Samuel Freeman Miller

“ The United States made these warrants the equivalent of money in purchase of these lands by the holders. They gave them the equivalent purchasing power of money and the quality of negotiability, and they gave the soldier the option of a treasury draft or a land-warrant when he had rendered the service. It is the merest quibble to say that where a man purchased a quarter section of the public lands with one of these warrants, the government had not sold him that land at a dollar and a quarter an acre. ”

“ The opinion concedes that the acts of congress under which the states of Illinois and Iowa were admitted into the Union, and the acceptance of their provisions, are compacts. If any less sanctity is due to these provisions by calling the matter a compact instead of a contract, it is not perceptible to me. It is not denied that the state and the United States were capable of contracting. It is not denied in the opinion that they did contract. ”

“ But it surely was never contemplated in this compact between a state of the Union and the general government that if the government could dispose of her public lands, and secure their full price in other valuable considerations than money, that the state should thus be cheated out of the 5 per cent. ”