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Show 194 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Acreage Listed by the Land Office as Available Under Graduation and the Amount Actually Entered" State Acreage Listed as Acreage Entered Percent Available Under Under Graduation Sold Graduation 70,495 69,294 98 458,700 371,123 81 1,384,610 938,285 67 8,785,890 1,036,227 11 1,906,757 886,907 46 595,480 130,314 22 Ohio____ Indiana. _. Illinois___ Michigan. Wisconsin. Iowa____ R The report showing the acreage open to graduation is dated December 24, 1855. Lands within the exterior limit of the railroad land grants in Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi are not included. It should be remembered, however, that the larger part of the grants of the fifties were made in 1856, and of course had not been withdrawn from entry at the time the report was prepared. House Ex. Doc, 34th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 5, No. 13 (Serial No. 847) passim. Practically all land available for graduation in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa which had not been reserved for railroads was actually sold during the years 1854 to 1862. By the latter year only fragments of land, if any, were left and all the land offices in the first three states had been consolidated into one office retained for record purposes, while in Iowa the eastern land offices had been closed. Even in the six public land states in which slavery flourished graduation did not sweep all the remaining public lands into private ownership. Large acreages remained, seemingly unwanted at any price. A considerable part of this unwanted land was not to attract interest until the 1880's when long leaf pine and Cyprus timber drew northern buyers.42 Graduation Entries and Land Remaining Unsold in 1862s States Acreage Listed As Available Under Graduation Acreage Entered Under Graduation Percentage of Land Entered Acreage Remaining Unsold Missouri . . Arkansas.. Louisiana _ Mississippi Alabama.. Florida__ 13,850,020 8 ,897,714 64 4,700,000 14,212,610 3 ,891,405 27 11,757,662 7,806,340 1 ,486,004 19 5,582,841 7,602,043 1 ,826,392 24 4,930,893 14,039,502 5 ,543,127 39 6,915,081 6,848,560 599,536 8 17,540,374 tt The acreage available under graduation, which is not necessarily all the remaining public lands in the states, is from H. Ex. Doc, 34th Cong., 1st sess., Feb. 5, 1856, Vol. V, No. 13, passim; the acreage entered under graduation is compiled from the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of the General Land Office; the percentage has been calculated; the acreage remaining unsold from the Report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office, 1867, p. 367. The acreage remaining unsold is not the result of deducting column two from column one. It does not altogether check out with other data. For example, the acreage remaining unsold for Missouri is given as 1,835,892, as of 1867. This is an error, for final homesteads to the amount of 3,644,306 acres, and cash sales and scrip and warrant entries after 1867 came to more than 1,100,000. There were, therefore, at least 4,754,000 acres remaining unsold and unappropriated in Missouri on June 30, 1867. 42 Paul W. Gates, "Federal Land Policy in the South, 1866-1888," Journal of Southern History, VI (August 1940), 303-30. |