A Cabinet Pick Sparks a Land War in Whitman County
Fifty-six farmers south of Colfax protested Hoke Smith’s appointment as interior secretary, saying the Northern Pacific was taking title to land they had settled and cultivated.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
COLFAX, Feb. 27.—[Special.]—A meeting was held today at a point south of Colfax to protest the appointment of Hoke Smith as secretary of the interior in President Cleveland’s cabinet. Fifty-six farmers, representing all the lien claimants of that neighborhood, were present. Resolutions were unanimously adopted and telegraphed to Mr. Cleveland, setting forth that Hoke Smith has been appointed secretary of the interior and that his course will be injurious to the interests of settlers upon lands in Eastern Washington, for which the Northern Pacific Railroad Company is obtaining title regardless of the rights of actual owners and cultivators thereof; that as American citizens, with homes at stake and our country’s welfare at heart, we respectfully but earnestly protest the appointment of said Hoke Smith. With the force of the resolution felt generally throughout the inland belt, leaders of the movement decided that it would be better to hold many meetings than one large gathering. Another is billed for Garfield on Wednesday, for Palouse on Thursday, for Colfax on Friday and for Pullman on Saturday, each representing the lien land claimants of the region.
“As American citizens, with homes at stake and our country’s welfare at heart, we respectfully but earnestly protest the appointment of said Hoke Smith.”
The fight over railroad land grants and settler titles is an old Washington story, but it has not gone away: public-land disputes, tribal treaty rights and who gets to own the ground under a home still shape rural politics.
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