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Show PRIVATE LAND CLAIMS 99 before March 10, 1804, had been actually located and surveyed by March 10, 1803, and on which the claimant or a tenant had resided, provided it was not "antedated or otherwise fraudulent" and the owner was not the direct beneficiary of a donation grant.33 These measures enabled the holders of numerous large claims, mostly people whose wealth had been made in the fur trade, to gain confirmation of some claims, but these were only a small part of the land they claimed. For example, John Mullanphy had confirmed four claims for 1,769 arpents; Auguste, Pierre, and other members of the Chouteau family had 34,766 arpents confirmed; Antoine Soulard had 4,542 arpents confirmed; Louis Lorimier had confirmed 6,470 acres; and Marie Leduc had 12,800 arpents confirmed. The report and the acts of confirmation created additional discontent for in important instances owners of 20,000-arpent claims were allowed only a square league and were left uncertain whether, if they accepted the decision and a patent issued, they would lose any prospect of gaining the balance of their claims. Action on Missouri Land Claims, Report of 1816a Claims submitted 2,555 Confirmed and approved by 1 ,756 Congress Village lots, field lots and commons 596 Extensions up to 640 acres of 236 previous confirmations Concessions dated to March 10, 387 1804 Claims authorized by Acts of 1812, 514 1813, and 1814 William Russell 23 Conditionally confirmed 9 Rejected 801 8 American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 314 ff. I have borrowed the tabulation of Violette, loc cit., p. 187. Russell had submitted 309 claims of which 23 were confirmed by the recorder for 13,905 acres; 316 claims for 152,377 acres were rejected. Frederick Bates, a member of the land commission which made the reports of 1812, and was solely responsible for the report of 1816, wrote in 1815 that he with the other commissioners made decisions "with a liberal hand" but he came to regret that "a relaxation bordering on waste has superseded a Policy governed by Justice, & bounded by Principles.-Congress possibly thought, that by doing, all at once, more than Justice required, the greediness of speculation would be glutted. ..." Complicating recorder Bates' task in adjudicating the titles were the kaleidoscopic changes in the legislation which necessitated doing over again part of the work already done. For example, before he had completed his work under the Act of 1812, the grants previously confirmed under the Act of March 3, 1813, were to be enlarged and had to be surveyed again. Then in April 1814, new legislation superseded previous steps and required a third survey of many claims.34 William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, declared in 1818 that the long series of acts relating to private land claims in Missouri "presents an uninterrupted and uniform course of relaxation in favor of land claimants of every description." It is extremely improbable, he added, that "injustice has been done by the rejection of claims which ought to have been confirmed."35 Neither the holders of large claims nor the Missouri delegation accepted this view. Thomas Hart Benton's election as Senator from Missouri in 1820 was a major victory for the large land claimants of that state and he owed it to their concerted support. His leading opponent was John C. B. Lucas, former member of the land board who had voted against confirmation of all the large claims and who as territorial judge had done the claimants no good. The election of Lucas would spell disaster to the landed aristocracy 33 Acts of March 3, Aug. 2, 1813, and April 12, 1814, 2Stat. 813, 3 Stat. 86, 121. 34 Territorial Papers, XV, 65, 228-29. 35 Territorial Papers, XV, 65; American State Papers, Public Lands, III, 393. |
