Land scrip

“ If in addition thirty-three States shall enter the market with their land scrip, the price must be greatly reduced below even 85 cents per acre, as much to the prejudice of the old soldiers who have not already parted with their land warrants as to Government. It is easy to perceive that with this glut of the market Government can sell little or no lands at $1.25 per acre, when the price of bounty-land warrants and scrip shall be reduced to half this sum. This source of revenue will be almost entirely dried up. Under the bill the States may sell their land scrip at any price it may bring. ”

“ It is obviously the main purpose of the section to declare, that after the lands are surveyed they shall be subject to sale, according to the general land system of the government; and, secondly, to subject them to the right of pre-emption as defined by the act of 1841, and to extend that right to lands unsurveyed as well as to those surveyed. ”

“ Third condition describes the land as one league of the larger size, and the requirement is that the judge who shall give the possession shall have the land measured in conformity to law, leaving the surplus which remained to the nation. Land commissioners confirmed the claim for one league, but on appeal taken by the claimant to the District Court that decree was reversed, and a decree entered confirming the claim as one for the whole tract with specific boundaries. ”

“ This act requires the commissioners of the State Land office to issue a certificate of purchase to every settler on the swamp lands belonging to the State, for forty acres of said lands, whenever such settler shall have resided upon it for five continuous years, and when he has drained the same so as to comply with the provisions of the Act of Congress making this grant to the State. ”

“ General rules and regulations upon the subject were accordingly ordained, authorizing the Governors of Territories, under certain specific conditions, to grant such lands to such of the persons therein described as might ask for the same for the purpose of settlement and cultivation. Persons soliciting such lands were required by those rules and regulations to address a petition to the Governor, setting forth their names, country, profession and religion, and also to describe the land asked for as distinctly as possible, by means of a diseno or map annexed to the petition. ”

“ In the light of these decisions, the almost uniform practice of the department has been to regard land, upon which an entry of record valid upon its face has been made, as appropriated and withdrawn from subsequent homestead entry, pre-emption settlement, sale, or grant until the original entry be canceled or declared forfeited; in which case the land reverts to the government as a part of the public domain, and becomes again subject to entry under the land laws. ”

“ In that case a pre-emptioner by the name of Cloyes claimed a right to make an entry of certain lands under the act of Congress of May 29th, 1830. That act gave to every occupant of the public lands prior to its date, who had cultivated any part thereof in the year 1829, a right to enter at the minimum price, by legal subdivisions, any number of acres not exceeding one hundred and sixty, including his improvements, provided the land was not reserved for the use of the United States, or either of the several States. ”

“ That citizens of the United States, and persons of certain specified qualifications, may file with the register and receiver of any land-district in which desert land is situated, a declaration of intention under oath, to reclaim within three years thereafter, by irrigation, a tract of desert land, surveyed or unsurveyed, not exceeding one section; and that upon payment of twenty-five cents per acre the applicant shall acquire an inchoate right thereto. ”

“ Be it enacted by the general assembly, that so much of the act entitled 'an act for surveying and apportioning the lands granted to the Illinois regiment, and establishing a town within the said grant' as requires that one thousand acres of land for a town shall be laid off into half acre lots, and each to be improved by building, subject to the condition of building on each a dwelling house twenty feet by eighteen at least, with a brick chimney, to be finished within three years from the day of sale, is hereby repealed. ”

“ Whatever the judicial authority of this officer, his action did not amount to an adjudication that those who were living on the grant, or who went there in 1806 or 1808, were the absolute and unconditional owners of 475,000 acres of land, and, indeed, he seems to have been of opinion, not only that the unallotted lands were subject to disposition by the government, but that the proper authority to make such disposition was the territorial deputation. ”

“ If he desires to preëmpt, and by payment to Government of $1.25 per acre for public land outside the limits of railroad and wagon-road grants, or $2.50 per acre for land within those limits, to obtain an immediate title, he must be sure that he does not fall within the two exceptions; for no one can acquire a right of preëmption who is the proprietor of three hundred and twenty acres of land in any State or Territory, nor can any one who quits or abandons his residence on his own land to reside on the public land in the same State or Territory. ”

“ It seems to us that our duty, as marked out in the act, is sufficiently plain and simple. The first section of the act provides that a tract of land, the limits of which are described in general terms, shall be secured as hereinafter set out, and be perpetually dedicated and set apart as a public park, pleasure ground, etc. It has a proviso as to the quantity of land, and the cost to be incurred. There are four steps to be taken in the process of securing the land, which are ordained by the body of the statute. The first one is the selection of the land by certain commissioners. ”

“ Ct. 510, this language was used: 'A settlement upon the public lands in advance of the public surveys is allowed to parties who in good faith intend, when the surveys are made and returned to the local land office, to apply for their purchase. If, within a specified time after the survey, and the return of the township plat, the settler takes certain steps,-that is, files a declaratory statement, and performs certain other acts prescribed by law,-he acquires for the first time a right of pre-emption to the land. ”

“ These Enclosure Acts appear as petitions; they are usually in the names of the lord of the manor, the parson of the parish, and a greater or less number of the holders of the lands. For now enclosure concerns the "open fields." It is represented that the "strip system" is very inconvenient—the land being so "scattered." It would be for the benefit of all if the lands were enclosed and divided among the holders—that is, if each holder got his share in one piece. This, it is added, will do away with "the half-year's close, and the rights of common and sheep-walks." ”

