OCR Text |
Show CREDIT SALES EXPERIMENT, 1800-1820 129 sale. No further action was taken on the proposals, but all three found their way into the Land Act of 1800.20 Harrison's Frontier Land Bill William Henry Harrison, Ohio Territory's first delegate to Congress, brought to his new position in 1799 an awareness of the advantages the private land agents enjoyed. He was disturbed that large areas of Ohio to which the Indian title had been surrendered were not drawing population or were attracting only squatters who often made only insignificant improvements. He thought it would be far better for Ohio if these neglected areas were made more attractive by building roads to them, opening land offices in their midst, offering the land on more generous credit terms, and reducing its price. Harrison was made a member of a committee to draft the new land law. When reported on the floor of Congress, it included provisions that recall some proposals Gallatin had made earlier. The Act of 1800 did not receive the attention that the Act of 1796 did at the hands of the editor of the Annals of Congress, and we cannot follow in the same degree the various views brought out in debate. The major objective of the West was preemption, the right of a settler to proceed upon the public lands, improve them, and later acquire them at the minimum price without having to worry that a speculator might outbid him at the auction. Almost from the inception of the new government, petitions began to come in from the West pleading for this right. Harrison was no egalitarian and his bill, as reported to the House, contained no provision for preemption. However, William C. C. Claiborne, a Jeffersonian Republican from Tennessee, proposed an amendment that would allow every head of a family who had made "an actual settlement or improvement on any part of the lands . . . and shall reside on the same" the right of preemption to a half- 20 Downs, Frontier Ohio, pp. 116-17; Annals of Congress, 4th Cong., 2d sess., Feb. 20, 1797, p. 2209. section. Only 17 members of the House voted favorably, even Gallatin opposing, though earlier in the session he had presented a petition of 176 "actual settlers" of Jefferson County, Ohio, asking for the right of preemption.21 A special preemption provision was, however, included in the general Land Act of 1800, though it had very limited application. Persons who "before the passage of this act, shall have erected, or begun to erect, a grist-mill or saw-mill upon any of the lands herein directed to be sold, shall be entitled to the preemption of the section including such mill, at the rate of two dollars per acre." Actually, Congress had previously enacted a special preemption act for the relief of settlers who had contracted with John Cleves Symmes for land which he had sold them, but for which he was unable to pay and to which he never acquired title. The Act of March 2, 1799, provided that these settlers be granted a "preference in purchasing all the lands so contracted for" at the price of $2.00 an acre and be given 2 years' credit.22 Continued difficulty in settling the many problems growing out of the unbusinesslike way in which Symmes had conducted his affairs led to the enactment of a second measure "giving a right of preemption" to those purchasers to whom Symmes was unable to give a title. A later act, of March 3, 1801, excused the beneficiaries of this act from interest on their delayed payments until they became due, which was a considerable step in advance of the general Land Act of 1800. Congress muddled along with the four reserved sections in the center of townships by authorizing the Surveyor General to lease them in sections or half-sections for not more than 7 years on the condition "of making such improvements as he shall deem reasonable." If Harrison's Frontier Land Bill, as the Act of 1800 has sometimes been called, failed 21 Annals of Congress, 6th Cong., April 1, 1800, pp. 210, 652. 22 1 Stat. 728. |