The Council of Fifty in Nauvoo,
Illinois
On 11 March 1844 in
, Illinois,
Joseph Smith organized a council
that he and his closest associates saw as the beginning of the
literal kingdom of God on earth. The council, which eventually
became known as the Council of Fifty because it had roughly fifty
members, operated under Smith’s leadership until his death less than
four months later. Following Smith’s death, the council met in
Nauvoo under ’s leadership from February 1845 to January
1846. Council members saw the council as somewhat
separate from but also related to the ecclesiastical structure of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Joseph Smith stated
that “the literal kingdom of God [that is, the Council of Fifty],
and the church of God are two distinct things” as “the laws of the
kingdom are not designed to effect our salvation hereafter.”
Instead, 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.” Nevertheless,
because Joseph Smith was leader of both the church and the council,
ecclesiastical concerns were frequently reflected in the discussions
of the council.
Minutes of the council’s meetings were
kept primarily by council clerk on
loose sheets of paper, which he then copied into three small bound
record books. This volume of
The Joseph Smith Papers
publishes these minutes for the first time. Because Joseph Smith authorized the
creation of the minutes and presided over the council until his
death, and because the record of the council in these years was kept
as a unit in Clayton’s bound volumes, the minutes are published as
part of
The Joseph Smith Papers even though much of
the record covers events in the eighteen months following Smith’s
death on 27 June 1844. This
volume is divided into four parts that correspond with the council’s
periods of activity.
Part 1 contains a record of the meetings
held on seventeen days from 10 March through 31 May 1844.
Part
2 of this volume covers the meetings held on fifteen days
from 4 February
through 10 May 1845. The final two parts contain,
respectively, the minutes for three meetings held in
September and October
1845, and for two meetings held in
January 1846.
Journals, letters, and reminiscences of council
participants, as well as the information included in the church’s
manuscript history,
have allowed previous scholars to examine some aspects of the
council’s history, philosophy, and operations. Without the minutes, however, knowledge about the
council has been limited. While many of the actions taken by the
council have been known through other records, the minutes chronicle
the deliberations that led to these decisions, helping explain the
rationale of events such as Smith’s 1844 campaign for the presidency and the
contemplated expansion of the Latter-day Saints into and the western United States.
The minutes also reveal much about early Mormon thought on earthly
and heavenly governments and constitutions. While illuminating
Latter-day Saint ideas regarding settlement in areas on the
geographic periphery from to Texas to the Great Salt
Lake, the minutes provide an unparalleled view of
decision making at the center of what participants viewed as the
nascent kingdom of God.
Antecedents to
the Council of Fifty
In the minutes, the Council of Fifty appears to spring
full blown. In fact, the council had many antecedents, including the
Latter-day Saints’ experiences in and expulsions from
and in the 1830s; the longtime interest of the Latter-day Saints in
American Indians, the West, and the ; and
the Saints’ interpretations of biblical prophecies and Joseph Smith’s revelations.
The expulsions the Latter-day Saints experienced during
the 1830s—particularly
from , Missouri, in
1833 and then from the state of
in 1838 and
1839 under threat of “extermination” from the state’s
—left them deeply convinced
of the inability and unwillingness of local, state, and federal
governments to protect the rights of unpopular religious minorities.
At this time, the Bill of Rights protected against abuses by only
the federal government, not state and local governments, meaning
that federal officials generally refused to intervene to protect
rights at local levels. The Mormons were not alone in their
reservations about the power of the majority in the .
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political
theorist who toured the young republic in the early 1830s, identified the repression of
unpopular minorities as “the main evil of the present democratic
institutions of the United States.” Like
abolitionists and members of other maligned movements who had
suffered at the hands of majority opinion, Latter-day Saints sought
changes that would restore what they saw as a proper balance to
America’s political system.
Joseph Smith and other leaders
consciously designed the government of the city of to provide
protections the Latter-day Saints had lacked during the 1830s. The Nauvoo municipal
charter, granted by the state of in 1840, was
intended to guard against many of the institutional wrongs the
Saints had experienced. Recognizing that their opponents in often included soldiers in state-supported
militias rather than members of loosely organized mobs or vigilante
groups, the Saints legally organized their own militia, the Nauvoo
Legion. Mormons also believed that courts, largely in the hands of
their opponents, had failed to protect them or to redress abuses. In
Nauvoo the municipal court had far-reaching authority and was used
to protect Smith and other Mormons from what they perceived as
unjust legal actions. The Council of Fifty, its members maintained,
would protect minority rights—the minority rights of all, not just
Latter-day Saints—against the tyranny of the majority.
In addition, the origins and purpose of the Council of
Fifty reflected the Latter-day Saints’ interest in American Indians.
