Resolution on Land Titles in Louisiana
Resolution on Land Titles in Louisiana
[ca. 29 Feb. to 14 Mch. 1804]
Whereas there is reason to believe that during the time which intervened between the date of the treaty of St. Ildefonso alienating the colony & province of Louisiana with all the rights & interests held by Spain in or over the same, & the transfer & delivery thereof to the US. frauds of great extent & enormity have been practised, & numerous fabrications & devices contrived,1 by various individuals, with or without2 the cover & semblance of legal authority, & under dates true or false,3 for transferring to private hands great portions of those public lands, the property & interest in which were, by the said treaty of St. Ildefonso,4 effectively alienated from the power then holding the same, in exchange for equivalents mutually satisfactory to the parties, so that no bonâ fide transfer of any part thereof could afterwards be made to the detriment or diminution of the rights & interests so alienated & exchanged:
Be it therefore ordained that all grants of lands within the said province, the title whereof, whether legal or equitable,5 was, at the date of the said treaty, in the crown, government, or nation of Spain, & every act and proceeding, subsequent thereto, of whatsoever nature, towards the obtaining any grant, title or claim to such lands, & under whatsoever authority transacted or pretended, be, and the same are hereby declared to be, & to have been from the beginning6 null, void, & of no effect in law or equity.
MS (DLC: TJ Papers, 137:23694); undated, entirely in TJ’s hand. Dft (same, 137:26710).
The date of the above resolution is uncertain, but TJ probably composed it sometime between 29 Feb., when he forwarded Amos Stoddard’s report on land fraud in upper Louisiana to Congress, and 14 Mch., when John Rhea of Tennessee offered an amendment to the bill for the government of Louisiana in the House of Representatives that very closely followed the wording of the second paragraph of TJ’s resolution. The House approved Rhea’s amendment on 16 Mch. by a vote of 60 to 42, and it was subsequently included in section 14 of the act for dividing Louisiana and providing for its temporary government, passed on 26 Mch. (, 4:631, 657-8; , 13:1128, 1186-7, 1196-7; , 2:287-9; Bill for the Organization of Orleans Territory, [23 Nov. 1803]; TJ to the Senate and the House of Representatives, 29 Feb. 1804).
1. In Dft TJ interlined, in two stages, the passage from “& numerous” to here.
2. Preceding three words interlined in Dft in place of “& covered under.”
3. Phrase beginning “and under” interlined in Dft.
4. Word interlined in Dft in place of “Domingo.”
5. Preceding four words interlined in Dft.
6. Preceding three words interlined in Dft in place of “ab initio.”