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Show 272 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT seventh of the warrants had been issued, Richard M. Young, Commissioner of the General Land Office, in his annual report for 1847, rightly predicted that they would fall into the hands of speculators who would act as intermediaries between the settler and the government, entering the land with the depreciated warrants and reselling the land at near the government price.67 Three years later, Young's Whig successor, Justin Butter-field, reported to the President that the as-signability of the warrants of 1847 had opened the door "for the commission of extensive frauds, as well upon the soldier and his heirs as the government." Numerous discharges have been forged, and warrants obtained thereon, and assigned and passed into the hands oibonafide purchasers, by individuals personating the soldier. Persons assuming to act as agents in procuring bounty lands have, in many cases, imposed upon the soldiers by obtaining assignments of their warrants, duly acknowledged before a magistrate or notary, leaving blanks for the number, date of warrant, and date of assignment and acknowledgment. These blanks were filled up after the issue of the warrants, so that the assignments appear on their face to be fair and regular, and executed after such issue. Warrants thus assigned are passed into the hands of innocent purchasers; and in such cases the soldier is generally defrauded of his land, as it is difficult, if not impossible, for him to explain or controvert the assignment. Butterfield added that transfers were frequently effected by blank powers of attorney, "surreptitiously obtained from the soldier before the adjudication of his claim, and filled up afterwards." He stated that it would have been far better if the warrants had not been assignable and if the patent had issued in all cases to the soldier. This, however, had been done with the warrants of 1811 and 1812 and with no better success in protecting the soldier. Of the 52,269 warrants located to November 30, 1850, 300 had been cancelled because they had been obtained on false or forged papers, 275 had been suspended because of irregularity or fraud, and 1,400 67 S. Ex. Doc, 30th Cong., 1st sess., 1847-48, Vol. II, No. 2 (Serial No. 504), pp. 12-13. caveats contesting the issue of patents had been filed.68 Experience had shown that few soldiers would be able to go west to secure lands with their warrants. Some would even have to sell them to finance the trip west, hoping on arrival either to work until they could raise the money to purchase a quarter-section or to squat upon public land and make enough to preempt a quarter-section when the land was put up for sale. Most of the warrants therefore passed to brokers who bought and sold them and perhaps used some to take a flyer in land themselves. From 1841 to 1846 land sales had averaged 1,626,000 acres; in 1847 they reached 2,521,306 acres and were not to be as large again until the adoption of the Graduation Act in 1854. With over 13 million acres in warrants dumped on the market, their price plummeted to near the $100-equivalent offered soldiers in place of them. The drop in price brought no benefit to settlers on unoffered lands who could only preempt their land with cash, but it was a great boon to speculators and money brokers seeking lands cheaply or lending funds to settlers on offered lands at "frontier" interest rates.69 An examination of the first 300 warrants located on land in the Chicago district of Illinois shows that less than a dozen were located by the warrantee. Most of them were used by speculators, or were used to enter lands for settlers. Payments ranged from $220 to $300 in extreme cases for the entries brokers and loan sharks made for settlers and carried for a year.70 Land warrants were thus a great boon to the speculator and the moneylender for they enabled the former to purchase about 68 S. Ex. Doc, 31st Cong., 2d sess., Vol. II, No. 2 (Serial No. 588), pp. 6-7. 69 R. W. Latham & Co., Bankers, Washington, D.C., were advertising on July 1 in the National Intelligencer they would pay the very highest price for soldiers' land warrants. By September 1847, the warrants were available in the land office town of Iowa City. Iowa Capital Reporter, Sept. 29, 1847. 70 Kansas News (Emporia), April 17, 1858. |