Mormons believed that the Indians were descendants of the Israelites
who are called Lamanites in the
Book of
Mormon; Mormons thus referred to contemporary Indians as
Lamanites. Relying on statements in both the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith’s revelations, Mormons
expected their proselytizing efforts would bring Lamanites “to the
knowledge of their Fathers & that they may know the Promises of
the Lord that they may believe the Gospel.” The
title page of the Book of Mormon says the
book was written particularly “to the Lamanites,” and that book of
scripture contains numerous prophecies about the Lamanites’ destiny
in the latter days as part of the restoration of the house of
Israel. Smith sent four missionaries to the
American Indians in September 1830,
only a few months after the church was organized, and other
missionaries followed throughout the church’s early history. In the
early 1840s Smith
sent additional missionaries to Indian nations, some of which—such
as the Sauk and Fox and the Potawatomi—reciprocated by sending
delegations to .
Mormon beliefs about the destiny of America’s Indians
also sparked an abiding interest in the and the
American West. As early as 1831, when
federal Indian agents denied permission to the four initial Mormon
missionaries sent to preach to Indians in what is now
Kansas, the missionaries contemplated
taking their message to the “Rocky Mountains,” if necessary, in
order to “be with the Indians.” The Mormon interest in American Indians
and the West (including both the Far West and nearer areas such as
) framed many of the council’s
discussions. In the early
months of 1844, Latter-day Saint leaders faced both
growing disquiet among some church members and increasing opposition
from without because of the practice of plural marriage by Joseph Smith and others, fears over
the Mormons’ political power, and concerns over elements of Smith’s
doctrinal teachings. As tensions grew, the Saints’ long-standing
interest in the West gained urgency. The West already figured in the
American imagination as a place of refuge and redefinition. A year
before newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan
proclaimed it the “manifest destiny” of the to spread
across the continent, the Saints contemplated new settlements in
Texas, , or . On 20 February, a few weeks before the
establishment of the council, Smith commissioned the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles to explore the possibility of settlements in
California or Oregon, not as an abandonment of but as an
expansion of their influence where they could “build a city in a
day— and have a governme[n]t of our own—— in a hea[l]thy
climate.”
In addition, biblical prophecies and Joseph Smith’s revelations
established the context for Latter-day Saint thinking on the kingdom
of God. Council members, as well as other members of the church,
emphasized the prophecy in Daniel that God would “set up a kingdom,
which shall never be destroyed,” which would be as a stone “cut out
of the mountain without hands” that would fill the earth. Latter-day
Saints did not believe that they were establishing simply another
denomination to take its place within the ranks of Christianity;
rather, they believed that Daniel’s prophecy referred to the
latter-day church and kingdom of God established through Joseph
Smith.
Latter-day Saints also looked to the imagery of raising a “standard to the
people” or an “ensign to the nations” that was rooted in the
writings of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Members of the Council
of Fifty repeatedly invoked this imagery in their deliberations.
Isaiah 5:26 prophesies that God “will lift up an ensign to the
nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth:
and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly,” while in Isaiah
49:22 God states, “I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set
up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their
arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.”
Variations on this theme can be found throughout the writings of
Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets. The
Book of
Mormon presented itself as a standard to help gather the
Lord’s people in the last days, whereas an early Joseph Smith
revelation presented the Mormon Zion as the “ensighn unto
the People.” While in jail
in in the late
1830s, Joseph Smith wrote that the Constitution of the
was a “glorious
standard” and a “heavenly banner” that had been erected to establish
liberty. The Council of Fifty
sought to erect a new standard of liberty in order to establish the
freedoms America had failed to safeguard.
Several of Joseph Smith’s revelations spoke of
the “kingdom of God” and contributed to the eventual establishment
of the Council of Fifty. Early revelations commanded converts, for
instance, to “seek the kingdom of God.” An October 1831
revelation, paraphrasing Daniel’s prophecy, declared,
“The keys of the kingdom of God is committed unto man on the Earth
& from thence shall the Gospel roll forth unto the ends of the
Earth as the stone which is hewn from the Mountain without hands
shall roll forth untill it hath filled the whole Earth.” That
revelation emphasized that the establishment of the kingdom of God
on earth would occur before the second coming of Jesus Christ. In August 1833
another
revelation instructed that the “keys” of the “Kingdom of
God on the earth” had been “confered upon” the Latter-day
Saints.
Initially, Latter-day Saints likely understood these
statements about the kingdom of God as describing the work of the
church; by the time of the organization of the Council of Fifty,
Joseph Smith and others saw them as
referring to a literal kingdom of God on earth. Smith had been
publicly expressing similar thoughts on the merits of theocracy
since 1842, when an editorial on
“The
Government of God” appeared in the church newspaper
Times and Seasons, of which he was the editor.
