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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Grow, Matthew J., editor.
Title: The Council of Fifty : what the records reveal about Mormon history / edited by Matthew J.
Grow and R. Eric Smith.
Description: Provo : Religious Studies Center BYU, 2017. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017017269 | ISBN 9781944394219
Subjects: LCSH: Council of Fifty (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)—History—Sources. |
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—History—19th century. | Mormon Church—History—
19th century.
Classification: LCC BX8611 .C6654 2017 | DDC 289.309/034—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2017017269
 Contents
Introduction
1. The Separatist Impulse in the Nauvoo Council of Fifty
2. Injustices Leading to the Creation of the Council of Fifty
3. The Council of Fifty and Joseph Smith's Presidential Ambitions
4. God and the People Reconsidered: Further Reflections on
Theodemocracy in Early Mormonism
5. The Council of Fifty and the Perils of Democratic Governance
6. "We, the People of the Kingdom of God": Constitution Writing in the
Council of Fifty
7. Lost Teachings of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Other Church
Leaders
8. Insights into Mormon Record-Keeping Practices from the Council of
Fifty Minutes
9. "To Carry Out Joseph's Measures is Sweeter to Me Than Honey":
Brigham Young and the Council of Fifty
10. American Indians and the Nauvoo-Era Council of Fifty
11. A Monument of the Saints' Industry: The Nauvoo House and the
Council of Fifty
12. "With Full Authority to Build Up the Kingdom of God on Earth":
Lyman Wight on the Council of Fifty
13. "We Are a Kingdom to Ourselves": The Council of Fifty Minutes and
the Mormon Exodus West
14. The Council of Fifty in Western History
15. The Council of Fifty and the Search for Religious Liberty
Contributors
Acknowledgments
 INTRODUCTION
Before he traveled to Carthage, Illinois, in late June 1844 to surrender on an
arrest warrant, Joseph Smith called William Clayton, a trusted clerk, to his
side. Less than three months earlier, Joseph Smith had formed a confidential
council consisting of roughly fifty men. The council, which became known
as the “Council of Fifty” or “Kingdom of God,” was to “look to some place
where we can go and establish a Theocracy either in Texas or Oregon or
somewhere in California.” Furthermore, Joseph Smith had told them, the
council “was designed to be got up for the safety and salvation of the saints
by protecting them in their religious rights and worship.”1 The members of
the council believed that it would protect the political and temporal interests
of the Church in anticipation of the return of Jesus Christ and his millennial
reign.
Now, shortly before going to Carthage, he instructed Clayton to destroy
or hide the records of the council. Joseph Smith feared that the candid
discussions within the Council of Fifty—including the desire to establish a
theocracy—could be used against him in either a court of law or, more
likely, the court of public opinion. Clayton opted to bury the records in his
garden.
A few days after Joseph Smith was killed by a mob in Carthage, Clayton
dug up the records of the Council of Fifty. He then copied the minutes of
the council’s meetings into more permanent record books and continued
taking minutes after Brigham Young reassembled the Council of Fifty in
February 1845. Over the next year, the council met to discuss how to
govern the city of Nauvoo after the state of Illinois revoked its municipal
charter and how to find a settlement place for the Latter-day Saints in the
West. The council’s final meetings in Nauvoo occurred in the partially
completed Nauvoo Temple in January 1846, just a few weeks before the
Saints began to cross the frozen Mississippi on their way west.
As they headed west, Church leaders took the minutes of the council
meetings with them. The council met for periods of time in Utah Territory
under Brigham Young and then under his successor, John Taylor. At some
point, the records of the council became part of the archives of the Church’s
First Presidency.
 Historians have long known of the existence of the council and the
minutes of its meetings. Until recently, though, the minutes had never been
made available for historical research. Because of their inaccessibility—and
because historians knew that they were made during a critical and
controversial era of Mormon history—a mystique grew up surrounding the
minutes. What did they contain? Why had they been withheld? Some
speculated that the council’s minutes must contain explosive details about
the final months of Joseph Smith’s life or the initial era of Brigham Young’s
leadership of the Church. Indeed, the minutes had become a sort of “holy
grail” of early Mormon documents.
Other records regarding the council’s activities are likewise scarce.
Members of the council took an oath of confidentiality when they joined,
meaning that many members left no records that discussed the council.
Nevertheless, some members later spoke about the council publicly and
others left private records in journals and letters. Over the past several
decades, these additional records have allowed several scholars—especially
Klaus J. Hansen, D. Michael Quinn, Andrew F. Ehat, and Jedediah S.
Rogers—to gain an understanding of the Council of Fifty. While they each
made important contributions, lack of access to the core minutes meant that
their scholarship remained tentative, as each recognized.2
Since the beginning of the Joseph Smith Papers Project in the early
2000s, project leaders have emphasized that the papers will contain a
comprehensive edition of all of Smith’s papers, published in print, online,
or both. Many outside the project initially wondered if that would include
documents that had previously not been made accessible to scholars. The
first major indication that the edition would truly be comprehensive was the
publication of one of Joseph Smith’s manuscript revelation books, called
the Book of Commandments and Revelations, that had been part of the
collection of the Church’s First Presidency and had never before been made
available.3 Still, historians questioned whether the project would ever
publish the minutes of the Council of Fifty.
The minutes had never been previously available for at least two key
reasons: first, because they were considered confidential during the
council’s meetings, and later stewards of the records wished to honor that
confidentiality; and second, because once they were in the possession of the
First Presidency, they were seldom used or read by Church leaders, and
there was no pressing reason to make them available. The Church’s
commitment to publish all of Joseph Smith’s documents as part of The
Joseph Smith Papers provided the appropriate moment for their release.
We had the privilege of being involved with preparing the minutes for
publication. In fall 2012, Matthew J. Grow was asked by Reid L. Neilson,
managing director of the Church History Department, to study a transcript
of the Council of Fifty minutes and—with the assistance of Ronald K.
Esplin, a general editor of the Joseph Smith Papers—to write an
introduction to the minutes that would help inform Church leaders
regarding their contents.
Several months later, we learned that the First Presidency had granted
permission to use the council’s minutes in the publication of Joseph Smith’s
final journals (the third volume of the Journals series of The Joseph Smith
Papers). This volume was nearly complete, but we had put publication on
hold pending this decision because the journal refers to the Council of Fifty
and we hoped to use insights from the minutes in our annotation.
Significantly, the First Presidency also granted permission to publish the
council’s minutes as a separate volume in The Joseph Smith Papers.
These three small record books contain William Clayton’s minutes of the Nauvoo Council of Fifty.
Photograph by Welden C. Andersen. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

After project leaders learned this news, they assembled a meeting of the
staff of the Joseph Smith Papers Project on May 1, 2013. At the meeting,
Elder Steven E. Snow, Church Historian and Recorder, announced the
decision to the jubilation of the staff. We were then allowed to see and hold
the three small record books that contained the council’s minutes in the
distinctive handwriting of William Clayton. As historians and editors who
had long studied the Council of Fifty and hoped that the minutes would be
included in The Joseph Smith Papers, this was a remarkable meeting. Eric
Smith recorded in his journal that evening, “This is a day long anticipated
by Mormon historians: the opportunity to publish these minutes, which the
world has known about for a long time and which critics of the Church have
often conjectured contain material that will embarrass the Church. I feel
privileged to be involved with this project and to be one of the few people
who has seen these minutes.”
We were asked to keep the decision confidential until a public
announcement was made. Notwithstanding our collective excitement, we
honored the request not to talk about the prospective publication of the
minutes until Elder Snow made a public announcement in an interview with
the Church News in September 2013.4 Following the public announcement,
we could talk more freely about our work on the minutes.
After the permission came, we quickly assembled a team of historians,
led by Grow. Ronald K. Esplin brought his deep knowledge about both
Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to the task. Mark Ashurst-McGee, who
had written a dissertation on early Mormon political thought, added
perspective on those issues and did the final textual verification. Gerrit J.
Dirkmaat’s dissertation had likewise probed a relevant topic: the
relationship between the Mormons and the United States between 1844 and
1854. Finally, Jeffrey D. Mahas brought his indefatigable research skills
and archival sensibilities to the task. Most of us were working on other
projects simultaneously with the Council of Fifty minutes, but all of us were
thrilled to have a part in writing the introductions and footnotes that would
be published along with the minutes. Historians generally love working
with documents that haven’t been used much by scholars previously. But
the council minutes were something else entirely: a document not only
made newly available, but one that had been the subject of tremendous
speculation and contained critical information on early Mormon thought
and governance.
The volume editors listed on the cover page were, however, only a small
part of the team at the Joseph Smith Papers Project who assisted with the
publication of the minutes. Eric Smith led the editorial team that helped
transcribe the minutes and verify their text, meticulously checked the
thousands of sources used in the annotation, edited and then edited and
edited again the introductions and footnotes, selected images, performed
genealogical research, designed maps, and helped promote the book.
Among the roughly two dozen individuals who assisted with such work
were Rachel Osborne, source checker; Shannon Kelly, editor; Kay
Darowski and Joseph F. Darowski, text verifiers; Jeffrey G. Cannon,
photoarchivist; Ed Brinton and Alison Palmer, typesetters; and Kate Mertes,
indexer.
As we began talking about the council’s minutes publicly in anticipation
of their 2016 publication, we learned that notwithstanding the mystique the
Council of Fifty had gained among the historical community and the
importance of the council to early Latter-day Saints, the organization itself
is little known among modern Latter-day Saints. The Mormon tendency to
use numbers to name quorums and councils did not help matters. “Do you
mean the Council of Seventy?” many wondered. The lack of knowledge is
not particularly surprising; while a few scattered references to the Council
of Fifty have appeared in the Church’s magazines in the past several
decades, the council has not received much other official attention from the
Church.5 For instance, the Church’s study manual Teachings of Presidents of
the Church: Joseph Smith does not contain any references to the council.
While the council’s minutes are very readable—containing as they do
relatively complete records of discussions, debates, and decisions—we
knew that most individuals interested in Mormon history and theology
would simply not have the time or inclination to wade through the nearly
eight hundred pages in the published Joseph Smith Papers volume to gain
an understanding of the Council of Fifty.
In addition, we were convinced that the council’s minutes needed to be
engaged by scholars to evaluate the question of how these minutes should
change our collective understanding of the Latter-day Saint past. The
minutes speak on a broad range of fascinating issues—Mormon thought on
earthly and heavenly constitutions and government, Joseph Smith’s
presidential campaign, the murder of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, Mormon
relationships with American Indians, the transition to the leadership of
Brigham Young, the response to the revocation of the Nauvoo charter, the
completion of the Nauvoo Temple, dissent and vigilante violence in and
around Nauvoo, Latter-day Saint thought on religious liberty, and the
planning for the exodus west.
Furthermore, the minutes illuminate a crucial era in the Mormon past that
has not received adequate attention from historians. Often, histories
underemphasize the critical era between the two events often used as a
shorthand to define this time period: the Martyrdom and the Trek West. The
era between March 1844 and January 1846—or, roughly, between Joseph
Smith’s murder and the Mormon exodus from Illinois—is a particularly
important time of transition in Mormon history. The council’s minutes
allow us an unprecedented window into the thinking of Latter-day Saints
during this era, including their grand ambitions to establish the kingdom of
God and fulfill prophecies from the Bible and Book of Mormon, their
devastation at the murders of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, their alienation and
anger at the United States because of these murders and other persecution,
and their determination to find a place of safety and refuge in western North
America where they could build their kingdom in peace.
The minutes of the Council of Fifty shape historical understanding not
just of Mormon history but of larger events in US and international history.
In the council’s deliberations—including over Joseph Smith’s presidential
campaign and the past treatment of the Latter-day Saints—Smith and other
members highlighted their views of the failure of the US Constitution and
of federal, state, and local governments to adequately protect religious
liberty. Under the government system of that time, the constitutional
protections of religious liberty did not yet apply to state and local
governments, and the Mormons believed that the tyranny of the majority
had imperiled their liberty. In addition, the council’s minutes demonstrate
the Mormons’ desire to potentially settle outside of the United States, as
they explored the independent Republic of Texas, California (then a part of
Mexico), and Oregon (then disputed between Great Britain and the United
States) as possible settlement sites. Mormons thus presented the US
government with a geopolitical challenge, as they sought to establish
settlements beyond the boundaries of the United States.
We asked each of the scholars in this volume to consider a question: How
do the Council of Fifty minutes change our understanding of Mormon
history? In other words, why do they matter? Three of the papers in this
volume began as initial scholarly reactions—before the Council of Fifty
minutes were published—at the Mormon History Association’s annual
conference in June 2016. Two additional essays were presented at a
conference at the University of Virginia at the launch of the publication of
the minutes in September 2016. All of the essays are published here for the
first time.
This volume opens with an essay by preeminent historian Richard Lyman
Bushman, professor emeritus from Columbia University and biographer of
Joseph Smith, who considers the broad ramifications of the minutes for
Mormon history. Richard E. Turley Jr., who played a role in obtaining
permission to publish the minutes during his time as Assistant Church
Historian and Recorder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
examines one key context for the establishment of the council: violence
against the Latter-day Saints, particularly in Missouri in the 1830s.
Several essays examine the three months that the council met under
Joseph Smith in early 1844. Spencer W. McBride, an early American
historian who works for the Joseph Smith Papers Project, demonstrates how
the minutes shed new light on Joseph Smith’s campaign for the US
presidency. The minutes also illustrate Joseph Smith’s thinking on the
blending of theocracy and democracy, captured with the evocative term
“theodemocracy,” as explored in the essay by Patrick Q. Mason, Howard W.
Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University.
Benjamin E. Park, an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State
University, places the questions raised by the council in broader American
political thinking. The essay by Nathan B. Oman, professor of law at
William & Mary Law School, likewise contextualizes the council’s attempt
to write a constitution in the milieu of US political thought and constitution-
writing in the nineteenth century.
The next two essays look at the minutes broadly. Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, an
assistant professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young
University, highlights some of the most important statements in the minutes
by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other Church leaders on topics
ranging from religious liberty to friendship to how councils should operate.
R. Eric Smith explores insights that the Council of Fifty minutes provide
into broader Mormon record-keeping practices of that period.
The essays then transition to examine the council as it operated under
Brigham Young from February 1845 to January 1846. The essay by
Matthew J. Grow and Marilyn Bradford assesses what the Council of Fifty
minutes demonstrate about Brigham Young’s personality, leadership style,
and priorities as leader of the Latter-day Saints. Jeffrey D. Mahas, a
documentary editor at the Joseph Smith Papers Project, examines one of the
council’s key objectives: encouraging conversion of and exploring alliances
with American Indians. As Matthew C. Godfrey, managing historian of the
Joseph Smith Papers, discusses in his essay, the council took several steps
to complete the Nauvoo House, a large boardinghouse in Nauvoo that the
Saints had been commanded to build in a revelation to Joseph Smith.
Two essays then consider the role of the council in planning for the
Saints’ exodus from Nauvoo. Disputes over where the Mormons should
ultimately settle led to divisions within the Quorum of the Twelve and the
Church, as Christopher James Blythe, a historian with the Joseph Smith
Papers Project, discusses in his essay on apostle Lyman Wight. Richard E.
Bennett, a leading expert on the Mormon exodus and professor of Church
history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, then examines how the
council’s minutes both confirm existing scholarship on the exodus and add
new light.
The final two essays examine broad themes in the council’s history,
particularly in the context of western US history. Jedediah S. Rogers, co-
managing editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly and author of a book on
the Council of Fifty that focuses on the Utah period, places the council in
the context of history writing about the American West. In his concluding
essay, W. Paul Reeve, professor of history at the University of Utah, reflects
on the contributions of the minutes, including in highlighting the Mormons’
search for religious liberty in the West.6
As demonstrated by these essays, the Council of Fifty minutes provide
crucial insights into Latter-day Saint history in these critical years. While
historians already knew the broad outlines of much of what was discussed
in the council, the minutes provide tremendous detail on the discussions and
deliberations that led to the actions taken by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young,
and other Mormon leaders during this time.
We hope that this collection of essays both increases public knowledge
about the Council of Fifty and spurs future scholarship. Dissertations,
articles, and books remain to be written on what the Council of Fifty meant
to early Latter-day Saints and how the council’s minutes shed new light on
a myriad of topics in early Mormon and US history.

NOTES
1. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11 and April 18, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin,
Mark Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes,
March 1844–January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith
Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2016), 40, 128 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
2. See Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in
Mormon History ([East Lansing]: Michigan State University Press, 1967); D. Michael Quinn,
“The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945,” BYU Studies 20, no. 2 (Winter 1980):
163–97; Andrew F. Ehat, “ ‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith and the
Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” BYU Studies 20, no. 3 (Spring 1980): 253–80; and Jedediah
S. Rogers, ed., The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books,
2014).
3. See Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C. Harper, eds., Manuscript Revelation
Books, facsimile edition, vol. 1 of the Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith
Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City:
Church Historian’s Press, 2009).
4. R. Scott Lloyd, “Newest Volume Published for the Joseph Smith Papers Project,” Church News,
September 16, 2013.
5. See, for instance, Donald Q. Cannon, “Spokes on the Wheel: Early Latter-day Saint Settlements in
Hancock County, Illinois,” Ensign, February 1986, 62–68; Glen M. Leonard, “The Gathering to
Nauvoo, 1839–45,” Ensign, April 1979, 35–42; Reed Durham, “What Is the Hosanna Shout?” in
“Q&A: Questions and Answers,” New Era, September 1973, 14–15; and Ronald K. Esplin, “A
‘Place Prepared’ in the Rockies,” Ensign, July 1988, 6–13.
6. The essays by Bushman, Reeve, and Bennett were first presented at the June 2016 MHA
conference. The essays by Turley and Oman were first presented at the September 2016
University of Virginia conference. Several of these essays were then revised by their authors
specifically for this compilation.
 Chapter 1

THE SEPARATIST IMPULSE IN THE

NAUVOO COUNCIL OF FIFTY
Richard Lyman Bushman
The publication of the Council of Fifty minutes as the first volume of the
Administrative Records series in The Joseph Smith Papers can only be
described as a triumph. The new volume is sure to be celebrated for its
annotation and editing, another excellent addition to the papers project. But
the minutes are also a triumph of the new transparency policy of the Church
History Department. Over the years, the council minutes attained almost
legendary status, as a trove of dark secrets sequestered in the recesses of the
First Presidency’s vault. Now the minutes have been published for all to
examine.
When I was finishing up Rough Stone Rolling, my associate Jed
Woodworth once asked if I could rest easy with my accounting of Joseph
Smith’s life without having examined the Council of Fifty minutes. At the
time, I brushed aside his concern, feeling we knew enough about Nauvoo
already. Now I am not so sure. The minutes do shed light on questions
about the last days of Nauvoo that could not be answered before. None of
the topics the council addressed are completely new. They all grew out of
ongoing issues in the Church’s history: protecting the Church from mobs,
dealing with Indians, preparing for westward migration, establishing the
kingdom of God in the last days. But the minutes reveal how desperate and
angry the leaders were and how far they were willing to go.
My particular interest is to solve a puzzle inherent in the history as we
have long understood it. Was the Church in Nauvoo committed to the
United States as a host government or not? In the spring of 1844, Joseph
Smith ran for the office of president, implying that the government and the
Constitution were worthy institutions under which the Saints were prepared
to dwell. At the same time, the Saints were planning migrations to Texas,
California, and Oregon, outside the boundaries of the United States, as if
they were prepared to jump ship and build their kingdom out from under the
nation’s oversight. Their intentions were made clear when they scratched
Texas from the list of possible destinations after it was absorbed into the
Union. They wanted to leave the United States.
So which is it? Did the Mormons wish to strengthen their ties with the
government, or were they ready to throw it over and strike out on their
own?
The council’s papers don’t offer a definitive yes or no answer to these
questions. In the spring of 1844, the council sent off a petition to the federal
government for authorization to lead an army into the West. They proposed
that Joseph Smith command one hundred thousand troops stationed along
the migration routes to protect Americans moving west. It appears that the
Saints were willing to collaborate with the federal government when it
served their purposes. In their frame of mind, they seemed able to pursue
two opposing courses of action at once. If they could plant crops and build
the temple while laying plans to move west, then they could cooperate with
the government while laying plans to separate.
But if ties were never severed completely, the strongest impression from
the rhetoric William Clayton recorded in the minutes was of men ready to
abandon the United States. The anger the Saints felt at the abuses they had
suffered and at the impotence of government in rescuing them boils to the
surface time and again. In places the language was excruciating. Perhaps
much of their rhetoric was froth, not hard policy. But they gave vent
repeatedly and passionately. Beneath their appeals for a refuge lay a deep
anger. Brigham Young for one said he felt the day was past for preaching
the gospel in the United States. “He dont care about preaching to the
gentiles any longer,” Clayton wrote of Young.1 Their treatment of the Saints
disqualified them. The council members were convinced that their
persecutors would never be brought to justice. Amasa Lyman said that
whenever “he thinks of the government he thinks ‘damn it’. There has been
nothing but one continued scene of wrath and persecution poured upon us.
They legislate for pe[r]secution.”2 Lyman certainly spoke for Brigham
Young. “As to suffering any more of the oppression and tyranny of the
gentiles,” Young said, “just so soon as we can secure our women and
children and put them where they will be safe, we will put our warriors into
the field and never cease our operations untill we have swept the scoundrels
off from the face of the earth.”3
The minute books of the Nauvoo Council of Fifty. The minutes were published in 2016 by The
Joseph Smith Papers. Photograph by Welden C. Andersen. Courtesy of Church History Library,
Salt Lake City.

When the prospect of war with the United States could be anticipated
with equanimity and even satisfaction, the proclivities of these men were
evident. Prophecy told them an independent kingdom would be established
before the Second Coming, and this was the moment. Wrote Clayton on
March 11, 1844, “All seemed agreed to look to some place where we can go
and establish a Theocracy either in Texas or Oregon or somewhere in
California.”4 Small wonder they insisted on confidentiality. They knew they
were speaking treason, much as Samuel Adams and the Boston patriots had
in 1775. The council was prepared to declare the Mormons’ independence
from the United States. As Brigham Young put it in May 1845, “When we
go from here we dont calculate to go under any government but the
government of God.”5
As time went by, practical necessity dictated collaboration with the
government. Church leaders never quite went for complete independence.
But if prudence required cooperation, we cannot believe that the passion of
the Council of Fifty died away immediately. That separatist urge, that rage
against injustice, that despair of ever finding security under the federal
government must have lived on in many hearts. The 1857 invasion by an
American army would only feed their fears and resentments. Restive spirits
must have harbored a desire for a complete break—or at least as much
independence as possible.
The question then becomes: How did these separatist impulses find
expression in nineteenth-century Utah, and how were they finally put to
rest? If progress was made as the decades went by, then federal intervention
in the 1860s and 1870s and hostile action in the 1880s could only have
revived the Saints’ disaffection. It cannot be a coincidence that John Taylor,
also a militant in 1845, reconstituted the Council of Fifty at the moment
when the antipolygamy laws were to be enforced. We have long understood
the suspicions of the Saints toward the federal government throughout the
nineteenth century. The Council of Fifty minutes require us to recognize
how strong those apprehensions were.
In the end, the Saints gave way to the government. Under the pragmatic
Wilford Woodruff, polygamy was abandoned, and theocratic government
was dissolved. Their hostile countrymen were not allowed to grind the
Saints into the dust. The Saints merged into the American political system,
including participation in the competing political parties. Joseph F. Smith
insisted in the Smoot hearings that the Mormons were prepared to play by
American rules. The Saints themselves acted the part of hyperpatriots,
declaring their utter loyalty to the government and enlisting enthusiastically
in the armed services during World War I.
But how long did it take for the anger of the fifty men gathered in council
in Nauvoo in 1844 to dissipate? What part did these separatist impulses
play in nineteenth-century Utah? It is hard today to imagine their rage and
despair, but their words are on record and have been made public. We will
now have to decide what they mean for Mormon history.

NOTES
1. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 299 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
2. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:336.
3. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:328.
4. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:40.
5. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:268.
 Chapter 2

INJUSTICES LEADING TO THE

CREATION OF THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY
Richard E. Turley Jr.
On the morning of September 25, 1824, Joseph Smith Sr. and some of his
neighbors stood, shovels in hand, next to the grave where just ten months
earlier, the Smith family had buried the remains of Alvin Smith. The
agonizing death of Alvin at the age of twenty-five was still fresh in the
minds of Joseph and Lucy Mack Smith and their children. Purposefully, the
men at the grave thrust their shovels into the dark soil and began tossing
earth to the side, digging deeper and deeper, hoping to hear their tools strike
something hard, wooden, and hollow. When at last they found and
uncovered the casket, they pried open the lid and peered in. There, much to
their relief, they found Alvin’s remains, partially decomposed but
undisturbed.
Later that day, after reinterring his son’s body, Joseph Sr. went to the
office of the Wayne Sentinel newspaper and filed a report that was
published two days later. Addressed “To the Public,” it countered rumors
that Alvin’s remains had been removed and “dissected.” Such rumors had
been “peculiarly calculated to harrow up the mind of a parent and deeply
wound the feelings of relations.” As such, Joseph Sr. pleaded with those
who circulated the rumor to stop.1
The original gravestone of Alvin Smith, brother of Joseph Smith, is encased on the back side of this
newer marker. Photograph by Brent R. Nordgren.
 What could have sparked such an incident? It began four years earlier,
when Joseph Smith Jr. reported his First Vision to a trusted religious leader
in his area. “I was greatly surprised at his behavior,” Joseph reported. “He
treated my communication not only lightly, but with great contempt, saying
it was all of the devil.” And it didn’t end there. “I soon found . . . that my
telling the story had excited a great deal of prejudice against me,” Joseph
wrote, “and was the cause of great persecution.”2
In the years that followed, Joseph wrote, “rumor with her thousand
tongues was all the time employed in circulating falsehoods about my
father’s family, and about myself. If I were to relate a thousandth part of
them, it would fill up volumes.”3 It was one of these rumors that convinced
Father Smith to confirm that Alvin’s body had not been stolen.
Throughout Joseph Smith Jr.’s life, persecution followed his religious
claims. His search for protection for himself and his followers led to two
decisions in the final months of his life: to run for president of the United
States and to form the Council of Fifty. In his candidacy for the presidency,
he strongly advocated for religious liberty for all Americans, not just for
Latter-day Saints. In the Council of Fifty, he discussed the creation of a
theocracy outside the borders of the United States that would be defined by
its extension of religious liberty to all individuals. This essay contextualizes
those decisions in the opposition against the Latter-day Saints, with an
emphasis on the 1830s. There were other immediate antecedents for the
Council of Fifty and complex causes for its establishment in 1844.
Nevertheless, the experiences of Mormons during the 1830s indelibly
shaped their mindset on the necessity of religious liberty, the failure of
current governments to adequately protect it, and the need for a new type of
government to defend the liberty of Latter-day Saints and other religious
minorities.

OPPOSITION IN JACKSON COUNTY

While early Mormons had already experienced intense opposition by 1833,
their experience that year in Missouri exemplified how far their opponents
were willing to go. By that time, thousands of Saints had flocked to Jackson
County, Missouri, which one of Joseph Smith’s revelations had designated
as the place to build “Zion.” They soon encountered opposition from those
who disliked their religious views and also clashed culturally with them.
For instance, most of the Saints who moved into Jackson County were
northerners, meaning they did not favor slavery, unlike many of their
Missouri neighbors.
As opposition to the Saints increased, some Missourians began to
vandalize Mormon property and exhibit other signs of prejudice against
members of this minority faith. Those with the greatest prejudice began
looking for something they could use as a pretense for driving out the
members of the Church.
Religious, cultural, economic, and political tensions exploded after the
Church’s newspaper in Missouri ran an article advising free blacks coming
into the state how to avoid encountering trouble with Missouri’s laws. The
article provided the pretense that vigilantes needed to rally support for their
cause against the Saints and wreak violence on them.
Resorting to patriotic language, vigilantes drafted a constitution or mob
manifesto to draw sympathizers to their cause. As is so often the case with
vigilantes, the Missouri mobbers cloaked their extralegal activities in
patriotic language. Following the rhetoric of the Declaration of
Independence, which concluded with the signers pledging “to each other
our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor,” the mobbers concluded
their manifesto with similar words: “We agree to use such means as may be
sufficient to remove them [the Mormons], and to that end we each pledge to
each other our bodily powers, our lives, fortunes and sacred honors.”4
After demanding that the Mormons leave immediately and giving them
only a short time to respond, the vigilantes attacked the most senior Church
leader in the area, Bishop Edward Partridge, kidnapping him from his
home, battering him repeatedly, partially stripping off his clothes, and
daubing him in tar and feathers.
A group of vigilantes also attacked the Saints’ printing establishment, a
sturdy two-story brick structure. They evicted the printer’s family and tore
the building completely to the ground, stopping the publication of the first
volume of Joseph Smith’s revelations and of the newspaper The Evening
and the Morning Star.
In the face of such violence, Church leaders agreed that their people
would leave. Later, they reconsidered and decided to seek legal redress for
the crimes committed against them and to defend their rights as US citizens.
 Irked at the Saints’ legal efforts, the vigilantes intensified the violence.
One of the Church members, Lyman Wight, later testified:
Some time towards the last of the summer of 1833, they commenced
their operations of mobocracy. . . . [G]angs of from thirty to sixty,
visit[ed] the house of George Bebee, calling him out of his house at
the hour of midnight, with many guns and pistols pointed at his
breast, beating him most inhuman[e]ly with clubs and whips; and the
same night or night afterwards, this gang unroofed thirteen houses in
what was called the Whitmer Branch of the Church in Jackson
county. These scenes of mobocracy continued to exist with unabated
fury. Mobs went from house to house, thrusting poles and rails in at
the windows and doors of the houses of the Saints, tearing down a
number of houses, turning hogs, horses, &c., into cornfields, burning
fences, &c.5
In October, Wight recounted, the mobbers broke into a Mormon-owned
store. When Wight, along with thirty or forty Mormons, went to the scene,
he “found a man name of McArty [Richard McCarty], brickbatting the store
door with all fury, the silks, calicoes, and other fine goods, entwined about
his feet, reaching within the door of the store house.” After McCarty was
arrested, he was quickly acquitted. The next day, the Mormons who had
testified against McCarty were arrested on charges of false imprisonment
and “by the testimony of this one burglar, were found guilty, and committed
to jail.”6
Used to being treated like a full-fledged citizen before joining the Church,
Wight now felt his civil rights were being violated. “This so exasperated my
feelings,” he said, “that I went with two hundred men to enquire into the
affair, when I was promptly met by the colonel of the militia, who stated to
me that the whole had been a religious farce, and had grown out of a
prejudice they had imbibed against said Joseph Smith, a man with whom
they were not acquainted.”7
Hoping to de-escalate the violence, Wight agreed that the Saints would
give up their arms if the militia colonel
would take the arms from the mob. To this the colonel cheerfully
agreed, and pledged his honor with that of Lieutenant Governor
[Lilburn W.] Boggs . . . and others. This treaty entered into, we
 returned home, resting assured on their honor, that we would not be
farther molested. But this solemn contract was violated in every sense
of the word. The arms of the mob were never taken away, and the
majority of the militia, to my certain knowledge, was engaged the
next day with the mob, ([the colonel and] Boggs not excepted,) going
from house to house in gangs of sixty to seventy in number,
threatening the lives of [Mormon] women and children, if they did
not leave forthwith.8
Church member Barnet Cole later signed an affidavit explaining what
happened to him. According to his affidavit, three armed men accosted him
at his house and compelled him to “go out a pace with them,” telling him
“some gentleman wished to see him.” He was forced to a spot “where there
were from forty to fifty men armed.”
One of the armed men asked his kidnappers, “Is this mister Cole?”
“Yes,” one replied.
Challenging Barnet’s religious views, an armed man asked him, “Do you
believe in the book of Mormon?”
“Yes,” he replied.
Swearing, the leader said, “That is enough. Give it to him.”
The mob stripped off some of his clothes, “laid on ten lashes” as a
warning, and then told him he could go home. Barnet did not leave the area,
and some five weeks later, a mob came “into his house and gave him a
second Whiping and ordered him to leave the County or it would be worse
for him.” He then left for Clay County.9
With all the Jackson County violence in late 1833, men, women, and
children were chased from their homes, and they scrambled for their lives.
Lyman Wight testified: “I saw one hundred and ninety women and children
driven thirty miles across the prairie, with three decrepit men only in their
company, in the month of Nov., the ground thinly crusted with sleet, and I
could easily follow their trail by the blood that flowed from their lacerated
feet!! on the stubble of the burnt prairie.” He also described how the mob
burned down all the Mormon homes in Jackson County.10
Despite the continual threat of violence, some Mormons returned to
Jackson County. Lyman and Abigail Leonard returned to avoid starving to
death. Abigail recalled, “A company of men armed with whips and guns
about fifty or sixty came to the house. . . . Five of the numbered entered. . . .
They ordered my husband to leave the house threatning to shoot him if he
did not, he not complying with their desires, one of the five took a chair,
and struck him upon the head, knocking him down, and then dragging him
out of the house. I in the mean time beging of them to spare his li[f]e.”
Abigail tried to save her husband, but three of the men aimed guns at her
and swore to shoot her if she resisted further. “While this was transpiring,”
she said, one of the men “jumped upon my husband with his heels, my
husband then got up they striping his clothes all from him excepting his
pantaloons, then five or six attacked him with whips and gun sticks, and
whipped him until he could not stand but fell to the ground.”11 They “beat
and whipt” him “until [his] life,” she said, “was almost extinct.”12

APPEALS FOR PROTECTION AND REDRESS

One of the challenges the Saints faced during this time period was that their
appeals for protection from the government went unheeded, in part because
the officials who should have protected them either participated in the
mobbings themselves or were sympathetic to those who did. The Saints
then sought redress in the courts, only to face similar frustrations.
For example, when Edward Partridge initiated legal proceedings against
those who tarred and feathered him, the leaders of the mob could not deny
what they had done, since there were so many witnesses to the highly
public event. Instead, despite kidnapping, assaulting, and battering the
bishop, with no legal provocation on his part, the attackers claimed that
they did it in self-defense.
The defense was so ludicrous that even the judge, a mob sympathizer,
could not in good conscience accept the attackers’ self-defense claim. So he
did the next best thing for the mobbers. He ruled in favor of Partridge but
awarded him only a penny and a peppercorn.13
No wonder the Saints grew frustrated. They were following the rules that
were supposed to protect citizens, but because of their status as members of
a despised minority faith, the law did not protect them from violence or
provide redress after it occurred.

TEMPORARY REFUGE IN CLAY COUNTY

The Saints who were driven out of Jackson County sought refuge in Clay
County, which was north across the Missouri River. There they found a
measure of sympathy among some of the citizens.14 Meanwhile, Lyman
Wight rode long distances trying to find others who would sympathize with
his fellow Saints and come to their aid. He later testified:
I left my family for the express purpose of making an appeal to the
American people to know something of the toleration of such vile and
inhuman conduct, and travelled one thousand and three hundred miles
through the interior of the United States, and was frequently answered
“That such conduct was not justifiable in a republican government;
yet we feel to say that we fear that Joe Smith is a very bad man, and
circumstances alter cases. We would not wish to prejudge a man, but
in some circumstances, the voice of the people ought to rule.”15
Such replies reflected a problem in the United States at the time. The
ruling majority could often do more or less as it pleased, even if that meant
violating the civil rights of minorities. The minorities were expected to
bend before the collective prejudice of the majority and could do little to
protect themselves or obtain justice in the courts.
The agitators in Jackson County began making so much noise against the
Mormons in Clay County that it affected the Saints’ sympathizers there,
who wanted to avoid trouble for themselves and their communities.16 In
addition, the impoverished refugees from Jackson County had begun
working for the Clay County citizens, and as the Saints began to prosper
economically and were joined by fellow Saints from elsewhere, they began
to have, by virtue of their numbers, political power as well. This incited
jealousies. Lyman Wight recalled that “when the Saints commenced
purchasing some small possessions for themselves; this together with the
emigration created a jealousy on the part of the old citizens that we were to
be their servants no longer.” Wight went on to describe gruesome
whippings and beatings that were visited on the Saints.17
Once again, those who inflicted this violence on the Saints justified their
crimes under the guise of patriotism. One mobber, who seemed to consider
himself an upstanding citizen, wrote to family members about the violence
he helped inflict. “We are trampling on our law and Constitution,” he
admitted in his letter, “but we Cant Help it in no way while we possessed
the Spirit of 76,” he claimed. “Six of our party . . . went to a mormon town.
Several mormons Cocked their guns & Swore they would Shoot them.
After Some Scrimiging two white men took a mormon out of Company &
give him 100 lashes & it is thought he will Die of this Beating.”18 The
almost matter-of-fact way that the mobber includes this description in a
family letter is chilling.
To avoid further trouble, the Saints left Clay County and settled in
Caldwell County, a new county established by sympathetic Missouri state
legislators as a “sort of Mormon reservation.”19 At first, this seemed to settle
the violence, but not for long.

THE MORMON WAR AND THE EXTERMINATION ORDER

Latter-day Saint men who went to vote at Gallatin, Missouri, faced
opposition and fought back, winning the election-day fight but giving their
critics just what they wanted—a reason to label them dangerous and to call
for driving them out once again. What followed has been called the 1838
“Mormon War,” a series of skirmishes (some deadly) between Missouri
vigilantes and militiamen on one side and Latter-day Saints on the other.
In De Witt, Carroll County, vigilantes demanded that the Mormons leave
and organized a “safety committee,” appealing to other counties for “aid to
remove Mormons, abolitionists, and other disorderly persons.”20 A Missouri
newspaper reported these actions and, though sympathetic to the vigilantes,
commented, “By what color of propriety a portion of the people of the
State, can organize themselves into a body, independent of the civil power,
and contravene the general laws of the land by preventing the free
enjoyment of the right of citizenship to another portion of the people, we
are at a loss to comprehend.”21
Parley P. Pratt was one of several members of the Church who wrote important accounts of the
persecutions experienced by Church members in Missouri. Photograph, circa 1850–56, likely by
Marsena Cannon or Lewis W. Chaffin. Courtesy of History Library, Salt Lake City.

