OCR Text |
Show 348 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT the Indiana line to the lake.22 Conflict over the Ohio-Michigan boundary and delay in surveying the lands held up the selection of the grant and construction of the Ohio portion of the canal. By 1842, however, the entire 87-mile stretch from the Indiana border to Lake Erie was completed and in operation. In 1843 the Wabash and Erie Canal was in operation from Lafayette, Indiana, to Toledo, Ohio. It has been pointed out that in 1828 the Adams and Jackson forces in Congress were vying with each other to win favor in Ohio; the one advocated a grant of land on the alternate-section pattern for the construction of the Miami extension to connect with Lake Erie directly or with the Wabash and Erie Canal; the other advocated a 500,000-acre grant to aid in completing canals already under way. The Adams forces seemed to be in control and had succeeded in gaining priority for their measure to aid the Miami extension when the Jackson faction added an amendment to give 500,000 acres to aid in completing the canals then under way, with the privilege of selecting the lands from any then unsold and subject to private entry, exclusive of the alternate sections along the canal and road grants. In this form the act was adopted. Ohio thus received a double grant. The 500,000-acre grant was a forerunner of the provision in the Preemption-Distribution Act of 1841 giving to each state that amount of land for internal improvements.23 Ohio was not greatly interested in either the Wabash or the Miami extension canals because the northwestern portion of the state was its least developed area. In fact, it appears that Ohio contemplated using the grant intended for the Miami extension for other purposes. To prevent that, Congress 22 Logan Esarey, "Internal Improvements in Early Indiana," Indiana Historical Society Publications, V (Indianapolis, 1912), 89. 23 Scheiber, "Internal Improvements and Economic Change in Ohio," pp. 363-64. enacted a measure on April 2, 1830, declaring that if the state applied the land "to any other use whatever, than in the extension of the Miami Canal, before the same shall have been completed," the unsold lands should be forfeited to the United States and Ohio should repay it for all the lands it had sold. In this same act it was provided that where any lands to which the state was entitled under the grant had been sold the Governor was authorized to select other lands in lieu thereof.24 Ohio's record in handling its canal grants of 1,230,525 acres (including its share of the Wabash grant, the grant for the Miami Canal and the general grant of 500,000 acres) does not compare favorably with that of Illinois. Its first decision, to select even sections, meant that the canal would lose section 16, that being a school section, and though it could get lieu lands elsewhere they would not be so close to the canal. Like all western states, Ohio had to steer between its desire to derive as large a return from the land as possible to finance the canals, and the eagerness of settlers to get lands cheaply and of others to have them developed speedily. In offering its canal lands for sale the legislature, badgered from both sides, vacillated, permitted insiders to buy up large tracts contrary to law, managed to have some illegal sales cancelled though others were confirmed, sold its best lands at low prices and then tried to extract high prices from refuse tracts, and on the whole showed that state management was no more, and probably less, ably handled than Federal.25 The Miami Extension Canal and the lands 24 4 Stat. 393. 26 Scheiber, "Internal Improvements and Economic Change in Ohio," pp. 365, 451 ff. Partial statistics of sale of Ohio canal lands show that 496,022 acres of the 500,000-acre grant brought to 1846 an average of $1.25 an acre, 304,730 acres of Miami canal lands brought an average of $1.32 an acre and 103,437 acres of Wabash and Erie lands brought an average of $4.00 an acre. In addition 15,717 acres of Ottawa-ceded reservation brought an average of $1.39 an acre. |