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Show EARLY EFFORTS TO PROTECT PUBLIC TIMBERLANDS 539 It was not only Democrats who excoriated the administration for its prosecution with "unrelenting severity" of the hardy lumberman who had dared to penetrate the remotest wilds to drag from their recesses materials for building towns and cities. Henry H. Sibley, a Whiggish-inclined delegate from Minnesota Territory, disliked the harassment of loggers by vexatious law proceedings, the outrageous confiscation of their logs cut on government land, the loss of the proceeds of their "honest labor. . . ."22 Similarly, Ben C. Eastman of Wisconsin glorified the lumbermen who "at great risk, and with intense labor . . . penetrated this forest, erected mills" and opened a lumber trade that had made possible the growth of settlements throughout the Upper Mississippi Valley. He argued that it would be true government policy to let this enterprising class "use a portion of the timber of the public lands without stint, as a sort of bounty for the hardships they have undergone. . . ." Instead, Federal marshals and a whole posse of deputies and timber agents, appointed by the President without authority, "have been let loose upon this devoted class of our citizens, and they have been harassed almost without endurance with pretended seizures and suits, prosecutions and indictments, until they have been driven almost to the desperation of an open revolt against their prosecutors." 23 Complaints of Senator Dodge, and Representatives Sibley and Eastman and of the territorial legislature of Minnesota about efforts to prevent depredations on the public timberlands led J. C. Clark, Solicitor of the Treasury, to write to the Secretary of the Interior: It is a grand pity that government will not give to these honest trespassers a 'carte blanche' to supply foreign markes [t] with lumber from these 'vast pineries!' The lumbermen, it would seem, are not to blame for stealing timber. It is all the fault of the government, in not bringing the lands into market!! If I refuse to offer my farm for Sale, any lawless coveter of another's property, has a right to enter upon it & steal my finest trees. This is the reasoning of the land pirates. They should be taught that this sort of argument is not consistent with sound morality.24 The Democratic victory of 1852 required the removal of the timber agents as well as most registers and receivers of the numerous land offices and the appointment of tried and true Democrats. Most important of the five new timber agents were Isaac W. Willard for Michigan, Herman M. Cady for eastern Wisconsin, and James B. Estes for western Wisconsin and Minnesota Territory. The instructions to the new agents said that the Department had no intention of interfering with the legitimate rights of bona fide settlers planning to preempt who had cut only for building, fencing, and construction of bridges but did insist that "speculators whose sole object and pursuit are the manufacture and exportation of lumber, for their own profit, without compensation to the government or benefit to the country whence it is taken" should be compelled to purchase the lands on which they had trespassed. The agents were directed to secure indictments of the guilty parties or to seize under due process the logs wherever they could be found. They were to seek out the district attorney or the Federal marshal and provide him with detailed information concerning the location of the trespass, the name of the trespasser, and names of witnesses.25 Cady reported in 1854 that he had seized the lumber of one Clark at Wolf River Falls and of one Lee at Oshkosh in addition to 25,000 logs cut on tributaries of the 22 Cong. Globe, 32d Cong., 1st sess., April 24, 1852, App., p. 486. 23 Ibid., p. 851. 24 Commissioner's Files, GLO. 25 R. McClelland, Secretary of the Interior, May 14, 1853, to Isaac Willard, Miscellaneous, Vol. 42, GLO. |