Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1888 — THE LAND STEALERS. [ARTICLE]

THE LAND STEALERS.

The following scathing and crushing expose of the methods of land storing under Republicanism will be read with interest. It is from the pen of Mr. Julian, SurveyorGeneral of New Mexico. Mr. Julian says:

In the October number of the North American Review, Stephen V\ . Dorsey makes what ho calls a “rejoinder” to ay article on “Land Stealing in New Mexico.” I find it a palpable misnomer, for he dees not attempt a reply to the mass of facts which constitute my indictment against the rogues of this Territory. A brief notice of his performance may, however, be deemed proper. In some respects Mr. Dors *y is a formidable antagonist. He once held a seat in the National Senat- from the State of Arkansas, where he will long be remembered as the genius who happily blended in himself the traits both of the carpet-bagger and the scalawag. He has held high places and wielded large powers as a party leader. He has shown uncommon ability in exploiting the mail serviee of the United States and eluding the hand of justice. Probably no man in the Union is so thoronghly acquainted with the whole business of “land stealing.” In this interesting field of activity I believe he has a national reputation as an expert. His selection as the apologist and defender of the tri .e of which he is the acknowledged ehief, is therefore altogether appropriate, and their cause will have to be abandoned as utterly hopeless if he is not able tc defend it. Mr. Dorsey damages his case in the outset by his bad temper It is not a symptom ot innocence. His personal abuse is too fervent and emotional. He should have remembered that the spaniel under the la,sh only yelps when it is touchingly appLed. The article to which he pretends to reply was dispassionately written. I only referred to individuals where my task made it neces ary dealing entirely in facts; and if Mr Dorsey had kept cool, and applied himself honestly to the work of answering them, he might have had the svmpathy, if not the respect of the public.

He also weakens his cause by dragging party politics into the discussion. He has done this without any provocation whatever. H is efforts to show that Democrats, as well as Rspnblicans, are involved in the exposures I have made, is not a response to anything 1 said. I have no dispute with him on that point. My article is thoroughly non partisan. In overhauling the frauds connected with (Spanish and Mexican grants °in New Mexico, I struck right and left, pursuing every ugly feet into its hiding place, without the least concern as to whether it would damage this party or that. I think the purpose of Mr. Dorsey in thus wandering away from the real issue is perfectly transparent. He has become tired of hanging on the ©uterwall of politics, and hopes to regain his lost! place of power in the Republican party. I sympathize with him in his distress, but be will find himself utterly disappointed. The days of his political glory are past, because, as I am oonvinced, the leaders and masses of all parties regard him as hopelessly pilloried before the nation as a Star Route thief. He smells of the penitentiary and no fumigation is possible. To every honest man in the republic the mere mention of his name suggests the striped costume of the crew whose fellowship he escaped through the miscarriage of public justice. Mr. Dorsey damages his cause still more fatally by his absolute recklessness in dealing with matters of fact. In attacking me personally he* succeeds in missing.the truth in every statement he makes. In pretending to give my pedigree, for instance, he says that nearly fif>y years ago I was e’ected to of-

fioe as a pro-slav • I r».. era: and that, defeated for i -i U. l.uu, 1 left my party. He also says that after I had posed as a 1 roe ‘Sober I became a conservative Whig. These ridicu'lou" statements will only provoke the Januhbr of my old friends, lie know. ;hnt after beginnirtr my political measaW big 1 became a na n bemud a leader of the Free Soil party in 1848, and so continued till R \,ns mergev with the Republican party in 185fi;&Ed that i remain d m that party till the Greeley campaign of 1872, when I joined its fathers and founders in walking out of it on account of its shameless misdeeds, in which Mr. Dorse* was disgracefully conspicuous. He says that i my eye “tliore was no public crime of which Ulysses 8. Grant was not guiltv,” and that to his personal knowledge I denounced General Garfield at every cross-road in Indiana as a “thief,” a “bribe-taker,” a “bribegiver” and a “perjurer.” The extravagance of t hese statements destroys them, and Mr. Dorsey knew them to be base tabrications when he penned them. 1 have in past years criticised the administration of General Grant and some of the acts of General Garfield, but in doing so 1 did not app. ar in the role of. a blacv guard, in which Mr. Dorsey is always a very shining figu e. J refer to these and kindred fabrications about myself solely as ill as: rations of th marvelous bent cf his mind towards tiro habit o. lying, and not by any means in sel -defense. Jn iiiis CTse Mr. Dorse is the defendant and culprit, and I frankly confess myself hopelessly lost if I need to defended ag inst any conceivable charges emanating from such a source. They can only tend toonthrone mo in the hearts of all honest men.

