IRVING E. RINES.
Author of the United enemy's vessel, but such bounties were abol ished by the act of 1899, so that both army and navy are on an equal basis as concerns pay. But there are some forms of bounty, such as in creased pay for re-enlistment, accompanied for the navy by allowance of four months' pay, extra pay, prizes for marksmanship and for the engineers of a successful cruiser and gratuities for winners of a medal of honor.
Land The practice of granting lands to soldiers goes back to colonial times. By royal proclamation of 7 Oct. 1763, American colonial governors were prohibited from mak ing land grants west of the sources of the rivers flowing from the west or northwest into the Atlantic. This was to quiet the apprehen sions of the Indians in the Ohio regions that their lands were to be granted out. But Lord Dunmore of Virginia was empowered to offer bounties of land to all officers and soldiers who had served in the French and Indian War, and should personally apply to him for warrants 5,000 acres to each field officer, 3,000 to captains, 200 to subalterns or staff officers and 50 to pri vate soldiers — up to 200,000 acres, from the King's domain either in Canada or Florida, or the "Crown lands.' This was understood by Americans to mean precisely the above western lands, and those who had the ability and fore sight selected choice tracts beyond the Alle ghanies provisionally in hope that the gov ernment would validate them later. Washing ton, for example, by himself and his land agent Crawford, had surveyed 70,000 acres and se cured patents in his own and other officers' names for 63,000, of which his own share was 32,000. Dunmore began to give these warrants on his own responsibility as early as July 1773, and on 21 Jan. 1774 notified all gentlemen,
officers and soldiers to have their surveyors assemble at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River and proceed to survey their claims. The land agents and surveyors who went down the river were stopped and in some cases attacked by the Indians, and this was one of the agencies in bringing about Dunmore's War, although trouble had been brewing for a long period owing to white settlement and Indian mur ders. The name "bounty lands'. has been defined as pertaining to the Northwest Terri tory lands belonging to the States, because on 16 Sept. 1776 Congress offered land bounties to volunteers in the Revolution (assessing the money to buy them on the several States, to which Maryland objected because the other States had lands and she had none, and so would be unfairly taxed) ; but it does not ap pear that the phrase was ever used of them at the time.
When Virginia ceded her claims to the Northwest Territory, a large tract north of the Ohio River was reserved, and the present land titles in that section date back to the beginning of bounty lands. Besides the gifts from the States the Revolutionary soldiers were grantea bounties of land by the Federal government. Four million acres of bounty lands were given to the soldiers of the War of 1812, while Con gress, by the laws of 1847, 1850, 1852 and 1855, recognized the claims of survivors of the Mexi can and Indian wars, 58,652,450 acres under 530,203 warrants being granted prior to 1883. Under the act of 1862 land scrip worth $1.25 per acre was distributed for 9,600,000 acres.