The State of Minnesota v. Bachelder

• Decision Date: 01 December 1863
• Citation: 1 Wall. 109,17 L.Ed. 551,68 U.S. 109
• Parties: THE STATE OF MINNESOTA v. BACHELDER
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

68 U.S. 109

17 L.Ed. 551

1 Wall. 109

THE STATE OF MINNESOTA v. BACHELDER.

December Term, 1863

THIS was a writ of error to the supreme Court of the State of Minnesota, and was taken under the 25th section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which gives a writ of error here in any case where is drawn in question any clause of the Constitution, or of a treaty, or statute, or commission, held under the United States, and the decision is against the right, title, privilege or exemption specially set up or claimed by either party under such clause of the Constitution, treaty, statute or commission.

The case was thus: By the act of March 3d, 1849, the organic law of the Territory of Minnesota, was enacted 'that when the lands in said Territory shall be surveyed, sections 16 and 36 shall be and the same hereby are reserved for the purpose of being applied to schools.' A subsequent act, that of February 26th, 1857, providing for the admission of this Territory into the Union, repeats this enactment, declaring that these same numbered sections of the public lands (and in case either of said sections or any part of them has been sold or otherwise disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto and as contiguous as may be), shall be granted to said State for the use of schools.

Notwithstanding this intended devotion to purposes of education of these sections Nos. 16 and 36, Congress, by an act of 1854,¹ declared that the provisions of what is known as the Pre-emption Act² of 1841, should extend to lands in Minnesota. The result was that great numbers of persons settled all over the State, and not unfrequently settled, in different townships, upon tracts which, when the tracts came to be surveyed, proved to bear the numbers 16 and 36. In consequence of this state of things, the Territorial legislature of Minnesota presented³ a memorial to Congress for a remedy. The memorial stated, that by reason of the extension of the Pre-emption Act to Minnesota, many settlers had settled and made improvements by the erection of costly buildings and otherwise upon farms, which, when the government surveys were made, were found to be included within the school sections, and that it would be unjust to compel these persons to repurchase or lose their improvements thus made in good faith and with the expectation of a pre-emption of the lot, and recommended the passage of a law which should meet the hardship of such cases. Accordingly, on the 3d of March, 1857, that is to say, after the above-mentioned act, providing for the admission of the Territory into the Union, but before the acceptance of that act by the Convention of the State, and so before the actual incorporation of the State into the Union, Congress passed a joint resolution, which provided, that where any settlements by the erection of a dwelling-house, or the cultivation of any portion of the land, shall have been or shall be made upon these 16th or 36th sections, before the said sections shall have been or shall be surveyed, &c. and if such settlers can bring themselves within the Pre-emption Act, then the right of preference to such sections or portions of them so settled and occupied shall be in them, the same as if such sections had not been previously reserved.

The present suit arose accordingly out of this condition of the law, and was an ejectment for a tract numbered 16, by the State of Minnesota, in behalf of its schools, against one Bachelder, the defendant, who claimed under the rights given by the joint resolution just above set forth. Bachelder set up as his defence pre-emption certificates and a patent, dated August 15th, 1857, to two persons of the name of Mills,—L. and J. Mills,—from whom he showed title to himself.

To this the plaintiff replied, that these had all been obtained by fraud and misrepresentations; that the Millses did not settle on the premises, did not build a house there, nor make any improvements prior to the government survey of the sections; that in granting the papers which he had granted, the register and receiver had been deceived as well by misrepresentations of the Millses as by the false oath of one George Dazner, whom they produced to swear to facts which did not exist, but whose existence was necessary to bring the parties within the Pre-emption Act. But the court, neither on a demurrer by the State of Minnesota to a replication by Bachelder, nor on its offers to prove these facts before a jury, considered them as making a reply to the case of the defendants, as exhibited by his certificates and patents; ruling in effect that the decision of the register and receiver could not be reviewed nor inquired into by the court, and that the remedy of the State was through the commissioner of said office or the Secretary of the Interior.

The statutes of the United States devoting the sections to school purposes were put technically in the pleadings; their binding force relied on by counsel and pressed upon the court, and rulings under them asked for and refused, and the refusal excepted to; but although, by being set out in the pleadings and exceptions, and by rulings against them, they were technically drawn in question and decided against, yet the actual ground of the decision was as just stated rather than specially against the statutes.

The correctness of the view taken by the court below, as to the effect of the register and receiver's acts, as also the right of the State to have a writ of error from this court to the Supreme Court of Minnesota, when the statutes of the United States had not been otherwise drawn in question than as mentioned, were now the questions here; the former question being made by the plaintiff in error, the State of Minnesota, and the latter by the other side.

Mr. Cole, A. G., of Minnesota, for the plaintiff: The joint resolution of Congress is void. It cannot divest a title which the United States had previously granted. The organic act of the Territory constituted a dedication to public uses, perpetual and irrevocable, and whatever might have been its effect upon the naked fee, at least divested Congress of all power of disposition over the subject-matter, so far as such disposition should tend to impair the public rights created by that act. The doctrine of dedications was first announced in Strange's Reports, A.D. 1725, and applied to highways. Since then it has been vastly extended. The donations of magnificent domains, by Congress, for the promotion of learning and the liberal arts in the rising communities of the West, afford instances not the least striking and interesting of such extension, and have induced more liberal views. Thus the doctrine has in New York been applied to a public square.⁴ So it has also in Vermont.⁵ In the former State it has been extended to a gift for religious purposes;⁶ while in Pennsylvania it reaches any property devoted to purposes of general education.⁷

Page 112-Continued

If dedicated, the power of Congress over it was gone. In Wilcox v. Jackson (13 Peters, 498), the court say: ...