CHAPTER III
SECTIONALISM
SECTIONALISM
In 1820 President Monroe, just reelected by an electoral vote lacking but one of unanimity, waxed eloquent over "the prosperous and happy condition of our country." Said he, "It is impossible to behold so gratifying, so glorious a spectacle, without being penetrated with the most profound and grateful acknowledgements to the Supreme Author of all Good for such manifold and inestimable advantages."1 In the realm of national politics it was an "Era of Good Feeling." The old Republican Party of Jefferson had at last triumphed to the extent of not only ousting the Federalist Party but also of becoming the only national party in the country. Yet Monroe's statement appears extravagant when one considers the manifold sufferings in the nation at large, particularly in the newer parts of the country. Nor did his exaggeration take into consideration the undercurrents of politics which were seething with discontent, for factionalism was sticking up its ugly head, and sectionalism had never been more pronounced.
When the question of the admission of Missouri into the Union arose in 1818, eastern interests were as much afraid of building up a powerful West as they were of increasing the slavery power of the South. The Missouri Intelligencer published at Boone's Lick called attention to the fact that "the eighty-seven members of the House of Representatives who voted" for "the restriction . . . to be imposed upon us . . . were those exclusively of the eastern states. They view with a jealous eye the march of power westward, and are well aware the preponderance will soon be against them; therefore they have combined against us; but let them pause before they proceed further, or the grave they are preparing for us, may be their own sepulchre. As well might they arrest the course of the ocean that washes their barren shores, as to check our future growth. Emigration will continue with a giant stride until the wilderness shall be a wilderness no more; but in its stead will arise flourishing towns, cultivated farms. . . . Let those who are raised by the voice of the people to watch over and protect their rights and liberties, beware how they abuse so sacred a trust, lest they find in every injured freeman the spirit of a Hampden [to] rise and hurl them from their posts."2
While it has been stated that the slavery issue struck in national politics like a "firebell in the night," nevertheless, close observation reveals that between 1820 and 1845 the slavery issue was kept out of national politics and other sectional issues such as those pertaining to the public lands, internal improvements, and the protective tariff challenged public attention. Again, as in the 1790's, the pendulum swung toward a national economy which professed to establish a more balanced economic-social order. The American people once more faced the question whether they desired to continue a regime in which the agricultural interests would remain dominant, or whether they preferred a Hamiltonian program which would encourage, and ultimately make predominant in national policy, a group of manufacturing interests. So far the agricultural expansion of the country had been at the expense of the East. The Great Migration had drained the Atlantic States of a valuable labor population, and there had been little foreign emigration to fill up the ranks. The depression period following the Panic of 1819, coupled with the more drastic effects of the European depression of 1825, thus provided American statesmen with a reconstruction problem of considerable dimensions.
John C. Calhoun in 1820 addressed to John Quincy Adams a discriminating comment on American conditions. "There has been within these two years," he observed, "an immense revolution of fortunes . . . and a general mass of disaffection to the government, not concentrated in any particular direction, but ready to seize upon any event and looking out anywhere for a leader."3 Ultimately that leader was to be a military man, Andrew Jackson, but for the time being the prominent statesman, Henry Clay, attempted to fill that place.
Perhaps Clay did not desire to go as far as Hamilton in granting extensive bounties to manufacturing interests. But he did want to grant some new direction to American industry which would help to bring about a balance in the economic system. By building up manufacturing centers in the country he sought to create a home market which would absorb the agricultural surplus of the South and West. To build up these centers it would be necessary to protect manufacturing interests from foreign competition by means of a protective tariff. Moreover, to bring about the exchange of products between the manufacturing East and the agricultural South and West, a system of extensive internal improvements was essential.4 This scheme became known as the American System, and the name carried an appeal to men's emotions even when the principles back of it failed to appeal to their reason.
