OCR Text |
Show LAND ORDINANCE OF 1785 69 forties of the 19th century New Englanders still tended to emigrate to Illinois and Michigan in groups, after careful planning and under the leadership of a Congregational minister.24 Those New Englanders who wished to migrate as a community preferred to buy Ohio Company or Connecticut Western Reserve Company lands where the political, religious, and cultural life was peculiarly New England in character. As soon as the surveys were completed, the lands in the Seven Ranges were to be apportioned to the states for sale "according to the quotas in the last preceding requisition." This meant there would be public auctions in each of the Thirteen States, with the larger offerings being made in the more populous States of Virginia and Pennsylvania. To this plan George Washington objected, declaring that it tended to magnify the importance of the states and to humiliate the Confederation and that it was not an efficient or forthright way of handling the sales.25 Before any sales were held Congress, on April 21, 1787, abolished the plan for 13 auctions and instead required that the public offering of land should be held in New York, the Seat of the Government.26 Sales in New York, far removed from the land, were a major hardship to the small man who was looking for a spot to improve. Indeed they were no great advantage to the capitalist investor since it might encourage him to buy land sight unseen. In periods of great speculation land was frequently bought in this way, often to the discomfiture of the investor. Invariably he found that such blind purchases included undesirable as well as good land. The canny investor who searched 24 For numerous instances see William V. Pooley, The Settlement of Illinois from 1830 to 1850 (Madison, Wis., 1908), passim. 28 John C. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Writings of George Washington (39vols., Washington, 1931-44), XXVIII, 137. 26 Treat, National Land System, p. 44. Other modifications of the ordinance including the introduction of indiscriminate locations were proposed in 1786 and 1787, but they were defeated. out land by a personal cruise, obtained the advice of able local people, looked over the surveyors' notes, and watched what other investors were doing was the most likely to succeed. Members of Congress who were anxious to make sales and derive revenue from the public lands in effect marched the soldiers up the hill and marched them down again: the sale policy of the Land Ordinance promised to produce so little result that from the outset members of Congress maneuvered around it. The ordinance did not lend itself to the intrigues of new groups of speculators; they therefore turned to Congress to secure the land they wanted. Speculation was in the air; everyone of means, it appeared, was dealing either in securities of the Confederation and of the states, or was trying to buy wild land on the frontier from Maine to Georgia, from the Ohio country to the Yazoo Delta.27George Washington, himself no small speculator in land, went out to the Ohio region to look over his land investments (in western Pennsylvania and Ohio) in 1784 and reported: "Such is the rage of speculating in, and forestalling of lands on the northwest side of the Ohio, that scarce a valuable spot within any tolerable distance of it, is left without a claimant. Men in these times talk with as much facility of fifty, a hundred, and even 27 The historian of land speculation, A. M. Sakolski, has said that the "early land lust . . . was not diminished by the democratic spirit of the Revolutionary fathers. Large estates, indeed, could no longer be a badge of nobility, but the growth of colonial fortunes through land acquisitions and sales led to the belief that this would continue to be an important means toward affluence as well as political and social prestige." Sakolski, The Great American Land Bubble, p. 30. Robert A. East in Business Enterprise in the American Revolutionary Era (New York, 1938), dredged up a good deal of information concerning individual and joint stock company speculations in lands. Other useful works are Paul D. Evans, The Holland Land Company (Buffalo, 1924); Ruth L. Higgins, Expansion in New York, with Especial Reference to the Eighteenth Century (Columbus, Ohio, 1931); Shaw Livermore, Early American Land Companies, Their Influence on Corporate Development (New York. 1939). |