OCR Text |
Show 172 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT the weak, and the first settlers, who are generally poor, must go to the wall, unless protected by the generosity of land speculators." With such an attitude prevailing among its officers it is understandable why there should have been an outcry against the company.70 Other land companies made large investments in land they had no intention of developing without drawing unfavorable attention but they may have kept their business more to themselves. This the officers of the American Land Company did not do. In a report of its operations for 1836, the American Land Company included a list of its directors and larger stockholders, and stated the amount of money it had committed to land purchases and the acreage it expected to acquire. Since a number of the investors were also officers of banks then receiving deposits of public funds, it was easy for Whig editors to charge that Jackson's deposit of public funds in the "pet banks" was making possible and indeed encouraging the great onslaught on the public lands and the accumulation of land in the hands of the officers and stockholders of those banks. There does seem to be some inconsistency in the professions of leading Democrats in behalf of the actual settler and in the attempts of so many of the party's leaders to circumvent the settlers by thus accumulating land. The United States Telegraph, a Duff Green-John C. Calhoun organ, began the attack on Jackson and the Democratic Party's land policy:71 We learn that the Secretary of the Treasury has closed several of the Western land offices; and we observe that the newspapers in that quarter complain that the people are put to much inconvenience on that account. This is indeed the age of Humbugs. Who could have doubted that the heads of departments and members of Congress "Letter of David Hubbard, Pontotoc, Oct. 13, 1836, in Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 8, 1836. 71 Quoted in Indianapolis' Indiana Journal, July 23, 1836. who have gone so largely into the purchase of public lands, would not find some pretence to shut the land offices. It is part of the plan. They first borrow the money, they then get up a tide of emigration, by puffing the West-the Great West -and when the honest settler reaches his new home, he finds that the land offices are closed, and that he is compelled to buy from Amos Kendall, or Mr. Attorney General Butler, or their agents, lands bought with the Government money at government price. Does anyone believe that Amos Kendall or Mr. Butler after having borrowed money to purchase land would sell it without a profit? And does not everyone see that, if the honest emigrant cannot buy from the Government, he must buy from the speculators? And is any one so blind as not to see the why and wherefore the Western land offices have closed? The New York Times and Thurlow Weed's Albany Evening Journal joined in the attack, asking if Benjamin F. Butler was not an in-corporator and stockholder of the American Land Company, if other Cabinet officers had not an interest in the company, if Silas Wright, New York Democratic Senator, other members of the Albany Regency, and a great many bank presidents, cashiers, and directors were not also stockholders. Had the company established settlers on and cultivated any land, inquired the Journal. How much land had it sold to settlers and at what advance in price? It charged that the company . . . over-shadowed the Republic. Such a combination of wealth and power had never before existed among us. The highest officers in the General and State Governments were stockholders in this gigantic monopoly. ... Its agents were sent abroad through the new States and Territories to monopolize all the valuable lands. . . . The surplus Revenue then in the Pet Banks, was at the service of these speculators. Millions of dollars were invested in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Mississippi, etc. The stockholders in this overgrown monopoly were selected from the men in power. Vast political and pecuniary influences were combined. Standing at the head of the Albany stockholders were Messers Croswell and Burt, Editors and Proprietors of the State Paper. Then came John Van Buren, the son of the President of the United States. Silas Wright, Jr., a Senator in Congress, through whose influence the |