that the time is near at hand, and the elements rapidly combining to bring about a state of affairs which will result in indiscriminate blood­shed, robbery and rapine, and which in a brief space of time will reduce that coun­try to the condition of a howling wilderness.

There are hundreds of good men in the country, who have for years endured every privations from the comforts and enjoyments of civilized life, to confront every description of danger for the purpose of improving their fortunes. These men have suffered repeated wrong and injustice, which they have endeavored to repair by renewed exertions, patiently awaiting the correction of outrage by that government which it is their pride to claim citizenship under, and whose protec­tion they have a right to expect; but they now see themselves liable, at any moment, to be stripped of their hard earned means, the lives of themselves and their col­leagues threatened and taken; ignominy and abuse, heaped upon them day after day, if resented, is followed by murder.

Many of the inhabitants of the Territory possess passions and elements of character calculated to drive them to extremes, and have the ability to conceive and the courage to carry out the boldest measures for redress, and I know that they will be at no loss for a leader. When such as these are driven by their wrongs to vindi­cate, not only their rights as citizens, but their pride of manhood, the question of disparity in numerical force is not considered among their difficulties, and I am satisfied that a recital of their grievances would form an apology, if not a sufficient justification, for the violation on their part of the usages of civilized communities.

In addressing you, I have endeavored to discard all feelings arising from my personal annoyances in the Mormon country, but have desired to lay before you the actual condition of affairs, and to prevent, if possible, scenes of lawlessness which, I fear, will be inevitable unless speedy and powerful preventives are applied. I have felt free to thus address you, from the fact that some slight requests made of

132 U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

me when I last left Washington, on the subject of the affairs of Kansas, justified me in believing that you had confidence in my integrity, and that what influence I could exert would not be wanting to terminate the unfortunate difficulties in that Territory; I have the pleasure of assuring you that my efforts were not spared.

With regard to the affairs and proceedings of the probate court, the only ex­isting tribunal in the Territory of Utah, there being but one of the three federal judges now in the Territory, I will refer you to its records, and to the evidence of gentlemen whose assertions cannot be questioned; as to the treatment of myself, I will leave that to the representation of others; at all events, the object I have in view, the end I wish to accomplish for the general good, will preclude my weary­ing you with a recital of them at present.

I have the honor to be very truly yours, &c. „ . . . „ . , n

Superficially, the Magraw letter appears to be a reliable account of condi­tions in Utah. Claiming the personal friendship as well as the political associa­tion of a President of the United States, Magraw twice assures the reader that he is an objective observer of high purpose and noble intent.

Virtually without exception, however, historians of the Expedition have quite properly rejected Magraw because he was a biased, untrustworthy source of information about contemporary conditions in Utah. In discrediting the reliability of the Magraw letter in a relatively hasty manner, though, these writers have denied themselves the opportunity of building more than a super­ficial case against Magraw's objectivity.12 At the same time they have failed to perceive the peculiar relationship among Magraw; his business partner, John M. Hockaday; and the Buchanan Administration. This relationship as well as the actions and character of Hockaday and Magraw merit further scrutiny.

Traditionally, attacks on Magraw's reliability have exhausted themselves with a brief observation that Magraw lost his source of income to a Mormon shortly before writing to President Franklin Pierce. Allegedly, then, Magraw's report to Pierce served as a medium for personal bitterness and hostility rather than an objective account of Mormon political activities.13 This argument seems to be essentially correct.

In March, 1854, W. M. F. Magraw had been awarded a four-year federal contract for the transportation of mail between Independence, Missouri, and Salt Lake City, Utah, on Route 8911. His contract involved an annual compensa-

11 W. M. F. Magraw to President of the United States, October 3, 1856, Utah Expedition, House Ex. Doc. 71, pp. 2-3. Complete text of this letter is also in Hafen and Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 361-63.

12 Until fairly recently, the simple fact that Magraw's letter was most likely directed to Franklin Pierce rather than to James Buchanan has even seemed to escape historical notice. As Andrew L. Neff in History of Utah, 1847 to 1869, Leland H. Creer, ed. (Salt Lake City, 1940), 442 and Norman F. Furniss in The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859 (New Haven, 1960), 64, point out, Magraw wrote a full six months before Buchanan took office. So, contrary to Creer's theory, there is a strong possibility that neither Cass nor Bu­chanan saw the letter until the House called for a justification of the Expedition early in 1858, and a search of department files was begun.

13 Neff, History of Utah, 326. See also LeRoy R. Hafen, The Overland Mail, 1849-1869, Promoter of Settlement, Precursor of Railroads (Cleveland, 1926), 63. All other references to Hafen pertain to The Utah Expedition.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 133

tion of $14,400 and called for monthly round-trip service between the terminal cities.14 Magraw's predecessor on the route, Samuel H. Woodson, had started service on July 1, 1850, for $19,500 per annum but had been forced to abandon the business early in 1854 because of operating difficulties.15

Soon after succeeding Woodson, Magraw took John E. Reeside into the business as a partner. Reeside withdrew from this arrangement in November of 1854, however, after Indians attacked one of the firm's mail trains, slaughtered the guards, and made off with most of the equipment.16 Magraw then acquired another associate, John M. Hockaday.17 Hockaday and Magraw were almost certainly acquainted with one another before the formation of this new partner­ship, for there are indications that the two men had had prior business dealings. During the summer of 1854, for example, John M. Hockaday and Isaac Hocka­day (presumably a relative) had advertised the opening of a monthly passenger coach service to be operated by them in conjunction with Magraw's mail route.18

The new partnership resulted in something less than efficient operations, and the quality of service that John M. Hockaday and Magraw were able to provide on Route 8911 became the subject of chronic grumbling in Utah during 1855 and 1856. In addition to numerous complaints of slow service, the con­tractors themselves were accused of tampering with the contents of the mail.19

To a certain extent these complaints may well have been justified, for there is evidence that neither Magraw nor Hockaday were devoting their undivided attention to improving the efficiency of the mail service. Both men were then engaged in other, subsidiary businesses, for Hockaday owned a store in Salt Lake City,20 and Magraw was working as western representative of Smith-Murphy Company, a Philadelphia mercantile firm.21

The House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads eventually took notice of the situation on Route 8911 and reported that

. . . in view of the uncertainty attending the mail service on this route, and the

wholly altered circumstances under which it must now be performed, the com­

mittee are of opinion that justice to both parties requires that the contract be an­

nulled, and the contractor released . . . after the 18th of August, 1856.22

"U.S., The Postmaster General, Report of Mail Contracts for 1855, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., 1855-56, House Ex. Doc. 122, Serial 860, p. 335.

