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Show LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785 was in the hands of the proprietors. Not having this responsibility, the state had no need of a land office and numerous administrative officers to handle questions of title. On the other hand, the southern way of migration westward was not by groups moving to a new township, but by individuals and families moving without direction, seeking a spot that suited them. The differences were resolved by a compromise that the rectangular system of survey made possible. The rectangular system was one of the great features of the Land Ordinance of 1785 that has been retained in the national land system ever since. At the point where the Ohio River crosses the Pennsylvania border, a north-south line-a principal meridian-was to be run and a base line westward-the geographer's line-was to be surveyed; parallel lines of longitude and latitude were to be surveyed, each to be 6 miles apart, making for townships of 36 square miles or 23,040 acres. Seven rows or ranges of townships running south from the base line and west of the principal meridian were to be surveyed. Each township was to be divided into lots of one mile square containing 640 acres. This made possible the great compromise whereby alternate townships were to be sold intact, as New England wished, and the other townships were to be subject to sale by sections. Because of the very pressing need of the government for revenue, little thought was given to the free grants that had been so characteristic a feature of the systems of land disposal in the South. At the very time the ordinance was being framed, land was being offered by the states for a few cents an acre in specie and there seemed little prospect that the Confederation could do much better from its more remote lands in the Ohio country. However, if the price of land were stated in terms of the government's depreciated securities, the lands might bring in considerable sums-in actual specie very little. What appears to be a very high price- a dollar an acre-was adopted, but since it 65 was payable in depreciated securities, it meant only a few pennies an acre. The dollar an acre price of 1785 must be contrasted with the $2 an acre established in 1796. At that time government securities were rising in value and soon were to be at par. Thus land bought from the government after 1796 cost many times that acquired in the 1780's. Even before the Revolution some New England states had taken to offering townships at auction. The New England delegates, impressed with the results, succeeded in including in the Land Ordinance of 1785 a provision that the public lands, when surveyed and ready for sale, should be put up at auction and sold to the highest bidder at %\ per acre or more. Henceforth until 1841, newly surveyed land could not be bought from the government until first offered at public auction, except where actual settlers who had previously made improvements were permitted under a number of limited preemption acts, beginning in 1830, to buy at the minimum price before the auction. Yet another victory of New England in shaping Federal land policy was the reservation of section 16 in every township "for the maintenance of public schools within the said township." This, like the prior rectangular survey, the public auction, and the minimum price, was to be carried over into later legislation and to become a long-lasting feature of the land system. A provision which was carried over into the Acts of 1796 and 1800 but later dropped was the reservation of four sections-8, 11, 26, 29-for future disposition. Also, the ordinance reserved a "third part of all gold, silver, lead and copper mines, to be sold, or otherwise disposed of as Congress shall hereafter direct."12 Exclusions from Ordinance Notable What was not included in the ordinance is as important as what was included. The 12 The Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 are in Commager (ed.), Documents of American History, pp. 123-24 and 128-32. |