The editorial, likely written by of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, criticized contemporary governments for their failures to
“promote universal peace and happiness.” Even the was “rent from
center to circumference, with party strife, political intrigue, and
sectional interest.” Speaking about the government of God as
reflected in ancient Israel and in the future Millennium, the
editorial averred, “Their government was a theocracy; they had God
to make their laws, and men chosen by him to administer them . . .
so will it be when the purposes of God shall be accomplished; when
‘the Lord shall be king over the whole earth’ and ‘Jerusalem his
throne.’”
Members of the council believed that it would play a
key role in the fulfillment of both biblical and latter-day
prophecies. , for instance, told the
council “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.”
further “addressed the
council on the subject of the filfillment of the prophecies of
Daniel showing that the time is at hand when the principles of
eternal truth & righteousness shall prevail.”
During the winter of 1843–1844, Joseph Smith
convened several special councils that may have been preparatory to
the formal organizing of the Council of Fifty. For example, on 29 January 1844 the Twelve Apostles
and a few others met to discuss whom the Latter-day Saints should
support in the coming presidential election. They decided that
Joseph Smith should declare his candidacy and that they would “use
all honorable means to se[c]ure his election.”
Smith continued to meet with such small councils to arrange the
details of his campaign until the organization of the Council of
Fifty.
Furthermore, in late
February, Joseph Smith held several councils with the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and other church leaders to discuss a
proposed expedition to and
. Both
the election campaign and the western explorations became key
projects of the Council of Fifty.
Organization,
Rules, and Records of the Council
While the Council of Fifty had many antecedents within
Latter-day Saint thought and experience, the immediate impetus for
its organization came on 10 March
1844 when Joseph Smith
received two letters from and , church leaders in .
Miller and Wight had been commissioned along with others to
establish mills in Wisconsin to provide lumber for the
and a
boardinghouse called the . Since enough lumber would soon be procured for
these projects, Miller and Wight proposed that the mills be sold and
that missionaries be sent to to select a
“place of gathering for all the South.”
They further wrote that American Indians throughout the
nation were eagerly waiting to be taught by Latter-day Saint
missionaries. The letters also reflected an expansive Latter-day
Saint view of the future growth of the church throughout the world,
as the writers noted that the “Gospel has not been fully opened in
all the South and South Western States, as also , , Brazil &c, together
with the West India Islands.” In an era of
growing sectional conflict within the —particularly
between northerners and southerners over the possible American
annexation of the independent, slave-owning nation of Texas— and believed that “a
concert and reciprocity of action between the North and the South
would greatly advance the building up of the Kingdom.”
After some initial discussion with (who carried the letters to ) and other
church leaders, Joseph Smith called a meeting that
evening in Nauvoo, inviting all the members of the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles who were immediately available, as well as a few
others, to attend. Joseph Smith encouraged candid discussion about
the letters, commenting that those who failed to speak frankly would
be “nothing better than ‘dough heads,’” and Smith did not “want to
be forever surrounded by a set of ‘dough heads.’” The discussion
revealed that many of the “same feelings” expressed in the letters
“had run through the minds” of church leaders in Nauvoo. The meeting
continued to a “late hour,” when the assembled men adjourned to the
following morning.
At that meeting on the morning of Monday, 11
March 1844, the men continued to discuss the expansion of
the church from , and “all
seemed agreed to look to some place where we can go and establish a
Theocracy either in or or somewhere in &c.” In addition, they conversed “on the
subject of 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.” During this
meeting Joseph Smith and other church
leaders formally organized the Council of Fifty. All the members of
the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, as well as many local
church leaders, were eventually added to the council. Nevertheless,
with the exception of Smith and later , seniority within the council was according
to age—as had been the case with the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
when it was formed in 1835—and not by
virtue of position within the church.
Rules adopted in this initial meeting governed the
Council of Fifty throughout its existence. The minutes note that
Joseph Smith “laid down the order
of organization after the pattern of heaven.” He had long been
interested in the organization of councils according to what he had
earlier described as “the order of Councils in ancient days,” which
he said had been shown to “him by vision.” Elements of the
procedures of the Council of Fifty reflected a blend of contemporary
parliamentary procedures and the practices of church organizations
such as high councils and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Joseph Smith became the
council’s “standing chairman,” and twenty-two other men were
accepted into the council on that day, with appointed as
recorder and as clerk. When the fiftieth
member was added to the council on 18
April 1844, Smith “said that the council was full.” Nevertheless, by
the last time Smith met with the Council of Fifty in late May 1844,
fifty-four men had been admitted, including Richards and Clayton,
who were sometimes not counted in the total number. In his journal account
of this final meeting held under Smith’s leadership, Clayton
recorded the name “council of 50” for the first time.
