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Show MILITARY BOUNTY LAND POLICIES 271 eastern states that the offer of a land bounty was still sufficient, without other compensation than the usual small pay allowed soldiers, to attract enlistments. May we not conclude then that land ownership was still not altogether easy to attain? In considering new bounty land legislation, Congress gave little thought to the effect this would have upon land policies then in operation, except that such a step would reduce revenue from the lands. No proposal was made to confine warrant entries to particular tracts. Aware of the boost to speculation that an issue of bounty warrants would cause unless steps were taken to protect the rights of the warrantee, much attention was given to the best way to prevent assignment of warrants. Benton and other members of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs seemed anxious to provide such protection. It had not been effectively provided by the Acts of 1811 and 1812. The committee's proposal was to make all sales, liens or transfers of the right of bounty null and void before the issue of the warrants and to have the lands inalienable for 5 or 7 years after patent had issued. The latter proposal was too drastic for the Senate and it was dropped, but the effort to prevent alienation of the bounty right before the warrant issued was retained. It seemed necessary for Congress to make a public profession that it was trying to protect soldiers, though it was understood by anyone experienced in the history of the earlier bounty land business that such restrictions were easily evaded.63 Without much serious consideration of the bounty land proposal in either the Senate or the House, Congress provided that noncommissioned officers, musicians, and privates who served in the newly authorized voluntary companies for a year or more and who had "marched to the seate of war" should receive a 160-acre land warrant usable only on land open to private entry. Those serving for less than a year were to receive a 40-acre warrant. «3Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 2d sess., Jan. 16, 19, 1847, pp. 192, 205. To prevent conflict with preemption claimants, it was provided that warrants should not be laid upon any lands "to which there shall be preemption right, or upon which there shall be an actual settlement and cultivation." This would prevent a settler from employing a warrant in place of cash in preempting his claim and, like the restriction that warrants could only be used for land subject to private entry, would somewhat limit the demand for them and the price they would bring in the market.64 Persons entitled to receive 160- or 40-acre bounty warrants were offered the opportunity of taking in their place either $100 or $25 in scrip bearing 6 percent interest. This scrip differed from that exchanged for Virginia land warrants under the Acts of May 30, 1830; July 13, 1832; March 2, 1833;'and March 3, 1855, in that it was in dollars, not acres, and was acceptable for any payment due the government. That $100 in scrip was offered in place of 160 acres may be taken as indicating the warrants were appraised at 62 H> cents an acre.65 Under the Act of 1847, 80,666 warrants for 160 acres and 7,583 warrants for 40 acres were issued, amounting to 13,209,880 acres. The efforts to make them unassignable proved ineffective, as realists had anticipated, and the warrants were dumped on the market where they were quoted at the outset at 65 to 78 cents an acre.66 Before more than a 64 Richard M. Young, Commissioner of the General Land Office, held in his annual report for 1847 that soldiers preempting in their own right could use their warrants instead of cash. S. Ex. Doc, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 1847-48, Vol. II, No. 2 (Serial No. 504), p. 13. 65 Act of Feb. 11, 1847, 9 Stat. 125. 66 Richard M. Young, Commissioner of the General Land Office, in New York Tribune, Oct. 14, 1848. Because the much larger issue of bounty warrants under the Act of 1850 were for the time almost unassignable and their market value was much lower as a result, most writers on public land policies have held that all bounty warrants, including those of 1847 were unassignable. Examination of the warrant entry volumes of the different land offices shows that almost from the first the 1847 warrants were assignable. |