“Resolved, That all the title which the United States still retains in the tracts of land along the Des Moines River, above the Raccoon Fork thereof, which has been certified to said State improperly, by the Department of the Interior as a part of the grant by act of Congress approved August 8, 1846, and which are now held by bona fide purchasers under the State of Iowa, be, and the same is hereby relinquished to the State of Iowa.”
On the 10th of April, 1862, Cabel B. Smith, then Secretary of the Interior, states officially.
“That the lands above the Raccoon Fork were improperly certified as a portion of the grant of 1846, and that such of these lands as are embraced in the railroad grant of 1856, are to be disposed of according to the terms of that grant, without regard to the fact of their having been certified under the act of 1846. After satisfying the demands of the act of 1856, so much of the residue of the lands north of the mouth of the Raccoon River, as were certified under the supposed grant of 1846, and which the State of Iowa has sold to bona fide purchasers prior to March 2, 1861, will also be certified to the State of Iowa. The act of March 15th, 1856, granting lands for railroad purposes excepts such lands as the right of preëmption have attached thereto. This last grant is made because it affects the case of Crilly and many others, claiming preëmptions on said lands.”
To show the intent of Congress in passing this joint resolution it is necessary to turn to the explanations made in the report of the committee on public lands in the House of Representatives, by the chairman of that committee when he reported the resolution as follows:
In the Thirty-sixth Congress on the 2d of February, 1861, Mr. Trimble said in explanation of the purpose of the resolution:
“In 1846 Congress made a grant of land to the State of Iowa to aid in the improvement of the navigation of the Des Moines River. The Secretary of the Interior certified to the State some 400,000 acres of land above the mouth of the Raccoon Fork of that river. It has been decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that those lands were improperly certified. A subsequent grant made by Congress to the State of Iowa for railroad purposes, covers the whole of these 400,000 acres, with the exception of about 1,000 acres. These lands, therefore, do not revert to the United States in consequence of that decision but are still to be
