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Show MILITARY BOUNTY LAND POLICIES 263 the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, and the third in Louisiana Territory, later Arkansas, between the St. Francis and Arkansas Rivers. Six million acres were to be surveyed and opened to entry with the warrants to be issued. Warrant holders could specify the state in which they desired their land to be located but beyond that the location was to be determined by lottery as New York had done. An effort was made to prevent the assignment of the warrants or the establishment of liens on them or on the land on which they were located until the patent had issued. Edward Tiffin, who was charged with surveying the military tract in Michigan, reported adversely in 1815 on the qualities of the terrain his men had been over: low wet land, many marshes and swamps, scrubby oaks, poor barren soil where not one acre in a hundred was fit for cultivation. So unfavorable was the report that the Michigan tract was abandoned. In its place 500,000 acres in the Territory of Missouri were to be set aside as a military tract and 1,500,000 acres were to be added to the tract between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers in Illinois. Lewis Cass, for a long generation the leading political figure in Michigan, was greatly incensed at the government's abandoning the Michigan location and at the attention given to the reasons for the change, which had the effect of diverting immigration to other regions. He charged that the two surveyors responsible for the report came to Michigan in the wettest season it had ever known, that they saw but little of the region for they only ran one line and were in the area only a short time and "grossly misrepresented" it. More than a decade passed before their unfavorable report on the economic possibilities of Michigan lost its force.38 38 Lewis Cass, Detroit, May 11, 1816, to Josiah Meigs, "Miscellaneous Letters C," GLO Files, National Archives; American Stale Papers, Public Lands, III, 164-65; George N. Fuller, Economic and Social Beginnings of Michigan (Lansing, Mich., 1915), pp. 50 ff. The reluctance of the Indians to give up their land in Illinois somewhat delayed the opening of the military tract in that state but officials pushed treaty negotiations, surveying, and other preparatory work with sufficient rapidity. By October 6, 1817, men entitled to warrants had selected the state in which they wished to have them located and patents were being delivered to them. This was a great improvement over the country's earlier experience with military bounty tracts. Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas Territories were only slightly developed when the tracts were opened and within them there was scarcely a settler, except possibly a few squatters. All were remote from the areas then drawing settlers and had not as yet caught the fancy of western landseekers as had Alabama cotton land or Ohio river bottoms. Part of all these states was, like some of Michigan, poor soil, poorly drained and, furthermore, much less accessible than Michigan. It took courage and something more than physical strength and a land warrant to migrate so far away from Maine, New Jersey, or New York. Ownership Concentration Continues Congress could attempt to prevent accumulation of warrants and patents but lawyers could always find ways around such restrictions. By using such devices as a power of attorney signed by the warrantee, agents could get the patents from the General Land Office and then have the titles recorded in their own names. The usual stories were afloat then and later about prices paid for the warrants. Thomas Hart Benton, as well informed on such matters as anyone in Congress, later said that the warrants sold for $10 to SI 5 (their assignability being illegal, the purchaser might find it best to have them entered in the name of the warrantee) and the patent sold for $25. Examination of 1,500 conveyances of bounty lands in the military tract of Illinois showed an average price paid of $115. It is difficult, however, to recon- |