The balances unpaid by purchasers of public lands steadily increased from 1813 to 1819 until on September 30, 1819, there was due from purchasers of land in the area of the old Northwest Territory nearly ten million dollars.[336] An increase would have resulted merely from an increased sale of public lands under the credit system, but it is also true that the difficulty of collecting the unpaid balances became so great that the government at last abolished the credit system, by the act of April 24, 1820. The act provided that after July 1, 1820, no credit whatever should be given to the purchasers of public lands; that land might be sold in either sections, half-sections, quarter-sections, or eighth-sections; that the minimum price should be reduced from two dollars to one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre; and that reverted lands should be offered at auction before being offered at private sale.[337] At least two of the provisions of this act had long been desired by Illinois in common with other frontier regions: the reduction of the minimum price and the sale in smaller tracts. Under the new law a man with one hundred dollars could buy eighty acres of land, while previously the same man would have had to pay eighty of his one hundred dollars as the first payment on one hundred and sixty acres, the smallest tract then sold. The great danger had been that the second, third, and fourth payments could not be made. In Illinois, [pg 137] before July 1, 1820, there had been sold 1,593,247.53 acres of the public land at an average price of about $2.02 per acre. Some of this reverted from non-payment.[338]
During the third quarter of 1820, all sales in Illinois were at the minimum price and a considerable proportion were of the minimum area. At the same time, some of the land in Ohio, and a very few tracts in Indiana, sold at a higher price, one tract in Ohio, but only one, selling for more than seven dollars per acre.[339] To October 1, 1821, the land-offices in Illinois reported:
| Acres Sold. | Surveyed, but Unsold. | |
| Shawneetown | 592,464 | 2,401,936 |
| Kaskaskia | 419,898 | 1,615,942 |
| Palestine | 714 | 2,880,720 |
| Edwardsville | 437,993 | 2,696,727 |
| Vandalia | 7,923 | 2,545,677 |
All land in the districts of Shawneetown and Kaskaskia had been surveyed, but the remaining districts were still indefinite on the north.[340] At this time, Illinois money passed in the state at par, and the Bank of Illinois was among those whose notes were received in payment for public lands.[341]
As more and more land was opened to settlement, a new difficulty arose and became increasingly troublesome. All public land was to be entered at the same minimum price, and as a natural result, the poorest land was not taken [pg 138] up and settlement became widely dispersed on the best tracts of land. In December, 1824, the Illinois legislature sent a memorial to Congress portraying the evils of sparse settlement, and asking that land that had been offered for sale for five years or more might be sold at fifty cents per acre. Better roads, better markets, and better institutions were expected to result from such sales.[342] Two years later, another memorial was sent. This asked that land be offered for sale at prices graduated according to the quality of the land, suggested that the poorest land might well be donated to settlers, and declared that settlement was retarded by the high minimum price of land.[343] Governor Ninian Edwards pointed out that in 1790, Hamilton had recommended that public lands be sold at twenty cents per acre, which “was the price at which Kentucky, long afterward, sold her lands.”[344] In 1828, the Committee on Public Lands recommended that public lands unsold at public sale be first offered at one dollar per acre, and if still unsold, that the price be reduced twenty-five cents per acre each two years until sold or reduced to twenty-five cents per acre; that eighty-acre homestead claims be given to such persons as would cultivate and occupy them for five years; and that lands unsold at twenty-five cents per acre be ceded to the states in which they lay, upon payment of the cost of survey and twenty-five cents per acre. At this time, there was in Illinois 1,403,482 acres surveyed and sold; 19,684,186 acres surveyed and unsold, of the 39,000,000 acres estimated to be in the State.[345] Still another memorial from the legislature was sent to Congress in 1829. It [pg 139] pointed out, in strong terms, the inconvenience arising from the high price at which public land was offered for sale. Unsold public land could neither be taxed nor legally settled. It was stated that of the forty millions of acres in Illinois, little over one and one-half millions had been sold at public sales. A granting of the right of preemption, which implies the presence in the state of squatters, is suggested.[346]
