Revolution, George Washington assigned Generals Sullivan and Clinton to mount a campaign against them. The Sullivan Campaign of 1779 was a major military undertaking which destroyed more than 40 villages and laid to waste hundreds of acres of cultivated fields and a large portion of the stored food and materials the Iroquois and British were dependent upon. A secondary, non-military result of the neutralization of the Six Nations Iroquois in this region was that it created "new" lands to allot to Colonial soldiers after the war in partial payment or reward for their service. The land was divided up into "military lots", the one mile (1.6 km) square (2.6 km²) units that are still the basis for the road (and much of the trail) system present on the Finger Lakes National Forest today. In 1790, the area was divided into 600 acre (2.4 km²) military lots and distributed among Revolutionary War veterans as payment for their services. These early settlers cleared the land for production of hay and small grains such as buckwheat. As New York City grew, a strong market for these products developed, encouraging more intensive agriculture. The farmers prospered until the mid-19th century, when a series of unfortunate events occurred - the popularity of motorized transportation in urban centers (reducing the number of horses to be fed), gradual depletion of the soil resource, and competition from the midwest. Federal purchase of the land Between 1890 and the Great Depression, over 1 million acres (4000 km²) of farmland was abandoned in south central New York State. In the 1930s it was recognized that farmers in many parts of the country could no longer make a living from their exhausted land. Environmental damage was occurring as they cultivated the land more and more intensively to make ends meet. Several pieces of legislation were passed, including the Federal Emergency Relief Act of 1933, and the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937 to address these problems. One result was the formation of a government agency, the Resettlement Administration, to carry out the new laws. This agency directed the relocation of farmers to better land or different jobs, and the purchase of marginal farmland by the Federal government. Between 1938 and 1941, over 100 farms were purchased in the area now in the National Forest. Because this was done on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis, the resulting Federal ownership resembled a patchwork quilt.