Matthew J. Grow and R. Eric Smith, eds., The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History. Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017. 201 p.: ills. Index. ISBN 978-9443-9421-9. Hardcover. $19.53 at Amazon.

Back at the turn of the century, when I first began attending meetings of the Mormon History Association, one of the best activities didn’t appear anywhere on the schedule. On some night of the conference, after all the planned activities were over, attendees in the know would gather at some lobby or waiting room or other corner of the conference hotel, someplace with lots of couches and sometimes ottomans to lounge against, and just talk. Who’s doing what? what’s the progress of your book? how do you really feel about the issue-of-the-day? Even a newbie like me was welcome to take part in the shop-talk, and dared challenge a senior scholar like Ron Esplin about something in my first such gathering (for the record, he was ultimately right; I still feel right about sticking up for my friend, though). Do they still hold those informal gatherings? Maybe I’m no longer cool enough to find them. Anyway …

Those sessions, where real live practicing historians chatted informally about their work, were my introduction to the Council of Fifty minutes, that much-discussed and never-seen Holy Grail of Mormon historical documents. People speculated about what they contained, and told of rumored encounters with the records themselves (nobody knew anybody who knew anybody who claimed to have read them, but there were stories about historians who had seen the minute books on a shelf in the First Presidency’s vault and been told that they need not concern themselves with them – they either held nothing of interest, or else held such interesting things that they could never ever ever be studied by the public).

Because the Council of Fifty was primarily a Nauvoo-era thing (the Council of Fifty was a theoretical governing body for the political kingdom of God, founded by Joseph Smith and extending into the early Utah period), and because it was political, I was not especially interested in the minutes myself – but I was fascinated by the strong responses of other historians to the existence and secrecy of those minutes. They treated the minutes as sort of a litmus test to the openness of the Church archives and the Church’s attitude toward history: One senior scholar (no longer particularly active, due to age) declared that s/he would not set foot in the archives again until the Council of Fifty Minutes were made available. (That declaration was not quite adhered to – I have seen that scholar in the archives – now Church History Library – only three times in 20 years.)

It didn’t bother me too much that those minutes were so tightly restricted. I was new to history, and had an absolute thrill every morning when I walked through the archives’ doors, because there was so much – so very, very much – that was brand new to me and that I knew I couldn’t comb through in two lifetimes. Why worry, I thought, about some record I couldn’t see when there were so many that I could see? I’m less naive now, having had my share of being denied access to records for what seem like needlessly arbitrary reasons – I’ve recently even had the experience of being denied access to records that were catalogued as “open for research,” by a librarian who didn’t think I should see them – and can better understand the frustration of those earlier historians, and the excitement which greeted the news that the Council of Fifty minutes would be published as a volume in the Joseph Smith Papers.

Those minutes were published last year, in the Administrative Records series of the project. That publication, so long anticipated, of these 500+ pages of previously unexamined records created at a crucial time by the most important leaders of the Church, landed with more of a soft squish than with a loud bang in the world of Mormon history. There were no scandalous reveals, no revolutionary plots against the civil government, no explosive actions or intentions. I wonder if those historians taking part in those long-ago discussions would have focused so heavily on the minutes, had they known what wasn’t there?

This is most definitely not to say that the minutes are not interesting, not worth reading, not revealing of life and expectations and fears and dreams in Nauvoo before and after the death of Joseph Smith. But those discoveries were not, as was once expected – or perhaps merely hoped – to be found in purple prose on every random page. Instead, the minutes are yielding their chief value to historians who do what historians do – carefully reading and evaluating and cross-referencing and seeking to understand what was happening and why.

The newly issued volume edited by Matthew J. Grow and R. Eric Smith, The Council of Fifty: What the Records Reveal about Mormon History is a relatively slim volume of essays by 15 significant and current Mormon historians (the co-author of one essay is a woman; all the rest are male, I notice; do women have nothing to say that isn’t directly tied to women’s history? or were no other women recruited for the project?), each considering some aspect of Mormon history or historiography informed by the Council of Fifty minutes.

The Separatist Impulse in the Nauvoo Council of Fifty / Richard Lyman Bushman

Injustices Leading to the Creation of the Council of Fifty / Richard E. Turley Jr.

