Network: Land Speculation
"Here Congress places its expectation for paying the National debt."
- Treaty Commissioner Samuel Holden Parsons Letter to Mr. Johnson, December 3, 1785
In the American Myth, pioneers and settlers are the heroes of the story. In the popular imagination, they felled trees and moved rocks to transform wilderness into farmland on their own small acreages. They surmounted great challenges – weather, isolation, occasional Indigenous resistance to their presence – to illustrate the merits of hard work and individualism. It was for the benefit of the settlers, according to the American Myth, that the U.S. expanded across the continent. The historical truth, however, is that narrower political and financial interests drove U.S. expansion. Chief among these was the early the mania for land speculation. The Founding Fathers and their immediate heirs personally acquired millions of acres of Indigenous land through treaty making. The settlers, more often than not, were their customer.
The Era of Big Speculators
During the American Revolution, the cash-strapped federal government promised millions of acres of land to army officers as payment for their service. Before the War had even ended, officers were forming the Society of the Cincinnati – America’s first special interest group – to demand that the government make good on its promise. Yes, land speculation shaped the country’s earliest treaty making with Indigenous nations. In fact, the early federal government could not function financially without acquiring Indigenous land and selling it to the highest bidder. The buyers of that land, major land speculators, were themselves the men who determined U.S.-Indian policy: leaders of the Revolution, members of Congress and their families, the nation’s elite. At times, they used their positions of power to fraudulently acquire millions of acres.
The transfer of Indigenous land to U.S. control was so important to the fortunes of land speculators that they and their representatives attended the treaties personally, and signed the treaties as commissioners or witnesses.
Some of the major land speculators among the U.S. Treaty Signers
- William Blount
- Daniel Brodhead
- William Constable
- Lemuel Donelson
- Nathaniel Gorham
- Francis Johnston
- Daniel McCormick
- Robert Morris
- Samuel H. Parsons
- Oliver Phelps
- William Polk
- William Tyrrell
- Jeremiah Wadsworth
- James Wilkinson
Townsite Development
As the U.S. expanded, speculation focused less on farmland and more on townsite development. Thousands of towns across the continent were formed by the speculators, who sold lots to residents and small businesses. The sites selected for these towns were typically river confluences and spots along well-used paths, where Indigenous people had lived and conducted trade for centuries. Eventually, railroads became the largest land speculators and creators of townsites.
Some of the many US Treaty Signers who established American towns:
- William P. Anderson
- John P. Arndt
- John Brahan
- Joseph R. Brown
- George Davenport
- James Duane Doty
- John W. Forman
- William Conner
- Josiah P. Keller
- Augustus Porter
- M. T. Simmons
- John Tipton
- J. B. S. Todd
- E. W. Wynkoop