m e asserts that mainly through my exertions nearly 400 citizens of New Mexico have been indicted for land frauds, and that every man tried haa been acquitt d. Ho says, “th*re is not grain or shadow oi truth that there have been, or are now, frauds committed to any xtent in New Mexico under the homes* ad •;i • ; mpti< u law;.” Mr. Dorse-' makes Gulliver respectable. to Ids “400 citizens of New Mexico,” (if there were so many ) li knows that I h. d nothing whatever to do with their indictment, and that this was the work of the Grand J uries, aided by the District Attorney and the

special agents of the Government He knows, also, that quite a number of these man were convicted, and that the great body of them escaped solely through the saving grace of the statute of limitation, which iunooant men would not have i leaded. The proof of their guilt was ample, and no man knows thiß better than Mr. Dorsey, who is exceedingly familiar with the work of acquiring title to the public lauds through t e perjury ana subornation of perjurv of scullions and dummies employed far this service. In this prostitution of our land laws to the base uses of theft and plunder, I do not speak at random, but on the authority of ascertained facts. I shall only refer to the proceedings of a single term of the United States Cou t held in Santa Fe, last spring. On the trial of numerous parties for perjury and subornation of perjury in procuring land titles, and conspiracy to defraud the Government through the corrupt use of our land laws, eighty-eight persons availed themselves of the statute of limitations and thus confessed their guilt. The testimony developed the fact that many of these men nad been paid from five to ten dollars each to sign oertain title papers, and that they never saw the land and never attempted to occupy or improve it, while the men who hired them to swear falsely sold the land to an lowa cattle company. All this is weU known to Mr Dorsey, aDd that these men would not hav« escaped the penitentiary if the Republican officials of the Territory had done their duty in securing indictments in season. But Mr. Dorsey says “there is not a grain or shadow of truth” in the charge that land frauds have been committed in New Mexico to “any extent.” In speaking of an accomplished scoundrel of th» last century, Thomas Carlyle says “there was not truth enough in him to mak- a real l : e of.” I suspect that Mr. Dor. ey is his lineal descendant. But hear him further. In speaking of the right of the citizo to take 160 acres of land and pay for it as designated by law at the rate of $1.25 per acre, ho says: “The person entering this land must sweai that he is doing d foe his own use and benefit, and not with the view of selling it.” This is true; but in the case just cited, which are mt.re samples of New Mexican frauds, the men who pretended to enter their tracts swore falsely, and the lands passed at once into the clutches of a cattle company, just as Mr. Dorsey is well understood to have secured the title to his lands on the Una ue Gat>: Grant, and he defends this disgraceful perversion of the pre-emption law. He says: “Before the tide passes to the pre-emptor he pays th Government the price of the land,” and that “the Government is not defrauded.” It is true the Government does not lose xhe price of the land, and, therefore, according to this logic, if Mr. Dorsey can hire one hundred mid-dle-men for a few dollars each to acquire that many qua ’ter sections oi: land by perjury, and convey them to hitu, it is a legitimate business. The pre-emotion law, iv is true, only permits one person to acquire one liundre and sixt r acres of land, but on the Dorsey plan he can acquire one hundred thousand, and that law thus becomes the ms.rument through the great curse o s jono olv. vrlif h •"| ,_ * , . • * ( . it' >vHo 'A S*. 1 v\) [ i' ‘ v til ij i.T j.tl i ened uuon the c--. untry. liver;.tody knows that the pre-emption law subordinates the question of revenue to the policy of a trial settlement an 1 tillage in’ mu '.] homesteads. When it was passe:],

in 1841, tho Treasury was full to overflowing from the proceeds or sales of the public lands in large, bodies for speculative purposes' thus fatally hindering the settlement and development of the c mn • try, after a long wrangle in Congress our ugly “surplus” was divided among the States, and we entered upon a new dispensation, inspired by the purpose thereafter to dedicate the public lands to the use of the landless men who wo’d personally appropriate them -in limited allotments. Not revenue, but the settlement of the lands was the dominating idea; |and this was fterwards still more strongly emphasized in the passage of the homestead law. But the moral vision of Mr. Dorsev sees nothing v.r Jig in nu..Ayi;ig imsh -ness

laws, and making them the engines of monopoly and robbery, through the detestabl agencies of bribery and perjury. As I have shown, he denies, absolutely, that any frauds have been committed under them in New Mexico, and then brazenly defends the very villainies I have charged upon him an* his kind. Such is the gospel of “land stealing,” according to St Stephen. It is Dorseyism, pure and sin pie, in its unveded ghastliness; and I turn away from it and mereiiully draw the curtain over it while I proceed with my task.

(Concluded next week.)

“If the government may rightfully collect money by taxation and then donate it as a oounty or subsidy to individuals or corporations 6i gaged in particular industries or particular commercial enterprises, in order to make their private business profitable, why may it not also collect it and distribute it among particular classes of the people to equalize their fortunes, and thus accomplish all that Socialism and Communism are demanding?”—Speaker Carlisle.