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Show PREEMPTION 239 speculation, but had taken it up in good faith for their own exclusive use or benefit and had no agreement or contract to sell it to others. Although there was considerable talk about preemption replacing public sales, the act specifically stated that it was not intended to interfere with public offerings, which were to be continued as before.53 It was the intention of Congress that settlers on the surveyed portions of the public lands would never again have to worry about the legality of moving upon land before it had been offered at auction, and that land office officials, no matter how strongly they were influenced by the revenue concept of the earlier days, should not have to face the unpleasant task of curbing intrusions on surveyed lands. However, the Act of 1841 was only prospective, and where settlement prior to its enactment had been excluded by the restricted provisions in the Acts of 1838 and 1840, settlers still could claim no right of preemption. More restrictive was the limitation of the act to surveyed lands. Because preemption was not extended to squatters on unsurveyed lands, Commissioner Shields feared that when the lands were surveyed others could anticipate them, file preemption entries, and thereby gain the advantage of their improvements. Actually, problems over squatting, intrusions, and the use of force to repel unlicensed settlement were to continue to annoy the West and to make difficulties for officialdom for two generations to come.54 53 Act of September 4, 1841, 5 Stat. 456. 54 This was brought out by James Shields, Commissioner oi the General Land Office in his Report of 1845 in S. Doc, 29th Cong., 1st sess., Vol. 3, No. 16 (Serial No. 472), p. 7. Shields was thoroughly caught up in the frontiersmen's conception of public lands, i.e., that every possible advantage should be conceded him in the administration of the lands and that speculator's rights should always be subordinated to them. In this same Report for 1845 he recommended that they be allowed to preempt an additional tract beyond the 160 acres to provide further needs for fuel and timber. This, he opined, would Another group of settlers who did not benefit from the Preemption Act of 1841 were those on 40-acre tracts. The act did not extend preemption to settlers on tracts of this size; that of April 5, 1832, had allowed squatters on these small tracts to purchase them, though only when they were offered at public sale. Shields feared that unless they were granted a preemption they would become tenants at will of the government or of large landholders. Controversies over frauds involved in the issuance of floats under the Preemption Act of 1830 and the numerous conflicting claims of preemptors and purchasers at the public sales were not sufficient warning to Congress of the need to draft legislation with great care.55 By 1842 the Commissioner was reporting that persons taking up preemption claims were stripping them of their timber and then abandoning them. It was found that while the Act of 1841 denied persons more than one preemption it did not prevent them from filing a second declaratory statement for a claim, removing everything of value from it, and then abandoning it. Also, where two persons were found to have established claims on the same tract, the law gave the right to the one who made the first improvement but it did not provide adequately that the first settler's right was also protected against his rival who might be the first to file his entry and pay the required price. Finally, it appeared that settlers were filing declaratory statements indicating their prevent "unscrupulous preemptors whose sole object is to speculate upon the necessities of settlers on the prairie" from entering the lands. Ibid., p. 9. Shields also recommended graduating the price of land. Never again was there to be a Commissioner so sensitive of frontier policies toward public lands. 56 In 1836 the Commissioner reported that the Preemption Law of 1834 was producing a regular flow of complaints and appeals from decisions of the local land officers, reaching 1,500 and seemed unceasing. S. Ex. Doc, 24th Cong., 1st sess., March 2, 1836, Vol. Ill (Serial No. 281), No. 216, p. 2. |