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Show 208 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT ever be exposed to sale," said the Nebraska Advertiser, which was getting up petitions against the sales recently proclaimed for Nebraska.75 The DeSoto Pilot of Nebraska reporting on an anti-land-sale meeting at Fontanelle, held to devise ways to prevent land sharks from seizing a large area of public lands, urged that all sales be postponed for 15 years. The Bloomington Pantograph said it was "the demon land speculation that is to be throttled . . .; land speculation that seizes the choice spots, separates the settlers' cabins by wide tracts of unreclaimed wilderness, and encircles every embryo town and populous city with leagues of waste land as absolutely wild as when the deer and the Indian were its only inhabitants."76 Reserve the public lands for actual settlers, urged the Monticello Indiana Spectator. The government should refuse to sell to "bank speculators and Shy-locks." Land monopoly, "the exclusive ownership of land by the few is the greatest curse to any country,'.' thundered the Lincoln (Illinois) Herald, a paper published in the heart of a region of great estates.77 The Stevens Point Wisconsin States Rights, of May 29, 1861, thought that the land policy of the government had been consistently mistaken.78 Our last sample of western opinion on the effects of the absentee speculator is taken from the travel account of Jane Swisshelm, a widely read journalist of the mid-19th century. She said of the area between Hastings and Red Wing, Minnesota, "There are a few farms, but generally it is a speculators' desert," thereby either coining an appropriate phrase or preserving one perhaps commonly used at the time.79 Westerners increasingly came to feel that direct efforts to reduce the amount of absentee ownership should be made. Tax sufficiently 76 July 23, 1857. 76 Bloomington Pantograph, March 8, 1859. 77 Sept. 5, 1860. ™ Eau Claire Free Press, Jan. 15, 1862, May 7, 14, 1863. 79 Arthur J. Larsen, Crusader and Feminist. Letters of Jane Grey Swisshelm (St. Paul, 1934), p. 153. high to compel the speculators to sell, urged the Arkansas Gazette & Democrat of November 11, 1853. Place the burden of support of government on real property, tax personal property lightly or not at all, and speculators will have to disgorge their holdings. The Dubuque, Iowa, Emigrant Association said that one of the inducements to settle in northern Iowa was that there were quantities of speculator-owned land on which settlers could pasture their livestock, and cut their hay. It might have added that if there was any timber on absentee-owned land, it was sure to go quickly.80 This land reform ferment, which was also being expressed in the East by workingmens' groups and most ably by the New York Tribune, had its impact on the Democratic leadership of the Pierce administration. In his first annual report as Secretary of the Interior, Robert McClelland of Michigan recommended limiting sales to actual settlers, thereby taking a position reminiscent of Jackson's in his famous State of the Union message of 1836. "Nothing retards the growth and prosperity of the country more, nor inflicts greater injury upon the resident," he said, "than the possession, by individuals or companies, of extensive uncultivated tracts of the public lands." Whether McClelland was simply trying to bring order and system to administrative policies, or whether he was following the lead of his reformist-minded Land Office Commissioner, John Wilson, which is more likely, at least the statement coming from the Secretary got attention.81 Thereafter neither McClelland nor Wilson gave much information in their annual re- 80 Dubuque Emigrant Association, Northern Iowa. Information for Emigrants (Dubuque, 1859), p. 12. 81 John Wilson, as Commissioner in 1852, had recommended postponement of sales announced to be held at Stevens Point but his superior A. H. H. Stuart had opposed postponement, as had Fillmore. Wilson, Oct. 22, 1852, to A. H. H. Stuart, Secretary's Files, Department of the Interior. Neither Secretary. McClelland nor President Pierce was strong enough to defend Wilson against the spoilsmen who wished his removal even had they desired to do so. |