History of public land law development

page 146

146 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT The Pioneer Harper's Weekly, Jan. 11, 1868 Typical of these memorials is that of the Alabama Legislature of December 12, 1823. The usual tale of the misfortunes which had dogged the people and made it impossible for them to raise the funds with which to purchase their land, including the low price of cotton, the failure of the local banks to redeem their currency, and the refusal of the land officers to accept their notes, was followed by the statement that speculators would get the settlers' land unless postponement were granted or preemption permitted.2 In another memorial, dated January 18, 1830, the Alabama Legislature offered a different set of reasons for postponement of the sale of Jackson County lands. It argued that for several years past the cotton crops of that part of the state had been poor and that 2 American State Papers, Public Lands, IV, 2. Also see memorials of the Alabama Legislature of Jan. 29, 1829, urging postponement of advertised sales in Jackson and Madison Counties and another of Jan. 31, 1835, urging postponement of sales of relinquished land. Ibid., 147 and VI, 11 although the crop of 1829 had been abundant, it would be impossible to move it to New Orleans in time to use the proceeds for the sale. Also the grant for the improvement of the Tennessee River was just coming into market and for the two land sales to be held simultaneously would be a hardship to planters in that area, and would only "afford facilities for the combination of those harpies, the land speculators, who prey alike upon the Government, and upon the honest occupant of the soil." Most of the 12,000 people in Jackson County had been compelled "to seek an asylum on the public lands, from an inability to purchase elsewhere" and their continuance there had been by the sufferance of the government. To permit the sale now, said the memorial, would be to force them "shelterless from their cabins, with their wives and helpless children, at an inclement season of the year . . . ."3 A somewhat different type of proposal for postponement came from Indiana in 1847-48. As a result of intimate relations with a group of powerful Fort Wayne traders, the Miami and Potawatomi Indians had succeeded in retaining their lands along the Wabash long after other tribes in Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, southern Wisconsin, and eastern Iowa had surrendered their reservations. When the Miami lands were finally ceded in 1838 and 1840 they were in great demand. Squatters had established claims on them, townsite promoters were anxiously waiting to locate on them, and a variety of other speculators were eager to acquire them, both because of their location and because of the many improvements on them. When these lands were surveyed, Congress granted the settlers the right of preemption but it insisted that the price should be $2.00 an acre instead of the usual $1.25 an acre. This action produced three memorials from the Indiana Legisla- 3 House Reports, 21st Cong., 1st sess., No. 97 (Serial No. 199), Jan. 18, 1830. On May 23, 1828, Congress granted 400,000 acres of relinquished land to Alabama for the improvement of the navigation of the Tennessee River, 4 Stat. 290.