The passage of the protective tariff of 1824 and the eloquence of John Quincy Adams attested to the rising strength of Hamiltonian forces. Adams looked upon the public domain as a great national resource from which funds should flow for the well-being, happiness, and education of all people.5 This idea of distributing the proceeds from the sales of public lands among the states for purposes of education found support, as one would expect, in many state legislatures, especially in eastern states which expected to get the greater share.6
But Adams believed even more strongly that the land of the West should be disposed of without injuring the real estate and manufacturing interests of the East. "The bee that robs the hive of his neighbor," he observed, "becomes idle and improvident -- and is never known to profit even by the flowers in his own garden, and the outrage usually results in the death of the robber and the robbed."7 Professor Wellington declared that "John Quincy Adams used all his influence to perpetuate the revenue attitude toward the public domain. . . . [He] looked upon the American public domain from the general point of view of the European administrator, seeing how instrumental it might be in the national administration of social and economic interests. His attitude was not unlike the physiocratic point of view of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a contemporary English economist. . . . If the United States had been controlled by men of property, and more respectful of European practice, the plan of John Quincy Adams might have been adopted."8
However, the attempt in the 1820's to convert the American people to a Hamiltonian philosophy was even more short-lived than it had been in the 1790's. It merely served to bring about a closer political alliance between the South and the West. When the East mustered sufficient strength to push through the protective tariff of 1824, John Randolph of Virginia exclaimed in the solemn chambers of the Senate: "If, ad artem, you draw the last shilling from our pockets, what are the checks of the Constitution to us? A fig for the Constitution! When the scorpion's sting is probing us to the quick, shall we stop to chop logic?"9 The defeat of Jackson for the Presidency in 1824, in spite of the fact that he carried the popular vote of the country, did much to gird the West for political action. The South and West alliance, together with aid from the Middle Atlantic States, made possible a powerful coalition against Adams and Clay. In the years of the Adams administration this coalition became effectively organized into the new Democratic Party which was to be triumphant in 1828. In the rise of this Jacksonian Democracy one cannot minimize the part played by the agricultural interests of the West which met with counterproposals each measure on the program of the Adams-Clay group.
The Land Act of 1820 brought the whole population of the frontier to the brink of ruin. Had the federal government proved a rigid creditor it could have turned the Mississippi Valley into a scene of desolation.10 Faced with the possibility of having to relinquish their holdings, settlers from far and wide frantically petitioned Congress for relief from their obligations under the new law. The problem was complex as well as embarrassing. If Congress refused relief these frontiersmen would become squatters or else seek lands in Mexico. On the other hand, if some indulgence were granted the return of prosperity might enable them to pay their debts. In such circumstances it seemed expedient for Congress to compromise the issue rather than antagonize a region where population and political strength were increasing from day to day.
Accordingly, in 1821 the first relief act was passed, extending the time of payment and authorizing purchasers to secure a portion of their lands by relinquishing the remainder to the government.11 As might have been expected, a temporary measure was not sufficient to satisfy frontier needs. In 1822 Congress extended the relief act of 1821. This policy of extending credit, once begun, was continued in one form or another until by 1832 eleven relief acts had been passed.12 Hence the indebtedness incurred under the Act of 1800 was eventually reduced without injury to the citizenry of the West and with but little loss to the government. Such a solution, however, also had unfortunate aspects. Perceiving the willingness to compromise displayed by eastern leaders with regard to extending credit, frontier forces were encouraged to gather their growing strength behind other measures which in fact endangered the whole land policy.
In the long struggle over land policy there were many congressmen from the New West who presented forcefully and effectively the problems of that rapidly growing section. But perhaps the most outstanding of these was that "veritable champion of the West," Thomas Hart Benton, Senator from Missouri. Whatever peculiar traits the West may or may not have had, it certainly cannot be doubted that Benton thoroughly understood and quite as thoroughly represented its economic and social interests. He began his legal career in St. Louis as a representative of Spanish land claimants, and was elected to the United States Senate chiefly because of his views on land policy.13 This Missouri Senator well understood the people who would "settle the lands in spite of everybody." He exaggerated little when he declared that the thirteen British colonies had been settled upon gratuitous donations or nominal sales."14 But perceiving the immediate futility of working for "gratuitous donations," he gave his attention to "nominal sales."
While the Senate, in 1824, was discussing Clay's tariff bill, Benton introduced his own bill providing for graduation in the price of land. "By the present rule," he declared, "the good and bad land are held at the same price. The best can be got for $1.25 per acre -- the worst cannot be had for less. . . . It is unjust to the people, because it prevents them from getting the inferior land at a fair price; unjust to the states, because it checks their population and deprives them of their right of taxation; unjust to the nation, because it prevents the public treasury from receiving the money which such land is worth and for which it would sell."15 His bill set 50 cents an acre as a second minimum price for poorer lands, and the refuse lands that would not sell for even 50 cents an acre were to be given away to poor people who would cultivate them. This bill received little attention.
