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State Policy and the Public Domain: The Ohio Canal Lands*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2011
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One of the principal sectional issues in nineteenth-century American politics related to Federal subsidies for major transportation facilities in the territories and newer western states. Not unreasonably, western political and business leaders contended that tax revenues in newly settled areas were insufficient to support the cost of large-scale public transport projects. Road and canal facilities were essential to regional economic development, declared a Cincinnati editor in 1824; yet “the Western states … are too poor, too exhausted, to engage in those public works.” The states recently admitted to the Union, he asserted, required “the fostering aid of the nation.” But appeals for such aid ran into a bedeviling series of political and financial obstacles. First, military expenditures during the War of 1812 and the legacy of war debt drained the Federal Treasury of surplus funds. Then, Jeffersonian “strict constructionists,” notably Presidents Madison and Monroe, questioned on constitutional grounds the propriety of an active Federal role in transport development. Underlying the tortured constitutional debates was a basic sectional conflict, which posed the eastern and southern states (some of which had been supplicants themselves for Federal aid a few years earlier) against the claims of the West. Of all the major western demands for Federal patronage, the National Road was virtually the only project approved before 1824.
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References
1 Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette (Cincinnati), Feb. 6, 1824. See also Sears, Alfred B., Thomas Worthington, Father of Ohio Statehood (Columbus: Ohio Historical Society, 1958), pp. 124 ffGoogle Scholar.
2 Nettels, Curtis P., “The Mississippi Valley and the Constitution,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XI, No. 3 (Dec. 1924), 341–51Google Scholar; Goodrich, Carter, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800–1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 19–48Google Scholar; Hill, Forest G., Roads, Rails, and Waterways: The Army Engineers and Early Transportation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1957), pp. 37–56Google Scholar.
3 U. S. Congress, Register of Debates, 19th Cong., 2d Sess. (1827), pp. 310–12, 318–19, 338, 1511.
4 Rae, John B., “Federal Land Grants in Aid of Canals,” the Journal of Economic History, IV, No. 2 (Nov. 1944), 168–70Google Scholar. See also Orfield, Matthias N., Federal Land Grants to the States (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1915), pp. 90–97Google Scholar.
5 Rae, Journal of Economic History, IV, 170. The floating grant, which deviated entirely from the “prudent proprietor” principle, was obtained as the result of jockeying between the Jackson and the Adams forces to put themselves on record in favor of western internal improvements. See Nettels, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XI, 338; also Ohio State Journal (Columbus), July 21 and 25, 1828.
6 My statistics for the Ohio grants agree with those in Rae, Journal of Economic History, IV, 170, except that he estimates the Wabash and Erie grant as only 265,815 acres. Rae's source excluded from the Wabash and Erie total the lands granted under an act of 1855 (U. S., Statutes at Large, X [1855], 634) which ceded selections long in dispute between the state and the U. S. General Land Office. My statistics are those shown on manuscript “Map of Northwestern Ohio Showing the Lands Granted by the United States” (1893), a copy of which is in the state archives, Ohio Historical Society, Columbus; they accord with acreage of grants given in Bogart, Ernest L., Internal Improvements and State Debt in Ohio (New York: Longmans, Green, 1924), pp. 36–37Google Scholar.
7 The counties are Williams, Fulton, Defiance, Henry, Lucas, Wood, Paulding, Putnam, Van Wert, Allen, Mercer, Auglaize, and Shelby. At the time of the 1830 census, population density in this thirteen-county area was only 1.4 inhabitants per square mile.
8 U. S., Statutes at Large, IV (1850), 393, 716.
9 Computed from map cited in fn. 6.
10 U. S., Statutes at Large, V (1848), 261; Elijah Hayward to Thomas Van Home, June 11, 1833, Dossier of Correspondence and Land Schedules Pertaining to the Miami Canal, Ohio, in General Land Office Record Group 49, National Archives (hereafter cited Miami Canal Dossier).
11 See works cited by Rae, in Journal of Economic History, IV, 167 fns. For a broader approach, however, see Gates's, Paul W. introduction to The John Tipton Papers (3 vols.; Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Bureau, 1942), I, 1–53Google Scholar.
12 Jacob Bumet to Gov. Trimble, July 9, 1828, in Canal Lands Letter File, State Auditor's Office, Columbus. Statements regarding land locations based upon map cited in fn. 6.
