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Show 268 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT occupant to legal ownership. Thus, in addition to patent titles, tax titles, judgment titles, squatters claims combined with tax titles, and liens of various sorts, titles under the "Quieting Title Act" created more legal questions that took years to thrash out. As a result, clear, uncontested ownership in the tract was unusual.50 Patent owners were indeed so hard pressed that a group met in Macomb, Illinois, on September 23, 1842, "to form strength by uniting our interests and see that each and every patent title suit is properly and effectively prosecuted. This being done the patent title holder must & will hold the land," said a notice for the meeting in the Peoria Register and North-Western Gazetteer. The Register, commenting on the purpose of the meeting, said that there were about 17,500 quarter-sections of land in the military tract which were then in controversy between patent- and tax-title holders.51 Some of the lands were highly improved and included some of the best farms in the state. It was proposed to organize "a vigilance committee"-an ominous title in frontier Illinois-for each county, to enroll patent title holders and to take measures for their defense. At the meeting, officers were elected, dues of $5 were established, and the "Patent Title Association" was created "to make all necessary arrangements for the prosecution and defence of all suits brought by or commenced against any" member.32 Promptly, the objectives of the organization were attacked by one writing under the caption "No Combination." He condemned all such efforts to nullify the law providing for sales of tax delinquent land, observed that without the power to coerce by selling delinquent land, government would be at a standstill, and declared that those opposing the sales and the new titles were not carrying their share of government costs and that their success would be a powerful blow at the credit of the state. Tax titles were valid, the writer maintained.53 Eastern capitalists were troubled by the growing burden and difficulty of paying taxes on their lands, of keeping the titles clear or redeeming their lands if tax titles had issued, and by the numerous conflicts with squatters. They became convinced that western people were a rapacious gang of rascals prepared to take advantage of absentee owners on every occasion. Such allegations were repeated over and over and reproduced in travel accounts. Inhabitants of the western states were portrayed as having no respect for private property and as being ever ready to strain and distort the law to strike at nonresidents. This stereotype was to make it difficult for western states to raise capital when they sought later to borrow for railroad and canal construction.54 The Tract in Arkansas The Military Tract of Illinois in its formative period attracted much more public attention than the tracts in Missouri and Arkansas. Neither of them compared with it in quality and general attractiveness, neither drew early immigrants in such large numbers, and neither has published its records. The 2 million-acre Arkansas Military Tract, situated between the St. Francis and Arkansas Rivers, was found to contain much inferior 50 Attorneys in Cincinnati advertised that they would represent patent-title owners in litigation to recover possession of property lost to tax-title holders in Illinois, Cincinnati Daily Gazette, March 3, 1836. 51 Aug. 26, 1842. 52 Peoria Register and North-Western Gazetteer, Sept. 30, 1842. i3Ibid., Oct. 7, 1842. 54 Charles Dickens had invested in the Cairo City and Canal Company which was promoting the city of Cairo at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and had lost heavily when it failed. In repayment, some have thought, he vented his feelings against Cairo and western folk, though actually a Philadelphia group was responsible. J. F. Snyder, "Charles Dickens in Illinois," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, III (October 1910), 9 ff.; John M. Lansden, History of the City of Cairo, Illinois (Chicago, 1910), pp. 170 ff. |