Council members were selected by the standing chairman
and invited to attend the council, where prior to being accepted by
vote they were given a charge that “explained the nature of the
council and briefly stated its importance, rules, regulations
&c.” The initiates were
then asked to assent to the regulations of the council and take an
oath that they would keep its proceedings confidential. Participants
believed they had an obligation to offer candid commentary on issues
before the council and that their collective deliberations would
lead them to correct decisions. Council members sat
“according to their ages the oldest member being seated at the right
hand of the chairman and forming a semicircle in front of the chair
the youngest member seated at the left of the chairman.” Most of the
business of the council, such as drafting documents or preparing
reports, was assigned to committees that met and then reported back
to the council.
The council generally followed traditional parliamentary order. The meetings
were organized when the chairman and council members took their
seats in order, and a roll was likely called. The meetings were then
opened with a prayer and occasionally with the reading of a passage
of scripture or the singing of a hymn. The minutes of the previous
meeting (or meetings if the council held two sessions on the
previous date) were then read and accepted and new members were
inducted. The council began its business by hearing reports from
committees and then proceeded with any additional items submitted by
the chairman. Although this rule was not always followed, motions
made during discussions were to be written out and submitted to the
chair. If the chairman approved of the motion, he would hand it to
the clerk to be read. Such
parliamentary rules had been used in the City Council
and were part of the broad culture of parliamentary procedures
practiced in legislative bodies throughout the . At the organization of the
council, Joseph Smith emphasized that
decisions of the council had to be unanimous. Beginning with the
oldest member, each participant voted by voice on resolutions.
In their deliberations, council members frequently
emphasized the importance of confidentiality, including the need to
safeguard the minutes kept by , presumably
on loose sheets of paper. They almost certainly believed that
knowledge of their discussions regarding theocracy and the kingdom
of God would increase the already widespread belief that Latter-day
Saints opposed key elements of American democracy. As early as 14 March 1844, “it was considered
wisdom to burn the minutes in consequence of treachery and plots of
designing men.” On the night of
22 June 1844, knowing that he
would soon be arrested and believing that he might be murdered, Joseph Smith sent for Clayton
before he left and ordered
him “to burn the records of the kingdom, or put them in some safe
hands and send them away or else bury them up.” Clayton immediately
returned home, “put the records in a small box and buried them in my
garden.”
On 3 July 1844,
shortly after Smith’s death, unburied the minutes, and he
soon began copying them into a small bound volume that he titled
“Record of the Council of Fifty or Kingdom of God.” When meetings resumed in 1845, he continued keeping minutes on
loose sheets that he then copied into the book. Clayton eventually
used three small record books for this purpose. Following the exodus
from in 1846, the record books were taken to
Utah. , Joseph
Smith’s successor as chairman of the council, had custody of the
records in the 1850s. In 1857 apostle asked Young for
records pertaining to the council for his work in preparing the
multivolume church history that Joseph Smith had begun.
Young agreed that Woodruff and his associates could “publish an
account of it so that the Saints might understand it but not the
world He gave into our hands all the records of the Council of
50.” References to the council thus appeared in the
manuscript history and in publications such as the
Deseret
News.Even so, the original minutes continued to be closely guarded. By 1880
George Q. Cannon, an apostle and clerk of the
council since 1867, had possession of
the key to the box “containing Records of ‘Kingdom of God.’” Cannon,
then serving as Utah territorial delegate to Congress, mailed the
key back to Salt Lake City so that , president of the Quorum of the Twelve, and
his fellow apostles Joseph F. Smith and
Franklin D. Richards could read the records
in preparation for a reinstitution of the council.
At some point thereafter, the minutes became part of the collection
of records of the church’s First Presidency, where they remained
throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, until
they were transferred to the Church History Department in 2010. Historians with the
Joseph Smith Papers used the minutes to assist in editing Smith’s
March–June 1844
journal, published in 2015, but the minutes have otherwise
never been directly available to scholars.
The Council under Joseph
Smith, 1844
Members of the Council of Fifty held lofty views of its
importance and its promise. and wrote to , president of the British mission, that
the “Kingdom is organized and although as yet no bigger than a grain
of mustard seed, the little plant is in a flourishing condition and
our prospects brighter than ever.” Reflecting on the achievements of
the council during 1844, summarized:
In this council was the plan arranged for
supporting president Joseph Smith
as a candidate for the presidency of the . . . In this
council was also devised the plan of establishing an
immigration to and
plans laid for the exaltation of a standard and ensign of
truths for the nations of the earth. In this council was the
plan devised to restore the Ancients to the knowledge of the
truth and the restoration of union and peace amongst
ourselves.
Clayton aptly captured the principal concerns of the
Council of Fifty in this era, including Joseph Smith’s candidacy for the
presidency, wide-ranging discussions about the meaning of the
kingdom of God, and a possible Latter-day Saint emigration to or elsewhere in the West.