15 A. R. Mortcnsen, "A Pioneer Paper Mirrors The Breakup of Isolation In The Great Basin," Utah Historical Quarterly, XX (January, 1952), 78.

1G Memorial of William M. F. Magraw to Honorable James Campbell, October 4, 1855, U.S., Congress, House, Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, William M. F. Magraw, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., 1855-56, House Rept. 6, Serial 868, pp. 4-6.

17 Creer, Utah and The Nation, 123, 231. 18 Mortensen, "A Pioneer Paper," U.H.Q., XX, 79. 19 Ibid., 79-81 and Deseret News (Salt Lake City), May 14 and July 2, 1856. 20 Neff, History of Utah, 337n. 21 W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West, A Study of Federal Road Surveys and Construction In

The Trans-Mississippi West 1846-1869 (Berkeley, 1952), 175. 22 William M. F. Magraw, House Rept. 6, p. 2.

134 U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Magraw's most vigorous critic in Utah, the Deseret News, was delighted at the prospect of a change in contractors:

There is so favorable a prospect that the contractor will be released from further performance (NON-PERFORMANCE?) of his contract, from and after the 18th of August, 1856, that we gladly waive comment upon his . . . miserably inefficient operations on the route from the beginning, trusting that the large amount of gov­ernment funds, paid to him, for getting in the way of those who would have done [the job] . . . may prove as little of a gratification and benefit to him as his mail-course has been to us. With this candid and strictly just wish, we hope to be able to close our brief biographical notice of one W. M. F. Magraw, contractor on route No. 8 9 1 1 . . . . 2 3

Magraw was relieved of his contract by act of Congress on May 29, 1856, and service on the route was thrown open to bidding under a new four-year agree­ment. Acting as the agent of a Mormon organization, the B. Y. Express Com­pany, Hiram Kimball advanced the lowest bid at $23,000 and was subsequently awarded the contract on October 9. Kimball's bid was reportedly half the sum that Magraw had demanded for continued service on the route.24

The loss of this contract was unquestionably a serious blow to Magraw, for in effect it meant the loss of his livelihood. In view of a prior history of ill-feeling between Magraw and the Mormons and the fact that Magraw wrote to President Pierce less than a week before the Mormon control of his mail route was formalized, it seems only reasonable to assume that the letter was actually prompted by a spirit of retaliation and economic self-seeking rather than noble considerations of what Magraw himself referred to as "the general good."

A much tighter case for Magraw's prejudices and motives can and should be made, however, than that afforded by this timing factor alone. Four other fac­tors should be considered: the phraseology of Magraw's letter to Pierce, the character of his previous correspondence with high federal officials, the location from which Magraw wrote to Pierce, and the nature of still another letter written to the President during October of 1856.

An analysis of Magraw's phraseology, something previously lacking in accounts of the letter, provides a measure of insight into the writer's motives. In his report to Pierce, Magraw twice referred to "personal annoyances in the Mormon country." Presumably these incidents were associated in some manner with his mail business in Utah. Specific and repeated reference to these annoy­ances indicates that they were in fact very much on Magraw's mind, despite pro­tests to the contrary, when he addressed Pierce. Furthermore, whenever Magraw mentioned mistreatment of a specific group in Utah, it was always the group of which he himself was a member, the frontier businessmen

23 Deseret News, June 11, 1856. Hockaday seems to have been a "silent" partner in this mail business, for contemporary sources rarely associate him with Magraw.

21Furniss, Mormon Conflict, 51.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 135

. . . whose enterprise is stimulated by a laudable desire to improve their fortunes by honorable exertions . . . men . . . who have for years endured every privation from the comforts and enjoyments of civilized life, to confront every description of danger for the purpose of improving their fortunes. . . .

In summary, then, the entire letter seems to assume an economic bias complete with Magraw's measured appeal to "the conservative people of the States." 25

Magraw's strategy in this letter becomes even clearer after an examination of his prior correspondence with various administrators in the Indian Bureau and Post Office Department during 1855. In December of 1854, Magraw had petitioned Congress to raise his annual contract allowance from $14,400 to $41,800. He succeeded in getting an increase to $36,000. Apparently heartened by this result, he spent much of 1855 in strenuous lobbying attempts to both raise his compensation further and to obtain reimbursement for property which he maintained had been damaged or stolen by Indians. Shuttling between In­dependence and Washington, Magraw addressed Postmaster General James Campbell on several occasions and implored him to use his official influence with Congress if the Postmaster General himself could not authorize financial relief. In dramatic and self-seeking phrases closely parallel to those he was to use a year later in his letter to Pierce, Magraw informed Campbell that

The route No. 8911, from Independence to Salt Lake, is twelve hundred and fifty miles long — perhaps the longest mail contract by land in the world. . . . From Big Blue to Fort Bridger, nine hundred and forty-seven miles . . . [I] must pass the entire route exposed to constant ambushes and assaults from a starving, ex­asperated, fierce, and remorseless enemy, without the slightest hope of aid or sym­pathy. . . .26

Magraw's campaign met with only limited success. The House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads refused to increase his contract revenue above $36,000 but did grant him $17,750 as compensation for property stolen by In­dians.

The return address on Magraw's letter to President Pierce, an obvious yet previously neglected detail, may also throw additional light on the motives behind this piece of correspondence. Magraw wrote from Independence, the principal city of Jackson County, Missouri, and the most bitterly anti-Mormon area in the nation at that time. It was in Jackson County that the Mormons had been most brutally treated during the 1830's; it was from there that they fled to Nauvoo, Illinois, and eventually to Utah.

25 W. M. F. Magraw to President of the United States, October 3, 1856, Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 361-63.

26 William M. F. Magraw, House Rept. 6, pp. 4-7. The "enemy" Magraw mentions here were Indians. His previous correspondence with Campbell may be found in this report along with the recommendations of the House Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads.

