Robert Trimble

“ In applying its own principles and practice in the action of ejectment, as might well be done to this case, has the Court misconstrued the Act of Congress, in deciding that the grant of the plaintiff, emanating upon the donation certificate of the Board of Commissioners, west of Pearl river, set forth in the record, would overreach the defendant's grant, and should prevail against it in the action of ejectment? ”

“ The country had been settled during the conflict on the subject of boundaries, between Spain and the United States, by the citizens and subjects of both governments. It was a weak and exposed frontier of the United States. The manifest general intent of the Act of Congress, is to confer a bounty upon the inhabitants and cultivators of the soil, who elected to remain in the country at the time of the actual evacuation by the Spanish troops. ”

“ If an individual had inhabited and cultivated a tract of land every day in the year 1797, still, according to the letter of this section, he was not entitled to the bounty of the government, because the Spanish troops had not evacuated the territory any day of that year, but some day of the next year ”