Presidential Campaign
As the 1844 presidential
campaign approached, Latter-day Saint leaders sought assurances from
possible candidates of their rights and the validity of their claims
for redress for their losses in . , who had assumed the presidency upon
William Henry Harrison’s death in 1841, had quickly alienated the Whigs who
elected him. Since the Whigs would not renominate Tyler, the race
seemed wide open. In November 1843
Joseph Smith wrote five leading
potential candidates—Democrats ,
, , and Richard M.
Johnson; and Whig —and asked,
“What will be your rule of action
relative to us, as a people.” Only three responded, and they
offered no commitments and little sympathy; Calhoun wrote Smith that
the Mormons’ treatment in Missouri was a state issue, not a federal
one. Smith responded, “If the
general government has no power, to reinstate expelled citizens to
their rights, there is a monstrous hypocrite fed and fostered from
the hard earnings of the people!”
Dissatisfied by the contenders’ responses, Joseph Smith and other church
leaders decided that he should become a candidate for president, a position to
which the apostles nominated him on 29
January 1844.
Smith may have thought he had a chance in the absence of a clear
front-runner, and he also may have believed that a presidential run
would publicize the Mormon message and their mistreatment in . The Council of Fifty became a vehicle for
managing the campaign, which eventually included over three hundred
electioneering missionaries. In addition, the council
settled on council member , a
counselor in the First Presidency, to run as the vice presidential
candidate.
Members of the Council of Fifty, reflecting Joseph Smith’s
Views on the Powers and Policy of the
Government and discussions in the council,
portrayed Smith’s candidacy as championing minority rights. The
Mormon expulsion from , apostle asserted in a
campaign meeting, was only the most egregious
violation of civil liberties during a decade in which “white men
have been shot and hung, and negroes burned without trial, judge or
jury; abolitionists have been mobbed and shot; Catholic churches,
dwellings and convents burned.” Pratt warned that the loss of civil
liberties by minority groups threatened the rights of all Americans:
“The Catholics may be the sufferers to-day, the Mormons to-morrow,
the Abolitionists next day, and next the Methodists or
Presbyterians.” The partisan disputes over “minor” issues like
tariffs and banks paled in importance to this fundamental question.
Ignoring the Saints’ suffering under the guise of states’ rights,
Pratt thundered, meant that national government officials, “with a
few exceptions, stand with their skirts stained and their hands
dripping with the blood of innocent
men,
women
and children.” Joseph Smith, by contrast,
would protect the rights of all citizens: “He is not a Southern man
with Northern principles; nor a Northern man with Southern
principles. But he is an Independent man with American principles,
and he has both knowledge and disposition, to govern for the benefit
and protection of ALL.”
Discussions of Theocracy
The preparations for Joseph Smith’s candidacy for the
presidency coincided with lengthy discussions in the Council of
Fifty regarding the nature of the kingdom of God, theocracy, and
Joseph Smith’s role as leader of the church and the council. For
most contemporary Americans, theocracy connoted the tyrannical rule
of religious leaders, conjured images of the collusion of
Catholicism with European governments, and seemed the antithesis of
American democracy and constitutional principles. However, Joseph
Smith and other council members believed that theocracy could be
fused with the best elements of democracy, a system that Smith
publicly described during his campaign as “theodemocracy.” In a
statement ghostwritten by , Joseph Smith proclaimed, “As there is not a nation or
dynasty, now occupying the earth, which acknowledges Almighty God as
their law giver . . . I go emphatically, virtuously, and humanely,
for a Theodemocracy, where God and the
people hold the power to conduct the affairs of men in
righteousness.” As “an advocate of unadulterated freedom,” Smith
argued that a theodemocracy would protect liberty and freedom “for
the benefit of ALL.”
Council members reiterated that a system that blended theocracy with
democracy would protect rights of minority groups, allow for dissent
and free discussion, involve both Latter-day Saints and others, and
increase righteousness in preparation for Jesus Christ’s second
coming. stated, “The design was
to form a Theocracy according to the will of Heaven, planted without
any intention to interfere with any government of the world. . . .
You need not fear that we design to trample on the rights of any man
or set of men, only to seek the enjoyment of our own rights.”
Joseph Smith likewise “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.”
Joseph Smith and other members of the Council of Fifty
believed that the council would serve as the government of the
kingdom of God both before and after the second coming of Jesus
Christ. In their view, not all good men and women either before the
Second Coming or during at least the initial stages of the
Millennium would be church members. Council members emphasized that everyone
would enjoy religious liberty in the kingdom of God. Joseph Smith
invited three men who were not church members to join the council in
order “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.” He
wanted the council to throw off “every spirit of bigotry and
intollerance towards a mans religious sentiments, that spirit which
has drenched the earth with blood.”