13 Governor's message in Ohio State Journal (Columbus), Dec. 4, 1828.
14 Report of debates in ibid., Jan. 28, 1829. Roll call of vote given in Ohio General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1828–29, p. 291.
15 Laws of Ohio: Acts of a General Nature, XXVII (1829), 55. (This source cited hereafter L. O.) An amendment in 1830 (L. O., XXVIII, 59) exempted from taxes for five years after sale all canal lands purchased from the state. The district receivers and registers of the two Federal land offices in western Ohio were appointed to serve in identical capacities for sale of the state lands; undoubtedly a convenience to purchasers of public lands, this action enhanced the district officers' power to engage in insider operations. Apparently they, did not neglect the opportunity. (See Piqua [Ohio] Gazette, Nov. 9, Nov. 16, and Dec. 7, 1833.)
16 The 40-acre maximum was established by L. O. XXXI (1833), 20. On construction as a stimulus to sales, see Robert Young to Gov. Robert Lucas, Apr. 15, 1833, and William Barber to Lucas, Dec. 20, 1833, Official Governors' Papers, Ohio Historical Society.
17 All statistics and conclusions relating to land sales are based upon examination of state land-office entry books (mss.) for Tiffin and Piqua offices, Records Room, State Auditor's Office, Columbus; and tax-entry books (mss.) by county, Ohio State Archives, Ohio Historical Society.
18 On Cory's speculations, see Winter, James F., A History of Northwest Ohio (3 vols.; New York: Lewis Publishing Co., 1917), I, 441, 468Google Scholar; on Perkins' relations with various eastern partners, with whom he shared equally in land purchases, see Elisha Whittlesey to Joseph Wakeman, Aug. 17, 1835, Whittlesey Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society (Cleveland); on the Hicks Land Company, see Knapp, H. S., History of the Maumee Valley (Toledo, 1876), pp. 422–23Google Scholar; and Warner, Beers & Co., History of Defiance County, Ohio (Chicago, 1883)Google Scholar, passim.
19 Many of the selections made by speculators named in the text have been identified as among the best lands owned by the state. (Comparison of entries with original plat books, in Records Room, State Auditor's Office.) For disposition of 2,100 acres of Ohio Canal lands in the Maumee Valley, see Ohio General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1835–36, pp. 343–46.
20 Sales of Federal lands were given in General Land Office annual reports as: 551,154 acres in 1833; 478,847 in 1834; 661,436 in 1835; 1,282,992 in 1836; and 470,420 in 1837. For annual Ohio Federal land-sale receipts, see Smith, Walter B. and Cole, Arthur H., Fluctuations in American Business, 1790–1860 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), p. 55, Chart 13Google Scholar.
21 L. O., XXX (1832), 14. The law further specified that any tolls collected on the canal at ports above Dayton would be credited to the special fund.
22 Commissioner G. Graham to T. Van Home, Sept. 28, 1828, Miami Canal Dossier.
23 U. S., Statutes at Large, IV, 393. This act also relieved Ohio of the requirement, in the 1828 law, to complete the canal by 1848.
24 The 1828 grant had not specified whether the state should receive odd- or even-numbered sections in the alternate-section pattern. The commissioners decided on the even-numbered sections and this was acceptable to the General Land Office. My description of locations is based upon map cited in fn. 6. The total amount of land selected included 142,005 acres in the Cincinnati Federal District, of which only about 15,000 acres were alternate-section lands; and 284,732 acres in the Piqua district, where 148,506 acres were alternate sections. Subsequent adjustments (including cessions to the state in lieu of Section 16 school lands, which already had been granted) brought the total Miami Canal grant to 438,301 acres. (Ohio General Assembly, House Journal, 1837–38, pp. 78–87; H. Garard et al. to E. Hayward, June 19, 1832, Peyton Symmes to Hayward, Sept. 15, 1834, Van Home to Hayward, May 30, 1834, Miami Canal Dossier.)
25 General Land Office Commissioner Hayward declared that the state had no legal claim to any Miami Canal lands selected, since the 1831 Ohio law authorizing construction of the Extension Canal included an explicit disclaimer against commitment of any funds other than land-sale proceeds. In Hayward's view, Congress had voted to aid construction, not to finance it completely without any expenditure by the state (Hayward to Symmes and Van Home, June 18, 1832, Lucas to Hayward, Jan. 1, 1833, and reply, Feb. 2, 1833, Miami Canal Dossier).
