Thomas L. Kane, an influential friend to Brigham Young and the Mormon pioneers was an important non-Mormon in Latter-day Saint history, said Matthew J. Grow, director of publications for the Church History Department.
Kane was promised by early Church leaders "that his name would be had in honorable remembrance among the Saints in all generations," said Brother Grow, who has authored a recent biography on the army colonel, attorney and social reformer. Brother Grow was the second speaker in the May 7 Pioneer Symposium of the National Society of the Sons of Utah Pioneers.
On May 13, 1846, the day the United States declared war on Mexico, Kane, then 24, attended a conference of the Church in Philadelphia, Pa., and heard the preaching of Jesse C. Little, a merchant and head of the Church in the eastern states, Brother Grow recounted.
"Little had been sent by Brigham Young to the East to lobby the federal government to see if he could raise some sort of funds ... that [the Mormons] needed for the westering exodus. Kane hadn't just stumbled upon the meeting. He'd read about the Mormons in print, or perhaps encountered some of them on the streets in Philadelphia, and decided that a relationship with them might be mutually advantageous," he said.
Kane set his sights on the Mormon refugee camps in the Midwest, Brother Grow said, adding that he was a potentially valuable ally for the Church because of his influential family connections with U.S. presidents James Polk and James Buchanan.
"In 1846, Thomas Kane was in search of a cause; he lived in a era in which fervor for social reform was sweeping the nation," Brother Grow said. "He had already dabbled in a variety of reforms." He would eventually become involved in the fight against slavery including as a Union general in the Civil War.
The expulsion of the Mormons from Nauvoo, Ill., in 1846 "meant there was quite a bit of sympathy in the United States among people like Kane for the Latter-day Saints" who were making painfully slow progress across Iowa in their trek to the Great Basin, their eventual place of refuge, he said. Refugee camps lacking adequate supplies, subject to diseases and frequent deaths and plagued by fears of future persecution presented "a humanitarian crisis that piqued Thomas Kane's sensibilities."
After the conference in Philadelphia, he approached Jesse C. Little and declared his intention to accompany the Saints to their ultimate destination. He overcame Mormon leaders' initial distrust about his intentions. Kane would travel to camps and observe firsthand the condition of the suffering Saints.
Meanwhile, Little, armed with a letter of introduction from Kane, approached government leaders in Washington, D.C. This and subsequent contacts by Kane would eventually result in President Polk's ordering the mustering from among the Latter-day Saints the Mormon Battalion in the war with Mexico. The move proved to be a boon to the Mormons' westward trek in a number of ways including funding in part the journey west and allowing at government expense the movement of part of their number to the West. It also demonstrated the loyalty of the Mormons to the United States.
On his way west, Kane went to Winter Quarters, the Mormon camp on the Iowa-Nebraska border.
"Just as Kane had provided Little the crucial letters of introduction to government officials, Little now gave Kane letters to key Mormon leaders," Brother Grow said.
Kane went to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., where he hoped to be commissioned as an officer in the Mormon Battalion; he got his wish when he arrived there, Brother Grow said. But his poor health lost the prospect of a military commission for him. It crushed his spirits.
"But then he reconsidered," he said. "With his 'path toward self-aggrandizement spoiled,' he would go forward with his unselfish options: the raising of the Mormon Battalion and the securing of Mormon loyalty to the nation."
He participated with Brigham Young and other Mormon leaders in the recruitment drive for the battalion.
Brother Grow said the instructions to the battalion soldiers "contrasted with much of the American rhetoric about Mexicans in the war with Mexico. Parley P. Pratt, for instance, told the battalion to 'neither misuse their enemies nor spoil their property, as the Mexicans were fellow human beings to whom the gospel is yet to be preached.' "
