Homestead Act (1862)

HOMESTEAD ACT (1862)

The Homestead Act, passed by the Republican-dominated Congress during the American Civil War (1861–1865), was intended to place public land in the hands of western settlers. It stated that any adult citizen (or a person who declared an intention to become a citizen) who was the head of a family could lay claim to 160 acres of public land. The only payment required was a small registration fee. The claimant was required to live on the land for a five-year period while improving it by building a house measuring at least 12 by 14 feet and farming at least ten acres. The period of residence was reduced to six months if the settler was willing to pay a price of $1.25 an acre. Within three years of the act's passage, more than 15,000 claims on public lands had been registered with the federal government.

The passage of the Homestead Act represented the culmination of 30 years' work by Republicans and their Whig predecessors. When the United States purchased the Louisiana territory from France in 1803, it acquired a huge tract of federally administered land. President Thomas Jefferson (1801–1809) envisioned this territory divided into small farms, whose owners could follow his rural vision of American democracy. Over the next few decades, Congress was split on the question of what to do with this land. Southern legislators feared that homestead laws, which divided public lands into small farms rather than large plantations, would attract immigrants and others who were opposed to slavery. Some of their northern counterparts, especially from the industrialized northeast, feared that the lure of free land would drain cheap immigrant labor from the factories to the frontier. Others, such as Senator Thomas Hart Benton, supported free farms as a means of encouraging democratic growth.

The problem became especially acute after the Mexican War (1846–1848), when transportation of both people and produce became cheaper because of new canals and railroads. So important was the issue that one party, the Free-Soilers, made distribution of public lands the major plank in their campaign platform during the 1840s. Although bills offering public lands to settlers were passed by the House of Representatives in 1852, 1854, and 1859, they were all defeated by the southern-dominated Senate. When an 1860 homestead bill was finally passed by both houses of Congress, President James Buchanan (1857–1861) vetoed it.

Although the Homestead Act was intended to benefit the homeless immigrants of the east, those who gained the most from it were native-born Americans and land speculators. Immigrants were mostly too poor to afford the stake needed to move west and take up a claim. It was typically second- or third-generation Americans who sold their farms to head west with their families. Most of these farmers, however, were poorly prepared for farming on the Great Plains. The quality of land allotments open to farmers varied considerably, and good claims were quickly taken up. Accustomed to plenty of water and wood for cooking and heating, as well as plentiful grass for their livestock, many were unable to cope with the arid conditions of the West. Many original homesteaders were unable to live on their new land long enough to complete their claims. These farmers often sold their claims to land speculators, who resold them to latecomers at a profit. Some land speculators also bought abandoned land and hired claimants to file false claims.

Those homesteaders who remained on their claims found new opportunities, as well as challenges. Federally funded railroads spanned the continent by 1869, opening isolated farms to markets and manufactured goods and bringing new settlers to the prairie. These pioneers built schools, churches, and towns, as well as homesteads. Within 40 years of the passage of the Homestead Act, most of the territories opened to settlement had either entered the Union as states or filed for statehood.

See also: Homesteaders, Westward Expansion

FURTHER READING

Lee, Lawrence Bacon. Kansas and the Homestead Act, 1862–1905. New York: Arno Press, 1979.

Potter, Lee Ann, and Wynell Schamel. "The Homestead Act of 1862."Social Education. October 1997.

Soza, Edward. Mexican Homesteaders in the San Pedro River Valley and the Homestead Act of 1862, 1870–1908. Altadena, CA: E. Soza, 1994.

Tatter, Henry. The Preferential Treatment of the Actual Settler in the Primary Disposition of the Vacant Lands in the United States to 1841. New York: Arno Press, 1979.

Trimm, Warren P. "Two Years in Kansas." American Heritage, February/March 1983.

i sold my pennsylvania farm with its stumps and stones and stingy soil that yielded so grudgingly to the toil i had given it. my wife, susie, and i decided to go to kansas and take up a government claim.

warren p. trimm, kansas homesteader