History of public land law development

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184 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT sistently for graduation. In 1828 he succeeded in having the registers and receivers of the numerous land offices attempt a classification of the lands in their districts; the result showed that they regarded an extraordinarily large amount of land as either nearly worthless or distinctly inferior. As for average values, their estimates were that the $1.25 price was altogether too high for much of the land. Their figures are not entirely meaningful for they were merely superficial estimates and are quite incomplete, but they are interesting as a reflection of local ideas about land values: 50 cents to $1.03 for Ohio lands as yet unsold, 44 cents to $1.25 for Indiana lands, 12]/2 to 62J/2 cents for Missouri lands, 5 to 40 cents for Alabama and Mississippi lands. We have no explanations of their appraisals.10 Graduation was before Congress in almost every session from 1820 to 1854. Jackson and many westerners favored graduation, to be followed after' a number of years by cession of the balance of the unsold land to the states. Legislatures of the four states in which the largest amount of land would be available at graduated prices petitioned Congress for enactment of the plan. Jackson, Van Buren, and Polk all called for its enactment. A later (1848) report of the House Committee on Public Lands demonstrated that some land classified at one time as poor, inferior, or unsuitable and not worth the government price of $1.25 an acre, sold readily at that price when conditions improved. True, this committee was stacked 6 to 3 by Representatives from non-public-land states who were searching for evidence to oppose graduation. It used the same arguments against graduation that eastern Representatives had used a generation earlier against efforts to reduce the price of land, to grant preemption, and to allow 5 percent of the net revenue from land sales to the states.11 The pressure for graduation was coming from the public land states of the South and Missouri where far the larger proportion of land that had been on the market from 10 to 35 years was situated. All the warmest supporters of graduation-including Benton, W. R. W. Cobb of Alabama, Robert J. Walker and Daniel Hubbard of Mississippi- were from the slave states. Of the 10 western votes in opposition in 1854 in the House only one was from a southern public land state.12 Benton and other advocates of graduation endeavored to give the impression that the only lands to be subject to graduation were widely scattered refuse tracts that had been carefully picked over and discarded for better lands. As has been seen, this was about correct for Ohio and Indiana, somewhat less correct for Illinois and not at all true of Missouri or the southern states. Despite their professions, the advocates of graduation seemed to be working for reductions in price as a step toward free land. Students of western history should inquire why Benton, the political broker for the land barons of St. Louis and later for those of California, and David Hubbard and Robert J. Walker, who had been involved in the largest of the speculative deals in Mississippi and Alabama in the thirties, came to be such ardent champions of graduation. In fact Benton made a career of his advocacy of this measure, and Walker derived considerable mileage from his support of it. Hubbard, it will be remembered, had been connected with the American Land Company, in which he held 50 shares, and had acted as its representative, buying and managing its huge holdings in Arkansas and Mississippi. When he was a member of Congress he appealed for votes for the graduation measure and made it appear to be one for the benefit of the small man.13 10 American State Papers, Public Lands, VIII, 885-86. 11 House Reports, 30th Cong., 1st sess., June 23, 1848, Vol. Ill, No. 732 (Serial No. 526), passim. 12 John Curtis Crandall, "The Graduation Act of 1854" (Master's thesis, Cornell University, 1946), p. 15. 13 Letter of Hubbard from Pontotoc, Mississippi, Richmond Enquirer, Nov. 8, 1836; Cong. Globe, 33d Cong.. 1st sess., p. 913.