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Show EARLY EFFORTS TO PROTECT PUBLIC TIMBERLANDS 541 seized great quantities of sawed lumber, logs, square timber, shingles, and shingle-bolts and hired people to guard them. Thirty-seven indictments were secured against persons accused of cutting illegally in the vicinity of the Manistee River and against the masters of several vessels who were engaged in carrying the lumber to Detroit. Meantime, the guilty parties commenced a systematic warfare upon him. Their agents and attorneys, with the aid of Chicago newspapers, attacked Willard for oppressive conduct and the Tribune even counseled resistance. Meetings were held by trespassers and attended by prominent Chicago lumber merchants, at which "violent harangues" were delivered against Willard. Threats were made against anyone who should remove the timber except the trespasser. A trial sale of seized property was made and a part was taken away but a mob prevented the balance from being taken and burned it. Several trespassers were arrested but soon were released by mobs; others were promptly set free by the judges. To cap the resistance to Willard's "oppressive" pursuit of lumbermen, the agent himself was arrested and held to bail for false imprisonment and, when released, was arrested again in Chicago by one of the big lumber merchants there for damages occasioned to his business. Nevertheless, a number of indicted persons were convicted and punished with jail terms and fines. Willard estimated that more than 437 million feet of lumber worth $100,000 had been plundered from the public lands in Michigan and in addition great amounts of hemlock bark had been shipped to Chicago and Detroit tanneries. He concluded that the only way to stop trespassing on the public lands was to prosecute the guilty parties "with the utmost rigor of the law, to final conviction and punishment; and it is believed that the infliction of the penalties of the law, fine and imprisonment, in a few cases only, would entirely and effectually put an end to the depredations. . . ." 31 Reports were coming to Senators James Shields and Stephen A. Douglas and to Representative John Wentworth from the Chicago district of the "obstructive and Tyrannical" actions of Willard in harassing loggers, millmen, shippers and others in the lumber trade, including eminent Chicago merchants to whom the lumber was consigned. Responsive to the pleas of the abused lumbermen, they brought formal charges against Willard, including mention of his indictment in Chicago, and demanded his removal. They also asked the Secretary of the Treasury to provide them with copies of all vouchers and accounts of Willard and other timber agents. Wentworth took the issue to Congress where he defended the men who went to the timber country and made their selections, but dared not leave them for several weeks to go to the land office to enter them. Whether they feared the timber would be stolen by other thieves or would be levied on by Willard is not clear. Wentworth was confident the timber agents were guilty of the "greatest abuses existing under the General Government." Those who paid tribute to them were allowed to steal all they pleased. The agents "persecute the depredators to penury and want. . . ." They are "now prosecuting honest men in our courts," merely because they "had mistaken section lines." They "have collected hundreds of thousands of dollars" from the accused lumbermen but have never paid a cent into the Federal Treasury.32 *H. Ex. Doc, 33d Cong., 1st scss., Vol. 14, No. 115 (Serial No. 727) , pp. 11-17; Cameron, The Development of Governmental Forest Control, pp. 144-51. 32 John Wentworth, to J. F. Callan, Sept. 10, 1854, filed with letter of J. F. Callan, Sept. 21, 1854, to John Wilson in File C, GLO; James Guthrie, to S. A. Douglas, copy, Sept. 18, 1854, in Congres- |