Constitution of the State of Deseret, with the journal of the convention which formed it, and the proceedings of the legislature consequent thereon. Kanesville, [Iowa], Published by Orson Hyde,1849. 16p. 23 cm.
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On May 4, 1849, John M. Bernhisel left Great Salt Lake City for Washington D.C. with a petition for a territorial government in the Great Basin. About the first of July, a shift occurred in the thinking of the Church leaders toward statehood rather than territorial status. And during the first three weeks of July, they drafted a constitution for a proposed state of Deseret and a memorial to Congress requesting admission into the Union. On July 27, 1849, Almon W. Babbitt left for Washington with the manuscript of the constitution and memorial, expecting to stop in Kanesville, Iowa, where the constitution was to be printed. The year before Orson Hyde had purchased a press from the Cincinnati Type Foundry and had set up a printing office in Kanesville; and on February 7, 1849, he published the first number of a semimonthly newspaper,
The Frontier Guardian, which for sixteen months was the only Mormon newspaper printed in the United States. Babbitt reached Kanesville on September 3 and
Constitution of the State of Deseret was printed shortly thereafter.
It is an interesting book--the founding document of government in the Intermountain West--and a bit perplexing. It reports a constitutional convention on March 5-10, 1849, and an organizing session of the legislature, July 2-9, both of which did not occur. Congress, of course, would not have considered an application for statehood that had not been produced by a constituent convention and ratified by popular election; so
Constitution of the State of Deseret was also a public relations piece designed to show that the democratic processes were alive and well in Deseret. The constitution itself was derived from the Iowa constitution of 1846, with a few significant changes.
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake,
A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 32, p. [25].
Used by permission of the authors.
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY