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Show 14 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT to vote for the deposit bill and even Andrew Jackson was reluctantly brought to sign the measure on June 23, 1836, though it included features against which he had argued in his veto of the distribution bill.29 Deposit of the surplus began on January 1, 1837, and in the succeeding quarters a total of $28 million was transferred to the states. This was about the equivalent of the increase in land sales for 1834-36 over the average of the previous 10 years. It was this increase which had created the surplus, for there was no comparable increase in other sources of government income. Only three of the four installments planned for the deposit of the $37 million surplus were made. A sharp contraction of government income from land sales and customs induced Congress to order the fourth installment withheld, notwithstanding angry objections.30 Unhampered by the compromise of a bonus to the western states, the Deposit Act accomplished just what Clay had wanted. The proportion of the surplus deposited with the old and the more populous states was larger and that to the public land states much smaller than they would have received under the distribution bill. Sixty-three percent of the deposits went to the Thirteen Original States and if the three other non-public-land states (Kentucky, Vermont, and Tennessee) are included, 79 percent of the deposits went to the states in which there was no public " 5 Stat. 55. 30 E. G. Bourne, History of the Surplus Revenue of 1837 (New York, 1885). This is still the standard work on the disposal of the surplus and the use the states made of their share, but regards the surplus as partly derived from increased customs collections, as well as from the increased land sales. Bourne relied for the former on the receipts for 1834, 1835, and 1836 in which years there was a large increase. But for the 10 years of 1827 through 1836, the average income from customs was $22,823,000 or $600,000 less than the figure for 1836. Customs receipts had sharply contracted from the previous highs of 1831, 1832, and 1833 and in 1836. were about back to normal. Land revenues, on the other hand, jumped from an average of a little more than $2 million from 1827-33 to $14,758,000 in 1835 and $24,877,000 in 1836. land. Jackson's action in vetoing distribution and signing deposit worked well for his own State of Tennessee and neighboring Kentucky, as well as for the Original States, but it did not work as well for Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, or other western states. The table of deposits helps explain why there were so many complaints about the unfairness of the act. The average amount deposited with each of the 17 non-public-land states was $1,310,058 while the average amount deposited with the nine public land states was $638,822.31 Deposits to States Under Act of 1836 Alabama Arkansas Connecticut Delaware Georgia Illinois Indiana Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Mississippi Missouri New Hampshire New Jersey New York North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina Tennessee Vermont Virginia $669,086 286,751 764,670 286,751 1,051,422 477,919 860,254 1,433,757 477,919 955,838 955,838 1,338,173 286,751 382,335 382,335 669,086 764,679 4,014,520 1,433,757 2,077,260 2,867,514 382,335 1,051,422 1,433,757 669,086 2,198,427 31 Ibid., pp. 40 flf. The case of Michigan is an illustration of how badly deposit worked from the point of view of a western state strongly contributing to the surplus. Land sales in Michigan had swelled greatly in 1835 and 1836 contributing $7,500,000 in revenue or $7,250,000 more than the average for the previous 10 years, while its deposit was only $286,751. Small wonder that people of Michigan talked about the drain of funds to the East by the land and deposit policy. Bourne (p. 143) was more concerned with the per capita amount of the Michigan deposit (using population data of 1830) which was $9.07 as compared with the per capita amount-$1.63-if the population of 1837 were the basis. |