OCR Text |
Show PREEMPTION 221 ment's title to these national resources. Despite prohibitions against intrusions, they continued to precede the surveyor and, before the public sale, to take possession of land wherever they found an attractive spot for a good farm or a site for a gristmill or sawmill. Because Congress had required the Treasury Department to give wide publicity to forthcoming public land auctions, squatters were greatly concerned about the possibility of speculators buying their claims. To prevent that catastrophe they sought a preferential right to buy the land on which they had made perhaps several years of improvements. Age of the Petition It was the age of the petition and memorial. Interested parties would set forth their reasons for favoring or opposing measures then under consideration, would secure many signatures, and induce the state legislatures to urge Congress to act. The petitions for preemption, sometimes filled with pathos and usually with marked dislike of the speculator, ran the gamut of emotion. An early one from near Kaskaskia, Illinois, dated May 23, 1790, said the Indians continued to kill members of the community, steal their horses and destroy their cattle, making it necessary for them to live in forts or in sickly villages on the Mississippi where they could not till the land. They humbly begged for the right of preemption to their improved land. Another petition from Ohio in 1798, signed by 85 men, spoke of their poverty which made it impossible for them to buy land at the "enormous prices it sold for." Having "left their friends and dearest connections," taken their lives in their hands "and faced danger and all the hardships attendant on the first settlers of an uncultivated frontier forest," they felt they deserved the right to preempt small tracts instead of having to buy from someone who had a quarter-township.8 Other petitions for preemption rights deplored the necessity of buying land at high prices from greedy capitalists. Still others declared that the signers might have to abandon American territory and seek land in Spanish dominions unless preemption privileges were extended them.9 One interesting petition signed by 32 men (including 10 members of one family) who had survived the ravages of war and had confronted the "ruthless savage with Intagerty & success Except the loss of property & friends" now asked for the right of preempting their claims. If not granted, and "our lands is taken from us by dint of oppulance" the signers urged the 'enactment of a law "to make such purchaseer pay us the full value of our Improvements . . . ." A petition from Gibson County, Indiana, in 1816, was signed by "poor but honest Industrious hard laboring Citizens . . . who emigrated hither . . . with a view of finding an assylum from the tyrannical yoke of oppressive landlords." Unable to pay for their land on which all their rights had been forfeited they prayed for the privilege of remaining on it until conditions improved and they could again purchase, as a preemption, they hoped.10 A Bona Fide Residence From A. D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi, 1867 8 Carter, Territorial Papers, II, 252, 639-40. 9 American State Papers, Public Lands, I, 68, 111, 163, 201; III, 122 ff; Annals of Congress, 5th Cong., 1st sess., Dec. 24, 1799, p. 210. "Carter, Territorial Papers, VIII, 281, 367, 368, 382, 389, 391, 393. |