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Show CASH SALES, 1820-1840 173 deposites [sic] were placed in the reach of speculators, was a stockholder in the monopolizing 'American Land Company.'72 The Cincinnati Gazette declared that the President's sanction had been obtained to permit the ALC officers to invest in Chicka-saw and Choctaw allotments, that the company had cheated the Indians by so controlling sales as to prevent competitive bidding and a fair market price for the allotments. After cheating the Indians in a series of "most unrighteous bargains," charged the Gazette, the company voted SI,000 to buy bibles for the natives of Alabama and Mississippi.73 The Randolph Recorder went so far as to hint that the administration had "opposed Distribution so that the funds of the Pet Banks would be available for Mr. Van Buren's Land Speculations."74 These charges and others were bandied about extensively in the Whig press and touched Charles Butler in a sensitive spot for he attempted an answer, denying that John Van Buren had any interest in the company, and holding that the company was not "speculating" in public lands but "investing" in land, as it had a right to do.75 Some economic historians have been troubled about the use of the term speculator to apply to individuals or companies who purchased public lands to hold for a rise without any intention of developing or improving them in any way. The pioneer settler was not concerned with the means or influence by which such people were able to take advantage of the system and acquire lands through favor, but was concerned with their 7 2 Albany Evening Journal, reprinted in the Chicago American, Aug. 12, 1839. Only a few years before, the Democrats had been making the same charges against the Second United States Bank. 73 Quoted in the Havana Republican, Nov. 27, 1839. 74 Randolph (Tennessee) Recorder, Sept. 16, 1836. 75 Copy of letter of Charles Butler, New York, Aug. 17, 1836, to T. O. Davis, in Butler Papers, Library of Congress and published in the Albany Argus, Sept. 30, 1836. social usefulness. The settler did not put it in these terms but he surely had the idea. He drew the line between large owners who, like the Wadsworths of the Genesee Valley, were residents, lived upon or in the midst of their property, and devoted their energies to settling purchasers or tenants upon it, building improvements, and drawing people to the region and, on the other hand, those absentee owners who paid their taxes grudgingly, urged their agents to resist all public expenditures, and waited for the time when the improvements of others would so enhance the value of property as to enable them to sell (or rent) at the returns they expected. The American Land Company, like so many of the absentee investors insofar as their wild lands were concerned, did nothing to enhance the value except perhaps to advertise their lands, which was more than some speculators did. It did not identify itself with the welfare of the communities where the lands were located and was a "monopoly" to the local people. The political nature of the charges against the American Land Company is obvious. The closing of land offices had nothing to do with the activities of the company; Whig leaders were also investing heavily in western lands and, like the company, borrowing from banks receiving Federal deposits. What made the American Land Company more vulnerable was that some of its investors and officers were prominent Democrats and it operated out in the open on such a large scale. In 1836, almost before the American Land Company had completed its purchases acquired at $1.25 an acre, it was advertising its Mississippi land for sale, as follows: 2,400 acres in Warren County near Vicksburg at $7 to $10 per acre; 15,200 acres in Washington County at $15; 1,139 acres in Holmes County at $20; 1,176 acres in Yazoo County at $10 per acre; 4,100 acres in Rankin County at $10; and 5,300 in Scott County at $10 an acre. John F. Scott, the agent for the lands, announced that after 2 years he would buy |
