OCR Text |
Show 178 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Residence of Isaac Funk, Prairie Landlord Atlas of McLean Ckninty, Illinois, 187-1 President Van Buren, driven to find additional sources of revenue to reduce the national deficit, if not to balance it, turned to the public lands. True, public offering of land in these trying times would work a hardship on those who had to raise the money to buy their claims but Van Buren had no alternative. Had he not ordered western lands to sale, the government deficit of 1838 might have been 40 percent greater than it was, the surplus of 1839 might have been turned into a deficit, and the deficit of 1840 might have been doubled. All this, together with an impending deficit of SI 1 million in 1841, which was to be followed by smaller deficits in 1842 and 1843, was enough in those pre-Keynesian days to alarm any responsible official.3 It was not so apparent to any but the hard pressed squatters that the money supplied by eastern moneylenders, land speculators, and western settlers was to be the factor easing the government crisis. It may be asked whether the sharply reduced sales of 1840 to 1845 are an accurate index of a leveling off in economic development on the frontier. Although no computerized study has been made of land entries in 3 James D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents (1904), III, 385. Here, as elsewhere, the data concerning public proclamations of sales and sales are taken from the GLO Annual Reports, and the statistics of income and expenditures are from Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, 1960), pp. 711-12. |