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Show 140 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Land Reforms Attempted Early in 1819, Jeremiah Morrow, who had represented Ohio in Congress since its admission and now was Chairman of the Senate Committee on Public Lands, reported a bill to end credit sales and reduce the price of land to $1.50 an acre. He said that experience had exploded the view of Gallatin that a high price for land would discourage injurious speculation and land monopolies. In practice it had prevented the "industrious class, with small means . . . from becoming purchasers, with a view to settlement and cultivation." Subdivision of the lands (into sections, then half-sections, finally quarter-sections, and in 1817 into half-quarters for certain tracts) had prevented speculators from monopolizing sales, he maintained, and he favored the general offering of land in units of 80 acres.43 Morrow had labored hard and effectively to ameliorate the rigidities of the land system for the benefit of small farmers of the West. However, parts of Ohio by 1819 were passing out of the frontier stage and its Congressmen were somewhat less representative of the thought of western pioneers than was Ninian Edwards, Senator from Illinois, a truly frontier state just admitted into the Union. Edwards was pictured many years ago by Solon J. Buck as a persistent speculator, though the evidence offered suggests that he bought and sold town lots rather than unimproved land.44 Whatever the size of his dealings, Edwards now constituted himself the representative of the settler who was squatting illegally on the public lands, hope- 43 Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 2d sess., I, 215-18. 44 Solon Justis Buck, Illinois in 1818 (Springfield, 1917), pp. 75, 80, 153, 200. Buck may have been the first person to use intensively the land entry books of land offices and his Chap. II, "The Public Lands," reveals an understanding of the public land system that was well in advance of anything else in print at the time. His map showing lands entered in Illinois in 1818, one of the few such maps in existence of any area, is the result of painstaking work in the entry volumes. ful of gaining a preemption right to his small tract without having to bid for it against men of capital. Credit could well be abolished, thought Edwards, but it still was essential to enable the squatter to purchase his preemption and to become a landowner instead of a tenant. Failing in his first move to retain credit for actual settlers, Edwards moved an amendment to increase the price of land in direct ratio to the size of the purchase, with 80 acres to sell at 50 cents an acre, a quarter-section to sell at 75 cents an acre, and a section to sell at $1.00 an acre. Other Edwards proposals would have allowed preemption to settlers on offered land, restricted purchases directly or indirectly to 640 acres, reduced the price of land to $1.00 an acre, and finally made the price $1.25 an acre. All were rejected and the Morrow bill was adopted, only to be defeated in the House.45 After the crash of 1819 Congress could no longer afford to dally on land reform. It was not only the terms of credit, the price, and the size of tract to be sold that needed alteration. Farther reaching reforms were needed so as to relieve debtors of obligations far beyond their capacity to pay in the foreseeable future.46 Again Edwards of Illinois spoke for the squatters. He moved an amendment to a bill brought in by the Committee on Public Lands that would have allowed squatters settled on land already offered to purchase their quarter-sections on credit terms of 4 or 5 years. He wanted to shield the settlers upon public lands "from merciless speculators, whose cupidity and avarice would unquestionably be tempted by the improvements which those settlers have made with the sweat of their brows, and to which they have been encouraged by the conduct of the Government itself. ..." The amendment was defeated 12-31 with affirmative votes coming 45 Annals oj Congress, 15th Cong., 2d sess., I, 241-45, and II, 1439. 46 For the effect of the crash of 1819 on commodity prices see Thomas Senior Berry, Western Prices Before 1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1943), pp. 123, 124. |