OCR Text |
Show STATE CESSIONS OF WESTERN LAND CLAIMS 57 hours of trying to satisfy all worthy claimants. It was the Federal government which had to deal with the thousands of land claims based on grants of predecessor governments, calling for consideration of French and Spanish as well as English land laws. Hundreds of these claims came before the District Courts, Courts of Appeal, and the Supreme Court, absorbing much of the time of the judges and of the lawyers in the Department of Justice. It was the Federal government which had to take jurisdiction of Indian relations within states, notwithstanding the very cautious saving clause in the Articles of Confederation and the very general statement in the Constitution of 1787. While the use of the public lands was to be a vital nationalizing factor in American development, from the viewpoint of those advocates of preserving power in the hands of the state governments, this exercise of power was disastrous. Cessions of Western Land Claims'1 Acres Jointly Claimed Acres Solely Claimed New York 1781 202.187 (Erie triangle) Virginia 1784 164, 118,800 103,950,800* Massachusetts 1785 34, 560,000 (also Erie triangle) Connecticut 1786 25, 600,000 (3,800,000 reserved) South Carolina 1787 3,136.000 North Carolina 1789-1790 [26,679,600]** Georgia 1802 56,689,920 * I have here disregarded New York's shadowy claim. * * Nominal, as most of the land in Tennessee had been alienated by 1790. Public Lands by States to 1802 Ohio Indiana Illinois Michigan Wisconsin Minnesota Alabama & Mississippi 18,069,600 23,068,800 35,867,520 36,492,160 35,011,200 16,640,000 59,825,920 224,975,200 (Virginia Military Tract and Western Reserve excluded) (portion east of the Mississippi River) (A portion of the South Carolina cession of 3,136,000 acres was given to Georgia by the United States. Excluding this the total of the cessions of Georgia and South Carolina in Alabama and Mississippi seems somewhat excessive.) s Donaldson, The Public Domain, pp. 11 ff.; Public Land Statistics, 1964, p. 4; Treat, National Land System, p. 395. Public Land Statistics estimate of cessions by the states is 233,415,680. My guess is that this total includes the 8,004,000 acres that Virginia and Connecticut reserved and which never were a part of the public domain. |