THE FARM LAND 33 



Gorge. Instead they took the more difficult route which fol' 

 lowed the line of good soils. This was a finger of Hagerstown 

 limestone that stretched south and west into the Tennessee 

 Valley. 



THE FIRST FEDERAL LAND POLICIES EAST VS. WEST 



When England finally ceded to the United States the vast 

 country between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, and 

 Maryland had forced the large seaboard states to give up their 

 claim to it, the land problems of the federal government had 

 just begun. How was this territory to be settled? From the be' 

 ginning of the Revolution the government believed that the 

 great area of unoccupied land was a valuable source of wealth 

 with which to pay soldiers. In the dubious days of the Revo' 

 lution, the Continental Congress used the public domain as 

 a bait for enticing deserters from the British Army into the 

 American ranks. This plan was used particularly to win over 

 the Hessians. The American government's offers of land were 

 printed in German on the backs of tobacco wrappers. 17 A 

 large portion of the pay of the Continental Army had been 

 simply a promise of land. That practice of giving federal land 

 to soldiers has continued up until the present time, for war 

 veterans are still permitted to take up government land with 

 much greater ease than other people. 



In distributing the vast public domain, Congress was di' 

 vided between two points of view. On the one side was the 

 opinion of Alexander Hamilton and those who represented 

 the traders and manufacturers of the East. They thought 

 federal land should be sold to raise revenue to pay the costs 

 of government. If tariffs were to raise government revenue, so 

 should the sale of government lands. Besides, they said, our 

 factories which are now beginning to thrive behind the pro" 

 tective wall of the tariff need more and more cheap labor. If 



"Hibbard, op. cit., p. 118. 