In the same year the House Committee on Public Lands, in answer to petitions from Illinois and elsewhere which prayed for a grant of preemption, expressed flatly its opposition to such indulgence: "It cannot be perceived by what principle persons having no color of title should, after lands on which they have settled were known to belong to the United States at the time of making their settlement, claim the right of preemption." If the government sanctioned this indulgence there would be a mad rush for valuable lands with the result that there would be no regard for surveys or boundaries. Lawlessness would abound everywhere, and the years of labor which the government spent in building up a respected land system would be lost. The report concluded: "A system of indulgence to those who trespass by making unauthorized settlements upon the lands of the United States after those lands are known to belong to the government, would in the opinion of the committee, be productive of much perplexity to the government as well as perjury to those concerned in the purchase and settlement of the national domain."16
Petitions continued to pour in upon Congress from the public-land states asking for graduation and preemption.17 In the debates on the graduation principle in 1826 Benton clearly maintained his stand "that it is better economy to sell the lands, or the best of them, in eight years, for twenty millions, than to sell them in the progress of ages and centuries for three hundred millions. One would enable us to get rid of the debt; the other would not. The lands were ceded to the federal government to pay the debt. . . . In eight years they will extinguish a debt of eighty millions if the present ruinous system is abandoned, and a new and judicious one adopted."18 Enormous quantities of land had failed to sell after being placed on the market. Yet large numbers of men desiring farms had been unable to buy land. He pointed out that if the lands could be occupied by those men, their production would result in greatly increased revenues. Population was the crying need of the West. Congress should graduate the price of the lands in relation to their value, which would be determined by the number of years they remained on the market unsold.19
But this prophet who could foresee the time when the valley of the Columbia would be the granary of China and Japan was too far in advance of those who lived in the psychological wilderness of Congressional halls. A resolution introduced by Senator David Barton of Missouri providing for donation of small tracts of the public lands that had remained unsold for a given time, to such persons as would actually live on and cultivate the same for some reasonable term of years, received but little attention.20 In the same Congress Senator T. W. Tazewell of Virginia proposed that all public land be ceded to the states in which it lay.21 The following year a bill was introduced in the Senate giving to persons who had relinquished their lands under the various relief acts the right of preemption at one-quarter the original contract price. This bill passed the Senate, but after a heated debate was tabled in the House.22
Finally in 1828 a committee reported to the House that it was "just and proper that he who renders a benefit to the public, who by his enterprise and industry has created for himself and his family a home in the wilderness, should be entitled to his reward. He has afforded facilities to the sale of the public lands, and brought into competition lands which otherwise would have commanded no price and for which there would have been no bidders, unless for his improvements."23 Benton again brought forward his graduation bill, but this time with a provision that all lands which did not sell for a certain minimum price should be ceded to the states in which they lay.24 Regarding the proposal of cession the committee reported that "each state would have a system of sales differing from that of the other states. . . . Serious collusions would necessarily occur; speculation, fraud, and corruption would be attempted in state legislatures."25
Thus in the short period of four years from 1824 to 1828 the South and the West brought before Congress, in answer to Adams's proposal to distribute the proceeds from the sales of the public lands among the states for purposes of education and internal improvements, such radical propositions as graduation, donation, and preemption. The conservative interests of the North Atlantic States were much alarmed at this trend of events.
In 1827, Richard Rush, Adams's Secretary of the Treasury, warned the country in very plain words of an imminent crisis in which certain agrarian tendencies threatened the very economic concepts upon which the nation was founded. "The maxim" he held to be "sound . . . that the ratio of capital to population should, if possible, be kept on the increase. . . . The manner in which the remote lands of the United States are selling and settling, whilst it may tend to increase more quickly the aggregate population of the country, . . . does not increase capital in the same proportion. It is a proposition too plain to require elucidation, that the creation of capital is retarded, rather than accelerated, by the diffusion of a thin population over a great surface of soil. Anything that may serve to hold back this tendency to diffusion from running too far and too long into an extreme can scarcely prove otherwise than salutary."26
Adams himself recorded in his diary that on December 31, 1828, Clay spoke to him "with great concern . . . [over] the prospects of the country -- the threats of disunion from the South, and the graspings after all public lands, which are disclosing themselves in the Western States."27 Eastern newspapers expressed considerable anxiety over the agrarian tendencies of Congress and of the nation at large. The editor of the New York National Advocate complained bitterly that the House public-lands committee appointed by the "Jacksonian" Speaker was completely dominated by southern and western men -- a situation which he regarded "as a material sacrifice of the just rights of the nation for the purpose of pandering to the land appetite of the west."28 He characterized the propositions introduced in Congress as "so wild and extravagant as to induce a belief that they intended by them nothing more than to show their constituents that they were deserving their support at the next Congressional election."
