Public Lands & Dual Sovereignty

In the Congressional debates of 20th Congress, Vol. 4., 1829, Senator Hendricks of Indiana expressed his concern about the federal government asserting continued title and sovereign jurisdiction over the State-ceded "public lands" east of the Mississippi subsequent to their admission as new States:

"This Union is in theory formed of sovereign, equal people and independent states. In the older members of this Confederation, the Federal Government sets up no claim to the waste and unappropriated lands, has no land office, derives no revenue from the sale of the land. The Ordinance contemplated the public lands as belonging to the new states after their admission to the Union...As a further inducement to the new states to join the Confederation the ordinance stipulated that they should be admitted to the Union... on an equal footing with the original states in all respects whatever, and the Constitution in substance of the same policy, provides that all engagements entered into before the adoption of the Constitution shall be as valid against the United States, under the Constitution as under the Confederation so that the Articles of Confederation, the Acts of Cessions, the ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution itself, form a perfect and harmonious chain of policy - the grand object of which was the union and equality of the states. Then Mr. President, if all correct in this view, it may well be asked by what means have the new states been deprived of their equality of the right of soil...The public lands should be ceded to the States in which they lie, because their present condition is not warranted by the letter of the Constitution of this Government...Its powers are carefully enumerated and specified...I deny, sir, the Constitutional power of this government to hold lands within the limits of the states, except for the purposes designated by the Constitution such as forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings; and to enable Congress to hold lands even for these purposes, the consent of the Legislatures of the states is declared to be necessary by the express language of the Constitution..."

"...The boundary separating Federal and State powers may be considered the stability of our political system. This boundary may not be passed by either for any purpose; neither to usurp nor to transfer power; for in either way would our system be deranged and the Constitution suffer violence...If one jolt or title of power not given by the Constitution can be acquired or exercised in such way as this, then farewell to the guards against usurpation of power, placed by the wisest and best of men around the Constitution; farewell to the sovereignty of the states. Establish this doctrine and we may live to see a consolidation of all power in the hands of this Government.."

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