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Show STATE CESSIONS OF WESTERN LAND CLAIMS 55 brought in 1802 to cede the western lands but with more favorable conditions than usual: the Federal government was required to pay Georgia $1,250,000 out of the first net proceeds from the sale of lands "for the expenses incurred by the said State, in relation to the said territory. ..." In this respect Georgia was unique, since no other state managed to obtain cash for its sole benefit from the sale of lands. All "legally and fully executed" grants by the British, Spanish, or Georgia Governments were to be confirmed. The United States was to assume responsibility for any claims growing out of the forfeited sale of 1795 and was authorized to use for that purpose up to 5 million acres of land, or the proceeds of that quantity of land, if done within a year. It was also to "extinguish ... as early as the same can be obtained, on reasonable terms" the title of the Creek Indians to a tract in central Georgia and to extinguish "the Indian title to all the other lands" in Georgia. All the ceded lands not required to fulfill the foregoing conditions were, again borrowing from the Virginia cession, to be "considered as a common fund for the use and benefit of the United States, Georgia included, and shall be faithfully disposed of for that purpose, and for no other use or purpose whatever. . . ,"16 Georgia became quite dissatisfied when the Federal government failed to remove the Indians speedily and to open their lands to settlement. Hence, it may have been no accident that the state's commissioners did not ratify the compact for the cession of its lands until the very day the Creeks were persuaded to sign a treaty giving up the land on the Oconee that the state wanted so badly.17 By the conditions of its cession Georgia had washed its hands of the Yazoo frauds, but the problem was to be on the doorstep of Congress for many years, taking a disproportionate amount of its time. In 1814 Congress was persuaded to vote $5 million from the proceeds of land sales in the territory ceded by Georgia to be divided among the holders of shares in the four land companies. Generous as the award was, some claimants were dissatisfied and for two generations kept up the demand for additional compensation.18 The Federal public domain created by these cessions from the seven states amounted to 237 million acres.19 From this area should be deducted 3,800,000 acres in the Connecticut Western Reserve and the Fireland tract which the Yankee commonwealth retained, and 4,204,000 acres reserved by Virginia to satisfy the bounty warrants it had given soldiers of the Revolution. The 237 million acres also included numerous claims to land granted by France, Spain, and Great Britain which the United States was bound to recognize and confirm if found valid. Not included in this total is land in Tennessee which was ceded to the United States but was subsequently turned over to Tennessee for management. Nor is the small segment of land ceded by South Carolina but subsequently given to Georgia included. Areas Retained after Cessions It should be clear that the Original States did not give up all their ungranted lands either within or outside their borders. A number of them had large areas to dispose of as they wished after the cessions were made. Massachusetts retained its province 16 American State Papers, Public Lands, I, 125-26. "Donaldson, The Public Domain, p. 81; C. C. Royce, Indian Land Cessions in the United States, Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Washington, 1899), Part 2, p. 660 and map of Georgia. It was not until 1835 that the last cession of Indian land was made. 18 Act of March 31, 1814, 3 Stat. 116; C. H. Haskins, "The Yazoo Land Companies," Papers of the American Historical Association, V (October 1891), 61-103. Haskins (102n) says that a "final" adverse decision was rendered against the claimants by the Court of Claims in 1864. 19 Cf., Marion Clawson and Burnell R. Held, The Federal Lands: Their Use and Management (Baltimore 1957), D. 21. |