Heritage Gateways
Official Sesquicentennial K-12 Education Project
sponsored by the Utah State Board of Education, the BYU-Public School Partnership and the Utah Education Network
Pioneer 1847 Companies
Brigham Young Description
Brigham
Young, Lion of the Lord, American Moses, and second president of
the Church. The April 1852 edition of the New York Herald printed
a letter from Jedediah Grant, mayor of Salt Lake City, in which
he applied an appropriately Western frontier metaphor to characterize
Brigham Young: "I can't undertake to explain Brigham Young to your
Atlantic citizens, or expect you to put him at his value. Your great
men Eastward are to me like your ivory and pearl handled table knives,
balance[d] handles, more shiny than the inside of my watch case;
but, with only edge enough to slice bread and cheese or help spoon
victuals, and all alike by the dozen one with another. Brigham is
the article that sells out West with us - between a Roman cutlass
and a beef butcher knife, the thing to cut up a deer or cut down
an enemy, and that will save your life or carve your dinner every
bit as well, though the handpice is buck horn and the case a hogskin
hanging in the breech of your pantloons. You, that judge men by
the handle and the sheath, how can I make you know a good Blade?"
