24 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



they pleased, often on land reserved for Indians, 

 provoking wars. New settlers on land claimed by 

 old settlers invited bitter and often lasting quarrels. 

 Later, as settlement made some localities more de- 

 sirable than others, land was sold, originating 

 prices. Out of these conditions arose the need of 

 government land control ; and the need of income led 

 governments to sell their own extensive lands. Thus 

 began land offices, first in the colonies and the states 

 which succeeded colonies; later also under the new 

 national government. 



Following a resolution of acceptance by the new 

 Congress of the Confederation on October 10, 1780, 

 the states of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, 

 Connecticut, South Carolina, North Carolina and 

 Georgia made the United States a landowner by 

 presentation of 259,171,787 acres. Little of this 

 land had quotable value at the time. Little of it had 

 even been explored. Almost none of it was surveyed. 

 Yet sales had to be made to meet government ex- 

 penses. With three classes of ownership, private, 

 state and now national, most boundaries in dispute, 

 and the young nation pledged since 1776 to reward 

 soldiers with grants of land, the duties of the first 

 national land administrator, the Secretary of the 

 Treasury, in 1789, and of his several successors, be- 

 came complex and strenuous. It is interesting to 

 note in passing, as a flash-back from our late war to 

 that of the Revolution, that fifty acres had been of- 

 fered to every soldier in the British army, including 



