LAND SCRIP

LAND SCRIP and land warrants were certificates from the Land Office granting people private ownership of certain portions of public lands. Congress authorized issues of scrip—some directly, others only after trial of claims before special commissions or the courts. It also placed restrictions on the use of certain kinds of scrip, making them less valuable than scrip with no limitations. Scrip was used primarily to reward veterans, to give land allotments to children of intermarried Native Americans, to make possible exchanges of private land for public, to indemnify people who lost valid land claims through General Land Office errors, and to subsidize agricultural colleges.

The greatest volume of scrip or warrants was given to soldiers of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, and, in 1855, to veterans of all wars who had not previously received a land bounty or who had received less than 160 acres. Warrants of the first two wars were for land located in military tracts set aside for that purpose; those of the Mexican-American War allowed entry to any surveyed public land open to purchase at $1.25 an acre. A total of 68,300,652 acres was thus conveyed to 426,879 veterans, their heirs, or their assignees.

Treaties with the Choctaw (1830) and Chickasaw (1832) Indians of Mississippi and Alabama allocated several million acres in individual allotments and land scrip, all of which became the object of speculation by whites and fell into the hands of powerful white traders and a number of prominent political leaders. For the next thirty years, treaties with Indian tribes were almost impossible to negotiate without the inclusion of similar provisions for allotments and scrip, so powerful were the traders in those negotiations. Three issues of scrip to two bands of Chippewas and Sioux in the 1850s and 1860s, totaling 395,000 acres, similarly fell into the hands of speculators, who used it to acquire valuable timberland in Minnesota and California that they would otherwise have been unable to acquire legally.

In the Morrill Act of 1862, Congress granted each state 30,000 acres for each member it had in the House and Senate to aid in the establishment of agricultural and mechanical arts colleges. Land was given to states containing public domain; states with no public lands were given scrip that they had to sell to third parties to enter land in public domain states.

To read the complete article, see:
Land Scrip (www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401802313.html)

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