The Political History of the Public Lands, from 1840 To 1862
- ISBN-10
- 1458931528
- ISBN-13
- 9781458931528
- Pages
- 210
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-01
- Publisher
- General Books
- Author
- George Malcolm Stephenson
Description
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE DISTRIBUTION-PRE-EMPTION ACT OF 1841 THE victory of the Whigs proved to be their undoing. When the country sobered down after the hard cider dissipation, as the Democratic papers sarcastically termed it, it became apparent that the Whigs were in for a stormy time. The Harrison leaders, as Calhoun said, were determined that his administration should commence before his inauguration.1 As soon as Congress convened the Democrats under the leadership of Benton and Calhoun proceeded to show up their hypocrisy, as they called it, during the campaign. They claimed that the West in voting for Harrison did so believing that he was a friend of pre-emption.2 Was not every stump worn smooth by Whig orators in trying to convince the people that General Harrison was the real friend of the West? asked Senator Sevier, of Arkansas.3 Did they not show from a history of his public life that he had always voted for both pre-emption and graduation bills? Did they not also show that his competitor had so late as 1828 voted against these measures? Benton insisted that the Whig promises should be translated into action when shortly after Congress convened he introduced his Log Cabin bill which provided that the head of a family, widow, or single man over eighteen years, who settled on the public lands to which the Indian title had been extinguished, whether surveyed or not, or who had resided on the public lands since June 30, 1840, should have the right to pre-empt a quarter section of land at the minimum price of $1.25 per acre, provided he built a log cabin and made improvements on it.4 Benton declared that the time was particularly favorable to such a bill, since all parties and their candidates had favored it during the campaign. 1 Calhoun to Hurt, Jan. 24, 1841. Calhou...