"What in the name of common sense," this editor asked "is the hurry to get rid of the public lands, that the government is thus crowded from year to year to reduce the price of them, overstock the market, invite speculators, and in the end take back the poorer portions, and forgive the indebtedness of those who have gone beyond their means and their discretion. . . . It is certainly time for Congress to adopt a little Yankee management on this subject. It may not be improper or unwise, perhaps, to help the western people to their farms gratis, as concerning the past, but we protest against trusting out the public lands only to give in the debt a few years hence, or permitting speculators to make large purchases only to trouble the government with taking them back again." In conclusion he advised the government to "make fair bargains, gives credit only where payment can reasonably be expected, and then hold the parties to strict accountability."29
While agrarianism was concentrated mainly in the frontier West, nevertheless it had counterparts in the East. In New York City at Military Hall the preachings of Thomas Skidmore on Equal Rights led such newspapers as The Courier and Enquirer, The Evening Journal, and The Commercial Advertiser to discuss this subject.30 Skidmore's scheme, which provided that the whole property of the state be taken from those who possessed it and redistributed on an equal basis, must have brought shudders to Wall Street and to the landed aristocrats of the Hudson River Valley. In 1828 the first labor newspaper, The Mechanics' Free Press, suggested to Congress the propriety of placing all public lands without delay within the reach of the people at large by the right of a title of occupancy only, supporting this memorial with such arguments as the following: "The present state of affairs must lead to the wealth of the few"; "all men have a natural right to the soil, else they will be deprived of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."31 In 1835, George Henry Evans, editor of The Man, a New York labor newspaper, proclaimed to the workingmen's associations the vital relationship between a labor surplus in the East and the public domain of the West.32 Instead of defending resort to strikes, he therefore advocated a crusade against land monopoly. The origins of the so-called Loco-Focoism, the agrarianism of the East, are clearly to be found in the equal rights and labor movements.
But it was too late to stem the tide. The alliance of the South and West, together with the agricultural forces from the Middle Atlantic States, had already made possible a new Democratic Party.33 In 1828 this new party supporting the presidency of Andrew Jackson was victorious, and again the East was compelled to recognize frontier values.
Out of the forests and the plains of the Mississippi Valley was born this new democracy of the common man. By 1830 one-third of the American people were "men of the western waters," as they liked to style themselves. Jackson was their natural leader. He had "smashed" the Indians; he had inflicted a stinging defeat on the British at New Orleans; he had met all the problems of the most rapidly growing part of America. It is true that few people knew what to expect after his election as President. When one considers that in the campaign of 1828, four-fifths of the preachers, practically all the manufacturers, and seven-eighths of the bankers opposed Jackson, one begins to understand fully what the Democrats meant when they cried: "Down with the aristocracy!"
As Professor Turner has so ably demonstrated, the victory of Jackson "meant that an agricultural society, strongest in the regions of rural isolation rather than in the areas of greater density of population and of greater wealth, had triumphed for the moment over the conservative, industrial, commercial, and manufacturing society of the New England type. It meant that a new, aggressive, expansive democracy, emphasizing human rights and individualism, as against the old established order which emphasized vested rights and corporate action, had come into control."34 For the first time in world history, a frontier society came into control of national polity.
The West of the Mississippi Valley was by 1830 a distinct section of nine states, possessing one-third of the nation's population, and controlling 30 per cent of the votes in the electoral college. It had a population greater than that of the original thirteen states when they declared their independence from the most powerful empire on the globe. No reasonable person, thirty years before, would have been likely to foresee the importance the West was to assume in national life by 1830. Probabilities were altogether against it. History and experience could furnish no precedents. All that extremist admirers had dreamed and prophesied had been more than realized.
In this new era there could be little doubt that the subject of land, so vital to the newer sections of the country, would play an all important part. A contemporary authority declared that "the greatest cause of prosperity in the West is the wide extent of good lands open to the reception of emigrants, and the flourishing state of agriculture." In that country the subject of public lands is "a matter of vital interest, and is every day growing in influence, and expanding in magnitude. . . . When the population of a country is thus rapidly increasing, where that increase tends inevitably to a transfer of power from one section of the Union to another, and where the anticipated change is so near at hand, . . . the subject becomes deeply interesting." It is one "calculated to awaken sectional feelings, and upon which, therefore a great deal of opinion may prevail."35 The West hoped and had reason to expect that the Jackson administration would do something for those who were settling the frontier. The subject of land, so vital to the nation and to the newer agricultural sections of the country was bound to play an important role.
In December 1829 Samuel A. Foot, Senator from Connecticut, who had consistently opposed western influences, suggested that an inquiry should be made into the advisability of placing no more public lands upon the market at least for a time.36 He was anxious to know, moreover, if the office of surveyor-general -- the most important administrative office in the General Land Office -- should not be dispensed with.
