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Show 462 LEADING FACTS OF NEW MEXICAN SPANISH HISTORY eral down to 1886, exclusive of the earlier Pueblo Indian claims, was 205. Of these thirteen were originally rejected and 141 approved, leaving fifty-one not acted upon. President Cleveland, shortly after his inauguration in 1885, appointed George W. Julian surveyor-general for New Mexico and William Andrew Jackson Sparks, commissioner of the general land office. These men, steeped in prejudice against New Mexico, its people, and their property rights, sought to establish in the public mind that, by the acts of former officials charged istration of public land affairs in New been despoiled of millions of acres of cuted a policy of investigation relative the public domain which, in the final with the admin- Mexico, the government had land, instituted and proseto the former disposition of outcome, proved a complete failure, owing to its virulence and partisan political character. By instructions from Commissioner Sparks, July 23, 1885, the surveyorgeneral reéxamined thirty-five of the claims originally approved by his predecessors, disapproving twenty-three of them. Not content with officially passing upon the matters coming regularly before him, this official, for strictly partisan political purposes, saw fit to use his name and office in a vain attempt *** to destroy the titles to 562; H. Mis. Doc. 181; 3d sess, H. Ex. Doc. 68; Sen. Doc. 37, 40, 45, 50. Reports and Doc., 42d cong., 3d sess., H. Ex. Doc. 37, 40, 128; 43d cong., 1st sess. H. Hx. Doc. 148-9, 206, 213, 258, 280; Sen. Doc. 3, 35, 58. 43d cong., 1st sess., H. Hx. Doc. 239; Sen. Doc. 43, 56; 2d sess, H. Hx. Doc. 62; Sen. Doe. Discussion; 44th cong., Ist sess, H. Rept. 50; Sen. Doc. 31. 2, 335, 38. Cong. Globe, 1873-6, per index. Id., 1876-7, 44th cong., 2d sess., H. Repts. 45th cong., 3d sess, 45th cong., 2d sess., H. Repts. 149, 222, 463. 110-111. H. Rep. 59. 884 Frank Springer, president New Mexico Bar Association, Address of, 1890: ‘‘One of these persons, a man who has been on all sides of almost every question he has touched, came out here, according to his own confession, to The amazing spectable was then inaugurate a raid on New Mexico land titles. presented, of a United Stater surveyor general, holding office under an act of congress, having for its object the settlement of titles, deliberately and professedly undertaking to overturn a large part of what his predecessors had done; setting himself up as a court of review upon their acts; taking UP cases passed upon years before, and without notice to the parties in interest, or an opportunity for them to be heard, declaring their titles fraudulent and These performances were without jurisdiction, and in legal effect abvoid. solutely null; yet they derived importance in the public mind from the fact that they were given out to the press and published as official decisions, wer? printed by the General Land Office as such, and scattered broadcast over the land. Titles that have been confirmed by congress and patented, and even decided by the highest courts of the country to be good and valid, and pet from fraud, were not safe from the venomous tongue of this official scanda Not content with the mischief he could do by his mendacious ficmonger. tions in the form of official reports, this modern Thersites sought, and to the AND MEXICAN LAND GRANTS 463 land grants in New Mexico by contributing articles to influential periodicals in which he endeavored to besmirch the character of prominent citizens of the territory and to impeach the integrity of every official who had held office in New Mexico during the thirty, years preceding his incumbency. The pernicious influence of this political mountebank was far reaching in the eastern states of the Union; but it awakened the people of New Mexico to a fuller sense of the necessity for a speedy determination of the titles to Spanish and Mexican land grants by congressional action. In his annual address to the members of the New Mexican Bar Association, in 1890, the retiring president of the association outlined a policy and course of procedure which, in part at least, was embodied in the act of congress establishing the court of private land claims. Differences in opinion between the senate and house of representatives as to methods of procedure in the disposition of the private land claims in New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado, prevented the adoption of any practical system. The people of New Mexico, although pronounced in their beliefs as to the best manner of disposing of these matters, were willing to adopt almost any system, provided it would afford relief. In his annual message, December 1, 1889, President Benjamin Harrison called the attention of congress to the matter, saying: ‘‘The unsettled state of the title to large bodies of land in the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona, has greatly retarded the development of these Territories. Provision should be made by law for the Prompt trial and final adjustment, before a judicial tribunal or commission, of all claims based upon Mexican grants. It is not Just to an intelligent and enterprising people that their peace should lasting discredit of the managers of that journal obtained, space in the N orth American Review, for the utterance of a paper, which for wilful distortion of facts, and wholesale vilification of publie officers in all departments of the Sovernment, has rarely had a parallel. He writes it as surveyor general of New Mexico, and claims belief upon that ground. It is entitled, ‘Land Stealing in New Mexico.’ He states that he ‘overhauled the work of his office for the past thirty years,’ and declared it to be for the most part legalized Spoliation and robbery.’ He asserts, in effect, that the ‘governors, Judges, district attorneys, legislatures, surveyors general and their deputies, marshals, treasurers, and county commissioners’ have all been the tools of the land thieves; that the surveyor general’s office has been a mere bureau in © Service of the grant claimants. He charges that congress, in confirming ‘orty-seven of these Mexican titles, ‘has criminally surrendered the monopolists not less than 5,000,000 acres of land.’ In short, official honesty "own quantity until the advent of George W. Julian.’’ was an un- |