The Land and Other Property

This chapter discusses the development of property law in the second half of the nineteenth century covering land law, public land, dynasts landlord and tenant, mortgages, titles, and intellectual property. One dominant theme of American property law was the idea that land should be marketable; that people should be able to buy and sell land freely. This was a big, open country, a land of abundance, a land with land for everybody, huge tracts of vacant land. For the settlers, land promised a better life, a life of rising expectations; land was mother of resources and development. As the frontier moved West, land law followed at a respectable distance. Land law was not uniform. Conditions in New York were not the same as conditions in Wyoming. However, overall trends were quite similar and old doctrines were reshaped to suit American conditions.