Dr. Larry Schweikart

Oh, and Steve, let me remind you one more thing.

Sure.

What I call the most important law in American history, even before the Constitution, was the land ordinance of 1785.

And what did that do?

That set up a series of surveys in the old Northwest, starting in Ohio, going all the way out to Illinois and Wisconsin, that would sell off land at a buck and a quarter an acre and give you a written title and deed.

And they broke up the countryside into sections and townships of square miles.

And as soon as you would fill up one section, you'd move on to the next section.

This is all for protection against Indians.

Well, we're Americans.

Damn it, I'm American.

I'm going to go settle where I want.

And people began running out settling in many of the unsurveyed areas.

And so we had a clash between

between written titles and deeds and common law, which says the people know what they're doing, the people know best.

So Congress sided with the people and it drafted a law called preemption, what we call squatters rights, which says you can go out and if you can find land that nobody is on and you can stay there seven years and build a house, you can claim ownership to that land by law and get your own title and deed.

And so when you fly across America from the east to the west, you'll notice in the east, especially when I was teaching Ohio, you fly over Ohio and you look out the plane window and you see what looks like a jigsaw puzzle of property.

And that's because so many of these people had not waited for the survey.

They said, well, my land runs from the creek down there to that mountain over to that big rock that looks like Jimmy Durante and then back here down here.

And they would draw that up and take it into an assay office or a government office, and it would be certified that that's their land.

As you move further west, though, you look out your plane window, and what do you see?