It was while the Mormons were scattered along the riverto-river trails that James Allen, a United States army officer, arrived at Mt. Pisgah from Fort Leavenworth to enlist volunteers for the Mexican War. Accompanied by Brigham Young, he proceeded to the camp on the Missouri River, opened a recruiting office and secured five companies of one hundred men each. An ex-elder of the Mormon Church asserted afterwards: "Money was needed to enable them to move. Their design they desired to cloak under a sham patriotism. The United States offered $20,000 bounty money, and Brigham recruited a regiment, persuaded, commanded them to leave their families, many of them perfectly destitute, and join General Scott's Army, then in Mexico, and they obeyed."26

For several years the trail across the State of Iowa guided hundreds of Mormons to the new asylum of their church amid the Rocky Mountains. Mormons in Lee County, Iowa, found no more favor with their neighbors than had their brethren in Illinois. Many were the crimes charged to them, and at a mass-meeting the citizens resolved that the Mormons must depart from their community. In 1847, it is said, "the last of these objectionable people left the county.''27

For five years the Mormons were in almost exclusive occupation and control of the present counties of Mills and Pottawattamie. After the camp at Winter Quarters broke up in the spring of 1847, those who did not accompany Brigham Young westward recrossed the Missouri to live at Kane was an eyewitness of much of the Mormon life in Iowa, but authorities are inclined to think he sacrificed accuracy to word pictures.

See also Bancroft's History of Utah, pp. 231, 234.

26 Hyde's Mormonism, p. 143; Linn's The Story of the Mormons, p. 370; History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Vol. III, p. 191; and Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers, Vol. VI, p. 826.

27 History of Lee County, Iowa, pp. 470, 477, 479, 481. See also Niles's National Register, October 17 and 24, 1846, Vol. LXXI, pp. 99, 124.

"Miller's Hollow" in Iowa. This place, later called Kanesville and, after 1853, Council Bluffs, became an important rendezvous for western emigrants, rivalling the town of Independence, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail. Emigrants to Oregon and California who preferred not to go so far south to reach the old Oregon Trail had only one alternative: the Iowa roads which converged upon the Mormon Trail in the western counties. Hence they arrived at the chief Mormon town, halted for equipment and supplies, and then hastened on to find homesteads or gold.

Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah, little farming and business communities in the midst of an almost uninhabited country, remained in the hands of their Mormon founders until the spring of 1852.28 They were resting-places for emigrating hosts of Mormon converts from eastern States and European countries,2o especially England; for it is a noteworthy fact that from the first the Mormons have been zealous missionaries in foreign lands, spreading no little dismay and alarm among the educated classes. John Hyde, in company with nearly four hundred fellow proselytes, sailed from Liverpool to New Orleans in 1853 and ascended the Mississippi to Keokuk, Iowa.30 There, on a hill overlooking the

28 Though Garden Grove and Mt. Pisgah passed into the hands of Gentiles, the surrounding country is to-day largely in possession of Mormons who dissented from the rule of Brigham Young and his polygamous adherents. In 1853 they called themselves the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints, the original church of Joseph Smith, whose son Joseph has been their president since 1860. At the city of Lamoni in Decatur County they maintain a college, church offices, and a large publishing house.- Journal of History, Vol. II, p. 190.

29 Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. II, pp. 596-600; Annals of Iowa, Vol. IX, p. 580; and Journal of History, Vol. II, pp. 112, 190.

In 1856 a company of several hundreds of men, women, and children Mormon proselytes from England — arrived at Iowa City and were fitted out with hand-carts, which they dragged westward, with terrible suffering and loss of life. Annals of Iowa (Third Series), Vol. II, p. 599; and Paxson's The Last American Frontier, pp. 100, 101.

30 Hyde's Mormonism, p. 19.

city and the majestic river, he found a "camp thronging with life, there being nearly two thousand five hundred Mormons preparing to start for the plains." Indeed, the stream of emigration westward set in with a rush after the Mexican War had ended.

Thus thousands of Mormon refugees, fleeing from persecution in Illinois, passed over Iowa's Territorial roads and highways into an Indian country beyond, and opened up for themselves a thoroughfare which guided hundreds and thousands of later homeseekers to the fertile valleys and plains of Nebraska, Utah, California, and Oregon indeed to the whole American West. Not only did the Mormons mark the first great Iowa route from the Mississippi to the Missouri, but they founded settlements along the way, the first places of permanent habitation in the western half of Iowa.