The De Witt Mormons appealed to Governor Lilburn W. Boggs and a

Missouri militia general to save them from extermination. The general
brought his men and ordered the mob to disperse. The vigilantes refused,
however, and the general’s men threatened to join the mob. The general had
to withdraw his troops and wrote to his superior officer, asking the governor
to intervene.
Governor Boggs, who had participated in the expulsion of the Saints from
Jackson County and valued his political position, ignored his duty to protect
the Saints, saying that the “quarrel was between the Mormons and the
mob.”22 Abandoning all hope of government protection, some four hundred
Saints of De Witt, who had suffered intense hunger during the siege, fled
the area, leaving behind valuable property that fell into the hands of their
persecutors. During their flight to safety, some died.23
Other Saints in northwestern Missouri also suffered. In 1838, Asahel
Lathrop purchased a land claim and settled down, “supposing,” as he said,
“that I was at peace with all men.” On August 6, however, he joined other
Mormon men in defending their right to vote at Gallatin. Before long, other
men threatened to kill him if he did not leave the area. Some of his family
members were sick at the time and could not easily be moved. His wife
pleaded for him to leave the children with her and flee for his life. He
hesitated but finally gave in to her pleadings.
Not long after he left, a mob of fourteen or fifteen men occupied his home
and, as he later testified, “abus[ed] my family in almost every form that
Creturs in the shape of human Beeings could invent.” One of his children
soon died. After appealing to local authorities for protection, he returned
home to find the other members of his family “in a soriful situation not one
of the remaining ones able to wait uppon the other.” He moved them sixty
miles away, but his wife and two other family members soon died due to the
“trouble and the want of care which they were deprived of by a Ruthless
Mob.”24
Left on their own, the Saints did their best to defend themselves and went
on the offensive, making preemptive strikes to eliminate threats, disarm the
enemy, and resupply their own people. A group of Missouri militia began
driving Latter-day Saint families from their homes and took three prisoners.
Several Mormons mobilized to rescue them before their rumored execution
and ended up in a firefight that became known as the Battle of Crooked
River. Although Mormon casualties exceeded those of the Missourians,
exaggerated rumors reached Governor Boggs and led him to issue an order
to exterminate or drive the Mormons from the state.25
A short time later, a large group of armed Missourians attacked the
village of Hawn’s Mill, which was occupied primarily by Latter-day Saints.
Ignoring cries for mercy, the attackers killed seventeen men and boys and
wounded many others. Before blowing off the head of a young boy found
hiding under the bellows in the blacksmith shop, one vigilante uttered the
slogan used for generations by bigots to justify the killing of the children of
minorities: “Nits will make lice.” The killers then plundered the village.26

FLIGHT TO ILLINOIS
With the upswell in violence, Saints in outlying areas fled to the Mormon
capital of Far West for protection. There they waited, hoping that the
government would intervene and rescue them. Instead, they were
surrounded by troops, their leaders captured, and the people forced to sign
over their property to pay the costs of the war. They were ordered to leave
the state or face further violence. Over the course of the fall and winter,
thousands of Saints braved harsh conditions to flee east across the prairie
and over the Mississippi River. Meanwhile, Joseph Smith and his fellow
prisoners listened to guards taunting them with stories of abuse heaped on
Mormon victims.27
Writing from the Liberty jail, Joseph Smith and his fellow prisoners wrote
of what they called “a lamentable tail[,] yea a sorrifull tail too much to
tell[,] too much for contemplation[,] too much to think of for a moment[,]
too much for human beings.” Recounting some of the war’s atrocities, they
wrote of a Mormon man who was “mangled for sport” and of Latter-day
Saint women who were robbed “of all that they have their last morsel for
subsistance and then . . . violated to gratify the hellish desires of the mob
and finally left to perish with their helpless of[f]spring clinging around their
necks.”28
Joseph, his brother Hyrum, and their companions later escaped to Illinois,
where they joined many of the other refugee Saints, though Joseph never
felt entirely safe there, as Missouri officials tried time and again to
recapture and bring him back to what likely would have been execution.
 The Saints tried to obtain justice for those who were killed and wounded,
as well as compensation for the thousands whose property was taken from
them. But all to no avail. Joseph even went to Washington, where he spoke
with President Martin Van Buren. The president was sympathetic but
thought the federal government had no power in the matter. Besides, he
said, if he were to help the Mormons, he would lose the vote of the state of
Missouri. In effect, he said, “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for
you.”29
Based on these experiences, the Saints figured that if they were to have
fairness and justice, they needed to have their own government, their own
courts, and their own state-sanctioned militia. In the new settlement they
established in Illinois, named Nauvoo, Mormons were the majority, and
Joseph Smith became leader of the city, the court, and the militia. The city
grew and prospered, aided by an influx of immigrant converts, and Joseph
continued to seek equality and justice for his people. In late 1843, Joseph
wrote the leading US presidential candidates, inquiring what they would do
to protect the rights of Latter-day Saints. After getting unsatisfactory
answers, he decided in early 1844 to run for president, with Sidney Rigdon
as vice presidential candidate. Joseph’s presidential campaign would be a
way to draw attention to the plight of Saints, slaves, prisoners, debtors, and
other downtrodden peoples. These events, as well as others in the early
Nauvoo years, also provided crucial context for the establishment of the
Council of Fifty in March 1844. A few months later, a mob killed Joseph
and his brother Hyrum.

A FEW CLOSING OBSERVATIONS

First, although Latter-day Saints sometimes fought back and at times even
went on the offensive, they were overwhelmingly the victims of illegal and
extralegal violence. Second, the three branches of government failed to
protect the Saints before they became victims or to compensate them for
their losses afterward. Third, as is so often the case with groups who have
minority status, the Mormons were victims of structural bias. In general,
when they did wrong, they were punished harshly. But when others
wronged them, even severely, they were not punished at all.
 This history of repeated injustices suffered by the Latter-day Saints
provides essential background to understanding the establishment of the
Council of Fifty—a body that was designed, as Joseph Smith put it, “to be
got up for the safety and salvation of the saints by protecting them in their
religious rights and worship.”30

NOTES
1. “To the Public,” Wayne Sentinel (Palmyra, NY), October 27, 1824.
2. Joseph Smith—History 1:21–23, 27.
3. Joseph Smith—History 1:61.
4. “To His Excellency, Daniel Dunklin, Governor of the State of Missouri,” Evening and Morning
Star 2, no. 15 (December 1833): 228.
5. Lyman Wight, Testimony, Times and Seasons 4, no. 17 (1843): 262.
6. Wight, Testimony, 262.
7. Wight, Testimony, 262.
8. Wight, Testimony, 262.
9. Barnet Cole, Affidavit of January 7, 1840, in Mormon Redress Petitions: Documents of the 1833–
1838 Missouri Conflict, vol. 16 of the Religious Studies Center Monograph Series, ed. Clark V.
Johnson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 1992): 431–32.
10. Wight, Testimony, 263.
11. Abigail Leonard, Affidavit of March 11, 1840, in Mormon Redress Petitions, 273–74.
12. See unsworn, undated petition of Lyman Leonard in Mormon Redress Petitions, 699.
13. Karen Lynn Davidson, Richard L. Jensen, and David J. Whittaker, eds., Histories, Volume 2:
Assigned Histories, 1831–1847, vol. 2 of the Histories series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed.
Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2012), 209, 227 (hereafter JSP, H2).
14. Parley P. Pratt et al., “‘The Mormons’ So Called,” The Evening and the Morning Star, Extra,
February 1834, [2].
15. Wight, Testimony, 263.
16. Edward Partridge, “A History, of the Persecution, of the Church of Jesus Christ, of Latter Day
Saints in Missouri,” Times and Seasons 1, no. 4 (1840): 50, in JSP, H2:226.
17. Wight, Testimony, 263.
18. Durward T. Stokes, ed., “The Wilson Letters, 1835–1849,” Missouri Historical Review 60, no. 4
(July 1966): 508–9. On the writer’s distinction between “white men” and “a mormon,” see W.
Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
19. Chicago Times, August 7, 1875, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Chicago_Times,_August_7, 1875.
20. “Anti-Mormons,” Missouri Republican (St. Louis), August 1838, in Publications of the Nebraska
State Historical Society: Volume XX, ed. Albert Watkins (Lincoln: Nebraska State Historical
Society, 1922), 80.
21. “The Mormons,” Southern Advocate (Jackson, MO), September 1, 1838,
https://web.archive.org/web/20110515042529/http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/MO/Miss1
838.htm.
22. “Extract, from the Private Journal of Joseph Smith Jr.,” in Times and Seasons 1, no. 1 (1839): 2–
9, josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/extract-from-the-private-journal-of-joseph-smith-jr-july-
 1839/1.
23. “Trial of Joseph Smith,” Times and Seasons 4, no. 17 (1843): 257; Joseph Smith, History, 1838–
1856, vol. B-1, 836, josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-b-1-1-
september-1834-2-november-1838/290.
24. Asahel A. Lathrop, Affidavit of May 8, 1839, and March 17, 1840, in Mormon Redress Petitions,
263–66.
25. Lilburn W. Boggs to John B. Clark, October 27, 1838, Mormon War Papers, Missouri State
Archives, Jefferson City.
26. History of Caldwell and Livingston Counties, Missouri: Written and Compiled from the Most
Authentic Official and Private Sources, including a History of Their Townships, Towns and
Villages (St. Louis: National Historical, 1886), 149.
27. “Memorial to the Missouri Legislature,” January 24, 1839, Joseph Smith Letterbook 2, 66–67,
josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/memorial-to-the-missouri-legislature-24-january-1839/1.
28. Joseph Smith to the Church and Edward Partridge, March 20, 1839, 3,
josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-the-church-and-edward-partridge-20-march-
1839/3. See also the testimonies of Hyrum Smith, “Missouri vs Joseph Smith,” Times and Seasons
4, no. 16 (1843): 255; and Parley P. Pratt, “Trial of Joseph Smith,” Times and Seasons 4, no. 17
(1843): 258.
29. Joseph Smith to Hyrum Smith and High Council, December 5, 1839, Joseph Smith Letterbook 2,
85, josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/letter-to-hyrum-smith-and-nauvoo-illinois-high-
council-5-december-1839/1.
30. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 128.
 Chapter 3

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY AND JOSEPH

SMITH'S PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS
Spencer W. McBride
Discussion of Joseph Smith’s 1844 presidential campaign elicits a fairly
standard set of questions. Was Joseph Smith serious about his presidential
ambitions or was he merely a protest candidate running to raise awareness
of the Mormons’ plight? Did Smith and his fellow Church leaders believe
that he could actually win the election? If they did, how confident were they
that the campaign strategy they had devised would carry Smith into the
White House? For decades, scholars defended their respective answers to
these questions with relatively limited source materials, reliant instead on
their own interpretations of the few surviving statements that Smith and his
close associates made concerning the seriousness of his campaign.1 But the
minutes of the Council of Fifty provide scholars with new source material
on the presidential campaign that, when considered with sources previously
known, better equips them to examine these key questions.
The Council of Fifty minutes reveal that Smith was more than a protest
candidate—that is, that he and other Church leaders viewed an electoral
triumph as possible, even if unlikely. While council members were certain
that the campaigning efforts of Church leaders throughout the United States
were essential to Smith’s success, they appear to have believed that his
candidacy would ultimately require some form of divine intervention in
order to succeed. Yet the most significant aspect of Smith’s presidential
campaign illuminated by the Council of Fifty minutes is that the campaign
was merely one possible avenue by which Latter-day Saints could attempt
to obtain federal redress and protection while awaiting the establishment of
the political kingdom of God. Smith’s run for the American presidency thus
represents a nexus of idealism and pragmatism as well as an unusual
combination of providentialism and contingency planning.

REASONS FOR SMITH’S CAMPAIGN

Smith launched his presidential campaign on January 29, 1844, when he
accepted the nomination made by Willard Richards, a member of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, in a meeting of Church leaders.2 A few
days later, after a public reading of his campaign pamphlet, General Smith’s
Views on the Powers and Policy of the Government of the United States,
Smith justified his candidacy to his followers. “I would not have suffered
my name to have been used by my friends on any wise as president of the
United States or Candidate for that office,” he explained, “if I and my
friends could have had the privilege of enjoying our religious and civil
rights as American citizens.” But since he felt that his followers had been
denied those rights, he declared, “I feel it to be my right and privilege to
obtain what influence and power I can lawfully in the United States for the
protection of injured innocence.” In this same meeting, Smith called on
“every man in the city who could speak” to go “throughout the land to
electioneer,” insisting that “there is oratory enough in the church to carry
me into the presidential chair the first slide.”3
While these words elucidate the reasons Smith was seeking the
presidency, they do not clearly establish whether he was serious about the
race or if he thought he could win. Indeed, various men and women have
campaigned for the presidency without any expectation—or desire—to win
but rather to raise awareness for the issues that mattered most to them and
their followers.4 In Smith’s case, his presidential ambitions could bring the
plight of the Mormons—first in Missouri and then in Illinois—to the
attention of the American public as well as to savvy politicians who
recognized the potential electoral boost they might receive as a result of
supporting the Mormon’s petitioning efforts with state and federal
governments.
John Tyler was president of the United States at the time that Joseph Smith announced his own
presidential campaign. Lithograph by Charles Fenderich. Courtesy of Library of Congress,
Washington, DC.

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY’S ROLE IN JOSEPH SMITH’S

CAMPAIGN
The Council of Fifty assumed much of the responsibility for managing
Smith’s campaign. Committee members helped build the campaign message
around the themes set forth in General Smith’s Views, titling their
independent presidential ticket “Jeffersonianism, Jeffersonian Democracy,
free trade and Sailors rights, protection of person & property.”5 They also
selected and invited men to be the vice presidential candidate on Smith’s
independent ticket. Their first choice was James Arlington Bennet of New
York, who had corresponded with Smith for years and joined the church in
1843. However, after council members discovered—incorrectly—that
Bennet was born in Ireland (and therefore ineligible for the vice
presidency), they opted to invite Solomon Copeland, a friend to Church
members in Tennessee, to assume that place on the ticket. When Copeland
failed to respond to the council’s invitation, council members decided to
name Sidney Rigdon, a counselor in the Church’s First Presidency, as
Smith’s running mate.6

Men campaigning for Joseph Smith issued tickets like this for use as ballots in the presidential
election. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

MORE THAN A PROTEST CANDIDATE

The view of Smith as a mere protest candidate arose in the weeks
immediately following his nomination, even among some of the Mormon
leader’s close friends and supporters. For instance, in responding to the
invitation to run for vice president on Smith’s ticket, Bennet wrote to
Willard Richards that “if you can by any Supernatural means Elect Brother
Joseph President of these [United] States, I have not a doubt that he would
govern the people and administer the laws in good faith, and with righteous
intentions, but I can see no Natural means by which he has the slightest
chance of receiving the votes of even a one state.” Considering other
possible reasons for the campaign, Bennet continued: “If the object of
[Smith’s] friends be to aid the Cause of Mormonism in foreign lands, or in
this Country among a certain class of persons . . . then I think they are
somewhat in the right track, but if they are aiming in reality at that high
office then I must say that at present they, in my opinion, are on a wild
goose chase.”7
Richards responded to Bennet in June. “Your views about the nomination
of Gen. Smith for the presidency are correct,” he wrote. “We will gain
popularity and extend influence, but this is not all, we mean to elect him,
and nothing shall be wanting on our part to accomplish it.”8 Richards clearly
acknowledged the potential benefits of the presidential campaign toward
raising awareness of the Mormons’ plight but insisted that those benefits
did not exclude an expectation of electoral success. Furthermore, his
insistence that “there would be nothing wanting on our part to accomplish
it” suggests that Smith’s election would require help from an outside—even
a divine—source.
Still, protest candidates do not always publicly identify themselves as
such. That Smith and his fellow Mormon leaders were serious in putting his
name forth as a presidential candidate is demonstrated by their efforts to
select electors in a formal convention. At a meeting of the Council of Fifty
on April 25, 1844, the council decided to “have delegates in all the electoral
districts and hold a national convention at Baltimore,” where both the Whig
and Democratic Parties were holding their respective nominating
conventions that May. Smith stated that “the easiest and the best way to
accomplish the object in view is to make an effort to secure the election at
this contest.”9 Indeed, at a conference of the Church just two weeks earlier,
Church leaders had called for members “to preach the Gospel and
Electioneer” for Smith. Nearly three hundred men volunteered, and
volunteers were subsequently assigned to preach and campaign in specific
states in which they would “appoint conferences . . . to get up electors who
will go for [Smith] for the presidency.”10
If the Church was promoting Smith’s candidacy simply to raise public
awareness for the plight of its members, then electors were superfluous.
While it was common in the earliest American presidential elections for the
legislatures of many states—and not the people—to select the men who
eventually cast their votes in the Electoral College, by the 1840s only South
Carolina still used this method to select its electors. The rest of the states
had moved to a system in which the winner of the state’s popular vote
received the support of all of the electors allotted to it.11 This meant that the
selection of electors was a technical aspect in a strategy to actually elect
someone president, an aspect that had little significance in a campaign
focused solely on building public support for a cause. By designating a slate
of electors in each state, Church leaders created an electoral infrastructure
designed to convert popular support into the votes that could actually carry
a person to the presidency. Of course, without popular support, that
infrastructure would be useless.
The Council of Fifty’s emphasis on securing electors in each state should
Smith win the popular vote in those places illuminates the way the council
viewed the presidential campaign. To council members, Smith was not
merely a protest candidate. They thought that he could win and made the
necessary technical arrangements to facilitate such an event should large
numbers of Americans in each state cast their votes for him. After all, no
amount of popular votes or divine intervention could make Smith president
without the requisite number of electoral votes.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS
That Mormon leaders believed Smith could win the presidency did not
necessarily mean that they believed he would win. It was merely one
possible avenue through which they believed divine providence could work
to restore the United States to its privileged place in God’s grand plan for
the world and to help the Saints reclaim their promised land of Zion.
Despite Richards’s insistence to James Arlington Bennet that the reason
Church leaders were promoting Smith’s candidacy for president was
“because we are satisfied . . . that this is the best or only method of saving
our free institutions from total overthrow,” the Council of Fifty members
were exploring several possible avenues that might eventually lead them to
the peace and prosperity in the land they believed that God had promised to
them while still remaining citizens of a country that had hitherto condoned
their ill treatment.12 For instance, the Council of Fifty petitioned the federal
government to authorize Smith to form and lead a military force of one
hundred thousand men to protect Texas and Oregon from foreign invasion.
If Congress had agreed to the plan, Smith would presumably have become a
general in the US Army—certainly a promotion from his role as lieutenant
general of the Nauvoo Legion. The United States would have a force
dedicated to protecting its interests in Texas and Oregon, and Smith would
have an army at his command to ward off mobs that threatened the
Mormons in Nauvoo.13
In addition, the council dispatched Heber C. Kimball and Lyman Wight to
Washington, DC, in May 1844 to petition Congress for “a liberal grant of
lands in one of the Territories of the United States, to be located in such
manner as not to deprive any previous settler of any just right or claim.”
They asked that the government either give them the land outright or sell it
to them on favorable terms of credit. Such an arrangement would have
provided the Mormons a degree of isolation ideal for preventing future
outbreaks of violence with non-Mormon neighbors, like those that occurred
in Missouri during the 1830s or that appeared imminent in western Illinois
in 1844.14
Yet another proposed solution was that the federal government designate
Nauvoo a territory. In such a scenario, the city would effectively secede
from Illinois and fall under the protection and direct authority of the federal
government. Smith explained in an April meeting of the Council of Fifty
that such an arrangement would “set us everlastingly free, and give us the
United States troops to guard us and protect us from any invasion.”15
However far-fetched and unlikely the proposal may have been, territorial
status would have empowered Smith and his followers to exercise greater
sovereignty in governing their society in nonecclesiastical matters, the kind
of sovereignty that was at that time eliciting suspicion and opposition from
several prominent figures in Illinois politics.
The White House, circa 1846. Daguerreotype by John Plumbe. Courtesy of Library of Congress,
Washington, DC.

Smith’s election or any of these other plans would have provided

substantial relief to the Mormons amid the growing hostility they felt from
their fellow citizens in Illinois. Yet the Council of Fifty members
anticipated that all their plans to remain in the United States on their own
terms might fail. Accordingly, they planned for an exodus to a place where
they could establish themselves as a sovereign people.16 In the end, Smith
was murdered several months before Election Day, and Congress never
seriously considered any of the Mormon leadership’s proposed plans.
Moving out of the country thus appeared to many council members as the
plan God intended for them to pursue.

CONCLUSION
Joseph Smith was not merely a protest candidate campaigning for the sole
purpose of raising awareness of the poor treatment of the Mormons in a
country that claimed to value religious liberty. While parties operating
outside the mainstream Whig and Democratic Parties often held
conventions to nominate candidates, holding conventions designed to select
electors in each state was less common. Still, as the intent of the Council of
Fifty was to “leave nothing wanting” on its part where the election was
concerned, council members simultaneously planned for other
contingencies, working out an array of potential paths to the building up of
the kingdom of God on earth, a kingdom that they believed they were
destined to lead.

NOTES
1. Several scholars have examined Smith’s campaign and offered their respective opinions on how
serious Smith was about his presidential ambitions. Fawn Brodie wrote that Smith “suffered from
no illusions about his chances of winning the supreme political post in the nation. He entered the
ring not only to win publicity for himself and his church, but most of all to shock the other
candidates into some measure of respect.” Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of
Joseph Smith, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971), 362. Richard Bushman portrays Smith’s
campaign largely as a gesture designed to attract publicity to the Church and its petitioning efforts
but acknowledges that “with a large field of candidates and no clear favorite,” Smith “may have
thought he could gain votes through convert baptisms and steal the victory in a split vote.” Richard
Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 515. In setting
forth their conspiracy theory that Smith was assassinated in order to elect Henry Clay president,
Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister portray Smith as a serious candidate with a real chance to
win. Robert S. Wicks and Fred R. Foister, Junius and Joseph: Presidential Politics and the
Assassination of the First Mormon Prophet (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2005). John
Bicknell asserts that Smith “understood fully that he would not be elected president” but that “the
campaign afforded him a chance to spread the word about Mormonism and put its case before the
people and their leaders.” John Bicknell, America 1844: Religious Fervor, Westward Expansion,
and the Presidential Election That Transformed the Nation (Chicago: Chicago Review Press,
2015), 48–49; see also Newell G. Bringhurst, “Reflections on a Roundtable Colloquium Dealing
with Joseph Smith’s 1844 Campaign for U.S. President,” John Whitmer Historical Society Journal
22 (2002): 153–58.
2. Joseph Smith, Journal, January 29, 1844, in Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Brent M.
Rogers, eds., Journals, Volume 3: May 1843–June 1844, vol. 3 of the Journals series of The
Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2015), 170.
3. Wilford Woodruff, Journal, February 8, 1844, in Scott G. Kenney, ed., Wilford Woodruff’s Journal:
1833–1898 Typescript (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1983), 2:349.
4. Notable examples of American protest candidates include James G. Birney, the abolitionist and
Liberty Party candidate in the presidential elections of 1840 and 1844, and Eugene V. Debs, the
labor advocate and Socialist Party candidate in five of the six presidential elections between 1900
and 1920. On Birney and the Liberty Party, see Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, and Free Men:
The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press,
1970), 78–82; and Vernon L. Volpe, “The Liberty Party and Polk’s Election,” The Historian 53,
 no. 4 (Summer 1991): 691–710. On Debs and the Socialist Party, see Nick Salvatore, Eugene V.
Debs: Citizen and Socialist (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982).
5. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 90 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 21 and May 6, 1844, in JSP, CFM:57, 157–59.
7. James Arlington Bennet to Willard Richards, April 14, 1844, Willard Richards Journals and
Papers, 1821–1854, Church History Library, Salt Lake City (hereafter CHL).
8. Willard Richards to James Arlington Bennet, June 20, 1844, Willard Richards Journals and Papers,
1821–1854, CHL.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:133–34. Ultimately, a convention in
Nauvoo on May 17, 1844, resolved to hold the proposed “National Convention at Baltimore” on
July 13. However, Smith’s murder on June 27 stripped the event of its core purpose. See JSP,
CFM:133n404.
10. Historian’s Office, General Church Minutes, April 9, 1844, CHL; Conference Assignments,
Nauvoo Neighbor, April 17, 1844, [2]; JSP, CFM:134n406.
11. Robert G. Dixon Jr., “Electoral College Procedure,” The Western Political Quarterly 3, no. 2
(June 1950), 215.
12. Willard Richards to James Arlington Bennet, June 20, 1844, Willard Richards Journals and
Papers, 1821–1854, CHL.
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 26, 1844, in JSP, CFM:66–72. Empowering the federal
government to send troops into individual states to protect religious minorities from mob violence
without the formal request of a state’s governor was a prominent plank in Smith’s campaign
platform. See Joseph Smith, General Smith’s Views on the Powers and Policy of the Government
of the United States (Nauvoo, IL: John Taylor, 1844), 10.
14. Lyman Wight and Heber C. Kimball, Petition to US Senate and House of Representatives, 1844,
Record Group 46, Records of the US Senate, National Archives, Washington, DC; JSP,
CFM:162n516.
15. Nauvoo City Council, Minutes, December 8 and 21, 1843, and February 12, 1844, CHL; Hyrum
Smith et al., Memorial to the US Senate and House of Representatives, December 21, 1843,
Record Group 46, Records of the US Senate, National Archives, Washington, DC; Council of
Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:127–28.
16. For more on the discussion in the Council of Fifty about relocating the main body of the Church
to Oregon, see Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:267—68; and Letters from
Orson Hyde, April 25 and 26, 1844, in JSP, CFM:181–84. On the discussion in the council about
relocating the main body of the Church to Texas, see Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in
JSP, CFM:115–16, 127–28.
 Chapter 4

GOD AND THE PEOPLE

RECONSIDERED
Further Reflections on Theodemocracy in Early Mormonism

Patrick Q. Mason
Joseph Smith’s quixotic 1844 presidential campaign, which ended
prematurely and tragically with his murder in June of that year, introduced
into the Mormon and American lexicon the concept of “theodemocracy.” In
a ghostwritten article in the Latter-day Saint newspaper Times and Seasons
outlining his political principles, Smith declared, “As the ‘world is
governed too much’ and as there is not a nation of dynasty, now occupying
the earth, which acknowledges Almighty God as their law giver, and as
‘crowns won by blood, by blood must be maintained,’ I go emphatically,
virtuously, and humanely, for a T , where God and the
people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in righteousness.”
Smith went on to say that such a “theodemocratic” arrangement would
guarantee liberty, free trade, the protection of life and property, and indeed
“unadulterated freedom” for all.1
I can’t recall when I first encountered Smith’s notion of theodemocracy,
but I became particularly interested in the subject when, as a master’s
student in international peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, I
took a course on democratic theory. A search of electronic databases
containing early American imprints, newspapers, and other primary sources
suggested that the word “theodemocracy” was not in wide circulation at the
time, and perhaps that the concept was original to Smith (or his ghostwriter
William W. Phelps). I wondered if theodemocracy might even constitute a
uniquely Mormon contribution to political theory. What began as a course
paper eventually culminated in my article “God and the People:
Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism,” published in 2011 in
the Journal of Church and State.2 My research suggests that outside of
Mormon circles the term has rarely if ever been invoked, with the
prominent exception of the influential twentieth-century Pakistani Islamist
author and political organizer Sayyid Abul A‘la Maududi.3
“God and the People” was not intended to provide a comprehensive
history of Mormon political thought—an ambitious project that has yet to
be undertaken.4 Nevertheless, within its rather narrowly tailored
perspective, the article did attempt to contribute to important conversations
in Mormon history, American political history, and democratic theory. I
argued that the Mormon concept of theodemocracy was designed to mediate
in a contemporaneous debate over how to best protect minority rights and
religious liberty—subjects that were far from academic for the earliest
generations of Latter-day Saints. That Mormons would even consider a
notion such as theodemocracy suggests their complicated relationship with
American political ideals, even at a time when those ideals were themselves
complex and in flux. Latter-day Saints joined other Americans in reflecting
on the meaning of freedom and how to guarantee its blessings for all, not
only the majority. From their own experience and reading of the US
Constitution, Mormons identified religious freedom as the first and most
important freedom, and they sought a political theory and system that
would prevent the abuses they had recently suffered in Missouri.
The irony is that the Latter-day Saints’ proposed remedy was viewed by
their opponents as equally if not more dangerous than the sociopolitical ills
it sought to cure. As I wrote, “Each side accused the other of undermining
democracy and basic liberties: Smith and the Mormons embraced a more
robust application of revealed religion in the public sphere as the answer to
the secular government’s hostility to religious minorities’ rights (namely
their own), while anti-Mormon critics denounced the prophet as a tyrant
and his politics as theocratic despotism.”5 Theodemocracy, then, provides an
excellent window onto the antiliberal tradition in American politics. The
illiberalism of vigilantism and state-sponsored violence against a particular
religious minority group was countered by the illiberalism of
theodemocracy. A consideration of Mormon theodemocracy therefore fixes
our gaze upon the contending illiberalisms of nineteenth-century American
political thought and behavior.
I concluded my article by expressing skepticism about theodemocracy as
a tenable political theory, arguing that theos would always trump demos,
and that such a system would perpetually struggle with an inability to
tolerate real dissent. The particular turns of Mormon history following
Joseph Smith’s death, and especially after Wilford Woodruff’s 1890
Manifesto, meant that what began as a radical political idea informed by
millenarian theology became domesticated and limited to applications
within ecclesiastical government. In the twentieth century, theodemocracy
became far less political, far more churchly, and thus far less dangerous.

THE ALIENATION OF CHURCH LEADERS

The recent publication of the Council of Fifty’s minutes from the final
months of Joseph Smith’s life provides an opportunity to reappraise the
arguments I made in my 2011 article.6 A thorough review of the Joseph
Smith–era minutes does not upend any of my claims, but they do provide
further texture and depth to our understanding of early Mormon politics,
history, and theology. In particular, the minutes reveal a core of Latter-day
Saint leaders even more alienated from American society than I suggested
in my article. It still holds true, as I argued, that “the ranks of Mormonism
in its first decade were hardly filled with fanatic dissidents, revolutionaries,
or theocrats.”7 But the Council of Fifty minutes make clear that by 1844,
many of the leading men of Mormonism had adopted a more jaded view.
John Taylor dimly reviewed “the positions and prospects of the different
nations of the earth” (though his mental geography seemed limited to the
United States and northern Europe) and later asserted that “this nation is as
far fallen and degenerate as any nation under heaven.”8 William W. Phelps
begrudgingly admitted there were “a few pearls” in the Declaration of
Independence and US Constitution—which an 1833 revelation said was
“established . . . by the hands of wise men whom I [God] have raised up
unto this very purpose”—but also “a tremendous sight of chaff.” Whatever
original inspiration there may have been in the nation’s founding, Phelps
said, “the boasted freedom of these U. States is gone, gone to hell.”9 Sidney
Rigdon embraced the world’s degenerate political condition as a harbinger
of the apocalypse. “The nations of the earth are very fast approximating to
an utter ruin and overthrow,” he proclaimed. “All the efforts the nations are
making will only tend to hasten on the final doom of the world and bring it
to its final issue.”10 In recent years many scholars have emphasized the
optimistic, progressive nature of early Mormon theology. Without
discounting that positive strain of thought within the movement, the
Council of Fifty minutes remind us that many early Mormons shared a
rather dark view of the world that lay beyond gathered Zion, a pessimism
founded upon Smith’s millenarian revelations and fueled by the Missouri
persecutions.11
William W. Phelps and other council members expressed bitter feelings toward the US government.
Photograph, circa 1850–60, likely by Marsena Cannon. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt
Lake City.

The council members’ alienation with present governments led to their

openness to, and even enthusiasm for, a theocratic alternative. By focusing
so intently on theodemocracy, my article underplayed the commitments of
many early Mormon leaders to plain old theocracy. In the Council of Fifty’s
first meeting on March 11, 1844, clerk William Clayton recorded that “all
seemed agreed to look to some place where we can go and establish a
Theocracy.”12 Indeed, theocracy was built into the council’s DNA from the
beginning. Sidney Rigdon, Brigham Young, and other council members
stood ready to ditch demos in favor of theos and the political rule of God’s
appointed servant, Joseph Smith. Rigdon asserted that the council’s “design
was to form a Theocracy according to the will of Heaven.”13 Brigham
Young declared, “No line can be drawn between the church and other
governments, of the spritual and temporal affairs of the church. Revelations
must govern. The voice of God, shall be the voice of the people.”14 Later,
Young argued that the government of the kingdom of God was in no need
of a constitution so long as its subjects had Smith as their “Prophet, Priest
and King,” who represented “a perfect committee of himself” through
whom God would speak.15 One can see here the foundations of an
authoritarian streak that has manifest itself throughout the larger Mormon
tradition, whether it be in what historians have characterized as Young’s
“kingdom in the West” or the “one-man rule” that Rulon Jeffs introduced in
the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the
1980s.16
Not all council members were so enthusiastic about theocracy. Almon
Babbitt departed from his fellow council members to explain (and
presumably defend) “laws in general” and especially “the laws of the land.”
He went so far as to remind his colleagues of “the apostacy of the children
of Israel in choosing a king.”17 Babbitt’s reservations notwithstanding, one
can sense in the minutes an emergent groupthink as council members built
upon one another’s exuberance for the establishment of the political
kingdom of God, confirming and even outperforming one another’s earnest
declarations.
At the same time, the minutes affirm that for all their theocratic
illiberality, the council members were unanimously committed, at least in
their own minds, to equal rights for all. They believed that “having sought
in vain among all the nations of the earth, to find a government instituted by
heaven; an assylum for the opprest; a protector of the innocent, and a shield
for the defenceless,” it was their God-given duty to create a government
that would not only fulfill prophecy but also protect society’s most
vulnerable members.18 At times their commentary was concerned primarily
with self-protection and the maintenance of their own rights, but this special
pleading did frequently give way to more universalistic sentiments.
Religious freedom provided the foundation for their broader thinking about
individual liberties and the limits of government power. For instance,
Amasa Lyman opined that one of their chief purposes in establishing the
government of the kingdom of God was to “secure the right of liberty in
matters of conscience to men of every character, creed and condition in life.
. . . If a man wanted to make an idol and worship it without meddling with
his neighbor he should be protected. So that a man should be protected in
his rights whether he choose to make a profession of religion or not.”19 The
kingdom of God would protect the rights of conscience for Mormons,
idolaters, and atheists alike.

JOSEPH SMITH’S VIEWS ON THEODEMOCRACY

Amidst the swirl of theocratic enthusiasm, Joseph Smith emerges in the
minutes as perhaps the most moderate member of the council. To be sure,
he did allow his colleagues to proclaim him as their prophet, priest, and
king.20 And he was the one who gave Brigham Young the idea that, as
chairman of the council, Smith was “a committee of myself.”21
Nevertheless, in the council’s discussions of theocracy, Smith left far more
room for human agency and coparticipation than did many of his peers.
While the word theodemocracy is never explicitly used in the minutes by
Smith or any other council member, in his remarks on April 11, just four
days before publishing the newspaper article that did introduce the term,
Smith articulated a vision of God and the people working together to
govern human affairs in righteousness. He declared that theocracy meant
“exercising all the intelligence of the council, and bringing forth all the light
which dwells in the breast of every man, and then let God approve of the
document.” Smith said it was not only advisable but in fact necessary for
the government of the kingdom of God to operate in this fashion so as to
prove to the council members that “they are as wise as God himself.” A
week earlier, Brigham Young had asserted, “The voice of God, shall be the
voice of the people,” but now Smith reversed that formulation by declaring,
“Vox populi, Vox Dei.” The people would still assent to the will of God, but
in Smith’s formulation the process would be far more collaborative than
what his colleagues had imagined.22
Smith’s statements, carving out space for human coparticipation with
God, make even more sense when we recognize that they were expressed a
mere four days after he delivered his seminal sermon known as the King
Follett discourse. In that remarkable address he proclaimed, “God Himself
who sits enthroned in yonder heavens is a Man like unto one of
yourselves,” and further, that the core essence, or intelligence, of each
human is “as immortal as, and is coequal with, God Himself.”23 This radical
collapse of ontological distance between God and humanity allowed for
Smith to believe that humans could confidently speak for and in the name
of God—just as he had been doing for nearly two decades. As I concluded
in my original article, Joseph Smith’s principal impulse was “to bring God
and humanity together in radically new ways. . . . Politically, this meant
devising a system in which God and the people would work jointly in
administering the government of human affairs. The notion of
theodemocracy thus represented the logical culmination of Mormon ideas
about the social-political relationships that people had with one another and
with the divine.”24
Joseph Smith tempered the more theocratic leanings of his fellow council
members not only by introducing demos into the equation but also in
affirming that the kingdom of God and the church of Jesus Christ were two
separate institutions, each with its own laws and jurisdiction. In determining
this he was settling a debate that occupied most of the meeting on April 18.
“The church is a spiritual matter,” he clarified, whereas “the kingdom of
God has nothing to do with giving commandments to damn a man
spiritually.”25

DIVERSITY AND DISSENT

Even with this relatively firm understanding of the separation of church and
state, Smith and the council never fully grappled with the problem of
genuine diversity and dissent. The nature of the council’s governance,
requiring that all decisions be made with full unanimity, can be interpreted
in at least two ways: first, as a pragmatic response to democratic politics
intended as a guard against the tyranny of the majority; or second, implying
a naive belief that all people of goodwill, especially when guided by the
Holy Spirit, would come to the same conclusions on any matter of import.
These two interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and both seem
plausible when understood against the backdrop of antebellum American
politics and culture. Indeed, the second interpretation, with its faith in the
very possibility of political and religious consensus, would be consistent
with the philosophy regnant in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
America which produced “an almost reverential respect for the certainty of
knowledge achieved by careful and objective observation of the facts
known to common sense.”26 At the time of the Restoration, this “Common
Sense philosophy seemed to have swept everything before it in American
intellectual life,” and virtually “all were convinced that in fair controversy
universal truth would eventually flourish.”27 In other words, early
nineteenth-century Americans—including Mormons—generally believed
that any two or more rational people looking objectively at the same set of
facts would come to similar conclusions. Joseph Smith could therefore
propose an extreme libertarian view of government, suggesting that “it only
requires two or three sentences in a constitution to govern the world,”
precisely because he believed that equipped with freedom, proper teaching,
and correct information, humans could and would act in complete harmony
for the common good.28 The inclusion of three non-Mormons on the council
was therefore a gesture not just of tokenism or religious liberality but also
an expression of a sincere belief that spiritual difference would not impede
social harmony and political unity.
Such sincerity would prove insufficient in the face of real difference and
especially dissent. Smith and the other council members, many of whom
also served as municipal officials in Nauvoo, were unable to tolerate even a
rival newspaper, to say nothing of how their proposed system would
respond to the deep pluralism characteristic of modern life in the twenty-
first century. All of the council’s fine talk of freedom, liberty, and minority
rights proved ephemeral when the authority of their prophet, priest, and
king was publicly challenged. Whether properly understood as theocracy or
theodemocracy, the government of the kingdom of God proved to be
incompatible with a pluralistic society and therefore untenable as a modern
political theory.29
CONCLUSION
The Council of Fifty stands as a fascinating study of the illiberal tradition in
American politics and society. Though fueled in substantial part by Smith’s
millenarian revelations, the theocratic strain in Mormonism must be
understood principally as the reaction of a people otherwise inclined toward
patriotism and republicanism but deeply scarred by the failure of the
American nation to live up to its own highest ideals. Early Mormon
theo(demo)cracy can therefore be considered alongside other protest
movements born of profound alienation from the American state—such as
the American Indian Movement and various black nationalist groups,
including the Nation of Islam and Black Panthers. These groups’ failure to
provide satisfactory alternatives should not diminish our recognition of the
potency of their complaints and the depth of their disaffection. In this
manner, it is precisely those minority groups who flirt with nondemocratic
polities who underscore the nation’s perpetual struggle to guarantee, in
Joseph Smith’s words, “those grand and sublime principles of equal rights
and universal freedom to all.”30