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One other bit of material may also contribute to an understanding of the economic and personal biases involved in Magraw's report to Pierce. Three days after Magraw wrote to the President, another letter left Independence for the White House to complain of ill-treatment in Utah Territory at the hands of the Mormon population. This time the letter was signed by Isaac Hockaday, a former business associate of John M. Hockaday and presumably a close rela­tive.27 The agreement of circumstances makes it difficult to believe that Magraw or John M. Hockaday had not pressured Isaac Hockaday into writing in sup­port of Magraw's lengthy account of Mormon abuses, especially in view of the fact that Magraw's own letter to Pierce stated, " . . . as to the treatment of myself, I will leave that to the representation of others . . . . " Buchanan failed to present Hockaday's letter to the House in February of 1858, although he had been speci­fically directed to submit all correspondence relative to conditions in Utah. A knowledgeable comparison of this document and the Magraw letter would have vitiated the sensationalism of the latter.

With the spring of 1857, and increased public interest in Utah affairs, Magraw seems to have seized on the idea of military intervention in Utah as the ideal means of avenging himself on the Mormon community there. At the same time his literary efforts took on more than their usual theatrical flair. On April 21, 1857, the Washington National Intelligencer reprinted a long letter that it had received from a correspondent whom the paper identified only by the pen name of "Verastus." Verastus denounced Mormon atrocities in terms remark­ably like those employed by W. M. F. Magraw during the previous October. The main point of Verastus' letter was that a federal force of 5,000 men should immediately be dispatched to deal with Brigham Young and his followers. The National Intelligencer heartily agreed with its correspondent. Fortunately, the paper could not resist the temptation to describe Verastus as "a respectable citi­zen, who lately spent twelve months in the Salt Lake Valley, engaged in busi­ness connected with the transit of the mails through the Territory." 28

The preceding points indicate that Magraw was hardly an unbiased source of information about the Mormon community in Utah. Even without most of this information, historians of the Expedition have been long appalled at the thought that Buchanan may actually have taken Magraw's letter of October 3, 1856, at face value in deciding to intervene in Utah. Without exception their line of reasoning assumes a lack of knowledge on Buchanan's part of Magraw's character and motives. A thorough sifting of primary sources, however, indi­cates that Buchanan knew exactly who and what Magraw was, and that the

27 For a description of this letter see David W. Parker, Calendar of Papers in Washington Archives Re­lating To The Territories (to 1873) (Washington, 1911), 396. Isaac Hockaday's letter has never been men­tioned before in connection with the Utah Expedition.

~% National Intelligencer (Washington, D.C.), April 21, 1857.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN UTAH 137

President still chose to favor him and John M. Hockaday repeatedly, especially in connection with the Utah Expedition.

W. Turrentine Jackson points out that Magraw was both a personal and political friend of Buchanan. In 1853, Buchanan had recommended Magraw for a minor federal appointment, stating that he was a faithful supporter of the Democratic party.29 Four years later, soon after becoming President, Buchanan appointed Magraw superintendent of the Fort Kearney-South Pass-Honey Lake stretch of the newly approved Pacific Wagon Road. This appointment was made through Secretary of the Interior Jacob Thompson only two days after the appearance of the Verastus letter.30

Significantly, before Buchanan took office, it seemed certain that not Magraw but a man from California or Minnesota would receive the South Pass appoint­ment, since those states had been instrumental in gathering congressional sup­port for the road bill. In addition to Buchanan's backing for the position, how­ever, Magraw held testimonials of his service to the Democratic party in Vir­ginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. He was also supported by General Persifer F. Smith; Jeremiah S. Black, Buchanan's attorney general; Stephen A. Douglas; and five other Democratic Senators.31 E. Douglas Branch contends that "Mc-Graw's [sic] appointment . . . was purely political, and [Secretary] Thompson probably had no choice but to overlook the superintendent's obvious disqualifi­cations of engrossing incompetence and vile temper." 32 Magraw himself later informed Buchanan that as a superintendent of the Pacific Wagon Road he considered himself accountable only ". . . to you, and your Administration " 33

On another occasion he wrote the President: "I owe my appointment to you, and to you, and you alone, am I accountable for my conduct." 34 Before Magraw left Washington to assume his new position, Buchanan asked that he write occa­sionally to inform the President of conditions in the West.35

In addition to these close personal ties with the President, Magraw had a brother or brothers among Buchanan's trusted associates and advisors, for on one occasion Magraw defended the capabilities of one of his own minor appointees for the wagon road project to the President by stating that " . . . for his fitness for

29 Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 175. Magraw's father, the Reverend James Magraw, may also have been one of Buchanan's friends for Reverend Magraw was born and lived for some time in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania—Buchanan 's home county. According to Biographical Cyclopedia of Representative Men of Maryland and District of Columbia (Baltimore, 1879), 359, W. M. F. Magraw was born on May 26, 1818. The Maryland Historical Society lists Cecil County, Maryland, as his place of birth.

30 National Intelligencer, April 23 , 1858. 31 Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 175. 32 E. Douglas Branch, "Frederick West Lander, Road-Builder," The Mississippi Valley Historical

Review, XVI (September, 1929), 177. 33 W. M. F. Magraw to James Buchanan, January 2, 1858 (MS, Buchanan Collection of the Historical

Society of Pennsylvania). Hereafter cited as H.S.P. 34 W . M. F. Magraw to James Buchanan, April 17, 1858, Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 200. 35 W. M. F. Magraw to James Buchanan, January 2, 1858 ( H . S. P . ) .

138 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

the position allow me to refer you to either of my brothers. . . ." 3G Jackson con­firms this connection in noting that Magraw had at least one brother residing in Washington who apparently acted as an intermediary with the Buchanan Administration when W. M. F. Magraw was out of town.37

This intermediary was most likely Robert Mitchell Magraw of Baltimore, an older brother who courted Buchanan's niece, Harriet Lane, at the White House during 1857 and was actually engaged to her at the time of his death in 1866.38

The President's letters from Washington contain a number of references to Robert Magraw, and a Washington newspaper described the man as a personal friend of the President from Baltimore.39 Referring to the members of Bu­chanan's inaugural party, the President's nephew and secretary spoke of Robert Magraw as " . . . an ardent personal and political friend . . . then president of the

30 Ibid. According to Biographical Cyclopedia, 359, Magraw had four brothers who were living at this time: James Cochran, Samuel Martin, Robert Mitchell, and Henry Slaymaker. Alumni records of Dickin­son College of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, indicate that both James Buchanan and Samuel Martin Magraw were alumni of that school — Buchanan was graduated in 1809, Magraw in 1827.