The Council of Fifty and Joseph Smith’s Presidential Ambitions / Spencer W. McBride

God and the People Reconsidered: Further Reflections on Theodemocracy in Early Mormonism / Patrick Q. Mason

The Council of Fifty and the Perils of Democratic Governance / Benjamin E. Park

“We the People of the Kingdom of God”: Constitution Writing in the Council of Fifty / Nathan B. Oman

Lost Teachings of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Other Church Leaders / Gerrit J. Dirkmaat

Insights into Mormon Record-Keeping Practices from the Council of Fifty Minutes / R. Eric Smith

“To Carry Out Joseph’s Measures is Sweeter to Me Than Honey”: Brigham Young and the Council of Fifty / Matthew J. Grown and Marilyn Bradford

American Indians and the Nauvoo-Era Council of Fifty / Jeffrey D. Mahas

A Monument of the Saints’ Industry: The Nauvoo House and the Council of Fifty / Matthew C. Godfrey

“With Full authority to Build Up the Kingdom of God on Earth”: Lyman Wight on the Council of Fifty / Christopher James Blythe

“We Ae a Kingdom to Ourselves”: The Council of Fifty Minutes and the Mormon Exodus West / Richard E. Bennett

The Council of Fifty in Western History / Jedediah S. Rogers

The Council of Fifty and the Search for Religious Liberty / W. Paul Reeve

Those who have thirsted for the Council of Fifty minutes chiefly to understand the early Mormon thought about government and politics – particularly on the eve of the Mormons’ flight to the West, where government would, for a few years, be almost exclusively under Mormon control – will find several essays addressing their topic.

I found Richard E. Bennett’s essay on the Exodus to be especially interesting. Mormon leaders are known to have considered several possible Western destinations for refuge, and historians have debated just how firm their destination was before the vanguard company reached the Salt Lake Valley in 1847 – for years, the popular Mormon conception was that Brigham Young did not know his destination until he raised up on his elbow from his sickbed and saw the Valley as it had been previously shown to him in a vision. Historians have long known that that was an exaggeration, that leaders had examined what maps were available, and queried those who had been in the West, and were well aware of Indian alliances in the region that made Salt Lake Valley more appealing than valleys to the north or the south. But Bennett finds in the minutes much more detail, heretofore unknown, about the planning process, and reports that the Council of Fifty debated numerous aspects of Western settlement, determining the qualities of what they needed as a settlement place – space to grow, a cooperative Native population, a healthy climate, and so on — long before they settled on exactly where such a refuge would be found.

R. Eric Smith’s essay on record-keeping practices might not, on the surface, sound like the most intriguing chapter in the book, but I found it quite interesting and think Keepa readers would, too. He briefly recounts the history of the minutes and discusses the confidentiality of the records from their creation until the decision in the 21st century to make them publicly available. Why, he asks, would you “[write] down something that you want kept hid? Why not just avoid recording in the first place?” If you keep a diary, or have ever struggled with what or how much to include of difficult topics in a family history, the decision of William Clayton to record and then preserve these minutes will be illuminating. Smith concludes that section by saying that “Clayton is a hero for deciding to preserve the records, even though doing so put him at personal risk.”

And why would recording those minutes, and then preserving them, have put Clayton and others at risk? The dramatic story of Mormon engagement with and rejection by the United States and several individual states, is narrated in the opening chapter by Richard E. Turley. “This history of repeated injustices suffered by the Latter-day Saints,” he writes, “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.’” It has become the accepted wisdom among those of us who spend much time on the internet that modern Mormons see persecution where there is none. That may sometimes be true – not being liked, or not getting our way in everything, is not persecution. But this chapter reminds readers that in the few years just before formation of the Council of Fifty, Mormons did face persecution – honest-to-goodness, not-exaggerated, loss-of-life-and-liberty persecution, and the political awareness and effectiveness envisioned by the Council of Fifty was intended to protect the lives and liberties of the Saints.

Other essays are equally as fascinating as those I have singled out for attention – I don’t think there’s a lemon in the list. Essays are short, averaging 12 pages, often with an illustration. The months leading from the Martyrdom to the Exodus are some of the most well known to the average Mormon, and you may think you’ve heard it all. But there’s more to be learned, and the essayists in this volume have teased out stories that were new to me, and added depth to the ones I generally already knew. These are the first fruits of the study of this important “new” record of Mormon history.