To September 30, 1819, the record of land sales in Illinois was as follows:

The balances unpaid by purchasers of public lands steadily increased from 1813 to 1819 until on September 30, 1819, there was due from purchasers of land in the area of the old Northwest Territory nearly ten million dollars.336 An increase would have resulted merely from an increased sale of public lands under the credit system, but it is also true that the difficulty of collecting the unpaid balances became so great that the government at last abolished the credit system, by the act of April 24, 1820. The act provided that after July 1, 1820, no credit whatever should be given to the purchasers of public lands; that land might be sold in either sections, half-sections, quarter-sections, or eighth-sections; that the minimum price should be reduced from two dollars to one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre; and that reverted lands should be offered at auction before being offered at private sale.337 At least two of the provisions of this act had long been desired by Illinois in common with other frontier regions: the reduction of the minimum price and the sale in smaller tracts. Under the new law a man with one hundred dollars could buy eighty acres of land, while previously the same man would have had to pay eighty of his one hundred dollars as the first payment on one hundred and sixty acres, the smallest tract then sold. The great danger had been that the second, third, and fourth payments could not be made. In Illinois, [pg 137] before July 1, 1820, there had been sold 1,593,247.53 acres of the public land at an average price of about $2.02 per acre. Some of this reverted from non-payment.338

During the third quarter of 1820, all sales in Illinois were at the minimum price and a considerable proportion were of the minimum area. At the same time, some of the land in Ohio, and a very few tracts in Indiana, sold at a higher price, one tract in Ohio, but only one, selling for more than seven dollars per acre.339 To October 1, 1821, the land-offices in Illinois reported:

All land in the districts of Shawneetown and Kaskaskia had been surveyed, but the remaining districts were still indefinite on the north.340 At this time, Illinois money passed in the state at par, and the Bank of Illinois was among those whose notes were received in payment for public lands.341

As more and more land was opened to settlement, a new difficulty arose and became increasingly troublesome. All public land was to be entered at the same minimum price, and as a natural result, the poorest land was not taken [pg 138] up and settlement became widely dispersed on the best tracts of land. In December, 1824, the Illinois legislature sent a memorial to Congress portraying the evils of sparse settlement, and asking that land that had been offered for sale for five years or more might be sold at fifty cents per acre. Better roads, better markets, and better institutions were expected to result from such sales.342 Two years later, another memorial was sent. This asked that land be offered for sale at prices graduated according to the quality of the land, suggested that the poorest land might well be donated to settlers, and declared that settlement was retarded by the high minimum price of land.343 Governor Ninian Edwards pointed out that in 1790, Hamilton had recommended that public lands be sold at twenty cents per acre, which “was the price at which Kentucky, long afterward, sold her lands.”344 In 1828, the Committee on Public Lands recommended that public lands unsold at public sale be first offered at one dollar per acre, and if still unsold, that the price be reduced twenty-five cents per acre each two years until sold or reduced to twenty-five cents per acre; that eighty-acre homestead claims be given to such persons as would cultivate and occupy them for five years; and that lands unsold at twenty-five cents per acre be ceded to the states in which they lay, upon payment of the cost of survey and twenty-five cents per acre. At this time, there was in Illinois 1,403,482 acres surveyed and sold; 19,684,186 acres surveyed and unsold, of the 39,000,000 acres estimated to be in the State.345 Still another memorial from the legislature was sent to Congress in 1829. It [pg 139] pointed out, in strong terms, the inconvenience arising from the high price at which public land was offered for sale. Unsold public land could neither be taxed nor legally settled. It was stated that of the forty millions of acres in Illinois, little over one and one-half millions had been sold at public sales. A granting of the right of preemption, which implies the presence in the state of squatters, is suggested.346

The implication of the presence of squatters was well founded. When Peter Cartwright, in 1823, visited a settlement in the Sangamon country, he found it a community of squatters, on land which had been surveyed, but was not yet offered for sale. Money was hoarded up to enter land when Congress should order sales. Cartwright paid a squatter two hundred dollars for his improvement and his claim, bought some stock, and rented out the place, to which he was to remove from Kentucky the following year.347 This squatting on surveyed land, and even on unsurveyed land, was a regular procedure. It added much to the difficulty of governing the state—hence the memorials to Congress, and hence the great significance to Illinois of an act of May 29, 1830, which gave to all settlers who had cultivated land in 1829 the right to preempt not more than one hundred and sixty acres.348 This law was of general application. Even now the Illinois legislature sent another petition concerning preemption to Congress, because one of the provisions of the act of May, 1830, was that the plat of survey should have been filed [pg 140] in the land-office, and this provision debarred about one thousand Illinois squatters from the benefit of the act. A modification in their favor was desired.349

The land claims of the ancient settlers, as they are called in government documents, continued to occupy the attention of Congress, in a desultory way, throughout the period, but their influence upon settlement had practically ceased with the opening of the public land-offices.350

