Paul Gates on federal land policy, by Ari Sclar

Questions concerning the pricing of land, the speed at which it should be surveyed and opened for settlement [led to a division between east and west]…Later, the conservative attitude toward the public lands…was that the lands should be surveyed and opened to settlement only when older areas had been well taken up and improved and the land should be offered at prices that would not tend to draw farmers away from these older areas since their leaving might adversely affect land values and also the wages of labor…But western pressure groups advocated the speedy opening of new land, the conservative policy was breached, the thinly maintained barriers were broken. The frontier of settlement advanced from Florida to Louisiana, and up the Mississippi to Arkansas and Missouri, and from Ohio to Illinois to Michigan, and new territories and states were created.

• Historian Paul Gates

1. According to Gates, why was there have been a division between east and west about the federal government’s land policy?

2. Provide two examples of how land policy changed from the 1790-1836 and indicate how this moved from a conservative to more liberal policy.

3. Does the passage help explain regional tensions over the tariff and internal improvements during the early 19th Century?