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Show 258 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT lists of the assignees and the people to whom the scrip was delivered. On these lists appear Colonel James Watson (9,778 acres) who was the largest holder of land acquired with military warrants in Illinois; Philo Hale, a scrip and warrant dealer, land locator and speculator (37,316 acres of which 15,650 acres were entered in Illinois); Alvah Buckingham, one of the most extensive dealers in land from Ohio to Kansas (12,203 acres); Thomas Ewing, Senator from Ohio and later to be successively Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of the Interior (9,000 acres). There were other large holdings amounting to 26,000, 28,000, 31,000, and 41,000 acres.24 The Act of August 31, 1852, by which the United States agreed to exchange scrip for all unsatisfied Virginia military warrants issued before that date, required Virginia to cede all claim to land in the military district. This Virginia did later the same year. On February 18, 1872, Congress ceded to Ohio the unsurveyed and unsold lands in the district and Ohio, then donated them to the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College which had come into existence as a result of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. It was expected that these bits and pieces of land of very slight value-some 45,000 acres in all- would thus pass to the college. Enterprising officials of the college, however, discovered that numerous occupiers of land with rights to a certain acreage but no patent, had extended their boundaries well beyond the acreage to which they were entitled. The officials instituted legal proceedings to recover these unjustly claimed and enclosed lands, many of which were held by the Massie heirs. Again the defects of the system of indiscriminate location came to light. For years the college and the claimants were involved in expensive litigation that caused anxiety to all parties. These evils might have been avoided had the United States insisted on the use of the rectangular system of survey in the district. First Federal Bounty Lands Located Officers and soldiers of the Continental Army who were promised land bounties by Congress had to wait for their land even longer than the troops of New York and Virginia. Congress could do nothing until it had secured a tract in which the bounties could be located, though it should be said that the officers and men who had served throughout the war were at its conclusion given 5 years' pay in a lump sum. In 1783, when the Continental troops were about to be disbanded, a pamphlet known as the "Newburgh Address" was circulated among them. It called for the creation of a new state in the Northwest Territory where soldiers and officers could exchange their warrants for land and for a time could enjoy the exclusive privilege of buying additional land. Coming at a time when the soldiers were restless and greatly irritated at the neglect of their wants, it caught their fancy and aroused much enthusiasm. Washington calmed their emotions and counseled patience. Men who had participated in drafting the plan were meantime consulting together about organizing the new territory being ceded to the United States by New York and Virginia and about methods of deriving revenue for the new National government from this land. Out of this ferment came the Land Ordinance of 1785, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, a contract for the sale of 1,500,000 acres to the Ohio Land Company and an even larger quantity to the Scioto Company, which were drawn up even before the Indians in the territory had been brought under American control and persuaded to surrender their land.25 One-seventh of the million dollars the Ohio Company contracted to pay for its land could be paid in United States bounty land certificates receivable at $1 an acre. A similar provision was included in a sale being made at the same time to John Cleves Symmes. Both 24 American State Papers, Public Lands, VII, 333ff. 25 Hutchinson, "The Bounty Lands," pp. 58ff. |