Pre-emption is the act of buying something ahead of other persons, or the right to do so. The term comes from two Latin words, emptio, meaning buying, and pre, meaning before. Pre-emption had special meaning in the United States in the 1800’s. People called squatters moved into unsettled areas and built on land they did not own. Real estate speculators called claim-jumpers often worked with lawyers to take away the squatters’ land.
Beginning about 1800, Congress granted the right of pre-emption to some squatters. In 1841, Congress passed a pre-emption law that applied to all squatters. Squatters who lived on surveyed government land and made improvements on it had the right to buy that land before anyone else could do so. When the land they occupied was offered for sale, they could buy up to 160 acres (65 hectares) of it for $1.25 an acre.
A person who already owned as much as 320 acres (129 hectares) of land could not get more by pre-emption. A married woman living with her husband could not get any land by pre-emption, and neither could a person who moved within the same state.
After the Civil War, big land companies sent out “dummy” settlers, who filed applications for land which they did not intend to keep as their own. In return for a cash payment from a land company, a dummy settler would file his claim, live on it for six months, buy it for an absurdly low price, and hand it over to his employer. Then he would file another claim.
Congress abolished pre-emption in 1891. During the years the system was in force, about 200 million acres (81 million hectares) of land passed from the government to private owners.
