1. Western settlement would cause further friction with the Indians, necessitating new spending on frontier defense. It was the initial basis for a middle class. He concluded, "Where socialized ownership of land is concerned, only the USSR and China can claim company with the U.S." Now does anyone want to … Land was not always a commodity in North America. Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Antonio Moore, an attorney based in Los Angeles, is one of the producers of the documentary Freeway: Crack in the System. Long before Americans filled up the land they had already acquired, they were demanding more. He had surveyed lands of the Ohio Valley, then deep in Indian territory, and he had led a Virginia regiment in the French and Indian War, fought primarily on the frontier. If the point was to spread popular government, what happened when the people over which it was to be spread objected to the spreading, as Canadians and Mexicans emphatically did? When the open spaces filled up, Americans suffered an identity crisis: Without the frontier of open land, who would we be? The new land proved the British right about one thing: More western settlement meant more trouble with the Indians. The limited supply of land let this closed system persist. A Black Agrarian Collective is Working To Build a Self-Sufficient Community. © 2021 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Land symbolized opportunity to generations of Americans, starting with colonists who never had the chance of owning property in Europe; the vast continent gleamed in their eyes and its frontier drew them west. Pingree Heirs 12. This outright stealing, intimidation, and violence had a devastating impact on black wealth ownership. Wilks Brothers 13. But some of his supporters provided a theoretical justification for American expansion, presenting it as generous sharing of American values and institutions. The following are excerpts from Mr. Hayward’s book. It has always been born in war and conquest — and in the selfish use the cunning have made of law and superstition. America’s borders were fixed; suddenly the country looked alarmingly like the Europe which Americans had long derided. Obama Didn’t Close the Racial Wealth Divide. African Americans, despite making up 13 percent of the population, own less than 1 percent of rural land in the country. George Washington knew the frontier well as it existed in 1763. The general courts of the various colonies, most notably that of Massachusetts Bay, would make a grant of land to a migrating group, fixing its boundaries carefully. Emmerson Family [Up 76,500 Acres] 3. Squabbles between developers and preservationists over land use become battles over the meaning and destiny of America. The history of federal land ownership has been largely one of divestiture and public use, not acquisition. Well before the formation of the United States the colonists enjoyed widespread ownership of land and were increasingly receptive to an emerging free market economy based on private contracts. Yet this biological basis does no… Washington wasn’t a philosopher like fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson. Beginnings Our feelings about ownership have very deep roots. Most animal life has a sense of territory – a place to be at home and to defend. Americans of the founding generation were not original in stressing the rights of property owners. Long an advocate of interpreting the Constitution narrowly, Jefferson scanned his copy of the document and saw nothing permitting Congress or the president to purchase new land. At the war’s end, he expected to capitalize on his knowledge of the frontier by gaining legal title to thousands of acres in the West, which he would hold for resale at a higher value. The Americans were more aggressive in seizing land than the British had been. And when Jefferson, elected president in 1800, had an opportunity to double America’s domain by purchasing the western half of the Mississippi Valley—the region called Louisiana—he seized it. This painting from 1795 depicts ‘Mad Anthony’ Wayne and his officers negotiating a treaty that opened up most of present-day Ohio to settlers, after Wayne’s legion won a decisive victory over a confederation of Indian warriors. The cowboy, that rugged knight of the open West, remains an icon of American culture. Colonel Washington Questions His Allegiance. But the social and economic problems that resulted from this concentration of ownership brought reformist solutions that attempted to reverse this trend. John Kennedy, the first president born in the 20th century, proclaimed a “new frontier” for his administration. To fully understand how land ownership in Mexico works, it is vital to learn the history of property ownership in Mexico. Individual land ownership, speculation in land, and participation in capital markets based on land as collateral, was widespread in North America. In 1992, the government acquired and distributed 382 hectares of land with nearly a quarter of a million farmer-beneficiaries. The purchase cost Jefferson some sleep. American rivers and harbors sustained shipping that carried American products across the globe. It is interesting that the loss of America’s property ownership nearly parallels the ongoing loss of individual rights in so many other areas. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. The racial disparity in rural land ownership has deep historical roots based not just in chattel slavery, but in the post-slavery period as well. The combined value of this land: $ 14 billion. Something about land lies deep in the American psyche. White Americans, by comparison, own more than 98 percent of U.S. land amounting to 856 million acres with a total worth of over $1 trillion. Land ownership today could look very different. After emancipation, black farmers tended to be tenants of wealthy white landowners working for sub-poverty wages and doing mostly subsistence farming. In the salad days of democracy, many Americans credibly considered themselves the best-governed people on earth, and it wasn’t ludicrous for them to argue that others would gain from being brought under democracy’s sway. If you guessed (A) people, I'm afraid that's incorrect. Land tenure in Mexico has over the long term seen the transfer of lands into the hands of private proprietors engaged in agricultural production for profit. Brad Kelley 9. Whether you're searching for family history, or you're just curious, you can find the ownership history of any piece of land. In fact, the land didn’t run out, as anyone flying across the continent in the 21st century can tell. The sustained popularity of the television series Star Trek and its Hollywood spin-offs had much to do with its characterizing of space as the “final frontier.” Elon Musk and other visionary entrepreneurs today are making big bets on this latest frontier. Briscoe Family [Up 46,000 Acres] 14. The Maryland-based initiative targets people who have historically helped to build the wealth of this society but had no real participation in that wealth. (Credit: Chicago History Museum/Getty Images). Singleton Family 10. Thomas Jefferson admired Franklin and read his calculations. And there was nothing he could do, for as a colonial he had no representation in Parliament. owners who purchased rural land between 1865 and 1910 generally became owner-operators of farms; consequently, the high-water mark for Black land ownership strongly correlates with the high-water mark for the number of Black farmers in the South. The idea of collective ownership has a long history in the United States. An inextricable link exists between land ownership and power in America. Going back to our pre-pandemic days will not be good enough. In 2007, according to the Land Report, the nation's 100 largest private landowners owned a combined 27 million acres of land — equivalent to the area of Maine and New Hampshire combined… THE FULL LIST: AMERICA’S 100 LARGEST LANDOWNERS 2020. After a final fling with Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867, American expansion clanged to a halt amid the roar of the Industrial Revolution. Part was an implicit contradiction in Manifest Destiny itself. 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