Council members also attempted to write a constitution for the kingdom of
God that would reflect the principles of theodemocracy. The
council’s name, which was given in a revelation during the council
meeting on 14 March 1844,
suggests a mix of political purpose and religious symbolism: “The
Kingdom of God and his Laws, with the keys and power thereof, and
judgement in the hands of his servants. Ahman Christ.” Council members often used an abbreviated
form of this revealed name, referring to the council by such titles
as the “Kingdom,” “Kingdom of God,” or “Council of the Kingdom of
God.” On the day of the council’s organization, , ,
, and were appointed a
committee to “draft a constitution which should be perfect, and
embrace those principles which the constitution of the lacked.”
Joseph Smith and other council
members criticized the U.S. Constitution for not protecting liberty
with enough vigor. After the council’s
committee reported its draft of the constitution, Smith instructed
the council to “let the constitution alone.” He then dictated a
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.”
In the midst of these discussions on governmental principles in the kingdom
of God, on 11 April 1844 moved that the
council “receive from this time henceforth and forever, Joseph Smith, as our Prophet,
Priest & King, and uphold him in that capacity in which God has
anointed him.” Snow’s motion
was unanimously accepted. This action dramatically demonstrates the
council members’ views of theodemocracy, under which the
ecclesiastical leader of the church (prophet and priest) would be
chosen by them as a political leader (king). Council participants
understood that this action would have no immediate political
consequences, but it symbolized their desire to prepare for the
millennial kingdom of God. Joseph Smith and others in the council
emphasized that leaders in the kingdom of God would govern by
fostering free discussion, by respecting the people, and by serving
as a conduit for revelation and God’s law.
Proclaiming Joseph Smith as a prophet, priest,
and king also reflected the temple ceremonies that he had introduced
among his closest followers beginning in May 1842. In the view of Latter-day Saints, these
ceremonies would allow men to one day become, in the words of John
the Revelator, “unto our God kings and priests.” On 23 July
1843, Smith taught that he would “adva[n]ce f[ro]m
prophet to pri[e]st & then to King not to the kingdoms of this
earth but of the most high god.” In his famous
King
Follett sermon delivered on 7
April 1844, a few days before the council received him as
prophet, priest, and king, Smith stated, “Here then is Et[erna]
l. life to know the only wise & true
God you have got to learn how to be a God yourself & be a K[ing]
& Priest to God.” The next day,
Joseph Smith urged the Saints to finish building the
so
that they could there “rec[eive] [their] endow[men]
t to make [them] K[ings] & P[ries]ts
unto the Most H[igh] G[od].” He explained that this office had
“nothin[g] to do with temporal things” but was instead related to
the kingdom of God.
The belief that Joseph Smith had been crowned as
king of an earthly theocracy, along with rumors of temple-related
ceremonies in which Smith and others were anointed kings and
priests, spread among both dissidents within the church and
opponents and observers outside the church. The dissidents who
published the Nauvoo Expositor in June 1844 accused Smith of attempting
to establish a tyrannical theocracy. In his account of Smith’s death, Illinois
newspaper publisher George T. M. Davis claimed
that Smith had been “crowned KING under
God, over the immediate house of Israel. This ceremony was performed
in 1842, by a council of fifty in
number, denominated the ‘Ancient of
Days.’ And thenceforward his authority as such was recognized
and obeyed by the church and its authority in all respects and under
all circumstances.” So common were rumors of
these actions in the summer of 1844 that governor placed the belief that Smith “had caused
himself to be crowned and anointed King of the Mormons” first in a
list of “causes of excitement” that led to his death.
Exploring a Place of
Refuge
The members of the Council of Fifty had a deep interest in expanding
Latter-day Saint settlements outside the American Midwest, and the
council took several actions to explore alternative sites of
settlement. For instance, the council wrote and approved a
petition to the Senate, the House of Representatives, and
the president asking that Joseph Smith be
authorized to raise one hundred thousand volunteers to protect
American emigrants to and and otherwise
establish peace and order on the American frontier.
was commissioned to take the petitions to , though
the ambitious proposal failed to attract much support.
Council members hoped to establish additional settlements as places of
refuge, fearing that hostility against the Saints would one day
force their evacuation from , as they had earlier been forced to flee . In their search, council members initially
focused on , then a new nation that had
won its independence from less than a decade
earlier. The council commissioned to
travel to Texas to negotiate with President regarding possible settlements. In mid-April,
before Woodworth returned, Joseph Smith
affirmed his intention to both strengthen the Latter-day Saint
center place of Nauvoo and establish other settlements, of which
Texas might be one. A few weeks
later, Woodworth reported on his travel to Texas and interview with
Houston; in response, the council debated whether to petition the
Congress of Texas for a grant of land. The council
commissioned Woodworth to return to Texas to “meet the Texian
Congress at their next session.” Following Joseph
Smith’s death, , acting on his understanding
of Smith’s intentions, led a group of Latter-day Saints to
Texas.
