A History of the American People

General Jackson bid for a potentially valuable town lot, no one bid against him. He acquired his
estate and became a reasonably wealthy man through land sales, though by the end of the war he
had ceased to be interested in money. His aide, General Coffee, formed the Cypress Land
Company, bought land at Muscle Shoals, and laid out the town of Florence, Alabama, where
speculators and squatters bid up the government minimum to $78 an acre." Others in the Jackson
camp made fortunes this way. The New York politician Martin Van Buren (1782-1862), who
became Jackson's Secretary of State, also grew rich through land deals: he got large parcels of
land in Otsego County for a fraction of their true value-one 600-acre parcel he bought for
$60.90-and he knocked down land cheap at Sheriff's Auctions when settlers were sold up for
non-payment of taxes." Of course some land speculation was parasitical and downright
antisocial. But large-scale speculators were indispensable in many cases. They organized
pressure on Congress to put through roads and they invested capital to build towns like
Manchester, Portsmouth, Dayton, Columbus, and Williamsburg. A lot of speculation was on
credit, and speculators went bust if they could not sell land quickly at the right price. That was
how big groups like the one organized by Sir William Pulteney, the English politician, acquired
huge tracts. His agent spent over $1m building infrastructures-stores, mills, taverns, even a
theater. A group of bankers from Amsterdam formed the Holland Land Company, which
acquired 4 million acres in northwest New York and western Pennsylvania, put in roads and
other services, and eventually (1817) made a profit by selling off land in 350-acre plots at $5 an
acre (on ten years' credit). But most settlers preferred cheaper land to the use of an infrastructure
which they could create for themselves. Moses Cleveland, agent of the Connecticut Land
Company, managed to sell good land at a dollar an acre, with five years' credit, and to found the
village named after him which became in time a mighty city. It was from Cleveland that William
Henry Harrison (1773-1841) played a major role in creating the new state of Ohio, then moved
on to Indiana, and finally became America's ninth President.
There is an important historical and economic point to be noted here. Men always abuse
freedom, and 19th-century land speculators could be wicked and predatory. But Congress, true to
its origins, was prepared to take that risk. It laid down the ground rules by statute and then, in
effect, allowed an absolutely free market in land to develop. It calculated that this was the best
and quickest way to get the country settled. And it was proved right-freedom worked. In South
Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, the British authorities interfered in the land market
in countless ways and from the highest of motives, and as a result these countries-some of which
had even bigger natural advantages than the United States-developed far more slowly. One
British expert, H. G. Ward, who had witnessed both systems, made a devastating comparison
before a House of Commons committee in 1839. In Canada, the government, fearing speculators,
had devised a complex system of controls which actually played straight into their hands. By
contrast, the American free system attracted multitudes who quickly settled and set up local
governments which soon acted as a restraining force on antisocial operators. The system worked
because it was simple and corresponded to market forces. `There is one uniform price at $1.25 an
acre [minimum]. No credit is given [by the federal government]. There is a perfect liberty of
choice and appropriation at this price. Immense surveys are carried on, to an extent strangers
have no conception of. Over 140 million acres have been mapped and planned at a cost of
$2,164,000. There is a General Land Office in Washington with 40 subordinate district offices,
each having a Registrar and Receiver ... Maps, plans and information of every kind are
accessible to the humblest persons ... A man if he please may invest a million dollars in land. If
he miscalculates it is his own fault. The public, under every circumstance, is the gainer.’