him in the regular order of the business of such day; taking care, at the same time, when there is a crowd in the office, not to allow a monopoly of purchase in favor of any one person, and not permitting any one person to purchase or locate, at any one time, more than the extent of an ordinary entry. It is then the duty of the receiver of public moneys to receive, in cash, land warrants, or scrip, payment for each tract so sold by the register, and certified as sold, in the regular order during each day of the reception by him of the necessary certificates from the register, and full consideration for the tract so purchased or located; thus consummating, before the close of each day, every entry for which full payment has been made during the day. If at any time a greater number of applications for the entry or location of land should be tendered at your office than can be attended to and consummated in the regular order of their reception, they should be allowed to remain in the hands of the applicant until they can be so received and consummated. The fact that an applicant has tendered his application and consideration for the tract he desires to purchase or locate, at a time when the business before you would not permit you even to examine, much less to consummate, the entry or location, gives him no right to make a subsequent entry or location of the tract in preference to one who may have made a proper application and tender for the same tract at a time when his application could be attended to and consummated. You will furnish Mr. Birch with a copy of this letter if he desires it."

Another accusation is, that the Commissioner procured the removal of James H. Birch from the registership at Plattsburg in March or April, 1857, with a view to the interests of Messrs. McLaughlin and Felix. The Secretary of the Interior disposes of that in a few words:

"Mr. Birch was removed on the decisive recommendation of the Missouri delegation in Congress, without any consultation with the Commissioner."

There seems to be no pretext, indeed, for the contrary assertion.

On the other hand, the Commissioner accuses the late register at Plattsburg, James H. Birch, of several irregularities, and asks that his management of that office be investigated. The committee does not conceive it the duty of the Senate to undertake such investigations; they pertain to the Executive department.

The memorialists pray Congress to suspend the granting of patents to Messrs. McLaughlin and Felix with a view to some judicial interposition. The committee can see no reason for this, and especially as the rights of the memorialists (whatever those rights are) will remain as against the patentees, in equity, capable of assertion and vindication.

The committee ask to be discharged from the further consideration of the subject.

To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled:

The undersigned, citizens of the State of Missouri, in behalf of themselves and thirty-six others, who reside elsewhere, respectfully represent, that on the second day of March last they applied, in writing, (each for himself,) to locate certain lands in the Plattsburg district, and that after the register had made the usual examination and found that said lands were vacant and subject to location by your petitioners, he received our warrants, marked our locations upon the maps of his office, and in our turns, respectively, within the month, as rapidly as the great amount of business which had been that day thrown upon. the office would admit, our applications were put into official form, and certificates of location issued to us accordingly, the dates being conformed to the day on which the business was thus finally completed, but the title inuring, in case of contest, from the date of the filing of the original application. Your petitioners further represent, that the method thus pursued by the register and receiver had prevailed for so long a period as to have become known and conformed to as the regular and appropriate system of disposing of the public lands, during the continued and unexampled pressure of business which gave rise to it, and that the regulations thus established had not only the tacit recognition of the Commissioner at Washington, but stand specifically approved and affirmed by him, in his correspondence with the register and receiver, in a case which was appealed from their decision for the purpose of testing and confirming its validity.

Such being the regular and approved method by which your petitioners acquired their titles to the land in question-the same, precisely, upon which, perhaps, a million of acres are held in this district-they regret to have to refer your honorable body to the course which has been subsequently pursued by the Commissioner of the Land Office and the Secretary of the Interior to divest them of their titles, and to transfer the land in question (about 19,000 acres) to certain parties in Pennsylvania, whom your petitioners aver did not even apply for it until five days after it had been thus regularly sold and paid for by your petitioners. Having been permitted, as parties in interest, to examine and understand the correspondence which ensued upon this subject, and which eventuated, in July last, in a peremptory order to the new register and the receiver to cancel our entries and permit Messrs. Felix and McLaughlin, of Pennsylvania, to locate our land, we cannot, with respect to the body to whom we appeal, say more, nor in justice to ourselves can we allege less, than that it discloses, from first to last, an apparent predetermination to find and maintain some pretext on which to ground so great a wrong, so inexcusable and as we believe so meretricious a favoritism.

Should that correspondence and the reports of the Commissioner and Secretary be called for by your honorable body, we stake our whole claim to your favorable consideration of our case upon the allegation, that the medley thus presented will be found to be sinuous, uncandid, and unjust in its varied and ever shifting pretexts; simulated, fraud

ulent, and false in every material representation which it pretends to make from the records; and that in the reports which were laid before the President, in order to obtain his concurrence in so great a fraud, there was studiously withheld from him not only the very gist of the case, (namely, the approved regulations alluded to, conformably to which our locations were to be regarded as of the second of March, the day of our original applications, instead of the official dates subsequently inserted in the papers and returns,) but the very letter which we are informed and believe had been specifically pointed out to the Secretary of the Interior, as the foundation for identifying the chief clerk in the Land Office as having been personally interested in the consummation of so bold and daring a swindle, was in a like manner kept wholly out of sight, in his report to the President.

Being thus brought to despair of obtaining the redress to which we are entitled through the ordinary executive machinery, which has been in fact turned against us, and the Commissioner having withdrawn (by telegraph) from the files of the office here all the original letters and papers in the case, we reluctantly appeal to Congress, under whose eye alone we can hope to have made and preserved such a record of this case as will protect us from such future falsifications of it as may be deemed necessary by the corrupt adepts who have usurped its entire custody. And we respectfully yet earnestly pray your honorable body, that, in addition to such redress as you may be pleased to award to us and to those who have been similarly outraged, oppressed, and injured, you will enact such additional legislation as by its penalties and disabilities may guard against the recurrence of malversations so apparently premeditated, demoralizing, and enormous. And your petitioners, &c.,

THOMAS D. W. YONLEY,
THOMAS E. BASSETT,

JOSEPH B. BIGGERSTAFF,
ELIZUR D. PARSONS,

THOMAS E. TURNEY.