“ Said the court: 'In no just sense can lands be said to be public lands after they have been entered at the land-office, and a certificate of entry obtained. If public lands before the entry, after it they are private property. ”

“ That all lands exclusive of timber lands and mineral lands which will not, without irrigation, produce some agricultural crop, shall be deemed desert lands, within the meaning of this act, which fact shall be ascertained by proof of two or more credible witnesses under oath, whose affidavits shall be filed in the land office in which said tract of land may be situated. ”

“ Provided further, That such lands shall be described as set forth in Schedules "A" and "B," and shall be exempted from settlement in the proclamation of the President opening the ceded lands, and that where lands so set apart are not described by legal subdivisions then the township or section or tract of land within whose limits such Indians' selections are located shall not be opened to settlement until the Indian allotments therein contained shall have been surveyed and proper evidence of title issued therefor. ”

“ The locative calls in this ontry are for a point two miles north of Harrod's Lick, and for a large buffalo road. If we reject the first call, the entry is void for uncertainty, for there is no definite starting point. If we reject the last call, the other is perfectly certain. The general leaning of courts has been to support entries, if it could be done by any reasonable construction. The law, indeed, declares, that every entry should contain a description of the land so certain that subsequent locators might be able to ascertain it with precision, and locate the adjoining residuum. ”

“ And, going beyond the special language of the act in respect to the sale of lands, the court observed:
'But we go further, and say that, whensoever a tract of land shall have once been legally appropriated to any purpose, from that moment the land thus appropriated becomes severed from the mass of public lands, and that no subsequent law, or proclamation, or sale would be construed to embrace it, or to operate upon it, although no reservation were made of it. ”

“ Provided, that this exception shall not continue to apply to any particular tract of land unless the entryman, settler or claimant continues to comply with the law under which the entry, filing or settlement was made. ”

“ A common field lot, as intended by said act of Congress, is a piece of land of larger or smaller dimensions, as the case may be, according to ancient cultivation, lying alongside of, and parallel to, other similar pieces of land, and claimed or cultivated under the protection of a common fence by those who inhabited said towns or villages prior to the 20th December, 1803; and said pieces of land might not have been conceded or surveyed by any French or Spanish authority, or surveyed officially by the United States as a common field lot. ”

“ But, strange to say, money will not be considered as "capital;" for otherwise, a number of settlers going up in succession with the same bag of sovereigns, might take up half the land in the Colony.—When the claimant has ascertained the number of acres to which he is entitled, he may select his grant in any district which may be opened for location, wherever the land be not reserved by Government or taken up by prior applicants. ”

“ Hanes, 21 Wall. 521, 530, in which this court said: 'If the claim be to quantity, and not to a specific tract capable of identification, a segregation by survey will be required, and the confirmation will then immediately attach the title to the lands segregated.' The land passes out of the jurisdiction of the land department. The grant has then become complete, and the only remedy for any wrong in the transfer of such title is through the courts, and not in the land department. ”

“ So far as lands are found in place when this is done, not coming within the exceptions as sold or held under pre-emption, the title, or at least the right to this land in place, is at once vested in the State or in the company to which the State has granted it, and the means of ascertaining precisely what lands have passed by the grant is to be found in the map of the line of the road, which is filed in the General Land-Office under provisions of the statute. ”

“ Those acts also provide that when, in the opinion of the president, 'a departure from the ordinary method of surveying land on any river, lake, bayou or watercourse, would promote the public interest,' the land may be surveyed, and sold in tracts of 2 acres in width, fronting on any such water, and running back the depth of 40 acres. ”

“ It was an easy matter for us to transfer the title at some later date to whomsoever we chose, who in turn could surrender the documents to the Clerk of the Land Board, and by paying up the balance due the State on the land, would receive a deed in his own name as if he were the original purchaser. It will thus be seen that one person could secure deeds to thousands of acres, or such quantities of land as he had assignments for. ”

“ And if the settler has kinsmen and friends willing to join with him, he can claim for himself and each of them 100 acres of land, and pay for it by the work of road-making in the new country, so that in four years, if the work set by the Commissioners be executed, each man who has been one year resident and has brought ten acres into cultivation, becomes, ipso facto, owner of the whole lot of 100 acres. ”

“ But, whether this be so or not, it is enough that in the cession, in the acts of congress, and in the proclamation of the president the land was dealt with as an entirety, with certain metes and bounds, and it is that body of lands, thus bounded, which all parties were forbidden to enter upon who desired thereafter to enter any portions as a homestead.
Counsel contend that the words 'enter' and 'entry' have a technical meaning in the land laws ”

“ The scheme, when approved by the committee, comes before the House for confirmation. It may prove unfortunate that agents originally selected to administer an Act having for its main object inclosure—i.e. the dividing of the land among separate owners—should have been chosen to carry out one specially intended, as Mr. Cross explained, to facilitate regulation—i.e. the preserving of the land open for the use of all. ”

“ Pre-emption or homestead claims might therefore be established after the passage of the land-grant statute, provided that this was done before the lands were withdrawn from settlement. [90] Indeed, the Secretary of the Interior ruled that settlement and occupation exempted land from the grant even though the settler failed formally to assert his claim. ”