The Public Lands
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THE PUBLIC LANDS.
Complaint is rife as to the difficulty bona fide emigrants to the West have in obtaining a share in the public domain. So many millions have been lavished on railroad companies, and so many more have been monopolished by speculators, that comparatively little remains for the Industrious settler.
The public lands of Ohio are gone. The public lands of Indiana are gone. The ten-shilling lands of Illinois are gone. Those in Wisconsin are gone, well up to the line of rocky, cold, and wet soil which girts the mineral district of Lake Superior. There are said to be no public lands subject to entry in the State of Iowa. Pre-emptors by thousands march across her border into Southern Minnesota. It is stated that from the bend in the St. Peter’s River way to the Missouri, every “extra claim” is taken up.
The crowding, contention, and crushing to gain admittance to the late land sale at the Osage office, in Iowa, resulted in severe accidents to several persons, and more than a thousand claimants were compelled to turn away without gaining admission.
The flood of emigration westward, we are inclined to think, will be largely diverted from the new Free States into Missouri, of the fertility of the unsettled portions of which the St. Louis Democrat is publishing the most fascinating accounts. The effect of this will be to heighten and intensify the emancipation movement in the State, to which Col. Benton1 appears at last to have given in his adhesion. There is therefore every probability that even those of us who are advanced in years may live to see Missouri take her place alongside of Kansas in the list of Free States.
Notes:
1. NEED TO RE-WRITE ANNOTATION FOR "Col. Benton" [back]