The memorial of James H. Birch, jr., a citizen of Howard county, Missouri, in behalf of himself and forty other citizens, to the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress assembled:

The demand for public land in the Plattsburg (Missouri) district. increased so rapidly in the beginning of the year 1856 as to make it impossible for the officers to work off the daily applications on the day they were made, as had been usual. To meet the emergency, the register opened a registry, in which the names of all applicants were recorded as made, and a day then fixed when each would be disposed of in turn.

The passage of the act in the same year, granting to the State of Iowa a large quantity of public land for railroad purposes, had the effect of withdrawing from market much the larger portion of the

desirable public land in that State, thereby directing public attention to the adjoining valuable vacant lands in Missouri, and greatly increasing the already crowded condition of the Plattsburg office.

The registry system had been greatly abused, and in June already reached the 26th of August. It failed to accomplish the object intended, and was discontinued by the register who adopted it. Many persons registered without present knowledge or want of land, but, before their day, ascertained the numbers of valuable lands, and on their turn either entered them on speculation for themselves or for others who were waiting at a premium. On the 30th of June, after the registry system was abandoned, and when applications were refused to give time for bringing up the business of the office, the resignation of the register took effect. A new officer had been appointed and qualified early in July. Large numbers of gentlemen from every part of the land district and the Union were continually visiting the office. It was physically impossible to transact their business, and the problem for the new register was the adoption of such a course as would be just to the government and all bona fide applicants. The old applications previously received and registered reached to the 26th of August, as before stated. They were worked up, as registered, and public notice given that the office would open for applications on the 1st of September, and that every applicant would be required to deliver a descriptive written list to the register, and as soon as conflicts were settled, to deposit land warrants or money sufficient to pay for all land applied for, and free from conflict. Notice was also given that at the close of that day the office would close for applications, and remain closed until those then received were disposed of.

The notice thus given brought together a large crowd from nearly every part of the Union, and applications were received for about 100,000 acres. A lottery was held for priority in office business; conflicting applications settled by offering all such to the highest bidder; and the issuing of ordinary office duplicates, in turn, commenced. Most of the applicants left the office, leaving their office business, thus settled by lottery, in the hands of local agents.

The applications were all made and received in bulk on the 1st of September, but the ordinary printed application for each tract and the duplicate were each dated the day they were signed by the register and receiver.

This course was adopted for reasons believed to be good by the officers. It was physically impossible to do the work in one day, and they were compelled to certify to signing a duplicate on a different day from the one on which it was signed, or conform the application and duplicate to the day the work was closed in the office. Another reason existed in the necessity of monthly returns to the General Land Office. The business could not be closed in one day, nor in one month, and a different course would have involved the incongruity of applications and duplicates dated the 1st of September, going forward in November with previous returns on file, closing all business for September and October.

All saw the propriety, and none doubted the exact justice of the course adopted; but as all desired a perfect title to the lands they Rep. No. 289-2

were paying for, two points were made by applicants, and appealed to the General Land Office.

Within a few days after the office was thus closed against applications, and while the officers were working off those of 1st September, an application was made for an eighty acre tract. The applicant tendered a warrant to the register, with the receiver's receipt for the locating fee, and the application was refused by the register under the above regulation. The decision of the register was appealed from, and the facts communicated in an agreed case to the Commissioner of the General Land Office. The Commissioner sustained the act of the register, and ordered him to deliver the warrant and receiver's receipt to the applicant, who should await the business of the office.

Soon thereafter, and while the officers were proceeding under the above regulation, a pre emption SETTLEMENT of the 6th was filed and proved to contest an office duplicate of the 8th, made in bulk on the 1st, as above stated. That point was the only one in the case, and the decision of the register and receiver refusing the pre-emption appealed from. The Commissioner sustained the register and receiver, and confirmed the land to the applicant of the 1st, under his office duplicate of the 8th.

Those were the only doubtful questions which grew out of the necessity of the regulations adopted on the 1st of September, and they were definitely and regularly settled, as stated. Thereafter the business of the office progressed without objection, all parties having acquiesced in the course of the register and receiver, sustained, as they were, by the decision of the Commissioner.

It was soon ascertained by the officers that the applications of 1st September could be worked up by November, and notice was given that on 1st of November the office would again open for applications, under the same rules and restrictions adopted 1st September.

On that day some 300,000 acres was applied for, as before, and thereafter worked up in the same manner. The extent of those applications satisfied all parties that the working up and other current business would consume the winter months; and it was soon publicly known that the office would not be open for applications until 2d March, 1857.

On that day the office was opened. The number of applicants present being unusually large, the register, whose duty it was to receive applications, mustered all in a line in the open streets. Commencing at one end, under his supervision, each drew for the privilege, in turn, of making application, and for priority of office work. Everything seemed fair, and, so far as I know or believe, the most perfect satisfaction was felt and expressed by every applicant present.

Applications were then made in turn. The register received them, dated them, and filed each under his official endorsement. They were thus made, and ever since have been, public records of the government.

The official maps of the office were then rapidly marked in the usual way to indicate that the land had been applied for, and all conflicting applications decided by offering each to the highest bidder.