The jurisdiction of courts martial extend only over offenses committed by persons enlisted in the military or the naval service of the country.

WHY AND HOW TERRITORIES ARE ORGANIZED.

The organization of territories in the United States is for two purposes:  to provide good government while population is sparse, and to encourage their development into self-governing commonwealths, and their incorporation into the federal system as rapidly as possible. (See page 217.)

Territories are organized by congress.  In the organic act the boundaries of the territory are defined, and a system of government is established.  “The governor and the administrative and judicial officers are appointed by the president, but a territorial legislature is entrusted with limited powers, subject to the approval of congress.”

Each of the several territories may elect one delegate to a seat in the United States Congress.  The delegate may speak on subjects in which his territory is interested, but he cannot vote.

WHY AND HOW THE PUBLIC LANDS ARE SURVEYED.

The public lands are not meant to be held forever by the general government.  They are designed to be owned and occupied by American citizens.  To divide the land into pieces and thus to facilitate the description and the location of any piece, is the principal purpose of the survey.  Incidentally the portions six miles square serve as bases for the political divisions called towns, and this was part of the original plan.

The “old thirteen” and Maine, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia were surveyed in a very irregular way.  Lands were described as bounded by lines running from stumps to stones, thence to a creek and down the main channel thereof.  In 1785, a committee of the continental congress was appointed, with Thomas Jefferson as chairman, to devise a simple and uniform mode of surveying the public lands in what was about to be organized as the Northwest Territory.

The most noticeable peculiarity of the system is that it is rectangular.  A prime meridian is first determined, then a baseline crossing it at right angles.  Then from points on the baseline six miles and multiples thereof from the meridian, lines are run due north.  And parallels to the base-line are run at distances of six miles.  The approximate squares thus formed are called townships.  The rows of townships running north and south are called ranges.  Townships are numbered north and south from the base-line; ranges east and west from the meridian.  The diagram on page 341 illustrates the system.

Since meridians all terminate at the poles, the lines between ranges, being meridians, gradually approach each other as they go northward.  The lines, then, soon become so much less than six miles apart that a new beginning has to be made.  The parallel upon which this correction is made is naturally called the correction line.  Corrections were at first made every thirty-six miles, but they are now made every twenty-four miles.