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Show CASH SALES, 1820-1840 153 Settlers had thus learned to organize combinations such as speculators had benefited from at the early Alabama sales, and molded them into an effective device to prevent men with capital from buying their improvements. A dispatch in the Detroit Gazette of 1829 leads one to wonder whether the squatters had so intimidated speculators that claim associations were really unnecessary, or whether the writer was gently avoiding mention of the intimidation and even violence that sometimes was resorted to against claim jumpers. The author was in attendance at the Monroe land sale at which squatters came from many miles around, fearing that they would lose their land and improvements. Some capitalists, he said, were prepared to pay $6 or $10 an acre for their claims. "But the speculators behaved honorably, and did not bid upon a single lot that was occupied."23 Plans for controlling the sales in the Cahaba district of Alabama in 1830 were brought to the attention of the officials in Washington by three disgruntled persons who may have hoped to speculate in the five townships to be offered. One of the writers reported that the land was "thickly populated by farmers, as wealthy, in the general, as any part of South Alabama." They had held a convention at which they resolved to prevent outsiders from viewing or exploring the land by force of arms, and had appointed bidders for each township to bid off the entire area the members wished bought. In a fair market the land would sell for $5 or $10 an acre, he said, but whether he was including the value of the improvements is not clear. One of the other writers said: "The general opinion is ... that these men will murder any man, or set of men, who bid for this land against their body."24 The numerous accounts pouring in to members of Congress and the officials of the Land Office about the use of associations to prevent competitive bidding caused much concern in Washington where many men still thought of the public lands primarily as a source of revenue. Congress at the time was considering the relief act of 1830 to ease the path of those who had bought in the credit period, had forfeited a portion of their land, and now wished to buy it back when conditions were improving. Revenue advocates, and those members of Congress who wished for more order and less turmoil at the western land sales, combined to bring forth a measure "for the relief of purchasers of public lands, and for the suppression of fraudulent practices at the public sales. . . ." The latter part, which is what interests us here, declared that persons who combined to prevent competition at public sales of United States land by intimidation, combination, or unfair management should on conviction, be subject to a fine not exceeding $1,000 and/or imprisonment not exceeding 2 years.25 This put teeth into the administrative regulations with which the Commissioner had previously supplied the local land officers. There is, however, little evidence that western people were intimidated by the law.26 There is an unusually interesting and realistic letter of May 15, 1833, from the Commissioner of the General Land Office, Elijah Hayward, to Louis McLane, Secretary of the Treasury, in which mention is made of a claims association in Alabama and of the 23 Detroit Gazette, quoted in the Michigan Sentinel, June 27, 1829. UH. Ex. Doc, 21st Cong., 1st sess., Vol. IV (Serial No. 198), No. 109, 1830, pp. 4-6. 26 Act of March 31, 1830, 4 Stat. 390-92. 26 I have found little evidence in the correspondence of the General Land Office and the Treasury Department or in local newspapers that the statute of 1830 deterred settlers from combining to suppress competition for the purchase of land. There is a letter of James R. M. Bryan to E. D. Brown, Aug. 19, 1836, in the Comissioner's File, General Land Office Records, National Archives, in which the Land Commissioner is told that in anticipation of a public sale to be held at Crawfordsville, Indiana, handbills were posted throughout the region calling attention to a "combination" organized to obstruct competition; a copy of the handbill was sent to the General Land Office with the suggestion that it be brought to the attention of the District Attorney because of its obvious violation of the Act of 1830. |