Among the obstacles to settlement was the holding of land by non-residents. Such lands were subject to a triple tax in case of delinquency, and when sold for taxes and costs frequently did not bring enough for that purpose, in which event they reverted to the state and the state paid the costs. Redemption, although possible, was rare.351 In 1823, about nine thousand quarter-sections of land in the Military Tract, lying between the Illinois and the Mississippi, were advertised for sale, because of the non-payment of taxes by non-resident landholders.352 At this time, two of the prominent men of the state who wished to dispose of a large amount of state paper, advertised that they would pay such delinquent taxes at twenty-five per cent discount.353 In 1826, thirty-eight pages of the Illinois Intelligencer were filled with a description, in double column, of lands owned by non-residents, the lands being for sale for taxes. In 1829, a similar list filled thirty-two pages.354 Much discontent was manifested in the state on account of the laws [pg 141] concerning the public lands, and Governor Edwards' message to the legislature, in 1830, elaborated a theory that all public lands belonged of right to the states in which they lay.355

Illinois early understood that an Illinois-Michigan canal would help to people her northern lands. This led to many efforts to secure such a waterway. In 1819 a favorable topographical report concerning the route for the proposed canal was made,356 and in 1822 the state was authorized to construct the canal, but no tangible aid was given.357 In 1825 the legislature petitioned Congress for a grant of the townships through which the canal would pass. A committee report of March, 1826, which was almost identical with another presented in February, 1825, pointed out that the cost of transporting a ton of merchandise from Philadelphia, New York, or Baltimore was about ninety dollars, and required from twenty to twenty-two days. The probable cost by the proposed canal, the Lakes, and the Erie Canal, from St. Louis to New York was from sixty-three to sixty-five dollars per ton, and the time from twelve to fifteen days. The canal would bind Illinois and Missouri to the North.358 Congress received a memorial from the legislature on the same subject in January, 1827, requesting the grant of “two entire townships, along the whole course of the canal,” and declaring that markets at New Orleans fluctuated because of speculators, and that grain and goods sent from the West to the Atlantic ports by way of New Orleans was exposed to the [pg 142] dangers of both the southern climate and the sea.359 A few weeks later the desired grant was made, the state being given one-half of five sections in width on each side of the canal, the United States reserving the alternate sections.360 The canal commissioners promptly platted the original town of Chicago and sold lots at from twenty to eighty dollars each, but no immediate settlement followed the land sale, and Chicago remained for some years longer an Indian town. The prospect of having a canal doubtless had some influence upon settlement, but at the close of 1830 the actual construction of the canal was still a thing of the future. By the close of 1828, Congress had donated to Illinois, for various purposes, chiefly for schools and internal improvements, 1,346,000 acres.361

The salt springs had been vested in the state of Illinois with the provision that no part of the reservations should be sold. Large reservations were made at the Saline River salt works and at the Vermilion saline near Danville, the object being to reserve a supply of wood for the making of salt. Upon the discovery of coal near the springs the state was permitted to sell not more than thirty thousand acres of the Saline River reservation.362

Illinois as a landowner sometimes mingled church and state. The original proprietors of Alton having donated one hundred lots, one-half for the support of the gospel, and one-half for the support of a public school, the state vested the donated lots in the trustees of the town, upon its incorporation in 1821. A similar donation made by the proprietors of Mt. Carmel was confirmed in the same [pg 143] manner.363 The Cumberland Presbyterians having built a church on a school section, the state provided that for ninety-nine years the building should be used as a schoolhouse also, the school being under the joint direction of the trustees of the township and the church society.364

The receipts for public lands in 1828 and 1829, respectively, were:

The receipts for 1828 were for 96,092.91 acres; of 1829, for 196,324.92 acres.366 From October 1, 1829, to September 30, 1830, sales, receipts, and prices were:

The northward movement of population in Illinois is well [pg 144] indicated by the figures for 1828 and 1829. The Indian barrier was being pushed back, and the Sangamon country, with its land-office at Springfield, was a favorite place for settlement. The rapid increase in the amount of land sold is also striking. As the third decade of the century closed Indiana was the favorite place for frontier settlement. The sales of public lands in Ohio were diminishing. A prophetic glance would have seen that as the ever-shifting frontier passed westward Illinois was to overtake and then to far surpass Indiana in number of settlers.

The period from 1818 to 1830 saw the Indian title to a great fertile tract of land in Illinois extinguished, the price of all public lands lowered and the land offered for sale in smaller tracts, the right of preemption granted to squatters who had settled before 1830, considerable grants of land made to the state for internal improvements, the great salt spring reservations reduced. These changes did much to make Illinois a more attractive place for settlement. When a committee of workingmen in Wheeling, Virginia, made a report, in October, 1830, on a method of escaping from the ills of workingmen, they presented an elaborate plan for buying land and forming a colony in Illinois.368 The experience of the squatter who settled with four or five sows for breeders and in four years or less drove forty-two fat hogs to market and sold them for $135, with which he bought eighty acres of land and paid his debts, was not a rare one.369

As 1830 closed there were still problems connected with the land to solve. The Indian question persisted, non-resident landholders were troublesome, and the state [pg 145] would still seek grants for internal improvements, but none of these was to be long a serious impediment to settlement.