The Destroying Angel

Porter Rockwell is a man whom my readers must have heard of in every account of fearlessly executed massacre committed in Utah during the last thirteen years. He is the chief of the Danites, -- a band of saints who possess the monopoly of vengeance upon Gentiles and Mormons. They are the Heaven-elected assassins of Mormonism . . . Porter Rockwell has slain forty men. This is historical. His probable private victims amount to as many more. He wears his hair braided behind, and done up in a knot with a back-comb, like a woman's. he has a face full of bull-dog courage, -- but vastly good-natured, and without a bad trait in it. I went out riding with him on the Fourth of July, and enjoyed his society greatly, - though I knew that at a word from Brigham he would cut my throat in as matter-of-fact a style as if I had been a calf instead of an author. I understood his anomaly perfectly, and found him one of the pleasantest murderers I have ever met. He was mere executive force, from which the lever, conscience, had suffered entire disjunction, being in the hand of Brigham.