indemnity bill was presented as a substitute for the bill which was passed and vetoed, but it was not adopted.
After Harrison became President, Attorney-General Miller was instructed to begin a suit, such as was contemplated by the act which was vetoed. The case was brought in the United States Circuit Court for the Northern District of Iowa and was tried at Fort Dodge before Judge Shiras. The suit was entitled “United States of America vs. Des Moines Navigation and Railroad Company, et al.”
John Y. Stone, the Attorney-General of Iowa, Whiting S. Clark and D. C. Chase appeared for the Government and B. J. Hall and C. H. Gatch for the defendants. The case was decided in favor of the defendants (the Des Moines Navigation Company) and the Government appealed to the United States Supreme Court which confirmed the decision.
In the course of his opinion Judge Shiras said:
“Should the court in the effort to protect the settlers, now hold them entitled to their homes, a manifest wrong would be done to the grantees of the Navigation Company, who for many years have paid taxes on these lands and have sold and conveyed the same in many instances, to parties paying full value thereof. If the courts, disregarding the many decisions heretofore made, should find some ground for holding that the United States might, at this late day, make a decree adjudging the title to be in the Government for the benefit of the settlers, Paul might thereby be paid, but Peter would be robbed. * * * I cannot refrain in concluding this opinion from urging upon Congress the claim of these settlers for some relief.
The question is not as to the legal title to these lands as between the Navigation Company and its grantees and the settlers, but as to the duty and obligations resting upon the United States to remedy a wrong done to its grantees and resulting from the acts of its own officials.”
This decision was accepted by all parties as the end of litigation. There was but one way to, in some measure, repair the great wrong done the settlers by the Government and the courts and that was the method proposed by Captain Orr in his indemnity bill which passed