26 Of 1,005 tracts sold, only nineteen were taken by out-of-state residents, whereas more than half of total sales were to residents of three southwestern Ohio counties. (Broadside, Nov. 26, 1833, in Official Governors' Papers; confirmed by reference to land-sale entry books.)
27 Under pressure from western Ohio residents, the state assembly in Jan. 1834 repealed the objectionable proviso of the 1831 authorization act. The press of business in the understaffed General Land Office caused further delay, and formal cession of the Miami Canal lands was not made until Oct. 1834. (Lucas to R. B. Taney, Jan. 20, 1834, and Hayward to Lucas, Oct. 8, 1834, Miami Canal Dossier.)
28 For a Federal district land officer's comments on the plenitude of petty speculators in northwest Ohio, see Joseph Larwill to E. Whittlesey, Apr. 9, 1836, Whittlesey Papers.
29 U. S. Congress, Senate Documents, 23d Cong., 1st Sess. (1832), No. 439, pp. 144–46; Governor of Ohio, Report on the Valuation of the State Canal Lands (Dec. 17, 1838; Columbus, n. d.), pp. 64–65. Though the latter report was made in 1838, no sales had been made since March 1836.
30 Laws of Ohio: Acts of a Local Nature, XXXIV (1836), 640Google Scholar. (This source cited hereafter as L. O. L.) Also, State of Ohio, Executive Documents, 1836–37, No. 1, p. 15.
31 Ohio General Assembly, House Journal, 1838–39, Appendix, pp. 152–54. Percentages of land sold in each Federal district are computed from ibid., 1837–38, pp. 78–87.
32 Memorial dated Dec. 1, 1837, in U. S. Congress, Senate Documents, 25th Cong., 2d Sess. (1838), No. 52, pp. 1–3.
33 For example, Richard L. Power, Planting Cornbelt Culture (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1953). The only studies which I have encountered that give even passing attention to canal-land administration as a retardative influence are Rae, Journal of Economic History, IV, 174; and Kaatz, Martin R., “The Black Swamp,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, XLV, No. 1 (Mar. 1955), 21–22Google Scholar. The latter has valuable maps of population change.
34 Indiana Canal Commission to Hayward, Mar. 8, 1833, in Records of the Wabash and Erie Canal Grant, Box 91, Division “F” of General Land Office Record Group 49, National Archives, Washington, D. C. (hereafter cited Wabash-Erie Records); William Duane to Hayward, June 14, 1833, ibid.
35 Knapp, pp. 557–58; Weatherford, John W., “The Short Life of Manhattan, Ohio,” Ohio Historical Quarterly, LXV, No. 4 (Oct. 1956), 376–82Google Scholar. See also Davis, Harold E., “Elisha Whittlesey and Maumee Land Speculation, 1834–1840,” Historical Society of Northwest Ohio Quarterly Bulletin, XV, No. 3 (July 1943), 139–58Google Scholar.
36 Ohio General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1833–34, pp. 11–12; John E. Hunt to Lucas, Dec. 16, 1833, and M. T. Williams to Lucas, Nov. 25, 1833, Official Governors' Papers.
37 Act of 3 March 1834, copy in Wabash-Erie Records. The act provided for auction sales lasting no longer than one week; within six months afterwards, at the governor's discretion, the lands were to be placed on sale at private entry.
38 U. S., Statutes at Large, IV, 716. McCarthy's Village Reservation and a fourmile-square reservation, both located directly on Maumee Bay, had been set aside for the Ottawa Indians by treaties of 1807 and 1817; the two tracts were acquired by treaty in 1833, the Indians being paid one dollar per acre, with 2,560 acres granted as allotments to tribal leaders. The other two reservations were known as the Six Mile Square and Three Mile Square tracts. Located near Wolf Rapids, they were acquired by treaty in 1831. On this subject, see Klopfenstein, Carl, “Removal of the Indians from Ohio” (unpublished dissertation, Western Reserve University, 1955)Google Scholar; and Royce, Charles C., “Indian Land Cessions of the United States,”in Bureau of American Ethnology, 18th Annual Report(Washington,1899), p. 748, plate 50 and passimGoogle Scholar.
39 Benjamin Tappan to Indiana Canal Commission, July 20, 1835, Ohio Canal Commission Papers, Ohio State Archives.
40 Lucas to E. A. Brown, Sept. 16, 1836, Wabash-Erie Records; E. A. Brown to Alexander McConnell, Sept. 20, 1836, Canal Commission Papers; Weatherford, Ohio Historical Quarterly, LXV, 381.
