Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/290

 employ counsel and meet the expenses of taking the case before the United States Supreme Court. Galusha Parsons, an eminent lawyer of Fort Dodge, was employed to conduct the trial before that tribunal.

The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Circuit Court and more than 2,000 bona fide settlers were driven from their homes by the United States marshals and their farms awarded to eastern speculators who had risked trifling amounts on doubtful titles and then sent a strong lobby to Congress to have their titles made good by legislation. It seemed incredible that the highest court of the country would utterly ignore the rights of bona fide settlers which Congress, the Iowa Legislature and the United States Land Office, Secretary of the Interior, United States Attorney-General and the President, had sought to protect in their homes by every official act in their power. It was shown in the debates in Congress, when the resolution of 1861 and the act of 1862 were under consideration, that every possible protection was given, or intended to be given, to guard the settlers on the lands involved, before any other claim was recognized. But the lawyers who made up the highest courts found a way to annul the intent of the lawmakers and all of the executive officers who had sought to protect the rights of the settlers and awarded their homes to non-resident speculators. The pretense of these courts that the lands above the Raccoon Forks were “withdrawn from sale and entry from 1846, to the time that Congress passed the acts of 1861-62” was not true. The Land Department had restored them to market, granted preëmptions and homestead entries and the President had issued patents for the lands thus sold to settlers. In order to reach its decision the Supreme Court was obliged to annul all of these official acts of the executive officers of the Government and utterly ignore every act and intent of legislation to make good the titles of the settlers. This decision of the Supreme Court will always rank with the famous Dred