NOTES
1. Joseph Smith, “The Globe,” Times and Seasons 5, no. 8 (April 15, 1844): 510. The article was
ghostwritten by William W. Phelps.
2. Patrick Q. Mason, “God and the People: Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism,”
Journal of Church and State 53, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 349–75.
3. In his influential 1955 treatise The Islamic Law and Constitution, Maududi wrote, “If I were
permitted to coin a new term, I would describe this system of government as a ‘theo-democracy,’
that is to say a divine democratic government, because under it the Muslims have been given a
limited popular sovereignty under the suzerainty of God.” Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi, The Islamic
Law and Constitution, trans. and ed. Khurshid Ahmad, 7th ed. (Lahore, Pakistan: Islamic
Publications, 1980), 139–40. On the broader context for Maududi’s concept of theodemocracy, see
Mumtaz Ahmad, “Islamic Fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi
Jamaat of South Asia,” in Fundamentalisms Observed, ed. Martin E. Marty and Scott Appleby,
vol. 1 of The Fundamentalism Project (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 457–530.
4. An important step in this direction, though still limited to the earliest years of the Mormon
movement, is Mark Ashurst-McGee, “Zion Rising: Joseph Smith’s Early Social and Political
Thought” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2008).
5. Mason, “God and the People,” 358.
6. Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D.
Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative
Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew
C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016) (hereafter JSP, CFM).
7. Mason, “God and the People,” 354.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 19 and April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:52, 114.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:94; Doctrine and Covenants 101:80.
10. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:104.
11. On Mormonism’s optimistic theology, see Terryl Givens and Fiona Givens, The God Who Weeps:
How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life (Salt Lake City: Ensign Peak, 2012). On early Mormon
millenarianism, see Grant Underwood, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1993).
12. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:40.
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:88.
14. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 5, 1844, in JSP, CFM:82.
15. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:120.
16. See John G. Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2012); Marianne T. Watson, “The 1948 Secret Marriage of Louis J.
Barlow: Origins of FLDS Placement Marriage,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 40, no.
1 (Spring 2007): 102.
17. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 4, 1844, in JSP, CFM:79.
18. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:112.
19. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:122.
20. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:95–96.
21. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:92.
22. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11 and 5, 1844, in JSP, CFM:92, 82.
23. Stan Larson, “The King Follett Discourse: A Newly Amalgamated Text,” BYU Studies 18, no. 2
(1978): 200, 203. Smith’s views on religious liberty are also consistent between the April 7 King
Follett discourse and his remarks in the Council of Fifty meeting four days later. In the April 7
sermon, he taught, “But meddle not with any man for his religion, for no man is authorized to take
away life in consequence of religion. All laws and government ought to tolerate and permit every
man to enjoy his religion, whether right or wrong. There is no law in the heart of God that would
allow anyone to interfere with the rights of man. Every man has a right to be a false prophet, as
well as a true prophet.” Larson, “King Follett Discourse,” 200. At the April 11 council meeting, he
declared, “Nothing can reclaim the human mind from its ignorance, bigotry, superstition &c but
those grand and sublime principles of equal rights and universal freedom to all men. . . . Nothing
is more congenial to my feelings and principles, than the principles of universal freedom and has
been from the beginning. . . . Hence in all governments or political transactions a mans religious
opinions should never be called in question. A man should be judged by the law independant of
religious prejudice.” Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:100–101.
24. Mason, “God and the People,” 373–74.
25. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:128.
26. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century
Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 15; see also Nathan O.
Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1989), esp. chaps. 1–2; and James Turner, Without God, without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in
America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 62, 104–9.
27. George M. Marsen, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to
Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 91.
28. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:101.
29. I explore these problems with theodemocracy at greater length in “God and the People,” 363–75.
30. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:100.
 Chapter 5

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY AND THE

PERILS OF DEMOCRATIC
GOVERNANCE
Benjamin E. Park
The winter of 1843–44 had been exceptionally cold in the Mormon city of
Nauvoo, Illinois, and the following spring was especially rainy. The
downpour was so strong on April 14 that Joseph Smith, prophet and
president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, canceled
Sunday meetings. Yet despite the gloomy weather, many Mormons’ hopes
were buoyed by the formation of a new secretive political organization that
they believed was destined to rule the world.
Joseph Smith and several dozen of his closest male followers gathered
together twice on April 18 in the month-old Council of Fifty, once at 9:00
a.m. and again at 2:00 p.m. During the morning session, they discussed a
new document that would take precedence over the American Constitution,
which Mormons believed the United States government had abandoned.
“We, the people of the Kingdom of God,” started the document, which was
a mix of traditional republican language with theocratic principles. Though
the new constitution was incomplete and required further revision, the
delegates enthusiastically praised its general ideas. In the afternoon session,
they debated its implications. Throughout, attendees were ecstatic. One
participant, Ezra Thayer, remarked that “this [was] the greatest day of his
life.” William Clayton, the secretary of the council, noted in his journal that
“it seems like heaven began on earth and the power of God is with us.” The
physical setting was wet and dreary, yet the theoretical future seemed
anything but.1
While part of a seemingly radical fringe response to a particular set of
circumstances, the Council of Fifty embodied central American tensions
concerning constitutionalism, democratic governance, and the separation
between church and state. Understanding the council’s relationship to these
broader themes is significant in reconstructing not only the turbulent
Mormon settlement of Nauvoo but also the dynamic environment of
antebellum America. This essay will focus explicitly on the intersections of
religious, secular, and constitutional sovereignty and how these
intersections were rooted in a culture in which all three spheres seemed to
converge. To do so, it will focus on a single day of debates, April 18, 1844,
and trace the cultural genealogies found within those discussions. How did
the Council of Fifty’s radical solutions speak to the problems of democratic
governance? The answers promise to add nuance to conventional
understanding of America’s democratic tradition.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND THE CHURCH OF GOD

The afternoon after the Council of Fifty received the first draft of its
constitution, Apostle Willard Richards posed two important questions to his
fellow council members. One dealt with religious and secular authority, and
the other dealt with constitutional evolution. Was there a difference, he
asked, between “the kingdom of God and the church of God”? In other
words, is there a separation between church and state? While such a
question had an immediate and parochial context (would the ecclesiastical
and civic structures in Nauvoo overlap?) it also held much broader
implications. And reflecting the complex issue, the question prompted a
number of divergent, and discursive, responses, and the numerous opinions
exemplified the disagreements even within the Church. The second
question was even more nuanced. “Will the ‘kingdom of God’ become
perfected as the legitimate results of the operation of the constitution now to
be adopted,” he asked, “or will it be perfected through the alterations of the
constitution which may take place hereafter to suit the situation of the earth
and kingdom?” Put another way, are the founding documents binding as
scripture—a position modern theorists define as originalism—or will
governing principles evolve as leaders, generations, and circumstances
develop? Few in the council seemed to grasp the significance of this latter
question, and discussion soon spiraled out of control. But as we tease out
the meanings and contexts of his questions, it becomes apparent that
Richards was an acute observer of the democratic dilemma.2
Willard Richards served as recorder of the Council of Fifty during the Nauvoo era. Copy of a
photograph, circa 1845, likely by Lucian R. Foster. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake
City.
 Born in Massachusetts and trained in Thomsonian medicine, Richards
converted to the Mormon faith in 1836 and became an apostle in 1840.
Joseph Smith quickly recognized his able mind and steady hand. Richards
was appointed as Joseph Smith’s scribe in 1841 and then as Church
historian and recorder the following year. He was therefore a natural choice
for the Council of Fifty’s recorder in 1844. Though William Clayton kept
the council’s minutes, Richards was a constant presence, mediating voice,
and reliable expositor. His questions on April 18, along with his other
remarks throughout the council’s minutes, reveal him to be a keen observer
of key issues. In many ways, his questions were more poignant than even he
could have understood at the time.

SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

Richards’s first question, on the difference between the “kingdom” and the
“church” of God, reflected how far American society had come in the half
century since disestablishment. Those who framed the United States’
founding documents inaugurated a then-radical idea of religious liberty—in
which there was a strict separation between political and ecclesiastical
governance—over the more traditional practice of religious toleration, in
which one religious institution would retain preference over others (even if
all faiths received some form of liberty). States were slower to adapt to
these new policies. Richards’s own Massachusetts, for instance, passed a
constitution that argued that because “the happiness of a people and the
good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon
piety, religion, and morality,” the legislature had the right to establish a
state-funded religion “for the support and maintenance of public Protestant
teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provisions
shall not be made voluntarily.” Citizens could worship whatever religion
they wished, but the state remained committed to the perpetuation of one
particular church. Full disestablishment did not reach Massachusetts until
1833, only three years before Richards encountered Mormon missionaries.
When Mormon leaders published a statement on government in 1835, it
reflected this new understanding: “We do not believe it just to mingle
religious influence with civil Government,” it declared. That Richards
wondered in 1844 whether there was a separation between church and state
—when the two institutions were clearly led by the same “prophet, priest,
and king”—demonstrated how deep these cultural roots had taken.3
But there were still many who wondered if America’s disestablishment
had gone too far. When the Constitution was being debated, a number of
critics pointed to its failure to mention God, the Bible, or religion in
general. Evangelicals in the South and Congregationalists in the Northeast
insisted that political rights were based on religious principles and that to
ignore the role of religion in society risked inviting God’s wrath and
inaugurating anarchy. During the antebellum period, antislavery and
suffragist activists accused America’s political system of forgetting its
religious past. Women’s rights activist Angelina Grimké, for instance,
argued that the rules dictated by “the government of God” should take
precedence over federal policies that “subjected [women] to the despotic
control of man.” Abolitionist Theodore Parker similarly argued that
American laws must recognize the “absolute Right” dictated by “a moral
Law of God,” which should serve as the basis for all laws and legislation.
Many believed America’s morals had become unmoored from the anchor of
divine oversight.4
The Mormon constitution sought to solve the problem. “None of the
nations, kingdoms or governments of the earth do acknowledge the creator
of the Universe as their Priest, Lawgiver, King and Sovereign,” its preface
declared, “neither have they sought unto him for laws by which to govern
themselves.” The constitution’s first article reaffirmed God’s supremacy, the
second proclaimed the authority of the prophet and priesthood, and the third
validated priestly judgment. There was no question where sovereignty
should reside. George A. Smith “compared the situation of the world,”
which did not recognize God’s true authority, “to an old ship without a
rudder on the midst of the sea.” Revelation and divine authority provided
the necessary guidance, and the members of the council were willing “to
throw out our cable and try to bring the old ship to land.” The nautical
metaphor emphasized the Council of Fifty’s role in providing a saving grace
for the rest of the nations. Secular democracy had brought only unrest and
war, and only a divine theocracy could reintroduce stability and peace.5
Participants in the council that afternoon were divided over what that
precisely meant, however, as Richards’s inquiry regarding whether there
was a difference between “the kingdom of God and the church of God”
sparked a lively debate. Reynolds Cahoon could “not see any difference
between them,” but Amasa Lyman disagreed. “The church has only
jurisdiction over its members,” Lyman explained, “but the kingdom of God
has jurisdiction over all the world.” Erastus Snow split the difference by
explaining, “They are distinct, one from the other, and yet all identified in
one.” Clearly, the boundaries were porous and contested. Council members
tried to balance their allegiance to prophetic rule and democratic principles.
At least four argued there was not a difference between the two entities, and
just as many offered countering rejoinders. As much as they tried to
reconcile the two spheres, however, their attempts were strained.
Exacerbated with the discussion over Joseph Smith’s concurrent roles,
David Yearsley asked, “How can a man be elected president when he is
already proclaimed king[?]” It was a good question.6
Joseph Smith, for his part, emphasized there was “a distinction between
the Church of God and kingdom of God.” The political kingdom had
authority only in this world and did not play a role in the hereafter. “The
church,” on the other hand, “is a spiritual matter and a spiritual kingdom.”
To Joseph Smith, there was a separation between the spiritual and political
spheres. A church functioned within the parameters protected by the
government, and the temporal “kingdom” would eventually fade away in
the Millennium. Further, even though he had earlier been received by the
council as a “prophet, priest, and king,” Smith downplayed the monarchical
language and connotations. “It is not wisdom to use the term ‘king,’” he
urged. He personally preferred the ambiguous term “theodemocracy,” a
neologism that captured the blended purposes of theocratic authority and
democratic participation. A “theodemocracy,” explained Smith in an earlier
council meeting, was when “the people . . . get the voice of God and then
acknowledge it, and see it executed.” The popular American maxim Vox
populi vox Dei should not mean the common translation of “the voice of the
people is the voice of God” but rather “the voice of the people assenting to
the voice of God.” To many outsiders, these would be distinctions without a
difference. For Smith and his followers, however, even while the
intersections between the Church, the kingdom, and the American
government were never fully fleshed out, the resulting ambiguity enabled a
space for creative innovation and theorizing.7
Joseph Smith emphasized the distinction between the Church and the Council of Fifty. This portrait
is believed to be by David Rogers, based on the work of Sutcliffe Maudsley. Courtesy of Church
History Museum, Salt Lake City.

THE NATURE OF CONSTITUTIONS

But while they debated the first of Richards’s questions on April 18,
members of the Council of Fifty failed to address his second query: “Will
the ‘kingdom of God’ become perfected as the legitimate results of the
operation of the constitution now to be adopted, or will it be perfected
through the alterations of the constitution which may take place hereafter to
suit the situation of the earth and kingdom?” Was this new constitution
pristine in its original form, or will it have to be adapted as the kingdom,
and society, advances? This seemingly abstract and theoretical question
regarding originalism reflected a much broader American anxiety: What
happens when founding documents fail to definitively answer pressing
questions? In an era when the entire nation debated how to address the slave
issue—what many saw as the “original sin” of the Constitution—theories
concerning origins, alterations, and advancements were abundant.8
The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries witnessed an
intellectual revolution regarding social evolution. Rather than staid
institutions frozen in place, nations and governments were now understood
to be organic and malleable structures that transformed with time and
culture. The American Revolution inaugurated a new age in which the
living had the right, even the obligation, to reform the works of the dead.
“No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law,”
declared Thomas Jefferson. “The earth belongs always to the living
generation.” Jefferson’s belief concerning the permanence of government—
he argued that “every constitution, and every law, naturally expires at the
end of 19 years”—may have been extreme, but it was the product of a
cultural environment no longer tethered to traditional forms of authority. In
a world in which everything seemed in flux, it made sense to forgo
installing permanent shackles.9
This anxiety only grew during the antebellum period, as antislavery
theorists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips argued that
existing governing mechanisms, even if they were enshrined in
constitutional law, were not set in stone. When faced with the dilemma of
America’s founding document being defined as a slaveholding compact,
Garrison responded by “branding [the Constitution] a covenant with death,
and an agreement with hell” and then burning it before an eager abolitionist
audience. Representing a more moderate perspective, Abraham Lincoln
argued that founding documents contained the “natural rights” owed to all
men but that the governing texts must be amended to better secure those
rights. Adapting the Constitution to natural rights was the work of the
present. In all corners, the legal foundations upon which Americans placed
political authority appeared in transition. Willard Richards’s question
regarding originalism, then, tapped into a larger ideological debate.10
Even if Richards’s query went unanswered on April 18, it did not remain
so for long. A week later, Smith recorded a revelation declaring that the
entire council was “my constitution, and I am your God, and ye are my
spokesmen.” A document could never supplant an authoritative body of
chosen men. Divine law was so fluid, and human society so malleable, that
constant deliberation was required. This was a culmination of nearly two
decades’ worth of ecclesiastical development within the Church, as councils
were given increasing authority and attention. To Smith, varying contexts
and circumstances necessitated holy men who could appropriate ideas and
practices as situations required. The constitutional tradition within the
Mormon faith, therefore, was closer to the British approach of an unwritten
constitution of laws and legislation than it was to the American system of
authoritative founding documents. The Council of Fifty’s members were
eager to receive this course correction. Apostle and prolific author Parley
Pratt, who was one of the authors of the draft constitution, noted that he
“burnt [his] scribbling” as soon as “a ray of light shewed” that the council
was to be the constitution itself. The voice of God’s chosen people was the
voice of God.11
This delicate balance would soon be tested by both internal personalities
and external pressures. Most notably, Brigham Young was not as interested
in squaring prophetic counsel with populist governance. At the same April
18 meeting, Young declared that it wouldn’t matter if “the whole church”
disagreed with Smith, because Smith “is a perfect committee of himself.”
The core democratic principle of compromise was misguided because it
hindered progress and qualified God’s rule. Young could not conceive of a
“difference between a religious or political government,” as the prophetic
authority in the former also wielded control in the latter. This emphasis
became only more apparent when Young took control of the council after
Smith’s death. In April 1845, Young declared that he would “defy any man
to draw the line between the spiritual and temporal affairs in the kingdom of
God.” His fellow leaders took notice. Correctly reading the chasm between
Mormons and their Illinois neighbors, William Phelps posited that “the
greatest fears manifested by our enemies is the union of Church and State.”
Yet Phelps was fine with this accusation: “I believe we are actually doing
this and it is what the Lord designs.” Young, Phelps, and other Mormons
were willing to embrace a principle theoretically alien to the American
experiment. The martyrdom of their prophet left them wanting to turn back
the errors of disestablishment in total.12

CONCLUSION
The Council of Fifty was, in an important way, a direct response to two
issues central to American political culture, which were aptly embodied in
Willard Richards’s two questions: What is the proper relationship between
church and state? And how should a government evolve in response to the
circumstances in which it governs? The Mormon answers to these questions
were, admittedly, radical (not to mention short lived). The Church adopted
America’s system of democratic governance by the twentieth century, and
Mormons are seen as some of the biggest defenders of that tradition today.
But in 1844, no solution to the problem of democratic rule appeared
definitive. Within two decades, the nation would go to war over the issue of
political sovereignty. And in many respects, the same questions posed by
Richards remain precariously unanswered even today. So even if the
Council of Fifty does not provide resolutions that are relevant for the
twenty-first century, the anxieties from which they were birthed are
anything but irrelevant.

NOTES
1. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 108–10 (hereafter JSP, CFM); William Clayton, Journal, April 18, 1844, in An Intimate
Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton, ed. George D. Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature
Books, 1995), 131. The rained-out Sunday meeting is mentioned in Joseph Smith, Journal, April
14, 1844, in Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Brent M. Rogers, eds., Journals, Volume 3:
May 1843–June 1844, vol. 3 of the Journals series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K.
Esplin and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2015), 230. The cold
winter is described in William Mosley to Kingsley Mosley, February 18, 1844, Church History
Library, Salt Lake City. The rainy spring is mentioned in Robert A. Gilmore to John Richey, July
5, 1844, Church History Library.
2. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:121–22.
3. Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, part 1, art. III,
https://malegislature.gov/Laws/Constitution; “Of Governments and Laws in General,” Doctrine
and Covenants of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, comp. Joseph Smith Jr. et al. (Kirtland, OH:
F. G. Williams, 1835), 253 (modern Doctrine and Covenants 134:9); Council of Fifty, Minutes,
April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:95–96.
4. Angelina Emily Grimké, “Letter XII: Human Rights Not Founded on Sex,” in Angelina Emily
Grimké, Letters to Catherine E. Beecher: In Reply to an Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism,
Addressed to A. E. Grimke, Revised by the Author (Boston: Isaac Knapp, 1838), 115; Theodore
Parker, “National Sins,” Sermon Book 10:421, Theodore Parker Collection, Andover-Harvard
Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA. For the religious critique of the
Constitution, see Joseph S. Moore, Founding Sins: How a Group of Antislavery Radicals Fought
to Put Christ into the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); and Spencer W.
McBride, Pulpit and Nation: Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America
(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017).
5. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:110–15.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:121–25.
7. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11 and 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:92, 95–96, 121–22, 128, emphasis
added; see also Patrick Q. Mason, “God and the People: Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century
Mormonism,” Journal of Church and State 53, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 349–75.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:122. For this context, see Jordan T.
Watkins, “Slavery, Sacred Texts, and the Antebellum Confrontation with History” (PhD diss.,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2014).
9. Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, September 6, 1789, in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, ed.
Merrill D. Peterson (New York: Penguin, 1975), 449; see Eric Slauter, The State as a Work of Art:
The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); and
Benjamin E. Park, “The Bonds of Union: Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, and Defining the Nation
in the Early Republic,” Early American Studies 15, no. 2 (Spring 2017).
10. “The Meeting at Framingham,” Liberator, July 7, 1854; Abraham Lincoln, Speech, August 21,
1858, in Lincoln: Speeches, Letters, Miscellaneous Writings, vol. 1, The Lincoln-Douglas
Debates, ed. Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Modern Library, 1984), 512. For Garrison’s
constitutional views, see W. Caleb McDaniel, The Problem of Democracy in the Age of Slavery:
Garrisonian Abolitionists and Transatlantic Reform (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 2013); for Lincoln’s, see John Burt, Lincoln’s Tragic Pragmatism: Lincoln, Douglas, and
Moral Conflict (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).
11. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:137; Pratt is quoted in JSP,
CFM:137n412; see Richard Lyman Bushman, “Joseph Smith and Power,” in A Firm Foundation:
Church Organization and Administration, ed. David J. Whittaker and Arnold K. Garr (Provo, UT:
Religious Studies Center, 2011), 1–13; and Kathleen Flake, “Ordering Antinomy: An Analysis of
Early Mormonism’s Priestly Offices, Councils, and Kinship,” Religion and American Culture 26,
no. 2 (Summer 2016): 139–83.
12. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844; March 4, 1845; April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:119–20,
285, 401.
 Chapter 6

"WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE KINGDOM

OF GOD"
Constitution Writing in the Council of Fifty

Nathan B. Oman
In the spring of 1844, Joseph Smith created a secret organization, the
Council of Fifty, of high church officials, civic leaders, and others, and
tasked it with establishing the kingdom of God, a political organization to
be set up by the Mormons someplace on the North American continent in
expectation of the imminent end times. This grandiose goal came amid very
concrete concerns about the deteriorating political situation in Illinois and
the felt need for the Mormons to look elsewhere for a place of refuge. Once
operating, the Council of Fifty spent the lion’s share of its efforts on the
practical questions of where to locate the projected Mormon commonwealth
and how to escape from hostile neighbors and governments. On March 11,
1844, however, the council appointed a committee of John Taylor, Willard
Richards, William W. Phelps, and Parley P. Pratt “to draft a constitution
which should be perfect, and embrace those principles of which the
constitution of the United States lacked.”1 Slightly more than a month later,
on April 18, the committee reported a draft constitution to the entire
council. The authors, however, expressed their dissatisfaction with their
work, and it was returned to committee.2 A week later, Joseph Smith
announced to the council a revelation abandoning the effort to draft a
written constitution for the kingdom of God, and the council devoted the
rest of its efforts to the more immediate problems facing the Saints,
culminating in the relocation en masse of the Mormons to the Great Basin
after Joseph Smith’s murder.3
On April 25, 1844, Joseph Smith announced a revelation that brought to an end the Council of
Fifty’s efforts to draft a constitution for the council. Painting by David Rogers, 1842. Courtesy of
Community of Christ Library-Archives, Independence, Missouri.

This bare statement of events casts the Mormons as radicals, operating

scandalously outside the American political tradition.4 The Treaty of Paris,
which ended the American Revolution, placed the western border of the
United States on the Mississippi River. Beginning with the Northwest
Ordinance of 1785, Congress organized the area west of the Appalachian
Mountains into discrete territories, with local governments under federal
supervision. In time, these territories became states. With the exception of
the unsuccessful effort to conquer Canada in the War of 1812, this orderly
process of expansion continued as the United States government
transformed the Louisiana Purchase and the cession from Mexico into
territories and then states. Thus the United States established itself as a
single polity occupying the center of North America. Within this narrative
of unified national expansion at the expense of native tribes, Spain, France,
and Mexico, the Mormon dream of an independent commonwealth and an
alternative constitution is a jarring aberration.

AN AMERICAN HISTORY OF BREAKAWAY REPUBLICS

The problem is that the narrative of smooth national expansion is false. In
the nineteenth century, North America was littered with abortive republics
seeking varying levels of independence from the federal government and
from the other competing powers on the continent. Very early in the history
of the United States, settlers formed break-away polities on the borders of
existing states. Vermont, for example, declared itself an independent
republic before being incorporated as a state in 1791. The abortive State of
Franklin, which would have sat athwart the Blue Ridge and Appalachian
Mountains, was less successful.5 In 1804, Aaron Burr—Thomas Jefferson’s
disgruntled vice president—began hatching plans to detach the western
territories of the United States to form a new nation with himself at its head.
Those efforts ended in failure when a co-conspirator betrayed him to
Jefferson in 1806.6 In 1810, American settlers in Spanish territory declared
the Republic of West Florida, raising the lone star flag that would be
adopted by Texas revolutionaries a few decades later. In the 1830s, as the
Mormon movement gathered steam, settlers in the disputed borderlands
between Canada and the United States declared the tiny Indian Stream
Republic.7 More spectacularly, American filibusters in Mexico managed to
detach the territory north and east of the Rio Grande to form the Republic
of Texas, which operated as an independent nation from 1836 to 1846.8
Shortly after the Council of Fifty adjourned its meetings in Nauvoo for the
last time, American settlers in the Mexican province of Upper California
declared the short-lived Bear Flag Republic.9 As late as 1894, American
businessmen in the Sandwich Islands formed the Republic of Hawaii, which
operated as an independent nation for four years. Most dramatically, the
Confederate States of America made a bid for political independence from
1861 to 1865.
It is only against this far messier background of American political
history that we can see what was unique in the abortive constitution making
of the Council of Fifty in March and April of 1844. The urge to found a
new republic in the liminal spaces of the continent and author a new
constitution for it was not unique. Rather, Mormons stood firmly within an
American tradition running from Aaron Burr to Sam Houston. They were
not even unique in injecting religion into their constitution writing. John
Brown’s proposed constitution for a redeemed America spoke in
apocalyptic religious terms, and the constitutional preamble beginning “We,
the people of the Confederate States” invoked “the favor and guidance of
Almighty God.”10 Rather, what is striking is that in their constitution
making, the Mormons ultimately turned away from written
constitutionalism.

THE US CONSTITUTION IN MORMON SCRIPTURE

Contemporary Mormons often affirm that their scriptures teach about “the
divinely inspired constitution” of the United States.11 However, the
revelations of Joseph Smith do not contain this exact phrase. The
Constitution makes its first appearance in those revelations in August
1833.12 The worsening affairs in Missouri seem to have been on Joseph
Smith’s mind when he dictated a revelation in which the Lord stated: “And
that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of
freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is
justifiable before me. . . . Nevertheless, when the wicked rule the people
mourn. Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for
diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold;
otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil” (D&C 98:5, 9–10).
A few months later, having heard the details of the increasingly intense
pressure on Mormons in Missouri, Joseph dictated a second revelation, in
which the Lord said: “Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in
bondage one to another. And for this purpose have I established the
Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto
this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood” (D&C
101:79–80). These revelations represent the appearance of the US
Constitution in the revelations of Joseph Smith, which had previously
spoken only of God’s law.
From a constitutional perspective, the most striking thing about these
passages is how ordinary they are by the standards of the time. The idea that
the US Constitution embodied general principles of freedom and justice
was widely accepted. Likewise, the providential role of God in the
American founding was a commonplace. The revelations also presented a
conservative and even anachronistic vision of politics. American politics
today could be called a procedural republic, a system where the public
interest is supposed to emerge from competition between interest groups
pursuing narrow agendas within the context of a supposedly neutral
constitutional order.13 Joseph Smith’s revelations, however, did not present
the US Constitution in these familiar modern terms. Rather, they presented
politics as essentially adjudicative, with “honest men and wise men” (D&C
98:10) and “wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose” (D&C
101:80) applying the “principle of freedom in maintaining rights and
privileges” (D&C 98:5) as “rulers of our land” (D&C 109:54). This vision
is republican and aristocratic, focusing on wise statesmen above party or
faction. Absent is any valorization of democracy or the common man. In
Joseph Smith’s revelations, vox populi is not vox dei; that is, the voice of
the people is not the voice of God. Rather, the ideal is of virtuous leaders,
what John Adams called a “natural Aristocracy of ‘Virtues and Talents,’”14
disinterestedly applying timeless principles. In this, Joseph Smith’s early
constitutional revelations hark back to the republican tradition that, in part,
animated early American politics.15 Crucially, for this adjudicative model of
statesmanship, the emergence of organized political parties and mass
political movements was problematic. While political parties were well
established by Joseph Smith’s time, they remained disconcerting for many
nineteenth-century Americans.16 It was difficult for many Americans to see
such politics as anything other than a fall from a more noble past into a
grubby and amoral tournament of selfish factions.

A CONSTITUTION FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD

By 1840, Mormon faith in this constitutional model had been shattered.
Events in Missouri had played themselves out to their bitter conclusion,
with the expulsion first from Jackson County and then from the entire state.
Mormon property had been seized, Mormons had been massacred by mobs,
Mormon women had been raped, and Governor Lilburn Boggs had issued
his extermination order. Efforts at relief before the courts of Missouri were
futile. Finally, Joseph Smith traveled to Washington, DC, to petition the
nation’s statesmen for relief. There he ran up against the realities of
antebellum federalism and the electoral needs of Martin Van Buren’s
embattled Democratic Party.17 That disjunction proved decisive for the
political development of Mormonism. No relief for the Mormons was
forthcoming from the federal government. In the end the federal
Constitution was wholly inadequate as a mechanism for protecting Mormon
rights, and in Mormon eyes “honest men and wise men” were nowhere to
be seen in high office. It was in this context of deepening disillusionment
toward the United States and its legal institutions that the Council of Fifty
embarked on its constitution-making project.
There are two features of the text presented by Taylor, Richards, Phelps,
and Pratt that are immediately apparent. The first is that unlike most efforts
at American constitution making, the document was written without
copying from an existing constitution. There are, to be sure, echoes of the
federal Constitution in its basic structure. The document begins with a
preamble announcing its authors as “We, the people of the Kingdom of
God”18 and is divided into articles like the Constitution of 1787. However,
there is no copying of governing structure or text from that Constitution or
any other. As the committee explained, in writing the document “they cant
refer to any constitution of the world because they are corrupt.”19 The
second feature is that the constitution is in no sense a practical document.
Only in the final article is there any effort to articulate procedures or
institutions for governing a community, and then only in the most skeletal
form. In this sense, it is perhaps closer in genre to the Declaration of
Independence, which propounded a theory of just government, as opposed
to the Constitution of 1787, which contained elaborate rules on such
eminently practical subjects as taxation and the spending of government
money. As written, the constitution of the kingdom of God was less an
effort to construct a working legal system than to set forth a theory of
government.
Roughly half of the document consisted of a prolonged preamble
condemning all contemporary political arrangements. The preamble
concludes:
We have supplicated the great I am, that he would make known his
will unto his servants, concerning this, his last kingdom, and the law,
by which his people shall be governed: And the voice of the Lord
unto us was,— Verily thus saith the Lord, this is the name by which
you shall be called, the kingdom of God and his Laws, with the keys
and power thereof, and Judgement in the hands of his servants,
Ahman Christ.20
The second half of the document consists of three articles in which “I . . .
the Lord thy God” rather than “We, the people of the Kingdom of God”
speaks in the first person. The constitution thus aspires to be a direct
revelation from God, consistent with the claim in the preamble that “the
supreme law of the land shall be the word of Jehovah,”21 a stark and perhaps
deliberate contrast to article 6 of the US Constitution, which declares that
the “supreme Law of the Land” shall be the constitution, laws, and treaties
of the United States.22
The critique of existing governments begins with the assertion of the
sovereignty of God. “All power emanates from God, . . . and he alone has
the right to govern the nations and set in order the kingdoms of this
world.”23 The “We, the people” of this document is thus fundamentally
different than the “We the People” of the constitution of 1787, who claimed
themselves as a sufficient font of sovereignty. Mormon political thinking on
the nature of sovereignty had already begun moving in this direction nearly
a decade earlier, when the Church’s 1835 declaration of beliefs regarding
governments stated, “We believe that governments were instituted of God”
(D&C 134:1), implicitly rejecting the idea that governments are established
by the consent of the governed.24 By 1844, however, Taylor, Richards,
Phelps, and Pratt were prepared to state categorically that all existing
governments were illegitimate because “none of the nations, kingdoms or
governments of the earth do acknowledge the creator of the Universe as
their Priest, Lawgiver, King and Sovereign, neither have they sought unto
him for laws by which to govern themselves.” Rather “all the nations have
obtained their power, rule and authority by usurpation, rebellion, bloodshed,
tyranny and fraud.”25 This is a Hobbesian vision of the state unredeemed
even by Hobbes’s Leviathan.26
The preamble also invoked mainstays of American political thought: the
rights of man and utility. Because existing governments arise from
“usurpation, rebellion, bloodshed, tyranny and fraud,” they lack “the
disposition and power to grant that protection to the persons and rights of
man, viz. life, liberty, possession of property, and pursuit of happiness,
which was designed by their creator to all men.” The debt to the
Declaration of Independence’s vision of men “endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness” is clear. The usurpations of human governments also
result in human suffering. The preamble declares that “the natural results of
these illegitimate governments” are “cruelty, oppression, bondage, slavery,
rapine, bloodshed, murder, carnage, desolation, and all the evils that blast
the peace, exaltation, and glory of the universe.” From the cosmic “glory of
the universe,” the preamble descends to what was no doubt a description of
contemporary American politics from the Mormon point of view, insisting
that by ignoring God, governments have bred “pride, corruption, impurity,
intrigue, spiritual wickedness in high places, party spirit, faction, perplexity
and distress of nations.”27 This is the voice of those whose hopes of a
political order in the “hands of wise men whom [the Lord] raised up unto
this very purpose” (D&C 101:80) had been dashed on the realities of party
and regional politics in democratic America. In response to this
disappointment, the voice of the Lord in the three articles of the constitution
presents an even more extreme version of this vision of adjudicative
politics.
In article 1, the Lord announces that he rules “the armies of heaven
above, and among the nations of the earth beneath.” He insists that “I alone
am the rightful lawgiver to man.”28 Intentionally or unintentionally, this
claim mirrors the structure of the US Constitution, where article 1 also
begins with the law-making power, declaring in contrast that “all legislative
powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,
which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”29 In article 2,
“wise men raised up for this very purpose” are replaced with even more
inspired agents of God’s providence:
I the Lord will do nothing but what I have revealed or shall reveal
unto my servants the prophets and I have appointed one man, holding
the keys and authority, pertaining to my holy priesthood, to whom I
will reveal my laws, my statutes, my ordinances, my Judgements, my
will and pleasure concerning my kingdom on the earth.30
Wise statesmen adjudicating the public good have been replaced by an
inspired prophet announcing God’s designs.31 Both sit above the “pride,
corruption, impurity, intrigue, spiritual wickedness in high places, party
spirit, [and] faction” of a corrupt democracy. In the Council of Fifty,
however, the aristocracy of republican virtue is transformed into the
spiritual aristocracy of priestly and prophetic authority. Only in article 3, the
single vast final sentence of the document, do we find anything that
resembles the ordinary subject of written constitutions, namely governing
procedures. “My Servant and Prophet whom I have called and chosen shall
have power to appoint Judges and officers in my kingdom, And my people
shall have the right to choose or refuse those officers and judges, by
common consent. . . . And if the judges or officers transgress, they shall be
punished according to my laws.”32 This is also the only place in the
constitution in which the will of the people is given any play in the vision of
the kingdom of God. It is an attempt to find a place for democracy in a
political vision that ultimately rejects the idea of popular sovereignty. The
model was clearly the emerging ecclesiology of the Church, in which
members were asked to give their assent and support to the revelations of
the leadership.33
Taken as a whole, the constitution of the kingdom of God is less a
blueprint for a functioning government than an effort to state a philosophy
of government. At its center is the absolute sovereignty of God.
Acknowledging that sovereignty and following God’s laws will lead to the
protection of rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.
Disregarding God’s sovereignty leads to misery and suffering. In a properly
functioning polity, the community is led by benevolent and inspired leaders
endowed with divine authority and upheld by the common consent of the
people. As to whether their draft was a revelation, however, the authors of
the constitution of the kingdom of God expressed their doubts. Upon
reporting the committee’s work to the council, John Taylor said, “If they
can get intelligence from God they can write correct principles, if not, they
cannot.”34 But he did not claim that the committee had in fact found that
inspiration. They were sent back to work, presumably to search for more
“intelligence from God.” Parley P. Pratt later gave a hint as to the problem
faced by the committee. “If we made a constitution it would be a man made
thing, and he considered that if God gave us laws to govern us and we
received those laws God must also give us a constitution.”35 It wasn’t
enough to state a proper theory of government or announce wise legal
mechanisms. As the first-person voice of the Lord in articles 1 through 3
testified, the committee believed that they must produce a revelation,
something that they did not seem to feel they had done.36

THE ABANDONMENT OF CONSTITUTION WRITING

They were never allowed, however, to complete their work. Rather, in late
April Joseph Smith “advised that we let the constitution alone.”37 He
summed up the “whole matter about the constitution” in a three-sentence
revelation:
Verily thus saith the Lord, ye are my constitution, and I am your God,
and ye are my spokesmen. From henceforth do as I shall command
you. Saith the Lord.38
The revelation ended any further discussion of a written constitution for the
kingdom of God. Rather, the council simply abandoned the project and
focused its attention on the immediate practical concerns facing the Saints,
including their ongoing legal difficulties. They certainly did not abandon
the ideal of a political kingdom of God, and they pursued often fanciful
plans, such as massive military alliances with American Indian tribes. In
that sense, the revelation did not represent any turning away from theocratic
ambitions.
Almost exactly two months after reporting his revelation to the Council
of Fifty, Joseph Smith was murdered. The April document is the final
constitutional statement in Joseph Smith’s revelations. As noted above,
Joseph’s revelations of a decade earlier present a thoroughly conventional
political theology in which the federal constitution embodies principles of
justice and freedom to be upheld by wise and honest rulers. It is an
aristocratic and republican vision rather than a liberal or a democratic one,
but it fit within the mainstream of American political thought, albeit in a
way that was increasingly anachronistic even when the revelation was
given. The adjudicative ideal of republican politics had given way by the
1840s to mass political parties and a politics based on a balancing of
sectional interests. Joseph’s revelation to the Council of Fifty, however,
seems to have finally escaped the gravitational force of American
constitutional models. In place of a written document setting forth the
formal procedures of government, the sine qua non of American
constitution making, the revelation offered an existing body of men
endowed with divine authority as all the constitutional structure that was
necessary for the kingdom of God.
In September 1897, George Q. Cannon, then an aging counselor in the
First Presidency of the Church, spoke at a church conference in Paris,
Idaho. Less than a decade earlier, in 1890, President Wilford Woodruff had
issued the Manifesto, publicly abandoning plural marriage, bringing the
federal government’s legal crusade against the Mormons to an end. Just the
year before Cannon’s sermon, Utah had been formally admitted to the
Union as a state. While the Mormon conflict with the nation would
dramatically flare up one final time a few years later during the Smoot
hearings, Mormonism’s theocratic ambitions were at an end, and the
political kingdom of God had been postponed to an ever-delayed
millennium.39 Strikingly, however, Cannon chose to preach on Joseph
Smith’s April 1844 revelation to the Council of Fifty:
There was an attempt made . . . during the life of Joseph Smith, by
some of the priesthood, at the prophet’s request, to write a
constitution for the kingdom of God. A committee was appointed of
the most capable men. They tried and tried to draft it, and so did the
prophet himself, but all in vain. Joseph sought the Lord, and he told
him: “Ye are the constitution of my church.” And so it is; the
priesthood, the living oracles, are the word of God unto us, and this
constitutes the growth and strength of the kingdom of God.40
Cannon’s subtle recasting of the precise language of the revelation is
telling. Joseph Smith’s original “Ye are my constitution” becomes “Ye are
the constitution of my church.” It is a shift that marks the final afterlife of
the prophet’s final revelation on the constitution.

CONCLUSION
Scholars have noted the way in which Mormons after 1890 exchanged
theocratic ideas for a vision of Church government where, ideally, righteous
and inspired leaders upheld by the consent of members would lead the
community in its religious—if not its political—life.41 The ability of
Mormon thinkers in the early twentieth century, such as Orson F. Whitney
and James E. Talmage, to make this move was important in creating
continuity within Mormon religious discourse even as Mormon political,
social, and religious ambitions were radically transformed. This flexibility,
which somehow managed to treasure the Mormon experience even as much
of it was being repudiated, helped Mormonism to survive and, in many
ways, thrive in the modern world. In some sense, this too is a legacy of
Joseph Smith’s April 1844 revelation. Had the kingdom of God been
poured into an inspired written constitution as originally envisioned by
Taylor, Richards, Phelps, and Pratt, it would almost certainly have shattered
amid the legal battles with the federal government over the “Mormon
Question” after the Civil War. The fluid, unwritten structure bequeathed to
the kingdom of God by Joseph Smith, however, proved more resilient. To
be sure, nineteenth-century Mormon theologians drew careful—if not
always consistent—distinctions between church and kingdom, the Council
of Fifty and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.42 Still, “ye are
my constitution, and I am your God, and ye are my spokesmen” is a
constitutional ideal easily taken up in a church populated by prophets and
apostles. By shifting theocratic ideas from the political kingdom of God to
the ecclesiastical structure of the Church, Cannon and those that followed
him could reach back to Joseph Smith’s earliest revelations on the US
Constitution without the later constitutional complications of the Council of
Fifty.43 It is a constitutional vision that allows contemporary Latter-day
Saints to make their peace with human governments and continue to build
up the kingdom of God, albeit in radically different ways than their
nineteenth-century forebears attempted.

