1780 CONGRESSIONAL PROCEEDINGS. 
The transaction originated about sixty-one or sixty-two years ago. 
Since then controversies have arisen between the State of Arkansas 
and the United States in regard to public lands, swamp lands, the 5° 
per cent fund from the sale of various lands, etc. Various claims have 
arisen on behalf of the State of Arkansas and against the United States; 
and those matters have remained unsettled. The United States, how- 
ever, has from time to time credited certain sums, amounting to about 
$55,000, upon this indebtedness. 
* * * * * * * 
Now, I have never felt that the settlement made by the Secretary of 
the Treasury and the Secretary of the Interior could, as a statement 
of accounts, be approved by any court of chancery, or as a detailed 
statement of accounts could be approved by Congress. If there were 
no intervening equities, as a mere statement of accounts I have not 
felt that it was a just one—one that could be approved as a specific — 
statement of the claims for and against the different parties. 
But when we take into consideration what has happened in all these 
years; when we take into consideration that this transaction occurred 
away back in 1836; when we take into consideration what the State has 
suffered since then, and the total amount of its indebtedness at this 
time; that it is a struggling community; that many portions of the 
State have been heavily overflowed; that its expenses in the construc- 
tion of dikes and levees and in the drainage of its swamps have been 
very great; when we take into consideration the heroic struggles that 
that State has made in behalf of education (for in traveling through 
that wild Western State to-day you will find the schoolhouse on the 
edge of the swamp, almost at the edge of the cypress timber); when 
we find that they are making this heroic struggle to bring the State 
out upon a high plane of progress, on a level with any other State in 
the Union, and when we consider that this old debt, originating away 
back before the war, has hung as a cloud over the affairs of that State, 
I assert it is perhaps just and right, and in all respects best, to accept 
this statement as a lumping settlement—as a general lumping of 
accounts—and to say that if the State of Arkansas will pay the $160,000 
provided for in this contract, or give its new bonds as here provided, 
and adjust the various land matters as provided in the amendment 
proposed by the committee, it would be best to accept this settlement 
and end this old controversy which began before most of us were 
born. 
Taking this view of the matter, I have felt constrained to concur in 
the report which recommends this settlement as a general closing of 
accounts between the two governments, so as to end this strife and to 
start anew. ; 
It will be remembered, Mr. Speaker, that a long time ago the sur- 
plus in the Treasury was divided up among the States—was deposited 
