Michigan Badlands?

In the first year of the war with England in 1812, an act was passed by congress requiring that two million acres of land in each of the territories of Michigan, Illinois, and Louisiana, in all six million acres, should be surveyed and set apart as a military tract, and of which each soldier serving in the armies of the United States in the war with England should be entitled to receive one hundred and sixty acres of land fit for cultivation.

The surveyor general in his report dated November 13, 1815, gave such discouraging and dismal accounts of the country that congress, on April 29, 1816, repealed so much of the act of 1812 authorizing the soldier's land in Michigan and providing in lieu thereof a survey and location of land in Missouri. [Source]

Enlisting For Bounty Lands?

From Michigan History, Volume 5, an article entitled Overland To Michigan In 1846:

"...they use up their good breath on the tariff reduction when they aren't settling the whole Mexican question [that culminated in the U.S.-Mexican War] .... ."  "Some talk of joining the army for the bounty lands, but the job is too long for me."


From the Descendants Of Mexican War Veterans site:

Immediately upon discharge, Mexican War veterans were eligible for a federal bounty land warrant, redeemable for 160 acres of land anywhere in the United States. These warrants were also redeemable for $100 in scrip. Not a few veterans were swindled out of their warrants by unscrupulous land speculators who took unfair advantage of returning veterans ignorant of the warrant's true worth. Many parted with their warrant for $50 or less.

A TNGenes blog post has a transcription of a Mexican War bounty land transaction.