Local History Website of the SMSU Department of History

Thomas Hart Benton,  The Public Lands—Their Proper Dispositions (excerpts)

I do not know how old, or rather, how young I was, when I first took up the notion that sales of land by a government to its own citizens, and to the highest bidder, was false policy; and that gratuitous grants to actual settlers was the true policy, and their labor the true way of extracting national wealth and strength from the soil. It might have been in childhood, when reading the Bible, and seeing the division of the promised land among the children of Israel: it might have been later, and in learning the operation of the feudal system in giving lands to those who would defend them: it might have been in early life in Tennessee, in seeing the fortunes and respectability of many families derived from the 640 acre head-rights which the State of North Carolina had bestowed upon the first settlers.

When I came to the Territory of Missouri in 1815, and saw land exposed to sale to the highest bidder, and lead mines and salt springs reserved from sale, and rented out for the profit of the federal treasury, I felt repugnance to the whole system, and determined to make war upon it whenever I should have the power. The time came round with my election to the Senate of the United States in 1820: and the years 1824, '26, and '28, found me doing battle for an ameliorated system of disposing of our public lands; and with some success. I resolved to move against the whole system, and especially in favor of graduated prices, and donations to actual and destitute settlers: I did so in a bill, renewed annually for a long time; and in speeches which had more effect upon the public mind than upon the federal legislation counteracted as my plan was by schemes of dividing the public lands, of the money arising from their sale, among the States.

[When the settler cultivates the land,] ... the improved condition of the land enables him to pay taxes, and consume durable goods, and to sell the products which command the imports which pay duties to the government, and this is the "well-regulated revenue"   which comes through the course of circulation, and through the "political secretions" of the State, and … commends [itself] above all revenue derived from the sale of lands.

The whole annual receipts from land sales at this time (1850) are about two millions of dollars: the annual receipts from customs, founded almost entirely upon the direct productions of the earth, exceed fifty millions of dollars! giving a comparative difference of twenty-five to one cultivation over sales …. I have looked up respective amounts of federal revenue, into the treasury from these two sources [since the] establishment of the federal government; and the customs to have yielded, in that fraction over one thousand millions net--the lands to have yielded a little less than a hundred and thirty millions gross, not 1 millions clear after paying all expenses of its sales and management. This is a difference of twenty-five to one--with the further difference of endless future production from one, and no future production from the land once that is to say, the same acre of land is for ever through cultivation, and pays for itself in purchase. 

… These Atlantic States were donations from the British crown; and the great proprietors distributed out of their possessions with a free and generous hand. A few shillings for a hundred acres, a nominal quitrent, and gifts of a 

hundred, five hundred, and a thousand acres, to actual settlers: such were the  terms on which they dealt out the soil which is now covered by a nation of freemen. Provinces which now form sovereign States, were sold from hand to hand, for a less sum than the federal government now demand for an area of two miles square.

I quoted the example of all nations, ancient and modern, republican and monarchical, in favor of giving lands, in parcels suitable to their wants, to meritorious cultivators; and denied that there was an instance upon earth, except that of our own federal government, which made merchandise of land to its citizens--exacted the highest price it could obtain--and refused to suffer the country to be settled until it was paid for. The "promised land " was divided among the children or Israel--the women getting a share where there was no man at the head of the family with the daughters of Manasseh. All the Atlantic States, when British colonies, were settled upon gratuitous donations, or nominal sales. Kentucky and Tennessee were chiefly settled in the same way. The two Floridas, and Upper and Lower Louisiana, were gratuitously distributed by the kings of Spain to settlers, in quantities adapted to their means of cultivation--and with the whole vacant domain to select from according to their pleasure. Land is now given to settlers in Canada; and £ 30,000 sterling, has been voted at a single session of Parliament, to aid emigrants in their removal to these homes, and commencing life upon them.

The new States of the West were the sufferers by this federal land policy. They were in a different condition from other States. In these others, the local legislatures held the primary disposal of the soil, so much as remained vacant within their limits, and being of the same community, made equitable alienations among their constituents. In the new States it was different. The federal government held the primary disposition of the soil; and the majority of Congress (being independent of the people of these States), was less  heedful of their wants and wishes. They were as a stepmother, instead of a natural mother: and the federal government being sole purchaser from foreign nations, and sole recipient of Indian cessions, it became the monopolizer of vacant lands of the West: and this monopoly, like all monopolies, resulted in hardships to those upon whom it acted. Few, or none of our public men, had raised their voice against this hard policy before I came into the national councils. My own was soon raised there against it: and it is certain that a great amelioration has taken place in our federal land policy during my time: and that the sentiment of Congress, and that of the public generally, has become much more liberal in land alienations; and is approximating towards the beneficent systems of the rest of the world. But the members in Congress from the new States should not intermit their exertions, nor vary their policy; and should fix their eyes steadily upon the period of the speedy extinction of the federal title to all the lands within the limits of their respective States; to be effected by. Preemption rights, by donations, and by the sale (of so much as shall be sold), at graduated prices- adapted to the different qualities of the tracts, to be estimated according to the time it has remained in market unsold--and by liberal grants to objects of general improvement, both national and territorial.

Excerpt from “The Public Lands—Their Proper Dispositions,” in Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View (NY: D. Appleton and Company, 1854) 1:102-107.