These are ten writs of error to the supreme court of the state of Iowa to review judgments in that court of affirmance in favor of the parties named. The railroad company was plaintiff in the inferior state court, and on appeal in the supreme court of the state, and in the writs of error in this court. The suit in the court of original jurisdiction was in the nature of a bill in chancery to quiet title, and to compel a conveyance of the legal title held by defendants under patents from the United States to plaintiff, who asserted title to it in equity. The cases all depend on the same pleadings and evidence, and were consolidated in the inferior court, and have been considered and argued together in the supreme court of Iowa, and in this court, except No. 1,139-the Jewell Case-which is submitted in this court on the same argument.
The defendants are in possession of the land in controversy in each case under a purchase from the United States, with a patent from the government, and the plaintiff, the railroad company, asserts a superior title, either legal or equitable, under certain land grants by act of congress to aid in building railroads. The first of these acts is that of May 15, 1856, (11 U.S. St. 9,) by which congress granted lands lying within the state of Iowa to that state to aid in building four principal railroads from the Mississippi to the Missouri river. One of these was for a road 'from Lyons city, on the Mississipi river, to a point of intersection with the main line of the Iowa Central Airline Railroad near Maquoketa; thence on said main line, running as near as practicable to the forty-second parallel across the said state to the Missouri river.' For each of these roads there was given to the state of Iowa, 'as soon as the road is completed, every alternate section of land designated by odd numbers for six sections in width on each side of each of said roads.' And it was provided that if, when the line of a road was definitely located, it was found that the United States had disposed of any of these odd sections, or rights had attached to them by pre-emption or otherwise, an agent appointed by the state might, in lieu of these, select other alternate sections anywhere within 15 miles of the line of the road.
The state of Iowa, by an act of the general assembly approved July 14, 1856, accepted the trust reposed in it by the above act of congress, and granted and conferred upon four corporations all these lands, under the terms and restrictions of the act of congress. These corporations were to construct the roads across the state according to that act, and the corporation on whom was conferred the grant for a road from Lyons to the Missouri river was the Iowa Central Air-line Railroad Company. The only result of this particular grant of the state was that the company received the 120 sections of land which this court held, in the case of Railroad Land Co. v. Courtright, 21 Wall. 310, could be secured before any road was built; but having built no road up to March 17, 1860, the state, by an act of its legislature of that date, declared the grant forfeited and resumed control of it. On the twenty-sixth of that month, by another act of assembly, the state granted the same lands to the Cedar Rapids & Missouri River Railroad Company-the plaintiff in error-upon conditions similar in all material respects to the grant to the Air-line Company. The Air-line Company had before this time surveyed and located the line of the road from Lyons to the Missouri river through the town of Cedar Rapids, and the map of this survey and location had been accepted by the state of Iowa and the land-office of the United States as the true line, and as governing the location of the land grant for that road. A road had also been built by another company, the Chicago, Iowa & Nebraska, which had no land grant, from a point on the Mississippi river within three miles of Lyons city to Cedar Rapids. Hence, the grant of the state to the Cedar Rapids Company required them to build speedily from Cedar Rapids west along the line thus adopted to the Missouri river.