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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 361 Proposals before Congress for Land Grants to Railroads" States Length of Lines Acreage Proposed Michigan 534 156 434 341,760 599,040 3,107,417 Wisconsin Iowa .. Missouri . 232 890,880 Arkansas 488 1,873,920 Alabama 314 1,205,760 Florida____ 932 5,882,880 Total 3,090 13,901,657 a Appendix to Congressional Globe, 32d Cong., 1st sess., April 14, 1852, p. 428. bills to grant land to the states for institutions to care for the insane or to appropriate money for river and harbor improvements, Pierce expounded the nature of the Constitution, the powers of the Federal government, its limitations and restrictions.62 In his second annual message he urged caution in furthering railroad expansion through grants of land, questioned whether it was not best to leave all such construction to private enterprise, and praised Congress for not adopting the many proposals then under consideration for land grants to aid the building of 5,000 miles of railroad at the expense of 20 million acres of public domain. He reminded Congress that he had ordered restored to entry 30 million acres which the Commissioner of the General Land Office had withdrawn in the expectation that bills making grants for this large mileage would be enacted. Pierce returned to the nature of the powers of the Federal government in his third annual message. He believed the Missouri Compromise with its ban on additional slave states north of 36°30' was unconstitutional, anticipating the Dred Scott decision by 2 years. He was pleased with its repeal and upheld his Kansas policy. He followed this with five veto messages striking down appropriations for the improvements of the mouth of the Mississippi River, the Des Moines River, the St. Clair River, the St. Mary's River, and the port of Baltimore.63 In the light of all the rhetoric Pierce loosed upon advocates of using Federal powers to aid the growth and economic development of the West, how was it possible for him to sign eight bills granting 19,678,180 acres to eight states for railroads? The answer seems to be that the President was overwhelmed by the demands of members of his own party from Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota Territory who were pushing their favorite measures, with little regard for economic feasibility or whether their grants would overlap others that had been given in earlier measures. Two and even three land grant measures were approved by Congress simultaneously, and without division. If Pierce had tried to resist, his administration and his party might have been hurt seriously.64 Though his conscience must have bothered him, Pierce signed all eight measures, thus approving land grants for railroads far in excess of the acreage granted by his Whig predecessor. Included were grants for four railroads in Florida, seven in Alabama, two in Mississippi, two in Louisiana, and one each in Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. This last was soon repealed. Thomas Donaldson estimated in 1880 that the grants made in the Pierce administration, if fully satisfied, would require 19,678,180 acres as compared with 8,198,593 acres promised in the Fillmore years. To this extent had Pierce allowed political considerations in the public land states to influence him, notwithstanding his rigid constitutional views. Unlike his predecessor John Wilson, 82 Ibid., V, 247 ff., 256. 63 Ibid., V, 290-91, 386-88. "Study of House Journal, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 942, 949, 1018, and the Senate Journal, pp. 316, 328, 367 suggested almost a bloc vote that was overwhelming in the Senate, but closer in the House. For the vote on the Iowa measure see Richard C. Over-ton, Burlington West. A Colonization History of the Burlington Railroad (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), pp. 73 ff. |