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Senate Debates On The Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons, February 21, 1854

From: Senate Debates On The Land-Grant Bill For Indigent Insane Persons
Creator: n/a
Date: February 21, 1854
Publication: The Congressional Globe
Source: Library of Congress


Introduction

Dorothea Dix’s Land-Grant Bill for Indigent Insane Persons was a frequent topic of debate in Congress between 1848 and 1854. Here a proponent of the bill and major ally of Dix, Senator Solomon Foot of Vermont, outlines his argument for passage of the bill. Foot, an antislavery Republican, was in the Senate until his death in 1866. Foot maintains that care for the indigent insane is an especially appropriate use for the federal lands.


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On motion by Mr. FOOT, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill making a grant of public lands to the several States and Territories of the Union, for the benefit of indigent insane persons.

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Mr. FOOT. Mr. President, the Committee of Public Lands reported an amendment to this bill, in the form of a substitute for the original bill, which was introduced by myself, and referred to that committee; and to that amendment or substitute there is now pending an amendment offered by the Senator from Indiana, -Mr. PETTIT- who is not now in his seat.

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Mr. President, this bill, with but a light modification, has been pending before Congress for the last five or six years, and has passed each House by decisive majorities at different terms, though unfortunately not at the same term in concurrence. The object of the bill and its provisions are doubtless well understood by most, if not all the members of the Senate. It has been very fully and carefully considered by your Committee on Public Lands, and we think it well guarded in all its provisions. It can hardly be deemed necessary, therefore, to enter upon any extended discussion at this time, with a view to enforce its claim upon the favorable consideration of the Senate.

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By the last census, it appears there are over thirty thousand persons in the United States laboring under the most fearful and terrible of all inflictions, mental alienation or insanity; a very large proportion of whom are in circumstances of indigence and want, destitute alike of the ordinary physical comforts of life, and of that remedial care and treatment which are afforded only at well endowed hospitals, devoted exclusively to that purpose, and which all observation and experience show to be indispensable to their restoration.

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The amelioration of the condition of this large and increasing class of our citizens, suffering under the most direful calamity which can befall a human being; to restore them, so far as it may be done, to reason, to usefulness, and to happiness, is no secondary object of public interest, or of national concern. The subject is one which appeals not to our sympathies only, but it addresses itself emphatically to our regard as legislators for the public weal. It seems hardly possible to conceive of any other, or more practicable mode, than the measure proposed by this bill, by which the Federal Government, not transcending its constitutional powers, can more effectually contribute to the accomplishment of this most beneficent, and most desirable object.

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The bill proposes a grant of ten millions of acres from your immense public domain for this object, to be apportioned among all the States, new and old, according to a prescribed and equitable ratio, in sections and parts of section, after it shall have been surveyed. In the States in which there are been survey of the value of $1 25 per acre are to have their distributive shares selected from such lands. The States in which there are no public lands of that value are to receive the amount of their distributive shares in acres in land scrip, to be sold by the States at a price not less than one dollar per acre. No State to which scrip is to be issued is authorized to locate it in any other State or Territory; but their assignees may locate their scrip upon any of the unappropriated lands of the United States which shall then be subject to private entry at $1 25 per acre.

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This provision will prevent the location of this scrip upon any of the public lands along the lines whose minimum value any price above fixed at the duplicate price, or at $1 25 per acre. The expenses of these proceedings are to be borne by the several States respectively. The moneys realized from the sale of the lands and from the sale of the scrip are to be invested in the United States stocks, or other stocks yielding not less than five per cent. upon their par value; and this is to constitute a perpetual fund, the interest of which shall be applied to making provision for, and to the support and maintenance of the indigent insane in some public hospital or institution devoted exclusively to their care and treatment, and having full corps of officers, physicians, and attendants attached to them. The previous assent of the States to the grant, with all its provisions and conditions, is to be signified by legislative enactments, if any portion of the fund shall be lost, or if it shall become diminished from any accident or cause whatever, the State must make up such loss or diminution, and keep the fund entire and inviolable.

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These are the principal features of the bill. The object is a good one. It is, indeed, an object of growing and national importance. The measure proposed by the bill is not circumscribed, nor local, nor partial in its operation, like very many of your grants; but, on the contrary, it is general and equitable, and as universal in its operation and influence as the miseries it proposes to relieve, it passes clear of all the objections to merely local and partial grants. It comes clearly within the limits of your constitutional power upon general principles, and has the authority of precedents almost without number. Indeed, the precedents, many of them, go far beyond this proposition, and, which, from their local and partial character, were obnoxious to objections of which this case stands clear. Objects of humanity and charity, both at home and abroad, have not unfrequently claimed the attention and consideration of Congress, and have shared the bounty of the Federal Government in different forms. Without stopping to comment upon them, I beg leave to call the attention of the Senate to several acts in which the principle and the power we ask to be exercised and applied in this case have been fully recognized by Congress.


