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Show PREEMPTION 229 1831 and 1832 new preemption measures were before Congress. The one that caught the favor of members was a combination of provisions to reduce the smallest unit of land that could be purchased to 40 acres and to allow 80-acre preemptions to all "actual settlers being house-keepers upon the public lands. . . ." Making preemptions of 40 and 80 acres to men of small means seemed not very radical and the measure was adopted on April 15, 1832. In 6 years, 265,779 acres were entered under it, most of which were in Louisiana.31 Another act of the same year (July 14) gave preemption rights to occupants or settlers who had been entitled to preemption under the law of 1830 but could not make proof in time because (1) the surveys had not been made and returned, (2) the land claimed had not been attached to a district, (3) the land claimed had been reserved because of a disputed boundary, or (4) because the lands claimed were on fractional sections. A third important change adopted on January 23, 1832, allowed preemptors to assign or transfer their certificates of purchase and final receipts.32 The first of these measures had no termination date and as re-enacted in 1838 and 1840 was invoked by Reuben Chapman, Alabama Congressman, for numerous residents on a tract in northwestern Alabama which had been ceded in 1835 by the Cher-okees, and now had a dense population which was entitled to preemption under the Acts of 1838 and 1840. They had not been able to secure title because the plats had not arrived at the land office and now could not arrive in time for them to be notified and to make their preemption entries before their rights expired. Under the current interpretation of the Commissioner this would have ended the matter, but Chapman successfully contended that the Act of 1840 continued and extended the Acts of 1832 and 1838 and that all rights on land they were intended to 31 4 Stat. 503; H. Ex. Doc, 25th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 9 (Serial No. 329), No. 303, p. 7. 32 4 Stat. 496, 603. concede were not destroyed by the expiration of the Act of 1838.33 The 40- and 80-acre Preemption Act of 1832 satisfied few settlers even though it might take them the better part of a lifetime to bring such an amount of land into productive farming. Nothing short of a quarter section would content the usual settler in the West. In 1834 it was proposed in Congress to re-enact the Act of 1830 and to extend its provisions to 2 years. Persons living on and improving land in 1833 would be entitled before the auction to enter, at the usual price of $1.25 an acre, a quarter section of land on which they had made improvements. By now Ohio was becoming assimilated into the eastern Whig point of view regarding public land policies. Samuel F. Vinton, a Representative of the region of the old Ohio Land Company, which had bought three quarters of a million acres to resettle with veterans of the Revolution, took the leadership in opposing further preemption privileges. He argued that preemption would benefit only speculators, that much of the land that would be taken under the bill was worth far more than $1.25 an acre, and that the government would lose heavily by it. James K. Polk declared that Vinton had been making this speech for 6 years and that it was based on misconception and misunderstanding. Advocates had only to point out that the average price of land rarely was much over the minimum and that, if anything, preemption would stimulate purchases. Horace Everett of Vermont observed that there were two types of combinations which tried to dominate the land sales: one was a combination of speculators trying to prevent all competition at the sale, the other a combination of settlers trying to prevent speculators from getting their land. Both were illegal. On this occasion, as earlier, the appearance of preemption bills in Congress induced some to talk about enforcing, 33 Chapman to the Secretary of the Treasury, April 18, 1842, N Series, Letters of the Secretary of the Treasury from Individuals, 1842, Treasury Files, National Archives. |