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Show PREEMPTION 245 ment was through preemption. Of course in the offered areas, which had already been somewhat picked over, public lands were available for sale, but settlers, investors, and speculators preferred to make selections where they had a wide choice. In this short period, then, preemption rights became valuable, despite the fact that the unoffered land was generally less accessible. However, the Nation's economy moved downward in 1857 and the government's surplus of the earlier years turned into the biggest peacetime deficit the Nation had yet known. Thus the period of grace between settlement and purchase which Pierce and Buchanan had allowed was abandoned and 39 million acres were rushed into market to aid in reducing the deficit. Once offered at public auction the unsold land was subject to cash purchase in unlimited amounts, as it had not been before the auction, when only preemption claims could be established. Therefore, after the auction, the only incentive to use the preemption privilege was that once a person had filed a declaratory statement indicating his intention to prove up and take title, he had a year in which to raise the necessary $200 plus fees to pay for his claim. Joseph S. Wilson, a longtime Land Office employee who became Commissioner in 1860, tried to cushion the shock to settlers caused by the demand for payment. He felt that a period of grace was necessary because settlers would not enter their land at land offices unless compelled to do so by the announcement of an approaching auction. In his report for 1860 he recommended that they be given 2 years between the filing of their declaratory statements and the date when they were required to make their payments. Wilson, like Hendricks before him, felt that the frontier preemptor had little incentive to use his capital to pay for his land while he was protected in his right to it.73 Both recommended that settlers be required to pay for their land whether a public sale was announced or not. They also recommended a definite period of settlement and wanted Congress to fix the period at which payment should be made. During the Lincoln administration there was a permanent moratorium on land sales in most newly surveyed areas except the timbered sections of northern Wisconsin and Michigan, a portion of southeastern Colorado, part of the Interior Valley of California, and considerable valley land in Oregon. Congress did not act on Wilson's recommendation until 1862 when the Homestead Act of June 2, 1862, made all public lands to which the Indian title had been surrendered subject to preemption, required settlers on unsurveyed lands to file notice of their settlement within 6 months after the survey, and to make their payment within 12 months after filing their declaratory statement.74 An ominous note crept into accounts of public land sales in 1859 when James Buchanan was trying to extract revenue from the frontier lands to relieve an unbalanced budget. At the Lecompton, Kansas, sale- which was angrily opposed by every faction in the territory, but without avail-it was reported that some speculators from a distance had hired people to preempt land for them instead of bidding for it themselves at the sale. This practice was to bring the preemption law into disrepute at a later time, and to lead to its final repeal in 1891 after repeated recommendations to that effect by Commissioners of the General Land Office.75 Preemption Passes Age of Usefulness We may summarize the place of preemption in the history of public land policies 73 S. Ex. Doc, 36th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. I, No. 1 (Serial No. 1078), p. 72. 74 12 Stat. 410. By an Act of July 14, 1870, preemption claimants were required to make payment for their lands within 18 months after filing their preliminary application, unless some shorter period were required by law. 16 Stat. 279. 7 b Kansas National Democrat (Lecompton), July 21, 1859. |