The land system now adopted in the United States is admirable in regard of ingenuity, simplicity, and liberality. A slight attention to the map of a district, will enable any one to know at once the relative situation of any section that he may afterwards hear mentioned, and its direct distance in measured miles. There can be no necessity for giving names to farms or estates, as the designation of the particular township, and the number of the section is sufficient, and has, besides, the singular convenience of conveying accurate information as to where it is situated. By the new arrangement the boundaries of possessions are most securely fixed, {154} and freed alike from the inconvenience of rivers changing their course, and complexity of curved lines. Litigation amongst neighbours as to their landmarks, is in a great measure excluded. The title deed is printed on a piece of parchment of the quarto size. The date, the locality of the purchase, and the purchaser’s name, are inserted in writing, and the instrument is subscribed by the President of the United States, and the agent of the general land office.[85] It is delivered to the buyer free of all expense, and may be transferred by him to another person without using stamped paper, and without the intervention of a law practitioner. The business of the land office proceeds on the most moderate principles, and with the strictest regard to justice. The proceeds are applied in defraying the expense of government, and form a resource against taxation. The public lands are in reality the property of the people.
The stranger who would go into the woods to make a selection of lands, ought to take with him an extract from the land office map applying to the part of the country he intends to visit. Without this, he cannot well distinguish entered from unentered grounds. He should also procure the names of the resident people, with the numbers and quarters of the sections they live on, not neglecting to carry with him a pocket-compass, to enable him to follow the blazed lines marked out by the surveyor. Blaze is a word signifying a mark cut by a hatchet on the bark of a tree. It is the more necessary for the explorer to be furnished thus, as he may {155} expect to meet with settlers who will not be willing to direct him, but, on the contrary, tell him with the greatest effrontery, that every neighbouring quarter section is already taken up. Squatters, a class of men who take possession without purchasing, are afraid of being turned out, or of having their pastures abridged by new comers. Others, perhaps meditating an enlargement of their property, so soon as funds will permit, wish to hold the adjoining lands in reserve for themselves, and not a few are jealous of the land-dealer, who is not an actual settler, whose grounds lie waste, waiting for that advance on the value of property, which arises from an increasing population. The non-resident proprietor is injurious to a neighbourhood, in respect of his not bearing any part of the expense of making roads, while other people are frequently under the necessity of making them through his lands for their own convenience. On excursions of this kind, the prudent will always be cautious of explaining their views, particularly as to the spot chosen for purchase, and without loss of time they should return to the land-office and make entry.
The new abode being fixed, the settler may be surrounded by strangers. Polite and obliging behaviour with circumspection in every transaction, become him in this new situation.
FOOTNOTES:
[84] The township system of survey was adopted in the first ordinance for the sale of public lands, passed May 20, 1785. The authorship of the plan has been a subject of controversy. It is usually attributed to Thomas Hutchins, first geographer of the United States, who had earlier embodied the idea in a plan for establishing military colonies north of the Ohio. See Hindsale, Old Northwest (New York, 1888), p. 262.—Ed.
[85] At every land office, a register of the weather is kept. Three daily observations of the thermometer, the direction of the wind, the aspect of the sky, whether clear or clouded, fair or rainy days; and some other occasional phenomena, are noted down.—Flint.
{156} LETTER XIII
Comparative Advantages of several Parts of the United States—Temperature of the Climate at Philadelphia and at Cincinnati—Pennsylvania—Ohio—Kentucky, and the Western Part of Virginia—Indiana—Illinois—Missouri—Reflections on Slave-Keeping.
Jeffersonville, (Indiana,)
October 16, 1819.
To determine the most proper parts of America for new settlers, is a proposition interesting in its nature, but one that cannot be solved with precision. This general fact is to be kept in view, that, in the old populous settlements, land is already too dear to admit of that spontaneous increase in value so profitable in back-wood districts. The sea-board then is to be rejected by those who would go in search of the most profitable investment of their capital, and some part of the interior country is to be selected. The vast migration from the eastern States to the western, is satisfactory evidence of this state of the land market; and, besides, countenances the opinion, that the country first peopled by Europeans is not destined to such population and wealth as that rationally anticipated in the more fertile western States.