NOTES
1. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 19, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 54 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
2. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:110–15.
3. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:135–37.
4. See, for example, Grant H. Palmer, “Did Joseph Smith Commit Treason in His Quest for Political
Empire in 1844?” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 32, no. 2 (2012): 52–58.
5. Echoes of the lost State of Franklin continued to reverberate as late as the Civil War, when east
Tennessee supported the Union and attempted to secede from the Confederacy. See Eric Foner,
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper & Row, 1988),
62.
6. Burr said so many different things to so many different people about his plans that it is difficult to
determine his ultimate goals. See Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early
Republic, 1789–1815, The Oxford History of the United States (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2009), 384–85.
7. See Robert L. Tsai, America’s Forgotten Constitutions (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 2014), 18–48.
8. See Michael Van Wagenen, The Texas Republic and the Mormon Kingdom of God, South Texas
Regional Studies, no. 2 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002).
9. See John A. Hawgood, “John C. Frémont and the Bear Flag Revolution: A Reappraisal,” Southern
California Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1962): 67–96; George Tays, “California Never Was an
Independent Republic,” California Historical Society Quarterly 15, no. 3 (1936): 242–43.
10. See Tsai, America’s Forgotten Constitutions, 83–117; “Constitution of the Confederate States,
March 11, 1861,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School,
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_csa.asp.
11. See, for example, Dallin H. Oaks, “The Divinely Inspired Constitution,” Ensign, February 1992,
68–74.
12. See Mark Ashurst-McGee, “Zion in America: The Origins of Mormon Constitutionalism,”
Journal of Mormon History 38, no. 3 (2012): 90–101.
13. See V. O. Key, Politics, Parties, & Pressure Groups, 5th ed. (New York: Crowell, 1964); Richard
Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It, reissue ed. (New York:
Vintage, 1989). Louis Menand identifies the intellectual origins of this vision in the American
pragmatist tradition, which emerged after the Civil War. See Louis Menand, The Metaphysical
Club: A Story of Ideas in America, Reprint ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002).
However, one can find intimations of it, if one is so inclined, as early as Federalist No. 10. See
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist: A Commentary on the
Constitution of the United States, ed. Robert Scigliano (New York: Modern Library, 2001), no. 10
(Madison).
14. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, ed. Lester J. Cappon (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History
and Culture, 1988), 400.
15. See Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill:
Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture at Williamsburg Va. by the
University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
16. Compare Wood, Empire of Liberty, 34–35. While dated, see also Richard Hofstadter, The Idea of
a Party System: The Rise of Legitimate Opposition in the United States, 1780–1840 (Berkeley:
 University of California Press, 1970). This work traces the historical processes in thought by
which American political leaders slowly edged away from their complete philosophical rejection
of a party and hesitantly began to embrace a party system. In the author’s words, “The emergence
of legitimate party opposition and of a theory of politics that accepted it was something new in the
history of the world; it required a bold new act of understanding on the part of its contemporaries
and it still requires study on our part.” Professor Hofstadter’s analysis of the idea of party and the
development of legitimate opposition offers fresh insights into the political crisis of 1797–1801,
on the thought of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Martin
Van Buren, and other leading figures, and on the beginnings of modern democratic politics.”
17. See Ronald O. Barney, “Joseph Smith Goes to Washington,” in Joseph Smith, the Prophet and
Seer, ed. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Kent P. Jackson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center;
Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2010), 391–420. Indeed, there is an almost perfect symmetry in the
fact that Joseph Smith came to Washington based on a vision of adjudicative politics by a natural
aristocracy to meet Van Buren, who wrote one of the first analyses and defenses of mass political
parties in American history. See Martin Van Buren, Inquiry into the Origin and Course of Political
Parties in the United States, ed. Abraham Van Buren and John Van Buren (New York: Hurd and
Houghton, 1867).
18. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:110.
19. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:114.
20. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:112–13, underlining in original. Joseph
Smith had announced this name earlier to the Council of Fifty, and the name referred not only to
the commonwealth to be established but to the council itself, which was conceptualized as the
commonwealth in embryo. See Andrew F. Ehat, “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph
Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” Brigham Young University Studies 20, no. 3
(1980): 253–79.
21. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:112.
22. See US Constitution, art. 6, cl. 2.
23. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:110.
24. While it has been argued that the political theory behind section 134 comes out of the political
theory of the Scottish Enlightenment as filtered through the founding generation, Fred Gedicks has
persuasively argued that its account of political sovereignty differs markedly from the standard
account of American constitutional law. Compare Rodney K. Smith, “James Madison, John
Witherspoon, and Oliver Cowdery: The First Amendment and the 134th Section of the Doctrine
and Covenants,” Brigham Young University Law Review 2003, no. 3 Spring (2003): 891–940;
Frederick Mark Gedicks, “The Embarrassing Section 134,” Brigham Young University Law
Review 2003, no. Spring (2003): 959–72.
25. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:111, underlining in original.
26. Compare Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Or, The Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth
Ecclesiasticall and Civill (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004), 77. Indeed, in its
uncompromising insistence on the exclusive sovereignty of God, the preamble bears more
resemblance to classical Islamic legal theories than to the liberal and republican traditions from
which the US Constitution emerged. As one historian of Islamic law summed up the classical
theory, “Law is the command of God; and the acknowledged function of Muslim jurisprudence,
from the beginning, was simply the discovery of the terms of that command.” Noel J. Coulson, A
History of Islamic Law (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964), 75. See also Nathan B.
Oman, “Preaching to the Court House and Judging in the Temple,” Brigham Young University
Law Review 2009, no. 1 (2009): 185–87.
27. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:111–12, underlining in original.
28. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:113.
29. US Constitution, art 1, sec. 1.
30. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:113.
31. An unsigned February 1844 editorial in the Times and Seasons supporting Joseph Smith’s bid for
the US presidency stated similar themes. “Who Shall Be Our Next President,” Times and Seasons,
February 15, 1844, 439–41.
32. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:113–14.
33. Compare Richard Lyman Bushman, “The Theology of Councils,” in In Revelation, Reason, and
Faith: Essays in Honor of Truman G. Madsen, ed. Donald W. Parry, Daniel C. Peterson, and
Stephen D. Ricks (Provo, UT: FARMS, 2002), 433–46.
34. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:114.
35. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:467.
36. The process here illustrates how some revealed texts within Mormonism were produced. While
the constitution has the Lord speaking in the first person, the document itself was the product of a
committee and contains clear instances of borrowing from other texts. The committee seem to
have understood the voice of the Lord to have been less a matter of taking down divine dictation
than of producing a text that they felt confident expressed divine intentions. Compare Scott H.
Faulring, “An Examination of the 1829 ‘Articles of the Church of Christ’ in Relation to Section 20
of the Doctrine and Covenants,” Brigham Young University Studies 43, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 57–
91.
37. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:135.
38. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:135–37. While the written constitution
produced by Taylor, Richards, Phelps, and Pratt lodged virtually all power in a single “Prophet
whom I have called and chosen,” Joseph Smith’s revelation addresses a plural audience who are
collectively made the constitution. This is consistent with the tendency that Richard Bushman has
noted of Joseph Smith to disperse prophetic authority into councils. See Bushman, “Theology of
Councils.”
39. See Kathleen Flake, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed
Smoot, Mormon Apostle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004).
40. “Cannon on Politics,” Salt Lake Herald, September 16, 1897, 5. There is no contemporary
evidence that Joseph Smith participated in the effort to draft the written constitution for the
kingdom of God. Cannon was not a member of the Council of Fifty at the time, although he was
later close to men who were. Strikingly, Cannon’s remarks allude to the recent decision to drop
Moses Thatcher from the Quorum of the Twelve as a result of conflicts with the First Presidency
over the role of church leaders in partisan politics. The controversy was one of the first steps
towards defining the more limited political role of the Church in the post-Manifesto era. See
Kenneth W. Godfrey, “Moses Thatcher in the Dock: His Trials, the Aftermath, and His Last
Days,” Journal of Mormon History 24, no. 1 (1998): 54–88; Edward Leo Lyman, “The Alienation
of an Apostle from His Quorum: The Moses Thatcher Case,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon
Thought 18 (Spring 1985): 67–91.
41. Patrick Q. Mason, “God and the People: Theodemocracy in Nineteenth-Century Mormonism,”
Journal of Church and State 55, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 373–75.
42. See, for example, Benjamin F. Johnson’s comments in his autobiography, quoted in Jedediah S.
Rogers, ed., The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books,
2014), 32.
43. Kathleen Flake has documented a similar dynamic in this period, during which Joseph Smith’s
accounts of the First Vision first gained wide prominence and the early efforts to preserve
Mormon historic sites were made, allowing Joseph F. Smith and other turn-of-the-century
Mormons to claim the history of the Restoration, even as they abandoned polygamy and
dramatically transformed the meaning of Latter-day Saint Zion building. See Flake, Politics of
American Religious Identity, 109–37.
 Chapter 7

LOST TEACHINGS OF JOSEPH SMITH,

BRIGHAM YOUNG, AND OTHER
CHURCH LEADERS
Gerrit J. Dirkmaat
The publication of the record of the Nauvoo Council of Fifty by The Joseph
Smith Papers (JSP) and the Church History Department of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is easily one of the most important events
of the last decade for expanding our understanding of early Mormon
history. Only the JSP’s publication of the Book of Commandments and
Revelations, the earliest record of many of Joseph Smith’s revelations,
rivals the publication of this important document, which has hitherto been
inaccessible to historians. For those who have hungered after the new
material that is being brought to light by the JSP, the Council of Fifty
record not only contains precious nuggets but is a veritable treasure trove of
new information. Researchers will learn much about the last few months of
Joseph Smith’s life and the dramatic, event-filled months that followed,
culminating in the Mormons’ winter departure from Nauvoo.
For members of the Church who may see examining such a massive
record as a daunting prospect, they may be most interested in the teachings
and insights of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other Church leaders
contained in the record. Because the record of the Council of Fifty has
never been published before, many of these apostolic and prophetic
teachings have been lost to history until now. Some of these priceless
insights will no doubt eventually make their way into lesson manuals,
general conference talks, Sunday School lessons, and other Latter-day Saint
literature. This article will highlight many of these teachings.

JOSEPH SMITH ON THE FUNCTION AND PURPOSE OF

COUNCILS
The Council of Fifty was organized with men from many different
backgrounds. Some had been members of the Church from the earliest
years; some had converted only recently. Some hailed from southern states,
some northern, and others came from Canada or England. In fact, three
members of the council were not members of the church at all, a point
Joseph Smith wanted recorded and heralded. Joseph Smith taught how such
an eclectic group could have productive meetings.
Council clerk William Clayton recorded in one of the earliest meetings,
“Prest. Joseph said he wanted all the brethren to speak their minds on this
subject and to say what was in their hearts whether good or bad. He did not
want to be forever surrounded by a set of ‘dough heads’ and if they did not
rise up and shake themselves and exercise themselves in discussing these
important matters he should consider them nothing better than ‘dough
heads.’ ”1
A few weeks later Joseph provided further instructions on the importance
of sharing differing thoughts and opinions in councils. Clayton recorded
that Joseph “commenced by showing, that the reason why men always
failed to establish important measures was, because in their organization
they never could agree to disagree long enough to select the pure gold from
the dross by the process of investigation.”2
Joseph Smith (right), shown here with his brother and council member Hyrum Smith (left),
encouraged council members to candidly share their views. Attributed to Sutcliffe Maudsley.
Courtesy of Church History Museum.
 The council made various assignments to committees and individuals.
The members of one committee, charged with the daunting task of writing a
constitution for the kingdom of God (that is, the council), were unsure how
to proceed. Feeling the weight of such an assignment, worried that what
they produced would not be acceptable to the Lord or to other members of
the council, they asked if Joseph Smith would join with them to aid them in
crafting their document. In response, Joseph explained the necessity of his
remaining separate from such discussions. He wanted the committee
members to struggle to find all the truth they could and then bring the
document to him for inspired correction. Perhaps Joseph realized that if he
were part of the committee, the members would be too deferential to him
and would not learn to search for truth and to make up their own minds. He
also wanted the men to see the limits of their own wisdom.
Prest. J. Smith arose and said that the committee were first appointed
to bring forth all the intelligence they could, and when their
productions were presented to him he could correct the errors and fill
the interstices where it was lacking. He had considered that a
Theocracy consisted in our exercising all the intelligence of the
council, and bringing forth all the light which dwells in the breast of
every man, and then let God approve of the document & receiveing
the sanction of the council it becomes a law. Theocracy as he
understands it is, for the people to get the voice of God and then
acknowledge it, and see it executed. It is necessary for the council to
exhaust their wisdom, and except they do they will never know but
they are as wise as God himself and ambitious men will, like Lucifer
think they are as wise as God and will try to lift themselves up and
put their foot on the necks of others. There has always been some
man to put himself forward and say I am the great I &c. I want the
council to exert all their wisdom in this thing, and when they see that
they cannot get a perfect law themselves, and I can, then, they will
see from whence wisdom flows. I know I can get the voice of God on
the subject. Vox populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people assenting to
the voice of God. . . . I dont want to be ranked with that committee I
am a committee of myself, and cannot mingle with any committee in
such matters. The station which I hold is an independant one and
 ought not to be mingled with any thing else. Let the Committee get all
the droppings they can from the presence of God and bring it to me,
and if it needs correction or enlargement I am ready to give it. The
principles by which the world can be governed is the principle of two
or three being united. Faith cannot exist without a concentration of
two or three. The sun, moon and planets roll on that principle. If God
the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost were to disagree, the worlds
would clash together in an instant. . . . From henceforth let it be
understood that I shall not associate with any committee I want every
man to get knowledge, search the laws of nations and get all the
information they can. There can be no exceptions taken to any thing
that any man can say in this council. I dont want any man ever to
assent to any thing in this council and then find fault with it. Dont
decide in favor of any thing untill you know it. Every man ought to
study Geography, Governments and languages, so that he may be able
to go forth to any nation and before any multitude with eloquence.3

JOSEPH SMITH ON RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND

DEFENDING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
During the April 11, 1844, meeting of the council, Joseph gave a moving
sermon on the importance of religious liberty. Having been on the receiving
end of local, state, and federal government failures to protect Mormons and
their rights, Joseph insisted that any government formed by God and every
member of the council should respect and protect the rights of every
religious group. Poignantly, and perhaps with a notion that his own death
was approaching, Joseph extolled the virtues of friendship and ominously
confided, “The only thing I am afraid of is, that I will not live long enough
to enjoy the society of these my friends as long as I want to.”4 William
Clayton not only captured the words spoken by Joseph in detail but also
attempted to convey the passion with which Joseph spoke, concluding the
account by explaining, “While the president was speaking on these subjects
he felt animated and used a 24 inch gauge or rule pretty freely till finally he
broke it in two in the middle.”5
For the benifit of mankind and succeeding generations he [Joseph
Smith] wished it to be recorded that there are men admitted members
of this honorable council, who are not members of the church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints, neither profess any creed or religious
sentiment whatever, to show that in the organization of this kingdom
men are not consulted as to their religious opinions or notions in any
shape or form whatever and that we act upon the broad and liberal
principal that all men have equal rights, and ought to be respected,
and that every man has a privilege in this organization of choosing for
himself voluntarily his God, and what he pleases for his religion,
inasmuch as there is no danger but that every man will embrace the
greatest light. God cannot save or damn a man only on the principle
that every man acts, chooses and worships for himself; hence the
importance of thrusting from us every spirit of bigotry and
intollerance towards a mans religious sentiments, that spirit which has
drenched the earth with blood— When a man feels the least
temptation to such intollerance he ought to spurn it from him. It
becomes our duty on account of this intollerance and corruption—the
inalienable right of man being to think as he pleases—worship as he
pleases &c being the first law of every thing that is sacred—to guard
every ground all the days of our lives. I will appeal to every man in
this council beginning at the youngest that when he arrives to the
years of Hoary age he will have to say that the principles of
intollerance and bigotry never had a place in this kingdom, nor in my
breast, and that he is even then ready to die rather than yeild to such
things. Nothing can reclaim the human mind from its ignorance,
bigotry, superstition &c but those grand and sublime principles of
equal rights and universal freedom to all men. We must not despise a
man on account of infirmity. We ought to love a man more for his
infirmity. Nothing is more congenial to my feelings and principles,
than the principles of universal freedom and has been from the
beginning. If I can know that a man is susceptible of good feelings &
integrity and will stand by his friends, he is my friend. The only thing
I am afraid of is, that I will not live long enough to enjoy the society
of these my friends as long as I want to. Let us from henceforth drive
from us every species of intollerance. When a man is free from it he is
capable of being a critic. When I have used every means in my power
to exalt a mans mind, and have taught him righteous principles to no
 effect—he is still inclined in his darkness, yet the same principles of
liberty and charity would ever be manifested by me as though he
embraced it. Hence in all governments or political transactions a mans
religious opinions should never be called in question. A man should
be judged by the law independant of religious prejudice, hence we
want in our constitution those laws which would require all its
officers to administer justice without any regard to his religious
opinions, or thrust him from his office. There is only two or three
things lacking in the constitution of the United States. If they had said
all men born equal, and not only that but they shall have their rights,
they shall be free, or the armies of the government should be
compelled to enforce those principles of liberty. And the President or
Governor who does not do this, and who does not enforce those
principles he shall lose his head. When a man is thus bound by a
constitution he cannot refuse to protect his subjects, he dare not do it.
And when a Governor or president will not protect his subjects he
ought to be put away from his office.
. . . When a man can enjoy his liberties and has the power of civil
officers to protect him, how happy he is.6

BRIGHAM YOUNG AND JOHN TAYLOR ON CONTINUING

REVELATION
In their efforts to discern how best to create a new constitution for the
coming kingdom of God on earth, council members shared multiple
viewpoints. Some were hesitant to write a draft of the constitution for fear
of making a mistake. Responding to the discussions by reminding council
members of Joseph Smith’s prophetic authority, senior apostle Brigham
Young declared that
he had no fears but God would organize the kingdom right, and what
he has seen in this assembly was nothing more than what he had
looked for. At the first meeting, when the president [Joseph Smith]
stated that this was the commencement of the organization of the
kingdom of God. He then felt as exalted views as he could do. He
contemplated kings, governments as they are. They sunk into oblivion
when he compared them with this kingdom, which was only in
embryo, and it would soon send forth its influence throughout the
nations. There will no doubt be a regular organization. He has heard
much said on the subject of bringing forth a constitution, but he
considered himself highly honored to have this privilege of being
accounted a fool, that when we had done all we were capable to do,
we could have the Lord speak and tell us what is right. There is a
great deal allready written We can form to ourselves independant of
the word of the Lord the best system of government on the earth; but
after all this, when we have done all the Lord will make it just right.
He can form a constitution by which he is willing to be governed. He
is willing to be ruled by the means which God will appoint. He dont
believe we can adopt laws for the government of people in futurity.
We can, for the time being, point out laws for present necessities. He
supposed there has not yet been a perfect revelation given, because
we cannot understand it, yet we receive a little here and a little there.
He should not be stumbled if the prophet should translate the bible
forty thousand times over and yet it should be different in some
places every time, because when God speake, he always speaks
according to the capacity of the people. The starting point for the
government of the kingdom is in the Book of Doctrine and
Covenants, but he does not know how much more there is in the
bosom of the Almighty. When God sees that his people have enlarged
upon what he has given us he will give us more. The sta[r]ting point
is here, but God has not come here, He has sent his agent, his minister
to act in his name. And if he has got an agent to dictate to us here the
organization is here. When a man is clothed with authority to do all
business for those who sent him, what he does [is?] right, and this is
the kind of agent we have got, and God appointed him We did not
appoint him. If the Lord Almighty calls upon one of his servants as a
minister, the nation to whom he is sent has no control over him
whatever. If the Latter Day Saints believe that our prophet is fallen
what are they going to do? How will they help themselves? It is the
prerogative of the Almighty to differ from his subjects in what he
pleases, or how, or when he pleases, and what will they do; they must
bow to it, or kick themselves to death, or to hell. He [Joseph Smith]
can disagree with the whole church as he has a mind, and how?
 Because he is a perfect committee of himself. . . . He would rather
have the pure revelations of Jesus Christ as they now stand, to carry
to the nations, than any thing else.7
In this same meeting, apostle John Taylor shared similar sentiments about
revelation flowing from God through his prophet. As a member of the
committee assigned to draft the new constitution, Taylor poignantly felt the
need for revelation through Joseph Smith:
If they can get intelligence from God they can write correct
principles, if not, they cannot. He was always convinced that no
power can guide us right but the wisdom of God. It needed a
revelation from God to shew the very first principles of the kingdom
of God. No one knew how to baptize or lay on hands untill it was
revealed through our chairman. National affairs are equally as far
fallen and degenerate as religious matters. This nation is as far fallen
and degenerate as any nation under heaven. When we were in the
world, we were ignorant with regard to correct principles. We are now
a little differently situated. We have a portion of the spirit, but if we
get the document any where right it will be because God gives it; and
if not, we know nothing but what either you [Joseph Smith] or God
teaches us.8

HYRUM SMITH ON THE FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY

AND THE EXERCISE OF FAITH
The council record also contains a few brief statements of Hyrum Smith.
One of the founding members of the council and the patriarch of the
Church, Hyrum spoke rarely in this venue, but each time he did, he spoke
wholeheartedly in support of his brother Joseph and the aim of establishing
the kingdom of God on earth:
Hyrum Smith followed the chairman and said that the time was at
hand when the prophecies should be fulfilled, when the nations were
ready to embrace the gospel and when the ensign should be lift up and
the standard to the people and he believed if we will set up the
standard and raise the ensign the honest in heart of all nations will
immediately begin to flock to the standard of our God.9
On another occasion, Hyrum stated that the
observations by our Prest. so well accorded with his own feelings that
he wanted to say a few words. When Moses was appointed to lead the
people, God gave him Aaron to speak for him. When God called
Enoch he wanted to know why God had done so inasmuch as he was
an illiterate man &c. God told him to go forth and he would justify his
words. Enoch went forth in the exercise of faith, not in the exercise of
great words. God walked with him 300 years. Moses had power.
before him Mount Sinai trembled and shook to the centre. Had Moses
not gone forth in the exercise of faith he would not have
accomplished the work which God sent him to do. We stand in the
same light. We have greater power and are called to do a greater
work. We have more power than Enoch and have a greater work to do
than Enoch had and we shall accomplish it.” He then referred to the
principles of a Theocracy and hopes every man will get into the spirit
of his calling.10
The council records contain teachings of Hyrum Smith and other Church leaders. Photograph of
painting by “Webber,” circa 1833. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City

JOSEPH SMITH ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD VERSUS THE

CHURCH OF GOD
One of the primary purposes of the Council of Fifty was to seek to establish
the physical, or political, kingdom of God on earth. It planned for a
government organization that would allow the Saints to worship God freely
and construct a government on theocratic principles in whatever land they
eventually settled upon. Naturally, this purpose of the council led to
questions on the difference between the kingdom and the Church. Since so
many Church leaders were at the head of the movement to create this new
government, what would be the difference between the two entities? Joseph
Smith provided that answer as well as commentary on the deficiency of the
US Constitution in one key area:
There is a distinction between the Church of God and kingdom of
God. The laws of the kingdom are not designed to effect our salvation
 hereafter. It is an entire, distinct and separate government. The church
is a spiritual matter and a spiritual kingdom; but the kingdom which
Daniel saw was not a spiritual kingdom, but was designed to be got
up for the safety and salvation of the saints by protecting them in their
religious rights and worship. Any thing that would tolerate man in the
worship of his God under his own vine and fig-tree would be
tolerated of God. The literal kingdom of God, and the church of God
are two distinct things. The gifts of prophets, evangelists &c never
were designed to govern men in civil matters. The kingdom of God
has nothing to do with giving commandments to damn a man
spiritually. It only has power to make a man amenable to his fellow
man. God gave commandments that if a man killed &c he should be
killed himself, but it did not damn him. In relation to the constitution
of the United States, there is but one difficulty, and that is, the
constitution provides the things which we want but lacks the power to
carry the laws into effect. We want to alter it so as to make it
imperative on the officers to enforce the protection of all men in their
rights
He then shewed how the constitution ought to be amended.
Men are complaining all over the United States, and we have the
most reason to complain.11

JOSEPH SMITH RECEIVES A REVELATION FOR THE

COUNCIL
After many discussions about what language should be included in the
proposed constitution for the kingdom of God on earth, Joseph Smith
received a revelation to put the matter to rest. The revelation was never
canonized but was reported in the later Utah-era council minutes.12 The
original minutes of the meeting capture the receipt of this unpublished
revelation:
The chairman then made some further remarks and advised that we let
the constitution alone.
He would tell us the whole matter about the constitution as follows
—
 Verily thus saith the Lord, ye are my constitution, and I am your
God, and ye are my spokesmen. From henceforth do as I shall
command you. Saith the Lord.13

JOSEPH SMITH ON NOT JUDGING OTHERS AND ON

AVOIDING SINFUL ACTS
In the council meeting held on May 3, 1844, there was apparently some
objection to one of the newly proposed members of the council because of
past transgressions. Joseph Smith taught:
We have no right to complain of others while we are as corrupt as
they are. . . .
We should never indulge our appetites to injure our influence, or
wound the feelings of friends, or cause the spirit of the Lord to leave
us. There is no excuse for any man to drink and get drunk in the
church of Christ, or gratify any appetite, or lust, contrary to the
principles of righteousness.
The chairman continued to instruct the council on the principles of
sobriety, and every thing pertaining to godliness at considerable
length & concluded by remarking that it is best to run on a long race
and be careful to keep good wind &c.14

PORTER ROCKWELL’S BITTER REACTION TO JOSEPH

SMITH’S MURDER
When council meetings resumed in 1845 after the murder of Joseph Smith,
several council members, including Porter Rockwell, expressed raw
emotions at the loss. Because few of Rockwell’s contemporary statements
exist, these words give rare insight into his passionate character and love for
Joseph Smith.
O. P. Rockwell said I say yes to every thing that is good and right. . . .
I was a friend to Joseph Smith while he lived. I am still his friend. He
cant avenge his wrongs himself, but I mean to avenge them for him,
and if I get into trouble I want you to help me if you can without
criminating yourselves if not, let me go. I love my friends and hate
my enemies. I cant love them if I would.15
JOHN TAYLOR ON MISTREATMENT OF THE MORMONS
In the aftermath of Joseph Smith’s murder and the continued threats of
violence against Mormons in Illinois, several men in the council expressed
their indignation both toward their persecutors and toward the government
that refused to help the Mormons remain in Nauvoo in peace. John Taylor,
still recovering from wounds received at Carthage, had lost all faith in the
willingness of the American democracy to defend the rights of a despised
minority. His exasperation, bitterness, and anger are demonstrated in these
remarks from March 1845:
In regard to the situation of the world as it now exists I dont care a
damn because they are as corrupt as the devil. We have no benifit
from the laws of the land, and the only reason why they dont cut our
throats is because they dare not, and as brother [Heber C.] Kimball
says I dont care how often the bucket is turned up. Some cry out it
will bring persecution, but they cannot lie about us, nor persecute us
worse than they have done, and I go in for whipping the scoundrels
when they come into our midst and if any of them come near me I
will use my cane to them and I want my brethren to go and do
likewise. This cursed Bettisworth [David Bettisworth, a constable]
was here prowling round the City a few days ago. He was one who
was trying to push our brethren into the Jail at Carthage, and he
wanted to have them taken out without a guard that they might be
shot down by the mob before they got to the Jail. I dont want such
men to come near us, and if they come near me I feel like whipping
them I dont care about excitement, we can stand it as long as they
can. We know we have no more justice here, no more than we could
get at the gates of hell, and the only thing we have got to do is to take
care of ourselves. As to the other thing which has been proposed
about seeking out a location in the West I don’t care how soon it go
into operation. People talk about law and justice I go in for giving
them the same kind of justice they give us. . . . I go in for a company
being sent out to find out place where we can establish the kingdom,
erect the standard and dwell in peace, and have our own laws.16
John Taylor, injured in the attacks that killed Joseph and Hyrum Smith, expressed exasperation and
outrage toward government officials. Photograph, circa 1852, likely by Marsena Cannon. Courtesy
of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

BRIGHAM YOUNG ON SETTLING IN THE GREAT SALT

LAKE AREA
Many of the later council meetings in Nauvoo are filled with discussions
about precisely when the Mormons should leave Nauvoo and where they
should go. Brigham Young felt he was carrying out Joseph Smith’s
intention to settle in the mountains of the West. Some raised concerns that
the Rocky Mountains were too high, too isolated, or too cold. Young
responded that those misgivings were precisely why he wanted to settle
there: to protect the Mormons from potential conflicts with other settlers as
had happened in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. Instead, Young wanted a
place where “we can gather by thousands and dwell in peace.”17
Young sought a place where the Mormons could live and practice their
religion without interference or harassment from mobs and the local, state,
and national governments that had proven themselves at best indifferent and
ineffectual in their responses to violence perpetrated against Mormons. At
worst, those vaunted democratic institutions had at times conspired with the
militant antagonists that sought to drive the Mormons first from Missouri
and then from Illinois. Young and other members of the council believed
they needed to find a place free from the tyranny that often resulted from
unrestrained American democracy. At the March 1, 1845, council meeting,
Young declared:
The propriety of fitting out this company for this expedition is what
we want to enter into, how many shall go, and who, or whether any.
We know this was one of Josephs measures and my feelings are, if we
cannot have the priviledge of carrying out Josephs measures I would
rather lie down and have my head cut off at once. To carry out
Josephs measures is sweeter to me than the honey or the honey comb.
I want to see the Lamanites come in by thousands and the time has
come. While Joseph was living it seems as though he was hurried by
the Lord all the time, and especially for the last year. It seemed he laid
out work for this church which would last them twenty years to carry
out. I used to wonder why it was, that he used to be hurried so, not
supposing he was going to die, but now I understand the reason. With
regard to the propriety of going ahead in this thing we are all of one
mind. With regard to how and when and where to begin is what we
what we want to investigate. I have no doubt or dubiety on my mind
with regard to the Lord’s communicating the knowlege no more than I
 have that I can walk home When the Twelve have been separated
from Joseph in England or the Eastern States or elswhere, I defy any
man to point out the time when I was in the dark in regard to what
should be done. I have not been in the dark pertaining to any matter.
Some have been fearful that I would blunder in the dark but it is not
so. When any person has any doubt and manifest to me a fear that the
Twelve or authorities of the church will blunder in the dark, it always
seems nonsense to me. I know as God lives that there is no man who
will always go in the way of his duty, but God will keep him right, &
preserve him untill he has accomplished his work, and there would
not a gun have gone off in Carthage had not God seen that Joseph had
done enough and he took him to rest.
There is no place but what we shall go along just right if we will be
of one heart and one mind. The time has come when we must seek out
a location. The yoke of the gentiles is broke, their doom is sealed,
there is not the least fibre can possibly be discovered that binds us to
the gentile world. It is for us to take care of ourselves and go and pick
out a place where we can go and dwell in peace after we have
finished the houses and got our endowment, not but that the Lord can
give it to us in the wilderness, but I have no doubt we shall get it here.
But we want a home where we can gather by thousands and dwell in
peace. . . .
These are some matters laying before us and I want the brethren to
speak their minds freely. I want the brethren to be patient stop and
consider and dont get in a hurry. We can stop as long as we like, and
meet as often as we have a mind to. Don’t be in a hurry. We are in
eternity and have all eternity before us, and there is no need to be in a
hurry.18
Later that year, Young identified the area of the Great Salt Lake as the
intended destination:
The chairman [Young] then stated that it is well understood by this
council the views of Joseph in regard to setting up the kingdom in
some place where we can exalt the standard and enjoy liberty. We
have sent some men this spring and have learned considerable of the
feelings of the Indians towards us, and the prospect is good. The
 Temple is near finished and many of the brethren will no doubt
receive their endowment this winter. We have contemplated sending a
company west next spring, and this is what we want to take into
consideration. It has been proved that there is not much difficulty in
sending people beyond the mountains. We have designed sending
them somewhere near the Great Salt Lake.19
After Illinois governor Thomas Ford deliberately falsified reports of a
federal army marching on Nauvoo and as other rumors began circulating of
impending conflict, Young and the council made immediate plans to depart
even though it was the middle of winter. Responding to the concerns about
the climate and the isolation of the proposed Great Basin settlement, Young
explained in a January 1846 meeting:
Now if we go between the mountains to the place under consideration
there will be no jealousies from any nation, but if we stop this side the
mountains there will be complaints which will reach us. There have
been some objections to the country because the land is high, but it is
surrounded by very high mountains which would moderate the
climate very much. If we can get to this place we can strengthen
ourselves and be better able to grapple with our foes. . . . If we should
[go?] there we can sustain ourselves comfortably and it will soon
become the greatest market in America for all kinds of the
productions of the soil. At the same time, we would fill up all the
country to the coast and soon hold the balance of power over the
whole country. Then, if they will give us a portion of the country we
will defend their flag for the time being, and if they did not walk up to
their agreement we could make them and set up our own standard.
Ten thousand men would do more to sustain us there, than two
hundred thousand would on the coast. After we get there the first
thing he would do, would be to fortify ourselves, which could easily
be done, and he should almost feel like fortifying before he took time
to pray. If it is a cold country, and a hard country to live in we wont
be envied, but if we go to a good country before we are able to defend
it we would be troubled with mobs as we are here.20

CONCLUSION
These selected sermons, teachings, and discussions found in the Nauvoo
Council of Fifty record not only demonstrate the value of this new
publication but also typify the insights that can be gained about the various
individuals whose discussions were recorded in this minute book. Readers
will get to view many of the most prominent leaders of the Church in the
late Nauvoo period as they grappled with ongoing threats of violence,
religious questions, the logistics of a cross-continental emigration, apostasy,
and the murder of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum. Few sources paint
this kind of candid, multifaceted portrait of the personalities that members
of the Church have come to revere as prophets and apostles.

NOTES
1. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 10, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 39 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
2. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 4, 1844, in JSP, CFM: 79.
3. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:91–93.
4. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:100.
5. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:101.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:97–101.
7. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:119–20.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:114–15.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 19, 1844, in JSP, CFM:52.
10. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:93–94.
11. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:128–29.
12. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 10, 1880, in L. John Nuttall, Notebook, 1880–82, Council of
Fifty, Papers, 1845–83, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; see also Franklin D. Richards,
Journals, 1844–1899, entry for April 10, 1880, Church History Library.
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:135–37.
14. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 3, 1844, in JSP, CFM:139–40.
15. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:223–24.
16. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:264–65.
17. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:258.
18. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:257–58, 260.
19. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:471–72.
20. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11, 1846, in JSP, CFM:518–19.
 Chapter 8

INSIGHTS INTO MORMON RECORD-

KEEPING PRACTICES FROM THE
COUNCIL OF FIFTY MINUTES
R. Eric Smith
I have been an editor and manager with the Joseph Smith Papers Project for
more than a decade. The project’s publications fall into the well-established
genre of documentary editing, meaning the focus is on presenting the texts
of the original documents with the historical information needed to
understand the circumstances of their creation. One of the major
contributions of the project’s historians and archivists has been to shed light
on the world of early Mormon record keeping, particularly with respect to
the papers of Joseph Smith. Who inscribed and revised these documents,
when, and in what capacity? For what purposes were the documents
created? How do the documents relate to one another? How were the
documents transmitted, used, filed, and preserved? How reliable are the
documents? For documentary editors, the answers to these and similar
questions can be as important as the content of the documents themselves.
As the other essays in this collection help demonstrate, the content of the
recently published record of the Nauvoo Council of Fifty is invaluable in
helping historians and others understand Mormon history from the late
Nauvoo period to the exodus west and beyond. Council clerk William
Clayton’s record is also fascinating when interrogated as a record—that is,
through questions such as those listed above. My essay shares a few
insights into and questions about Clayton’s record from the standpoint of a
documentary editor.

CONFIDENTIALITY OF THE MINUTES

The life story of the minutes, from their initial creation by Clayton down to
the present, is interesting in its own right, and I provide a brief summary
here for that reason and to help introduce my other observations about
them. A key element of the story is confidentiality. The members of the
council took a confidentiality oath upon joining the council, and many
council discussions reemphasized the importance of secrecy. Clayton
evidently began keeping minutes on loose paper at the preliminary council
meeting on March 10, 1844,1 but the minutes of the initial March meetings
were burned after the March 14 meeting out of fear they could be used
against the members of the council. Nevertheless, Clayton continued
keeping minutes after March 14. A few days before his death, Joseph Smith
ordered Clayton to send away, burn, or bury the council records. Clayton
buried them in his garden and dug them up a few days later—another
Mormon record coming out of the ground.
It was apparently after this that Clayton began reconstructing the
destroyed minutes and copying surviving loose minutes in the three bound
volumes (sometimes referred to as the “fair copy,” meaning a neat and final
copy) that survive today. When the council was revived in early 1845 under
Brigham Young, a pattern was established of the loose minutes being read
at the subsequent meeting and then burned. Clayton kept a permanent copy
of the minutes in the bound volumes, but it is not clear if other members of
the council even knew of the fair copy. After the exodus to Utah, the
records and proceedings of the council continued to be closely guarded. For
example, in December 1880, council recorder George Q. Cannon referred to
the Council of “Kanalima” when he wrote about the council in a letter to
Joseph F. Smith (“kanalima” is the Hawaiian word for “fifty”; both Cannon
and Smith had been missionaries to Hawaii in their youth). Eventually,
Clayton’s record became part of the First Presidency’s collection, where it
remained closed to access until the twenty-first century.2
That the record was closed was obviously a challenge for the Joseph
Smith Papers Project, which intended to publish a comprehensive edition of
Joseph Smith documents and had repeatedly advertised that fact. The
question of whether the project would publish these records was seen by
some observers as a sort of acid test of the project’s credibility—if the
project could not publish the Council of Fifty minutes, it could not claim to
be transparent (much less comprehensive). Project scholars remained
hopeful that permission to access and publish the Joseph Smith–era Council
of Fifty records would be given. While for years we waited and hoped
permission would come, we focused on producing an edition that both
would satisfy high scholarly standards and would serve the Church’s
interests in fostering reputable scholarship on the Church’s history. We also
paused work for a period of time on the third volume of Joseph Smith’s
journals, covering May 1843 through June 1844, because we wanted the
annotation in that volume to be informed by the Council of Fifty minutes.3
Eventually, in 2010, project scholars were given access to the records and
permission to publish them.
The council minutes are one of several records from the First
Presidency’s collection that have been made available to the project for
either publication or research in the last dozen years. Other examples
include Revelation Book 1 (or the “Book of Commandments and
Revelations”), Joseph Smith’s first Nauvoo journal (contained in the record
book titled “The Book of the Law of the Lord”), and three drafts of the
early portion of Joseph Smith’s manuscript history project.4
It should be noted that the council minutes are not the only Joseph Smith
record containing material that Joseph and his associates viewed as
confidential. The early editions of the Doctrine and Covenants, for example,
used code words in some revelations to conceal the identities of Church
leaders involved with Church businesses.5 In Joseph Smith’s Nauvoo
journals, his scribe Willard Richards used shorthand to record especially
sensitive information, such as information about plural marriages.6 Richards
also attempted to conceal certain aspects of council-related discussions in
the journal by writing some words backward. In the March 10, 1844, entry,
in which he summarized the initial meeting of the council, Richards wrote
Texas as “Saxet,” Pinery as “Yrenip,” Santa Fe as “Atnas Eef,” and
Houston as “Notsuoh.”7 This code is about the simplest one imaginable,
useful probably only to throw off someone who would take a quick glance
at the journal.
To me, the recording and preservation of confidential information shows
how serious Church clerks were about keeping records. Why else the
paradox of writing down something that you want kept hid? Why not just
avoid recording in the first place?

