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Show MILITARY BOUNTY LAND POLICIES 281 ing doubt as to the rights of these late applicants, the Commissioner of Pensions began to subject applications to even more rigid inspection and to demand additional evidence in support of them. As a result he reduced the number of warrants issued from 2,598 in 1871 to 443 in 1872 and 340 in 1873. In 1874 there were more than 100,000 suspended warrants which could not be dropped. They provided loopholes for unscrupulous warrant dealers and others to forge additional evidence to gain the desired warrants. The whole history of bounty land grants is marked by the efforts of speculators, politicians, brokers, and other dealers in land paper to take advantage of unsophisticated people who did not know how to obtain their warrants or how to market them. On the other hand many veterans did receive perhaps a fair return from their rights, a few did enter lands in the West with their warrants and many others were able with the warrants to get land there at lower prices than the government minimum. But the cost to the country was out of proportion to the benefits obtained by those the legislation was intended to assist.89 Other forms of land paper, issued in smaller quantities, possessed privileges denied to holders of the military warrants. It has been seen that the latter could not be offered at a public sale, being only subject to entry after the sale was over. They could not be used to enter unoffered land; they could be used to enter 80 acres of double-minimum priced land but only with the payment of an additional $100. Revolutionary bounty land scrip, which was available in small quantities, could be used to pay the other half of the double-minimum price within railroad grants and because of this advantage and its scarcity the Revolutionary land scrip sold for 5 to 15 cents an acre more than the warrants. Sioux Half-breed, Soldiers' Additional Homestead, and Valentine scrip could be used to enter unsurveyed land and Sioux scrip could be used on double-minimum priced land; hence these forms brought higher prices than warrants.90 Soldiers' Additional Homestead Rights With the outbreak of the Civil War and Lincoln's call for volunteers it was natural for members of Congress and the public to think of offering bounty lands to induce enlistments, as had been done in every major war in the past, for after the first patriotic fervor had subsided it proved difficult to fill up the necessary regiments. When the homestead bill was under discussion in the House, William S. Holman, a Democrat from Indiana and a strong advocate of free lands- but not as certain about the justice of Lincoln's efforts to restore the Union-proposed an amendment to give every person who served in the Army or Navy for 60 days or more a 160-acre land warrant. The same amendment was introduced in the Senate by John S. Carlile, a conservative Democrat of Virginia. They made a sufficiently emotional plea to reward the soldiers that other land reformers like George W. Julian and Schuyler Colfax of Indiana and William Kellogg of Illinois joined in the move to reward soldiers with land bounties. In the course of the discussion it was brought out that at least 100 million acres of land would be required to fulfill the obligations the measure would entail, that the issuance of this many warrants would depress their price well below the current price of warrants-50 or 60 cents an acre-and would benefit speculators who would use them to accumulate large holdings. Caleb Smith, Secretary of the Interior, pointed out that there were only 78,662,000 acres of public lands surveyed and proclaimed for sale and therefore subject to entry by warrant holders. An additional 55,555,000 90 Jost, "Entrepreneurial Study of a Frontier Financier," p. 18. |