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Show SUMMARY 767 Federal aid in the form of public lands. In voting these bounties it was slowly expanding its own vision of America's destiny and of the powers of the national government under the Constitution. It was the Federal government that built the National Road in Ohio, roughly Route 40 today, and made possible the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the predecessor of the Chicago Drainage Canal, and the most widely used Soo Canal. It was the Federal government that made possible early construction of the Union Pacific, the Northern Pacific, the Santa Fe, and the Southern Pacific Railroads. It was the Federal government that provided a source of funds for common schools in frontier communities and initiated moves for the establishment of the great state universities. These Federal land grants made necessary the creation of state and railroad land departments to sell these grants at the highest price obtainable if the purposes for .which they were given were to be achieved. In the 1850's, then, Congress was relaxing its own emphasis upon revenue, was issuing great quantities of military bounty warrants and scrip that sold for less than $1.25 an acre, under western pressure was graduating the price of land in proportion to the length of time it had been on the market and was moving toward a policy of free grants; at the same time the states and the railroads were attempting to extract from their grants the greatest possible return. The incongruity was apparent to few at the time. Having pledged the income from the sale of public lands to the retirement of the war debt it was natural that the public lands should be placed under the charge of the Treasury Department (they remained there until 1849 when they were transferred to the newly established Department of the Interior, where western influences were to be much stronger). It was also natural for Congress to ask of the brilliant Hamilton a plan for the sale of the lands which was partly incorporated in the first important land act of the new government in 1796. But Congress early showed its intention of determining land policies. It had no great liking for Executive leadership, whether it came from the President, as during the Jackson administration or, at a later date, from vigorous and energetic administrators of the Land Office like John Wilson and William A. J. Sparks. Commissioners of the General Land Office who irked Congress did not last long. Outstanding American statesmen who have had a share in shaping our land policies have held very diverse views. In addition to Hamilton, Jefferson, and Gallatin in the early period, we have Madison and Monroe expressing grave constitutional doubts as to the use of Federal power to develop internal improvements, whereas John Quincy Adams reverted to Hamilton's and Gallatin's broad latitudinarian concept of Federal powers. Jackson and Cal-houn both advocated the transfer of the public lands to the states when the income from the public domain was no longer essential for the central government. Cession of the lands would remove one of the principal nationalizing forces which Cal-houn so greatly feared, and would at the same time win for him a political following in the newer states. Henry Clay wanted to retain the $1.25-an-acre price and distribute the surplus income to the states on the basis of their population, a position that was liked in the older and more populous states. Thomas Hart Benton, friend of the St. Louis barons of the fur trade and of claimants to huge land grants, preferred to cheapen the price of land by graduating it in relation to the length of time it had been on the market. In the middle period, new statesmen like Stephen A. Douglas argued that the Nation with its new acquisitions on the Pacific should be bound together by railroads which could only be built with great dona- |