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Show 274 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT of sharply cutting their market value and greatly reducing the benefits they brought to the thousands of old soldiers who could not go out to Illinois, Wisconsin, or Iowa to locate them. An influential firm of land agents of Mineral Point, Wisconsin, representing many eastern capitalists, reported that they were buying 1850 warrants in New York as follows: $20 for 40-acre warrants, $35 for 80-acre warrants, and $60 for 160-acre warrants. The firm insisted that the sale of a warrant before the patent was issued was valid, arguing that soldiers could make a valid title to land when entered and could make a valid agreement to sell as soon as the warrant was issued and in effect maintaining that the restriction on alienation was meaningless. A year later the New York Tribune reported that the warrants of 1850 were "unsaleable" but it added that an occasional sale was made for $80, or 50 cents an acre. Mexican warrants sold for 68 to 81 cents an acre. To assure ready sale and a fair return to holders of the 1850 warrants it was important to have them made assignable.74 Warrant Assignability Even before its adoption, the Bounty Land Act of 1850 became the object of varying interpretations; there was much uncertainty as to its meaning. Members of the House had been deeply influenced by the plea that most of the persons to receive the bounty were in the older states, that many were old men too far along to move west to enter their land and would perforce have to sell their right. They had wanted to make the new warrants assignable and thought the measure as finally approved did make them assignable. Anti-speculator sentiment was much stronger in the Senate where there was 74 Washburn & Woodman, Mineral Point, Wis., April 7, 1851, to Geo. W. Paine, and to Ephraim Flint, April 15, 1851, Washburn & Woodman Letter Book, 1851, Wisconsin State Historical Society; New York Tribune, March 11, 1852. By March 29, 1852, the 1850 warrants were quoted at 62 cents an acre. New York Tribune, Feb. 5, March 29, 1852. concern for making the warrants unassignable. Whether, as was claimed, a section of the act was dropped, inadvertently or otherwise, in the final rush for the adoption of the measure, the Journals of the two Houses and the Congressional Globe do not make clear. Few members of Congress were satisfied with the act. During the last frantic days of the session the Senate passed a measure to amend the act specifically to prohibit the sale or transfer of the warrants, but it failed in the House.75 In the second session of the 31st Congress, supporters of assignability introduced into the House a joint resolution declaring that nothing in the Bounty Act of 1850 "shall be so construed as to prevent the sale and transfer of any certificate or warrants issued by virtue of said act, prior to the issue of the patent thereon." It passed both Houses by an overwhelming vote after a deluge of petitions in its behalf, mostly from Pennsylvania and Virginia. However, the Senate added amendments, introduced in part by westerners who were not favorable to assignability, and the delay in the Senate made it impossible to send the resolution back to the House for consideration before adjournment. Yet the strongly favorable vote in both Houses for the explanatory feature of the resolution might have justified the Secretary of the Interior and the Commissioner of the General Land Office in instructing the registers and receivers to accept assigned warrants.76 Disregarding the fact that large majorities had voted to make the warrants of 1850 assignable, Justin Butterfield, Commissioner of the General Land Office, interpreted the Act of 1850 as meaning that no transfers of 75 Senate Journal, 31st Cong., 1st sess. (Serial No. 548), Sept. 30, 1850, pp. 707, 708; House Journal, 31st Cong., 1st sess. (Serial No. 566), Sept. 30, 1850, p. 1602; Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st sess., Sept. 30, 1850, pp. 2072, 2074. 76 House Journal, 31st Cong., 2d sess. (Serial No. 594), Dec. 30, 1850, p. 91; Senate Journal, 31st Cong., 2d sess. (Serial No. 586), Feb. 28, March 3, 1851, pp. 230, 277; Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 2d sess., p. 126. |