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Show CASH SALES, 1840-1862 193 to sell the land they had entered at 12}/$ cents for $5 and $10 to others.38 The upshot of it all was that Stuart and Pugh agreed to report a measure to the House within a few days. This they did, with safeguarding amendments, but essentially the southerners had their way. "The Act to confirm certain entries" was introduced and passed in the House on February 2; the Senate Committee reported it on the 5th; it was promptly passed without a division, and became law on March 3.39 Before the measure was finally adopted, Burton Craige of North Carolina moved to amend the title to have it read: "An act for the purpose of enabling persons to hold land without complying with the requirements of the original act." The motion was met with laughter and it was ruled out of order but there was much to it, for the act did try to accomplish just that. It validated all entries under the Graduation Act if the purchaser had complied with the first set of instructions by filing the required affidavit and paying the purchase money, and directed that the patents should be issued forthwith. Such entries as the Commissioner had found to be "fraudulently or evasively made" and entries which had previously been annulled and vacated by the Commissioner because of fraud or evasion of the law were excepted. This act enabled many thousands of acres to be patented which had not been occupied and improved and for which relatively meaningless affidavits had been filed.40 The act was retrospective only and soon thousands of additional entries were in the same situation, i.e., suspended because the entrymen had not conformed to all the requirements set by the Land Office. Com- MCong. Globe, 34th Cong., 3d sess., Feb. 2, 1857, pp. 552-55. 39 Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., 3d sess., Feb. 25. 1857, pp. 538, 551-54, 579. i0Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., 3d sess., Feb. 2, 1857, p. 538. H Stat. 186. missioner Hendricks in his Annual Report of 1858 reiterated that a very considerable proportion, if not the greater part, of the graduation entries "have been made by unscrupulous individuals in contravention of the law, and bought up by speculators, who are relying on Congress for the confirmation of their entries, by the passage of an act similar to the Act of March 3, 1857, dispensing with the proof of settlement and cultivation." He posed two alternatives to Congress: either to free the Graduation Act of the "odium of evasion and fraud" by amending it so as to require positive proof of settlement and cultivation before the patent should issue, as Wilson had attempted to do by his second set of instructions, or else to abandon the requirement of settlement and cultivation altogether.41 The nonslaveholding states of the Mississippi Valley had not been much concerned about graduation because they were anxious for free land and nothing short of that would satisfy them. No northern state but Michigan had any great amount of land affected by the Graduation Act and no lands in the territories had been proclaimed for as long as the 10 years that would bring them within the scope of the law. The greater part of the eligible land in these states was snapped up quickly and another part that would have been eligible was withdrawn from entry under graduation either because it was reserved for land grants to railroads or was to be sold at the double-minimum price if within the 6-mile limit of these grants. The land grants and withdrawals greatly reduced whatever acreage would have been available under graduation and disappointed many potential land buyers in the North who now found that, instead of graduation prices, they would have to pay the double-minimum, $2.50, for public land and as much as $6 to $15 an acre for railroad land. 41 H. Ex. Doc, 35th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. II, No. 2 (Serial No. 997), Nov. 30, 1858, p. 123. |