41 Brown to Lucas, Oct. 7, 1836, Wabash-Erie Records. This ruling also awarded Ohio only those sections lying in their entirety within five miles of the canal line; fractional sections were not ceded. The U. S. Attorney General reversed this ruling in 1840, and Ohio was granted the disputed fractional sections. (Opinion of H. D. Gilpin, June 26, 1840, ibid.)
42 Ohio General Assembly, House Journal, 1836–37, Appendix, pp. 1–71. In the case of the Wabash and Erie grant, Ohio selected odd-numbered sections within the alternate-section pattern; those even-numbered sections not taken as lieu lands were reserved for sale at $2.50 per acre by the Federal Government.
43 Broadside announcement of sales, Sept. 24, 1836, Ohio Historical Society; Lucas to General Land Office, Oct. 19, Nov. 29, 1836, Wabash-Erie Records.
44 Ohio General Assembly, House Journal, 1836–37, Appendix, pp. 1–71.
45 The others were Horace Pease and Edward Sturges of Ohio, and John Andrews and James Robinson of New Jersey. (From Defiance Land Office entry books, 1836, State Auditor's Office, Records Room.)
46 Ohio General Assembly, House Journal, 1836–37, Appendix, p. 20.
47 Appraisals were said to range from 10 to 50 per cent of current market value. (ibid.)
48 L. O., XXXVI (1838), 85. To avoid recurrence of fraud, the law ended the system of private entry, providing for land sales at auction only and prohibiting purchases by state officers connected with land administration. The floating-grant lands were not affected, but only 7,000 acres remained unsold.
49 L. O., XL (1842), 72. On state finances and issue of scrip, see Bogart, p. 68. The new law reinstituted sales by private entry but provided that land offices be closed from Nov. 15 to May 15 each year to aid actual settlers.
50 Lima Land Office entry books, State Auditor's Office, Records Room; Ohio Auditor of State, Annual Report, 1842, p. 32. All sales made in 1842 and most made in 1843 were paid for in scrip. Contractors on the canals paid scrip to laborers and suppliers, and the scrip circulated at 50 to 60 per cent discount in 1842. (Bogart, p. 177.)
51 L. O., XLI (1843), 25. There was one large purchaser of note, Daniel Chase of Toledo, who bought 4,130 acres of Wabash and Erie lands in 1844 and 1845. (Perrysburg Land Office entry books, State Auditor's Office, Records Room.) Chase had been involved in the 1836 Perrysburg auction scandal. See also Gates, Paul W., “Tenants of the Log Cabin,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XLIX, No. 1 (June 1962), 29Google Scholar.
52 Lima (Ohio) Reporter, Dec. 29, 1846.
53 ibid., Nov. 11, 1845.
54 John J. Ackennan in ibid., Dec. 29, 1846. A local Democratic candidate for the legislature declared in 1845 that the canal lands should be reappraised at low prices and sold only to actual settlers (ibid., Sept. 30, 1845). See also Ohio Statesman (Columbus), Jan. 24, 1842; Kalida (Ohio) Venture, Sept. 5, 1851, and May 20, 1853; and Holt, Edgar A., Party Politics in Ohio, 1840–1850 (Columbus: Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society, 1931), pp. 329–31, 403, 422–23Google Scholar.
55 L. O., XLV (1847), 31. Nonsettlers and those wishing to purchase more than 160 acres would still pay the appraised price. Approximately 127,000 acres of Miami Canal lands and 148,000 acres, of the Wabash and Erie grant were affected by the new law. (State of Ohio, Executive Documents, 1846–47, Pt. I, pp. 637–39; Ohio General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1846–47, pp. 420–24.
56 L. O., XLVI (1848), 54.
57 ibid., XLVIII (1850), 92; ibid., L (1852), 180; ibid., LI (1853), 293; ibid., LII (1854), 120. On the use of dummy entrymen by speculators, see Ohio General Assembly, Senate Journal, 1852, pp. 418–19. Examination of manuscript entry books reveals that nearly every purchaser after March 1847 filed the settler's affidavit, but numerous entries are in names of known speculators; until 1854 man and wife (in some cases, children as well) filed entries in many instances for adjoining tracts. In 1853, a major scandal occurred when the land commissioner conspired with five speculators to purchase with settlers' discounts 5,500 acres of land under an oversight (quickly corrected) in the 1852 land law, which had omitted the 160-acre maximum-purchase provision. But the sales were disallowed. (On this issue, see Report of the Joint Select Committee [Ohio General Assembly] to Examine into Alleged Frauds at the Defiance Land Office [Henry, Ohio, 1853]; Kalida Venture, Aug. 19, 1853.)
