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Show GRANTS TO STATES ON ADMISSION TO UNION 311 Pacific Railroad, which were held at $2.50 an acre, by giving up double the amount of scrip for the acres thus selected. Also, the agricultural college lands which in other states except California could only be selected from offered lands could be selected from unoffered lands.711 Still another liberalizing act was adopted by Congress in 1880. At that time the surveying of the public lands in the state had not gone far. It was still impossible to locate many school sections in the remote, unsur-veyed and unattractive areas. Also, by 1880 the state had succeeded in selling only 61,967 acres of school land of the total of 3,904,746 to which it was entitled. Instead of waiting to gain ownership of the place grants which might not be surveyed for decades, and because some that were already surveyed were worthless, Nevada proposed that it be permitted to exchange all the unsold and un-selected land, amounting to about 3,864,000 acres, for 2 million acres of nonmineral lands still in the possession of the United States. In this way it would rid itself of responsibility for much worthless land and could block up areas which might be susceptible of cultivation with the aid of water from artesian wells. When introduced into the House the proposal aroused the indignant opposition of William A. J. Sparks, later to become famous as Commissioner of the Land Office. Sparks called the exchange privilege Nevada requested, unique, never before granted to any state, and judged that it would mean the state would get every acre of any value whatever for agriculture and would leave the government with nothing but worthless land. It was, he declared, an odious distinction in favor of Nevada. Rollin M. Daggett, Representative from Nevada, denied that the state would select all the choice land; rather its object was to select land that with the aid of the state might be brought to productive farming. The measure easily won the support of Congress and became law on June 16, 1880.80 Nevada thus gave up the right to some 1,864,000 acres in order to select the remaining 2 million acres of school lands to which it was entitled from the most useful and promising it could find. Nebraska was not so easily cozened into playing the Republican game as Nevada had been. Party feelings ran high then. From the creation of the territory in 1854 there had been a strong Democratic Party, supported by the patronage and power of the Pierce-Buchanan administrations. The difference between the political situation in Nebraska and that in Kansas that had caused this turmoil was that the Nebraska Democrats had cut themselves loose from the Buchanan policy in time and were not hurt to the same degree as the Kansas leaders had been. In 1860 an election to select delegates to a constitutional convention was carried by the Republicans but the people of Nebraska, tiring of the ultra-partisanship, voted against statehood and the convention was not held.81 In January 1864, both parties had joined in a memorial asking Congress for an enabling act but feelings had changed by June when delegates were elected to a convention. It proved to be overwhelmingly opposed to statehood. Apparently the fear of the heavy taxes that would accompany statehood was the most telling argument in opposition to to admission. In 1866, the movement for statehood was revived, the party division was closer, and the fact that Nevada with a much smaller population was now a sovereign state, electing its own governing and judicial officers was given emphasis. Reluctantly Nebraska formed a state government after 79 Act of June 8, 1868, 15 Stat. 67. 80 Cong. Record. 42d Cong., 2d sess., May 20, June 14, 1880, pp. 3598, 3633, 4513; 21 Stat. 287; Report oj the Surveyor General and State Land Register of the State of Nevada, 1889-1890 (Carson City, 1891), p. 111. This report shows that at the end of 1880 the state still had 1,018,258 acres to select. 81 James C. Olson, History of Nebraska (Lincoln, Nebr., 1955), pp. 128-29. |