same should be paid. On the 31st August, 1868, ordered that the sentence be stayed from execution for sixty days, on a representation that the ends of justice would be promoted rather than otherwise by the delay. REMISSION OF FINES AND FORFEITURES. .$100.00 Roger Loftus, Lee county, amount remitted................... ...... 75.00 Geo. Sharieder, Muscatine county, amount remitted...... 300.00 Thomas Shafer and Absolom Farlow, forfeiture, But ler county, amount remitted........ 500.00 G. W. Conner, Muscatine county, amount remitted (including costs)..... 50.00 William Sterman, Madison county, amount remitted...... 500.00 Peter P. Freeman, Johnson county, amount remitted..... 300.00 Gilbert Hawkins, Johnson county, forfeiture, amount remitted......... 200.00 SAM'L MERRILL. OF THE GOVERNOR OF IOWA, TO THE THIRTEENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY, IN REFERENCE TO THE DES MOINES RIVER LANDS. DES MOINES: F. M. MILLS, STATE PRINTER. SPECIAL MESSAGE. To the Gentlemen of the Senate and House of Representatives: I am constrained to call your attention to a subject, which seems to me worthy of your consideration, during your present session. Having of late received numerous letters from citizens residing along the Des Moines Valley, in reference to the great hardship which will result to them from a late decision of the Supreme. Court of the United States in relation to the Des Moines River Grant. And having consulted with other reliable parties, who confirm the statements of those letters, and also being somewhat familiar with the history of this case from personal knowledge, I take occasion to ask the attention of the General Assembly to the facts in relation thereto, in the hope that some plan may be devised to relieve these people from the great suffering which must come to them if they should be driven without any compensation from the farms they have cultivated for years, and upon which they have spent their all. It is evident that the decision of the highest court in the nation in the case of Wm. B. Welles vs. Hannah Riley, lately announced against this pre-emption, settles the question that these pre-emptors can expect no relief from the court, and whatever they may obtain, for what, to most of them, comprises the accumulation of a life time of industry, must come from the mercy of a corporation and its grantees, or as a gratuity of the State or General Government. In order to a clear understanding of this question, it may not be improper for me briefly to refer to the manner in which these titles, now determined to be worthless, were acquired. On the 8th day of August, A. D. 1846, Congress granted to the then territory of Iowa one moiety, in alternate sections, of the public lands in a strip of five miles in width on each side of the Des Moines river to be selected within said territory, to improve the navigation of the said river from its mouth to the Raccoon Fork. The State of Iowa, on the 9th day of January, A. D. 1847, by joint resolution of the General Assembly accepted the grant. February 23, 1848, R. M. Young, Commissioner of the General Land Office, decided that the State was entitled to alternate sections of five miles in width along the whole extent of the river within the limits of Iowa. The decisions of the land department at Washington, in reference to the extent of the grant, from this time fluctuated with almost every change of affairs in that department until December, 1859, when the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision limiting the grant to the Raccoon Forks. Previous to this decision, and during the time in which the extent of the grant was undetermined and uncertain, a large number of settlers had gone upon these lands by the advice of the United States Land Officers and made valuable improvements with the avowed purpose of pre-empting as soon as the result should be finally determined. When this Supreme Court decision was announced, they went forward, proved up their pre-emptions, received certificates of payment, and finally obtained patents for their lands. Others went on and made pre-emptions up to July 12, 1862, when a confirmatory act of Congress was obtained, extending the grant of August 8, 1846, to the north line of the State. Now, this late decision of the Court, a copy of which I herewith transmit, deprives these pre-emptors of their title to these lands, and throws them upon the mercy of those who have prosecuted this suit to a successful issue. Instances are not wanting in our history where States, and even the United States, under circumstances like these have partially indemnified the victims of the errors of their own officers. That this is a case of that kind there can be no question. These men went upon the lands with the assurance of the Land Department at Washington that they were entitled so to do under the pre-emption laws of the United States. According to the books of the Land Department at Washington City, as shown by Mr. Kelburnis' report on the adjustment of the river lands claims, under the act of July 12th, 1862, there is some 32,854 50-100 acres of this land upon which settlements has been |