First Annual Message by President James Buchanan
President James Buchanan December 8, 1857 On July 18, 1857, President James Buchanan dispatched the Tenth Infantry Regiment from Fort Leavenworth, soon to be joined by the Fifth Infantry, 1,200 American soldiers. He exaggerated in calling the circumstance a “rebellion,” but it is true that Brigham Young was both the head of the church and the governor of the territory, and the church had been routinely undercutting the authority of the territorial courts and administrators. Here is Buchanan’s message to…