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Show 232 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT preemptions largely increased the number of tracts to be entered and checked upon the plats. Challenged and suspended applications increased alarmingly. The enormous burden the General Land Office had to carry in these busy years is shown by the data provided by the Commissioner in his report for 1837. Between December 1, 1836, and November 30, 1837, there were 216,784 entries of lands registered; 81,682 sales were waiting to be recorded. In the same period 135,000 land patents were issued.37 Ethan Allen Brown, Commissioner of the General Land Office in 1835 and 1836, worn out by the demands of Congress for information and by the tremendous burdens the enormous entries of public lands were creating for his staff, came out with a harsh indictment of preemption in January 1836. Though not quite a fair statement, for it 37 S. Ex. Doc, 25th Cong., 2d sess., Dec. 9, 1837, Vol. I (Serial No. 314), No. 11, pp. 2-3. The unfortunate feature of the GLO Annual Reports while GLO was in the Treasury Department is that without exception they are concerned, almost to the exclusion of everything else, with the mechanical details of the office, the number of entries, the amount of correspondence, the number of miles of surveying authorized, the receipts from sales. Rarely did the Commissioner discuss the meaningfulness of the data he offered. In the thirties the only correspondence which is included is that of the surveyors general. In the report for 1840 this correspondence absorbs 92 of the 137 pages and it is likewise concerned with the minutia of surveying and not at all with the nature of the land and people found on it. At the request of the Senate of Feb. 28, 1837 the General Land Office Commissioner prepared for publication copies of all general instructions sent out from his office and those sent from the Treasury Department instructing the registers and receivers how to administer the land laws and to deal with the many delicate questions arising under them. These were published under the title General Public Acts of Congress respecting the Sale and Disposition of the Public Lands with Instructions . . . on Questions Arising under the Land Laws. Vol. 2 contains the instructions and the opinions of the Attorney General. The instructions concerning the interpretation of the preemption laws are found in pages 539-654 but elsewhere in this big 1117 page book are numerous statements of the attorneys general resolving fine points of law concerning preemption rights. was obviously penned by one who was not in sympathy with squatters on the public lands, it still has considerable substance. The use in Louisiana of the floats of the Act of 1830 bothered Brown most, for they were in such demand that many settlers conspired to gain them illegally. Members of the same family, urban residents, even slaves were used to swear to "artfully worded" depositions of joint occupation, and the planting of a few turnip seeds or peach stones, the burning of a small patch of cane, and the erection of a slight enclosure not entitled to be called a fence were offered as evidence of improvements. Brown's allegations were sufficiently supported by evidence to carry much weight but when he went on to anathematize the entire preemption policy he was on less certain and verifiable ground. The preemption privilege, he said, enables "the adventurer to appropriate to himself the choicest lands, most valuable mill seats, and localities for towns, at a vast cost to the public. ..." He estimated that "outrageous combinations to intimidate purchasers, and other unjustifiable confederacies" had cost the government $3 million in loss of income from land sales. Here Brown was confusing claims clubs and speculators' groups with preemption. Brown feared it was a hopeless task to draft proposals that would "silence perjury and defeat the devices of sagacious speculators . . . . " Other than fraud in the use of floats, he felt that the most dangerous aspect of the business was the "system of terror that threatens the competitor for the purchase of public land with the vengeance of the settler with whose usurpation he may interfere. In some quarters, this state of things is become formidable: probably finding its origin, in a great measure in the preemption laws, whose repeated enactment may have led the settlers to the erroneous persuasion, that they have acquired rights not given by law."38 38 H. Ex. Doc, 24th Cong., 1st sess., Jan. 28, 1836, Vol. IV (Serial No. 289), No. 125, pp. 2-6. Brown offered additional evidence of what he regarded as |