37 Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 200. 38 As Buchanan was not married, Harriet Lane acted as First Lady of the White House. Roy F. Nichols

in The Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1948), 101, is the only writer to mention Robert M. Magraw's romance with Miss Lane. Nichols implies a tie of kinship between Robert M. Magraw and W. M. F. Magraw, but first confirmation of this relation comes from Mrs. Edna D. Magraw, of Perryville, Maryland, to William P. MacKinnon, March 19, 1962. W. M. F. Magraw was the great-uncle of Mrs. Edna D. Magraw's husband.

39 Washington Union, February 27, 1857.

H H K

^ 1 *

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 139

Northern Central Railroad " 40 Finally, Captain John W. Phelps, an artillery officer with the Utah Expedition, made the following notation in his diary while passing through Fort Laramie:

It appears that | W. M. F.] Magraw's brother was a delegate to the convention that nominated Buchanan for the Presidency, and hence, in the political logic of the present day, must be a party chief for a scientific exploring expedition [in con­nection with the Pacific Wagon R o a d ] . . . .41

Despite these connections, however, W. M. F. Magraw's administration of his responsibilities on the wagon road project proved highly embarrassing to the Department of the Interior under whose jurisdiction the road was to be con­structed. The superintendent used his position and power primarily as a means of advancing his own personal pleasures and of actively contributing to the military movement against the Mormons. Magraw's actions as superintendent reflect a great deal of his character, his hostility to Mormons, and his ties with Buchanan.

Magraw himself was expected by the Interior Department to spend the sum­mer of 1857 in surveying a feasible route for the new wagon road. Instead he sent out Frederick West Lander, his chief engineer, at the head of a small party to do the major portion of the exploratory work while he dawdled in Inde­pendence and frittered away the project's rather sizeable appropriation. In July

of 1857, the Interior Department took alarm at Magraw's inactivity and unorthodox ex­penditures. Secretary Thompson finally goaded the superintendent into taking the field with the rest of his employees by sus­pending his appropriation.42

Once on the trail to South Pass and Utah, Magraw's conduct degenerated to a point that horrified many of his own em­ployees. According to several accounts Ma-

40 J. Buchanan Henry, "Biographical Sketch," The Worlds of James Buchanan, ed., John Bassett Moore (13 vols. Phil­adelphia, 1911), XII, 479.

41 Diary of Captain John W. Phelps, entry for Septem­ber 3, 1857, Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 123. Robert Magraw is not listed as an official delegate in Official Pro­ceedings of The National Democratic Convention Held in Cincinnati, fune 2—6, 1856 (Cincinnati, 1856).

42 Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 192-96.

C. W. Carter photograph of a stagecoach operating in Utah.

140 U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

graw was insensible from drink much of the time. The superintendent fre­quently stopped travelers headed east and urged them in an expansive manner to accept a personal letter of introduction to his "crony," the President of the United States. On these occasions Magraw would offer the advice that the best possible introduction to Buchanan was to appear before him with the smell of good liquor on the breath. Magraw also expended a considerable amount of energy in bitterly cursing the Mormons.43

In September of 1857, the engineers, disbursing agent, and physician attached to Magraw's party wrote to Lander and urged him to take over the position which, in their eyes, Magraw had forfeited by his extraordinary conduct. This group pointed out that valuable weeks had been lost on the wagon road project because of the superintendent's chronic intoxication. Magraw's subordinates also accused him of using government wagons to haul personal supplies (including 6,300 pounds of liquor) to Fort Laramie with the intention of selling them there and dividing the profits with Tim Goodale, his guide and interpreter. Once the party reached Laramie, Goodale and Magraw could not come to terms in deter­mining an equitable division of the profits. Goodale reportedly pulled Magraw's beard and jumped on his feet in an effort to provoke a fight and settle the affair in mountain style. Magraw ignored these challenges, however, and the dispute had to be adjudicated by army officers at Fort Laramie. Goodale was "awarded" $3,617.28.44 An officer at Laramie described the condition of Magraw's group when it reached the fort:

There are several governmental parties at the Fort and in its vicinity at present. Among others is Magraw, who has an appropriation of some 300,000 dollars for exploring the track from Fort Leavenworth, via Fort Laramie and Salt Lake to California. The party consists of a dozen officers, more or less, and a hundred men, and so far as the officers are concerned it is in a state of dissolution. They say that Magraw is an ignorant blackguard, totally unfit for the head of such an expedition, while the chief engineer of the party [Lander] is.45

Shortly after pushing on from Fort Laramie, Magraw's exploration party came into contact with the main body of the Army of Utah. At this point the superintendent's anti-Mormon biases took a decidedly more active and irrespon­sible bent than mere letter-writing had heretofore permitted. Perceiving that the Expedition was badly in need of transportation equipment, Magraw immedi­ately offered to further the successful prosecution of the campaign by lending out fifteen wagons and over one hundred mules. All of this stock and equipment had been entrusted to his safekeeping by the Interior Department. Colonel Al-

43 Ibid., 360n. "Ibid., 197 and 361n. Magraw later defended himself by saying that this concession was necessary

to obtain Goodale's services as guide, and that he himself never profited from the deal. 45 Phelps Diary, entry for September 3, 1857, Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 123.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 141

bert Sidney Johnston, General Harney's successor as commander of the Expedi­tion, directed his staff to accept Magraw's unauthorized offer. In his eagerness to help the army, Magraw neither asked nor received compensation for the use of this valuable stock and equipment.46

Two days after thus disposing of property that did not belong to him, Magraw took additional steps to ensure the success of the Expedition — he started recruiting troops. Writing from South Pass, Colonel Johnston informed his superiors in the East that,

. . . Mr. Wm. Magraw, superintendent South Pass wagon road, with a patriotism highly creditable to him, places at the disposition of the government as many of his employees as will volunteer. He thinks fifty or sixty will organize, and I have agreed to accept their service. . . .47

Magraw's recruiting efforts met with considerable success; and when he him­self volunteered for service with the Expedition, he was elected captain of the company in which his former employees were to serve.48

Writing from the army's winter quarters, Magraw later reported to the President that he had joined forces with the Expedition because,

. . . the Mormons were watching my movements and dogging my trains requir­ing on my part the utmost vigilance . . . [and because] the employees themselves expressed their wishes to be permitted to assist in queling the rebellion of the miser­able traitor Brigham Young and his marauding followers, and bringing to the jus­tice they so richly merit these insolent offenders against the laws of our Country.49

In this extremely long letter, Magraw revealed the full force of his hatred for the Mormons and at the same time repeated many of the phrases of self-indul­gence that had become an integral and virtually automatic part of his corre­spondence with high federal officials.