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In 1819 Congress granted a township of land for the support of an asylum for the deaf and dumb in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1826 they granted another township of land for the support of a similar Institution at Danville, Kentucky; and in 1812 Congress appropriated $50,000, to be expended in the purchase of provisions to be sent to the people of Venezuela, who had suffered from the great earthquake; and in 1815 they granted a tract of land in the Territory of Missouri, called the "New Madrid grants," for the benefit of such persons as had suffered by earthquakes. In 1827 Congress voted $20,000 to the city of Alexandria, for the relief of persons who had suffered by the fire which had consumed a considerable portion of the town; and in 1847 Congress authorized the employment of the United States ships Macedonian and Jamestown to transport provisions for the famishing poor of Ireland and Scotland. These were all objects of charity, of benevolence, and humanity. They were objects local and temporary in their character, and, in two instances, among a foreign people. Yet the Congress of the United States answered to the calls of human suffering, and in bestowing these gratuities, while you inflicted no blow upon the Constitution, you struck a responsive chord in the American heart.

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In 1831 Congress granted a tract of land to the trustees of Shawneetown, Illinois, for the purpose of graduating and paving the river bank within the limits of that town; and at another time a similar grant was made to Tuscarawas county, Ohio, for the improvement of streets amid alleys. But I need not multiply instances of this sort. Special grants, in almost unlimited numbers, have been made for purposes of local improvement; for educational purposes; for sites for court-houses; for churches and cemeteries, and the like.

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Of a similar character was the large grant in 1841 of half a million acres to each of the States in which the public lands are situated, for purposes of internal improvement. Your whole system of annuities, your pension and bounty land system, is but a system of beneficent and charitable gratuities, and founded upon no consideration springing from any contract for service. Your statute-books abound with acts making grants of lands and money for particular and local objects; for local and specific improvements; for local institutions within the States; for the support of schools, academies, colleges, and universities, to say nothing of your annual appropriations for your numerous marine and military hospitals.

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In addition to all this, there are now bills upon your table by which it is proposed to invite the landless of our own country, and of other countries, to go and take possession, each man, of a hundred and sixty acres of your public domain, without money and without price. In the fullness of your liberality to all other claims, you are now asked to bestow this comparatively small pittance for the relief of those who are not only destitute, but are mentally and physically unable to avail themselves of your proffered boon upon that condition -- who have not the ability to go and personally occupy your lands. The only mode in which they can be benefited by the bounty of the Government through its public lands, is in the manner proposed by this bill. Why shall we hesitate to pass it? Humanity, public policy, and impartial justice alike demand the adoption of the measure. Pass the bill, and the sentiment of the country will respond to it as one of the most just and beneficent acts of your legislation. Pass this bill, and it will accomplish more substantial and lasting good -- it will alleviate more suffering and sorrow; yes, sir, it will illumine, with the rays of hope, more dark and desolate places of anguish and despair, than an equal appropriation of your public lands in any other manner, or for any other purpose.

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It is no argument against this proposition to tell us that it is the duty and the proper business of the States to provide for and to take care of their indigent insane. We do not propose to take from them that duty, but the rather to encourage and aid them in the discharge of it. And with the multiplied examples and precedents before us, it is quite too late to make a serious question of the power of Congress to grant such aid, if Congress may give lands to the States to aid them in building roads, and canals, and railways; to support schools, and academies, and colleges; to improve streets, and alleys, and river banks, in particular localities; if it may give Sites for court-houses, and churches, and cemeteries to particular towns, or counties, or parishes; if it may grant annuities, and pensions, and bounty lands to particular individuals, or classes of individuals -- the very terms of which imply a gift, or bounty, and independent of any contract obligations; if it may give money and employ its ships to furnish provisions the sufferers from earthquake, or from fire or famine, in foreign lands, as well as in our own; if it may give lands for the benefit of local asylums in Connecticut or Kentucky; if it may give lands, as you propose to do, to all the destitute among those who are vigorous and robust enough to go and take possession of and occupy them -- if we may do all this, why, in the name of common justice, and of common humanity, may we not grant lands, in equitable proportions, to all the States, embracing the new as well as the old, to aid them in making suitable provisions for the proper care and treatment of the thirty thousand of our fellow-beings, who are in a more helpless and deplorable condition than any other class upon whom your bounty has ever been bestowed?


