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Show 110 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT ing the claims the neighboring public lands could not be sold. As a result, the tide of emigration elsewhere was turning. The legislature protested against requiring owners of undecided claims to submit them to a tribunal outside the state calling it "incompetent equally from the nature of its organization, its ordinary functions, and the novelty, obscurity and variety of details" it would have to consider. The assembly urged the recon-stitution of a Board of Land Commissioners to pass upon all remaining unconfirmed claims and set forth the principles upon which it wished the claims to be decided. Claims which had been outlawed for failure to submit them before the deadline and those which had been passed upon and rejected by previous boards, but for which new evidence had been found, should be given consideration. The backlands for an additional depth of 40 arpents should be conceded all owners of frontage on the rivers, a privilege which would, in effect, double the acreage that had generally been confirmed to this time. In arguing for a much more generous and lenient consideration of claims, the memorial went so far as to say that "possession, without interfering with the claims of others" was tantamount to a title under the Spanish system.72 Congress responded promptly by an Act of May 11, 1820, which further extended the period in which claims could be presented to the land officers in Louisiana, allowed persons whose claims had not been confirmed to file additional evidence, retained the maximum that could be confirmed at one league square, but granted a preferential right to owners of frontage to buy the backlands.73 Prominent and powerful political figures and businessmen-including Edward Livingston, Stephen Girard, Aaron Burr, Daniel Clark, and Wade Hampton-became associated with the Maison Rouge, Bastrop, and Houmas claims. Representing the interests of these claims in Congress were Judah P. Benjamin, Pierre Soule, and John Slidell. The Maison Rouge claim was kept before the courts until 1850 when Chief Justice Taney finally struck it down.74 Anticipating the defeat of the Maison Rouge title, Congress on January 27, 1851, authorized any person who had bought from the assignees of the original grantee and who had improved the land, the right to preempt it at SI.25 an acre.75 Owners of the Bastrop claim likewise found it possible to keep their claim alive, though it was rejected by the Board of Land Commissioners and disputed by the Commissioner of the Land Office, by gaining repeated recommendations from congressional committees urging its confirmation. Finally, after the Girard portion had been bequeathed to the cities of Philadelphia and New Orleans, these cities brought suit to quiet title with Senator Pierre Soule as one of the attorneys. In a 5-4 decision it was struck down in 1850.76 In anticipation of the rejection of the Bastrop claim Congress enacted on March 3, 1851, a generous measure first confirming six claims, which had been held up for nearly half a century because they overlapped the Bastrop claim; second, it confirmed all bona fide purchasers of land from Bastrop who had occupied and cultivated land within the claimed area for 20 years; third, persons who had migrated to the Ouachita territory at the invitation of Bastrop but who had no contract with him were to be confirmed to 640 acres, and finally, all other actual settlers were to be given the right to preempt 160 acres. Fifty-one claims for 29,800 acres were 72 American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 430-32. "3 Stat. 107. 74 Jennie O'Kelly Mitchell and Robert Dabney Calhoun, "The Marquis de Maison Rouge, the Baron de Bastrop, and Colonel Abraham Morehouse. Three Ouachita Valley Soldiers of Fortune. The Maison Rouge and Bastrop Spanish Land Grants," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XX (April 1937), 289 ff. 78 9 Stat. 565. 76 52 Stat. 610. |