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Show 538 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Early protests against the threatening activities of the timber agents came from Minnesota and Wisconsin. A Wisconsin memorial urged relief, not prosecution, of those in the pineries. More specifically, it urged the revocation of all seizures or confiscation of pine lumber and the suspension of all prosecutions to permit the men to buy the land on the Wolf, Black, Chip-pewa, St. Croix, and Wisconsin Rivers on which they had been cutting. The legislature said, "It is a well known fact, that from the earliest settlement of the State, a numberous class of our citizens have been engaged in lumbering . . . upon these lands without being regarded or molested as trespassers." Their activities had materially aided in the development of the state. To have the government now bring to bear its enforcement procedure to halt this cutting threatened great hardship to the state.18 The territorial legislature of Minnesota stated that encouragement had been given to the establishment of sawmills in the territory but not an acre of pine land had been offered at public sale and none was open to preemption. Lumbering was the major occupation of the territory, employing "hundreds of our citizens" and an immense capital. Now to be informed that all persons trespassing on the pine lands would be prosecuted threatened disaster to the territory and would result in "filling the pockets of a few government officials at the expense of the law-abiding community, without resulting in any advance to the government." The memorialists maintained that prosecution should only be brought against those trespassers who persisted in cutting on public land after it had been opened to preemption or sale and not bought by them. Occupants of pine lands and those engaged in lumbering "would be willing and anxious to pay the government for the land they occupy" and they should have that privilege. The legislature urged that all trespass actions be abandoned and that the lands be surveyed and brought into market at the earliest possible moment.10 It was in Congress that the enforcement activities of the timber agents brought out the most effective protests. Senator Augustus C. Dodge of Iowa pointed out that in the southern public land states there were seven suits for trespass on the public lands, in Ohio 38, in Illinois four, in Iowa 20, in Michigan 40, in Minnesota seven, in Wisconsin 77.2n Dodge's strictures on the activities of the timber agents elicited a reply from A. H. H. Stuart who had succeeded Ewing as Secretary of the Interior. Stuart denied that the appointment of the timber agents was to "thwart or subvert the beneficent ends of the preemption system," or to harass and annoy settlers. Settlers could continue to cut timber on the public lands for their own use or for public improvements, as they had in the past. But timber was essential for the development of the prairies and "it is therefore a proper subject of protection by the government." Greedy adventurers who cut and destroyed and left an insufficient supply for settlers would be discouraged. Stuart added that he would amend his original instructions to the agents to permit actual settlers to take a "reasonable amount of timber for their own use or for public improvements, but to prosecute, with the utmost rigor, those who depredate on the public domain for the purpose of speculation."21 17 Miss Larson offers as her only source for the table, A. D. Cooke of the U.S. Surveyor General's Office in St. Paul. 1R Statutes of Wisconsin, 1851, memorial of Feb. 21, 1851, p. 441. 1B Memorial signed by Alexander Ramsey, Territorial Governor, Feb. 14, 1852, GLO Files. The italics are added. 20 In Iowa, Federal officials were levying on wood cut for fuel for steamboats. Cong. Globe, 32d Cong., 1st sess., March 4, 1852, A pp., p. 365. n Washington Republic, March 18, 1851. |