Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 3.djvu/295

OF IOWA of the General Land Office and while the bill was before the committee on public lands, he addressed a communication to that committee strongly urging its passage as an act of justice. He said:

After a full hearing the act was seen to be one required by every consideration of justice and it passed the House by a large majority.

If all of the settlers could at this time have realized that this decision was to be final, that their homes were lost to them beyond hope of recovery, that the only remedy possible for Congress to provide was compensation for their losses, and had all united in urging the passage of the bill, there is no doubt that it would have been passed by the Senate and become a law in 1874. But many of them could not be made to believe that the Government which had given them its highest title to their homes, for which it had taken their money, would permit them to be driven from them; and still entertained a strong hope that, in some way, it would make their titles good. In this belief they not only refused to apply to Congress for indemnity but actively opposed that remedy.

George Crilly who had entered his farm when the Government lands were offered for sale, had received a patent signed by the President of the United States conveying to him the best title it was possible for the Government to give a citizen. This farm was adjoining the town of Fort