This challenge was accepted by Benton of Missouri, who exclaimed: "The manufacturers want poor people to do the work for small wages; these poor people wish to go to the West and get land; to have flocks and herds -- to have their own fields, orchards, gardens, and meadows -- their own cribs, barns, and dairies, and to start their children on a theater where they can contend with equal chances for the honors and dignities of the country."37
Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina saw clearly that both the West and the South were fundamentally opposed to the economic policy desired by the North Atlantic States, though for different reasons. The West desired a lower price on public lands, which would mean that eastern manufacturers would have to pay higher wages. The South wanted a lower tariff, which was opposed by the northeastern manufacturers because it would mean increased foreign competition and hence a cut in their profits. Hayne proposed that the South work with the West on a basis of their common enmity toward the Northeast. He gave a clear statement of the case as it pertained to the land question: "On the one side, it is contended that the public land ought to be reserved as a permanent fund for revenue and future distribution among the states; while on the other it is insisted that the whole of these lands of right belong to, and ought to belong to, the states in which they lie."38
The debates might have been resolved into a serious discussion over the principles of distribution and cession had not Daniel Webster moved to the defense of New England. This onetime protagonist of free trade, but now eloquent defender of infant industries and friend of the wealthy manufacturer, Abbott Lawrence, was moved to the defense of certain Hamiltonian interests.39 For five days he discoursed on matters which touched the emotions of the nation. He was successful in turning the debate into a discussion of the nature of the Union and the question whether a state could nullify an act of Congress, as Calhoun had maintained in 1828. But Benton remained quite unconvinced that the interests of the West were compatible with those of New England.
While the Hayne-Webster debate sidetracked the real issues in the Senate, conservative interests in the lower house were making a concerted attempt to push through a distribution bill before the census of 1830 should change the complexion of that chamber. Representative John Test of Indiana, in defense of the new states, asked why Congress should "cram this measure down their throats before they shall have acquired the strength which the new census bill will give them? . . . If we must have a scramble for this property, give us a chance with you -- do not take the advantage of our present representative weakness, when you know we have a large portion of original physical strength just ready to organize and bring into action." James Blair of South Carolina claimed that too many gentlemen were worried about the accumulation of a surplus in the treasury and were already providing for its distribution. All this reminded him, he said, of the story about the hunter who sold the skin before he had killed the bear. He felt that "the friends of stockholding interest" were combining "with the advocates of high protecting duties and the friends of internal improvements, in order to squander away the public funds for selfish and sinister purposes."40
Representative Dixon H. Lewis of Alabama protested that the lands were pledged for the sole purpose of redeeming the public debt. He had yet to learn that it was constitutional for the federal government to enter either the field of internal improvements or education. As for the value of the public lands, he contended that it "has been imparted to them by the industry, enterprise, and sufferings of that hardy population who preceded the comforts and conveniences of a more advanced condition . . . who levelled the forests, who opened the roads, who established the towns, who gave, in fact, a determinate value to all the lands in the country, by converting a wilderness into a country possessing all the comforts of cultivated life." He was opposed to distribution because it would mean continuing the protective tariff. "The Southern states," he continued, "had hoped for some alleviation of their burdens after the payment of the national debt. They had thought that after the necessities of the revenue had ceased, these duties would be taken off. But, sir, the race of politicians who believe that a national debt.is a blessing is not yet extinct. They exist full force in this House."
Representative Spencer Pettis of Missouri exclaimed: "Has it come to this, sir? We have had American systems, antislavery systems, the Lord knows what; and now we are to have an anti-emigration system to cripple the West, and to prevent the poor of the East from going to the West. . . . Do you fear the increased and increasing power of the West?"41
But neither in the Senate nor in the House was a decision reached on either of the principles of distribution or cession. Benton's graduation bill passed the Senate in May 1830, but was tabled in the House. All of the eastern senators north of the Potomac voted against it, but the South and the West pushed it through.42
While Webster and Hayne were proclaiming their love for the West, the frontier forces seized the opportunity to put through Congress a much-cherished piece of legislation. Since the passage of the Act of 1820 the situation of settlers had been serious. The various relief acts of the 1820's enabled many farmers to get rid of lands they could not pay for under their contracts, but this type of legislation did not aid new settlers in the purchase of their lands,"43
The situation in Illinois, which probably had more arable land than any other state in the Union, is a case in point. Ninian Edwards, then governor, was waging a campaign for a more liberal land policy comparable to the fight Benton was making in the Senate. As late as 1829, six-sevenths of the land of this state was still owned by the federal government, which paid no taxes to the state government notwithstanding the fact that every public improvement made by the state government commensurately enhanced the value of the federal lands. The whole quantity of land sold in Illinois up to July 1, 1828, was little over a million acres, which if divided into 160-acre tracts would make around 7,000 such farms. The actual number of votes cast in Illinois in the August election of that year was nearly 17,000. If allowance is made for, say one person in eighteen not voting, then the number of persons entitled to suffrage was at least 18,000. If the land sold had been equally distributed, the number of farms should nearly correspond with the number of voters. The ratio would then be eighteen voters per every seven farms. And when one considers that many farmers owned more than 160 acres, that many men of property in the state owned extensive tracts, and that a great many tracts were held by nonresidents, then the disparity becomes all the more apparent. In other words, fewer than one-third of the voters were freeholders.44 Perhaps one should allow for a small proportion of trades people, professional, etc. If these figures are to be relied upon, somewhere near two-thirds of the population of Illinois were persons who were squatting upon lands belonging to the United States government.
