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Show MILITARY BOUNTY LAND POLICIES 267 total receipts of Illinois. A tax title had at least a nuisance value, being a lien on the land. A decision of the state supreme court brought little comfort to buyers of the tax titles who then went to Chancellor James Kent-the great constitutional authority- and secured from him a statement that they were regular and in conformity with the statutes and were valid.47 Heavy penalties were assessed against delinquent taxpayers, amounting to between 50 and 100 percent of the taxes due. Once a tax title had been issued, the owner of the patent title had to pay a comparable penalty to remove the lien on his property. This handsome profit induced land agents and some holders of bounty lands, who saw little opportunity to sell their land for some time, to buy such tax titles at the annual sales in the hope of evening up on their investments.48 Squatters and Disillusioned Speculators Meantime, the military tract, despite its unfortunate reputation for absentee ownership and title difficulties, was receiving growing numbers of immigrants who found unimproved land, squatted upon it and began farm making. They hoped to gain a preemption right if the land proved to be public or, if it were owned by an absentee owner, that the patent owner might come to terms when he realized the obligations that were accumulating against his property. If ejectment action was brought by the patent title owner against a squatter who had unknowingly settled upon, begun improving, and acquired a color of title (such as a tax title) to an unoccupied tract, the squatter had two alternatives under the Occupancy Law of 1819. He could either demand that he be paid for all the improvements he had put on the land, minus such damage as he may have committed, or he could offer to pay the owner the appraised value of the land without the 47 Iowa Territorial Gazette and Burlington Advertiser, March 2, 1839. 48 Carlson, The Illinois Military Tract, p. 47. improvements. Either the value of the improvements or the value of the land without them was to be determined by a local jury which could ordinarily be expected to render a decision favorable to the occupant and against the absentee owner. The very abundance of tax titles and the ease and cheapness with which they could be acquired constituted a real danger to the patent owner, for they provided the squatter with a color of title he otherwise lacked. By 1830, most of the original holders of bounty lands had long since conveyed their titles to others. Stephen B. Munn, for example, had added tax titles to 38,000 acres to his thousands of acres of patent titles. Romulus Riggs, member of the famous banking family of New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, had accumulated 40,000 acres, partly by direct purchase from ex-soldiers. He tried to arrange with squatters on his tracts to pay the taxes as rent and at the same time to accept a lease acknowledging Riggs' ownership. Largest of the holdings was that of the New York & Boston Illinois Land Company which had titles of one sort or another to more than 900,000 acres. Many disillusioned speculators placed their lands under the management of this company. These holdings, together with large purchases of tax titles, made the company the largest holder of real estate in Illinois, though the value of the tax titles was still in question. Had the boom of the thirties continued, the company might have been able to dispose of sufficient property to make a success; but the crash of 1837 brought it down as it did so many other speculative enterprises.49 Bankruptcy made the title situation in the military tract worse, as did the adoption in 1839 of a 7-year adverse possession law and court decisions under it. This measure provided that 7 years of unchallenged occupation of a property, the payment of all taxes assessed on it, and a color of title, entitled the 49 Paul W. Gates, The Illinois Central Railroad and its Colonization Work (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 38 ff. |