Horace- Greeley, popular editor of the New York Tiibune, was a leading supporter of the Homestead Act (1862), which Greeley believed would offer land and hope for the urban poor:

Make the Public Lands free in quarter-sections to Actual Settlers and deny them to all others, and earth's landless millions will no longer be orphans and mendicants; they can work for the wealthy, relieved from the degrading terror of being turned adrift to starve. When employmerit fails or wage's are inadequate, they may pack up and strike westward to enter upon the possession and culture of their own lands on the- banks of the Wisconsin, the Des Moines, or the Platte, which have been patiently awaiting their advent since creation. Strikes to stand still will be glaringly absurd when every citizen is offered the - alternative to work for others or for himself...