IMPORTANCE OF KEEPING A RECORD

At the close of Clayton’s minutes for the council meeting on March 14,
1844, we find this surprising passage: “It was considered wisdom to burn
the minutes in consequence of treachery and plots of designing men.”8
Given that the council’s plans to improve upon the US Constitution and to
explore settlements outside the nation’s boundaries could be seen as
controversial, if not treasonous (and publicizing such plans could have led
to interference with them), it makes sense that council members would want
to keep their business confidential. Why then did Clayton keep minutes of
those initial meetings in the first place? And—a more arresting question—
after burning the earliest minutes, why did Clayton continue minute taking
and then later reconstruct the discussions of those earliest meetings, even
when Church leaders worried so much about keeping their discussions
confidential?
The answer must be that Church leaders, or at least Clayton, had become
thoroughly convinced of the importance or even vitality of record keeping
—perhaps so much so that keeping records had moved to the level of habit.
Of course, record keeping had been emphasized both explicitly and
implicitly in the Church’s scripture. In the Book of Mormon, for example,
Enos prays that the Nephite records will be preserved, and the resurrected
Christ himself inspects the Nephite records and finds them deficient. In the
revelation given the day the Church was organized, God commanded the
Church to keep a record.9 The fullest explication on the importance and
purposes of record keeping had come from Joseph Smith in instructions he
gave the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shortly after the quorum was
organized in February 1835. The oft-quoted passage is too long to be
repeated here, but in it Joseph Smith gave a number of reasons that records
should be kept: they would serve as precedent to help decide “almost any
point that might be agitated”; they would help leaders more powerfully bear
witness of the “great and glorious manifestations” that had been made
known to them; leaders would later find passages of these records
personally inspiring—“a feast” to their “own souls”; God would be angry
and the Spirit would withdraw if leaders did not sufficiently value and
preserve what God had given them; and if leaders were falsely accused of
crimes, records would help prove that they were “somewhere else” at the
time.10
While we can only guess as to whether particular members of the council
had any of these objectives in mind with respect to the record Clayton was
keeping (indeed, it is not clear that the members realized Clayton was
copying his loose minutes into a bound record11), we get one more glimpse
into Joseph’s views on the importance of records a few days before his
murder. At about one o’clock in the morning on June 23, 1844, Joseph
Smith, fearing for his safety in the crisis that erupted after the destruction of
the Nauvoo Expositor, called for Clayton and gave him instructions. In his
journal Clayton recorded, “Joseph whispered and told me either to put the r
of k [records of the kingdom] into the hands of some faithful man and send
them away, or burn them or bury them.”12 Presumably, Joseph Smith feared
the records might be used against him and other Saints. Even so, he gave
Clayton the option to hide the records rather than to destroy them. At this
point Clayton, as one historian observed, “trusted that calmer, more
reasonable and more secure times would come for the Latter-day Saints and
therefore preserved the records for future generations.”13 In light of the
importance that the Council of Fifty record has to understanding Mormon
history, Clayton is a hero for deciding to preserve the records, even though
doing so put him at personal risk.

SYSTEMATIZATION OF RECORD KEEPING

In looking at Clayton’s record as a record, one of the first things we notice
is that Mormon record keeping had become routinized. At the preliminary
meeting of the Council of Fifty on March 10, 1844, Joseph Smith appointed
William Clayton as clerk of the meeting.14 Clayton apparently began
keeping minutes that day, though, as noted above, the minutes of the earliest
Council of Fifty meetings were later burned. The next day, when the
council was officially organized, Joseph appointed Willard Richards as
council recorder and Clayton as council clerk—Clayton was to take the
minutes, and Richards perhaps had some supervisory role over Clayton.
Both Richards and Clayton had significant prior experience in keeping
Church records.15
Having two experienced clerks on the council meant that Clayton had a
replacement scribe on standby if he couldn’t make a meeting. This may not
have been the reason that Joseph Smith appointed both a recorder and a
clerk to the council, but the redundancy of roles proved handy, as Richards
evidently took the complete minutes of three meetings. He was presumably
also the one who took up the pen for Clayton when he had to leave one
meeting partway through with a toothache.16
Further evidence of the routinization of Church record keeping is the high
quality of Clayton’s Nauvoo Council of Fifty record. His thorough, highly
legible record is clearly the product of much time and care. Though Clayton
presumably took original minutes on loose paper, he eventually began
copying those minutes into bound volumes.17 This process reflects
awareness of broader Church record-keeping practices18 and a
consciousness to safeguard and preserve the record. As he copied the
minutes, Clayton apparently used other available records, such as an
attendance roll and original correspondence, to flesh them out.19 This
copying and expanding effort took considerable time and labor, as Clayton’s
journal indicates.20 Even the fact that the three volumes of Clayton’s record
closely match one another in size and binding signals a maturing in
Mormon record keeping.
We can see by comparison to earlier efforts how far the Church had come
in systematizing its record-keeping practices. For example, Joseph Smith
apparently did not begin copying loose manuscripts of revelations into a
copy book until at least two years after he received his first revelation.21 As
another contrasting example, consider the document known by the Joseph
Smith Papers as Minute Book 2, perhaps still better known as the Far West
Record. This record book contains copies of minutes from Church meetings
held as early as 1830 in New York, but the book as we have it was not
begun until 1838 in Missouri—and was written by scribes different from
those who kept the original minutes (indeed, some of the original scribes by
that time had left the Church).22 It seems probable that important
information was lost as the minutes now copied into Minute Book 2
traversed this distance of time, place, and personality.

A SOLITARY EFFORT
Most of the significant Church record books from this period were created
by a number of scribes working in sequence or sometimes together. For
example, Joseph Smith’s second letterbook, created from 1839 through the
summer of 1843, was inscribed by seven different clerks. Minute Book 2,
created intermittently from 1838 through 1844, was inscribed by five
different clerks, who copied minutes originally kept by about twenty
different clerks. The first volume of Joseph Smith’s manuscript history, the
only volume of that record completed before his murder, was inscribed by
four clerks.23 With these records, which were generally kept in Joseph
Smith’s office, the work of one scribe was likely to be seen by another. This
may have created a certain accountability as to what was recorded—and an
expectation that what was recorded was not completely private.
In contrast, the Nauvoo Council of Fifty record as we have it was created
by one scribe, working alone and apparently in private, William Clayton.
Though loose minutes of one council meeting were read at the following
meeting, there is no evidence that anyone other than Clayton saw the fair
copy of the minutes until the Utah period—in fact, as noted above, other
council members may not have even been aware of the fair copy. It is
interesting to consider how these circumstances may have affected the way
Clayton created the fair copy—did this spur him on, for example, in his
effort to complete the fair copy, expecting that there would never be anyone
else who could complete the record for the Nauvoo period if he did not?
In this vein, I raise another question that others may wish to explore.
What can we learn by considering the Nauvoo Council of Fifty record not
only as an institutional record but also as a personal record of William
Clayton? What can we learn of his personality or biases, his views of what
initiatives or positions were wise, his individual understanding of what the
council was to accomplish? If nothing else, the triumph of the detail in and
the mere existence of this record shows how valuable Clayton thought the
minutes of the council were and would be.

QUALITY OF RECORDS
It is always interesting to consider how various circumstances influence the
quality of a particular Mormon record from this period. Joseph Smith’s
history notes that the deaths and faithlessness of some of his clerks, together
with lawsuits, imprisonment, and poverty, had significantly interfered with
the keeping of his journal and history.24 With respect to the Council of Fifty
record, it is painful to imagine how much detail from the record was lost
when the minutes of the initial meetings were burned. The March 10, 1844,
preliminary meeting convened at 4:30 p.m. and met until a “late hour,” with
a break for dinner. And yet the minutes that Clayton reconstructed in fall
1844 are limited almost entirely to copying the two letters from the
Wisconsin Saints. The pattern continues for the next few days of minutes.
On March 11, the council met “all day,” but the minutes take up only three
pages of the record. On March 12, the council apparently met in the
evening, but the record has no report, apparently because Clayton had other
business that day. On March 13, the council evidently met most of the day.
Clayton’s report is two paragraphs. On March 14, the council met for about
seven hours. Clayton: two paragraphs.25 These meetings, held over five days
straight, were the ones where two fairly innocuous letters (proposing the
relocation of the Wisconsin branch to Texas) launched the formation of a
new body that proposed to revise the US Constitution and that expected to
“govern men in civil matters”!26 How did these men get from A to Z so
quickly? The minutes here show the conclusions but so few of the reasons.
The nearly 900-page Council of Fifty record is entirely in the handwriting of council clerk William
Clayton. Photograph circa 1855. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

Finally, on March 19, the minutes start to become lengthier and more
detailed, as now we have contemporary rather than reconstructed minutes.
Even so, it is only during the period of Brigham Young’s chairmanship that
the minutes become consistently detailed. It is not entirely clear what
changed during Young’s administration, but Clayton did complain in the
May 25, 1844, minutes that he could not take minutes “in full” because
members were talking over one another.27 This was after many council
members had left to campaign for Joseph Smith’s presidential run, and
when the outside opposition that would lead to the two murders a month
later was reaching a fever pitch. The editors of the minutes also postulate
that the minutes from the Young era may be fuller because Clayton copied
his loose minutes closer to the times of the meetings being reported,
meaning he could use his memory to flesh out his raw minutes.28

HUMOR IN THE RECORD?

There is an example of humor in the Council of Fifty record that is worth
noting, though we will never know if it was intentional.
In early 1845, a fairly obscure figure named William P. Richards wrote to
council member George Miller proposing a “Mormon Reserve” (a
dedicated area where Mormons would be confined) as a solution to the
ongoing conflict between Mormons and their neighbors in Illinois. To me,
Richards comes across as meddling, tedious, and a bit self-congratulatory.
Council members expressed some initial interest in the proposal, though it
is not clear that their interest was genuine. They may have only wanted to
buy themselves more time to finish the temple. At one point in the
correspondence between Richards and Miller, Richards gave permission
that the exchanges be published in the newspaper but asked that the printer
“guard against typographical errors.”29 When Clayton hand copied the
correspondence into the record, however, he misspelled a word, making
Richards’s request a kind of joke on itself: “Please also gaurd against
typographical errors.”30 In the rest of the record, Clayton spells “guard” or
“guarded” correctly about ten times, with no other misspellings. While the
misspelling “gaurd” could have resulted from the mere slip of a pen, one
wonders if Clayton felt a bit exasperated at Richards’s officiousness and
decided to play a quiet trick on him.
The extant council minutes for March 10, 11, 13, and 14, 1844, were reconstructed in fall 1844 by
William Clayton, based on journal entries, memory, and perhaps other records. Photograph by
Welden C. Andersen. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

INFORMATION ABOUT OTHER RECORDS

The Council of Fifty record provides a treasure trove of information about
records (in addition to the minutes themselves) that were created, received,
or reviewed by the council. On its website, the project has published a
comprehensive list of such records, totaling roughly six dozen items.31 We
see in the volume and variety of these records a Church leadership who are
coming of age in using the written word or published records to share
information, to try to persuade others, to seek advice, to make decisions,
and to document their history.
Besides all that we can infer about Mormon record keeping from
Clayton’s record, there is also some explicit commentary about the scope
and purpose of the Church’s flagship record-keeping project of that time. In
a council meeting on March 22, 1845, discussion ensued about what kind of
information was appropriate to include in the manuscript Church history
then being compiled (the history was published serially in Church
newspapers and then by B. H. Roberts as History of the Church). Willard
Richards, one of those working on the history, asked whether all of the
activities of the Nauvoo City Council should be included—“or only those in
which prest. J. Smith was particularly active in getting up.”
Two other questions that arose in the discussion have probably been
asked by many practicing Latter-day Saints today who write or publish
Mormon history. To generalize: Do we leave out information that could be
potentially embarrassing to a Church leader? And, How much information
do we include about the activities of the Church’s opponents? Joseph Smith
provided the answer that would guide the history writers of that era: “He
said if he was writing the history he should put in every thing which was
valuable and leave out the rest.” William W. Phelps also remarked in the
discussion that Joseph Smith had earlier instructed him to put “every thing
that was good” into the history.32
Willard Richards’s suggestion that the level of Joseph Smith’s
involvement be the determining factor in questions of scope resonates to
our own time, as the same factor is used by Joseph Smith Papers Project
scholars to decide what to include in the comprehensive edition. The basic
question is, Is this a Joseph Smith document (that is, was the record either
created by him or received by him and kept in his office)? That question is
dispositive, with no consideration of whether the content is “valuable” or
“good.” The underlying assumption is that publishing Joseph Smith’s
complete documentary record is of inherent value, a point with which
William Clayton might have agreed.

NOTES
1. The council was formally organized March 11, 1844. The March 10 meeting can be considered a
preliminary meeting of the council.
2. See Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11 and 14, 1844; February 4, 1845; March 4, 1845, in
Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D.
Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative
Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew
C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 42–43, 50, 224–25, 277 (hereafter
JSP, CFM); Source Note and Historical Introduction to Council of Fifty, Minutes, in JSP, CFM:5–
 6, 8–14; George Q. Cannon to Joseph F. Smith, December 8, 1880, Church History Library, Salt
Lake City.
3. See Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Brent M. Rogers, eds., Journals, Volume 3: May
1843–June 1844, vol. 3 of the Journals series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin
and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2015) (hereafter JSP, J3). This
volume contains numerous references to the Nauvoo council minutes. See, for example, JSP,
J3:xvi.
4. See Source Note to Revelation Book 1, in Robin Scott Jensen, Robert J. Woodford, and Steven C.
Harper, eds., Revelations and Translations, Volume 1: Manuscript Revelation Books, vol. 1 of the
Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K.
Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 4–5
(hereafter JSP, R1); Source Note to Joseph Smith, Journal, December 1841–December 1842, in
Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson, eds., Journals, Volume 2:
December 1841–April 1843, vol. 2 of the Journals series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C.
Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2011), 5 (hereafter JSP, J2); and Source Notes to Joseph Smith, History, Drafts, 1838–circa 1841,
in Karen Lynn Davidson, David J. Whittaker, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Richard L. Jensen, eds.,
Histories, Volume 1: Joseph Smith Histories, 1832–1844, vol. 1 of the Histories series of The
Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt
Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2012), 187, 192.
5. “Substitute Words in the 1835 and 1844 Editions of the Doctrine and Covenants,” in Robin Scott
Jensen, Richard E. Turley Jr., and Riley M. Lorimer, eds., Revelations and Translations, Volume 2:
Published Revelations, vol. 2 of the Revelations and Translations series of The Joseph Smith
Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake City:
Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 708.
6. See, for example, Joseph Smith, Journal, March 4, 1843, in JSP, J2:297.
7. JSP, J3:200–201. Richards first wrote out the correct words, then came back later to cross them
out and write them in backward, suggesting he had become worried about confidentiality
sometime later. In this same journal passage, Richards also wrote and then later canceled the
sentence “Joseph enquired perfect secrecy of them.”
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 14, 1844, in JSP, CFM:50.
9. Enos 1:13, 16; 3 Nephi 23:7–13; Doctrine and Covenants 21:1.
10. Record of the Twelve, February 27, 1835, 1–3; Minute Book 1, February 27, 1835, 86–88, both at
josephsmithpapers.org.
11. Historical Introduction to Council of Fifty, Minutes, in JSP, CFM:13–14.
12. William Clayton, Journal, quoted in JSP, CFM:198n625; Events of June 1844, in JSP, CFM:197–
98.
13. D. Michael Quinn, “The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945,” BYU Studies 20, no. 2
(1980): 192.
14. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 10, 1844, in JSP, CFM:39.
15. Historical Introduction to Council of Fifty, Minutes, in JSP, CFM:7.
16. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 5, 1844; May 3, 6, and 13, 1844, in JSP, CFM:81–82, 137, 148,
160. One may wonder whether Richards’s minute-taking habits were different enough from
Clayton’s that the differences can be seen in the resulting minutes. Since we have only Clayton’s
fair copy of the minutes and none of the original raw minutes for these 1844 meetings, the
question may be impossible to answer. (Given how difficult Richards’s idiosyncratic handwriting
is to transcribe, that any raw council minutes he kept did not survive may have been a boon to the
Joseph Smith Papers team!) There is one meeting reported in the record, the one held February 27,
 1845, at which neither Clayton nor Richards took the original minutes. Church scribe Thomas
Bullock, not a member of the council, attended the meeting and took the minutes. (Editorial Note
to Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 27, 1845, in JSP, CFM:247.)
17. Historical Introduction to Council of Fifty, Minutes, in JSP, CFM:11–14.
18. A common practice with many of the Church’s records was to create original records on loose
paper, then to transfer those into a permanent record book. Revelation Book 1, Revelation Book 2,
Minute Book 1, and Minute Book 2 (all available at josephsmithpapers.org) are examples.
19. Historical Introduction to Council of Fifty, Minutes, in JSP, CFM:9.
20. Andrew F. Ehat’s 1980 article on the Council of Fifty includes transcripts of William Clayton’s
journal entries related to the Nauvoo council. Journal entries for the following dates note that
Clayton was “copying” or “recording” the minutes of the council (meaning, copying and
expanding the raw minutes into the fair copy): August 18, 1844; September 6, 1844; February 6,
11, 12, 1845; March 6, 7, [unknown day], 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 24, 27, 1845; April 1, 16, 17, 21,
22, 24, 28, 1845; September 11, 1845; October 5, 1845. These entries often note that the copying
efforts took “all day.” Andrew F. Ehat, “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith
and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” BYU Studies 20, no. 3 (1980): 266–73.
21. JSP, R1:5.
22. Source Note and Historical Introduction to Minute Book 2, at josephsmithpapers.org.
23. See Source Notes and Historical Introductions at josephsmithpapers.org for Joseph Smith
Letterbook 2; Minute Book 2; and Joseph Smith, History, 1838–56, vol. A-1, respectively.
24. Joseph Smith, History, 1838–56, vol. C-1, 1260, at josephsmithpapers.org.
25. See editorial notes on and minutes of these meetings in JSP, CFM:19–50.
26. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:128.
27. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:169.
28. Historical Introduction to Council of Fifty, Minutes, in JSP, CFM:12–13.
29. William P. Richards to George Miller, February 3, 1845, Brigham Young Office Files, Church
History Library, Salt Lake City.
30. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:216–18, 232–44; emphasis added.
31. “Documents Generated, Reviewed, and Received by the Council of Fifty in Nauvoo,” at
josephsmithpapers.org.
32. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:366–69.
 Chapter 9

"TO CARRY OUT JOSEPH'S MEASURES

IS SWEETER TO ME THAN HONEY"
Brigham Young and the Council of Fifty1

Matthew J. Grow and Marilyn Bradford

Seven months after the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young reconvened
the Council of Fifty. Indicating his view of the council and his own role in
succeeding Smith as chairman, Young stated that he intended to “have the
priviledge of carrying out Josephs measures.” Indeed, he continued, “To
carry out Josephs measures is sweeter to me than the honey or the honey
comb.” Young hoped to enact the plans and priorities of Joseph Smith, who
had established the Council of Fifty to “go and establish a Theocracy either
in Texas or Oregon or somewhere in California” and to work “for the safety
and salvation of the saints by protecting them in their religious rights and
worship.”2
After the council’s reorganization, council member Orson Spencer
cautioned Young, suggesting that he would also have to divert from Smith’s
policies: “When Joseph was here he was for carrying out his (Josephs)
measures, he now wants prest. Young as our head to carry out his own
measures, and he believes they will be right whether they differ from
Josephs measures or not. Different circumstances require different
measures.”3 This interchange between Young and Spencer, which occurred
during one of the most difficult eras in Mormon history, illustrates Young’s
dilemma: as the successor to Joseph Smith as leader of the Latter-day
Saints, how to implement Smith’s vision while also retaining flexibility as
new circumstances arose.
Though the minutes of the Council of Fifty were published as part of The
Joseph Smith Papers, they arguably provide more insight into Brigham
Young than Joseph Smith. During the era of the Nauvoo minutes, March
1844–January 1846, the council operated for a much longer period of time
under Young than Smith—with meetings spanning eleven months for
Young versus three for Smith. In addition, the minutes of the Young era
tend to be much more detailed, capturing more of Young’s thoughts and the
dynamics of the council. In fact, nearly 70 percent of the words in the
Nauvoo minutes concern the Young era rather than the Smith era. Other
records illustrating Young’s work as an administrator—such as minutes
from the Quorum of the Twelve—also tend to be more fragmentary than the
council’s minutes. As such, the council’s minutes give rich insights into
Young’s personality, leadership style, and priorities.

YOUNG AND THE COUNCILUNDER JOSEPH SMITH

Young was a member of the Council of Fifty during its entire existence in
Nauvoo. Along with Smith and Willard Richards, Young was one of the
addressees of the letters sent from Saints in Wisconsin Territory that served
as the catalyst to organize the council. At the organizational meeting of the
council, Young is listed after only Joseph and Hyrum Smith among the
members, an indication of the increasing importance of his role as president
of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.4 Young recorded in his journal, “Met
in councel at Br. J. Smith store in company a bout 20 to orginise our Selves
into a compacked Boddy for the futher advenment of the gospel of Christ.”5
Young appears to have spoken infrequently to the council at first, though
the brief minutes of the opening meetings could obscure some of his
participation. According to the records, he first spoke on March 21, when
he seconded a motion from Joseph Smith that Erastus Snow serve a mission
in Vermont.6 Over the coming weeks, he became increasingly involved in
making or seconding motions to the council, though he was not appointed
to participate in any of the committees of the council.
During the first three months of the council, the minutes record two
significant statements from Young, the first on April 5 and the second on
April 18. In these remarks, Young articulated many themes that he would
return to in future council meetings and that defined some of his core
beliefs as a leader of the Church, including the necessity of revelation and
prophetic leadership, the merging of Church and state (particularly as seen
in Utah during the first decade of settlement), and the emphasis on
individual freedom and autonomy.7
Brigham Young was an addressee of the February 15, 1844, letters that led to the formation of the
Council of Fifty. Photograph by Welden C. Andersen. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt
Lake City.

In these statements, Young emphasized the primacy of revelation over

written laws, telling the council that he “thought when he came in this
church he should never want to keep book accounts again, Why? He
thought the law would be written in every mans heart, and there would be
that perfection in our lives, nothing further would be needed.” Furthermore,
he stated, “Revelations must govern. The voice of God, shall be the voice of
the people.” According to Young, revelation was suited to a particular
moment in time. He stated that he “supposed there has not yet been a
perfect revelation given, because we cannot understand it, yet we receive a
little here and a little there.” Young would “not be stumbled if the prophet
should translate the bible forty thousand times over and yet it should be
different in some places every time, because when God speake, he always
speaks according to the capacity of the people.” In addition, Young taught
that revelation would come after the people had done all they could: “When
we had done all we were capable to do, we could have the Lord speak and
tell us what is right.” Obeying God’s revelations would lead to further
revelation: “When God sees that his people have enlarged upon what he has
given us he will give us more.”8
Young also spoke of his views of Joseph Smith and of prophets in
general. “God appointed him,” Young told the council. “We did not appoint
him.” As such, Smith in his role as a revelator could “disagree with the
whole church” because he “is a perfect committee of himself.” Indeed,
Young stated, “It is the prerogative of the Almighty to differ from his
subjects in what he pleases, or how, or when he pleases, and what will they
do; they must bow to it, or kick themselves to death, or to hell.” However,
Young continued, “If it was necessary, and we were where we could not get
at the prophet, we could get the revelations of the Lord straight.”9
Young’s statements also indicated his vision of earthly governments as
compared with the kingdom of God. He recalled the “exalted views” he felt
at the first meeting of the council when Smith “stated that this was the
commencement of the organization of the kingdom of God.” Though the
kingdom of God was then just “in embryo,” Young believed that it would
“send forth its influence throughout the nations” and the governments of the
world would sink “into oblivion.” He gave his opinion that there was no
distinction between the spiritual and the temporal: “No line can be drawn
between the church and other governments, of the spiritual and temporal
affairs of the church.” Joseph Smith, by contrast, saw a distinction between
the “Church of God and kingdom of God,” asserting that the Church would
govern in ecclesiastical matters while the kingdom would govern in civil
matters. Nevertheless, a year later, Young reiterated that he saw this
distinction less clearly than Smith, stating that he would “defy any man to
draw the line between the spiritual and temporal affairs in the kingdom of
God.”10
Finally, Young spoke of his strong belief in independence and autonomy:
“Republicanism is, to enjoy every thing there is in heaven, earth or hell to
be enjoyed, and not infringe upon the rights of another.” Later in 1844,
William Smith referred to the “Mormon Creed” as “mind your own
business.” That statement resonated with Young, who often repeated it
during his long ministry. “To mind your own business,” Young later said,
“incorporates the whole duty of man.”11
 Young’s personality also comes through in these early council meetings.
Known for the quality of his singing voice, Brigham often sang in public.
One participant on the Camp of Israel (also known as Zion’s Camp) in
1834, Levi Hancock, recalled that Brigham’s duets with his brother Joseph
“were the sweetest I ever heard in the Camps of Zion.”12 On four occasions
in April and May, Young sang a parody of the popular patriotic song “Hail
Columbia” that had been composed by council member William W. Phelps.
In addition, Young was evidently among the council members who were
excused in the afternoon session of April 25 because they were performing
in a popular German play—Pizarro; or, The Death of Rolla—that evening.
Young also showed his ability to think quickly. On April 11, Joseph Smith
became so animated while speaking on worldly and heavenly constitutions
that he broke a two-foot ruler in half. Young quipped, “As the rule was
broken in the hands of our chairman so might every tyrannical government
be broken before us.”13
Young attended his last meeting of the council under Joseph Smith on
May 6, after which he departed on an electioneering mission. He was in
Peterborough, New Hampshire, when he received confirmation on July 16,
1844, that Joseph Smith had been killed. After gathering other apostles in
the East, Young raced back to Nauvoo, where he and the other members of
the Quorum of the Twelve took firm control over the Church organization.
He continued many of the “measures of Joseph” over these months but did
not immediately reorganize the Council of Fifty.14

REORGANIZATION OF THE COUNCIL

On February 4, 1845, after receiving news that the Illinois legislature had
revoked the Nauvoo municipal charter, the Council of Fifty met for the first
time following Smith’s death. Young asked the other twenty-four men
present “whether they are willing that I should take the place of brother
Joseph as chairman.” The men spoke in order of seniority. Samuel Bent, the
oldest man, set the tone of the responses that followed: “He rejoices in the
opportunity of meeting once more and feels steadfast in the principles and
rules of the council as laid down by our beloved brother Joseph. He feels
that it would be highly satisfactory to him to have president Young take the
place of brother Joseph as chairman and carry out Josephs measures.”
Orson Pratt stated, “It is a thing selfevident that the president of the church
stands at the head of this council.” William Clayton said, “We cannot carry
out Josephs measures but by sustaining Brigham Young as our chairman,
our head and successor of Joseph Smith.” Following the discussion, the
council voted unanimously to sustain Young as “the standing chairman of
this council and legal successor” to Smith. About a month later, council
members unanimously received Young as “prophet, priest, and king to this
kingdom forever after” as they had earlier received Joseph Smith.15
In addition to noting his own sustaining as leader of the council on
February 4, Young reported in his journal that the council was “righted up
& organized.” That day, the council sustained as members the twenty-five
men present and an additional fifteen men absent that day. Three men—
including Joseph and Hyrum Smith—had died since the council’s last
meeting in May 1844. In addition, the council rejected eleven men on
February 4, meaning that the membership stood at forty (fifty-four men had
joined the council under Joseph Smith). The council dropped men seen as
disloyal to Young and the Twelve Apostles, including Sidney Rigdon.
While Young worked to reclaim individuals whose loyalty was in doubt—
such as council members Lyman Wight and James Emmett, both of whom
had led companies of Saints from Nauvoo over the objections of Young—
he also did not want them in a confidential council.16
The council also dropped the three non-Mormons who had joined the
council under Joseph Smith. It does not appear that the council rejected the
men simply because they were non-Mormons. Of the three, one had been
arrested for counterfeiting, one had been accused of threatening to “bring a
mob on the church” around the time of Joseph Smith’s murder, and the third
later recalled that he had a falling-out with the Saints after Smith’s death.
However, no efforts were made to add any non-Mormons to the council.
Rather, they were replaced—as were the other council members who had
been dropped—by trusted Latter-day Saints over the next several weeks.17

HOW YOUNG OPERATED THE COUNCIL

The Council of Fifty met under Young’s direction in Nauvoo from February
through May 1845 and then, following a summer recess, from September
1845 through January 1846. Young later reconvened the council in Winter
Quarters and then in territorial Utah. The detailed council minutes in 1845
and early 1846 give insights into Young’s leadership approach for the thirty
years that he led the Saints, including his stated reliance on revelation, his
sometimes harsh rhetoric, and his focus on settlement and the temple.
Young clearly felt the heavy weight of leading the Latter-day Saints during
a perilous time. In describing his responsibility, he stated, “If men are set to
lead a people it is not for them to consult and satisfy their own private
feelings, but to use all the stratagem and cunning they are capable of to save
the people.”18
In leading the council, Young referred both to his ability to receive
revelation to guide the Latter-day Saints and his belief that Joseph Smith
had established the agenda they should follow. “While Joseph was living,”
he recalled, “it seems as though he was hurried by the Lord all the time, and
especially for the last year.” In Young’s mind, “It seemed he laid out work
for this church which would last them twenty years to carry out.” At the
same time, Young was confident that he and the other apostles could carry
the work forward: “When the Twelve have been separated from Joseph in
England or the Eastern States or elswhere, I defy any man to point out the
time when I was in the dark in regard to what should be done. . . . Some
have been fearful that I would blunder in the dark but it is not so.” Other
council members concurred. As Alpheus Cutler told the council in early
May, “The only thing he wants is the word of Lord on the subject. . . . We
have got a leader that can tell the mind of the Lord.”19
Following the example of Joseph Smith, Young encouraged robust debate
and discussion among council members. According to Young, “Joseph
declared for every man to spue [spew] out every thing there was in him, and
see if there is not a foundation in him for a great work. . . . He wants to hear
the brethrens views on the subject, and by talking over each others views,
we learn each others feelings, and all learn what each other knows.”
Certainly, Young stated, “There has always been an objection in this church
to listening to what is term explateration [a slang term meaning to explain
in detail], but if there are fools amongst us let them speak out their folly,
and we will know who are men of wisdom.” Like Smith, Young also
presided over the council through parliamentary procedure and the
establishment of committees. According to Young, running the council both
by revelation and candid debate meant that it was a “living body to enact
laws for the government of this kingdom, we are a living constitution.”20
Brigham Young reorganized the Council of Fifty on February 4, 1845. Daguerreotype, circa 1846,
attributed to Lucian R. Foster. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
 While Young encouraged vigorous discussions, his opinions and
decisions—like those of Joseph Smith the previous year—held enormous
sway. For instance, on March 22, after six weeks of discussions on a
proposal to send missionaries to American Indian tribes, Orson Spencer
motioned that Young make final decisions. Young initially “objected
inasmuch as the responsibility rests upon the council.” In response, George
Miller stated that the council had thoroughly discussed the matter and that
he was “in favor of immediate action, and dont want to see the ship rot on
the stocks.” Young then agreed to move forward as the final decision
maker.21 On other topics, council members likewise indicated that Young
should make decisions following discussion.
One difference between the Joseph Smith era and the Brigham Young era
was that under Young, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles became more
important to the Council of Fifty. On April 11, Young stated, “Formerly one
man stood at the head, now the Twelve stand there.” Over time, Young
sometimes relied on prior discussions among the Twelve before meetings of
the Council of Fifty to make decisions in the council. For instance, at the
April 11, 1845, meeting, the Council of Fifty endorsed decisions regarding
the Church’s publishing program and the Nauvoo print shop that had been
made the previous day by the Quorum of the Twelve.22

PRIORITIES OF THE COUNCIL UNDER YOUNG

Under Young’s direction, the Council of Fifty engaged less in the wide-
ranging debates about earthly and heavenly constitutions that occupied it
under Joseph Smith. Rather, the council focused on more practical matters,
particularly how to govern the Saints in and around Nauvoo following the
loss of the municipal charter, exploration of relationships with American
Indian tribes, a search for a sanctuary in the American West, and the
completion of the Nauvoo Temple. The shift from the philosophical to the
pragmatic reflected Young’s own practical personality. In addition, the
discussions under Smith had at least partially resolved many of the pressing
theoretical concerns, such as the purpose of the council and the meaning of
theocracy for the Latter-day Saints. Finally, the pragmatic turn under Young
reflected the increasingly tenuous situation of the Latter-day Saints in
Nauvoo: events demanded concrete decisions and a clear way forward for
the Saints.
How to respond to the loss of the Nauvoo charter was of immediate
concern when the council reconvened in February 1845. The Latter-day
Saints had explicitly designed the charter to provide them with protections
they had lacked in Missouri, including their own independent militia and
municipal court with the unusual power of issuing writs of habeas corpus.
The revocation of the charter—an indication that Illinois leaders believed
the Mormons incapable of self-government—left the Mormons in Nauvoo
without a city council, a court, a militia, a police force, and even the right to
perform marriages. In the words of William Clayton, the revocation of the
charter “laid us open to all the raviges of mobs & murderers.” Without the
charter, the Saints felt especially vulnerable to internal dissidents, criminals
who would prey upon the populace, and even the threat of a concerted
outside attack by their enemies.23
Over the next several months, the Council of Fifty essentially became a
shadow government in Nauvoo as it explored ways either to fight the repeal
of the charter or to provide a semblance of government for the city. For
instance, Young and other members of the council sent letters to leading
lawyers asking for recommendations to seek legal and judicial remedies.
They also wrote letters to the governors of each US state asking for their
response to Mormon persecution and about the prospect of the Latter-day
Saints settling elsewhere. Young, though, had little hope, telling the council
that “the only object of our writing to the governors is to give them the
privilege of sealing their own damnation.” On a more concrete level, the
council helped establish an extralegal police force in the city—known as the
“whistling and whittling brigades”—which relied on Church members to
watch suspicious visitors to Nauvoo and, if necessary, intimidate them to
leave the city. The council’s minutes indicate that the Saints were
responding to real threats and that, when the vigilante justice threatened to
get out of hand, Young tightened the controls on it.24
Even as council members discussed ways to govern and protect Nauvoo,
they became increasingly focused on leaving the city. In 1844, the council
had explored various possibilities for possible western settlements, focusing
on California, Oregon, and Texas, all of which were then outside the
borders of the United States. When council members learned that Texas had
been annexed to the United States in March 1845, they no longer saw it as a
viable option. Similarly, Oregon eventually dropped out of consideration,
leading Young and other members of the council to increasingly focus on
the Mexican territories that covered much of what is now the western
United States. On March 1, Young instructed the council, “The time has
come when we must seek out a location.” He connected the need for a
sanctuary to the deteriorating situation for the Latter-day Saints in Illinois
and the rest of the United States: “The yoke of the gentiles is broke, their
doom is sealed, there is not the least fibre can possibly be discovered that
binds us to the gentile world.”25
The early months of 1845 were dark days for Young and other Church
leaders, as they contemplated the loss of the Nauvoo charter, feared the
possibility that they would be driven from Illinois as they had from
Missouri, and worried that Church leaders would be arrested on judicial
writs from false charges, as they believed Joseph and Hyrum Smith had
been the previous year. In response to his concerns, Young advocated that
missionary work cease to the “Gentiles”—whom Young perceived as white
Americans and Europeans—and focus rather on the house of Israel,
including American Indians and others. Young also instructed at this time
that the Relief Society not reconvene, as it had the previous two springs,
apparently believing that some members had used the Relief Society to
foment opposition against plural marriage and Joseph Smith.26
Young’s concern can also be seen in his increasingly harsh rhetoric within
the Council of Fifty. Believing that “the gentiles” had rejected the gospel,
persecuted the Latter-day Saints in Missouri and Illinois, and murdered
Joseph and Hyrum Smith, he said that he did not “care about preaching to
the gentiles any longer.” Paraphrasing Lyman Wight, he stated, “Let the
damned scoundrels be killed, let them be swept off from the earth, and then
we can go and be baptized for them, easier than we can convert them.”
Furthermore, Young vowed that he would not allow himself to be taken by
what he viewed as corrupt judicial officers with false writs.27
Young’s statements to the council regarding inflammatory speeches also
give insight into his rhetoric. In March 1845, Young rebutted a comment
that Almon Babbitt had made about Mormon rhetoric several years earlier
in Missouri, a comment Young believed was targeted at Joseph Smith. “No
man can ever speak against Joseph in my presence,” Young stated, “but I
shall tell him of it.” Referencing those earlier speeches, which many
believed had contributed to violence against the Saints, Young explained,
“To the natural man this church has from the beginning had a boasting spirit
but to the priesthood it does not appear so.” According to Young, “A man
never could speak by the power of the spirit but his language would appear
to this ungodly world as inflammatory.” Thus, Young partly attributed the
inflammatory nature of some statements by himself and others as inspired
by the Spirit. Nevertheless, a month later, Young also cautioned council
members “to cease all kinds of harsh speeches which would cause the spirit
of God to leave us. We want to lay aside all such things that we may enjoy
peace in the city.”28
Under Young, the Council of Fifty focused on the need for the Saints to
find a sanctuary in the West. Besides sending emissaries to American
Indians, council members also studied the latest maps and reports and
explorations. As new information came in, the council eliminated
possibilities they considered impractical. Eventually the council began to
focus on the Rocky Mountains and then the valley of the Great Salt Lake as
the destination. Throughout this process, council members felt that they
were being guided by revelation, but not until the time for departure neared
did Young feel confident of the exact destination. On January 13, 1846, as
the Saints were preparing to leave their homes in Nauvoo, Young declared,
“The Saying of the Prophets would never be verified unless the House of
the Lord should be reared in the Tops of the Mountains & the Proud Banner
of liberty wave over the valley’s that are within the Mountains &c. I know
where the spot is.”29
Young’s statement occurred when the Council of Fifty was meeting in the
attic of the Nauvoo temple. Over the previous month, one of the council’s
objectives had been realized: the completion of enough of the Nauvoo
temple so the Latter-day Saints could perform temple rituals before they left
for the West. A year earlier, in January 1845, Young had contemplated
whether the Saints should remain in Nauvoo until the completion of the
temple. He sought in prayer an answer and recorded the response: “we
should.” On March 1, 1845, Young tied the completion of the temple with
the exodus from Nauvoo: “It is for us to take care of ourselves and go and
pick out a place where we can go and dwell in peace after we have finished
the houses [the temple and the Nauvoo House] and got our endowment, not
but that the Lord can give it to us in the wilderness, but I have no doubt we
shall get it here.” On November 30, 1845, the construction was far enough
along that Young partially dedicated the temple, and temple ordinance work
—particularly endowments and marriage sealings—began on December 10.
It was thus fitting that the final work of the Council of Fifty in Nauvoo
involved final preparations for the exodus as the council met in the temple.
Only when he was standing in the temple, as endowments and sealings
occurred in nearby rooms, could Brigham Young announce with clarity the
final destination of the Latter-day Saints’ exodus.30

NOTES
1. The language of this quotation has been standardized slightly for purposes of the title.
2. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, March 11, 1844, April 18, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow,
Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council
of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The
Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake
City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 257, 40, 128 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
3. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:222.
4. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 10 and 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:32, 36, 43.
5. Brigham Young, Journal, March 13, 1844, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 21, 1844, in JSP, CFM:59.
7. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 5 and 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:82–84, 119–21.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 5 and 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:82, 119.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:120–21.
10. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, April 5, 1844, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:119, 82,
128, 401.
11. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 5, 1844, in JSP, CFM:84; Michael Hicks, “Minding Business: A
Note on ‘The Mormon Creed,’” BYU Studies Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Fall 1986): 128; Brigham
Young, Discourse, May 15, 1864, Journal of Discourses (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855–86),
10:295.
12. Leonard Arrington, American Moses (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 40.
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, May 3, 1844, April 25, 1844, April 11, 1844, in JSP,
CFM:110, 118, 138, 131, 101.
14. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 6, 1844, in JSP, CFM:147–59; “Part 2: February–May 1845,” in
JSP, CFM:205.
15. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:218–25, 256.
16. Young, Journal, February 4, 1845; Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:216,
225–27.
17. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:226–27.
18. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 6, 1845, in JSP, CFM:448.
19. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, May 6, 1845, in JSP, CFM:257, 445.
20. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:254, 401.
21. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:353–56.
22. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:390, 398.
23. “Part 2: February–May 1845,” in JSP, CFM:212–15; William Clayton, Journal, December 27,
1844, quoted in JSP, CFM:213.
24. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:312, 330–31.
25. Volume Introduction,” in JSP, CFM:xlii; Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP,
CFM:257.
26. Document 1.13, in Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J.
Grow, The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History
(Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 168–71.
27. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, March 18, 1845, April 15, 1845, in JSP, CFM:299–
300, 337, 424–25.
28. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, April 15, 1845, in JSP, CFM:307–9, 421–22.
29. John D. Lee, Journal, January 13, 1846, 79.
30. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 13, 1846, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:257–58, 521; Young,
Journal, January 24, 1845; “Part 4: January 1846,” in JSP, CFM:507
 Chapter 10

AMERICAN INDIANS AND THE

NAUVOO-ERA COUNCIL OF FIFTY
Jeffrey D. Mahas
“We’ll ask our cousin Lemuel, to join us heart & hand,
And spread abroad our curtains, throughout fair Zions land”
John Taylor, April 11, 18451
Most scholarship on the Council of Fifty has focused on the political and
religious aspirations of the council and its members. Questions of
theodemocracy, Joseph Smith’s presidential campaign, or westward
migration have dominated these discussions.2 With the publication of the
minutes of the council by the Joseph Smith Papers Project, it is clear that
historians have underestimated the degree to which perceptions of and plans
related to American Indians played into the Council of Fifty’s actions in
Nauvoo.3 Indeed, the council’s discussions during 1845 largely revolved
around designs to establish alliances with and among the Indians living
west of the Mississippi River. These discussions in the Council of Fifty
reveal the central role Mormons assigned to Indians as they planned for
their westward migration.
Mormon interest in American Indians originated with the Book of
Mormon, which principally narrates the story of two civilizations: the
Nephites and the Lamanites. According to Book of Mormon prophecies, the
descendants of the Lamanites—identified by early Mormons as all Native
Americans—would receive the Book of Mormon and convert en masse to
the faith their forefathers had rejected. The Lamanites would then scourge
all those who refused to repent “as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as
a young lion among the flocks of sheep” before joining with the repentant
Gentiles—the Mormon designation for white Euro-Americans—in building
a New Jerusalem in North America.4 Both the Book of Mormon and Joseph
Smith’s later revelations associated the mass conversion of the Lamanites
and the subsequent conflict with the beginning of the Millennium.5
 During the 1830s and early 1840s, Mormons made several attempts to
bring about the conversion of the Lamanites, starting with the September
1830 commission directing Oliver Cowdery to “go unto the Lamanites &
Preach my Gospel unto them & cause my Church to be established among
them.”6 During the 1830s, rumors of Mormon-Indian alliances among the
Saints’ non-Mormon neighbors fueled anti-Mormon accusations and
violence.7 Within a few years, Church leaders encouraged members to
downplay Mormon interest toward Indians.8 The 1840s saw a return to
proselytizing among American Indians, with men such as Jonathan
Dunham, James Emmett, and John Lowe Butler being sent to the
Stockbridge, Potawatomi, Sioux, and others groups in the Indian Territory
west of the Missouri River or elsewhere. However, the purposes or
expectations of these missions were shrouded in secrecy.9 One of the great
contributions of the Council of Fifty’s minutes is that they provide a more
detailed explanation of early Mormon expectations for American Indians
than previously existed, especially for 1844 and 1845.

