OCR Text |
Show GRANTS TO STATES ON ADMISSION TO UNION 293 they undoubtedly disliked the detailed prescriptions drafted by Congress for the apportionment of delegates, the election of members of the conventions, and the determination of the time and place for the meetings. It was not the donations of land as much as it was the eagerness for admission that led members of the conventions to accept Federal limitations on the states' powers.21 At the moment of admission there were few protests against the restriction on state taxation and state interference with the public domain. Deviations from the normal conditions for admission were caused by changing circumstances in the territories. Illinois, for example, striving to be admitted before Missouri, petitioned in December 1817 for an enabling act although its leaders were uncertain whether the territory had even 35,000 inhabitants. Fearing that Congress would delay action if not convinced by a census that the territory had sufficient population, the local officials ordered one to be taken in 1818 and instructed the census takers to continue to enumerate all persons moving into the territory between June and December of that year, as a large increase of population was expected in this period.22 In July 1818 the population was shown to be 34,610 and in December, 40,258. Congress had not waited, however, for a census to adopt an enabling act. Illinois was offered, in addition to the usual section 16 in each township, 72 sections or 46,080 acres for a seminary; all the salt springs with adjacent lands; and it was permitted to use its three-fifths of the 5 percent of the net returns from land sales for the encouragement of learning with one-sixth of this fund to be bestowed on a college or university. Illinois was permitted to select half of its seminary lands in small tracts, which gave the state the possibility of securing land of a better quality than Indiana or Ohio secured with their solid township grants. Also Illinois' salt spring bounty, the most generous given, brought it 121,029 acres whereas Indiana had obtained only 23,040 acres, and states admitted from 1837 to 1876 were allowed only 46,080.23 The state did not get the lead mining lands of the Galena district which it had tried to obtain.24 Illinois, like other new states, was required to agree that all government lands should be exempt from taxation for 5 years after sale. It was also obliged to promise that the military bounty lands, which constituted much the largest proportion of privately owned property, should be exempt from taxes for 3 years after the issuance of the patent if held by the patentees or their heirs. This restriction was a severe blow to the young state, for at the time of admission it is doubtful whether there were 10,000 acres subject to taxation. Moreover, as has been seen, the failure of absentee owners of bounty lands to pay their assessments led to the issue of thousands of tax titles which complicated the land and title problems of the state for years to come. Mississippi American possessions south of Tennessee were made Mississippi Territory in 1798. In 1817 the Territory of Alabama was cut off and assigned the tier of counties west of the Mobile and Tombigbee Rivers, and Mississippi was authorized to form a constitution for admission as a state. One of the first actions of the convention was to memorialize Congress urging that the eastern boundary 21 Logan Esarey, Governors' Messages and Letters, Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison, (2 vols., Indianapolis, 1922), II, 729-30. 22 Francis S. Philbrick, The Laws of Illinois Territory, 1809-1818, "Collections of the Illinois Historical Library," XXV (Springfield, 111., 1950), 315-17. 23 George W. Knight, "History and Management of Land Grants for Education in the Northwest Territory," Papers of the American Historical Association, Vol. I, No. 3 (New York, 1885), p. 37. 24 Acts of May 18, and Dec. 3, 1818, 3 Stat. 428, 536; Solon Justus Buck, Illinois in 1817 (Springfield, 111., 1917), pp. 207 ff., esp. 227. |