The Illinois governor argued that settlers should be able to possess their lands, "that the government should not hold up its land, that it ought not to sell for a profit, that the land" was held "to the use of such as choose to settle it," that the people had the right to a "reasonable price," and that a price was "not reasonable which the people residing on, or near the land, and anxious to purchase, will not or cannot give."45
From a frontier point of view these settlers on government lands were not squatters. The word "squatter," it was insisted, originally applied to persons who setded upon the unimproved lands of individuals in the older states, with the express intention of acquiring titles by occupancy, or of profiting by defects in the legal titles of the rightful owners. But in Illinois there was no intent to defraud any one. In many regions surveys were lagging far behind the edge of settlement, not because of the difficulty of surveying prairie land but because of congressional slowness in appropriating the necessary money. One can well appreciate the feelings of the frontiersmen when certain New England congressmen, early in 1830, proposed restrictions on surveys and settlement in the West.
The Preemption Act of 1830 was forced through Congress primarily by the alliance of the South and West.46 Under its terms any settler who had migrated to the public domain and had cultivated a tract of land in 1829 was authorized to enter any number of acres up to a maximum of 160 by paying the minimum price of $1.25 per acre.47 Although the act was temporarily in character it nevertheless constituted a general pardon to all inhabitants who had settled illegally. It also served in some respects as a further indulgence to those settlers for whose assistance the relief legislation of the 1820's had been designed. But the act had still more far-reaching significance. Once the government had granted this concession -- preemption -- it was exceedingly difficult to refuse it on later occasions. In practice, therefore, the act encouraged illegal settlement, for settlers immediately took up the best lands they could find and petitioned Congress for preemption. Why not pardon us, they queried, as well as the unlawful settlers of 1830? So in 1832 Congress renewed the Act of 1830, and again in 1834. In fact, as Edward Everett complained in 1835, the preemption bill was coming up as regularly as the annual appropriation bill.48
Another widely celebrated victory for the West was the removal of the Indians beyond the Mississippi. The insatiable desire for Indian lands constituted an embarrassing problem for the national government, a problem that became more alarming as settlement in the late 'twenties again began to spread out into the West. Some observers were beginning to wonder if the total annihilation of the red race was not only a matter of time.49 In 1814 British peace commissioners had proposed the setting aside of an Indian state in the West, but this had been vetoed by the Americans who were convinced that England was more interested in Canada's fur-trading interests than in the fate of the red man.
Major Stephen S. Long's expedition in 1819 into the region beyond Missouri and the pronouncement that the High Plains country was a great desert quite unfit for white men led several high officials of the government to consider it a suitable location for the Indian tribes of the eastern states. John C. Calhoun, then Secretary of War, continued to agitate this plan until finally in 1825 President Monroe recommended it to Congress. The idea was accepted and negotiations began at once with the Plains Indians to prepare the way for the incoming of the eastern tribes.50
But governmental machinery moved too slowly to suit the impatient spirits of the frontier states. The spreading of population into western Georgia and into the Southwest, as well as into Illinois, brought demands that the army remove the Indians at once. The situation in Georgia aroused a controversy of national importance, and did much to ruin Adams' chances for re-election in 1828. This southern state contended that in 1802 when it ceded its claims to western lands the federal government agreed to remove the Indians from its boundaries. After that agreement was made, the federal government had cleared the title of some of the Indian lands, but millions of acres of the best lands still remained in the hands of aborigines. By 1825 the insatiable whites, supported by local public opinion, were breaking in upon these lands from all sides. In the course of the next three years, the governor of Georgia berated the national government for its slowness, and actually defied that authority by ordering the survey of Indian lands. The Cherokees brought suit in the courts. Their case finally went to the United States Supreme Court where Chief Justice John Marshall upheld the Indians in their claims.51
At the opening of Jackson's administration the issue was thus squarely drawn between the federal government and the State of Georgia -- an issue which might easily have resulted in civil war. In Alabama it was estimated that fifteen to twenty thousand persons were quietly settled on Indian lands, and that while several spirited letters passed between the Secretary of War and Governor Gayle the army had not dared to remove these white settlers. It was declared that "all difficulty would probably have been avoided had the national government not succumbed to the will of Georgia in a similar case."52
The situation in Illinois was just as alarming. Governor Ninian Edwards was entirely out of patience with federal policy. The lead mines of the Fever River region of northwestern Illinois brought an influx of white settlers beginning in 1825. The challenge was met by the Indians, and the Winnebago War of 1827 was the result.53 Forts in that region were strengthened, for Governor Edwards was convinced that this was not the end but only the beginning of trouble. He wrote to General Clark on May 25, 1828: "I have only time to ask you whether any, and what, definitive arrangements have been made for removing the Indians. . . . The general government has been applied to long enough. . . . If it declines acting with effect, those Indians will be removed, and that very promptly."54
Such definitive action on the part of frontier states convinced Andrew Jackson that the removal of the Indians should be carried out with all available speed. He struck so suddenly that the Indians had little chance to resist. The problem was so efficiently handled that by 1835 Jackson could proudly declare that the removal process was nearing completion.55 Difficulty was encountered, however, on two fronts. The disturbance in northwestern Illinois, as has already been related, led to the Black Hawk War.56 While it is outside the scope of this book to treat the war itself, it may be noted that in the wake of the United States army flocked settlers ready to take up the most fertile lands. The area between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi and eastern Iowa was cleared of Indian title by treaty, and almost immediately Congress created Iowa and Wisconsin Territories.