The Council under Brigham Young,
1845–1846
The council met for a final time with Joseph Smith as
chairman on
31 May 1844. Less than a
month later, Smith and his brother were murdered while awaiting trial in a jail in
, Illinois.
included an account of Joseph
Smith’s June activities and of the
murders in the minutes of the Council of Fifty.
Following Joseph Smith’s
death, the Saints faced the central question of who should succeed
him as president of the church. Although a number of possibilities
were suggested, church members in
in the immediate aftermath of the murders considered two principal
alternatives. First, , who had
long served as a counselor to Smith, declared that he should serve
as guardian of the church. Second, , president of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, and other members of his quorum affirmed that they had
received the essential keys of authority from Joseph Smith and had
been prepared by him to lead in his absence. At a conference on
8 August 1844, most Mormons
in Nauvoo accepted the leadership of Young and the Twelve Apostles.
A month later, Rigdon was excommunicated for making secret
appointments and ordinations in opposition to the apostles’
leadership. His excommunication, however, did not end the tumult
over succession. For the next several years, the Quorum of the
Twelve Apostles, Rigdon, and other claimants battled for the loyalty
of Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, in other areas of the , and in
Great Britain.
Initially, and the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles moved forward in advancing key priorities, such as resuming
construction on the
,
without reconvening the Council of Fifty. A deteriorating political
situation in , however, apparently prompted Young
to call the council together again on
4 February 1845. In late January
1845, the Illinois state legislature had voted to repeal
the Nauvoo city charter, depriving the Saints of their city
government—including their local court system, police force, and
militia. The repeal of the charter also led to an increased urgency
to carry out the western measures deliberated in the council a year
before.
When reconvened the council, he explained to council
members that it had not “been prudent and safe to call the council
together untill within a few days past.” At its first
meeting under Young, the council dropped eleven members: the three
non-Mormons; and one of his followers; and , both of
whom had led companies of church members out of against the
wishes of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles; and four other men
whose loyalties to the Twelve were questioned. The succession
of Young, the senior apostle, as standing chairman of the Council of
Fifty indicated that the council would continue to operate under the
church’s presiding officer, as it had under Smith. Young emphasized to the
council his loyalty to his predecessor: “To carry out Josephs
measures is sweeter to me than the honey or the honey comb.” He
further commented that Smith had “laid out work for this church
which would last them twenty years to carry out.” In meetings from
February through May
1845, the council accepted new members and occasionally
chose additional men to attend the council for particular
assignments.
Under ’s leadership in 1845 and 1846, the council focused less on the
wide-ranging discussions about millennial prophecies, the kingdom of
God, and constitutionalism that had occupied it during the council’s
initial months. Rather, council members focused on more pragmatic
concerns, especially how to respond to the repeal of the charter,
complete the Nauvoo and
, and explore settlement sites. As they wrestled with
the question of how to maintain order in a city of over ten thousand
inhabitants without a functioning local government, council members
discussed and at times implemented ideas to establish an extralegal
police force, to restore city government, and to urge leaders to reinstate the charter.
In addition, as wrote in his journal
in March 1845, the council
increasingly looked to the West; they wanted to “seek out a location
and a home where the saints can dwell in peace and health, and where
they can erect the ensign & standard of liberty for the nations,
and live by the laws of God without being oppressed and mobbed under
a tyrannical government without protection from the laws.” Following its annexation to the in March 1845, council members no longer
considered a viable option. Instead, they
began gathering more information on and and
sent four men on a “Western Mission” among various American Indian
tribes, hoping to forge alliances with western tribes and find
temporary gathering places for the Saints.
During these 1845 meetings—in the shadow of the
murders of Joseph and , and with the growing realization of their
tenuous situation in —council members occasionally lashed out in anger at
their perceived enemies. expressed
his frustration by stating that he did not “care about preaching to
the gentiles any longer.” Indeed, he stated, paraphrasing , “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.” The previous treatment
of the Latter-day Saints in and and the murders of the Smiths heavily influenced
Young’s rhetoric: “The gentiles have rejected the gospel; they have
killed the prophets, and those who have not taken an active part in
the murder all rejoice in it and say amen to it.” Rather than preach
to the Gentiles, he continued, the Saints would look to the “house
of Israel,” by which he meant the American Indians. Young believed
that American governments had been too powerless or too corrupt to
protect the Latter-day Saints’ rights, and he vowed that he would
not allow himself to be taken and killed as the Smiths had
been.
