The bill provides that the patent “shall convey no title to any mineral lands except iron and coal, or to any lands held by right of possession, or by any other title, except Indian title, valid at the time of the selection of the said lands.”  It will be seen that by the first section lands in “Indian reservations” are excluded from individual preemption right, but by the fourth section the patent may cover any Indian title except a reservation; so that no matter what may be the nature of the Indian title, unless it be in a reservation, it is unprotected from the privilege conceded by this bill.

Without further pursuing the subject, I return the bill to the Senate without my signature, and with the following as prominent objections to its becoming a law: 

First.  That it gives to the New York and Montana Iron Mining and Manufacturing Company preemption privileges to iron and coal lands on a large scale and at the ordinary minimum—­a privilege denied to ordinary preemptors.  It bestows upon the company large tracts of coal lands at one-sixteenth of the minimum price required from ordinary preemptors.  It also relieves the company from restrictions imposed upon ordinary preemptors in respect to timber lands; allows double the time for payment granted to preemptors on offered lands; and these privileges are for purposes not heretofore authorized by the preemption laws, but for trade and manufacturing.

Second.  Preemption rights on such a scale to private corporations are unequal and hostile to the policy and principles which sanction preemption laws.

Third.  The bill allows this company to take possession of land, use it, and acquire a patent thereto before the Indian title is extinguished, and thus violates the good faith of the Government toward the aboriginal tribes.

ANDREW JOHNSON.

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 16, 1866.

To the House of Representatives: 

A careful examination of the bill passed by the two Houses of Congress entitled “An act to continue in force and to amend ’An act to establish a bureau for the relief of freedmen and refugees, and for other purposes’” has convinced me that the legislation which it proposes would not be consistent with the welfare of the country, and that it falls clearly within the reasons assigned in my message of the 19th of February last, returning, without my signature, a similar measure which originated in the Senate.  It is not my purpose to repeat the objections which I then urged.  They are yet fresh in your recollection, and can be readily examined as a part of the records of one branch of the National Legislature.  Adhering to the principles set forth in that message, I now reaffirm them and the line of policy therein indicated.