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Show 230 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT or re-enacting, the Act of 1807. Joseph M. White of Florida met such talk by pointing out that the act had been directed against persons taking possession under pretended titles and not against ordinary settlers on the public lands. Joseph Duncan of Illinois again reminded the House that the act had been dead nearly 40 years, "had never, and could never be enforced," that all the numerous suits brought under it had been unsuccessful and that the government had been left with all costs. Congressmen followed the usual line expected of them and the bill, the most important of the general preemption measures up to this point, passed safely.34 Difficulties of Administration All land statutes, no matter how carefully thought out, reconsidered, amended, and modified in the legislative process, called for even more carefully prepared instructions to be sent to the registers and receivers advising these officials how to apply them. It was in these rules for the guidance of the local officers that the Land Office seemed to lean over backward in rigidly interpreting the law. This was particularly true for the preemption laws. Francis S. Lyon, who was shortly to be elected to Congress from the Demopolis District of Alabama, was convinced that the Commissioner had been too rigid and too technical in his instructions concerning the Act of 1834, especially in ruling that the construction of a dwelling house on a tract was requisite to a preemption claim. Lyon pointed out that the statute authorized "settlers or occupants" to preempt land they cultivated and improved, and that to require actual habitation would rule out many of his constituents who lived on one side of the Tombigbee where the land was higher and better drained, and farmed on the other side which was productive though less healthy. Occupancy did not mean habitation, he main- tained. Lyon also thought the Commissioner's rules were too technical in regard to preemptions on fractional tracts and the right of two settlers on fractional tracts to acquire floats. He was troubled because settlers who were on land they had improved in 1833 but sold in 1834 before the act was adopted could not actually pass a good title to the buyer, according to the instructions. Finally, he found that settlers who were on public lands in the fall and winter of 1833, had made preparation for a crop by grubbing out brush and making rails, but had planted nothing and did not plow until 1834 were denied preemption, whereas those who cleared, fenced, and plowed in 1833 would be so entitled. Several of the inconsistencies which Lyon pointed out were to arise constantly in General Land Office rulings and in the statutes of Congress.35 Preemption entries under the Act of 1834 were much more numerous than under the Acts of 1830 and 1832, doubtless because Acres of Public Land Sold and Preempted* Year Total Sales Preemption Sales 1830 1,929,734 2,777,857 242,979 557,840 1831 1832._ 2,452,342 49,971 1833-- 3,856,228 4,658,219 31,756 637,597 1834________ 1835________ . 15,564,479 574,936 1836____... .. 20,074,871 112,842 1837 5,601,103 1838 3,414,907 a The acreages of sales are compiled from the GLO Annual Reports; the acreage preempted which is a part of the acreage sold is from American State Papers, Public Lands, VIII, 701. Unfortunately, after 1836 the Commissioner published no data concerning preemption entries, doubtless because the registers and receivers did not keep them segregated in such a way as to prepare the data for publication. 34 The measure passed the House by a vote of 124-53. Register of Debates, 23d Cong., 1st sess., pp. 4469-73; 4 Stat." 678. 35 F. S. Lyon, Demopolis, Sept. 13, 1834, to Levi Woodbury, Secretary of the Treasury, N Series. Letters from Individuals to the Secretary of the Treasury, 1834, Treasury Department Files, National Archives. |