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Show WHOSE PUBLIC LANDS? the request that it be transmitted to their legislatures for the purpose of soliciting their cooperation.8 There followed in rapid succession memorials from Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Kentucky, Delaware, Maine, and Vermont asking for a share of the public lands for aid to education. New Jersey and Kentucky asked for the exact amount the Maryland report calculated they should have, while Maine modestly asked for 800,000 of the 966,332 acres the report had recommended for both Massachusetts and Maine. Even before all the memorials were in, the Senate Committee on Public Lands reported, recommending the inadvisability of granting lands to the non-public-land states. Such grants would involve "an excessive proportion of their superfices . . . leaving but a small part of the land in each subject to taxation, or to settlement, except at the will of other sovereign states." Furthermore, it repeated that grants for education to states in which the lands were Federal had the effect of increasing the value of remaining public lands, as grants to the older states would not do. Also, the grants to the new states were a part of a bargain by which they surrendered their right of sovereignty over the public lands and conceded 5 years of tax exemption for all lands sold. The committee agreed, however, that it was "just and expedient" to give a percentage of proceeds from public land sales for public education in each state and territory, the amount to be apportioned on the basis of population.9 Again in 1826 the Legislature of Rhode Island requested its Representatives in Washington to procure an act of Congress appropriating to this smallest state "her proportion of the public lands" for "the establishment of an educational fund in this State." None of the states then or later seemed to be 8 Annals of Congress, 16th Cong., 2d sess., 1820-21, pp. 151, 154, 328, 384, 1772 ff. 9 American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 496. bothered by the prospect of jurisdictional conflicts which were almost certain to develop if they gained ownership of large bodies of land within other states.10 Meantime, the Treasury was accumulating a large surplus as a result of the rapid economic development of the country. Since this surplus was being applied to the purchase of the outstanding obligations of the United States, then mostly held abroad, it was feared that the outflow of money would before long produce serious financial distress. Discussion turned to slowing down the redemption of the debt and diminishing the outflow of funds. At this point Henry Johnson of Louisiana introduced a resolution into the Senate urging that the "public lands of the United States be appropriated, and pledged as a permanent and perpetual fund, for Education and Internal Improvements." Under his plan, all net income from public land sales was to be invested and the interest distributed among the states according to their representation in the House; one-half was to be used for education and the other half for internal improvements. Possibly in answer to this resolution Rufus King, Senator from New York, proposed in the same session that, when the portion of the national debt for which the public lands were pledged was paid off, the net proceeds of all future sales should be inviolably applied to the emancipation and removal outside the United States of slaves and free men of color. Now the fat was in the fire. Robert Y. Hayne, a defender of slavery and states' rights, declared that the use of public funds for the emancipation and removal of the slaves was a violation of the compact between the states, dangerous to the safety of the states, and "calculated to disturb the peace and harmony of the Union."11 Both sides of the slavery question let off a little steam, but in doing so delayed consideration of the use of the surplus for purposes other than retirement of the debt. 10 American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 500 ff. 11 Register of Debates, 18th Cong., 2d sess., Dec. 22, 1824; Feb. 18 and 28, 1825; I, 42, 623, 696. |