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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 345 interior were not indifferent to canals. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois-in 1820 they had populations of 581,000, 147,000, and 55,000, respectively; and 937,000, 343,000 and 157,000 by 1830-were planning internal improvements and were pleading for Federal aid in the form of alternate sections of land for a depth of 5 miles on each side of the proposed routes. They had little prospect of carrying their canals to completion for many years, so sparsely populated were they and so narrow was their tax base, but with Federal aid they might accomplish their objectives. Congress having established the principle, at least for the time, that interstate canals and roads were fit projects for Federal appropriations, one might expect it to have made money grants for these interior states but, with an abundance of fertile land available, it seemed easier to use that. Representatives of eastern states, some of which had received money grants for their favored canals, growled about the extreme generosity being displayed toward the West. In 1827 and 1828 Congress met western pleas for aid by six acts giving land to the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Alabama for the building of canals to connect Lakes Erie and Michigan with the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, for the improvement of the navigation of the Tennessee River at Muscle Shoals, and for 100 miles of road construction in northwestern Ohio.12 Grants for Ohio Roads This was not the actual beginning of land grants for internal improvements, which date back somewhat earlier. By the Treaty of Brownstown of November 25, 1808, with the Chippewa, Ottawa, and other tribes, there was ceded to the United States a tract of land 120 feet wide running from the rapids of the Miami of Lake Erie to the western border of the Connecticut Reserve and "all the land within one mile of the said road, 18 Acts of March 2, 3, 1827, and April 17, and May 23, 24, 1828, 4 Stat. 234, 236, 242, 263, 290, 305. on each side thereof, for the purpose of establishing settlements along the same . . . ." The treaty also ceded a 120-foot wide stretch of territory extending from Upper Sandusky to the boundary of land ceded by the Treaty of Greenville, for a "road only . . . ."l3 Here is an early instance of what became a not uncommon practice: incorporating in Indian treaties, which are subject to the ratification of the Senate only, provisions for the distribution of land being ceded before it could become part of the public domain and subject to the general land laws; such provisions might not have been acceptable to the House of Representatives. Congress implemented the Browns-town Treaty by an Act of February 28, 1823, authorizing the State of Ohio to lay out and construct the road from the Miami rapids to the Western Reserve, granted it a strip of territory 120 feet wide along the route "together with a quantity of land equal to one mile on each side thereof to aid in financing construction; if the cost was exceeded by the return from the land the surplus was to be used for maintenance of the road. The road was to be completed in 4 years and the land was not to sell for less than the government minimum price. The grant totaled 60,000 acres.14 The second 120-foot right-of-way provided for in the Brownstown Treaty was not made use of by the Federal government. Instead, to aid the Columbus and Sandusky Turnpike Company to build a road connecting these two points and intersecting the Maumee road, Congress granted Ohio "one half of a quantity of land equal to two sections, on the western side of said road . . . ." Though awkwardly stated, and not fully developed in the Act of 1827, this was the beginning of a practice to be followed in most future instances of granting land for the construction of specific internal improvements: donating alternate sections or one half of the land 13 Charles J. Kappler, Indian Laws and Treaties (Washington, 1904), II, 100. 14 3 Stat. 727; William E. Peters, Ohio Lands and Their Subdivisions (Athens, Ohio, 1918), pp. 316 ff. |
