C. My husband's great, great, great-grandfather (Alpheus Cutler) was a member of the Council of 50, so there is no question that it was real, and there is no question about it's purpose.
The extravagant self-confidence of Smith and other Mormon leaders, reinforced by the faith and expectations of their followers, knew no bounds. It was in such a temper of mind and heart that the Council of Fifty, that extraordinary group for strategic planning, proposed to detach Nauvoo from the State of Illinois and make it a powerfully garrisoned independent state under the guise of a federal territory; to launch vast, paramilitary mission-colonizing ventures beyond the western territories of the US; to create a Mormon state in Texas; and to nominate Joseph Smith for President of the US.
Robert B. Flanders, "The Kingdom of God in Illinois: Politics in Utopia,"
Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought vol.5, no. 1 (Spring, 1970):35.