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The Land Act of 1820 (ch. 51, 3 Stat. 566), enacted April 24, 1820, is the United States federal law that ended the ability to purchase the United States' public domain lands on a credit or installment system over four years, as previously established. The new law became effective July 1, 1820 and required full payment at the time of purchase ...
If he was a citizen or was taking steps to become one and he and his family developed the land (buildings, fields, fences) he had the right to then buy that land for the minimum price. Land was otherwise sold through auction, typically at a price too high for these settlers. Preemption is similar to squatter's rights and mining claims. [1]
Given the $0.15 per pound production cost, this would reduce per acre profits by over 90%. As a result, farmland values collapsed: by 1819, prices fell to around $0.20 per acre, [3] and by 1820, Alabama land buyers collectively owed the federal government $21 million, $12 million of which was owed by Alabama itself. [7]
April 24 – The Land Act of 1820 reduces the price of land in the Northwest Territory and Missouri Territory encouraging Americans to settle in the west. July 20 – Thomas Bibb is sworn in as the second governor of Alabama, following the death of William W. Bibb.
The claimed homestead could include the same land which they had previously filed a preemption claim (on up to 160 acres at $1.25 per acre, or up to 80 acres of subdivided and surveyed land at $2.50 per acre), and they could expand their current ownership to contiguous adjacent land up to 160 acres total.
Maintenance of high public land prices to generate federal revenue; Preservation of the Bank of the United States to stabilize the currency and rein in risky state and local banks; Development of a system of internal improvements (such as roads and canals) which would knit the nation together and be financed by the tariff and land sales.
The 1820 law had ended public land purchases on credit installments, but also lowered both the size and cost requirements of new purchases. This led to discrepancies between current buyers and the earlier buyers, who had had to purchase more land and at a higher price. The Relief Act permitted the earlier buyers to return land back to the ...
[10] [11] As prices soared for agricultural goods, a speculative agrarian land boom ensued in the South and West United States, [12] encouraged by liberal terms for government public land sales. [13] [14] "The entire postwar American economy", observed historian George Dangerfield, was "based on a land boom". The inflationary bubble grew from ...