Washington City July 3rd 1850

To President Brigham Young,

Dear Brother:

A bill having recently been passed by Congress, and received the sanction of the Executive, for the taking of the seventh and subsequent Congress of the United States, including the Territories, I have procured for your the appointment of Agent of Marshal, to enumerate or cause to be enumerated all the inhabitants of Deseret, and to collect all the other statistical information within the Territory, in the manner provided in the act, and specified in the instructions which you will receive from the Department of the Interior. The appointment was made by the President. There are one or more persons here who were desirous to obtain this appointment. The Hon. Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Interior, will forward to you a commission, blanks provided for the enumeration of the population and the collection of other statistics, and a copy of the census law, containing the form of the oath or affirmation, required to be taken and subscribed by marshals provisions to entering upon the discharge of the duties of their office. The Secretary will send you three setts of blanks: one for Salt Lake Valley and Fort Bridger, another for Utah Valley, and a third for Sand Pitch Valley; but it remains optional with you to appoint a deputy for each of these districts, or only one for the whole Territory. Some grave Senators having expressed the opinion that our Provisional Government is a legal one, I presume that any circuit or district judge or any justice of the peace in Deseret, would be deemed competent to administer the prescribed oath or affirmation. I beg leave respectfully to suggest that no person of African descent be reported as a slave. I make this suggestion because a large majority of the members of both branches of Congress, and a vast majority members of jurists in the United States, entertain the conviction that slavery does not, and cannot exist in the Territory of Deseret, without the sanction of positive law, yet to be enacted.

. . .