Meanwhile, unaware of the fact that Magraw had totally abandoned his responsibilities with the Pacific Wagon Road project to campaign against the Mormons, Secretary Thompson finally grew weary of Magraw's incompetence and discharged him late in 1857. Thompson offered the superintendent's position to Lander, but the capable engineer initially refused to assume the title of this position after a trip to Washington and a consultation with Magraw's powerful friends revealed that such a move would be politically inexpedient.50 Probably in deference to Buchanan's wishes, Thompson's staff glossed over this incident

"Assistant Adjutant General F. J. Porter to William F. Magraw, October 16, 1857, Hafen, The Utah Expedition, 151—52.

47 Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston to Major Irvin McDowell, October 18, 1857, Utah Expedition, House Ex. Doc. 71, p. 36.

48 Ibid. 49 W. M. F. Magraw to James Buchanan, January 2, 1858 (H.S.P.). 50 Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 200.

142 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

in its report to Congress by mentioning only that Magraw " . . . had vacated his commission [with the road project] by volunteering into the service of the army of U tah . . . . " 5 1

Magraw did not receive word of his dismissal by the Interior Department until March 25,1858. His reaction is significant. Enraged by Thompson's charges of drunkenness, inefficiency, brutality, overbearingness, and ungentlemanly con­duct, Magraw drafted a protest to Buchanan in which he asserted that Secretary Thompson had listened to and acted on the charges of a group of "miserable and designing men." 52

The parallel between this letter and the one written to President Pierce in 1856 is striking. The memorials to the Post Office Department and Indian Bureau, the letter of Isaac Hockaday, and the contributions of "Verastus" all fit into this same pattern. In each case Magraw vehemently lashed out at a per­son or group that he felt was responsible for his economic misfortunes. Usually his retaliatory efforts were channeled through the medium of correspondence with powerful Democratic political figures. Magraw's active association with the Army of Utah was a departure from this more conventional medium of attack, as was the violent nature of his later dealings with Lander.

For some reason Magraw came to believe that Lander had been chiefly re­sponsible for his removal from the wagon road position. As a result of this conviction, ill-feeling developed between the two men, climaxing in a series of brawls in and about various Washington hotels. A contemporary paper dutifully recorded the details of one such encounter at Willard's Hotel:

Last evening Mr. Lander, late the engineer attached to the Government Wagon Road Expedition of which Mr. Wm. McGraw [sic] was the superintendent, met the latter in one of the public apartments of Willard's Hotel; Mr. L. having, ac­cording to popular rumors, previously challenged him, without receiving a reply to the challenge, which grew out of a difficulty between them when engaged to­gether on the expedition. It is said that Mr. Lander, on meeting Mr. McGraw at Willard's, entered into conversation with him about his declension to make any reply to the hostile billet-doux, which . . . resulted in a terrible collision, both being physically powerful men. In the course of it Mr. McGraw, who is said to have had in his hands a sort of "billy", dealt Mr. Lander three tremendous blows ere he could return the first. When he [Lander] did return it, however, the tide of battle turned on his side, and he floored his antagonist. . . . Both left the scene of action terribly cut and disfigured.5'5

In the spring of 1860, the two men met again by accident, this time in front of the Kirkwood Hotel. Insults were exchanged, Magraw drew a pistol, and a vio-

51 U.S., Secretary of the Interior, Report of General Superintendent Albert H . Campbell, Report Upon The Pacific Wagon Roads, 35th Cong., 2d Sess., 1858-59, House Ex. Doc. 108, Serial 1008, p . 6.

52 W. M. F. Magraw to James Buchanan, April 17, 1858, Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 2 0 0 - 1 . 53 From an undated Washington newspaper quoted in Branch, "Frederick West Lander ," M.V.H.R.,

XVI, 181-82n.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN UTAH 143

lent scuffle ensued. The Kirkwood's management finally succeeded in disengag­ing the combatants.54

Even after his removal from the Pacific Wagon Road project and release from military service with the Army of Utah, Magraw continued to benefit from the Buchanan Administration's military operations in the western territories. Magraw's obituary notes that "He was subsequently engaged as a transporter of supplies to the army in Utah and New Mexico." 55

Significantly it was not until after Buchanan left office in 1861 that legal action was taken against Magraw to obtain compensation for the $15,851.79 worth of government property that he had turned over to the Utah Expedition and for which he could not account. While Buchanan was still in the White House, Secretary Thompson displayed an inordinate amount of patience in his informal attempts to settle the deficiencies in Magraw's accounts. Within a month after Lincoln's inauguration, however, a suit against Magraw had been authorized.56

Magraw died unexpectedly at the age of forty-six on April 7, 1864. At the time of his death, he was visiting Baltimore from his farm in Allegany County, Maryland.57

Although John M. Hockaday shared in the same political favoritism that Magraw enjoyed once Buchanan took office, his background is considerably more obscure than Magraw's. Captain Albert Tracy, an officer attached to the Utah Expedition, spoke of Hockaday as "a Virginian," 58 while another source identified him as a young Missouri law student who was barely of age when the Expedition was being formed.59 It seems unlikely, however, that Hockaday was actually this young in 1857, for two years later he himself stated that he had ". . . an acquaintance of seven years with the country over which said route [8911] runs."60 Frederick West Lander also referred to Hockaday as "an ex­perienced mountaineer" in 1857, and stated that Hockaday had ". . . discovered in 1854 a cut-off route across the Bear River mountains, over which he attempted

51 Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 211 . 55 Magraw's obituary was furnished by Mrs. Edna D . Magraw and is taken from what is described

as a "local paper" of April, 1864 (most likely the Baltimore Sun). 511 Jackson, Wagon Roads West, 211-12 . Apparently the suit against Magraw was never completed for

a record book entitled Record of Suits, Second Comptroller's Office in the United States General Account­ing Office indicates that as of August 26, 1885, Magraw's account (No. 5293) still showed a balance of $12,615.44 due the United States (suspensions in the amount of $3,236.35 had been al lowed) . On Decem­ber 5, 1885, Magraw's account was forwarded to the Solicitor for further action, but it was returned to the Second Comptroller 's Office with the notation "Parties not found."

