| OCR Text |
Show PREEMPTION 237 land auctions. It was a preferential right at first won by the settlers and finally wholeheartedly granted to all retrospectively and, in 1841, prospectively. It marked another step away from the early revenue policy that was to culminate in free lands in 1862.49 Having won retrospective preemption in a series of measures between 1830 and 1840, the West's next objective was to gain permanent prospective preemption. Westerners had long felt that this was desirable as it would take the issue out of politics and would assure settlers moving on public lands that they would not have to wait for congressional action to protect them in their claims. Anything short of that goal was, like the measures of 1830 and 1838, a mere palliative. It was the western Democrats who sponsored preemption and who drew some support from Democrats of other sections; in opposition were Whigs such as Samuel F. Vinton of Ohio, a state from which frontier and western attitudes were receding, and the Clay men. The victory of the Whigs in 1840 did not promise well for the advocates of prospective preemption. Harrison, though a mild advocate of land reform in 1800, had long since given up any such interest and in one of America's dreariest inaugurals, March 4, 1841, he avoided all pressing issues and mentioned land matters not at all.50 His successor, John Tyler, disapproved of preemption. Henry Clay and other opponents continued their hostility, though somewhat less ada- 49 In his first annual message to Congress, 1837, Van Buren declared: "A policy which should be limited to the mere object of selling the lands for the greatest possible sum of money, without regard to higher considerations, finds but few advocates. . . . The government's leading object ought to be the early settlement and cultivation of the lands sold; and that it should discountenance, if it cannot prevent, the accumulation of large tracts in the same hands, which must retard the growth of the new states, or entail upon them a dependent tenantry and its attendant evils." 60 Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, IV, 5-21. mantly than before, and were prepared to bargain. Walker and other western Democrats worked mightily during the lame duck session of 1840-41 to secure a permanent prospective preemption measure that they labeled the "log cabin" bill, hoping that the "log cabin and hard cider" candidate and his party would now fall into line in its support. In the next Congress their ranks would be depleted by losses in the 1840 election and if preemption was to be achieved in a satisfactory form it must be in this session. Benton and Walker were successful on February 2 in driving the Senate to a final vote, after an unusual Whig display of parliamentary maneuvering and harassing tactics designed to delay action. There were no Bentons or Walkers in the House, however, which failed to act, and the issue was left to the new Congress, strongly Whig in makeup. Replacement of Harrison by Tyler in the White House did not enhance the hopes of the West for preemption, nor of Clay for distribution. Clay's anxiety to retain the tariff rates at a protective rather than a revenue level seemed to him to require that the public lands should continue to serve as an important source of public funds for the United States. The $1.25 price must be maintained, no concession should be made to graduation, and sales at public auction should be retained. When protective tariff rates and $1.25-an-acre land produced a surplus, he wanted to rid the Treasury of that surplus not by lowering either tariffs or land prices but by apportioning the surplus among the states on the basis of their representation in the Congress. Frustrated by Jackson's veto in 1833, by the Panic of 1837 and the disappearance of the surplus which forced the suspension of deposit, Clay in 1841 was pushing again for distribution, even though there had been a deficit the previous year and another, even larger deficit was looming for 1841. At the same time some Whigs were attempting to get through Congress a meas- |
