OPERATIONS UNDER THE SWAMP LAND ACTS TO JUNE 30, 1880.

Total acres patented to June 30, 1880, under all acts, as above, 51,952,190.10.

CHAPTER XIII.

EDUCATIONAL LAND GRANTS BY THE UNITED STATES TO PUBLICLAND AND OTHER STATES.

GRANTS AND RESERVATIONS.

The lands granted in the States and reserved in the Territories for educational purposes by acts of Congress from 1785 to June 30, 1880, were

For public or common schools,

Every sixteenth section of public land in the States admitted prior to 1848, and every sixteenth and thirty-sixth section of such land in States and Territories since organized-estimated at 67,893,919 acres.

For seminaries or universities,

The quantity of two townships, or 46,080 acres, in each State or Territory containing public land, and, in some instances, a greater quantity, for the support of seminaries or schools of a higher grade-estimated at 1,165,520 acres.

For agricultural and mechanical colleges.

The grant to all the States for agricultural and mechanical colleges, by act of July 2, 1862, and its supplements, of 30,000 acres, for each Representative and Senator in Congress to which the State was entitled, of land "in place" where the State contained a sufficient quantity of public land subject to sale at ordinary private entry at the rate of $1.25 per acre, and of scrip representing an equal number of acres where the State did not contain such description of land, the scrip to be sold by the State and located by its assignees on any such land in other States and Territories, subject to certain restrictions. Land in place, 1,770,000 acres; land scrip, 7,830,000 acres; total, 9,600,000 acres.

In all, 78,659,439 acres for educational purposes under the heads above set out to June 30, 1880.

The lands thus ceded to the several States were disposed of or are held for disposition, and the proceeds used as permanent endowments for common school funds. (See Reports of the Commissioner of Education, Hon. John Eaton, to June 30, 1880; land and auditors' reports of the several land States; Kiddle & Schem's Dictionary of Education; and also ninth census, F. A. Walker, Superintendent, for details of endowments of the several States for common schools resulting from sales of United States land grants for education.) As an illustration, the State of Ohio has a permanent endowment for education called the "Irreducible State Debt," the result of sale of all granted lands for education, of $4,289,718.52.

EARLY EDUCATIONAL INTEREST.

The importance attached to education by the founders of the Republic is shown by the provisions they made for its permanent endowment. Indeed, in the earliest set

tlements on this continent of the Anglo-Americans, measures were adopted in the cause of education, not only as essential to morals, social order, and individual happiness, but as necessary to new and liberal institutions. Every immigrant ship had its schoolmaster on board, each settlement erected its school-house, and the cultivation of the mind advanced with the culture of the soil from the landing of the Mayflower through our colonial history.

Prior to the revolution, in the different colonies the subject of popular education had attracted attention, and provision had been made for its practical realization. The theory of general education found no basis in the aristocratic social constitution of the mother country, while in the colonies themselves were to be found influences decidedly hostile to it. The injustice and persecution, however, which had caused the immigration to this country, especially to the northern colonies, wonderfully neutralized the religious and political prejudices of our forefathers, and prepared them to accept doctrines of very opposite tendency. The comparative feebleness of aristocratic prestige in the forests of the New World permitted the development of the sentiment of independent manhood. The establishment of democracy was followed by the natural development of its principles, especially in the direction of popular education.

After the erection of the States into an independent republic, and before the adoption of the Constitution, the Continental Congress, by the ordinance of 20th May, 1785, respecting the disposition of lands in the Western Territory, prepared the way for the advance of settlements and education as contemporaneous interests.

THE FIRST RESERVATION FOR SCHOOL PURPOSES-THE SIXTEENTH SECTION.

Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Dane, Mr. Madison, and other statesmen of that day assumed, without question, that a government, as the organ of society, enjoys the right, and is vested with the power, to meet the necessity of public education. So the question of the endowment of educational institutions by the Government in aid of the cause of education seems to have met no serious opposition in the Congress of the Confederation, and no member raised his voice against this vital and essential provision relating to it in the ordinance of May 20, 1785, "for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the Western Territory." This provided: "There shall be reserved the lot No. 16 of every township for the maintenance of public schools within said township." This was an endowment of 640 acres of land (one section of land, one mile square) in a township 6 miles square, for the support and maintenance of public schools "within said township." The manner of establishment of public schools thereunder, or by whom, was not mentioned. It was a reservation by the United States, and advanced and established a principle which finally dedicated one thirty-sixth part of all public lands of the United States, with certain exceptions as to mineral, &c., to the cause of education by public schools.

July 23, 1787, in the report from a committee consisting of Messrs. Carrington, King, Dane, Madison, and Benson, reporting an ordinance of "Powers to the Board of Treasury" to contract for the sale of western territory in the Continental Congress, it was ordered "That the lot No. 16 in each township, or fractional part of a township, to be given perpetually for the purpose contained in said ordinance" (the ordinance of May 20, 1785, above referred to). This additional legislation made the reservation of the sixteenth section perpetual.

In the Continental Congress, July 13, 1787, according to order, the ordinance for the government of the "Territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio" came on, was read a third time, and passed. It contained the following:

ART. 3. Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

The provision of the ordinance of May 20, 1785, relating to the reservation of the sixteenth section in every township of public land, was the inception of the present rule of reservation of certain sections of land for school purposes.

The endowment was the subject of much legislation in the years following. The question was raised that there was no reason why the United States should not organize, control, and manage these public schools so endowed. The reservations of lands were made by surveyors and duly returned.

This policy at once met with enthusiastic approval from the public, and was tacitly incorporated into the American system as one of its fundamental organic ideas. Whether the public schools thus endowed by the United States were to be under national or State control remained a question, and the lands were held in reservation merely until after the admission of the State of Ohio in 1802.