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY UNDER JOSEPH SMITH

Indians played a crucial role in the immediate impetus for the organization
of the council. In 1843, apostle Lyman Wight and bishop George Miller led
a large company of Saints to Black River Falls, Wisconsin Territory, to
continue the Church’s lumber operations in the region.10 During the
following winter, these Saints had frequent contact with Winnebago,
Chippewa, and Menominee Indians and sought permission to begin
missionary work among these tribes.11 Before they could follow through
with their intentions, a hostile federal Indian agent in the area mistakenly
claimed that the Mormons were trespassing on Menominee Indian lands,
and local Mormon leaders began to worry that they would be forced from
the area. Rather than return to Nauvoo, these men, led by Wight and Miller,
wrote to Joseph Smith, proposing that the Wisconsin Saints abandon their
logging efforts and instead create a Mormon colony in the Republic of
Texas. They claimed with a great deal of exaggeration that the local Indians
had received the Mormons “as their councilors both temporal and spiritual”
and that they could convince these Indians to come with them to Texas.
There they could create a settlement that would provide a foothold to spread
the gospel to the native peoples in western North America as well as in
Central and South America.12
Joseph Smith conferred with a number of American Indian delegations in Nauvoo in the 1840s.
Lithograph by Henry R. Robinson based on drawing probably by Edward W. Clay. Joseph the
Prophet Addressing the Lamanites (New York City: Prophet, 1844). Courtesy of Church History
Library, Salt Lake City.

When Joseph Smith received the letters on March 10, he assembled a

small group of trusted Church leaders and advisers that would quickly
become the Council of Fifty to discuss the Wisconsin Saints’ proposal.
Despite the enthusiasm contained in these letters, American Indians were
never the primary focus of the Council of Fifty under Smith’s leadership.
Instead, the council focused much of its attention on the Wisconsin Saints’
proposal for a Mormon colony in the Republic of Texas.
On January 1, 1845, William Clayton, the council’s clerk, reflected on the
council’s activities for the previous year and wrote that the council had
“devised [a plan] to restore the Ancients [i.e., Indians] to the Knowledge of
the truth and the restoration of Union and peace amongst ourselves.”13
Nevertheless, under Joseph Smith, the council’s only explicit action in the
minutes was to follow up on the Wisconsin Saints’ exaggerated reports by
sending James Emmett “on a mission to the Lamanites [in Wisconsin] to
instruct them to unite together,” presumably in preparation for their
eventual mass conversion.14 When Emmett conveyed his message to a
Menominee leader, possibly Chief Oshkosh, the leader largely dismissed its
practicality, and Emmett returned with nothing to show for his efforts.15
Additionally, on April 4, the Council of Fifty met with a delegation of
Potawatomi Indians in Nauvoo and Joseph Smith encouraged the visitors to
“cease their wars with each other.”16
While the Council of Fifty spent little time in 1844 discussing or
contemplating how Indians would fit into this new millenarian government,
their attitudes changed after Joseph Smith was killed by an anti-Mormon
lynch mob on June 27, 1844. In the Mormon worldview, Smith’s violent
death was a literal and total rejection of the Mormons and their message by
the nation. Smith’s death eroded whatever positive feelings remained for the
United States among the Mormons. When the Illinois legislature repealed
the statute providing a city government for Nauvoo in January 1845, it
added to their outrage. Mormons interpreted these major disappointments
within their millenarian worldview, associating their setbacks with the
plight of Native peoples. Brigham Young publicly preached that the actions
of Illinois and the United States had expelled the Mormons from political
citizenship and made them “a distinct nation just as much as the
Lamanites.”17 Given this state of affairs, many Mormons now believed that
the promised time had come for the American Indians to convert and “vex
the Gentiles with a soar vexation.”18

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTYUNDER BRIGHAM YOUNG

With Mormons already interpreting recent setbacks within their
millenarian framework, their worldview was seemingly confirmed with the
unannounced and unexpected arrival in Nauvoo of Lewis Dana on January
27, 1845. Dana—a member of the Oneida nation—had been baptized along
with his wife and daughter in the spring of 1840 after Dimick Huntington
read them the entire Book of Mormon over the course of two or three
weeks.19 Several Mormons, including apostle Wilford Woodruff, interpreted
Dana’s conversion as the beginning of the prophesied redemption of the
Lamanites.20 When Dana returned to Nauvoo in 1845, Latter-day Saints
began again to discuss his place in the millennial Mormon–American
Indian alliance. In February, Dana received a prophetic statement known as
a patriarchal blessing that stated he would be “a Mighty instrument in
kniting the hearts of the Lamanites together . . . bringing thousands to a
knowledge of their Redeemer & to a knowledge of their Fathers.” The
blessing explicitly connected Dana to the prophecies contained in the Book
of Mormon, promising that he would “gather thousands of them
[Lamanites] to the City of Zion.”21
A week after Dana’s arrival in Nauvoo, Brigham Young reconvened the
Council of Fifty for the first time since Joseph Smith’s death. While the
repeal of the city charter in January 1845 forced Church leaders to
reconsider plans to find a new home, Dana’s arrival likely rekindled hopes
that the other tasks charged to the council could be completed. Indeed,
under Brigham Young the anticipated conversion of the American Indians
took on a much more central role in the council’s deliberations. Throughout
February, Church leaders informally discussed the possible role Dana
would play in their designs. On March 1, 1845, the Council of Fifty began
discussing Dana’s mission in earnest. At the beginning of the meeting,
Young formally added Dana and nine other Mormons to the council—
including Jonathan Dunham, a frequent missionary to the American
Indians. When introducing Dana, Young told him that the council was
organized not only “to find a place where we can dwell in peace and lift of
the standard of liberty” but also “for the purpose of uniting the Lamanites,
and sowing the seeds of the gospel among them. They will receive it en
Masse.” As the “first of the Lamanites” to be “admitted to this kingdom,”
Dana sensed his responsibility to bring about the long-anticipated mass
conversion of his people and swore with uplifted hand, “In the name of the
Lord I am willing to do all I can.”22
At this meeting of the Council of Fifty, Young announced his intentions
to send eight men west with Dana to go from tribe to tribe seeking to forge
a pan-Indian alliance. “I want to see the Lamanites come in by thousands
and the time has come,” Young stated.23 The certainty Young and other
council members placed on an imminent Lamanite conversion reveals how
thoroughly immersed they were in Mormonism’s millenarian theology.
“Our time is short among the gentiles, and the judgment of God will soon
come on them like [a] whirlwind” Young declared on March 11, 1845.24 The
council seemed to universally agree that in light of recent events they
should halt Mormon missionary efforts among the Euro-Americans they
viewed as Gentiles. Following the private deliberations of the Council of
Fifty, Young publicly announced on March 16 that he would “scarcely send
a man out to preach” that year, stating that “if the world wants preachers, let
them come here.”25 Young reiterated this policy a month later at the
Church’s general conference, reasoning that just as the ancient apostles
turned to the Gentiles when the Jews rejected the gospel, the latter-day
apostles would preach only to Israelites because the Gentiles had rejected
the gospel.26 Apostle Heber C. Kimball took this resolve one step further
and encouraged a total separation from the Gentile world. Contextually it is
clear that the decision to not preach or interact with the Gentiles was
directed solely toward white Americans and that Mormonism’s missionary
impulse remained intact, in theory, on a global scale.27

THE WESTERN MISSION

Nevertheless, the Mormons’ more global ambitions were put on hold in
favor of the immediate mission to the American Indians. While the Council
of Fifty was unanimous in believing that the time had come to send a
delegation to the Native peoples in the West, there was less agreement over
how the missionaries should proceed. For nearly two months following
Brigham Young’s announcement of the mission, the body debated the
missionaries’ destination and message. By March 18, Jonathan Dunham had
received intelligence that eventually helped settle these debates. On that
day, Dunham announced that he had learned of “a council of the delegates
of all the Indians Nations” that would take place in southern Indian
Territory in the summer of 1845.28
The council Dunham described had been called by the Creeks in response
to violent altercations with both the Pawnee and the Comanche. According
to James Logan, the federal Indian agent to the Creeks, the council was to
be “an assemblage of deputations from all the Indian Tribes on this frontier
as well as those of the wandering tribes of the distant Prairies to meet in
Council on the Deep Fork on the first of May next, with a view of settling
all difficulties that may exist between them respectively, and to discuss such
matters as may tend to advance peaceable and amicable relations.”29
Logan’s description of the scope of this council was no exaggeration.
According to the Cherokee Advocate, by May 1845 nearly 850 delegates
from eleven tribes had assembled at the Creek council ground.30
It is unclear how Dunham learned of this impending Indian council;
however, the Council of Fifty immediately made attendance at this pan-
Indian council a central goal of the “Western Mission.” Although Brigham
Young had initially called for a party of eight or more, by April the council
favored sending a smaller group of missionaries. On April 23, 1845, Lewis
Dana and the men chosen to accompany him—Jonathan Dunham, Charles
Shumway, and Phineas Young—left Nauvoo and began traveling southwest
to the region surrounding Fort Leavenworth. There the missionaries tarried
for ten days among the western Stockbridge and Kickapoo before
continuing their journey south to the Indian council.31 Both tribes had a
history of favorable contact with Mormons, especially Dunham, and their
interactions with the missionaries proved to be the only favorable results of
the mission.32 Unfortunately for the missionaries, their lengthy stay with the
Stockbridge meant that the missionaries missed the conference they hoped
to attend. Faced with this disappointment, Phineas Young and Charles
Shumway abandoned the mission and returned to Nauvoo.33 For his part,
Phineas Young was disgusted with the whole affair and blamed the failures
on Dana and Dunham’s incompetence.34

The Council of Fifty dispatched Phineas Young and other “western missionaries” to attempt to
forge alliances with American Indian tribes. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

Meanwhile, Dunham and Dana remained west of the Missouri in Indian

Territory and reverted to the original plan of going tribe to tribe. In August,
Brigham Young sent out another small wave of missionaries to the Indians,
but when they arrived near Fort Leavenworth they were met by Dana and
another Mormon Indian, who brought news that Dunham had died in late
July after an illness of three weeks.35 When the council heard a report on the
missionary efforts in September 1845, Young sought to put a positive spin
on their labors, claiming that they had now “learned considerable of the
feelings of the Indians towards us, and the prospect is good.”36
Nevertheless, talk of an immediate Indian alliance disappeared from the
council. While the missionaries had been gone, Church leaders had largely
abandoned their more militaristic and millennial rhetoric surrounding a
potential Mormon-Indian alliance. Under Brigham Young’s direction, a
select group of Church leaders had formulated a new plan to send a
company of Saints west, “somewhere near the Great Salt Lake.” In the fall
and winter of 1845, the Council of Fifty primarily concerned itself with the
practical preparations to move nearly fifteen thousand men, women, and
children across the Rocky Mountains.37
Young optimistically looked to the West as the location for the promised
redemption of the Lamanites to begin. Speaking of the Mormons’
contemplated home on the other side of the Rocky Mountains just a month
before their departure from Nauvoo, Young reasoned that “it is a place
where we could get access to all the tribes on the northern continent and
some of the tribes could be easily won over. The shoshows [Shoshones] are
a numerous tribe and just as quick as we could give them a pair of breeches
and a blanket they would be our servants, and cultivate the earth for us the
year round.”38 Thus, the Mormon attempts to form an Indian alliance were
deferred to await the removal of the Saints from Nauvoo and the
colonization of the Great Basin.

CONCLUSION
Despite all the time and attention the Council of Fifty invested in bringing
about the hoped-for conversion of and alliance with American Indians, they
had had little or no success by the time wagons began crossing the
Mississippi River in February 1846. Nevertheless, for historians interested
in Mormon-Indian relations, the records of the council’s deliberations
provide an unprecedented window into Mormon expectations during the
tumultuous years of 1844 to 1846. However, the value of the Council of
Fifty minutes is not limited to the chronological scope of the minutes.
Instead, the debates and discussions surrounding Mormon conceptions of
and designs for American Indians illuminate earlier secretive attitudes and
beliefs and also provide greater context for understanding the relationship
between Mormon settlers and their Indian neighbors in the Great Basin
through the nineteenth century and beyond.

NOTES
1. From Taylor’s lyrics to the song “The Upper California,” in Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11,
1845, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and
Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–January 1846, vol. 1 of the
Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J.
Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 402 (hereafter
JSP, CFM).
2. See, for example, Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the
Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967); D.
Michael Quinn, “The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844–1945,” BYU Studies 20, no. 2
(Winter 1980): 163–97; Andrew F. Ehat, “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph Smith
and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” BYU Studies 20, no. 3 (Spring 1980): 253–80; and
Jedediah S. Rogers, ed., The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City: Signature
Books, 2014).
3. A slight exception may be scholarship focusing on Mormon splinter groups—such as the one led
by Alpheus Cutler, who later placed a great deal of emphasis on Indian missions. See, for
example, Danny L. Jorgensen, “Building the Kingdom of God: Alpheus Cutler and the Second
Mormon Mission to the Indians, 1846–1853,” Kansas History 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1992): 192–209.
4. 3 Nephi 21:12; Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf,
2005), 84–108; W. Paul Reeve, Religion of a Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for
Whiteness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 57–58; Armand L. Mauss, All Abraham’s
Children: Changing Mormon Conceptions of Race and Lineage (Urbana: University of Illinois,
2003), 48–52.
5. Revelation, December 25, 1832 [D&C 87], in Matthew C. Godfrey, Mark Ashurst-McGee, Grant
Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, eds., Documents, Volume 2: July 1831–
January 1833, vol. 2 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee,
Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman Bushman, and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2013), 330–31 (hereafter JSP, D2); Revelation, December 16–17, 1833 [D&C
101], in Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Brent M. Rogers, Grant Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William
G. Hartley, eds., Documents, Volume 3: February 1833–March 1834, vol. 3 of the Documents
series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City:
Church Historian’s Press, 2014), 396.
6. Revelation, September 1830–B [D&C 28], in Michael Hubbard MacKay, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, Grant
Underwood, Robert J. Woodford, and William G. Hartley, eds., Documents, Volume 1: July 1828–
June 1831, vol. 1 of the Documents series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee,
Ronald K. Esplin, Richard Lyman Bushman, and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2013), 185.
7. Reeve, Religion of a Different Color, 52–105.
8. Joseph Smith to William W. Phelps, July 31, 1832, in JSP, D2:266.
9. Ronald W. Walker, “Seeking the ‘Remnant’: The Native American during the Joseph Smith
Period,” Journal of Mormon History 19, no. 1 (1993): 1–33.
10. George Miller to “Dear Brother,” June 27, 1855, Northern Islander, August 23, 1855, [1].
11. See for example Joseph Smith, Journal, February 20, 1844, in Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith,
and Brent M. Rogers, eds., Journals, Volume 3: May 1843–June 1844, vol. 3 of the Journals series
of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2015), 179.
12. Lyman Wight et al. to Joseph Smith et al., February 15, 1844; George Miller et al. to Joseph
Smith et al., February 15, 1844, in JSP, CFM:17–39.
13. William Clayton, Journal, January 1, 1845, quoted in Ehat, “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on
Earth,’” 268.
14. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 21, 1844, in JSP, CFM:58.
15. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 31, 1844, in JSP, CFM:171.
16. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 4, 1844, in JSP, CFM:75–76.
17. William Clayton, Journal, February 26, 1845, quoted in James B. Allen, No Toil nor Labor Fear:
The Story of William Clayton, Biographies in Latter-day Saint History (Provo, UT: Brigham
Young University Press, 2002), 174.
18. Revelation, December 25, 1832 [D&C 87], in JSP, D2:330.
19. Oliver B. Huntington, History, 1845–46, 83, Oliver Boardman Huntington, Papers, 1843–1932,
L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT.
20. Wilford Woodruff, Journal, July 13, 1840, in Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 1833–1898, ed. Scott
G. Kenney, vol. 1, 1833–1840 (Midvale, UT: Signature Books, 1983), 483.
21. Patriarchal Blessing, John Smith to Lewis Dana, ca. 1845, Patriarchal Blessing Collection,
Church History Library, Salt Lake City (hereafter CHL).
22. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:255.
23. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:257.
24. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:299.
25. Minutes, March 16, 1845, Historian’s Office, General Church Minutes, 1839–1877, CHL.
26. “The Conference,” Nauvoo Neighbor, April 16, 1845, [2].
27. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:356.
28. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:342.
29. James Logan to T. Hartley Crawford, March 3, 1845, in US Bureau of Indian Affairs, Letters
Received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824–81, National Archives Microfilm Publications,
microcopy M234 (Washington, DC: National Archives, 1959), reel 227.
30. “The Indian Council,” Cherokee Advocate, May 22, 1845, [4].
31. Phineas Young, Journal, April 23–May 19, 1845, CHL.
32. Walker, “Seeking the ‘Remnant,’” 18, 24.
33. Jonathan Dunham to Brigham Young, May 31, 1845, Brigham Young Office Files, CHL.
34. Phineas Young, Journal, May 19, 1845, CHL.
35. Daniel Spencer, Journal, August 3–18, 1845, CHL.
36. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:471.
37. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:472.
38. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11, 1846, in JSP, CFM:518.
 Chapter 11

A MONUMENT OF THE SAINTS'

INDUSTRY
The Nauvoo House and the Council of Fifty

Matthew C. Godfrey
In January 1841, Joseph Smith dictated a revelation that commanded
members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to begin
construction of two structures in Nauvoo, Illinois: a temple and what was
designated as the Nauvoo House, a boardinghouse for travelers. At times,
Joseph believed that completing the Nauvoo House was as important as
finishing the temple—the spiritual center of Nauvoo—if not more so.
However, delays in construction and an eventual emphasis on finishing the
temple meant that the Nauvoo House was nowhere near completion at the
time of Joseph’s murder in June 1844. For a period of time thereafter, little
was seemingly done on the house. In March 1845, however, the Council of
Fifty took up the status of the Nauvoo House, and it became a periodic topic
of discussion for the next several months as construction resumed. The
story of these 1845 efforts has been ably told by historians using the records
of the Nauvoo House Association, the journal of William Clayton, and the
correspondence of George Miller, among other records.1 However, minutes
of the Council of Fifty flesh out the story, showing the role that the council
played in generating support to resume construction on the building, as well
as its role in supervising the efforts. The minutes demonstrate that the
council had jurisdiction over at least some of the Church’s financial
interests, a topic that deserves more consideration by historians.
This “View of Nauvoo” comes from an 1859 lithograph of a sketch by John Shroede. Detail from
Map of Hancock County, Illinois (Holmes and Arnold, 1859). Courtesy of Library of Congress,
Washington, DC.

BEGINNINGS OF THE NAUVOO HOUSE

The January 1841 revelation directed the Church to construct the Nauvoo
House as a “boarding house . . . for the boarding of strangers.” The
structure would “be a delightful habitation for man,” the revelation
continued, “and a resting place for the weary traveller.” George Miller,
Lyman Wight, John Snider, and Peter Haws were to serve as a committee
overseeing construction of the house, which would be financed from the
sale of stock at fifty dollars a share. The revelation directed several
individuals, including Joseph Smith, to purchase stock in the house.2 In
February 1841, the Illinois state legislature passed an act that incorporated
the Nauvoo House Association, setting forth the purposes of the house and
providing authorization for the issuance of stock. The act also declared that
Joseph Smith “and his heirs would hold a suite of rooms in perpetual
succession” in the house because it would be built on his property,
something which the revelation also allowed for.3
Under the authority of the act and the revelation, construction on the
house began in 1841, and emissaries of the Church were sent to sell stock.
The building, which was originally planned as an L-shaped structure with
five floors, was seen, along with the temple, as an important component of
Nauvoo. Just as the Saints needed to construct the temple to show their
obedience to God, they felt that they were under a divine mandate to build
the Nauvoo House. Construction of the house also provided employment to
many who converted to the Church in the British Isles and then emigrated
to Nauvoo. Despite this labor force, and despite the importance that Joseph
Smith placed on completing the structure, construction efforts were only
sporadic from 1841 to 1844, in part because of work on the temple. Indeed,
in March 1844, Smith asked that work on the Nauvoo House cease until the
temple was completed: “We need the temple more than any thing Else.”4 By
the time of Joseph’s death in June 1844, only the ground floor’s walls were
completed.5

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTYAND THE NAUVOO HOUSE

In the months after Joseph Smith’s death, little, if anything, was done on the
house as Church members tried to cope with the loss of their leader and
decide who would take his place. A few months after Brigham Young and
the Twelve Apostles assumed leadership in the fall of 1844, Young resumed
meetings of the Council of Fifty—an organization Joseph Smith had
established in March 1844 to govern the kingdom of God on the earth. One
of the questions the council examined was whether to move forward with
the completion of the Nauvoo House. On March 11, 1845, the council first
addressed the subject. Brigham Young, who chaired the meeting, requested
“that arrangements be made forthwith to put the works in operation,” but
the minutes provide no further detail about these arrangements or what
other considerations the council gave to the question.6

IMPORTANCE OF COMPLETING CONSTRUCTION

More discussion occurred at the council’s March 18 meeting. Young
explained that a revelation had commanded the Church to build the house,
“and we have sent out men to fetch in the means to do it.” Because “the
stone for the Temple are about cut, and we will have a host of hands without
work,” Young believed it was an opportune time to resume construction on
the Nauvoo House. Concerned that Church members in need of
employment would abandon Nauvoo, Young proposed that they be
employed on the house and that the council emphasize to the Church “that
if they don’t build that house they shall bear the curse of it.” Young himself
felt strongly about completing the work, stating that “there are sacred
records deposited in the foundation of that house and it is our duty to build
the house and cover up those records.”7 He proposed that shares of stock be
sold at the April general conference and that George Miller, assisted by
Newel K. Whitney, “call a meeting of the stockholders and enter into the
work immediately.”8
After Young spoke, other council members conveyed their support of
recommencing work. Heber C. Kimball noted that three subjects occupied
“his whole mind and the minds of his brethren”: construction of the temple;
the “western mission,” whereby men were to consult with American Indian
tribes about potential alliances and gathering places; and the building of the
Nauvoo House. Kimball believed that the Church had sufficient means to
accomplish all three of these projects, claiming that he alone could raise ten
thousand dollars for them. Like Young, Kimball also supported work on the
Nauvoo House because of the employment opportunities it would provide,
stating that he did not want to send Church members “away among the
gentiles.” John Taylor believed that the Nauvoo House would make the
Saints richer rather than poorer, even with monetary outlays that would
need to be made. With this high level of support among the Council of
Fifty, Orson Pratt moved that George Miller “settle up the books of the
Nauvoo House Association, call a meeting of the Stockholders and appoint
men to fill the place of the Trustees who are gone away.”9 The motion
passed unanimously.10

SUPERVISORY ROLE
Miller, who had been serving as a trustee for the Nauvoo House since its
inception, tried to carry out the council’s direction. On March 22, 1845, he
reported to the council that “he had taken steps to call a meeting of the
Stock Holders” for April 5, but that more needed to be done to ascertain
“the amount of means belonging to the Nauvoo House.” One of the
problems was that Lyman Wight had evidently lost a considerable number
of stock certificates in 1843, leaving a question as to what certificates were
actually still extant. To solve this problem, Miller proposed publishing a
notice requesting that stockholders “give account of the date and numbers
of the certificate[s]” that they held and that those certificates lost by Wight
then be invalidated. Miller also recommended that a building plan of the
house be created and that “a bill of the lumber and other materials”
necessary for construction be given to the council.11
 Miller clearly regarded the Council of Fifty as taking a supervisory role
over the Nauvoo House, and other council members evidently agreed.
William W. Phelps and Orson Hyde, for example, recommended the
formation of a committee of council members “to investigate the affairs of
the Nauvoo House.” However, such a proposal—and apparently even
Miller’s proposals—did not sit well with Lucien Woodworth, original
architect of the Nauvoo House. Woodworth declared that the committee
designated in the January 1841 revelation should be the one overseeing the
house. Woodworth also believed that he should play a large role in the
house’s construction, given that he had been appointed by the Nauvoo
House committee “under the directions of president Joseph Smith to be the
architect” of the building. In addition, Woodworth claimed that he had been
“appointed to superintend the building of the house.” Indeed, Woodworth
continued, he knew as much about the house “as any committee which can
be appointed.”12
In the ensuing discussion, it became apparent that many members of the
Council of Fifty were not aware of Woodworth’s extensive involvement
with the house. However, even after considering Woodworth’s already
existing role and what Miller had done and was doing on the house, council
members still believed that more supervision from the Council of Fifty was
necessary. A committee of Miller, Woodworth, Newel K. Whitney, William
Clayton, and James Sloan (who was not a member of the council) was
appointed to go through the financial papers of the Nauvoo House
Association, and Woodworth was appointed to prepare a plan of the house
to present to the council. Such tasks should be completed, the council voted,
before the Church’s April general conference.13
On March 25, 1845, the committee appointed by the council reported on
its findings regarding the Nauvoo House Association stock, including the
total number of certificates that had been issued (2,377), how many of those
had been sold (348), how many were missing (272), and how many the
trustees still held (1,773).14 Because some certificates were missing, several
council members advocated calling in the old stock and issuing new stock
to prevent fraud, something that Peter Haws, one of the original trustees of
the association, asserted Joseph Smith had told him to do. Joseph had even
had new certificates printed for this purpose, Haws continued. Although
there was much support among the council for this proposition, Brigham
Young declared that he had spoken to Joseph Smith before his death about
the issuance of new stock and that Young did not believe that it was
necessary to do so “at present.” Instead, he recommended that the
committee’s report be printed in the newspapers, including the dates of the
missing certificates, thereby decreasing the chances of fraud.15

THE SMITH FAMILY’S INTEREST

The council also examined the question of Joseph Smith’s interest in the
Nauvoo House—an interest specified both in the revelation instructing the
establishment of the house and in the charter of the Nauvoo House
Association. Lucien Woodworth insisted that Joseph had “no claim in that
house,” but Brigham Young stated unequivocally that “brother Joseph and
his heirs have an interest in that house.” Young wanted the interest to be
sold at auction, but he also declared that the Nauvoo House trustees should
still deed to Joseph’s heirs “the suit[e] of rooms contemplated in the house”
once the building was completed. Orson Pratt then moved that the
administrator of Joseph’s estate—Joseph W. Coolidge, a member of the
Council of Fifty—“be advised to advertise according to law the right title
and interest of Joseph Smith in that house and that the Trustees for the
church be advised to bid it off.” The motion passed, and the April 2, 1845,
issue of the Nauvoo Neighbor contained a notice from Coolidge that an
estate sale would be held on April 12, including the sale of “all the interest
of Joseph Smith deceased in the Nauvoo House Association.”16

STOCK AND TRUSTEES

On April 5, 1845, the stockholders of the Nauvoo House Association met.
Presumably because so few stockholders were in attendance, the meeting
adjourned until April 7 after being called to order. On that day, several
items of business were transacted, including the appointment of George A.
Smith and Amasa Lyman as trustees in the association, replacing Lyman
Wight and George Snider. Woodworth also displayed his plans for at least
some parts of the building.17 That afternoon, the Church met in general
conference, and Young raised the subject of the Nauvoo House, asking that
all those willing to purchase one share of stock in the house raise their
hands. According to the minutes of the meeting, “there were so many hands
uplifted that they could not possibly be counted.” Young then asked for a
raise of hands of those willing to purchase two shares of stock, and “quite a
large number of hands were shown.” When Young asked who was willing
to complete the Nauvoo House, “every hand was raised in the
congregation.” Young then informed the group that the books of the
Nauvoo House Association “would be opened in the upper part of the brick
store” on April 14.18
On April 15, George Miller conveyed to the Council of Fifty that the
association’s trustees were “ready to go into active operation.” He
wondered whether the trustees’ duties “should be investigated in this
council.” After some discussion, the council voted that the trustees’
business should be under the supervision of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles rather than the Council of Fifty.19 Despite this designation, at least
some business pertaining to the Nauvoo House continued to come before
the council. On May 6, 1845, for example, Miller raised a question about
whom deeds for property given in exchange for stock in the house be made
out to. The council voted that they should be made to the trustees-in-trust of
the Church.20
After this decision, the Nauvoo House did not appear in the minutes of
the Council of Fifty again until January 1846, when Church leaders were
making preparations to depart Nauvoo. At that time, Brigham Young
declared that he wanted to leave a group of men in Nauvoo to “finish the
Temple and perhaps the Nauvoo House, for he believes they can both be
finish’d as well as not and for his part he is willing to leave all his property
to finish these two houses.” Later in this same meeting, Young stated that
the completion of these two buildings would “stand as monuments of the
industry of this people,” making it important that they were completed. The
council agreed, voting unanimously that both the temple and the Nauvoo
House be completed. Council members also responded with a “universal
no” to the question of whether the two buildings should be sold. Clearly,
having been directed by revelation to complete these two buildings, Church
members continued to believe it was a sacred duty to do so.21

CONCLUSION
The Nauvoo House was never finished. By October 1845, Willard Richards
reported that the walls now approached “nearly the third story above the
basement,” but that may have been an exaggerated portrayal of the
progress. Whatever the case, the house never came close to completion.22
Regardless, the minutes of the Council of Fifty reemphasize what other
records indicate: that construction of the building was considered a
significant assignment from the Lord, akin to the establishment of the
Nauvoo Temple. The minutes also provide a richer account of the role the
council played in generating renewed interest in finishing the house in the
spring of 1845. Had it not been for discussions in the council about the
Nauvoo House, it is debatable whether the Saints would have recommenced
their work. However, council members, including Brigham Young and
others, considered it a sacred duty to finish the house. That deliberations
about the house occurred in the Council of Fifty indicates that the council
was responsible not just for examining and selecting a new gathering place
for the Saints but for many of the temporal affairs of the Church. At a
meeting on April 11, 1845, Young “def[ied] any man to draw the line
between the spiritual and temporal affairs in the kingdom of God” and then
declared that every member of the Council of Fifty “has to do with every
thing between earth and heaven or hell.”23 The temporal needs of the
Church were just as important as the spiritual needs, and, under Young’s
leadership, the council exercised its authority over temporal matters as well
as spiritual ones.

NOTES
1. The most complete account of the Nauvoo House is Alex D. Smith, “Symbol of Mormonism: The
Nauvoo Boarding House,” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 35, no. 2
(Fall/Winter 2015): 109–36.
2. Revelation, January 19, 1841 [D&C 124], josephsmithpapers.org; Smith, “Symbol of
Mormonism,” 115.
3. Smith, “Symbol of Mormonism,” 115–16; Revelation, January 19, 1841 [D&C 124:56],
josephsmithpapers.org.
4. Joseph Smith, Journal, March 4, 1844, in Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Brent M.
Rogers, eds., Journals, Volume 3: May 1843–June 1844, vol. 3 of the Journals series of The
Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2015), 189 (hereafter JSP, J3); see also, Joseph Smith, Journal, March 7, 1844,
in JSP, J3:193.
5. Smith, “Symbol of Mormonism,” 117–29.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 321 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
7. Young was referring to items placed in the cornerstone of the Nauvoo House on December 29,
1841, including the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, Heber C. Kimball’s journal, the
January 1841 revelation commanding construction of the temple and the Nauvoo House, and
published editions of the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants. Joseph Smith,
Journal, December 29, 1841, in Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson,
eds., Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843, vol. 2 of the Journals series of The Joseph
Smith Papers, ed. Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman (Salt Lake
City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 19–20.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:344.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:345. Those who had “gone away” were
evidently Lyman Wight and John Snider. Wight had been rejected from the Council of Fifty on
February 4, 1845; there is little information about Snider during this time period. Both were
replaced as trustees in the Nauvoo House Association on April 7, 1845. Council of Fifty, Minutes,
February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:226; Minutes, April 5–7, 1845, Nauvoo House Association
Records, box 5, folder 16, CHL, MS 2375.
10. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:346.
11. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:362.
12. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:363.
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:364–66.
14. “Report of a Committee appointed to examine the situation of the Stock of the Nauvoo House
Association,” Nauvoo House Association Records, CHL.
15. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 25, 1845, in JSP, CFM:381–84.
16. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 25, 1845, in JSP, CFM:384–86; “Administrator’s Sale,”
Nauvoo Neighbor, April 2, 1845. Although the notice was dated March 23, 1845, that may have
been a mistake, given that this discussion in the Council of Fifty and its authorization of the sale
did not occur until March 25.
17. Minutes, April 5–7, 1845, Nauvoo House Association Records, CHL.
18. “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons 6, no. 7 (April 15, 1845): 871.
19. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 15, 1845, in JSP, CFM:431.
20. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 6, 1845, in JSP, CFM:442.
21. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11, 1846, in JSP, CFM:512, 519–20.
22. Willard Richards to R. C. Richards, October 15, 1845, in Our Pioneer Heritage, comp. Kate B.
Carter (Salt Lake City: Daughters of Utah Pioneers, 1960), 3:137–38; Smith, “Symbol of
Mormonism,” 131n75.
23. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:401.
 Chapter 12

"WITH FULL AUTHORITYTO BUILD UP

THE KINGDOM OF GOD ON EARTH"
Lyman Wight on the Council of Fifty

Christopher James Blythe

Members of the Council of Fifty—or the kingdom of God, as it was also
often called—took various positions in the succession crisis after Joseph
Smith’s death. The majority of council members accepted the succession
claim of Brigham Young and the Twelve Apostles and in turn supported
Young in 1845 as the “prophet, priest, and king” of the council.1 On the
other hand, some council members believed they had been granted special
responsibilities as part of the Fifty that they could now fulfill independently
of the Church’s hierarchy. Others insisted that the council itself should
become the governing voice of the Church.
Both Lyman Wight and Young agreed that the best course of action was
to pursue the plans that Joseph Smith had revealed and prioritized before he
died. Yet their zeal led these men to take starkly different roads in fulfilling
these ends. This chapter examines the place of Wight in the history of the
Council of Fifty, demonstrating how a man who attended only three council
meetings became the council’s most outspoken public advocate in the late
1840s and early 1850s. As the leader of a small colony in Texas, he spent
his last years trying to live up to what he believed were his and the council’s
most important commissions—even when it came to him opposing his
fellow members of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles.

TEXAS
Although Wight did not attend a meeting of the Council of Fifty until May
1844, his proposal for a Latter-day Saint settlement in the Republic of
Texas was a major impetus for the council’s preliminary meeting on March
10. Beginning in 1841, apostle Lyman Wight and bishop George Miller had
been assigned to lead a colony in charge of gathering lumber in an area
known as the “Pineries” in Wisconsin Territory.2 In February 1844, Wight
and other representatives from the colony wrote to Nauvoo, presenting
various reasons to establish a settlement in Texas. When Joseph Smith
received the letters, he appointed a committee to meet and discuss the
proposal. According to Smith’s journal, the committee determined to “grant
their petition,” including giving the “go ahead concer[n]ing the indians. &
southern states &c.” Apparently, the committee also discussed the
possibility of sending men from the Pinery to Santa Fe to meet with Sam
Houston and see if he “will embrace the gospel.”3
Establishing a settlement in the Republic of Texas remained a central item
on the Council of Fifty’s 1844 agenda. On March 14, 1844, the council
dispatched an emissary, Lucien Woodworth, to visit Sam Houston and
discuss the possibility of a settlement.4 Some retrospective accounts of
council members went so far as to suggest that Texas was given priority in
the council’s discussions about colonization. For instance, George Miller
recalled that the council’s primary goal was “to have Joseph elected
President,” that thereby “the dominion of the kingdom would be forever
established in the United States. And if not successful, we could but fall
back on Texas, and be a kingdom notwithstanding.”5 Yet the minutes of the
meetings of the Fifty reveal that Texas was only one of multiple locations
considered.
On April 18, 1844, Joseph Smith even expressed his hope that Nauvoo
could be recognized as an “independant government,” rendering it
unnecessary for the majority of the Saints to leave the region. He admitted,
“I have no disposition to go to Texas, but here is Lyman Wight [who] wants
to go.”6 Wight was not present for that meeting or in the council’s
organizational meeting when council members decided they would “look to
some place where we can go and establish a Theocracy either in Texas or
Oregon or somewhere in California &c.”7 In fact, when Wight arrived in
Nauvoo to be officially admitted into the council, the first meeting he
attended on May 3 was dominated by discussion of Texas prompted by
Woodworth’s return from meeting with Houston.8 Joseph Smith and other
council members deliberated on the possibility of a future Mormon
presence in the Republic of Texas, including the Saints’ involvement in the
struggling Texas government.
Council member Lucien Woodworth traveled to the Republic of Texas in spring 1844 to negotiate
with Texas president Sam Houston for a possible Mormon settlement in the republic.
Daguerreotype of Houston, circa 1848 to 1850, by Mathew B. Brady studio. Courtesy of Library of
Congress, Washington, DC.