37 Magraw obituary (Mrs. Edna D . Magraw) . 5 8Tracy Journal, entries for April 13, I860, The Utah War, Journal of Albert Tracy, 1858-1860,

U.H.Q.,Xm (1945) , 104. mIbid., 106n. m J. M. Hockaday to Honorable J. Holt, March 8, 1859, Majority Report, U.S., Congress, Senate, Com­

mittee on Post Offices and Post Roads, Report for the relief of John M. Hockaday and William Liggit, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., 1859-60, Senate Rept. 259, Serial 1040, p . 3 .

144 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

to turn the emigration, and he erected a bridge for the purpose of aiding the adoption of the line." 61

It is not clear whether Hockaday was as well acquainted with Buchanan as was Magraw, but there is little doubt that Hockaday knew the President. In 1858, for instance, Magraw concluded a letter to Buchanan by stating: "Mr. Hockaday will give you all the news here, so I will trouble you no further " 62

Elsewhere in this same report, Magraw again referred to "Mr. Hockaday," indi­cating that Buchanan was sufficiently familiar with the man to need no further identification.

Hockaday, of course, lost his livelihood as did Magraw when Mormons took over the mail service on Route 8911 during the fall of 1856. His activities during the rest of that year and the first half of 1857 are not known. Not long after April of 1857 and Magraw's appointment by Buchanan as a wagon road super­intendent, however, the President named Hockaday United States attorney for Utah.63 At about the same time, Buchanan's Post Office Department annulled the Mormon contract on Route 8911 for "Not having executed contracts in proper season, and for other reasons. . . ." 64 Hockaday immediately sought to use the leverage of his appointment as U. S. attorney to regain the Independence-Salt Lake City mail business.65 The Post Office Department rejected Hockaday's request and subsequently awarded the contract for Route 8911 to S. B. Miles at $32,000 per annum.

Failing to recover the mail business that he and Magraw had once operated, Hockaday left Washington and moved westward to take up his new office under the protection of the Army of Utah. At Camp Scott, the Expedition's winter quarters near Fort Bridger, Hockaday was reunited with Magraw, who by that time had abandoned the wagon road project and joined forces with the army. While in winter quarters Hockaday performed his first duties as U. S. attorney for Utah in presenting a special grand jury with the charges against Mormon militiamen who had been captured while raiding the Expedition's supply trains.66

Hockaday grew restless, however, and during the first week of 1858 left Camp Scott to return to Washington. It is known that at this time he planned

01 Preliminary Report of F. W. Lander, Report Upon The Pacific Wagon Road, House Ex. Doc. 108, p. 31. Lander's statement is dated November 30, 1857. The "line" and "bridge" to which Lander refers undoubtedly had some connection with the mail business of Hockaday & Magraw during 1854-56.

02 W. M. F. Magraw to James Buchanan, January 2, 1858 (H.S.P.). esNew York Times, August 3, 1857. 01 J. Holt to Honorable D. L. Yulee, May 5, 1860, Minority Report (Exhibit D), Report for the relief

of John M. Hockaday and William Liggit, Senate Rept. 259, p. 16. Holt was Buchanan's postmaster gen­eral and Yulee was chairman of a Senate committee investigating the administration of Route 8911.

03 Statement of John M. Hockaday, August 1, 1857, Minority Report (Exhibit N), ibid., 38-39. 0,iW. N. Davis, Jr., "Western Justice: The Court at Fort Bridger, Utah Territory," U.H.Q., XXIII

(April, 1955), 102.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 145

to have a personal interview with Buchanan. By March of 1858, Hockaday was back in the capital, and on March 31, he again wrote an official of the Post Office Department to ask for Route 8911.67 The following day, April 1, the department hastily annulled S. B. Miles' contract on the route and awarded it to Hockaday. The new contract called for improved round-trip mail service between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Salt Lake City, this time at an annual com­pensation of $190,000. Hockaday's contract was to run from May 1, 1858, to November, 1860. Soon after regaining the route, he acquired a partner, William Liggit.68

Besides the highly unusual circumstances under which Hockaday re-entered the mail business, two other points about this incident should be kept in mind — the size of the contract fee and the connection between the contract itself and the Utah Expedition. Hockaday's compensation was to be $190,000 — Miles had asked for only $32,000 in 1857, while the B. Y. Express Company had originally succeeded Hockaday and Magraw in 1856, on a bid of $23,000. Furthermore, the wording of Hockaday's contract made it quite clear that a prolonged military campaign in Utah would be to his financial advantage. Postmaster General Holt later explained this point to Secretary of War Floyd:

The postal communication between St. Joseph's, Missouri, and Salt Lake City, Utah, was, in consequence of the threatened rebellion of the Mormon population, improved to a weekly mail, in order that the government might be enabled to cor­respond regularly and rapidly with the troops engaged in military operations in that Territory. It was expressly provided in the contract that the Postmaster Gen­eral should have the power to curtail the service whenever the reason which had led to this improvement should cease to exist. . . .<!9

With the failure of Congress to pass the Administration's requested Post Office appropriation and with the negotiated collapse of the "Mormon War" in 1858, service requirements on Route 8911 again came under scrutiny. During March and April of 1859, Postmaster General Holt advised Hockaday that his service would be reduced from a weekly to a semi-monthly basis, and that com­pensation would drop accordingly from a level of $190,000 to $125,000. Hocka­day immediately protested that such a move was grossly unjust. At the same time he and his partner made covert plans to transfer the mail service to another firm. On May 11, 1859, Hockaday and Liggit secretly sold their contract to Jones, Russell & Company, a subsidiary of Russell, Majors & Waddell. One part­ner of this firm, William H. Russell, was then involved in financial practices

07 John M. Hockaday to Honorable William H . Dundas , March 3 1 , 1858, Minority Report (Exhibit B) , Report for the relief of John M. Hockaday and William Liggit, Senate Rept. 259, pp . 12-13 . Dundas was second assistant postmaster general.

