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Show 126 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT holders" both in as well as outside the Congress who feared that a liberal policy of disposing of the public lands would produce "too great an emigration from the Atlantic States" to the West. This fear of the older states and speculators and the hope of speedily retiring the public debt doubtless were the principal factors in the adoption of the $2.00 price. The terms were not nearly as generous as were commonly offered at the time either by the states for their own lands or by private landowners.14 Early Administrative Procedures Since the production of revenue was a prime objective of the public land system it was natural for Congress to assign responsibility to the Secretary of the Treasury for surveying the lands, establishing offices for their sale, issuing patents which were to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, and maintaining records. The Act of 1796 was most detailed in providing for the survey of public lands. It replaced the Geographer of the Confederation with a Surveyor General and instructed him to survey an additional seven ranges beyond those that had been already set off. Deputy surveyors were required, in running the lines, to mark on a tree near each corner of the township and section the number of township, range, and section, and to note in their fieldbooks all mines, salt licks and springs, mill seats, water courses, and "also the quality of the lands." The Surveyor General was to make a fair plat presumably of each township from the surveyor's notes which was to be available at his office and at the place of sale. It was these plats which in the future were to be looked over in 30 public land states by millions of landseekers eager to find tracts with promising descriptions that they might file upon after personal inspection.15 The Act of 1796 mentioned receivers of public moneys who presumably would receive applications for entries and payments but did not spell out how land offices were to function and left responsibility in the hands of the Surveyor General and the Secretary of the Treasury. In 1800 and 1804 Congress took a major step toward satisfying western wishes that land sales be conducted near the tracts to be sold. A statute of May 10, 1800, provided for the establishment of four land offices at Marietta, Chillicothe, Steubenville, and Cincinnati. In 1803 and 1804 additional offices were opened in Detroit, Kaskaskia, and Vincennes and one each east and west of the Pearl River in Mississippi Territory. In each office there were to be two officials. The register was to receive applications for entries of land, make notations of entries on the tract and plat books, and prepare monthly reports of all applications for transmission to the Treasury Department. The receiver was to accept payments for the land, to make and retain in his own office abstracts of entries for which payments were made, and to send copies to the Treasury Department. In this way, the Treasury would have two complete monthly reports of all land business from the individual offices, each being a full check upon the other. Both the register and the receiver would retain also complete monthly accounts of all land entries and payments, so that in effect there would be a full record of all transactions maintained at the Treasury De- M Annals of Congress, 4th Cong., 1st sess., p. 354. 15 For reproductions of a township plat and of tractbook entries see The Public Land Records . . . Footnotes to American History, prepared by the Bureau of Land Management (Washington, 1959). Later, charges were sometimes made that the local officers denied landseekers the right of access to these plats and that lands were indicated on them as already filed upon when the local officers were simply holding them until favored individuals could make their inspections and then enter such as proved most attractive. 16 2 Stat. 73, 230, 277. |