City of St Louis v. United States

• Decision Date: 01 October 1875
• Citation: 23 L.Ed. 731,92 U.S. 462
• Parties: CITY OF ST. LOUIS v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

92 U.S. 462

23 L.Ed. 731

CITY OF ST. LOUIS v. UNITED STATES.

October Term, 1875

APPEAL from the Court of Claims.

Mr. Montgomery Blair for the appellants.

Mr. Solicitor-General Phillips, contra.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.

The subject of this controversy is the title to the land known as Jefferson Barracks, consisting of about seventeen hundred acres, five miles below the city of St. Louis. It lies within the lines of a survey of the commons of Carondelet, containing a much larger quantity,—nearly ten thousand acres.

The present suit was instituted in the Court of Claims, in 1859, by the city of Carondelet. As the jurisdiction of that court was doubted, Congress, by the act of 1873 (17 U. S. Stat. 621), specially authorized it to entertain jurisdiction of the controversy. The city of Carondelet having become merged in the city of St. Louis by an act of the legislature of Missouri, the latter city was substituted as plaintiff.

A deed conveying the land in controversy to the United States was made by the city of Carondelet on the twenty-fifth day of October, 1854; and it is not controverted that the authority under which this was done was sufficient. If this deed be held to be otherwise valid, it decides the controversy in favor of the United States. Its validity is denied, however, on the part of plaintiff, on the ground that it was without consideration, and that it was improperly coerced from the authorities of Carondelet by the officers of the government who had charge of the department of public lands by an unjust and illegal exercise of authority in refusing to confirm and threatening to set aside the survey, which we have already mentioned, of the Carondelet commons, and exacting this deed as the condition of their acquiescence in that survey. On the other side, the deed is supported as a just and equitable compromise of a long-existing controversy, both as to the correctness of that survey and the right of the government to the ground known as Jefferson Barracks.

The origin of the claim of Carondelet was a concession of six thousand arpents of land adjoining the village, made in 1796 by Zenon Trudeau, lieutenant-governor of Upper Louisiana. An attempt to give locality to this concession was made by Soulard (who describes himself as a surveyor commissioned by the government) in December, 1797; but the first actual survey was made in 1818 by Elias Rector, who was deputy under his father, William Rector, surveyor of public lands for the Territories of Illinois and Missouri.

The Court of Claims finds, that, though the field-notes of this survey were filed in the surveyor's office, it was never approved by him.

But, in the year 1834, Elias T. Langham, surveyor-general at St. Louis, caused J. C. Brown, one of his deputies, to retrace and re-establish the lines of Rector's survey; and, when the result of the work was returned to his office, he approved the survey, and the same was duly filed in the office of recorder of land-titles in Missouri, who thereupon certifies that the title was by him duly confirmed of the village to their claim as commons of six thousand arpents of land, as shown by that survey. Six thousand arpents are equivalent to five thousand one hundred and four acres. The survey contained nine thousand nine hundred and five acres; and the Court of Claims finds, that, after deducting from that quantity the Jefferson-Barracks claim and all private claims, there still remained nearly one thousand acres more than the six thousand arpents. There is no evidence that this survey was ever brought to the attention of the Land Department in Washington until June, 1839.

In that year, the surveyor-general at St. Louis seems to have called the attention of the district-attorney of the United States for Missouri to the survey in connection with the location of Jefferson Barracks; and, the letter having been transmitted to the Secretary of War, an investigation of the whole matter was instituted by the commissioner of public lands.

This resulted in an order, made in 1841 by Commissioner Whitcomb to Surveyor-General Milburn, directing a new survey of these commons, on the principle of reserving one thousand seven hundred and two acres for military purposes at Jefferson Barracks, allowing six...