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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 353 distance of 5 miles on each side of a route for a proposed canal to connect Lake Michigan at Milwaukee with the headquarters of the Rock River which flows southwesterly, emptying into the Mississippi at Rock Island. Of all the proposed canals for which land was given it had the least justification. David Petrikin of Pennsylvania brought this out on the floor of the House charging, with an abundance of justification as subsequent study has shown, that the canal was being projected by a group of speculators who had bought the best sites along the route, that they had organized a private company to receive the grant because the territory lacked money with which to build the canal, and that the sole purpose of the project was to enhance the value of their lands and contribute to the growth of Milwaukee in which they had large investments.39 It was badly planned and inadequately supported in Wisconsin, and only one mile of canal and a power dam were to be constructed. Undoubtedly the grant did much to draw attention to Milwaukee but it was to be a nuisance for years to all settlers anxious to develop its land. This was the first act which specifically named the odd sections as those to be granted, and required that both the canal lands and the government-reserved sections within the 10-mile strip should be sold at not less than $2.50 an acre, but the measure continued the indefinite language of the Wabash and Lake Erie grant, not indicating precisely where it was to begin and to end. This grant established two basic features of the policy that was to be followed, with few exceptions, in grants for canals and railroad: alternate sections granted, the others reserved for sale like the granted lands at double the minimum price. Unfortunately, the high price for which the lands were held repelled settlers, squatters on the lands were denied preemption rights, taxes could not be 39 Cong. Globe, 25th Cong., 2d sess., June 5, 1838, pp. 428-29 and 438 ff.; 5 Stat. 245. collected on the canal lands and local governments suffered from lack of a tax base. In the Wisconsin Admission Act of March 3, 1847, by which time it was clear that no canal would be built, the reserved sections were ordered into market to be sold at the regular minimum price of $1.25 an acre and preemption rights were to be recognized. Persons who had paid $2.50 an acre for the even sections were to be given assignable land scrip to the amount of the acreage they had bought, thereby reducing their cost to $1.25 an acre. The state was to repay the government for the land the canal company had sold, deducting therefrom the expenditures of the company and of the territory for administrative costs and for such construction work as had been done. In summary, Congress had blindly rushed into a speculative scheme which left many problems, dissatisfied settlers, and created sharp controversies over the final settlement of the 124,431-acre grant.40 For a time after the panic of 1837 canals, railroads, and waterways received less attention because people were too much troubled by the huge burden of debt their states had so eagerly incurred in the thirties in order to obtain these facilities. Suspensions of interest payments on obligations, defaults and partial repudiation followed upon each other. In such circumstances there was no capital for new enterprises and precious little to complete those already undertaken. It was not until after 1845 that the economy began to revive, older projects were carried to completion, and some new undertakings begun.41 40 9 Stat. 178, 233; 13 Stat. 413; Joseph Schafer, "Memorials of John H. Tweedy," Wisconsin Magazine of History, VIII (March 1925), 355-57. Most useful on Wisconsin politics for this period is Alice Elizabeth Smith, James Duane Doty. Frontier Promoter (Madison, Wis., 1954). 41 Reginald C. McGrane has told the story of the letdown in construction of internal improvements following 1838 and 1839 and the difficulty of the states in carrying their debts in Foreign Bondholders and American State Debts (New York, 1935). |