08 Minority Report, ibid., 1. , , 9J. Holt to Honorable John B. Floyd, May 1, 1860, Minority Report (Exhibit D, No . 1) , ibid., 18.

Hockaday's contract dated April 1, 1858, may be found on pp. 13-16.

146 U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

of doubtful ethics concerning the Utah Expedition with Secretary of War Floyd. Between what they were later to be awarded by the government and what they received from Jones, Russell & Company, Hockaday and his partner sold out foratotalof$405,847.51.70

This purchase agreement was not immediately made public. To further pre­serve the secrecy of the transfer, J. M. Hockaday & Company and Jones, Russell & Company both agreed that the latter would operate the mail service under the former's name. In addition the contract between the two companies stipu­lated,

. . . John M. Hockaday further agrees to give his personal aid and influence to secure the interests of Jones, Russell & Co., for an increased compensation for carry­ing said mail, so far as he can, with convenience to his own business interests, the said Jones, Russell & Co., agrees to pay him a liberal compensation therefor in case of success.71

Hockaday eventually did start a legislative influence campaign in Washing­ton. His efforts, however, were directed toward benefiting himself and Liggit rather than Jones, Russell & Company. On March 14, 1860, Hockaday directed a memorial to Congress in which he demanded $65,000 as compensation for unexpected operating expenses and for Holt's curtailment of service during the previous year. The House Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads sympa­thized with Hockaday and reported a relief bill for $59,576. In highly emotional tones the committee described what it felt were the consequences of Holt's action:

Thus at a single blow the accumulations, in Mr. Liggit's case, of a long life of virtu­ous toil were swept away, his family beggared, and his partner, Mr. Hockaday, dis­couraged and disheartened, retired to Salt Lake City, where he now remains in a state of mental and physical debility, which disqualifies him from bestowing any attention whatever to his business.72

A Senate committee also investigated the matter and recommended that $40,000 be awarded to Hockaday. This recommendation was proposed even though a militant minority of the committee had concluded, "There is no principle upon which the bill can be placed, that does not open the treasury to raiders to an illimitable amount of demands for similar damages." 73

Uneasy about the heavy expenditures attributable to the Expedition and about recent scandals involving military contractors and his cabinet officers,

70 George A. Root and Russell K. Hickman, "Pike's Peak Express Companies, Part III — The Platte Route — The Hockaday Purchase," Kansas Historical Quarterly, XIII (November, 1945), 486-87.

71 For contract between J. M. Hockaday & Company and Jones, Russell & Company, May 11, 1859, see Minority Report (Exhibit H) , Report for the relief of John M. Hockaday and William Liggit, Senate Rept. 259, pp. 21-22.

72 U. S., Congress, House, Committee on the Post Office and Post Roads, Report, Hockaday & Legget, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., 1859-60, House Rept. 268, Serial 1068, pp. 1-2.

73 Minority Report, Report for the relief of John M. Hockaday and William Liggit, Senate Rept. 259, p. 11.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 147

Buchanan vetoed a relief bill in January of 1861 that would have awarded Hockaday and Liggit $59,576. At the time, though, the President remarked, "There is no doubt that the contractors have sustained considerable loss in the whole transaction." 74 He subsequently approved a substitute measure that appropriated $40,000 on behalf of the contractors.

It is difficult to determine the nature of Hockaday's personality and tem­perament prior to his second and final departure from the mail business in 1859. Captain Tracy, however, provides us with a description of the contractor's pitiful condition shortly after he petitioned Congress for financial relief in March of 1860:

. . . at Gilbert's Station . . . [near South Pass, I met] one, John Hockaday, a Vir­ginian, a former mail contractor, and, only a month or so since, one of Captain Heth's candidates — after Sharpe — for Sutler of the Tenth Regiment [of the Utah Expedition]. With Hockaday, and indeed, in actual charge of him — for John was little better than in a condition of chronic tremens — was also a most genial and kindly second, by name, Doc Erwin. . . . the driver of the incoming stage — a small, lean man — had been forthwith recognized by John Hockaday, as a party who, he insisted, had upon a certain former occasion, stolen some of his mules. Wroth with the recollection and identification, and yet further excited with the fumes of drinks, untold of number, Hockaday . . . possessed himself of two shoe­makers' knives . . . and stood in the door-way of the hut hatless, coatless, and with his hair abroad in a wild, insane manner, . . . challenging then and there to mortal combat the presumed purloiner of his animals. . . . [I stepped between the two men, pointed out to Hockaday that his "opponent" was a mere boy, and persuaded him to drop the knives.] Hockaday, retiring, took more whiskey, from what ap­peared a favorite blue keg, of the capacity of about two gallons, and was soon asleep, with whatever dreams may visit the brain of the sodden inebriate.75

On July 17,1860, the San Francisco Bulletin ventured that, "Hockaday's mental faculties have been seriously affected." 76

Hockaday's activities after the summer of 1860 are not known. During July and August of 1861, however, the firm of Hockaday & Burr entered the probate court of Great Salt Lake County as a party to legal action involving both the surveyor general and territorial marshal of Utah.77 This writer has been unable to determine whether John M. Hockaday was a partner of Hockaday & Burr.

In summary, then, we see that W. M. F. Magraw and John M. Hockaday corresponded vigorously with the President, his cabinet officers, other high-ranking federal officials, and even newspapers to further their personal ends.

J? Henry, "Veto Message On a Bill For The Relief of Hockaday and Leggit," January 25, 1861, Works of James Buchanan, XI, 114-16. Congressional sources alternate between spellings for the name of Hocka­day's partner — "Leggit," "Liggit," and "Legget."

"Tracy Journal, entries for April 13 and 14, 1860, The Utah War, U.H.Q., XIII, 104-6. 7,1 Ibid., 106n. 77 Smith Journal, entries for July 9 and August 9, 1861, A. R. Mortensen, ed., "Elias Smith, Journal of

a Pioneer Editor, March 6, 1859-September 23, 1863," U.H.Q., XXI (July, 1953), 258 and 263. Smith was a judge as well as an editor.