Both the Latter-day Saints and their opponents accepted widespread American
attitudes toward community violence and vigilantism that justified
using extralegal means to provide for community defense when other
mechanisms failed or to enforce order on individuals or communities
perceived as undesirable. The Mormons continued to
be targets of extralegal vigilantism after the mob murders of the
Smiths, and the Saints themselves expelled dissenters from in spring 1845.
Both sides used similar arguments to justify their actions. For example,
anti-Mormon newspaper editor
defended “the summary execution” of the Smith brothers that he
helped instigate by arguing that “nature says to every man, ‘protect
thy self, when the law of the land cannot protect.’” In a March
1845 council meeting, justified the
extralegal defense of
by asserting, “We have been excluded from all our rights as other
citizens and we have a right to make law for ourselves and put them
in force, and there is not a court of justice in these but that would
justify the principle if they knew all the facts as we do.” Notwithstanding the
often heated statements within the Council of Fifty, Mormon
extralegal violence was typically limited to the defense of Nauvoo
from outsiders—particularly after the repeal of the Nauvoo charter
left the city without a police force or court system—and the
coercive expulsion of dissidents. When faced with the possibility of
armed conflict between the Saints and other residents, and other church
leaders spoke of suffering wrong rather than doing wrong and
eventually opted for a mass exodus rather than battle.
By the end of April 1845, the Council of
Fifty had sent missionaries west among the American Indians and had
supervised the reorganization of a municipal government in . On
10 May 1845
proposed that the council not
meet again until “something of importance shall arise to call the
council together.” Furthermore, Young had concerns about
confidentiality, complaining, “There are some vessels in the council
which are leaky.”
By the time the council reconvened on
9 September 1845, the
Latter-day Saints in
had begun making concrete plans for a westward exodus. At that
council meeting, stated that an initial company
would head west in spring
1846 and first settle “near the Great Salt
Lake,” after which “in a little time we can work our
way to the head of the ,
or the .” Initially Young and
other Latter-day Saint leaders hoped that a partial evacuation of
Nauvoo would suffice. However, vigilante attacks in Mormon
settlements near Nauvoo during September forced revisions to the plan. Council of Fifty
members also feared that the federal government might interfere with
the exodus if they delayed too long. After negotiations with local
and state political authorities, some of which are highlighted in
the minutes of the Council of Fifty, leaders agreed to a complete
evacuation of church members from Nauvoo and the surrounding area by
spring 1846.
During council meetings in September and October 1845, council members discussed
selling or renting church-owned properties in Nauvoo, shutting down
the Latter-day Saint newspapers in Nauvoo, and organizing companies
for the westward trek.
Following these fall meetings, the council met again for the last two
meetings recorded in the official minutes for this period, on
11 and
13 January 1846, in the
attic rooms of the partially completed
, where
and other church leaders were in
the process of performing temple ceremonies for thousands of
Latter-day Saints. Records
indicating that the council met two more times in —on
18 and
19 January—are included
as appendixes to this volume. The January
1846 council meetings focused on the westward exodus and
how to dispose of church property in Nauvoo.
The last meeting of the council recorded in the minute books
occurred on
13 January
1846. On that occasion, again referred to the image of the “standard to the
people” or “ensign to the nations” in relation to their imminent
removal west, noting that “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 & I no [know] how to make the Flag.” Even though the minutes of the Nauvoo-era
council end at this time, the council or its members still appear to
have been engaged in organizing and leading the exodus. The council
met for five brief sessions in November and December 1846 in
Winter Quarters (in what later became
Nebraska Territory).
Two years later, on 5 and 6
December 1848 in Salt Lake City,
called together all
available council members and formally reconvened the Council of
Fifty. At
the time, there was no government structure in the area, as
Utah Territory was not officially
organized until 1850. From December 1848 through
1849, and to a lesser degree in 1850 and 1851, the council
thus functioned both as an ecclesiastical body and as an active,
functioning government. The council
briefly resumed some activity in 1867
and 1868.
Under ’s leadership, the council
formally reorganized again on 10 April
1880 and met through early 1885. During these
later iterations of the Council of Fifty, participants looked to the
original minutes from the
era for guidance.
The minutes reproduced in this volume capture the
principles, protocols, and activities of the Council of Fifty as it
was formed and operated in . In the minutes, council members wrestled with the
meaning of the kingdom of God and anticipated the fulfillment of
millennial prophecies. They expressed their vision of the ideals
that should guide earthly governments and constitutions, including
the necessity of protecting religious minorities in a pluralistic
society, and that they believed would characterize the government of
the Millennium. In addition, the minutes show that the council
operated as a key decision-making body from March 1844 to January 1846, helping to
plan for Joseph Smith’s campaign for the
presidency, seek other Latter-day Saint sites of settlement, and
organize the exodus from Nauvoo. The minutes of the Council of Fifty
thus shed new light on the development of Latter-day Saint beliefs
and on the history of Nauvoo and the church during this critical
era.