Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Missouri Volume 41 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868 Excerpt: ...purposes. Which the court made, and appellant excepted. The court found and rendered judgment for the respondent. The appellant filed a motion for a new trial; which the court overruled, and appellant excepted. Hall 8f Oliver, for appellant. I. The declarations of law asked by plaintiff and refused by the court should have been given. The act of Congress of September 28, 1850 (9 U. S. Stat. at Large, 519), granting the swamp and overflowed lands to the States, does not set apart any particular tracts of land and separate them from the public domain. The States might, no doubt, very properly employ agents to select said lands; but the selections, when made, did not ipso facto separate the land so selected from the public domain. Nothing in the act defines the officers who are charged with the duty of executing the land laws, or their control over selections made by the States in order to see that they are made by legal subdivisions; that the greater part of each tract selected is unfit for cultivation by being wet and overflowed; that they have not been sold by the United States, nor granted to railroads, nor covered Hann. & St. Jo. R.R. Co. v. Smith. by pre-emption rights, &c. On the contrary, the act expressly imposes on the Secretary of the Interior the duty -f supervising the selections, and it is only on his approval and the issuing of a patent that the final severance from the public domain of the lands so selected takes effect and the title vests in the State--Rice v. Railroad Co., 1 Black, 358; Foley v. Harrison, 15 How. 433; Baker v. Gee, 1 Wall. 336; Wilkinson v. Lcland et al., 2 Pet. 661; State v. Comm'rs, 9 Wis. 236; Hann. & St. Jo. R.R. Co. v. Moore, 37 Mo. 338; Pacific R.R. v. Lindell's Heirs, 40 Mo. 359; vol. 1, part 1, Exec. ...