Homestead Act

9 Key excerpts on "Homestead Act"

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  The Citizen's Share

  Putting Ownership Back into Democracy

  • Joseph R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman, Douglas L. Kruse(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Yale University Press

    (Publisher)

  By the 1880s, both political parties supported the homestead idea that the lands should go to citizen settlers and not corporations. 48 The original Homestead Act eventually allowed some six hundred thousand Americans to get a property stake in society. Between 1860 and 1900 it created 4 million farms. It did not live up to its promise quickly because the government’s administra-tive apparatus was not widespread or efficient enough to man-age the program, because of fraud and favoritism. After the Civil War the government passed many additional Homestead Acts to allow for the different land needs associated with different types of farming. The Homestead Act continued until it was finally re-pealed in 1976. Similar legislation continued in the state of Alaska until 1986. The distribution of public lands through homestead-ing helped build many western states that today value rugged in-dividualism and small government. These laws represented a major implementation of the Found-ers’ policy of broad-based ownership. Between 1862 and 1938, 10 percent of the landmass of the United States—nearly the area 40 THE AMERICAN VISION of Texas and California combined—was claimed and settled by 1.6 million homesteads under the different Homestead Acts. This represents about 20 percent of all public land and is comparable to all the land granted to states and sold or awarded to corpora-tions and land grant colleges. While Congress granted four times more land to railroad corporations than it allotted under the original Homestead Act, railroads sometimes granted “home-steads” to citizens to encourage the building of settlements and create markets for their services. 49 When the original Homestead Act became law in 1863, Afri-can Americans could not become citizens and so could not enjoy its benefits.

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  Twentieth Century Land Settlement Schemes

  • Roy Jones, Alexandre M.A. Diniz, Roy Jones, Alexandre M.A. Diniz(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  However, the expansion of the United States' continental territory in the 1840s and 1850s brought about a marked increase in the imperative to settle the western United States (Krall 2001). Considerable division over how this was to be achieved remained, however, and, in 1851, 1852 and 1854, homesteading legislation was passed in the US House of Representatives, only to be rejected in the Senate (Kent Rasmussen 2009). A further attempt in 1860 saw President Buchanan veto the bill. The secession of the southern states from the Union shifted the political dynamics considerably and, in 1862, the Homestead Act was passed. Under the provisions of the US bill, settlers 21 years of age or older who were, or intended to become, citizens and who acted as heads of households could acquire tracts of 160 acres of surveyed public land free of all but $10 registration payments. Titles to the land went to the settlers after five years of continuous residence. Alternatively, after only six months, the claimants could purchase the land for $1.25 per acre. Over the years, amendments and extensions of the act made it applicable to forest land and grazing land and increased the maximum acreage tract that individual settlers could acquire (Mikesell 1960).

  Importantly, the Homestead Act was not passed in isolation and, later in 1862, the Pacific Railroad Act was passed in order to improve transport between industrial regions and the nation's newly emerging agricultural areas (Billings 2012). By the 1930s, 285 million acres had been allocated under the Homestead Act. While the overall success of the Act remains open to debate (Billings 2012), it nevertheless played a critical role in the settling of large areas of the western United States. Moreover, as a policy instrument, it has had considerable influence beyond its immediate jurisdiction.

  To the north, the newly confederated Dominion of Canada expanded rapidly westward through the purchase of a vast area of land held by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1870 (Gerhard 1959). This area today covers northern Quebec and Labrador, northern and western Ontario and much of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nunavut and Alberta. One of the central objectives of the Dominion government was to increase economic development, particularly on the Canadian prairies, through the expansion of agricultural enterprise. In developing these regions, Canada drew heavily on American land settlement ideas (Mackintosh and Joerg 1934). From 1871, the Dominion Lands Survey adopted a modified version of the American square or township and range system, with the newly acquired lands being divided into six-mile-square townships containing 36 sections of 640 acres. Each section was divided into “fourths” comprising 160 acres. For Richtik (1975), the adoption of the American system was partly a matter of convenience, in that it provided a framework that would rapidly and accurately provide the country with an orderly pattern of land settlement. However, he also notes that competition with the United States for settlers was critical given the existence of the 1862 Homestead Act. The prevailing view was that any Canadian system of homesteading needed to at least match the offering south of the border (Richtik 1975). Perhaps not surprisingly, therefore, Canada's response, the Dominion Lands Act, bears striking similarities to its American counterpart.

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  Food Insecurity

  A Reference Handbook

  • William D. Schanbacher, Whitney Fung Uy(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  The Homestead Act of 1862 was another impactful piece of legislation that was largely detrimental to Native Americas. Under the act, the government enabled adult male citizens to claim up to 160 acres of surveyed land. This contributed to increased western expansion, which further dispossessed Native Americans. Although the intent of the act was to encourage homesteaders, much of the land that was claimed went to land speculators, loggers, miners, and cattle ranchers and for railroad construction (“Homestead Act (1862),” n.d.).

