Sixty Million Acres: American Veterans and the Public Lands Before the Civil War
Historian Oberly (Univ. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire) sees the Mexican War policy of military recruitment based on land grants as the driving force behind the politics of the public lands between 1845 and 1862. His inquiry, based on a random sample of land warrants, explains why the grants came about at that particular time, what the veterans did with their warrants, and how the warrant business operated during the land boom of the 1850s. His conclusions are well conceived and supported with evidence from the sample and other archival sources. This study fills a gap in the literature of land policy and is essential for research collections on the West; libraries holding Paul W. Gates's Fifty Million Acres (Ayer Co. Pub., 1979. reprint), Roy Robbins's Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1970 (Books Demand UMI, 1976. reprint), or Vernon Carstensen's Public Lands: Stud ies in the History of Public Domain (Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1963) should consider it.- Stephen H. Peters, Northern Michigan Univ. Lib., MarquetteCopyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.