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Show 220 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT 6 months. Conviction was to be evidence that the offender had no squatter's right to the land.5 This was a peculiar measure to be enacted by an agrarian-minded administration. From the instructions of the Secretary of the Treasury concerning application of the act, it appears that its provisions were to be enforced most rigorously against intruders claiming titles from the Wabash and Illinois Companies and from other claimants in Indiana and elsewhere whose titles were based on questionable Indian grants.6 The only action taken, so far as published documents show, was that 408 settlers west of the Pearl River were given permission to remain on their tracts, which were mostly 320 acres. The register went out of his way to assure them that they would be given preemption rights and even encouraged those who settled upon the lands after January 1, 1808, to believe that they would be given the same rights, contrary to the specific provisions of the law.7 Squatters could not have been prevented from settling on public land before it was offered for sale except by greatly limiting the area to be opened to settlement and by establishing a cordon of troops to bar entry. (Many years later the government did this in Oklahoma and on a number of other tracts of former Indian land being prepared for settlement.) But public opinion, especially western opinion, was hostile to both policies. Instead of limiting the areas being prepared for settlement, the government made every effort to induce the Indians to surrender their claims in both the Northwest and Southwest Territories. Also, surveying was pushed rapidly to make possible the opening of land to settlement. Orders for all squatters on the public lands to leave were quickly followed by political action to prevent enforcement. Congress gradually gave way to western pres- 5 2 Stat. 445; Annals of Congress, 9th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 68, 671. 6 2 Stat. 446; Carter, Territorial Papers, VII, 444-45. 7 American State Papers, Public Lands, II, 244 ff. A House Twelve by Fourteen sures by relaxing the prohibitions and penalties against intrusions, then by enacting measures that forgave previous intrusions. For example, a proclamation of James Madison in 1815 declaring the government's intention to expel all persons illegally on public land in Indiana, led to such an outcry that Congress quickly passed an act making lawful the illegal settlements in that state. Ultimately Congress was to authorize intrusions first on surveyed land and later on unsurveyed land. Though both Federalists and Republicans in Congress accepted the necessity of using the public lands strictly for revenue, western landseekers were of a different mind. They saw nothing to justify withholding the Nation's abundant public land from settlement, nor to justify requiring settlers to purchase it and to pay considerable sums for small tracts. They were willing to compensate the government for the land, but only after they had wrung the purchase price from it by exploiting the timber, fur bearing animals, and soil. They had no real respect for the govern- |