ABSTRACT
The business of surveying, sectioning, advertising, selling, and collecting the proceeds constituted the largest single area of economic activity in the country and a major obligation of the federal government. After the individual states claiming the trans-Allegheny region had surrendered their rights, the public domain of the United States amounted to more than 200,000,000 acres. By the close of the War of 1812 the administration, sale, and donation policies of the public domain were fairly well defined. Before opening public lands to settlement, the occupancy rights of Indian tribes claiming them were recognized and treaty negotiations similar to those with foreign nations were conducted for the surrender of these rights. Speculation in public land was stimulated in the flush years 1815–1819 by the extraordinarily high prices which cotton, sugar, tobacco, and wheat brought. Meantime, Congress used the public lands to induce enlistments in the army and to reward veterans of the War of 1812.