The movement in the cause of education was not confined to the legislative department, for at an early period the public mind was aroused to the importance of the subject by elaborate papers emanating from eminent men, among whom stands conspicuous Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who in 1786 memorialized the legislature of Pennsylvania in favor of a thorough system of popular instruction, maintaining that it was favorable to liberty, as freedom could only exist in the society of knowledge; that it favors just ideas of law and government; that learning in all countries promotes civilization and the pleasure of society; that it fosters agriculture, the basis of national wealth; that manufactures of all kinds owe their perfection chiefly to learning; that its beneficial influence is thus made coextensive with the entire scope of man's being, mortal and immortal, individual and social. At a later period, 1790, the same great man addressed a Congressional representative from Pennsylvania, declaring that "the attempts to perpetuate our existence as a free people by establishing the means of national credit and defense" are "feeble bulwarks against slavery compared with the habits of labor and virtue disseminated among our people"; adding, "Let us establish schools for that purpose in every township in the United States, and conform them to reason, humanity, and the state of society in America," and then will "the generations which are to follow us realize the precious ideas of the dignity and excellence of republican forms of government."

RESERVATION OF THE THIRTY-SIXTH SECTION IN ADDITION TO THE SIXTEENTH.

The reservation of a section, or one mile square, of 640 acres, in each township, for the support of public schools, was specially provided for in the organization of each new State and Territory up to the time of the organization of Oregon Territory.

April 30, 1802, Congress, in the act authorizing the formation of a State govern. ment in the eastern portion of the Northwestern Territory (Ohio), enacted the following three propositions, which were offered for the acceptance or rejection of the convention to form the constitution of Ohio. (Up to this time no transfers by the United States of title or control of the sixteenth section of reserved school lands had taken place.)

By section 7:

First. That the section number sixteen in every township, and where such section has been sold, granted, or disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto and most contiguous to the same, shall be granted to the inhabitants of such townships for the use of schools.

The second was a saline reservation, and the third related to a moiety of the net proceeds of the sales of public lands, for the laying out of roads, &c.

The three conditions above set out were in consideration of the non-taxation of the public domain, for a period after sale, about which there was serious discussion as to who should tax, or whether it should be taxed at all, prior to or after purchase. The non-taxation compensation was that no tax on the land sold by the United States should be laid by the authority of the State, county, or townships therein for the term of five years after the date of sale. The object of this stipulation was to prevent any person from obtaining a tax title under the authority of the State before the United States had received the full amount of the purchase money. Lands were then sold on credit by the United States of one, two, three, four, and five years, at two dollars per acre.

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The people of Ohio complied with the above stipulations, November 29, 1802, and were admitted into the Union.,

The act of Congress of March 3, 1803, in addition to the above act of April 30, 1802, provided—

That the following several tracts of land in the State of Ohio be, and the same are hereby, appropriated for the use of schools in that State, and shall, together with all the tracts of land heretofore appropriated for that purpose, be vested in the legislature of that State, in trust for the use aforesaid, and for no other use, intent, or purpose whatever.

Thus Congress transferred the reserved school lands, section 16 in each township, and provided an indemnity for such sections as had already been sold or taken prior to survey to the State of Ohio, in trust for the United States, and the people of the State, for schools. Prior to this, laws were silent as to how the proceeds of these reserved lands were to be applied or by whom.

Congress thus made the State its trustee. Compacts between the United States on the admission of the States of Indiana, Illinois, and Louisiana, and all the States admitted into the Union prior to 1820, also contained the provisions above set out.

THE SIXTEENTH SECTION.

To each organized Territory, after 1803, was and now is reserved the sixteenth section (until after the Oregon Territory act reserved the thirty-sixth as well) for school purposes, which reservation is carried into grant and confirmation by the terms of the act of admission of the Territory or State into the Union; the State then becoming a trustee for school purposes.

These grants of land were made from the public domain, and to States only which were known as public-land States. Twelve States, from March 3, 1803, known as public-land States, received the allowance of the sixteenth section to August 14, 1948. (See table, page 228.)

OTHER SCHOOL GRANTS.

Congress, June 13, 1812, and May 26, 1824, by the acts ordering the survey of certain towns and villages in Missouri, reserved for the support of schools in the towns and villages named, provided that the whole amount reserved should not exceed one-twentieth part of the whole lands included in the general survey of such town or village. These lots were reserved and sold for the benefit of the schools. Saint Louis received a large fund from this source. These acts benefited the towns and villages of Saint Louis, Portage des Sioux, Saint Charles, Saint Ferdinand, Villa à Robert, Carondelet, Saint Genevieve, New Madrid, New Bourbon, Little Prairie in the Territory (now State) of Missouri, and Arkansas in the Territory of Arkansas. The act of May 26, 1824, extended the benefits of both acts to the village of Mine à Burton.

THE THIRTY-SIXTH SECTION.

In the act for the organization of the Territory of Oregon, August 14, 1848, Senator Stephen A. Douglas inserted an additional grant for school purposes of the thirtysixth section in each township, with indemnity for all public-land States thereafter to be admitted, making the reservation for school purposes the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections, or 1,280 acres in each township of six miles square reserved in public-land States and Territories, and confirmed by grant in terms in the act of admission of such State or Territory into the Union.

From March 13, 1853, to June 30, 1880, seven States have been admitted into the Union having a grant of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections, and the same area has been reserved in eight Territories. (See table, page 228.)

UNIVERSITIES.

July 23, 1787, Congress, in the "Powers to the Board of Treasury to contract for the sale of Western Territory," ordered

That not more than two complete townships be given perpetually for the purpose of an university, to be laid off by the purchaser or purchasers as near the centre as