Sixty Million Acres: American Veterans and the Public Lands before the Civil War

Abstract

disposal of the millions of acres of public lands played a major role in shaping the economic geography of the United States and greatly influenced our national attitudes toward land. Students of land economics are not necessarily students of history; yet ignorance of the history of the disposal of the public lands is a serious handicap in developing an understanding of the contemporary political economy of American land. James Oberly's book may not be the place to start if one wishes to overcome that handicap, but it will need to be on the reading list. It has something of interest for those who hold to the efficient market hypothesis and to those who are concerned about how institutional arrangements shape market outcomes. Fundamentally, Oberly's book is a specialized historical monograph. It examines the ways in which the federal government went about making land available to as a reward for military service in the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War. title of the book comes from the fact that over sixty million acres of public land was disposed of as a bounty to before the Civil War. Working with primary records and documents in the National Archives as well as other contemporary accounts, Oberly paints a detailed picture of the interest groups that influenced land legislation, their lobbying techniques, and the distribution of benefits resulting from the legislation. emphasis in the book is upon depth of detail. For both historians and economists, the most interesting parts of the book are likely to be the sections where Oberly examines who benefited from the various pieces of land legislation. In a chapter entitled, Westward Who? Warrantees and Th ir Bounties, and another entitled, Prices, Markets and Fairness in the Trading of Land Warrants, Oberly uses some simple economic theory and statistical analysis to examine what happened after land warrants were issued. His conclusions do not refute, but do seriously challenge the view of historians like Paul Gates who contend that the benefits of the public lands disposal programs accrued primarily to speculators. The 1850, 1852, and 1855 grants should be thought of as a one-time pension payment and evaluated accordingly Oberly suggests. On the basis of price information, one must conclude that land warrants were an effective way for a land-rich, cash-stingy government to reward its veterans (p. 161). focus upon speculators that has marked most previous scholarship is merited in the sense that most of those who