THE STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF IOWA

IOWA CITY IOWA

JACOB VAN DER ZEE

HISTORY OF THE CODES OF IOWA LAW

VI

THE PRIVATE CODES

As was stated in the first paper of this series, a code, in the proper sense of the term, is a reduction to writing of all the law of the realm, systematically arranged and officially sanctioned by legislative authority. Such a code has not yet been made in Iowa, but the statute law has been compiled several times in the various official "codes" published by the authority of the State. In addition to the compilations just mentioned, moreover, there have been others, published as private undertakings,1 in which an at

1 Digests of the Iowa reports have been published by the following: J. F. Dillon, 1860; W. G. Hammond, 1866; J. F. Lacey, 1871; Withrow and Stiles, 1874-5; E. H. Stiles, 1879 and 1883; J. S. McCaughan, 1887; Hunter and Meyer, 1874 (Index to Iowa Reports); Henry Binmore, 1887 (Index of Cases and Citations); Emlin McClain, 1887 and 1898; and S. H. Fairall, 1892 (Reference Digest).- See Check List of the Publications of the State of Iowa, 1904, p. 56.

In addition, Mr. J. F. Lacey, in 1875, published A Digest of Railway Decisions; and the West Publishing Co. has published the Northwestern Reporter Digest.

The reports of the Supreme Court of Iowa now (1913) fill 153 volumes, in addition to a volume published by W. J. A. Bradford in 1840; one published by E. Morris; four by G. Greene; and eight published by C. C. Cole. The last mentioned eight volumes are reprints of Vols. I-VIII of the State reports, and were published by Mills and Company of Des Moines. Considerable information may be found concerning them in The Western Jurist of the following dates: August, 1878, pp. 508, 509; September, 1879, p. 425; June, 1879, p. 287; July, 1881, p. 336; April, 1874, pp. 251, 252; May, 1874, p. 320; November, 1874, p. 698.

Mills and Company also advertised a reprint of the Report of the Code Commission in 1871. The announcement of this reprint is to be found in The Western Jurist, October, 1871, p. 480.

There are a number of excellent articles of interest to the student of Iowa jurisprudence. Among these may be mentioned: The Relation Between General

VOL. XII-2

17

tempt was made to collect all the existing statutes of the State then in force, or all the statutes relating to some particular subject.

It will not be possible, within the limits of this paper, to give a history of any of these private compilations except those that have been popularly termed "codes". Hence, the various digests, manuals, and text-books, though conHistory and the History of Law, by Eugene Wambaugh, in Proceedings of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Constitution of Iowa, 1907, pp. 85-112; Light Reading for Law Students, by Eugene Wambaugh, in The Law Bulletin of the State University of Iowa, No. 2, pp. 28-31; Historical Bibliography of the Statute Law of Iowa, by T. L. Cole, in The Law Bulletin of the State University of Iowa, No. 2, pp. 38-48; The Science of Jurisprudence, by Dr. Hannis Taylor, in Proceedings of the Iowa State Bar Association, Vol. 13, pp. 105–115. In The Western Jurist may be found a number of articles on codification, and various book reviews. Among these may be mentioned Codification of the Laws, by David Dudley Field, Vol. V, 1871, pp. 49-60, also articles on pp. 289292, 520, and 522 of the same volume; Codification — Is It Practicable?, 1878, pp. 641-658; editorial on codification, 1881, pp. 205, 206; Statutes and Session Laws of Iowa, 1879, p. 32.

In Ebersole's Encyclopedia of Iowa Law, Section 32, pp. 13, 14, a short account of the statutes of this State may be found. The title of this work is The Iowa People's Law Book, but it is rarely mentioned by any other name than Encyclopedia of Iowa Law.

Among the text books and other works relating to, or containing, Iowa law may be mentioned the following, which is by no means a complete list:

John W. Templin's A Compendium of Repeals and Amendments, 1871, 2nd edition (with table of cases), 1878. Reviewed in The Western Jurist, June, 1877, p. 382.

James D. Templin's Abridgment of Decisions by the Supreme Court of Iowa, 1874. Commented on in The Western Jurist, September, 1874, p. 569. See also August, 1874, p. 510.

Field's A Treatise on the County and Township Officers of Iowa, 1875. Reviewed in The Western Jurist, August, 1874, p. 512. See also p. 570, and February, 1875, p. 126.

Ebersole's Encyclopedia of Iowa Law, 1900, and supplement of 1905. Ross's Manual of Forms, Adapted to the Code System of Iowa, 1882. Reviewed in The Western Jurist, April, 1882, p. 207.

Weaver's Iowa: Its Constitution and Laws, 1912.

Conklin's A Treatise on the Powers and Duties of Justices of the Peace, 1867. Reviewed in The Western Jurist, October, 1867, p. 336. 2nd edition, 1874, by Conklin and Bissell. Reviewed in The Western Jurist, May, 1874, pp. 316, 317. Kinne on Pleading and Practice, 1888. Revised edition, 2 vols., 1898. Jones's Iowa Supreme Court Practice, 1904.