  During the period from 1863 to 1939, approximately half a million households received titles to 246 million acres of land, or roughly, 20 percent of U.S. land was given to around two million households. This new European form of land parceling and enclosure of common lands was, in many ways, anathema to the Indigenous conception of land and how it was to be inhabited. Moreover, given that indentured servants, recent immigrants, and slaves were barred from citizenship, the Homestead Act largely benefited white males.

  Through the parceling of land across the country, the Homestead and Morrill Acts—along with other conciliatory pieces of legislations—compensated Indigenous tribes with only a sliver of what that land was worth in comparison to the income it is generating today. For example, with respect to the Morrill Act, although estimates are difficult to determine, over 500,000 acres of unwillingly donated land remain in trust for at least 12 universities, and in 2019, estimates suggest that more than $5.4 million was generated in college revenue. Groundbreaking reports by High Country News on the lasting effects of the land-grant university system of land appropriations found that Indigenous people remain largely absent from student populations, staff, faculty, and the curriculum (Ahtone 2020).

  Reconstruction Era (1865–1877)

  After the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the official abolition of slavery, the United States entered a paradoxical new period of both opportunity and harsh oppression known as the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The Civil Rights Act of 1875 afforded freed slaves with new hopes and opportunities including the prohibition of public discrimination and inclusion in jury services. However, these short-lived changes were soon challenged in a series of court cases that culminated in the infamous Plessy v. Ferguson

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  Food in America

  The Past, Present, and Future of Food, Farming, and the Family Meal [3 volumes]

  • Andrew F. Smith(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  Of the estimated 500 million acres of public-domain land that passed into private ownership from 1862 to 1904 as a result of this Act, only 80 million acres went to small farmers and other homesteaders. The remaining 420 million acres ended up in the possession of speculators and corporate interests. Following is the complete text of the Homestead Act. An Act to secure Homesteads to actual Settlers on the Public Domain. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, and who has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies, shall, from and after the first January, eighteen hundred and sixty-three, be entitled to enter one quarter section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands, upon which said person may have filed a preemption claim, or which may, at the time the application is made, be subject to preemption at one dollar and twenty-five cents, or less, per acre; or eighty acres or less of such unappropriated lands, at two dollars and fifty cents per acre, to be located in a body, in conformity to the legal subdivisions of the public lands, and after the same shall have been surveyed: Provided, That any person owning and residing on land may, under the provisions of this act, enter other land lying contiguous to his or her said land, which shall not, with the land so already owned and occupied, exceed in the aggregate one hundred and sixty acres. SEC. 2

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  The Laws That Shaped America

  Fifteen Acts of Congress and Their Lasting Impact

  • Dennis W. Johnson(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  To many, the Southern Homestead Act was another insult, of northerners trying to rub the war into their noses and retard growth and economic prosperity. Finally, in 1876, after a long, heated fight, with southern lawmakers unified in their determination, the 1866 law was repealed. Now, the South was open once again to land and timber speculation. But ironically, it was monied interests from the North that swooped down and bought control of the best land, the best cypress and yellow pine acres, and reaped the profits from the southern timber industry. 83 Altogether, over 1.03 billion acres of public land were disposed of, with 285 million going to homesteaders, and the rest to railroads, the states, and other claims. 84 In the eight years following passage of the Homestead Act, a total of 127 million acres were granted to railroads and another 2 million to the building of canals and wagon roads. Another 140 million acres of public lands were given to state governments to produce endowments for state institutions. After 1862, between 100 and 125 million acres of Indian reservation land was also sold off to white settlers. 85 Timeline of Homesteading and Land Policy 1796 Land Act of 1796 established rectangular system of surveys in townships consisting six miles square. Public land sold for $2.00 per acre, with credit extended

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  Working on the Land

  • Nancy F. Cott(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Saur

    (Publisher)

  WORKING ON THE LAND οητεη ΰη ^Wyoming, l880-ig30 < P a u L J V { . « 84 CLU.ma.ri The Homestead Act has been called one of the great democratic measures of world history. 1 Women had the opportunity to homestead, because the act made no dis-crimination towards sex. Single women took this oppor-tunity offered to them and did homestead in the state of Wyoming. It is important to explore motives, the means by which they obtained land, the typical life of women homesteaders, the status of the women once the certificate had been granted and what became of the land once a cer-tificate had been granted. During a special session of Congress, Representative Aldrich of Minnesota introduced a homestead bill in the House of Representatives and on May 17, 1862, the Homestead Act became a reality when President Lincoln signed the bill. The Homestead Act specified the qualifica-tions for a homestead as: . . . any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intentions to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States Govern-ment . . . shall be entitled to one quarter section. 2 HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Homestead land became available not only to a man over 21 and head of his family, but to a single woman over 21 and head of her family, because of the term, person. For the purpose of clarity, single women are defined as women who have no husband. Some were unmarried, some widows, some divorcees and some even runaway wives. In order to apply for homestead land, individuals were required to include the information of the exact section, township, range and meridian.