At the May 6 council meeting, Wight expressed his desire “to have those
families now at the pinery go to Texas.” According to the minutes, Smith
agreed and “suggested the propriety of those families going to the Texas
and not telling who they are.” Presumably, Smith wanted to continue talks
with Houston about Mormons arriving pursuant to an official agreement
and thus did not want the members of the Black River Falls colony
announcing their religious affiliation. Brigham Young followed Smith’s
remarks and moved that Wight, like other apostles, should first “go through
the United States electioneering for the Presidency.” Young later moved
“that the brethren in the pine country be committed to the council of Ers
[Elders] Wight, Woodworth and Miller.” The minutes note that the proposal
was “carried unanimously.”9
This meeting held great significance for Wight throughout his life.
However, when he wrote his own account of that day four years later, his
version differed from the official minutes in that it emphasized Smith’s role
in the decisions. Wight recalled that it was Smith who brought up the Texas
mission and declared, “‘Let George Miller and Lyman Wight take the Black
river company and their friends, and go to Texas, to the confines of Mexico,
in the Cordilleras mountains; and at the same time let Brother Woodworth,
who has just returned from Texas, go back to the seat of government in
Texas, to intercede for a tract of country which we might have control over,
that we might find a resting place for a little season.’ A unanimous voice
was had for both Missions.” According to Wight, Smith also moved that
Wight should go to the East to “‘hold me up as a candidate for President of
the United States at the ensuing election; and when they return let them go
forth with the Black river company to perform the Mission which has been
voted this day.’ Which again called the unanimous voice of the Grand
Council.” After the meeting, Wight met with Smith in “a private chamber”
where the Prophet spoke further about the Texas mission and told him that
if Congress rejected a proposal for the Saints to raise troops to defend
Texas, “‘get 500,000 if you can and go into that country.’ He instructed me
faithfully concerning the above Mission.”10
WIGHT’S COMMISSION TO TEXAS
Not surprisingly, when Wight returned to Nauvoo from his electioneering
mission after Joseph Smith’s martyrdom, he was eager to begin this
commission. On August 12, 1844, during a meeting of the Quorum of the
Twelve, Wight expressed his desire to take the Black River Falls colony to
Texas. The apostles, perhaps grudgingly, passed a resolution “that Lyman
Wight go to Texas as he chooses, with his company, also George Miller and
Lucien Woodworth, and carry out the instructions he has received from
Joseph—to procure a location.”11 This was far from a breaking point
between Wight and Young, but it was the beginning of Wight’s
estrangement from the Church.
Young warned Wight that he did not want others outside of the Black
River Falls company accompanying him to Texas. His concern seems to
have been that Wight would draw off resources—both human and material
—from Nauvoo, which would render the construction of the temple and a
future exodus, if necessary, much more difficult. He even cautioned Wight
that he “would have to speak a little against [his] going for fear the whole
Church to a man would turn out.”12 Wight agreed to this condition.
Likewise, when Heber C. Kimball urged the colony that had relocated to
Nauvoo in July to first move to Wisconsin before making the trek to Texas,
Wight complied.13 In these early days after the martyrdom, Wight seems to
have seen himself as completely loyal to his fellow apostles. He supported
the Twelve’s taking the lead of the Church, which he viewed as a strategic
move to withstand “aspiring men,” such as Sidney Rigdon and James
Strang, who were seeking to be recognized as prophets over the Church.14
On November 6, 1844, the colony in Wisconsin publicly sustained “the
Twelve Apostles of this church in their state and standing and all other
authorities with them.”15

RUPTURE WITH THE QUORUM OF THE TWELVE

On the other hand, observable fractures in the relationship between Wight
and the Twelve seemed evident during the October 1844 conference in
Nauvoo. The minutes, as published in the Times and Seasons the following
month, stated that Brigham Young referred to “Wight’s going away because
he was a coward.”16 While Young may have been simply fulfilling his
promise to Wight that he would “speak a little against” the mission, Wight
was greatly offended by the barb.17 Sentiment toward Wight in Nauvoo was
changing. Rumors were circulating that Wight was not actually as loyal to
the Twelve as he pretended.18 In February 1845, when Young revived the
Council of Fifty, Wight with several others was expelled from the
kingdom.19 In April, the Twelve sent a messenger to Wight’s colony—who
had already begun their trek to Texas—with a letter, counseling them to
abandon their plans to go west until after they could receive their
endowments in the temple.20 Directly disobeying orders for what seems to
have been the first time, Wight continued to lead his colony on their
southwestern journey. The colony eventually settled near Austin in a village
they named Zodiac.21 During the October 1845 conference, Church leaders
deliberated on whether he should remain a member of the Quorum of the
Twelve.22
From Texas, Wight may have become increasingly aware of the Church’s
diminishing opinion of him and the Texas mission from the Times and
Seasons or occasional visitors, but it was the arrival of George Miller that
set him off. Miller, who had remained in Nauvoo, joined the Texas colony
in 1848 after his own falling out with Brigham Young. He likely brought
word that Wight had been expelled from the Council of Fifty in February
1845, when Young had revived the kingdom.23 It was shortly after Miller’s
arrival that Wight, now incensed, decided to publicly defend his position
and standing in the Church. The result was a sixteen-page pamphlet titled
An Address by the Way of an Abridged Account and Journal of My Life from
February 1844 up to April 1848, with an Appeal to the Latter-day Saints.
The first nine pages followed Wight’s life from his proposal for a
Mormon colony in Texas to his eventual journey to Texas by way of
Wisconsin, touching on his initiation into the Council of Fifty,
electioneering mission, and return to Nauvoo. This is a noteworthy
publication because of Wight’s candidness about the details of the Council
of Fifty. Likely because members of the Fifty swore an oath of secrecy on
admission to the council, there are no comparable public histories of the
Fifty. Wight’s willingness to ignore this vow is unusual, but he may have
believed this was his only means to defend his position. He characterized
the Fifty as an ecclesiastical organization. It was the “Grand Council of the
Church, or in other words, the perfect organization of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints on earth. This council consisted of fifty
members, with full authority to build up the Kingdom of God on earth, that
his will might be done on earth as in heaven.”24 He also explained, as noted
above, his specific assignment to begin a settlement in Texas.
In the second half of the pamphlet—what Wight termed his “appeal”—he
defended his character and his place as one of the Twelve Apostles, and
protested his removal from the Council of Fifty. He explicitly challenged
“those of a like ordination unto myself that they have neither power nor
authority given them, to move me from this station, nor to place any long
eared Jack Ass to fill a place, which has never been vacated. . . . I have not
forfeited my right, title nor claim to a seat with the Twelve, neither with the
Grand Council of God on the earth.”25 Finally, he invited “all ye inhabitants
of the earth” to join him on his mission in Texas.26
Ultimately, the pamphlet was the point of no return for Wight’s
relationship with the Church as continued under the authority of the
Quorum of Twelve Apostles. He sent messengers to distribute the pamphlet
to Latter-day Saint branches in Iowa and throughout the Midwest.27 Just as
Wight had prioritized his commission to establish a settlement in Texas over
the apostles’ efforts to construct the temple in Nauvoo, his pamphlet
clarified that he viewed other colonization efforts as inferior to his own.
More important, what the pamphlet revealed was that the division between
Brigham Young and Lyman Wight had less to do with their competing
priorities than it did with their fundamental interpretations of the Council of
Fifty. Young saw the Council of Fifty as an nonecclesiastical institution
organized for deliberating on political concerns. He viewed the council as
an important fulfillment of prophecy, but he also believed it was subservient
to the needs of the Church and was rightfully under the direction of the
Church’s leadership. Wight saw the Council of Fifty as the highest
ecclesiastical institution of the Church. For Wight, the Twelve should report
to the Fifty and not the other way around.

DIFFERING OPINIONS ON THE ROLE OF THE FIFTY

Wight was not the only council member to have held the belief that the
Fifty was a new governing body over the Church. On April 18, 1844, the
council devoted much of an afternoon meeting to resolving differing
opinions on whether “the kingdom of God and the church of God are one
and the same thing” or whether “the church is one thing and the kingdom
another.” Joseph Smith concluded this discussion by explaining that “there
is a distinction between the Church of God and kingdom of God. . . . The
church is a spiritual matter and a spiritual kingdom; but the kingdom which
Daniel saw was not a spiritual kingdom, but was designed to be got up for
the safety and salvation of the saints by protecting them in their religious
rights and worship.”28 While this resolved the debate during Smith’s
lifetime, only a month after the martyrdom, two members of the Council of
Fifty wanted to “call together the Council of Fifty and organize the church.”
Church leaders rebuffed the idea and explained “that the organization of the
church belonged to the Priesthood alone.”29 James Emmett, like Wight, also
set out on a mission based on a commission he received from the Council of
Fifty. His company spoke of the Council of Fifty as “the highest court on
earth.”30
Yet, by 1848, there were few advocates for this interpretation that the
Council of Fifty should govern the Church. Wight’s pamphlet seems to have
revived this sentiment among at least some members of the council.
Council members Lucien Woodworth and Peter Haws visited Zodiac,
perhaps with intentions to stay.31 As council member Alpheus Cutler started
his own mission with connections to the Fifty, his followers likewise met
with Wight.32 In 1853, Cutler established a church with himself as the head,
arguing that the original Church had gone into apostasy but that he
possessed higher authority as a member of the kingdom. While we cannot
be certain what degree Wight’s pamphlet influenced Cutler’s position that
the kingdom was superior to the Church, it is an interesting coincidence that
there would be a dialogue between these communities at that time.33 Peter
Haws, on the other hand, was inspired to defend Wight’s position to Church
leaders in Iowa. After his return from Texas, Haws demanded Orson Hyde
“call together the Council of Fifty, as there was important buisness to be
attended to, and it was necessary that, that body should meet immediately
as there was feelings, and important buisness to attend to.”34 Memorably, he
accused Brigham Young of failing “to carry out the measures of Joseph” by
not fully utilizing the Council of Fifty, declaring “the Twelve had
swallowed up thirty eight.”35 That is, the Twelve had usurped the
responsibility and authority that Smith had intended for the Fifty.
CONCLUSION
As Lyman Wight and his settlement in Texas had fewer interactions with
other Latter-day Saint communities, the Council of Fifty still remained
crucial to Zodiac’s identity. Local branch meetings even went so far as to
publicly recognize “Lyman and George [Miller] in their standing as two of
the Fifties.”36 Wight continued to reflect on what the Fifty should have done
after the martyrdom. In 1851, he wrote that “the fifties assembled should
have called on all the authorities of the church down to the laymembers
from all the face of the earth” and sustained the leadership of Joseph Smith
III, who would have taken the lead of completing the temple. “Then,”
Wight continued, “should the fifty have sallied forth unto all the world, and
built up according to the pattern which Bro. Joseph had given; the Twelve
to have acted in two capacities, one in opening the gospel in all the world,
and organizing churches; and then what would have been still greater, to
have counseled in the Grand Council of heaven, in gathering in the house of
Israel and establishing Zion to be thrown down no more forever.”37 In 1853,
Wight still maintained his hope that “the majority of the fifty, which Br.
Joseph organized, [would] assume their place and standing.”38

NOTES
1. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 256 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
2. See Matthew J. Grow and Brian Whitney, “The Pinery Saints: Mormon Communalism at Black
River Falls, Wisconsin,” Communal Societies 36, no. 2 (2016): 153–70.
3. Joseph Smith, Journal, March 10, 1844, in Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Brent M.
Rogers, eds., Journals, Volume 3: May 1843–June 1844, vol. 3 of the Journals series of The
Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2015), 201 (hereafter JSP, J3).
4. Joseph Smith, Journal, March 14, 1844, in JSP, J3:204.
5. George Miller, Letter to “Dear Brother,” June 28, 1855, Northern Islander, September 6, 1855.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM: 127–28.
7. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:40.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 3, 1844, in JSP, CFM:137–47.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, May 6, 1844, in JSP, CFM:157–58.
10. Lyman Wight, An Address by the Way of an Abridged Account and Journal of My Life from
February 1844 up to April 1848, with an Appeal to the Latter-day Saints (1848), 3–4. The actual
 petition was not limited to Texas, but included Oregon as well. See Council of Fifty, Minutes,
March 26, 1844, in JSP, CFM:67–70.
11. Willard Richards, Journal, August 12, 1844, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
12. Lyman Wight, Letter to Brigham Young, March 2, 1857, Church History Library
13. Heber C. Kimball, Journal, August 23, 1844, in Stanley B. Kimball, ed., On the Potter’s Wheel:
The Diaries of Heber C. Kimball (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987), 82.
14. Wight, Letter to “Dear Brother and Sister,” November 29, 1844, in Wight, An Address, 5.
15. Crawford County Branch (Wisconsin), Minutes, November 6, 1844, Church History Library.
16. “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons, November 1, 1844, 5:694.
17. Lyman Wight to Brigham Young, March 2, 1857, Church History Library.
18. William Clayton, Journal, September 25, 1844, in George D. Smith, ed., An Intimate Chronicle:
The Journals of William Clayton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1991), 545.
19. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:226.
20. See Quorum of Twelve to Lyman Wight “and all the brethren with him,” April 17, 1845, Brigham
Young Collection, Church History Library.
21. See Melvin C. Johnson, Polygamy on the Pedernales: Lyman Wight’s Mormon Villages in
Antebellum Texas, 1845 to 1858 (Logan: Utah State University, 2006), chaps. 3–4.
22. “Conference Minutes,” Times and Seasons, November 1, 1845, 6:1009.
23. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:226.
24. Wight, An Address, 3.
25. Wight, An Address, 12.
26. Wight, An Address, 16.
27. Lucius Scovil to Samuel Brannan, December 17, 1848, Church History Library.
28. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:121, 128.
29. History, 1838–1856, vol. F-1, Addenda, 9, Church History Library.
30. William D. Kartchner, Reminiscences and Diary, 19, Church History Library. For a discussion of
Emmett’s mission, see Jeffrey D. Mahas, “‘The Lamanites Will Be Our Friends’: Mormon
Eschatology and the Development of a Mormon-Indian Racial Identity in the Council of Fifty,”
unpublished.
31. Lucius Scovill to Samuel Brannan, December 17, 1848, Church History Library
32. See Danny Jorgensen, “Conflict in the Camps of Israel: The 1853 Cutlerite Schism,” Journal of
Mormon History 21 (Spring 1995): 41–42.
33. For Cutler’s understanding of the Council of Fifty, see Christopher James Blythe, “The Church
and the Kingdom of God: Ecclesiastical Interpretations of the Council of Fifty,” Journal of
Mormon History 43, no. 2 (2017): 113–16.
34. Orson Hyde, George A. Smith, and Ezra T. Benson, Report to “Presidents Brigham Young, Heber
C Kimball, Willard Richards, and the Authorities of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints in Zion,” April 5, 1849, Church History Library.
35. Hyde et al., Report, April 5, 1849.
36. William Leyland, Sketches on the Life and Travels of William Leyland, Community of Christ
Library and Archives, Independence, Missouri, 20.
37. This document was quoted in The History of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints (Independence, MO: Herald House, 1896), 2:791. The original was destroyed in the
Herald Publishing House fire in 1907.
38. Lyman Wight, Letter to Benjamin Wight, January 1853, Community of Christ Library and
Archives.
 Chapter 13

"WE ARE A KINGDOM TO OURSELVES"

The Council of Fifty Minutes and the Mormon Exodus West

Richard E. Bennett
In June 2016 at the annual Mormon History Association conference, I
participated on a panel discussion concerning the about-to-be-released
Council of Fifty minutes. This remarkable resource has since been
published and now forms part of the Administrative Records series of the
Joseph Smith Papers Project. My comments at that time centered on how
these minutes shed new light on a variety of topics. These topics included
the political role of the Council of Fifty, the plans to unite with and convert
the various tribes of Indians in the American West, the so-called “Western
Mission,” the building of the Nauvoo Temple and more especially the
Nauvoo House, and the Saints’ ultimate destination in the Rocky
Mountains. I noted that in the minutes there was a definite shift in tone
between the topics, designs, and purposes of this previously secret council
during Joseph Smith’s lifetime and those covered during Brigham Young’s
role as chairman. Under Joseph Smith, there was a good deal of talk about
government, constitutions, and policies; under Brigham Young, the council
had much more concrete discussion of plans and preparations for the
pending exodus. After Joseph’s martyrdom and particularly following the
revocation of the Nauvoo charter in January 1845, these minutes take on an
air of greater urgency as the council engaged in more studious preparation
than before. No doubt this hastening was in light of growing persecution
and the realization that the Latter-day Saints would have to vacate Nauvoo
sooner than later and perhaps begin their exodus west as early as February
1, 1846. The purpose of this paper is to probe more deeply into the role that
the Council of Fifty played in the planning and preparation for the exodus.

GENERAL PARAMETERS OF THE DESTINATION

As a student of the Mormon migrations west, I have long been of the
opinion that when the Saints began leaving Nauvoo, Brigham Young and
the Twelve Apostles, at that time the united leadership of the Church, did
not have a precise destination in mind. They knew they were looking at the
Rocky Mountains and possibly some good valley therein as possibilities,
but their destination became clearer the further west they traveled.1 While
this is still partially true, the Council of Fifty minutes shed new light on the
exodus, the preparations for it, the challenges the Saints would face, and
what Church leaders were looking for in a new home. I discuss these topics
below but especially how leaders zeroed in on the Great Salt Lake Valley as
their primary destination, at least as a vantage point for later, more careful
explorations of surrounding areas. Concluded Brigham Young in late 1845,
“We have designed sending them somewhere near the Great Salt Lake and
after we get there, in a little time we can work our way to the head of the
California Bay.”2
The minutes shed more light on what they were looking for in a
destination than precisely where they were heading. The size of the place
they would settle in was a major factor in their thinking—it needed to be
quite large. On behalf of the entire council, Orson Spencer wrote that the
Saints were “willing to accept of any eligible location within any part of the
Territory of the U. States” so long as it was large enough to accommodate at
least 500,000 people. “A portion of Territory not less than 200 miles square
would be none too great or roomy for the increase of the people arising in a
period of 10 years judging from the analogy of 10 years that have gone
by.”3 Such a statement reflects leaders’ combined optimism, largely borne
out of the impressive success of the Twelve in their mission to Great Britain
from 1838 to 1841, that the Church was destined for spectacular growth and
that Nauvoo could never accommodate such swelling ranks of membership
in the best of times. Seen in their deliberations was an optimism that
missionary work was going to become ever more successful and that, in
short order, hundreds of thousands of people would be converted and
emigrate to wherever the headquarters of the Church would be located. In
reality, it would take at least sixty years to meet this threshold. Thus, the
members of the Council of Fifty may have been overly optimistic in their
rosy projections of Church growth, but they were thinking big—very big—
and envisioned a new location, a new “kingdom” as some members of the
council called it, that must accommodate such favorable anticipations.
SPACE FOR AMERICAN INDIAN ALLIES
This anticipated imminent spike in membership may also be attributed to
their robust expectation of not merely making allies with the various Indian
tribes in the West, but also of converting them in large numbers. Said
chairman Brigham Young, “The object of this organization [the Council of
Fifty] is to find a place where we can dwell in peace and lift up the standard
of liberty. It is for the purpose of uniting the Lamanites, and sowing the
seeds of the gospel among them. They will receive it en Masse.”4 The
council firmly believed that the Lamanites were modern Israel and that the
martyrdom signaled the definite end of the day of the Gentiles. The Lord’s
Spirit was therefore about to effect a bounteous harvest of conversion upon
the American Indians, fellow exiles in the West since at least Andrew
Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830. Any movement west would of
necessity bring the Saints into contact with many of these wounded and
disenfranchised tribes and provide ample opportunities for preaching the
gospel to them. Some members of the council therefore believed the exodus
would result not only in finding a new place of settlement but also in a rich
harvest of thousands of converted Native American peoples. Again, this
proved an overly naive and optimistic prediction, and one that was
somewhat characteristic of the unrealistic tone of much of the council’s
deliberations.
There was more, however, to the Indian question than conversion. The
minutes are replete with references to the possibility of the Saints aligning
themselves with the tribes not merely to defend themselves but to wreak
vengeance upon the nation that had so viciously turned upon them. Some on
the council envisioned the tribes being instrumental in helping the Saints
return to their New Jerusalem (Zion) in Independence, Missouri: “We are
Legislators, set here to legislate for the best means whereby the chosen seed
shall return that they might go to Jerusalem and receive the statutes they
once rejected. Zion is the place where the tribes shall return and bring a
present to the Lord of Hosts.”5 Council member George Miller, a well-
known scout of the Iowa Territory who knew many of the tribal leaders
personally, believed that the leading object of their pending mission was “to
unite the tribes from North to South,” for they “are ready to come forth and
take hold of the matter in earnest.” He continued at another meeting, “Our
object is to unite all the Indian tribes from north to south and west to the
Pacific Ocean in one body and to include ourselves in the number. . . . This
nation has severed us from them and we are a kingdom to ourselves; and if
the crisis come we can make honorable reprisals, and have enough to carry
us to the farthest corner of the earth. . . . He is in favor of immediate action,
and don’t want to see the ship rot on the stocks, let us la[u]nch her and go to
work in earnest.” Having formed these Native alliances, Brigham Young
stated, the Saints will “come back and sweep Jackson County and build the
Temple.”6
These kind of exaggerated, sometimes vitriolic statements lend credence
to the “Lamanism” of Alpheus Cutler, who broke with the Church at Winter
Quarters in 1848 in large measure because of what he felt was Brigham
Young’s denunciation of the Indian plan of alliance. Cutler preached this
doctrine of “Lamanism” openly on the east side of the Missouri River.7
The fact that Young later dismissed some of his own earlier predictions,
let alone the talk of some other members of the council, underscores the
need to read these minutes with caution. The council deliberated courses of
action. It did not dictate them, and few binding resolutions were made.
Members gave advice and insights, but they did not ultimately determine
action. It was essentially a deliberative body of “legislators” and advisers
that expressed all kinds of different and often contrasting opinions, with
some members far more vocal—and hawkish—than others. This matter of
Indian conversion is a case in point. By late 1847, Brigham Young had
realized that mass Native American conversions were not happening and
that their once-discussed alliance with the Indian tribes was an
impossibility. To talk of such things at Winter Quarters was tantamount to
declaring war upon the United States and upon the state of Missouri. Thus
what was said in the privacy of Council of Fifty meetings and what was
decided upon during the exodus itself as the Saints moved west, were not
always the same. Unlike the Quorum of the Twelve, the Council of Fifty did
not exist as a separate governing body over the Church, although it is
apparent that some apparently wished it would be.

DEFENSIBLE BORDERSAND A HEALTHY CLIMATE

Another consideration in selecting their destination was that it should be a
place of safety whence they could not easily be dislodged. The Mormons
had learned bitter lessons from their expulsions from both Jackson and
Caldwell Counties in Missouri and now from Illinois, and it was uppermost
in their minds that wherever they went, it be almost impregnable and
unassailable militarily from without. Said Charles C. Rich, later apostle to
Bear River country, “All we want is a place to gather the women and
children and when they are safe there will be no difficulty in defending
ourselves as we might see proper.”8 Almon W. Babbitt, Esq., added, “It is
wisdom to seek out a place with natural fortifications, where we can
naturally defend ourselves.”9 The conversion of thousands of Indians would
bring greater safety still: “We would be glad to have the Indians put in
possession of the arms,” and “when the blow is to be struck, and our object
is accomplished in effecting the union, the enemy will be scattered.”10
Of equal importance in evaluating possible destinations was the matter of
the Saints’ health and well-being. Nauvoo had proven to be a sickly place,
especially in its formative years. Despite all the fanfare of it being the “city
beautiful,” Joseph Smith once described it as “a deathly sickly hole” and
while painting as bright a picture as possible in order to attract emigrants,
admitted that “we have been keeping up appearances, and holding out
inducements, to encourage emigration that we scarcely think justifiable in
consequence of the mortality that almost invariably awaits those who come
from far distant parts.”11 The truth is, the Latter-day Saints lost more lives to
disease than to persecution! “If we can find a healthy country we will go
there,” Brigham Young said.12

DECIDING ON A DESTINATION
With these and other considerations in mind, what place would best fill the
Saints’ needs? A close look at the minutes indicates a progression of
thinking, a gradual refinement in plans. It would appear that in the spring of
1845, Church leaders had more or less agreed upon Upper California. At
that time, California was part of the expansive northern territory of Mexico
sprawling all over much of the western part of today’s United States,
loosely governed and poorly understood. But to the Saints, it meant a place
south of Oregon and likely on the coast. John Taylor even composed the
favorite song of the council, titled “The Upper California” (sung to the tune
of “The Rose That All Are Praising”), in celebration of the likelihood of
their going there. Sung on numerous occasions and even later in the temple,
its fourth verse was as follows:
We’ll reign, we’ll rule, & triumph & God shall be our king
The plains, the hills & vallies, shall with Hosannas ring
Our towers and temples there shall rise
Along the great Pacific Sea.
In upper California, O thats the land for me.13
The advantages of settling on the coast were many. Said Brigham Young,
“Our final object is to get on the sea coast where we can have the
advantages of commercial navigation.”14 The coast would be more fertile
than inland, the climate more agreeable, and it would certainly be more
conducive to emigration and to pursuing worldwide missionary work. John
Taylor frowned on the idea of settling in the “barren deserts” of the interior.
By building their city on the coasts, they could “carry the gospel to the
other parts of the globe” more easily and efficiently.15 Erastus Snow agreed,
“If we pitch upon California, and that seems to be the place where our
feelings centre, we can take care of ourselves. He often heard the prophet
speak of that country last spring. He was always opposed to the idea of
seeking a location in the interior where we should be cut off from the
advantages of communication by the seas.”16
But by late summer of 1845, sentiments had certainly changed, with the
council now favoring an interior valley destination, something they called
“the Oregon expedition,” likely in an effort to disguise their true intent. The
reasons for the change are not easy to decipher. Orson Hyde, never a
proponent of leaving the United States in the first place, believed an interior
valley within the United States to be their best option. “We could then make
our own laws for our own [territorial] government and would be shielded
by the constitution of the United States. . . . Should we go to California
there is the same blood runs there as here and the same feelings of
opposition to the truth would soon manifest themselves. We will find
mobocrats there.”17
Besides isolation, distance was also a factor. Why travel 2,100 miles if
1,500 miles would do? An obvious factor leaders considered was the
preparation of their own families, wives, and children at a time of
increasing persecution. Could the Latter-day Saints as a people make such
an extended journey all the way to the coast?
Another pivotal consideration was the matter of Mormon livestock. The
Mormons may have been money poor, but they were cattle rich. There
would be tens of thousands of head of cattle in the pending exodus.
Cornelius Lott, a member of the council and an excellent herdsman, was
later put in charge of the Mormon livestock and played a critical role in the
movement west of somewhere between ten thousand and thirty thousand
head of cattle.18 The requirement to move so many cows, oxen, sheep,
chickens, horses, and other farm animals influenced leaders’ choice of
routes and distances. Driving that many animals up and over the mountains
would be a formidable task. The difference between the Great Salt Lake and
the coast, for instance, was at least six hundred more miles of additional
herding, no small consideration.
Title page of John C. Frémont’s 1845 report. Courtesy of Church History Library.
In evaluating possible destinations for a new Mormon settlement, Church leaders studied John C.
Frémont’s reports of his western expeditions. This map was published in John C. Frémont, Report
of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and North
California in the Years 1843–’44 (Washington, DC: Blair and Rives, 1845). Courtesy of Church
History Library, Salt Lake City.

Another factor was undoubtedly the publication of John C. Frémont’s

report of his 1842 expedition to the Rocky Mountains and his 1843–44
exploration of Upper California and Oregon, which included surveying the
area around the Great Salt Lake. This study, titled Report of the Exploring
Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842, and to Oregon and
North California in the Years 1843–’44, was published in August 1845, but
Orson Hyde had obtained an earlier version of it (reporting on only the
1842 expedition) as early as April 1844. “Judge [Stephen A.] D[ouglas]
borrowed it of Mr. [Thomas Hart] B[enton] [Frémont’s father-in-law]. I was
not to tell any one in this city [where] I got it. The book is a most valuable
document to any one contemplating a journey to Oregon.”19 The Nauvoo
Neighbor later recorded that “the Rocky Mountains are shown to be not the
formidable barriers supposed. Capt. Fremont crossed them at four different
places—instead of being desolate and impassable they are shown to have
many excellent passes, of which the South pass is the finest, and to
embosom beautiful valleys, rivers, and parks, with lakes and mineral
springs, rivalling and surpassing the most enchanting parts of the Alpine
regions in Switzerland.”20 Thus the Saints were studying Frémont’s maps at
least a year and a half before their departure.

ANNOUNCEMENT OF PLANS
With all these considerations in mind, Brigham Young announced in one of
the last meetings of the Council of Fifty in September 1845, “It has been
proved that there is not much difficulty in sending people beyond the
mountains. We have designed sending them somewhere near the Great Salt
Lake and after we get there, in a little time we can work our way to the head
of the California Bay, or the Bay of the St Francisco.”21 Added Parley P.
Pratt:
There is a good Wagon Road to California leading on from
Independance Missouri. It follows the Platte, going in between the
mountains, after which the roads fork, one going to California and the
other to Oregon. At the place where the roads fork is the spot where
we have some notion of settling. The rout to San Francisco . . . would
be about 2100 miles, but to the place where we calculate to go not
more than 1500.22
And in one of the council meetings held within a month of the departure
of the first companies, Brigham Young said that their destination would be
best located somewhere out of the United States but east of the coast, if not
a permanent site then certainly one from which they could scout out other
possibilities. “[My] mind is to go just beyond the Rocky mountains,” he
said on January 11, 1846,
somewhere on the Mexican claim and the United States will have no
business to come there and if they do we will treat them as enemies.
We can make a stand somewhere on the vallies of the Bear River. . . .
Whenever we get ourselves planted in that region of country we can
send scouts to explore the whole country to the coast and seek out
suitable places where we can locate and fortify ourselves so as to bid
defiance to the enemy; and also where the Saints from the Eastern
States and England could land and establish themselves.23
 And as to their intended route, they had long concluded the following: “In
case of a removal . . . , Nauvoo is the place of general rendezvous,” said
Orson Hyde.
Our course from thence would be westward through Iowa, bearing a
little north, untill we come to the Missouri river, leaving the State of
Missouri on the left, thence onward till we come to the Platte, thence
up the north fork of the Platte to the mouth of [the] Sweet water River
in Long. 107"45" W. and thence up said Sweet water river to the
South pass of the Rocky Mountains about 11 hundred miles from
Nauvoo, And from said South pass Lat 42° 28" north to the Umqua
and Clamet valleys in Oregon bordering on California.24
As to the time of their departure, the so-called “committee on foreign
relations,” established back on March 4, 1845, and chaired by Samuel Bent,
was initially charged with the planning and outfitting of the “Western
Mission” or western expedition.25 But as the time of the exodus drew near,
the entire Council of Fifty assumed responsibility for organizing their
wholesale departure. While a concrete departure date was not mentioned for
several months, as early as September 1845 they were thinking of a spring
1846 departure. By the beginning of 1846, there was talk of little else, even
if it meant leaving in winter, which surprisingly held out certain benefits.
“If there is an advance company to go and put in crops this spring,” said
Orson Pratt in January, “it will be necessary to start by the first of February
for we cannot cross the mountains to Bear River in less than three months
and we could not get there soon enough to put in spring crops unless we
start quickley.” John Taylor echoed Pratt’s sentiments: “He approves of an
early start. If we start in one month while the ground is hard and froze we
could take extra grain, nearly enough to sustain our teams all the way.”
Phelps agreed: “If we can transplant this kingdom while the ground is
frozen we shall accomplish a great thing.”26
And as to the makeup of the advance companies, Brigham Young said
that the company captains should “use their influence to have as few
women and children as possible, go with the first company, but let us go
and prepare a place for them, so that they can follow in the spring.” “The
next thing is for every man of this council to select his fifty men who can be
prepared to start immediately either night or day when the word is given.”
Fearing possible government intervention, Young said, “The government of
the United States have laid plans to take the Twelve and some others of this
council, and they calculate to send a regiment of troops to take them but we
can go as fast as they can.”27
And so the time grew near, and the era of preparation was almost over.
The spirit of departure permeated the penultimate meeting of the council, as
evidenced by the following:
We want to go whether we are ready or not. “The Lord is going to
find this nation something to do, besides hunt after the blood of the
saints and innocent men. . . .”
He then called for the reports of the Captains of companies. . . .
Of the 25 companies of 100 families each now organizing, 20 companies
by their captains made report, the sum total of said reports are as follows:
916 Horses, 639 Wagons, 18 Buggs [buggies], 227 Yoke of Oxen 251
Cows, 54 men and Guns, and 70 teams ready to start at one hours
notice.28

CONCLUSION
In summary, I wish to emphasize three things that have impressed me as I
have more carefully studied these minutes. The first is that the Council of
Fifty was not a legislative or Church administrative body. Although the
council did pass resolutions, they seemed not to have been binding, nor did
the council determine ultimate Church policy. Likewise, the Council of
Fifty did not attempt to define Church doctrines and beliefs. Deliberative in
nature, it primarily gave counsel and advice.
A second contribution is that the minutes provide a glimpse into the
character of Brigham Young, who would shortly be leading the exodus.
When he became chairman of the council, he directed it not in a dictating or
controlling manner, but in a way that invited participation. Everyone had a
voice and expressed himself freely, doing so in an advisory capacity.
Brigham Young was growing into his leadership roles, and any future
biography of this great Mormon leader must take these minutes into serious
consideration.
 Finally, the minutes of the Council of Fifty are an important help to the
study of the Mormon exodus. While they corroborate much of the best
current research on the exodus, they nevertheless add valuable insights and
perspectives. More was said about what they were looking for in a future
destination than precisely where they were going. The spaciousness of their
future Zion, health concerns, safety, and the role of the American Indians—
these were their earlier considerations. But as time went by, and especially
after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith, there developed a tone of urgency and
greater clarity in regard to their final destination, the organization of their
departing companies, the concerns over their livestock, their intended route,
their preparations, and the timing of their departure.

