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Show 234 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT those who have but little feeling in Common with the humble labourer that their improvements were taken from them their labour lost and their means Expended, the Settlers, ask but little, only a Quarter Section of land by which he may be enabled to support his family and Educate his children, to the end of which is our Parental duty, and for that end your memorialists will ever pray. The petition, signed by 116 men, was transmitted through Senator John Tipton to the Committee on Public Lands which reported "That the prayer be not granted."41 In 1836 there was considerable support for making the Intrusion Act of 1833, which was primarily intended to prevent squatting on the Sac and Fox cession in eastern Iowa, applicable to other areas. Known lead deposits in the tract drew miners before the region was incorporated into a territory and before there were any officials competent to protect the lands from depredation. Consequently, Congress specifically applied the Intrusion Act of 1807 to the cession and authorized the Indian agents at Prairie du Chien and Rock Island to enforce it.42 Efforts to revive the control of settlement were part of the maneuvering of the opponents of preemption. While this was going on. Clay was pressing forward his distribution and deposit bills to apportion to the states the net income from the sale of public lands. Whenever the western pro-settler element seemed on the verge of winning one of its objectives, it was good politics for the easterners to discourse on the degree to which the preemption laws were abused for the benefit of speculators and to advocate the distribution of the land sale proceeds to the states for internal improvements or aid for education. On the other hand, if Clay seemed on the verge of forming a coalition of the East, the old West, and the South strong enough to get a deposit bill or an anti-intrusion measure through Congress, the western egalitarians would enter 41 Undated Petition in National Archives, referred to Committee on Public Lands, Feb. 16, 1836. 42 Act of March 2, 1833, 4 Stat. 665. into eulogies on the squatter-he was advancing the frontier, adding value to the public lands, creating new commonwealths with herculean labor and at great sacrifice, only to be faced with penury, the loss ot his improvements, and tenancy because the speculator was threatening to obtain his land at the approaching auction sale. Depression Increases Demands for Preemption While Congress was considering these issues, public land sales reached their highest point in American history, Jackson issued his Specie Circular and the great crash ot 1836 and 1837 occurred. Deposit, which Clay had carried to a successful conclusion, quickly ended with the disappearance of the surplus. The affluence which seemed to be extending widely in 1836 faded away as land sales abruptly fell off and the demand for produce shraxik. The West was again in a depression. Now the demand for preemption became stronger, particularly as extensive land sales had been ordered and capital was still being attracted from the East to invest in land. According to Robert J. Walker, who was in charge of the preemption bill in the Senate, many meritorious individuals would lose the labor of years unless preemption were promptly passed. He assured questioners that no floats, such as the Act of 1830 had allowed, would be given to settlers contending for the same quarter section. Opponents still thundered against preemption as "a system of partiality, plunder, and perfidy," partial to the new states and unfair to the old, and Clay took delight in reading the strictures of Ethan Allen Brown, the former Commissioner of the General Land Office. Walker replied that Brown was "wholly incorrect," that his views were founded on calumny and misrepresentation, the result of an anonymous letter. Strong support for preemption came from the White House. Settlers had long since gotten into the habit of preceding the sur- |