U.S. army officers ask church leaders at Kanesville (Council Bluffs), Iowa, to raise 500 volunteers for the Mexican War. Brigham Young had previously commissioned Jesse C. Little to secretly negotiate army service for 2,000 Mormons to finance exploration of the Great Basin. But in public sermons Young would insist that the Mormon Battalion was a necessary accommodation to the U.S. president's threat to annihilate the Mormons if they did not comply.
[source: On This Day in Mormon History, http://onthisdayinmormonhistory.blogspot.com]
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