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If it be said that Government receives a consideration for these land grants, in the enhanced value of its remaining lands, by the increased settlements and improvements, the argument applies with equal force in the present case. You are furnishing another means, an additional agency to encourage and promote settlements, and thereby to Create an increased demand, and to give a greater value and more ready sale for your other lands. The exercise of the power claimed in this case comes within the rule of the most strict construction, that the Federal Government, as the trustee of the public lands, may dispose of them only in such manner as a proprietor would do in the exercise of it sound discretion.

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Mr. President, if I may be allowed to express the opinion, this is the only measure which is likely to command the favorable action of Congress, by which the old States will receive directly any share or benefit from the public domain. which is the common property of all the States. I am not complaining of injustice to the non-landholding States; but with the record of its acts before me, I feel authorized to say that Congress has dealt liberally, to say the least, with the land States in the way of grants to them. The grants to the new States and Territories, for various purposes, amounted in the aggregate, on the 30th of June last, to a fraction short of one hundred and thirty millions of acres. I hope the policy of the Government will always be characterized by a spirit of liberality towards them; but, at the same time, that it will not be forgetful of a proper regard to what is just and due to the old States of this Union.

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Now, when the new States are asking the votes of the representatives of the old States, for grants of other millions of acres of this common domain, to aid them in the construction of various lines of railroad and for other purposes, is it a vain or unreasonable expectation on our part, that the representatives from the new States will characterize their action by a spirit of justice and liberality, in cheerfully according to us the small portion of this common fund which is called for by the provisions of this bill, for an object so commendable and worthy, and in which they themselves are to enjoy an equal participation? "They who ask justice must do justice," is a maxim of policy as well as of morality, even in legislation. I am not prepared to believe that honorable Senators from the new States will assume the position of demanding all for themselves and denying everything to us. It gives me pleasure, indeed, to bear my testimony to the very kindly and generous disposition of those Senators from the new States upon the Committee on Public Lands, towards this beneficent measure.

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Mr. President, if it were needful, or if it were possible, to invest the proposition before us with any additional interest aside from its intrinsic merit, it is found in the consideration of its origin. It comes commended to our attention and our regard in the memorial of an accomplished and gifted lady, the prime and energy of whose years have been devoted to the study and amelioration of the condition of this most unfortunate and neglected class of people. She has visited in person nearly every State in this Union, and made herself acquainted with the condition and personal history of more than twenty-five thousand of this class of persons, most of whom were found in a lamentable state of destitution and neglect. Fitted by rare endowments to have attained popular eminence and applause in the higher and more inviting departments of life; to have moved among the more attractive and admired scenes of its proudest and gayest circles, her days and years, and an ample private fortune have been expended in seeking out and alleviating the condition of those whom the world beside had forsaken. With the vigilance and devotion of a patron saint, she has sought out the stricken maniac in jail, and in poor-houses; in private cells, in garrets, and in dark dens; often in rags and in chains, and administered to their physical wants, and poured the accents of inspiring hope and consolation into their dark and troubled spirits. Like an angel of mercy, her visitation by day and by night have been among the abodes where poverty and wretchedness and wild delirium dwell. This, sir, is but a feeble tribute to the purity and disinterestedness of motive, to the excellence and energy of purpose, to the moral heroism and true nobility of character of her whose prayer is before you in her memorial for the aid of the Government in behalf of suffering humanity. Look at the picture which that memorial presents; look at your abundant means; look at what you have done, and are daily doing, for others; then let those who can, reject the prayer of that petition.

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A word or two now, Mr. President, in reference to the amendment offered by the Senator from Indiana, -Mr. PETTIT- which proposes to limit the appropriation exclusively to the States in which the public lands lie. The proposed amendment is incompatible with the main object of the bill, and inconsistent with all its provisions. It is an adversary proposition, and as such, it may be considered as coming within the parliamentary rules of legitimate opposition to the bill, with a view to defeat its passage. If the Senate agree to the amendment, it defeats the bill; if they reject it, the vote may be taken as an indication of the judgment of the Senate in favor of the bill. I am quite willing, therefore, that the issue should be made upon the proposed amendment, and that the fate of the bill be tested by that vote.


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The time having arrived for taking up the special order, on motion, the further consideration of the bill was postponed until half past twelve o'clock tomorrow.

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