Description

A Higher Object

The Mormon Battalion was discharged from the United States Army on July 16, 1847. Immediately after the men split into different groups and began to make their way back to join the main body of the Saints.

James Stephens Brown joined up with a group led by Levi Ward Hancock and they made their way north, intending to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Sacramento. On September 7, 1847, they were met by messengers from President Brigham Young informing them that unless they had sufficient provisions to survive the winter, they ought not come on to the Salt Lake Valley, but instead remain in California until the following season.

About half of the men kept going east, while James Brown and the others turned back to seek employment for the winter. James and five others secured employment working for John Sutter building a mill on the American River.

They were there on January 24, 1848, when the foreman, James Marshall discovered gold in the mill race. That discovery sparked the gold rush of 1849, in which it is estimated that tens of billions of dollars in gold was found, and some 300,000 people rushed to California to claim it. But before the 49ers came James Brown and his brethren were there first and found the gold everywhere.

As summer approached, the Battalion veterans were faced with a weighty decision—should they stay and make a fortune or leave it all behind and return to their families and their faith? James Stephens Brown wrote:

“The day before starting from the gold diggings was a kind of an off-day, in which [I] … wandered off from camp, with pick and shovel, up a dry gulch where [I] soon struck a very rich prospect of gold. … By sundown [I] had … washed out forty-nine dollars and fifty cents in gold; yet … strange as it may appear … I have never seen that rich spot of earth since; nor do I regret it, for there always has been a higher object before me than gold. We had covenanted to move together. … We were in honor bound to move the next day. We did move, leaving that rich prospect without ever sticking a stake in the gulch, but abandoning it to those who might follow. … People said, ‘Here is gold on the bedrock, gold on the hills, gold in the rills, gold everywhere, gold to spend, gold to lend, gold for all that will delve, and soon you can make an independent fortune.’ We could realize all that. Still duty called, our honor was at stake, we had covenanted with each other, there was a principle involved; for with us it was God and His kingdom first. We had friends and relatives in the wilderness, yea, in an untried, desert land, and who knew their condition? We did not. So it was duty before pleasure, before wealth, and with this prompting we rolled out and joined our comrades.”

Do we have a higher object than wealth, power, or pleasure?

Source: Michael Landon and Brandon Metcalf, The Remarkable Journey of the Mormon Battalion Covenant Communications, American Fork, Utah, 2012. p. 85-88https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush