OCR Text |
Show 332 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT to the committee of origin but that too frequently meant the kiss of death and the chamber preferred to approve and send them along to the other House where the process would be repeated. Bills were frequently improved and provided with additional safeguards; some infelicities and irreconcilable features were eliminated in the process, but too often the debates, amendments, and minor changes left the measures with loopholes, loose construction, and vague expressions. Consequently, registers and receivers of the local land offices had to contend with measures they were ill prepared to interpret for they had little knowledge of the views of Congress. The commissioner's instructions provided much aid but they too needed further amplification. The instructions of Commissioner Thomas A. Hendricks of March 18, 1857, to the registers and receivers informed them that the states were entitled to patents "for all of the lands heretofore selected and reported to this office" except as previously provided for by the Act of 1857. Land officers, he declared, were "precluded from entertaining objections against the approval of any land heretofore reported as swamp on the mere ground that they are not lands of that character; hence all contested cases are brought to a close." The officers were instructed to use great care "not to permit the entry or location of any lands interfering with swamp selections." They might well be excused for any uncertainty respecting the interpretation of the act by Hendrick's next statement, to the effect that settlers who had made improvements and planned to preempt their tracts were protected in their occupancy rights. Upon filing proof of settlement and evidence that the land was not swamp or overflowed they would receive their patents. If, however, the land were swamp, their rights could only be determined by further legislation.36 A summary of the results of the remedial Act of 1857 shows that the measure confirmed many state selections, terminated numerous contests, and resulted in the patenting to the states of "a large amount of lands unquestionably not of the character contemplated by the original grants," according to a later Commissioner of the Land Office. Selections made by the states after March 3, 1857, were, however, subject to contest by settlers.37 Notwithstanding the two remedial acts, swampland selections dragged on interminably. The states and their representatives seem to have cast away all moderation in their determination to gain as much land as possible. The table of selections and the acreage actually patented shows how wide was the disparity between the two in some states. It is notable that in the states of Illinois and Iowa where there was the greatest rush for land and where land values were pushed up to the highest levels, state officers were the most liberal in their efforts to acquire the largest possible amount of land by stretching to the utmost their interpretation of "swamp and overflowed." By 1860 Congress was tiring of the slowness of swampland selections and the insistence of state officials on bringing in new selections for areas in which they had already obtained generous quantities of land that hardly warranted classification as swampland. Their persistence made it necessary for land officers, who had already worked over the plats and field notes a number of times, to give them another going over. This required time which should have been given to speeding up patenting and other tasks in which the Land Office was far behind. Minnesota and Oregon Benefit When Minnesota and Oregon were admitted to the Union the Act of 1850 was made 36 Thomas A. Hendricks, Commissioner, to Registers and Receivers, March 18, 1857, Swamp Land correspondence, National Archives. 37 S. Ex. Doc, 50th Gong., 1st sess., 1888, Vol. 8, No. 55 (Serial No. 2510), p. 3. |