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Show GRANTS TO STATES ON ADMISSION TO UNION 317 Federal Sovereignty The enabling acts have proved somewhat difficult to modify because not only is it necessary for Congress to adopt the changes but the states are required through constitutional amendment to accept them also. However, the Federal government has shown flexibility in permitting the states to sell instead of lease their saline lands, to use their internal improvement lands for education, to exchange their sections 16 and 36 for select lands, to sell mineral rights, and to establish schools of mines instead of colleges of agriculture.96 Also Congress tolerated, if it did not actually sanction, sale of the swamplands without regard to their objective, and the use of the proceeds for public buildings, education, roads and bridges.97 From the admission of Ohio in 1803 to that of Alaska in 1959 the territorial- and state-making policy involved Congress and the people of the territories in complicated and lengthy political disputes in which there was being hammered out agreements concerning the management and sharing of the public lands as well as the basis for the fundamental law of each state. In the process the states were brought, with some reluctance, to give up any plans or ideas some of their leaders may have entertained of either acquiring or controlling and managing their public lands as the Original Thirteen and Texas did. They were even obliged to accept limitations on their taxing powers. The states were never to accept Federal management of the lands and Federal reduction of their power with equanimity and were to devote much time to considering plans for reversing the disclaimer provisions in their enabling acts and the ordinances they were compelled to accept. 96 Annual Report, New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands, 1965-1966, pp. 8-9. 97 Matthias Nordberg Orfield, Federal Land Grants to the States with Special Reference to Minnesota (Minneapolis, 1915), p. 119. States which entered the Union late profited from the experience of the older ones in bargaining with Congress and won double, and in 1896 quadruple, the earlier donations for schools and an elaboration of donations for higher educational institutions. Over 77 million acres were given for common schools and 21 million for universities, technical schools, and other public activities. The galvanizing effect of these grants in stimulating education can hardly be exaggerated. Not to be minimized either is the effect the small sums received by the states over many years from the 3 and 5 percent funds for road construction, levee building, and experiments in irrigation. In addition to the usual grants for education and public buildings which were gradually liberalized, Congress had shown an inclination to convey to the states certain public lands it could make nothing of either because of their apparent worthlessness or because large capital expenditures were necessary to make them useful. Examples are the donation of the remaining and relatively valueless scattered lands in the Virginia Military Tract to Ohio, the donation to the states of the swamplands for which Congress believed it had no constitutional power to provide drainage, and the promise to several states of up to a million acres of arid lands capable of irrigation. Similarly, the school, university, and agricultural college grants were given by Congress which could not find justification for using tax money for such purposes. One may say that the use of public lands for purposes which otherwise strict constructionists could not favor had some effect on the political views of many persons. Certainly, western people who came to look to the Federal government for land donations for objectives they strongly desired moved away early from Calhoun's view of the Constitution. The fact that the Congress was supreme in the management of its lands and that "sovereign states" could not assume control over them |