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  Masterless Men

  Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South

  • Keri Leigh Merritt(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 The Southern Origins of the Homestead Act Thieves steal trifles from rich men; slaveholders oppress poor men, and enact laws for the perpetuation of their poverty. Thieves practice deceit on the wise; slaveholders take advantage of the ignorant. – Hinton Helper 1 There has been a considerable exportation of slaves to the newer Southern States; but the increase has been so great, notwithstanding, as to cut off all hope of employment for the poor whites, and to compel them to seek homes elsewhere . . . in South Carolina the constant increase of a class of laborers who are compelled to work without wages deters immigrants from abroad, and compels the poor whites who were born on the soil, and who have hitherto managed to eke out existence by occasional jobs, to abandon their native land, and seek employment in States whose institutions foster free labor. – National Era 2 To this day, the Homestead Act remains the most comprehensive form of wealth redistribution that has ever taken place in America. Passed during the Civil War, after slaveholders who had long blocked the legislation had seceded, the Act awarded approximately 246 million acres of western land to settlers for nothing more than a small filing fee. As the most sweeping form of entitlement legislation ever to pass Congress, the law granted a gigantic land mass – close to the size of both California and Texas – to more than 1.6 million households. These settlers, of course, were almost exclusively white. Both native poor whites and white 1 Helper, The Impending Crisis, 140. 2 “Political Economy,” National Era, Oct. 6, 1859. 38 immigrants greatly benefited. Homesteading offered them a chance to start fresh in a new area, often in places unstained by the legacy of slavery. Indeed, the importance of the Homestead Act cannot be overstated. Yet its humble southern origins are nearly always overlooked.

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  The Farmer's Last Frontier

  Agriculture, 1860-97

  • Fred A. Shannon(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  15 Persons who tried to accumulate the necessary area had to resort to subterfuges and evasions of the laws. Others, unable to accomplish this feat, overgrazed the land to its ultimate destruction, or plowed it up only to see it blow away.

  Sweeping and serious as this indictment of the Homestead policy may seem to be, it fails to tell more than a minor fraction of the whole story. Further demonstration of the faults before mentioned is necessary, but it is best first to enumerate the other principal land acts and policies of the federal government in the later years of the nineteenth century, so that the consequences of the system can be considered as a whole rather than piecemeal.

  Subsequent Land Acts

  Of all the land laws passed after 1860 the Timber Culture Act of March 3, 1873, perhaps contributed least to the growth of speculation and monopoly. It too, however, fell rather short of the hopes of its authors. Painfully aware of the frequent shortage of rainfall in the West, and realizing that trees tend to retain moisture in the soil, Senator Phineas W. Hitchcock of Nebraska introduced the measure that was vainly expected to change weather conditions on the Great Plains. The law, applying to the same classes of persons as did the Homestead Act, permitted any of them, even if they already had a homestead and a pre-emption claim of a quarter section each, to take out papers on another 160 acres of relatively treeless land. The original law required the planting of one fourth of the area in trees within ten years. This proving too much, an amendment of June 14, 1878, limited the amount to one sixteenth and reduced the time to eight years. But for every year that the young seedlings or sprouts were destroyed by grasshoppers, drouth, or other calamity, a year’s extension of time was allowed. In not less than eight years, when proof was given that at least 2,700 seeds or slips had been planted for each required acre and that 675 or more trees to the acre were still living and thriving, the settler could get a deed to the tract.16

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  Who Owns the Crown Lands of Hawai'i?

  • Jon M. Van Dyke(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • University of Hawaii Press

    (Publisher)

  The 1895 Land Act 193 grams described below, about 800 individuals obtained title to more than 40,000 acres of these lands between 1895 and 1899. 32 A report in 1900 stated that 9,960 of these acres had come from the Crown Lands, at a valuation of $36,400. 33 To some extent, this act seemed designed to gain support for the Republic from the common (and frequently landless) Hawaiians. It had the effect in some areas of clustering Hawaiians into limited locations and encouraging them to abandon their scattered Kuleana holdings. The act provided that a three-member Board of Commissioners (the Minis-ter of Interior and two others appointed by the President with the approval of the Cabinet, one of whom was designated “the Agent of Public Lands”) would control and manage these lands. 34 Their goal was to distribute as much land as possible, but they were constrained by the long-term leases that remained on most of the best lands, by the lack of access to some of the arable lands that might have been used, for instance, for coffee cultivation, and by their realization that indiscriminate cut-ting of native forests would lead to erosion and destruction of arable lowlands. 35 The commissioners were empowered to make “special homestead agreements,” setting terms of sale, payments, and conditions regarding residence and improvements at their discretion. 36 One commentator observed that these “special homestead agree-ments” primarily benefited westerners who had cash plus credit. 37 From 1896 to 1899, 123 special agreements were issued affecting about 7,104 acres of land valued at $51,373.05. 38 These transactions are summarized in Table 4. 39 Under the 1895 Act, qualified citizens were eligible for three separate home-stead programs: the Right-of-Purchase Lease, the Cash Freehold, and the 999-Year Table 4. Special Agreements 1896–97 1898–99 No. Acres Value No.

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