NOTES
1. “The fact remains that if he ever did anticipate it, Brigham Young referred to it in only vague,
obscure generalities without ever specifying a timetable or particular place of settlement.” Richard
E. Bennett, Mormons at the Missouri, 1846–1852: “And Should We Die . . .” (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 16.
2. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark
Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March
1844–January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed.
Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s
Press, 2016), 472 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
3. Council of Fifty, Minutes, February 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:243.
4. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:255.
5. William W. Phelps, in Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:286.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 4 and 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:289, 355–56. Said Reynolds
Cahoon, “It is a part of this mission to go from tribe to tribe and feel after their wise men and
ordain presidents & set their own wise men up as councillors. . . . And if the enemies do not let us
alone we will call out these men of the forest and they had better let us alone.” Council of Fifty
Minutes, March 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:284.
7. See the author’s article “Lamanism, Lymanism, and Corn Fields,” Journal of Mormon History 13
(1986–87): 44–59.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:353.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:307.
10. Charles C. Rich and Orson Hyde, in Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:408.
11. Joseph Smith to Horace Hotchkiss, August 25, 1841, josephsmithpapers.org. The mortality rate in
Nauvoo in 1840 was thirty deaths per one thousand people. Evan Ivie and Douglas C. Heiner,
“Deaths in Early Nauvoo, Illinois, 1839–1846, and in Winter Quarters, Nebraska, 1846–1848,”
Religious Educator 10, no. 3 (2009): 163–74.
12. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:309.
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:402, emphasis added. The song was later
included in Latter-day Saint hymnals. Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon
Church, vol. 1, 1830 to 1847 (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, 1997), 335.
14. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:328.
15. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:352.
16. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:354. A careful reading of the minutes
downplays any assumed prophecy of Joseph Smith that the Saints would move to an interior
valley of the Rocky Mountains.
17. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:329.
18. Gary S. Ford, “Cornelius P. Lott and His Contribution to the Temporal Salvation of the Latter-day
Saint Pioneers through the Care of Livestock” (master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 2005),
105.
19. Letter from Orson Hyde, April 26, 1844, in JSP, CFM:184. This first report of Frémont was titled
Report on an Exploration of the Country Lying between the Missouri River and the Rocky
Mountains, on the Line of the Kansas and Great Platte Rivers (Washington: United States Senate,
1843).
20. “Capt. Fremont’s Expedition,” Nauvoo Neighbor, September 17, 1845, [1]; see Council of Fifty,
Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:472. For a fine recent study of Frémont’s expedition
and its impact on Latter-day Saint leaders, see Alexander L. Baugh, “John C. Frémont’s 1843–44
Western Expedition and Its Influence on Mormon Settlement in Utah,” Utah Historical Quarterly
83, no. 4 (Fall 2015): 254–69. Baugh argues that Frémont’s study had “a profound influence on
Brigham Young and the Church leadership and in their discussion to select the Wasatch region of
northern Utah” as the main place for settlement. Baugh, “John C. Frémont’s 1843–44 Western
Expedition,” 256.
21. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:472
22. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:475.
23. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11, 1846, in JSP, CFM:513–14.
24. Letter from Orson Hyde, April 26, 1844, in JSP, CFM:181–84.
25. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:299. The Western Mission was an
assignment given to Jonathan Dunham and others in the spring of 1845 to gain permission from
relocated Indian tribes living in the middle Missouri River region to establish settlements in the
area and to obtain their pledge to assist the Saints in exploring the western countries. See Glen M.
Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise (Salt Lake City and Provo, Utah:
Deseret Book and Brigham Young University Press, 2002), 514.
26. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11, 1846, in JSP, CFM:515, 517.
27. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11 and 13, 1846, in JSP, CFM:519, 525.
28. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 13, 1846, in JSP, CFM:522–23. William Clayton recorded in
his journal that on January 25 he met with the captains of the various companies to receive their
final reports. JSP, CFM:550n32. The Saints began leaving Nauvoo just ten days later.
 Chapter 14

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY IN WESTERN

HISTORY
Jedediah S. Rogers
In his Frontier Thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner postulated that social life
in the West was a Darwinian sequence marked by “civil-savage encounter”
and “free land.” Humans who encountered the wilderness were at first at its
mercy, until they slowly transformed it. As the wilderness receded and the
“lines of civilization” advanced, settlement moved into a more developed
stage.1 Turner’s thesis, written in 1893, drew from widely held nineteenth-
century beliefs about the West and offered a compelling synthesis of
American history that shaped history writing for generations. It also
launched western American history as a distinct field. But Turner left out of
his exposition individuals, groups, and ideas that we now consider to be
quintessentially western, Mormons included.2 After Turner, the field offered
varying competing theories—each building on Turner’s and past
historiographical traditions—yet in each retelling, Mormons, with few
exceptions, did not figure prominently. Although Mormons’ own histories
were Turnerian in some regards, the building of Zion by the communally
oriented Latter-day Saints did not fit standard narratives of the West. Part of
the blame may lie at the feet of western historians; Jan Shipps posits that
western historians treat the West as a donut, with the conspicuous hole
representing Mormon country. Another metaphor, offered by the
environmental and cultural historian Jared Farmer, draws on Great Basin
geography: the provincialism of Utah history is like water that pools and
never finds an outlet.3
Mormon studies has made inroads in the last few decades, garnering
greater recognition and attention from academics and publics outside the
Intermountain West. The Joseph Smith Papers Project is in part responsible
for raising the stature and quality of Mormon history. And, coincidentally,
its recently published volume of the Nauvoo minutes of the Council of Fifty
can help us rethink not only the Mormon place in the West but the meaning
of the Mormon experience to western history. Mormons had a unique but
also distinctly American way of perceiving and approaching the Far West.
Turner’s compelling synthesis of American history, whatever its limitations,
provides insight into the nineteenth-century Mormon mindset that viewed
the interior West as a region without a history, a blank slate upon which
they could imprint their mark.
···
The formation of the Council of Fifty in the spring of 1844 came just as
Americans were widely awakening to the idea of a westward empire
extending to the Pacific. Expanding the nation’s borders satisfied America’s
divine mission, so the idea went. In his run for the US presidency, Joseph
Smith blended the ideology of Democrats and Whigs; like ardent
Democrats he looked westward and spoke of extending the nation, but in
the Whig tradition he saw national influence as what the liberal minister
William Ellery Channing called “a sublime moral empire, with a mission to
diffuse freedom by manifesting its fruits, not to plunder, crush, and
destroy.”4 The Great Emigration of 1842 and in following years gave the
Americans a firm presence in Oregon Country, which after 1818 was jointly
occupied by the British. Yet, as Richard White has observed, “The
American nation that began to expand westward was neither militarily
formidable nor a centralized state.”5
Upon its formation, the Council of Fifty petitioned Congress for Smith to
lead a company of one hundred thousand “armed volunteers” for protection
along the emigrants’ trails to Oregon and Texas.6 Congress ignored the
memorial, though in 1846 it did authorize establishing military posts along
the road to Oregon and a regiment of mounted riflemen (part of a long
tradition of federal government oversight and support of emigration and
western settlement, which is ofttimes ignored in narratives of the western
individualist). The council’s military proposal was part of a larger western
strategy that occupied the council through 1845: where to establish
Mormon settlement beyond western Illinois. The council’s project to
expand outward no doubt drew from a national sense of Manifest Destiny.
Smith and his associates, though, sought refuge from their enemies, and
they seriously considered Oregon, Alta California, and the Republic of
Texas as possibilities.7
 Geographically, Oregon had several advantages and may have appealed
to Smith. Orson Hyde, writing from the nation’s capital in 1844, apparently
mailed Smith a prepublished copy of explorer John C. Frémont’s report and
identified the most attractive locations in Oregon as the “Umqua and
Clamet Valleys.”8 As Frémont wrote, “Th[e] structure of the coast, backed
by these two ranges of mountains [Cascades and Sierra Nevadas], with its
concentration and unity of waters, gives to the country an immense military
strength, and will probably render Oregon the most impregnable country in
the world.”9 As appealing as Oregon appeared, however, Mormons clearly
recognized that other Americans likewise coveted the region, particularly in
Orson Hyde’s view settlers from Missouri—“our old enemies, the
mobocrats of Mo.”10 And it was not altogether clear that the United States
would “win” Oregon or that it would be anything other than British. The
council debated and even considered the “influence we can have under the
British government,” but discussion was brief; Brigham Young, who
assumed chairmanship of the council after Smith’s death, claimed to want
“nothing to do with them.”11
The Council of Fifty unsuccessfully petitioned Congress to allow Joseph Smith to raise an army to
protect American interests in the West. Daguerreotype of US Capitol by John Plumbe. Courtesy of
Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Mormons considered the government of the United States as intolerable

to live under as that of Great Britain, if not more so. The minutes hint at
disillusionment toward the US government. When the council drafted its
own constitution, it mimicked the structure of the US Constitution and
listed off grievances in the vein of the Declaration of Independence. As
noted in the committee’s constitution, the US government was beset, as
were other governments, with “pride, corruption, impurity, intrigue,
spiritual wickedness in high places, party spirit, faction, perplexity and
distress of nations.” The problem was not the principles undergirding the
government but the absence of “the disposition and power to grant that
protection to the persons and rights of man.”12 Members seemed to look
forward to self-rule; George A. Smith said he “has long reflected that we
ought to have a new government.”13 Their new home would be governed by
their own laws, perhaps with creation of a territory through an act of
Congress, as George Miller contemplated in correspondence with William
P. Richards in 1845, or perhaps within domain of their own independent
country.14
All this suggests, and the minutes seem to confirm, that Mormon leaders
sought, at least initially, to shed the federal yoke and settle in a location
outside of US jurisdiction. Smith spoke of “establish[ing] independent
governments” from land carved from the Republic of Texas. 15 After Smith’s
death, Young remarked that “in the name of the Lord when we go from
here, we will exalt the standard of liberty and make our own laws. When we
go from here we dont calculate to go under any government but the
government of God.”16 This intent to institute God’s laws in many ways
made Mormons distinct from other Americans who looked westward.
William W. Phelps was prescient when he remarked in a council meeting in
1845 that “the greatest fears manifested by our enemies is the union of
Church and State.”17
Mormons cast their gaze westward to Alta or Upper California, then
Mexican territory. From council deliberations, it seems Smith favored the
Gulf of California as a location for his people; according to Erastus Snow,
Smith always opposed settling away from the coast.18 Young felt the same
as late as mid-1845. In meeting after meeting, a member or the entire
council expressed delight in a song composed by John Taylor, “The Upper
California,” expressing the intent to reside somewhere “Beside the great
Pacific Sea.”19 Maps depicting Alta California as a large swath of land
ranging from the Pacific to Colorado’s Rocky Mountains give the sense that
Upper California meant the Great Basin just as well as the Pacific coast.
Descriptions in the council minutes clearly point to the virtues of settling
close to the coast, however. Young’s description of the ideal place for the
Saints—“the advantages of Navigation and commerce,” fortified between
mountains, “gold and silver and precious stones,” “raise all kinds of fruit,”
building and travel in ships, “where we can live without labor”—hardly fit
the description of the Rocky Mountains.20
Not until late summer 1845 did leaders identify the Salt Lake Valley or
possibly the Bear River Valley to the north as potential places to create a
Mormon homeland. Knowledge of the Great Basin region came from
trappers reporting to James Emmett, a council member, and from Frémont’s
1845 publication of his Far West travels. The idea initially was that a
Wasatch Range settlement would serve as an entrée to Mormon expansion
to the Pacific and as a way station for weary travelers on the emigrants’
trail.21 The interior West did not have a coastline or favorable climate, but
the geography and terrain had several advantages coveted by Mormon
leadership. Young spoke of locating a place beyond the Rockies that could
“easily be fortified against all hostile foes.”22 To another, the desert
mountain terrain would mean they would “be free from the jealousies of
any government.” But the men also saw value in a landscape they did not
know, opining for example that the mountains would shield them from cold
and that near the West’s “barren deserts” were “plains which are always rich
and fertile.”23 Clearly, Young thought about desert lands not in the context
that Mormons would come to see them—as land suited for a people
determined to make it blossom as the rose—but as buffers from their
enemies.
···
Not until they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and got their hands dirty in the
soil did they come to understand their new homeland. The Nauvoo minutes
conclude in early 1846, but what we have from the available Council of
Fifty record of the Mormons’ first years in the Great Basin provides a
dramatic juxtaposition between earlier perception and later realities.24 This
time the Mormons confronted a landscape that confounded and frightened
them. What crops they planted were devoured by swarming crickets. Their
cattle wallowed in deep snow with insufficient feed during the harsh winter
of 1848 and 1849. Wild animals presented a threat to public safety and, in
the case of wolves, a noise nuisance.
The story of the Latter-day Saints’ first years in the West is one of
desperation. It is also one of action: they sought to refashion their homeland
as they imagined it. The Council of Fifty organized a public two-month
hunt to eradicate wild animals, the result being an overwhelming
slaughter.25 It sent men to establish fisheries on Utah Lake, others to
establish a tannery, still others to go east to buy sheep. The council
outlawed the making of corn into whiskey, erected an armory, imposed
taxes, redistributed money and food to those who had little, surveyed streets
and fenced farm lots, constructed canals, located the site of the Salt Lake
City cemetery, and reorganized the Nauvoo Legion. A committee
superintended construction of fences in the “Big Field” to farm the land
between 900 South and 2700 South. These efforts to build up not only the
Great Salt Lake City but numerous other settlements came to characterize
the idea, as expressed by the writer Wallace Stegner, that Mormons are
more earthly, their communities more deeply rooted in the land than are
other groups in the West.26
Stegner and other writers have rooted the Mormons to the western
landscape; indeed, Mormon communities in a large swath of the American
West—Mormon Country—appear as western as anything. Yet prior to their
arrival in the Great Basin, Latter-day Saints were largely ignorant of the
West and its peoples. When they did set their gaze west of the hundredth
meridian, the land was unfamiliar and their perceptions often erroneous.
Like other Americans, they looked to the West for opportunity, their
aspirations part of a midcentury national project to spread beyond the
nation’s borders. The Mormons brought to that project their own style and
agenda (in some respects counter to the mainstream) to shape the landscape
according to their religious aspirations. Yet Mormon migration and
settlement in the Great Basin has meant that the religious group originating
in the frontier of western New York has become intricately intertwined with
a national narrative that is western in its orientation and that the ambition to
find a home that is unpeopled perfectly fits into the larger white western
project to settle and reshape the West.
Mormons colonized the Far West with idealized views of the land that
originated from their experience in the well-watered East and were refined
by the religious assurances of a promised people. They envisioned not only
a place where people could live, but a well-ordered place.27 This idealized
view—the quintessential pastoral landscape—possessed a redemptive
quality that fit squarely with the nineteenth-century biblical view of land
ordained by providence for “the use of man.” Mormons brought with them
religious beliefs about land and their role on it. They may have looked
forward longingly to the millennial day when the high places would be
made low and the crooked places straight, but they didn’t have to wait.
Their work was to realize that dream. They established the first modern
irrigation system in the West and created an inland empire in the mountains
that lasted nearly through the nineteenth century. It was a spiritual and
temporal endeavor, and it gave meaning and vitality to the act of settlement
and survival in this region.
 Central to these ideas was the notion held by council members that Upper
California, the Far West, and most particularly the eastern rim of the Great
Basin constituted a region without a past, without a history. This was
particularly important to a people driven out of several states at the behest
of “old” settlers—in the words of George A. Smith in 1845, to “plant
ourselves where there will be no one to say [we] are old settlers.”28 The Salt
Lake Valley was for Young a blank canvas on which God could realize his
handiwork: to organize a new society, to ensure that its citizens and the land
conformed to the divine decree. Young reportedly told the council not to
“suffer infernals, thieves, Murders, Whoremongers & every other wicked
curse to [exist],” urging its members to blot out evildoing as prescribed by
the body’s very name, “The Kingdom of God and his Laws, with the keys
and power thereof, and judgement in the hands of his servants.”29 Likewise,
in council deliberations in early Utah we see this impulse to shape not just
human behavior but the land in conformance with divine decree. Part of
planting a new society in a new place was the idea of environmental
transformation—the attempt to domesticate wild lands by subduing wild
animals, for example.30
···
If the Mormon narrative sounds Turnerian, it is because in large measure it
is—at least in the way that nineteenth-century Mormons spoke of their
westward march of progress. Once ensconced in the valley of Salt Lake,
Mormons represented their history as one of settling, even conquering, the
wilderness. Speaking before his people on July 24, 1852, five years since
the Mormons’ arrival in the Great Basin, Young helped to create the
mystique of the Mormons arriving in the mountain valleys and building a
thriving city that “spread out from the east to the west, measurably so, but
more extensively to the north and south.”31 George Q. Cannon, speaking
before the Third National Irrigation Congress in 1894, said that when he
first entered the Great Basin he “felt that there was a great future for” the
western country. After describing the desolate conditions in the basin,
Cannon looked back on what was accomplished with a great deal of pride,
holding up the Mormon system of irrigation as a model for the other
western territories and states.32 Cannon’s and other pioneer narratives
underscored the God-ordained rightness of their cause, ignored other
peoples or events that went counter to their retelling of the history, and
emphasized the resulting environmental transformation of their civilizing
work on the landscape.33 The simplicity of the narrative—not unlike that of
Turner—gave it staying power, even as it bolstered a rendering of the
history that did not support its own weight. Yet however much the Frontier
Thesis has since been discredited in the academy, Turnerian ideas live on
prominently in the American imagination. His ideas would have
reverberated with a late-nineteenth-century audience who could look back
on the peopling of a continent with pride and nostalgia.
Whereas Turner spoke of the West as the westward march of human
progress, a generation later Walter Webb, in his book The Great Plains,
defined the West as a place. Webb borrowed from the ideas of John Wesley
Powell to argue that the West’s defining characteristic was a scarcity of
water. Aridity forced westerners to innovate.34 Some of this is reflected in
the post-Nauvoo council record: the Mormon system of irrigation, the
fencing of field to keep cattle from wandering, the extermination of
predators. The communal energy of the Mormon project also helped
mitigate terrestrial problems; for instance, Church-controlled irrigation
differed from the more competitive orientation of prior appropriation
practiced elsewhere.35 The idea of water scarcity might help us reconsider
the reasons for the council’s vast State of Deseret: lack of rainfall and
distance between water sources forced Young to explore large areas of land
for expansion. Could it be that the expansive State of Deseret—the Mormon
inland empire—was as much a product of environmental contingencies as
geopolitical aspirations?
Taking a page from Webb, though considerably complicating his
narrative, are the so-called New West historians, who identify the West as a
particular region characterized by conflict and racial and ethnic diversity.
The area bounded by the State of Deseret’s original proposal is considered
by historians as “unambiguous West,” the core of what most historians
think of as the West.36 Other themes identified by New Western historians
are reflected in the record of the council. Note, for instance, that historians
have emphasized the community impulse of western settlement, not only of
Mormons but of other groups in the region. Moreover, Mormon central
planning, which eventually contributed to the success of dozens of western
settlements, in some respects presaged the federal control that came to
dominate the political, economic, and social fabric of the West.37
 When I think about the Council of Fifty and its expansionist ideas for the
West that never materialized, I look to another historiographical tradition
represented most prominently by Henry Nash Smith’s Virgin Land but also
by many other western historians and writers since: the West as a state of
mind, a myth, an identity.38 As the Nauvoo minutes reveal, council members
envisioned innumerable iterations of their planned western empire. The
boundaries and contours remained opaque even as they attempted to bring
geographical specificity to their discussions. The problem, of course, was
that the territory of which they spoke was still relatively unknown and
unpeopled—in some cases literal blank spaces on the map. Until they
planted their feet on the soil, they could do little more than to envision and
plan. Even after they arrived in the West, their aspirations remained just
that. Their proposed State of Deseret never came to be, but it reflected the
broader aspirations of Utah’s first permanent Euro-American settlers, who
dreamed and worked toward a Great Basin empire. Moreover, the idea of
Mormon expansion had not reached a terminus. Settlements would continue
to be made, and the imprint of the Mormon settler would continue to stamp
itself on the land. The dream of a Mormon kingdom continued.
The American West has always been a place of dreams and aspirations.
Few were as grand and idealistic as the Mormons. The Council of Fifty
minutes provide a glimpse into the vision of a religious people who played
an important role in western history—in the Mormon migration west, the
Euro settlement of the Great Basin, and the political maneuverings for a
Mormon state. It was a vision unique from the western experience, but it
was also one that can be placed in western American historiography.

NOTES
1. Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” (paper
presented at the American Historical Association conference, Chicago, July 12, 1893).
2. For the absence of Mormons in Turner’s analysis, see Patricia Nelson Limerick, Something in the
Soil: Legacies and Reckonings in the New West (New York: Norton, 2000), 239–40.
3. Jan Shipps, Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons (Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 2000), 21; Jared Farmer, On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American
Landscape (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 14.
4. Quoted in William Nester, The Age of Jackson and the Art of American Power, 1815–1848
(Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2013), 226.
5. Richard White, It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own: A New History of the American West
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 61.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 26, 1844, May 13, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin,
Mark Ashurst-McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes,
March 1844–January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith
Papers, ed. Ronald K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church
Historian’s Press, 2016), 62–73, 159–65 (hereafter JSP, CFM).
7. See, for example, Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, May 3, 1844, March 1, 1845, in JSP,
CFM:115–16, 127–28, 137–47, 267–68. The council considered but soon abandoned Texas as a
place to relocate en masse.
8. Letter from Orson Hyde, April 26, 1844, in JSP, CFM:181–84.
9. John C. Frémont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains in the Year 1842,
and to Oregon and North California in the Years 1843–44 (Washington DC: Gales and Seaton,
1845), 275.
10. Letter from Orson Hyde, April 25, 1844, in JSP, CFM:177.
11. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:408.
12. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:111–12, 129.
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:116.
14. George Miller to William P. Richards, January 28, 1845, in JSP, CFM:240. Richards had
suggested the idea of a “Mormon Reserve” to be created by an act of Congress.
15. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 18, 1844, in JSP, CFM:127–28.
16. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1, 1845, in JSP, CFM:268; see also Young’s remarks on
January 11, 1846, in JSP, CFM:513.
17. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 4, 1845, in JSP, CFM:285. This is not to say that Young did not
calculate the possibility of Mexican territory becoming a US possession, and he almost certainly
expected Alta California to come under the protective care of the United States. Seeking to curry
favor from federal officials, Young informed President Polk in 1846 of Mormon plans to carve a
state out of Upper California. Statehood would create “home-rule” within the American political
system, even though it threatened to temper theocratic designs. Brigham Young to James K. Polk,
August 9, 1846, Brigham Young Office Files, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, qtd. in
Ronald W. Walker, “The Affair of the ‘Runaway’: Utah’s First Encounter with the Federal
Officers,” Journal of Mormon History 39 (Fall 2013): 2.
18. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18 and 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:328, 354.
19. See, for example, Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:402–3.
20. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 18, 1845, in JSP, CFM:328–29.
21. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:472.
22. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11, 1846, in JSP, CFM:513. Prior to Frémont, some
mapmakers placed east-west ranges bounding the northern and southern boundaries of the Great
Basin, suggesting an even more isolated and protected region.
23. Council of Fifty, Minutes, January 11, 1846, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:515, 518, 352.
24. Prior to publication of the Nauvoo minutes of the Council of Fifty, what we knew about the
Council of Fifty’s role in the West derived from diaries, letters, and reminiscences of council
members revealing either their impressions or their memories of council proceedings. These are
compiled in my own edited volume, The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History (Salt Lake City:
Signature Books, 2014). See also Klaus J. Hansen, Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of
God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press,
1967); D. Michael Quinn, “The Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1844 to 1945,” BYU Studies 20
(Winter 1980): 163–97; and Andrew F. Ehat, “‘It Seems Like Heaven Began on Earth’: Joseph
Smith and the Constitution of the Kingdom of God,” BYU Studies 20 (Spring 1980): 253–80.
25. The council’s war against “wasters and destroyers” is but one example of a broader tradition of
categorizing and vilifying the animal kingdom. Like the land, animals fell into camps of “good” or
“bad” depending on how they served humans. Patty Limerick has shown that in the West, so-
called good animals had wildlife bureaus named for them—Fish and Game—while bad animals
did not. See Patricia Nelson Limerick, Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American
West (New York: Norton, 1987), 311–12. Wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes were often attacked
by the government, as was the case with Utah’s earliest Euro government in 1849. And the
Council of Fifty’s first laws in Utah, dated 1848, granting a bounty on wolf and other skins began
a grand tradition in Utah of targeting animals deemed too wild, troublesome, or dangerous. See
entries for the winter of 1848–49 and Historian’s Office History, January 26, 1850, in Rogers,
Council of Fifty.
26. Wallace Stegner, Mormon Country, ed. Erskine Caldwell, American Folkways series (New York:
Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1942).
27. Jedediah S. Rogers, Roads in the Wilderness: Conflict in Canyon Country (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 2013), esp. chaps. 1 and 2.
28. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:476.
29. John D. Lee, Diary, March 3, 1849, in Rogers, Council of Fifty, 161. For the council’s name, see
Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 14, 1844, in JSP, CFM:48; see also William Clayton, Journal,
January 1, 1845, in Rogers, Council of Fifty, 29.
30. See Rogers, Council of Fifty, esp. entries for 1848 and 1849.
31. Brigham Young, July 24, 1852, in Journal of Discourses (Liverpool: F. D. Richards, 1855),
1:146.
32. George Q. Cannon, “The Mormon Land System in Utah,” Irrigation Age: A Journal of Western
America 7 (July 1894): 188–89.
33. The Mormons’ narrative that they had transformed the environment is taken up in Farmer, On
Zion’s Mount, 105–38; and Jon T. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 173–87.
34. Walter Webb, The Great Plains (1931; repr., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981).
35. See John Bennion, “Water Law on the Eve of Statehood: Israel Bennion and a Conflict in Vernon,
1893–1896,” Utah Historical Quarterly 82 (Fall 2014): 289–305.
36. Walter Nugent, “Where Is the American West: Report on a Survey,” Montana: The Magazine of
Western History 42 (Spring 1992): 2–23.
37. For works on the federal presence, see Karen R. Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning:
Ranchers, the Government, and the Property between Them (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2002); and Leisl Carr Childers, The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great
Basin (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015).
38. Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1950).
 Chapter 15

THE COUNCIL OF FIFTY AND THE

SEARCH FOR RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
W. Paul Reeve
On July 22, 2014, I received a brief email from Peggy Fletcher Stack, the
award-winning religion reporter at the Salt Lake Tribune: “Paul, I am doing
a short piece on Mormon pioneers for Thursday. Would you be willing to
send me three surprising or intriguing facts about the pioneers and the trek
that most people don’t know? I don’t need anything lengthy, just a
paragraph on each.”
In response, I sent Peggy the following paragraph:
Considering the way in which some Pioneer Day talks in Mormon
congregations sometimes conflate American patriotism with the
Mormon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, it seems evident that most
Mormons today don’t realize the depth of mistrust and resentment
some Mormon pioneers harbored toward the United States in 1846
and 1847. When the Mormons arrived in the Great Basin, they were
actually arriving in northern Mexico. They crossed an international
border and were fleeing the United States. The U.S. war with Mexico
was ongoing. When some Mormons first learned of that war, they
hoped Mexico would win. Pioneer Hosea Stout, for example, wrote in
his diary, “I confess that I was glad to learn of war against the United
States and was in hopes that it might never end untill they were
entirely destroyed for they had driven us into the wilderness & was
now laughing at our calamities.”1
After Stack’s story appeared in print and was subsequently passed around
on Facebook, a bit of a dustup ensued.2 A few people on Facebook wanted
me to know that their Mormon pioneer ancestors were loyal Americans and
that I had done them a disservice in the way that I had characterized the
mistrust and resentment that some pioneers harbored toward the United
States. After now having read the Council of Fifty minutes, if I had to
answer Stack’s request today, I would suggest that my original answer, if
anything, understated the mistrust and resentment some Mormons bore
toward the United States. I would amplify the degree and depth of mistrust
—and even outright rejection—of the United States and its Constitution that
animated the Council of Fifty’s attitude.

A PREVIOUSLY GLOSSED-OVER PERIOD

In terms of an overall assessment of the council minutes, let me state that
while some students of the Mormon past might be disappointed in the
Council of Fifty minutes because they do not contain salacious evidence
that might bring Mormonism to its knees, what I found was engaging and
even sometimes riveting. It was as if I had a front-row seat as I watched the
tragic unraveling of the Mormon community at Nauvoo. The time period
covered in the minutes is significant. The two years from 1844 to 1846
seem so crucial, yet they fall between the cracks in terms of how historians
have typically told the Mormon story.
Traditionally, historians end their discussion of the early era of
Mormonism with Joseph Smith’s murder in June 1844 and then begin a
discussion of the Great Basin era with Brigham Young’s departure from
Nauvoo in February 1846 or Young’s arrival in the Salt Lake Valley in July
1847. If for no other reason, the Council of Fifty volume is essential for its
fascinating and insightful lens—from an administrative perspective—into
the two years that historians of the Mormon past typically only gloss over
or ignore altogether. The unease and ongoing tension with old settlers in
Hancock County sometimes drip from the pages as does the Latter-day
Saint leadership’s efforts at finding a new place of refuge for the Saints. If
readers are able to set aside their knowledge of how the story plays out and
immerse themselves in the minds of council members who were not privy
to that knowledge, the bleakness and even desperation of the Saints’
precarious situation from 1844 to 1846 is powerfully embodied in these
minutes.
Nauvoo, Illinois, 1846. Glass plate negative made by Charles W. Carter of original daguerreotype
by Lucian R. Foster. Courtesy of Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

RESENTMENT AND ANGER TOWARD US GOVERNMENT

I felt the depth of council members’ despair over a continued inability to
find judicial, executive, or legislative justice for the wrongs they had
endured, including the murder of their leaders Hyrum and Joseph Smith. I
was reminded of Alexis de Tocqueville’s assessment of one of the inherent
weaknesses he found in American democracy, something he called the
tyranny of the majority:
What I most criticize about democratic government as it has been
organized in the United States, is not its weaknesses as many people
in Europe claim, but on the contrary, its irresistible strength. And
what repels me the most in America is not the extreme liberty that
reigns there; it is the slight guarantee against tyranny that is found.
When a man or a party suffers from an injustice in the United
States, to whom do you want them to appeal? To public opinion? That
is what forms the majority. To the legislative body? It represents the
majority and blindly obeys it. To the executive power? It is named by
the majority and serves it as a passive instrument. To the police? The
police are nothing other than the majority under arms. To the jury?
 The jury is the majority vested with the right to deliver judgments.
The judges themselves, in certain states, are elected by the majority.
However iniquitous or unreasonable the measure that strikes you may
be, you must therefore submit to it or flee. What is that if not the very
soul of tyranny under the forms of liberty?3
The Council of Fifty minutes made Tocqueville’s point real to me in a
way that academic histories of Mormonism have not been able to do.
Joseph Smith was especially concerned that the US Constitution did not
protect minority rights. “There is only two or three things lacking in the
constitution of the United States,” Smith contended, and it was the
guarantee of rights and freedom for all, regardless of religious affiliation.
He was dismayed that the federal government refused to intervene on behalf
of Mormon property rights and religious liberty in Missouri. He wished that
the Constitution required “the armies of the government” to enforce
“principles of liberty” for all people, not merely the Protestant majority. He
advocated severe penalties for a “President or Governor who does not do
this,” suggesting that “he shall lose his head” or that “when a Governor or
president will not protect his subjects he ought to be put away from his
office.”4 The failure of state or federal governments to address Mormon
grievances clearly bothered Smith and was a prime motivator in his
appointing a committee from among the council to draft a new constitution.
That the committee’s efforts failed to produce a viable document testifies to
the difficulties of constitution writing in general and to the challenges of
writing specific guarantees against oppression toward marginalized groups.
That a committee attempted such a feat affirms the depth of despair
Mormon leaders felt at their status as a religious minority and the gravity of
their perception that the US Constitution had failed them.
Joseph Smith compensated for the lack of liberty he saw in the US
Constitution with an expansive vision of religious freedom at Nauvoo and
for his proposed kingdom of God on earth. He included as members in the
Council of Fifty those of other faiths or of no faith as an explicit
demonstration of his views. He stated on April 11, 1844, that there were
men (three total) admitted to the council who were not Latter-day Saints
and who “neither profess any creed or religious sentiment whatever.” They
were admitted to the council, in part, to demonstrate that “in the
organization of this kingdom men are not consulted as to their religious
opinions or notions in any shape or form whatever and that we act upon the
broad and liberal principal that all men have equal rights, and ought to be
respected, and that every man has a privilege in this organization of
choosing for himself voluntarily his God, and what he pleases for his
religion.”5
For Joseph Smith, it was not enough to merely tolerate people of other
faiths or of no faith. Religious bigotry had no place in his worldview. He
stated, “God cannot save or damn a man only on the principle that every
man acts, chooses and worships for himself; hence the importance of
thrusting from us every spirit of bigotry and intolerance towards a mans
religious sentiments, that spirit which has drenched the earth with blood.”
He called the council to witness that “the principles of intollerance and
bigotry never had a place in this kingdom, nor in my breast, and that he is
even then ready to die rather than yeild to such things. Nothing can reclaim
the human mind from its ignorance, bigotry, superstition &c,” he insisted,
“but those grand and sublime principles of equal rights and universal
freedom to all men.”6 Joseph Smith and other members of the council came
to believe that the US Constitution had failed the Latter-day Saints on this
count—that their rights had not been protected. Thus they needed to draft a
new constitution to rectify this inadequacy.

DEVOTION TO THE NATION

Despite the substantial resentment manifested in the Council of Fifty
minutes toward the United States and its Constitution, council members
also demonstrated an ongoing devotion to the nation. Considerable paradox
is thus bound up in the minutes and in the hearts of its members. Under
Joseph Smith’s leadership, the council “agreed to look to some place where
we can go and establish a Theocracy either in Texas or Oregon or
somewhere in California.”7 Council members also “spoke very warmly”
about “forming a constitution which shall be according to the mind of God
and erect it between the heavens and the earth where all nations might flow
unto it.”8 At the same time, the council petitioned the US Congress to
authorize Joseph Smith to “raise a company of one hundred thousand armed
volunteers” to protect and facilitate US western expansion. Such a plan, the
council suggested, would demonstrate Joseph Smith’s “loyalty to our
confederate Union, and the constitution of our Republic.”9 Joseph Smith
also ran for president of the United States, and council members left
Nauvoo on electioneering missions. Under Brigham Young’s leadership,
council members talked about declaring themselves an independent nation
even as the council drafted letters to every governor of every state in the
nation asking if each governor might be willing to accept Latter-day Saints
as a group of religious refugees in his respective state. Only the governor of
Arkansas, Thomas S. Drew, wrote to Young in response. Drew claimed that
he was unable to help and that the Mormons would be better off with their
proposed move west.10
Perhaps these paradoxes foreground the tension that US Mormons
continue to exhibit in the twenty-first century, with their desire to both
belong and to be distinct. Perhaps that desire is a holdover from a much
more fraught historical climate in the mid-to-late 1840s that ultimately
propelled Mormons outside of the United States altogether and then put
them at odds with the American nation for the rest of the century. As
William W. Phelps said in one council meeting, he was in favor of “letting
the United States and the British governments alone, we are better without
them.”11 It was a sentiment that continued to animate Mormon interactions
with the nation on occasion. By the early twentieth century, Mormon
leaders were ready to move toward accommodation, yet an underlying
wariness still sometimes stirred both sides.

THE WEST
My final impression from reading the minutes highlights the power that the
American West (or what would become the American West) had over the
imaginations of members of the Council of Fifty. The council’s very
organization centered on the idea that Mormons needed to find a new
location for Mormon settlement (initially, the search was for an additional
location for Mormons—another gathering place not to replace Nauvoo but
to supplement it, with some early discussion and efforts focused on Texas
as a place where Mormons with slaves might gather to avoid the problems
that moving to a northern state might present for slaveholding converts).
Oregon and California were also places that captured the council’s
imagination.
The historian Frederick Jackson Turner talked about the West as a safety
valve—a location that allowed the crowded cities and factories of the East
to release the pressure of America’s growing industrialization by offering
free land and a new destiny in the West.12 The Council of Fifty viewed the
West as a safety valve of its own making. What council members sought to
flee was not the growing squalor of industrial centers but a government that
failed to protect minority rights. The West of their imagination was a place
outside the bounds of firm state control, and for those reasons they zeroed
in on Oregon, Texas, and Alta, or Upper, California. Over the chronological
course of the minutes, council members for various reasons became less
enthused about Texas and Oregon and more focused on California (an
expansive geographic term at the time that encompassed the northern
Mexican frontier, including the Great Basin). “The sooner we are where we
can plant ourselves where there will be no one to say [that] they are [the]
old settlers the better,” George A. Smith said on September 9, 1845.13 At
that same meeting, Brigham Young stated that “it has been proved that there
is not much difficulty in sending people beyond the mountains. We have
designed sending them somewhere near the Great Salt Lake.”14
Historians have long known of the advanced preparations of the
Mormons for their removal west, especially their foreknowledge of the
resources that the West had to offer and of the potential sites for a future
relocation.15 The Council of Fifty minutes add detail and a more concrete
timeline to that knowledge. As early as September 1845, Young had zeroed
in on the Great Salt Lake. Sometimes, stories that circulate in popular
Mormon culture suggest that the Saints were driven from their homes in
Illinois and wandered aimlessly westward, not knowing their destination
until, on July 24, 1847, Brigham Young declared that the Salt Lake Valley
was “the right place.” Young, in fact, arrived two days after the initial
Mormon migrants entered the valley on July 22. He joined that vanguard
group on July 24 at their camp between present-day Third and Fourth South
and Main and State Streets, where the beginnings of the initial Mormon
settlement were already under way. Young’s declarative statement that day
was thus a confirmation of a decision already made, something Young had
contemplated with the Council of Fifty as early as the fall of 1845.16
 Council members were also purposefully looking for a place outside of
firm governmental control for their settlement, and northern Mexico fit that
bill. They were fully aware that they were leaving the United States and
crossing an international border. Mexico’s lack of direct dominion over its
northern frontier was what made it so desirable to the Saints. Erastus Snow
observed on March 22, 1845, that “the only difficulty there appears to be in
the way of our locating in California is the Mexican government, and he has
no fears about them. . . . He knows the Mexican government is weak, and
they have never taken measures to place themselves in a situation of
defence: They are too weak to maintain themselves against their own
enemies in their midst. Every information he has been able to get goes to
satisfy him that there is a mere form of government but not much power.”17
As Snow viewed it, the Great Basin existed in a power vacuum, which
made it an attractive destination for the Saints, who were looking for a
place to establish a religious kingdom without the same type of outside
interference that had worked to their disadvantage in Missouri and Illinois.

CONCLUSION
The Council of Fifty minutes, in summary, offer an important
administrative perspective into a crucial two years in Mormon history. They
highlight the mounting tension between the Saints and the American nation
and offer a much longer view of events leading up to the Utah War of 1857–
58. Future histories of that war will need to account for the attitudes and
perspectives toward the federal government brewing among Mormon
leaders in the 1840s as the beginnings of a fracturing relationship that
continued to deteriorate through the 1850s. These insights and many more
will give students of Mormon history much to contemplate as they pore
over the Council of Fifty minutes in search of new understanding.

NOTES
1. Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844–1861, 2 vols. (Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1964), 1:163–64; see also John F. Yurtinus, “‘Here Is One
Man Who Will Not Go, Dam’um’: Recruiting the Mormon Battalion in Iowa Territory,” BYU
Studies 21, no. 4 (Fall 1981): 475–87.
2. Peggy Fletcher Stack, “This Is the Place for Facts You Might Not Know about Mormon Pioneers,”
Salt Lake Tribune, July 24, 2014, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58216230-78/mormon-
pioneers-mormons-companies.html.csp.
3. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en
Amérique, ed. Eduardo Nolla, trans. James T. Schleifer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), 2:413–
14.
4. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in Matthew J. Grow, Ronald K. Esplin, Mark Ashurst-
McGee, Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, and Jeffrey D. Mahas, eds., Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 1844–
January 1846, vol. 1 of the Administrative Records series of The Joseph Smith Papers, ed. Ronald
K. Esplin, Matthew J. Grow, and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press,
2016), 101, (hereafter JSP, CFM).
5. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:97.
6. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:97, 100.
7. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:40.
8. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 11, 1844, in JSP, CFM:42.
9. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 26, 1844, in JSP, CFM:68, 69.
10. JSP, CFM:389.
11. Council of Fifty, Minutes, April 11, 1845, in JSP, CFM:409.
12. George Rogers Taylor, The Turner Thesis Concerning the Role of the Frontier in American
History, rev. ed., Heath New History Series (Boston: Heath, 1956).
13. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:476.
14. Council of Fifty, Minutes, September 9, 1845, in JSP, CFM:472.
15. Lewis Clark Christian, “Mormon Foreknowledge of the West,” BYU Studies 21, no. 4 (Fall
1981): 403–15.
16. W. Randall Dixon, “From Emigration Canyon to City Creek: Pioneer Trail and Campsites in the
Salt Lake Valley in 1847,” Utah Historical Quarterly 65 (Spring 1997): 155–64.
17. Council of Fifty, Minutes, March 22, 1845, in JSP, CFM:354.
 CONTRIBUTORS
Richard E. Bennett is a professor of Church history and doctrine at
Brigham Young University. His publications include We’ll Find the Place:
The Mormon Exodus, 1846–1848 (1997) and Mormons at the Missouri,
1846–1852: “And Should We Die . . .” (1987).
Christopher James Blythe is a historian with the Joseph Smith Papers
Project. His published work has appeared in journals such as Journal of
Mormon History, BYU Studies Quarterly, Nova Religio, and Material
Religion.
Marilyn Bradford is a research assistant at the Church History
Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She graduated
with a degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015
and will be pursuing a master’s in history education.
Richard Lyman Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor Emeritus of
History, Columbia University, and former Howard W. Hunter Chair of
Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University. He is a member of the
National Advisory Board and a former general editor of the Joseph Smith
Papers Project.
Gerrit J. Dirkmaat, an assistant professor of Church history and doctrine
at Brigham Young University, has coedited several volumes of The Joseph
Smith Papers, including Council of Fifty, Minutes: March 1844–January
1846 (2016). He is coauthor of From Darkness unto Light: Joseph Smith’s
Translation and Publication of the Book of Mormon (2015).
Matthew C. Godfrey is a general editor and the managing historian of the
Joseph Smith Papers Project. He is the former president of Historical
Research Associates, a historical and archeological consulting firm, and is
the author of Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the
Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921
(2007).
Matthew J. Grow, director of publications for the LDS Church History
Department, is a historian specializing in Mormon history. Grow
coauthored a biography of Parley P. Pratt with Terryl Givens. He formerly
directed the Center for Communal Studies housed at the University of
Southern Indiana.
Jeffrey D. Mahas coedited Council of Fifty, Minutes: March 1844–January
1846 (2016). He is a documentary editor with the Joseph Smith Papers
Project and is pursuing a PhD in history from the University of Utah.
Patrick Q. Mason is Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies and
dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at Claremont Graduate
University and a nationally recognized authority on Mormonism. His
publications include The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism
in the Postbellum South (2011), Planted: Belief and Belonging in an Age of
Doubt (2015), and What Is Mormonism? A Student’s Introduction (2017).
Spencer W. McBride is a historian whose research interests include the
intersections of religion and politics in early America. He is a volume editor
with the Joseph Smith Papers Project and the author of Pulpit and Nation:
Clergymen and the Politics of Revolutionary America (2016).
Nathan B. Oman is Rollins Professor of Law at William & Mary Law
School. His legal scholarship has focused on the philosophy of contract law
and on Mormon legal history.
Benjamin E. Park is an assistant professor of history at Sam Houston State
University. His first book, American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in an
Age of Revolutions, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in
2018.
W. Paul Reeve is a professor of history and the director of graduate studies
in history at the University of Utah. He is the author of Religion of a
Different Color: Race and the Mormon Struggle for Whiteness (2015).
Jedediah S. Rogers is co-managing editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly
and a senior historian, Utah Division of State History. His publications
include The Council of Fifty: A Documentary History (2014).
R. Eric Smith is the editorial manager for the Publications Division,
Church History Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints. In that role, he edits print and web publications for the Church
Historian’s Press, including publications of the Joseph Smith Papers. He
previously was an editor for the church’s Curriculum Department, and
before that he practiced law for a Salt Lake City firm.
Richard E. Turley Jr. is the managing director of the Public Affairs
Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was
previously an Assistant Church Historian and Recorder and the managing
director of the Church History Department.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We appreciate the Religious Studies Center staff for their assistance through
the peer review, design, editing, and marketing. Thomas A. Wayment and
Joany O. Pinegar shepherded the book through the peer-review process.
Brent R. Nordgren and Madison Swapp edited photos and designed the
book. R. Devan Jensen, Tyler Balli, Mandi Diaz, Shannon K. Taylor,
Kimball Gardner, and Leah Emal edited the chapters. Erin Gazdik helped
with the promotional materials.