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Show LAND GRANTS FOR RAILROADS AND INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 373 Twenty percent of the acreage of Kansas (10,175,149 acres) fell to railroads, whereas Nebraska received 15 percent or 7,792,088 acres. Error Redressed One of the statutes granting land to the State of Kansas for what became the St. Joseph and Denver City Railroad had been awkwardly drafted by Congress and misinterpreted by the Land Office. This caused both judicial and administrative errors that required remedial legislation and imposed heavy costs upon the United States. The grant was given to Kansas for the "use and benefit" of the St. Joseph and Denver, which was to extend from Elwood, by way of Marys-ville, to effect a junction with the Union Pacific not farther west than the 100th meridian. Since the main line of the Union Pacific was located north of the border in Nebraska and no state grant had overlapped another state, it was questionable whether the St. Joseph and Denver could get any portion of the 10 sections per mile the act seemed to grant in Nebraska. Because of the uncertainty created by the awkward wording of this legislation and the fact that the railroad did not immediately press for lands north of the boundary, the Land Office permitted individuals to homestead and file preemptions on odd numbered sections in Nebraska within 10 miles of the line and patents were issued to the settlers. Sixteen years after the grant was made, action was brought by an assignee of the railroad against a settler who had home-steaded and received his patent in one of the odd sections. The court declared that the settler's patent was void. As Senators later said, the United States did not guarantee its title, and in these as in all cases it gave in its patents only such right as the United States possessed at the time. Five years elapsed during which the settlers were served with notices threatening eviction unless they paid for their titles again. The consciences of mem- bers of Congress were finally touched and on March 3, 1887, they enacted a measure allowing the distressed settlers not over $3.50 an acre (the price the assignee demanded) for not over 160 acres each in compensation for the error of the government. Nonsettlers were allowed only the $1.25 an acre they had paid for their holdings.90 Routes to the Pacific Since the late 1840's a railroad from Lake Superior to Puget Sound had been under consideration. The Pacific Railroad Surveys, reported in 1855, had endorsed the northern route, but had shown more favor to one of two southern routes. What helped the northern route in the fifties but counted against it in the sixties was the fact that a group of top ranking Democrats-including William W. Corcoran, the Washington banker and creditor of a number of them and a major beneficiary of plums they had to hand out, Stephen A. Douglas, Jesse Bright of Indiana, Henry M. Rice of Minnesota, John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, and others-had acquired the site of present Superior which they projected as the terminus of the northern transcontinental. As the first step in making Superior City a great railroad center, they succeeded in 1854 in obtaining a land grant of 850,000 acres for a railroad (the Minnesota and Northwestern) from Minneapolis to the eastern border of the territory in the direction of Lake Superior. Unfortunately, the promoters of the railroad committed a number of indiscretions in lining up support for their enterprise. A charter from the Territorial Legislature had been obtained that would enable the company to receive 90 24 Stat. 550; Cong. Record, 49th Cong., 2d sess., p. 515 et seq.; Sheldon, Land Systems and Land Policies in Nebraska, pp. 92-93. Rae, "Railway Land Subsidy Policy," p. 101. Unlike the usual grants to states for railroads, the Act of July 28, 1866, made the grant to Kansas but specified clearly it was to be for the St. Joseph and Denver Railroad. This may explain why Donaldson, p. 271, lists it as a grant to a corporation. |
