Act for Granting Lands to the Inhabitants and Settlers at Vincennes and the Illinois County.

Act for Granting Lands to the Inhabitants and Settlers at Vincennes and the Illinois County.

In 1816, when Lincoln was seven, his family moved to Indiana, then a brand-new state. The Land Grant Act above had helped prepare the territory, originally part of the Old Northwest Territory, for entry into the United States. Indiana remained a borderland where the U.S. North and South overlapped and flowed together, and where Native Americans, French citizens, English citizens, and Americans intermingled. The War of 1812 had been followed by forty years of forced relocation of the defeated Wyandotte, Piankashaw, Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Wea, and Potawatomi tribes. Lincoln’s father was able to buy land cheaply from the U.S. government through a system developed by Thomas Jefferson. The land sales provided revenue to alleviate Revolutionary War debts and created communities organized into neat grids.

[U.S. Congress].

Photograph by Vincent Dilio. Courtesy of David M. Rubenstein.

[1791]

[U.S. Congress]. Act for Granting Lands to the Inhabitants and Settlers at Vincennes and the Illinois County. [Philadelphia: Childs and Swaine, 1791].

1809–1853 Early Years and Ambitions

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