58 The state had taken most of the dry land in the Maumee region as part of its lieu-land or floating-grant selections.
59 L. O. L., XLVII (1849), 397. An act of 1855 (U. S., Statutes at Large, X, 634) ceded all disputed canal-land selections to the state.
60 Alan Latty to Salmon P. Chase, Feb. 18, 1856, Swamp Land Letter File, State Auditor's Office; Latty to Governor Dennison, June 26, 1860, Land Records File, Charles Wetmore Papers, Ohio Historical Society.
61 Ohio General Assembly, House Journal, 1883, pp. 911–13. The land-grant acts of 1828 also helped to foster confidence in Ohio's credit standing among potential eastern investors, thus aiding in sale of state canal bonds. (E. A. Brown to Alfred Kelley, Aug. 7, 1828, Canal Commission Papers.)
62 “History and Appraisal of U. S. Land Policy to 1862,” Land Use Policy and Problems in the United States, ed. Ottoson, Howard (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963), p. 21Google Scholar.
63 And then it was with disastrous results, for it led to the Defiance frauds of 1853 (seefn. 57).
64 This is not to say that the governors were uniformly innocent in their personal dealings in canal lands. In 1840, for example, Gov. Wilson Shannon was discovered to have obtained some 4,000 acres of Federal reserved lands at the $1.25 price, with aid of district land officers, after the lands officially had been withdrawn from entry. The purchase was disallowed. (“The State of Ohio in acct. with the U. S.,” ms. memorandum, 1841, Miami Canal Dossier.)
65 Ohio General Assembly, House Journal, 1883, pp. 911–13; J. W. Riley to W. Bebb, Feb. 12, 1847, Wetmore Papers.
66 These records are in the Alfred Edgerton Papers, Ohio Historical Society. Edgerton was buying land in small parcels as late as 1850, but it is clear that nearly all the land tabulated here was purchased in 1835–36. (Based on examination of tax-entry books for Williams and Defiance counties.)
67 One local historian asserted that the Hicks speculation did not prove profitable: Slocum, Charles E., History of the Maumee River Basin (Indianapolis: Bowen and Slocum, 1905), p. 539Google Scholar.
68 Gordon, John, ed., “The Michigan Land Rush in 1836,” Michigan History, XLIII, No. 1 (Mar. 1959), 39–40Google Scholar. Further corroboration is provided by the record of William P. Greene's sales of land in Williams County. A Connecticut man, Greene acquired extensive property located in the northwest portion of the county, nearly all of it originally purchased in the mid thirties from the Federal land offices. During the years 1847–53, Greene sold about 5,800 acres at prices ranging from $2.50 to $3.00 per acre, plus interest on credit sales. In 1852, a slow year, Greene's agent informed him that the best farmland in the region was selling for only $2.00 per acre. This comment points up the fact that the $2.50 price on Federal reserved lands (including much wet land) was relatively high, just as settlers in the region claimed. (Calvin Ackley to Gardiner Greene, Oct. 27, 1852, Greene Papers, New York Public Library. Computations of land sales from business records, ibid.)
69 The thirteen counties are listed in fn. 7. All computations relating to tax valuations from Ohio Auditor of State, Annual Reports.
70 Population and data on land in farms from U. S. Seventh Census (1850) and Eighth Census (1860); acreage of land taxed from Ohio Auditor of State, Annual Reports.
71 The three counties are Henry, Paulding, and Mercer. On distribution of unsold canal lands in 1847, see State of Ohio, Executive Documents, 1847–48, Pt. II, pp. 94 ff. See also fns. 52 and 53, preceding.
72 On road construction in the northwest region, see Slocum, pp. 583 ff.; on drainage, Meyer, H. P., Atlas and History of Auglaize County (Wapakoneta, Ohio, 1917), p. 84Google Scholar; and other county atlases and histories. For a discussion of problems of instituting drainage in a wetland region similarly affected by heavy land speculation, see Gates, Paul W., “Land Policy and Tenancy in the Prairie Counties of Indiana,” Indiana Magazine of History, XXXV, No. 1 (Mar. 1939), 21–22Google Scholar.