Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith had both millennialand temporal aspirations for the organizationhe called the Council of Fifty, named after the numberof men who were intended to comprise it. Organized afew months before Smith s death in June 1844, it continuedunder Brigham Young as a secret shadow governmentuntil 1851. Minutes from the earliest meetings areclosed to researchers but contemporary accounts speakof a deliberative body preparing for Christ s imminentreign. It also helped to sponsor Smith s U.S. presidentialbid and oversaw the exodus to present-day Utah.
One member downplayedthe significance of thissecret legislative body in 1849 as nothing but a debatingSchool. On the contrary, a typical meeting includeddecisions regarding irrigation, fencing, and adobe housing, after which the group sang a song written by ParleyP. Pratt: Come ye sons of doubt and wonder; Indian, Moslem, Greek or Jew; Be to all a friend and brother;Peace on Earth, good will to men. Two weeks later, thecouncil called for blood to flow to enforce its laws.
As the nineteenth century waned and the LDSChurch moved toward the American mainstream, endingits emphasis on the imminent End of Days, therewas no longer a need for a Church-managed municipalgroup destined to become the millennial world government.The council became irrelevant but survives todayas a historical artifact available in fragmented documentarypieces which are presented here for the first time."