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Show 88 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT The absence of any guarantee of the rights of property to people in the territory acquired from Britain in 1783 was taken care of in the Jay Treaty of 1794, wherein the United States agreed that all settlers in the territory finally surrendered by the British should continue "to enjoy, unmolested, all their property of every kind . . .. " as if they were citizens of the United States, which they could become if they so wished. Similar promises were made in later treaties with France, Spain, Mexico, and Russia, when the Louisiana Purchase, Florida, New Mexico, California, Oregon, and Alaska were acquired.2 Georgia, in its Act of Cession of 1802, followed Virginia's example of binding the United States in a compact to confirm actual settlers in the area ceded in their titles to grants legally and fully executed by the British or Spanish Governments in 1783 and 1795. It left unrecognized, however, French grants made before 1763, Spanish grants not settled in 1795, Spanish grants made after 1795, and an array of claims springing from previous action by the State of Georgia.3 Twenty-two types of claims listed by William Dunbar, the official government surveyor of Mississippi Territory, varied from grants whose conditions had been fully met to dubious preemption and improvement claims unaccompanied by evidence of settlement. Throughout the 19th century Congress struggled to deal fairly with an estimated 30,000 to 35,000 claims covering some 45 million acres. It tried to apply both the laws of the Nation under whose government the claims had originated and American land law, modified by equity, to determine their validity and whether or not the grantees had sufficiently conformed to the conditions of their grants to be worthy of patents. Numerous general and many special acts were passed to give claimants an opportunity to 2 Commager (ed.), Documents of American History, p. 165. 3 Territorial Papers, V, 156-59, and note. prove their rights before commissions, later before the courts, and to grant them reconsideration after initial rejections. Finally, Congress confirmed many claims which were persistently brought before it for reconsideration. Numerous commissions studied and reported on the status of the claims. Registers and receivers sometimes served on these commissions while carrying on their other duties. A heavy burden was thus thrown upon the surveyors general, the registers and receivers, and on the already overburdened staff of the General Land Office. In addition, the 126 cases that were carried up to the Supreme Court before 1860 and the much larger number that reached it thereafter, as well as the numerous cases that cluttered the lower courts but were not carried further, added much to the labor of the judges. The burden of conducting the vast amount of litigation over these private land claims might not have been so serious had it not been for two major factors that emerged at the outset: the forging and fabrication of grants once the territories had been transferred to American control and land values began to climb; and the action of attorneys and other dealers in claims in hunting up ancient grants. Many of these had either been abandoned under French or Spanish control because it had not been worthwhile to fulfill their conditions, because of Indian trouble, or because they had been merely continued as residence rights without full ownership. Now confirmation was asked on the ground of equity. Those who shaped American policy made clear from the outset their intention of dealing more than fairly with all claimants, recognizing that only by the most generous treatment could they win the loyalty of the new Americans. Yet, because of the extraordinary generosity of the predecessor governments in granting away large acreages for slight services, and because the lands thus granted often constituted the most desirable in the territory gained by annexation and purchase, it was felt that close scrutiny of their muniments was only fair and proper. |
