s and purposes identical with Senate bill
No. 150, passed in the first session of the Forty-ninth Congress, which
failed to receive Executive approval. My objections to that bill are set
forth in a message transmitted to the Senate on the 11th day of March,
1886.[32] They are all applicable to the bill herewith returned, and
a careful reexamination of the matters embraced in this proposed
legislation has further satisfied me of their validity and strength.

The trouble proposed to be cured by this bill grew out of the
indefiniteness and consequent contradictory construction by the officers
of the Government of a grant of land made in 1846 by Congress to the
State of Iowa (then a Territory) for the purpose of aiding in the
improvement of the Des Moines River. This grant was accepted on the 9th
day of January, 1847, by the State of Iowa, as required by the act of
Congress, and soon thereafter the question arose whether the lands
granted were limited to those which adjoined the river in its course
northwesterly from the southerly line of the State to a point called the
Raccoon Fork, or whether such grant covered lands so adjoining the river
through its entire course through the Territory, and both below and
above the Raccoon Fork.

The Acting Commissioner of the General Land Office, on the 17th day of
October, 1846, instructed the officers of the land office in Iowa that
the grant extended only to the Raccoon Fork.

On the 23d day of February, 1848, the Commissioner of the General
Land Office held that the grant extended along the entire course of the
river.

Notwithstanding this opinion, the President, in June, 1848, proclaimed
the lands upon the river above the Raccoon Fork to be open for sale and
settlement under the land laws, and about 25,000 acres were sold to and
preempted by settlers under said proclamation.

In 1849, and before the organization of the Department of the Interior,
the Secretary of the Treasury decided, upon a protest against opening
said lands for sale and settlement, that the grant extended along the
entire course of the river.

Pursuant to this decision, and on the 1st day of June, 1849, the
Commissioner of the General Land Office directed the reservation or the
withholding from sale of all lands on the odd-numbered sections along
the Des Moines River above the Raccoon Fork.

This reservation from entry and sale under the general land laws seems
to have continued until a deed of the lands