The implication of the presence of squatters was well founded. When Peter Cartwright, in 1823, visited a settlement in the Sangamon country, he found it a community of squatters, on land which had been surveyed, but was not yet offered for sale. Money was hoarded up to enter land when Congress should order sales. Cartwright paid a squatter two hundred dollars for his improvement and his claim, bought some stock, and rented out the place, to which he was to remove from Kentucky the following year.[347] This squatting on surveyed land, and even on unsurveyed land, was a regular procedure. It added much to the difficulty of governing the state—hence the memorials to Congress, and hence the great significance to Illinois of an act of May 29, 1830, which gave to all settlers who had cultivated land in 1829 the right to preempt not more than one hundred and sixty acres.[348] This law was of general application. Even now the Illinois legislature sent another petition concerning preemption to Congress, because one of the provisions of the act of May, 1830, was that the plat of survey should have been filed [pg 140] in the land-office, and this provision debarred about one thousand Illinois squatters from the benefit of the act. A modification in their favor was desired.[349]
The land claims of the ancient settlers, as they are called in government documents, continued to occupy the attention of Congress, in a desultory way, throughout the period, but their influence upon settlement had practically ceased with the opening of the public land-offices.[350]
Among the obstacles to settlement was the holding of land by non-residents. Such lands were subject to a triple tax in case of delinquency, and when sold for taxes and costs frequently did not bring enough for that purpose, in which event they reverted to the state and the state paid the costs. Redemption, although possible, was rare.[351] In 1823, about nine thousand quarter-sections of land in the Military Tract, lying between the Illinois and the Mississippi, were advertised for sale, because of the non-payment of taxes by non-resident landholders.[352] At this time, two of the prominent men of the state who wished to dispose of a large amount of state paper, advertised that they would pay such delinquent taxes at twenty-five per cent discount.[353] In 1826, thirty-eight pages of the Illinois Intelligencer were filled with a description, in double column, of lands owned by non-residents, the lands being for sale for taxes. In 1829, a similar list filled thirty-two pages.[354] Much discontent was manifested in the state on account of the laws [pg 141] concerning the public lands, and Governor Edwards' message to the legislature, in 1830, elaborated a theory that all public lands belonged of right to the states in which they lay.[355]
Illinois early understood that an Illinois-Michigan canal would help to people her northern lands. This led to many efforts to secure such a waterway. In 1819 a favorable topographical report concerning the route for the proposed canal was made,[356] and in 1822 the state was authorized to construct the canal, but no tangible aid was given.[357] In 1825 the legislature petitioned Congress for a grant of the townships through which the canal would pass. A committee report of March, 1826, which was almost identical with another presented in February, 1825, pointed out that the cost of transporting a ton of merchandise from Philadelphia, New York, or Baltimore was about ninety dollars, and required from twenty to twenty-two days. The probable cost by the proposed canal, the Lakes, and the Erie Canal, from St. Louis to New York was from sixty-three to sixty-five dollars per ton, and the time from twelve to fifteen days. The canal would bind Illinois and Missouri to the North.[358] Congress received a memorial from the legislature on the same subject in January, 1827, requesting the grant of “two entire townships, along the whole course of the canal,” and declaring that markets at New Orleans fluctuated because of speculators, and that grain and goods sent from the West to the Atlantic ports by way of New Orleans was exposed to the [pg 142] dangers of both the southern climate and the sea.[359] A few weeks later the desired grant was made, the state being given one-half of five sections in width on each side of the canal, the United States reserving the alternate sections.[360] The canal commissioners promptly platted the original town of Chicago and sold lots at from twenty to eighty dollars each, but no immediate settlement followed the land sale, and Chicago remained for some years longer an Indian town. The prospect of having a canal doubtless had some influence upon settlement, but at the close of 1830 the actual construction of the canal was still a thing of the future. By the close of 1828, Congress had donated to Illinois, for various purposes, chiefly for schools and internal improvements, 1,346,000 acres.[361]