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Land Warrants

Source: Map Guide to American Migration Routes: 1735-1815
Ed. by William Dollarhide and Brad Steuart. Heritage Quest, April 1997.

"After the French-Indian War of 1754-1763, France relinquished its claims to the great Mississippi and Ohio valleys. These areas now belonged solely to the British. The Mississippi River became the undisputed boundary between British and Spanish territory.

Britain surprised its American colonies with the Proclamation Line of 1763 which took away from the colonies the right to grant lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. In fact, the King's proclamation prohibited colonials from crossing the line at all. All land west of the Proclamation Line of 1763 was declared "Indian Hunting Grounds." However, the next decade was to lead to the American Revolution and the reversal of British policies in regards to western expansion and relations with the American Indians.

After the Revolutionary War and the creation of an American government, expansion into the western regions became a matter of national policy. The losers were the Indians who had supported the British during the war. For the next 100 years the American policy towards the Indians became one of "Manifest Destiny," the self-proclaimed right of the United States to take possession of the continent by whatever means possible.

A Federal Land Grab?

The Manifest Destiny of the United States to expand from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean began at the very beginning of its existence as a nation. The Continental Congress of the United States began the process with the Ordinance of 1787, which was the original law providing for the creation of all new territories and states.

The national plan for expansion was part of ratifying the Constitution of the United States. The thirteen states were not only agreeing to the creation of a new Federal Government, they were giving up their claims to their western lands. Conflicting claims based on the Royal Charters of the original colonies were eliminated when the states of Virginia, Massachusetts, and Connecticut ceded their western lands to the US Government. All three of these states had laid claim to the same area. By ceding their western claims, that issue was forever ended. In 1787 these lands became the Northwest territory.....(15)

...All of these ceded western lands became the "public domain" with ownership in the hands of the Federal Government....Outside of a few customs fees and duties, the new Federal Government had no source of revenue. There were no federal taxes to run the government, no personal taxes, not even business taxes. For the first decade of its existence, the Federal Government was financed entirely by subsidies from the governments of each of the thirteen states.

The states gave up millions of acres of their western lands willingly for a very simple reason. As a landowner, the Federal Government would have a source of revenue by selling off land and the states could stop subsidizing this new federal monster they had created. As it turned out, land sales by the US Government were to provide enough revenue to run the Federal Government for the next century without any other significance taxes levied on the American people (17).

The Land Business Begins

As an orderly plan for the creation of new territorial and states was created, procedures for the sale of land by the Federal Government developed as well....(17).

Rufas Putnam's Great Ideas

In 1785, a Boston businessman named Rufas Putnam had a great idea for making lots of money. As a former Revolutionary War General, he knew that the new United States was filled with thousands of former Revolutionary Soldiers, all of whom had been paid a suit of clothes and a promise of land "out west somewhere" in the form of a certificate called a Bounty-land Warrant. These certificates had a set value of $1.25 per acre of land, but a soldier would have to travel to the great western wilderness and claim his parcel of land. The certificates could be legally "assigned," and the buyer of the certificate would then gain the claim to the wilderness land "out west somewhere" (17).

So Rufas devised a plan to buy certificates from former Revolutionary Soldiers, and for a fraction of their face value. ... By early 1787, the company was able to obtain warrants representing millions of acres of land "out west somewhere" purchased from the soldiers (17).... It is estimated that over ninety percent of all Revolutionary War Land Warrants were sold in this way (18).

"All in all, Rufas and his associates managed to purchase seven million acres of land in the Northwest Territory for an average price of eight cents an acre. Some of the land grant was paid for using Bounty-Land Warrants and a small down payment was paid for the rest (18).

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