I am aware that there are some writers who represent that this addition to school land was a special favor to Oregon; and at least one Oregon man who claimed to have secured it by his personal efforts.[8] But the records of congress disprove such pretensions. It was sometimes objected in congress that the new states were receiving too much land gratuitously.[9] In a speech on this subject by Woodbridge, of Michigan, delivered April 29, 1846, that gentleman said: "Now, a very great error prevails on this subject. It is a common opinion, I believe, that the school lands, amounting, as the gentleman from Connecticut says, in some instances, to an enormous amount, are gratuitously conveyed to the new states. Sir, I do not so read my books at all. There is no gratuity about it! This appropriation of section sixteen was made in order to secure an accelerated sale of your wild lands. I do not say that there were not other and higher motives, but this was one, and an efficient one. * * * You published to the world your terms of sale. You pledged your faith to all who should buy land of you in any surveyed township, that one thirty-sixth part of it, namely, section number sixteen, should forever afterwards be applied toward the support of schools. * * * It is true that you afterwards affected to transfer these school lands to the states; but what passed by that transfer? Nothing, sir, but the naked title only, subject always to the use, and I am not prepared to admit the competency of your doing even that." So there were in congress, in 1846, men who contended that the western people, and not the government which had solemnly renounced it, held the right to the educational reservations in the public lands from the beginning.
In August, 1846, a bill being before congress to enable Wisconsin to form a state government, it passed through the usual routine, and was reported from the territorial committee by Douglas, February 9, 1847. On the fifteenth, the question of engrossing the bill was about being put, when John A. Rockwell of Connecticut, moved to amend by adding the following: "And be it further enacted, That in addition to section numbered sixteen, section numbered thirty-six, in each township of the public lands of the United States in said state, not heretofore otherwise disposed of, be, and the same is hereby appropriated to the support of education in the said state." Certain conditions were attached, which need not be here quoted, as the amendment failed.[10]
That it failed was not owing to any strong opposition so much as to the fact of its not being incorporated in the original bill. Congressmen and senators have to be urged somewhat to make changes by which their districts gain nothing. Rockwell's amendment was crowded out by other business concerning the disposition of the public lands then claiming attention.
Nothing in the circumstances of the case goes to show that Mr. Rockwell was the first to propose the additional school section. The Wisconsin and the Oregon bills were in the hands of the same committee of the house, and at the same time. Yet the Douglas bill contained the two school sections in every township, and the Wisconsin bill did not. The Douglas bill passed in the house and was sent to the senate in January, 1847, whereas the Wisconsin bill was not reported until February, which gives Mr. Douglas precedence in proposing the change to congress. The question might arise why, since he was chairman of the committee which presented both bills, he withheld the additional section from one and gave it to the other. Did he wish to show favor, or seem to do so, to Oregon, as a reward for her long and loyal waiting? It might well be so, and probably was so.
But Oregon was not receiving a special gift in the appropriation of her school lands, as some suppose. In November, 1846, James H. Piper, Acting Commissioner of the General Land Office, made a report to Robert J. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, "on the expediency of making further provision for the support of common schools in the land states."[11] The Secretary, in his report to the house of representatives, referring to the proposed donations of land to settlers in and immigrants to Oregon, recommended, also, "the grant of a school section in the center of every quarter of a township, which would bring the school house within a point not exceeding a mile and a half in distance from the most remote inhabitant of such quarter township."[12] In his report for 1847–48 the Secretary of the Treasury again referred to this subject as follows: "Congress to some extent adopted this recommendation, by granting two school sections instead of one, for education in Oregon;[13] but it is respectfully suggested that even thus extended the grant is still inadequate in amount, while the location is inconvenient."[14]
William M. Gwin, Senator from California, remarking on the transfer of the public lands from the Treasury Department to the Department of the Interior in 1849, says: "When a territorial government was established over Oregon, some able men contended for four sections for each township, and they succeeded in getting two," and quotes from Walker's report.[15] He also referred, in a speech before the State Convention of California in 1850, to Piper and Walker as authors of the movement to increase the amount of school land in the new states. Although not important in themselves, these facts are interesting. It is a pleasure to the properly constituted mind to know to whom to give credits. It is also a satisfaction to remove from history falsehoods, whether deliberate or accidental, which blind our vision as to the verity of so-called history.[16]
As a matter of fact, from 1803 to 1848, in each of the twelve territories organized from the public lands, the sixteenth section in every township was reserved for school purposes, Oregon being the first to receive the addition of the thirty-sixth. There has been no fixed rule of appropriation, much depending upon the people and their representatives. In 1812, and again in 1824 congress ordered a survey of certain towns and villages in Missouri, reserving for the use of schools one-twentieth part of the whole survey. When sold these town reservations produced large sums, as in the case of St. Louis. Down to 1880 seven states and eight territories had received the thirty-sixth section in each township. Twenty-four states had received two townships each for the use of universities. Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Florida had taken more. Previous to 1882 the appropriation of land for common schools in the land states aggregated sixty-seven million eight hundred and ninety-three thousand nine hundred and nineteen acres; for university purposes, one million six hundred and fifty thousand five hundred and twenty acres; for agricultural and mechanical colleges, nine million six hundred thousand acres—a total of seventy-nine million one hundred and forty-four thousand four hundred and thirty-nine acres devoted to the support of education in the United States.
From time to time it has been necessary to make changes in the land laws, as when the discovery of mineral lands, reserved by congress called for the substitution of lieu lands, but there has been no diminution in quantity or value.
Oregon has less vacant or public land than from its area might be expected. The bounty of government in donating to the pioneer settlers six hundred and forty acres to a family—three hundred and twenty to the husband, and the same amount to the wife—and to single men and women three hundred and twenty each, provided they lived upon or improved their claims, disposed of most of the cultivable area west of the Cascade Range. The school lands which passed with the territorial act occupied two thirty-sixths of every township. The act of admission passed to the state the usual endowment of five hundred thousand acres for its public uses,[17] with twelve salt springs and six sections adjoining each; ninety thousand acres for the endowment of an agricultural college, and seventy-two sections for the use and support of a state university. Subsequent grants to railroads and public highways, with military and Indian reservations, absorbed large bodies of land, both in the valleys and the mountains. The state devoted the net proceeds, with the accruing interest of the five hundred thousand acres, as an irreducible fund for the support of common schools, and for the purchase of libraries and apparatus.[18] It also added to this fund all gifts to the state whose purpose was not named.