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Show CASH SALES, 1840-1862 195 It would be interesting to speculate whether the institution of slavery and the plantation system, with its tendency to absorb the best lands, was responsible for discouraging small farmers from taking up the less attractive lands, as small farmers were doing before the Civil War in Indiana and Illinois. Alabama and Mississippi were being settled at the same time as Indiana and Illinois but the two northern states quickly surpassed the two southern ones in population, number of farms, improved acreage in farms, and value of farm implements; the cash values of the farms in these northern states was nearly twice that of those in the South. Similarly, Iowa was far ahead of Arkansas. Perhaps what impelled Benton to favor graduation was his realization that in a slave economy $1.25 an acre was high and that only by reducing the price drastically would the long unsold southern land pass into private ownership and be made into farms. It was in the decade of the fifties that the greatest increase in land in farms occurred in the six slave states. The increase came largely from lands bought at graduation prices. This was not true of northern states where only 4,432,150 acres were sold at these prices in contrast to 22,244,178 sold in the South.43 Whatever the motive of Benton, Cobb, Hubbard, and Walker in urging the adoption of graduation, it seems very obvious that they were right in concluding that if the price of land was lowered in proportion to the length of time it had been subject to sale, there would be a big demand for such as had any value for farming. As the accompanying Acreage in Farms 43 That the sale of graduation lands provided the larger part of the increased land in farms in the slave states can best be seen in Alabama where the acreage in farms increased 6,966,000 acres; the acreage of public land sales (of which 86 percent were graduation sales) was 6,400,330 for the decade. In the other five slave states with public lands the donation of swamplands complicates the story somewhat, but all evidence supports the conclusion that graduation sales were the most important factor in making possible expansion of the land in farms. Six Slave States 1850 1860 Missouri 9,732,670 19,984,810 Arkansas 2,598,214 9,573,706 Louisiana 4,989,043 9,298,576 Alabama 12,137,681 19,104,545 Mississippi 10,490,419 15,839,684 Florida 1,595,289 2,920,228 Total 41,543,316 75,721,549 Six Free States Ohio 17,997,493 20,472,141 Indiana 12,793,422 16,388,292 Illinois 12,037,412 20,911,989 Michigan 4,383,890 7,030,834 Wisconsin 2,976,658 7,893,587 Iowa 2,736,071 10,069,907 Total 52,924,946 82,766,710 table shows, the lower the price the larger the proportion of land available at that price was taken. Through graduation and the issuance of military bounty land warrants, the greater part of the land sold or entered in the fifties was acquired at substantially less than the $1.25 price which had prevailed since 1820. In fact, only 22 percent of the land entries of 1855 to 1862 went for the regular minimum price. To this extent Benton and other exponents of a low pricing policy had won their objective. The graduation business took up much of the time of the local officers and provided an additional method by which local men of capital could acquire Federal lands cheaply. Outside capitalists with large funds to invest in land at this time had little reason to resort to fraud under the Graduation Act. They wanted first choice, not second or third choice, if they were well advised, and that meant buying newly offered land which could be acquired in unlimited amounts. It was the lands restored to market in Illinois and Missouri after the railroads had made their selections and even more the newly of- |