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Show CASH SALES, 1840-1862 189 tunity to make their applications. One man stood in line 2 weeks at Shawneetown before he could make his entry for 80 acres.25 The correspondence of Commissioner Wilson reveals that the scramble for land was participated in by poor men who had squatted on 40- or 80-acre tracts hoping to acquire them at 12^ cents an acre though not certain they could pay even that small sum. There were also substantial farmers wanting to enlarge their well-developed properties, farmer-speculators who were already holding more land than they had the capital to develop, and residents of nearby towns and cities who not only tried to gain 320 acres of graduation land under their own names but hired others to make entries for them. William Brinkley wrote the Commissioner that in southern Illinois thousands of "swindling entries" had been made by speculators who employed a diverse crew to file applications for the cheap land, who furnished the money "to the lowest class of people and to negroes and they make the affidavit and then take transfers for the land . . . ." Minors and married women whose fathers and husbands had also made entries participated in the rush to file for land when the officers, overwhelmed with business, could make no examination of their right to do so.26 In the Montgomery, Alabama, district it was brought out that 12,000 acres had been bought by persons "acknowledging that they have evaded the law on the ground that it does not require them to state when they design making settlement under it."27 In the Elba district, where a large proportion of the public lands was subject to graduation, the 25 William T. Harrison, Register, and Joseph P. Ament, Receiver, Land Office, Palmyra, Mo., Oct. 11, 1854, to John Wilson, File C, Land Office Files; D. C. Tuttle, Register, Land Office, St. Louis, Nov. 2, 1854, to John Wilson, loc. cit.\ J. A. Elkins, A Century in Egypt (1927), p. 27. 26 William Brinkley, McLeansboro, Hamilton County, 111., Nov. 3, to the Commissioner, File C; Valley Farmer, VI (October 1854), 383. 27 Montgomery Advertiser in National Intelligencer, Nov. 2, 1854. rush for land was more than the officers could handle and outsiders arranged to control the flow of applicants, charging each person $10 for their services and putting through minors of both sexes and married women who were apparently filing applications for others. Again Wilson had to declare all such activities contrary to law and instructed the registers and receivers to discontinue the practice and to report all entries of minors and others ordinarily precluded from entering lands.28 A well-documented instance of abuse of the graduation law occurred in Indiana. Fifty-seven people were shepherded into the Vincennes land office where each filed application for 320 acres of 1214-cent land located in a nearly solid tract. After the applications had been filed, each applicant was asked by the register if he intended to settle and cultivate the land. All answered affirmatively, the oath was administered, the affidavits presented, and a Dr. Selsam then tendered the payment for all 57 applicants, thereby consummating the business. It was charged later that Selsam paid the expenses of the men while they were in Vincennes and that he was to have half the land and each entryman the other half of his entry. Upon hearing of this flagrant abuse of the act, Commissioner Wilson demanded of the register his explanation for acceptance of the applications. The register declared that he was not aware of Selsam's part in the transaction, but also stated that Selsam had been strongly recommended to him by Senator J. D. Bright. Representative T. A. Hendricks observed that it was not unusual for persons to enter lands under the Graduation Act without having seen them and remarked that he "could not conceive that men could be found so lost to honor and the dictates of conscience, as to swear falsely for 320 acres wild land at 12]/2 cents per acre." Wilson said that all 28 Wilson to Register and Receiver of the Elba Land Office, Oct. 18, 1854, "Charges against Land Officers," Vol. 1, GLO Records; James A. Glendin, Nov. 28, 1854, to Wilson, loc. cit. |