Account has already been taken of the first congressional land grant, that of February 19, 1851, “reserving” for the support of a territorial university seventy-two sections of public lands. When the enabling act of 1857 was before the House of Representatives, Delegate Henry M. Rice secured a modification of the traditional tender of lands for university purposes. The enabling acts of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa had provided that the lands for university support previously reserved from sale should be granted and conveyed to the respective states. Delegate Rice quickly saw to it that the corresponding section of the Minnesota act should read, “that seventy-two sections of land shall be set apart and reserved for the use and support of a STATE university _to be_ selected by the governor of the state....” Why no claim was presented for the additional university reservation, apparently authorized by the enabling act of 1857, till 1860 is not known, but when then made, it met with no hospitality. No secretary of the interior or commissioner of the general land office would construe the paragraph as having any other intent than to guarantee to the state the reservation of 1851 made to the territory. The correspondence revealed the fact that the original reservation had not been “granted and conveyed” to the state. The mortgages placed on the lands and the devastations permitted had therefore been illegal. It took an act of Congress, that of March 2, 1861, donating the lands reserved in 1851, to remedy this omission.
Ten years ran by after the passage of the enabling act, and Minnesota’s claim for a double portion of university lands had not been allowed. On February 8, 1867, the legislature authorized the special board of regents to employ counsel to prosecute the claim on “a contingent compensation in land or money.” The person employed rendered such effective aid to the member from the university district that Congress was moved to direct the commissioner of the general land office, by an act approved July 8, 1870, to ignore the reservation of 1851 and allow Minnesota to take the seventy-two sections mentioned in the enabling act of 1857. The successful counsel was voted by the regents a compensation of 1950 acres of land. As these acres were promptly located in the pine region of Itasca County it may be assumed that the remuneration was satisfactory.