148 U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

All of these efforts seemed to stem from successful Mormon attempts to control operations on Route 8911 during 1856. Magraw's actions were apparently domi­nated by a desire to improve his financial condition and to avenge real or imagined misfortunes suffered at the hands of the Mormon community in Utah. To him a federal military force in the territory was perhaps the ideal instrument of retaliation. Hockaday's lobbying efforts were prompted primarily by eco­nomic motives. There is little evidence to indicate that he bore the Mormons any ill will as a group.

Both men realized their prime objectives through political affiliations with the Buchanan Administration. Magraw received a responsible appointment with the Pacific Wagon Road project, and federal troops were in fact dispatched to deal with the Mormons. Magraw also managed to serve as a captain with the Army of Utah, and later as a supplier with troops in Utah and New Mexico. Hockaday became a U. S. attorney. In addition he regained the franchise for Route 8911, ostensibly to improve communications between the War Depart­ment and the Army of Utah. There is also evidence to indicate that Hockaday was at least considered for the position of sutler with one of the infantry regi­ments attached to the Expedition. Both Hockaday and Magraw displayed an affinity for strong drink and violence.

The foregoing is not to say that Buchanan purposely initiated the Expedi­tion to advance the personal fortunes of Magraw and Hockaday. The evidence does indicate, however, that the President's decision to intervene in Utah was based on biased, irresponsible sources. Once the formation of the Expedition had been decided upon, Buchanan used the Army of Utah repeatedly to benefit his personal and political associates.

In fairness to Hockaday and Magraw, though, it should be noted that their attitude was not atypical on the American frontier. Howard R. Lamar points out that, as a section, the Trans-Mississippi West looked to the presence of mili­tary units as a valuable source of cash as well as protection. The army was something to be exploited and manipulated for personal gain.78 The Army of Utah proved to be no exception. When news of Mormon raids on federal sup­ply lines and livestock reached Kansas, for instance, a local paper offered the fol­lowing commentary:

Money is very scarce in Kansas. But we believe that there will be more money in the territory next summer than in any state in the union, in proportion to popu­lation. The Utah expedition has already cost $6,000,000; the army has already lost 1,700 mules and between 3,000 and 4,000 head of cattle. The probability is that all their stock will be gone before spring. This stock, the feed and fodder —

78 Howard R. Lamar, Dakota Territory 1861-1889, A Study of Frontier Politics (New Haven, 1956), 25.

BUCHANAN'S SPOILS SYSTEM IN U T A H 149

every kind of agricultural produce — will have to be replaced. It will give a mar­ket to our farmers — who will sell for cash, at the highest prices, all that they can raise. Let Eastern Emigrants, who have stock, bring them on.79

Neither was the attitude of Hockaday and Magraw blatantly out of place in the atmosphere engendered by the Buchanan Administration, the atmosphere Captain Phelps referred to as "the political logic of the present day." For weeks after Buchanan took office the workings of the federal government were virtu­ally at a standstill while the President dutifully doled out patronage.80 Corrup­tion was rife, and one scandal after another plagued Buchanan. His Adminis­tration was accused of buying congressional votes in connection with Kansas' Lecompton Constitution.81 Secretary of War Floyd alone figured in scandals involving the purchase of property for a military reservation at Willett's Point, New York;82 the sale of Fort Snelling;83 a brick contract for the Washington aquaduct; and the heating contract for the Capitol itself.84 Floyd eventually had to resign when it became known that a distant relative had taken $870,000 in bonds from the Interior Department to forestall exposure of the Secretary's own irregular financial dealings with Russell, Majors & Waddell, the contract­ing firm which supplied the Utah Expedition. Floyd was indicted later for mal­feasance of office.80

While probing the Willett's Point scandal during the summer of 1857, a con­gressional committee of investigation aptly identified a problem basic to the Buchanan Administration and its entire handling of the Utah Expedition which was just then getting underway:

. . . this pernicious and perilous system of making public preferments the spoils of the successful side of politics, by extending it a very little, becomes a system, whereby other employments, not official, jobs and contracts, like mail contracts, army contracts, jobs for transportation and supplies, and other preferences may be claimed by men who manage parties successfully 86

The following spring, Representative S. A. Purviance, of Pennsylvania, touched on the same subject in a highly critical speech sarcastically entitled "The Triumphs of The Administration." He said,

79 The Kansas Crusader of Freedom (Doniphan City) , January 30, 1858, quoted in "Bypaths of Kansas History," Kansas Historical Quarterly, VI (May, 1937), 200-10 .

80 See National Intelligencer, May 18, 1857. 81 U.S., Congress, House. Select Committee, The Covode Investigation Report, 36th Cong., 1st Sess.,

1859-60, House Rept. 648, Serial 1071. 82 U.S., Congress, House, Select Committee, Wilkins' or Willett's Point Investigation Report, 35th Cong.,

1st Sess., 1857-58, House Rept. 549, Serial 968. 83 U.S., Congress, House, Select Committee, Fort Snelling Investigation Report, 35th Cong., 1st Sess.,

1857-58, House Rept. 351, Serial 965. 84 Nichols, Disruption of American Democracy, 329-30 and 553. 83 U.S., Congress, House, Select Committee, Report . . . Fraudulent Abstraction of Certain Bonds . . .

Department of the Interior, 36th Cong., 2d Sess., 1860-61 , House Rept. 78, Serial 1105, or Raymond W . and Mary Lund Settle, Empire On Wheels (Stanford, 1949).

86 Wilkins' or Willett's Point Investigation Report, House Rept. 549, p . 23 .

150 U T A H HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

With a Delegate sitting in the House from Utah, with whom we have not even heard that the President ever had a conference, a war is undertaken against the Mormons, at an expense of millions; contracts given out to political favorites, to buy up broken-down horses and mules; provisions at most exorbitant prices, out of which magnificent fortunes have been made in a few weeks; the Army increased, and a partisan President enabled thereby to distribute effectually the spoils of office. . . . What a farce, to thus disgrace ourselves in the eyes of the civilized world, by exhibiting to public gaze the vibrations and vacillations of an Executive whose mind to-day is for war, to-morrow for peace, and the next day for both. Thus has ended the second triumph of the Administration, costing the people many mil­lions of dollars, now conceded to have been uselessly thrown away.87

8' U.S., Appendix to the Congressional Globe, Representative S. A. Purviance, "The Triumphs of the Administration," 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 1857-58, pp. 414-15.