LAND GRANTS IN AID OF INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS. iba 
grant and fix the price at which the lands were to be sold (at not less than 
$1.25 per acre), and adopt such kind and plan of improvement as was for 
the best interests of the State. 
The provisions for the sale of the lands were the same as in the Iowa 
erant, except that the sum to be realized by such sales was fixed at $20,000. 
Section 3 required the work to be commenced within three years after 
the admission of the State, and to be completed within twenty years, or 
the United States was to be entitled to receive the amount for which any 
of the lands may have been sold; the titles in the purchasers from the State 
were, however, to be valid. 
The ee ige employed in this statute was more definite than that 
need in the Des Moines grant, and in it is to be found the first provisions 
respecting the increase in price of the reserved sections. 
Probably no grant of this character has received such widespread 
notoriety as the one for the improvement of the Des Moines River. It is 
owing, no doubt, in a great degree to the numerous conflicting decisions by 
the Executive Departments touching the extent of the grant. The Hon. R. 
J. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury (under whose supervision the Land 
Office ae came), decided on the 2d of March, 1849, that the grant 
extended above the tributary of the Des Moines River commonly known 
as the Raccoon Fork. The Land Office soon thereafter passed from the 
jurisdiction of the Treasury Department, and was placed as one of the 
bureaus of the Home or Interior Department. The Secretary of this lately 
established branch of the Government (Hon. Thomas Ewing) decided on 
‘the 6th of April, 1850, that the grant did not extend above the Raccoon 
Fork. From that decision the State of Iowa appealed to the President, 
who laid the matter before the Attorney-General. That officer (Hon. 
Reverdy Johnson), on July 19, 1850, expressed an opinion confirmatory of 
the decision of Secretary Walker. The Secretary of the Interior, however, 
being determined in his views, did not adopt the opinion of the Attorney- 
General, and the Commissioner of the General Land Office wrote, under 
date of 26th September, 1850, to the President, reviewing and objecting to 
the opinion of Mr. Johnson. The President, having been again applied to 
by the State of Iowa to determine the matter, referred the whole question 
