Letters to the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve proposing a new gathering center for Mormon settlement in the Republic of Texas provided the immediate impetus for the organization of the Council of Fifty in March 1844. The proposal may have grown out of earlier interest in the southern states as well as the Republic of Texas. JS’s journal notes that a few months earlier, on 27 October 1843, he conversed with George Miller and Peter Haws, who had “just retur[ne]d from the south.” Miller was the bishop for the settlement of Latter-day Saints who were logging and milling pine at Black River Falls in Wisconsin Territory. Haws and other Mormon missionaries preaching in Alabama and Mississippi had recently converted scores of southerners. JS’s journal also notes that on 29 October, Miller and Haws met with Willard Richards, JS’s secretary, and ordained William C. Steffey an elder in order to send him on a mission to Texas. These notes in JS’s journal suggest that he and Miller shared a new interest in the South and in Texas.

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On 7 March 1844 JS explained his position on Texas in an address to a congregation in Nauvoo. He warned that if the United States did not annex Texas, the republic would form an alliance with the British that would expose America’s western frontier to an attack. JS acknowledged that many opposed annexation because Texas would come into the union as a slave state, upsetting the balance of power between northern and southern states in Congress. He argued, however, that protecting America from British intrigue and invasion was more important. In JS’s view, the congressional balance of power could be restored by converting slave states into free states or by annexing Canada. Anticipating the concern that many would have with such a large number of emancipated slaves, JS stated that the freedmen could be sent through Texas to Mexico—to live “where all colors are alike.”

The day after JS delivered this address, George Miller arrived in Nauvoo carrying two letters from Wisconsin, where church members had been logging pine since 1841 to supply lumber for the Nauvoo temple and the Nauvoo House. . . . Noting the poor prospects for making money in Wisconsin and the recent proselytizing success in the South, the Wisconsin Saints proposed that they abandon the milling venture and establish a new gathering center in Texas for southern Saints. In terms of raising money for the church, they expected they would do so more successfully by instituting a consecration program among gathered planters. As for the Indians, the Wisconsin Saints felt they could persuade them to move to Texas with them, and that the Saints there could then use Texas as a doorway to proselytize among Indians throughout the Americas.

The Wisconsin Saints appointed a committee—consisting of Lyman Wight, George Miller, Pierce Hawley, Phineas R. Bird, and John Young—to write up their views and send them to church leaders in Nauvoo. . . .

Miller delivered the letters to JS in Nauvoo on the afternoon of Sunday, 10 March 1844. JS perused the letters and some discussion ensued. At 4:30 p.m. JS met in the Nauvoo Mansion with Miller, available members of the Quorum of the Twelve, and the temple committee. The men reacted favorably to the petition from the Wisconsin Saints. Though his journal entry for this day is somewhat ambiguous, JS apparently suggested the production of a revised version of the U.S. Constitution that would protect all men in their rights as well as the possibility of amending the Texas Constitution. After breaking for supper, the group reconvened at “7 eve” in “the assembly room” over JS’s store. JS organized the meeting by appointing Willard Richards as chairman, whereupon Richards appointed William Clayton the clerk. According to the account below, the letters were further discussed, after which JS expressed satisfaction with the “union of feeling” that prevailed among the brethren with whom he was meeting and also between themselves and the Wisconsin Saints. The meeting continued until a “late hour” before being adjourned until the next morning.