The Seminoles of Florida and the Cherokees of western Georgia and eastern Alabama also caused serious trouble, the former by refusing to migrate westward and the latter by procrastinating after having agreed to move. Not until the government threatened force did the Cherokees move. The Seminoles resisted and later embarrassed the Van Buren administration with a costly war. The remnants of the tribe had to be tracked down in the Florida swamps and moved forcibly to the West.57 By 1840, however, the ugly and bloody business of Indian removal was for the most part finished, and millions of acres of rich Indian lands east of the Mississippi had been opened for white settlement. The Indian's only consolation was the promise that the white man would never again disturb him in his habitat. An act of Congress in 1832 created the Bureau of Indian Affairs and another in 1834 set off the region of the High Plains as Indian Country. The government's interest for the red man appeared to be sincere but scarcely was the permanent Indian frontier established than white settlers were cutting across it on their way to Oregon.
As soon as the title to these rich Indian lands was cleared there immediately arose a strong demand for surveying these areas and opening them to settlement. From 1830 to 1834 the Commissioner of the General Land Office complained of lack of sufficient appropriations to carry on the surveys. The establishment of more local land offices also became necessary. The Land Commissioner pointed out that if surveys kept abreast of the line of settlement and there were a sufficient number of land offices, there would be no need for preemption. Intruders and trespassers could then be left "to the local tribunals of justice for such relief as they may be entitled to on any principle of legal right or equitable jurisdiction."58
By 1831, with the increase in sales due to augmented immigration from Europe, pressure on the land office was greater than had been expected. At the beginning of the new administration in 1829, the business of the office was four years in arrears. One would think, the Land Commissioner pointed out, that a business which concerned three millions of people in the Mississippi Valley certainly deserved more attention from Congress.59 The pressure became even greater when by Act of April 5, 1832, Congress provided for the survey of lands in as small tracts as forty acres -- otherwise known as quarter-quarter sections.60
Finally after 1832 Congress responded by making special appropriations. This action so much encouraged the Land Commissioner that he took steps toward certain important administrative reforms. He called attention to the propriety and necessity of keeping the land-office documents in fireproof bags. Also he asked for an appropriation to be applied toward collecting and compiling the statutes of the state legislatures and the adjudicated decisions, which were vitally important in the conduct of business in the General Land Office.61 The Act of March 2, 1833, provided for the appointment of a secretary to sign patents in the name of the President. In fact by 1834 much progress in the solution of administrative problems was evident: surveys were progressing nicely, additional land offices had been created, and many additional clerks had been hired to handle the details of business. In fact, an administrative setup had been established which would be able to handle the unprecedented land purchases of 1835-36.
