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Show 324 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT million acres, whereas over 80 million acres actually were selected (though not all were allowed), one can see that the possibilities of the swampland donation were not fully recognized in 1850. On September 23, 1850, a measure to enable Arkansas and other states to reclaim the swamp and overflowed lands therein was adopted, granting to the states "the whole of those swamp and overflowed lands, made unfit thereby for cultivation. . . ." The proceeds of the lands, "whether from sale or by direct appropriation in kind," were to be applied "exclusively, as far as necessary, to the purpose of reclaiming said lands by means of levees and drains. . . ."12 Justin Butterfield, who had beaten out Abraham Lincoln for the post of Commissioner of the General Land Office in 1849, was unimaginative, inefficient, and anything but an alert officer. He made no further political progress. His weakness shows up in his failure to prescribe a system of selection for the swamp and overflowed lands, based on clear evidence of their unsuitability for cultivation as nature had left them.13 Butterfield's failure to segregate the swamp and overflowed lands as quickly as possible and to halt all entries on them and his decision to leave selection to state selection agents, were responsible for a great deal of litigation. Nearly 200 swampland cases reached the Supreme Court by 1888 and many more were carried to district 12 9 Stat. 519. "Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (2 vols., Boston, 1928), I, 487-92. It is interesting to speculate what progress Abraham Lincoln might have made toward political immortality had he beaten Justin Butterfield in the competition for the Commissionership of the General Land Office in 1849. Lincoln had been unsuccessful in his bid for re-election to Congress, was for the moment footloose and was anxious for the Commissionership which carried with it numerous patronage appointments, lucrative surveying contracts, and the opportunity to acquire familiarity with the intricate details of land office management, all of which could be very profitable to him when the inevitable political turnover came. Lincoln was unsuccessful in his quest for the office though as Beveridge brings out, he pulled every possible wire in his campaign. and circuit courts. State officials could either use the plats and field notes of the government surveyors or they could make their own surveys and provide proof that their selections conformed to the provisions of the act. Much of the litigation and enormous expense to which the states were subjected in defending their selections against private parties and the Federal government and the greatly increased burden on the officials of the General Land Office could have been avoided had Congress been more careful in writing the law and had Butterfield taken prompt action to segregate the swamp and overflowed lands.14 John Wilson, who replaced Butterfield in 1852, brought new and vigorous leadership to the General Land Office at a time when it was badly needed. As a result of complications over the selection of the swamplands, the many instances of fraud discovered in the assignments of military bounty land warrants, the problem of withdrawing public lands along routes being considered for railroad land grants, and with the great increase of land entries, a tremendous volume of business was threatening to overwhelm the staff. Among other suggestions made by Wilson in his first annual report in 1852 was a revival of a proposal he had made in 1850 that all the remaining unsold lands in Louisiana be given that state to enable it to build a series of modern, systematically planned and constructed levees that would effectively shut out the floodwaters of the Mississippi.15 No action on his recommendation was taken but Wilson's views as to swamplands in Louisiana were to prevail in a large measure, for a third 14 For the criticism of Butterfield's neglect and failure see U.S. Supreme Court Reports, 76:97-100; Senate Reports, 42d Cong., 2d sess., 1878, Vol. II, No. 502 (Serial No. 1790), pp. 1-3; and the later reports of the Commissioner of the General Land Office. 15 H. Ex. Doc, 32d Cong., 2d sess. (Serial No. 673), Vol. I, No. 1, Part I, p. 79. Wilson thought there might be 10 million acres remaining after the selection of the swampland but he could not foresee how far this measure was to be stretched. Under the Swamp Land Act 9,504,245 acres fell to Louisiana. |