The Des Moines Daily News reported that "[t]he meetings of the council were irregular, infrequent and always star chamber proceedings.
From the beginning, dissension featured the meetings, and long before the close of the war one-half of the membership ceased to attend the sessions.
[4][5] To chair the Council, Governor Harding chose Lafayette Young, the editor and publisher of The Des Moines Capital.
As the Council's chairman, Young urged that "disloyal" persons should be impoverished and imprisoned, arguing that "[a]ny man who has lived under the protection of our laws and has accumulated wealth and is now disloyal should be deprived of every dollar he possesses and he should be interned in a stockade until the end of the war and at that time his fate should be considered carefully.
"[6] He also campaigned against the teaching of any foreign language in any public school or college, and for the imposition of English literacy tests for voting.