OCR Text |
Show 22 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT gain a more direct share in the public lands. He pointed out that the bounty lands given veterans of the Revolution and of the War of 1812 had "flowed mostly to the citizens of the old states, and, say, one-half of those for services in the Mexican War." Of the income derived from the sale of public lands which had permitted lower tariff rates, the "vastly more populous" old states had derived the major benefit, which he calculated at $113,676,758.67. He added to this sum $32,108,970 representing the value of the 25,687,177 acres of military bounty lands that went to people in the older states, and the $409,912.42 distributed to them under the Act of 1841, arriving at a total of $146,-195,641.09 which he claimed had benefited "chiefly, if not entirely," the people of the old states.52 There is no evidence that Wilson's reasoning had any effect in allaying eastern fears that the public lands were rapidly being given away without any direct grants going to the old states and that the revenue from public lands would soon dry up. Lands for Education Notwithstanding the numerous defeats, success was to come to the non-public-land states-including the Original Thirteen and Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Texas-but only when they could frame a bill offering something the West wanted as much as they did. Such a joining of mutual interests was achieved when agricultural reformers united their efforts to secure land grants for colleges of agricultural and mechanic arts. The original call for Federal aid had been made by Jonathan Baldwin Turner of Illinois in 1851 and during the next 11 years was taken up by the United States Agricultural Society and distinguished groups of writers, scientists, and administrators, including Marshall Pinckney 52 "Annual Report, Commissioner of the General Land Office," H. Ex. Doc, 33d Cong., 2d sess., Vol. I, No. 1, Part 1 (Serial No. 777), p. 83. Wilder, America's best known fruit specialist; Joseph R. Williams, President of Michigan Agricultural College; and Freeman G. Cary, President of the Farmers' College of Cincinnati. It was pushed to success in 1862 by Justin Smith Morrill, Congressman from Vermont. The original measure, borrowing heavily from the earlier Dix and Bennett bills, provided for grants to the public land states of 20,000 acres for each Senator and Representative they had in the Congress, while giving scrip instead of land to the older states on the same formula. The geographical area feature of the Dix bill was left out, thereby reducing the amount of land western states would receive. As in the Bennett bill, the scrip was not to be used to acquire land by the older states but was to be sold to third parties. The Federal ratio assured New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio the largest grants and the new western states coming into the Union with their sparse populations, the least. This seeming unfairness and the virtual certainty that the issuance of millions of acres of scrip would further land speculation led many westerners to look with disfavor upon the Morrill bill. Sam Medary, an influential Ohio Democrat, presented both the western view that the old states had no right to land in the West and the southern states' rights position in his denunciation of the bill. He condemned it as "infamous," a "regular plunder scheme," a "disgrace" to Congress, a "base swindle." It plundered both the government and the western states where the lands were located. It was designed to build up a great agricultural college in New York whose supporters saw it as a means of replenishing their pockets.53 Senator Alexander Ramsey of Minnesota later called the scrip for which the act provided a "great curse to the land States of the West," destructive of the "the settlement and progress ... of the West." Jim Lane of Kansas called it "iniquitous," certain to ruin his state, a contradiction to the homestead law, 53 Columbus, Ohio, The Crisis, July 2, 1862. |