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Show 54 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT the loose way in which North Carolina had administered her western lands made the surrender something less than a welcome addition to the responsibilities of the new government. If the conditions had been carried out completely they would have required the United States to bring order out of the chaotic land and title business and to apply North Carolina law to outstanding claims and United States statutes to land conveyed in the future. But the issues were even more complex. North Carolina continued to grant bounty lands to its war veterans in the new Federal Territory of Tennessee, and it was learned that outstanding claims would absorb practically all the land in the territory to which the Indian title had been surrendered. When Tennessee entered the Union in 1796, it denied the right of North Carolina to grant any land within its boundaries and declared that Congress had no claim to vacant lands in the state because there was no reservation of such lands in the act of admission. Although Congress refused to accept Tennessee's position concerning vacant lands, it never succeeded in extending its land system over any part of the state. Out of this most unusual imbroglio came a compromise in the form of a compact between North Carolina, Tennessee, and the United States which set up a Congressional Reservation in western Tennessee to be retained for the United States. But as numerous speculators' and squatters' rights had already been established in this reserve, even though the Indian rights had not been conveyed, the ownership of the land by the Federal government was practically meaningless. From then until 1841, titles in the reservation were in confusion. Finally in that year, Congress made Tennessee a Federal agent for the management and disposal of the land. As Thomas Jones, the author of an excellent study of "Tennessee's 'Public Lands,' " concludes, "All the Federal Government had left as a memento to assure itself that at one time Tennessee was a public land state was a record of 640 acres that were sold as a townsite for an unlikely place known as Pulaski."14 Last to cede its western lands was Georgia. Its first cession, authorized in 1788, was rejected because it included only part of Georgia's western lands, and a portion thus offered was in the British Territory of West Florida. The rejection proved unfortunate for both Georgia and the United States because of the serious difficulties subsequently created when the state tried to' sell its lands to a number of land companies. The first sale, for 25,400,000 acres, was made in December 1789. to three Yazoo companies at less than a cent an acre. It failed to be carried through, though for years the would-be purchasers tried to secure damages for losses, presumably of anticipated profits. In 1795 another sale was made to four land companies which agreed to pay $500,000 for an estimated 21,500,000 acres, or \XA cents an acre. The territory sold would have amounted actually to 35 million or 40 million acres. Such an astounding sale brought immediate charge of fraud, soon clearly proved, and the succeeding legislature rescinded the act of sale in 1796. Meantime, ownership of shares in the four land companies had been widely distributed and lobbyists began their long campaign to secure relief. 15 For years Georgia was bedeviled by the scandals growing out of the "Yazoo frauds," as the sale of 1795 was called, and by an even more pressing issue-the Creek Indians, who were not found easy to move from land within the state. Despairing of solving either issue without Federal aid, the legislature was 14 I have drawn heavily from Thomas B. Jones, "Tennessee's 'Public Lands,' " (unpublished) and his briefer "The Public Lands of Tennessee," Tennessee Historical Quarterly, 27 (Spring 1968), 13-36. 15 American State Papers, Public Lands, I, 133-35; C. Peter Magrath. Yazoo Law and Politics in the New Republic. The Case of Fletcher v. Peck (Providence, 1966), passim. |