The question of the public lands policy of the Jackson administration came to a head in 1832. On March 22, a combination of western and southern interests referred certain measures on tariffs and public lands to the Committee on Manufactures of which Henry Clay was chairman. Clay discerned the motive which prompted the action and wrote to F. T. Brook as follows:
"You will have seen the disposition made on Thursday last of my resolution respecting the tariff. On that occasion some developments were made of a scheme which I have long since suspected -- that certain portions of the South were disposed to purchase support [for] . . . the anti-tariff doctrines by a total sacrifice of the public lands to states within which they are situated! A more stupendous, and a more flagitious project was never conceived! It will fail in its object; but it ought to be denounced. A majority of the Senate referred a resolution concerning public lands to the Committee of Manufactures! Can you conceive a more incongruous association of subjects? The first object has been suggested. The second was to affect me personally by placing me in a situation in which I must report unfavorably to the western and southwestern states which are desirous of possessing themselves of the public lands. I think I shall disappoint the design, by presenting such news of that great interest as will be sustained by the nation."62
The report of the Committee on Manufactures thereupon presented some strong arguments against reducing the price of public lands and contended that the briskness of the land sales was evidence that the prices were not too high.63 A reduction, said the committee, would be a pernicious tendency toward the accumulation of large quantities of land by speculators, as had happened with military bounty lands. This would operate unjustly and injuriously to the government and to former purchasers. Since the proceeds from the sales of public lands would no longer be wanted for ordinary revenues, which were to be abundantly supplied from imports, the committee proposed to distribute the proceeds among the states according to their federal representation in Congress after 10 per cent had been deducted for the new states. The states could apply the funds to education, internal improvements, colonization of free Negroes, or redemption of debts.64 A number of the older western states immediately began counting their chickens not yet hatched. "The amount received annually" under Mr. Clay's plan, calculated the editor of the Steubenville Herald, together "with the income from the public lands now owned by Ohio, would pay the entire interest of the canal debt for the said five years. And if the net income of the canals should be equal only to the support of the state government, the people of Ohio might be relieved altogether from state tax."65
Benton was convinced that the protective tariff and distribution interests were working hand in hand against strengthening of the power of the federal government over that of the states.66 The Committee on Public Lands immediately challenged the right of the Committee on Manufactures to deal with the subject of public lands. The Land Committee after study of the subject presented a report refuting every point of the Manufactures Committee report, challenging the principle of distribution, and favoring the idea of cession.67 It urged that the price of public lands be reduced for the two-fold purpose of diminishing the amount of revenue derived from the sales thereof and of placing within reach of every man, however poor, the opportunity to acquire a home for his family. Much attention was devoted to the effects upon the western states of annually withdrawing so much money from the West and expending it in other portions of the country. Congress, the report concluded, "should retain the unrestricted control of the public domain.... National legislation over the same should be guarded by a policy which shall regard it rather as a means to build up flourishing communities, than as a source of revenue to the general government or of wealth to the individual states."68
Jackson, fresh from the victory over Clay in the election of 1832, stepped into the controversy at this point. The times were threatening. Sectional lines had been drawn upon every national issue. South Carolina had just nullified the tariff law of 1832, thus threatening the integrity of national authority. The President himself in his attack on the National Bank had contributed to the feeling of West against East, and of class against class. Sectionalism was driving the nation to the brink of civil war.
While the land question was not as serious as the tariff and bank issues, nevertheless Congress spent just as much, perhaps more, time on it than on the other issues. It was not surprising then that a considerable part of Jackson's message to Congress was devoted to this problem. "The wealth and strength of a country," declared the President, "are in its population, and the best part of that population are the cultivators of the soil. Independent farmers are everywhere the basis of society, and the true friends of liberty." The public lands should "be sold to settlers in limited parcels, at a price barely sufficient to reimburse to the United States the expense of the present system, and the cost arising under our Indian compacts.... It is desirable, however, that, in convenient time, ... the right of the soil, and the future disposition of it, be surrendered to the States, respectively, in which it lies."69 The population of the West, he went on, besides contributing its equal share in taxation under the tariff system, had also paid into the Treasury a large portion of forty million dollars, of which sum only a very small part was spent in the western country.
As for distribution, he reminded the old states that it was labor alone that gave real value to the lands, and that he could not favor a system of distributing proceeds among states which had not originally any claim to them, and which had enjoyed the original emolument arising from the sale of their own lands. Nor would the new states be likely to remain contented with the present policy after the payment of the public debt. In order "to avert the consequences which may be apprehended from this cause, to stop forever all partial and interested legislation on this subject, and to afford every American citizen of enterprise the opportunity of receiving an independent free-hold," it seemed to Jackson "best to abandon the idea of raising future revenue out of public funds."70
Nevertheless, the conservative forces, aware of the rupture in the South and West alliance, passed Clay's distribution bill. The measure passed the Senate in December, and was finally approved in the House by a vote of 95 to 39. Calhoun denounced the bill in no uncertain terms. To denationalize public funds, he declared, was not only dangerous but unconstitutional. Might not distribution be applied to taxes and tariff duties as well as to proceeds from public lands ? He suggested the calling of a convention of the states to decide the matter, though he felt that the prejudices of the time were too strong to permit wise action on the subject. Clay in reply opposed postponement and the calling of a convention of the states.71
The distribution bill passed too late in the session, however, to escape Jackson's pocket veto. In his message the following December the President gave his reasons for the veto. He declared that distribution would come to mean federal aid for internal improvements, which he considered unconstitutional; that it meant creating a surplus with the danger that the tariff might be used for this purpose. He reiterated his stand of the previous December that the timely interest of the new states "consists in the rapid settling and improvement of the waste lands within their limits. As a means of hastening these grants, they have long been looking to a reduction in the price of lands upon the final payment of the national debt. The effect of the proposed system would be to prevent that reduction."72 Clay very angrily termed Jackson's action unconstitutional as well as disrespectful to the Senate of the United States.73