Homestead Act

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The Homestead Act of 1862 was one of three public-land acts advocated by the Republican Party and passed during the Civil War. Like the other two, the Land Grant Act and the Pacific Railway Act, this act had to await the secession of the Southern states before it could be enacted. Destined to draw large numbers of settlers to the West, an area that had proven itself resistant to slavery, the act was seen by the South as antithetical to its best interest.

The Homestead Act provided for free grants of up to 160 acres of contiguous, surveyed, unreserved public lands to bona fide settlers. To be eligible, an applicant had to be the head of a family or twenty-one years of age and a U.S. citizen, or an alien who had filed for citizenship. Women could qualify under the head-of-household provision. All applicants had to live on the homestead for five years and make certain improvements to gain title to the land.

Reflecting the passions of the time, however, the act initially disqualified a large segment of the American public from homesteading eligibility: those who "had borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies." This, of course, included nearly everyone in the Confederacy. On the other hand, it granted the favor of an age waiver to Union soldiers and sailors under the age of twenty-one.

The Homestead Act reflected the entrepreneurial, opportunity-promoting, and optimistic views of the new Republican Party, which stressed the importance of landownership. "I am in favor of cutting up the wild lands into parcels, so that every poor man may have a home," said Abraham Lincoln of the homestead proposal in 1861. Lincoln had earlier shared with Congress his belief that such settlement represented a "higher and more enduring interest" than simply selling the public lands to raise revenue. He attached sufficient enough importance to the act that he detailed its operation to Congress in his annual messages of 1863 and 1864.

From enactment until the 1930s, when homesteading virtually ended, some 250 million acres were claimed as homesteads. By nearly any measure, however, the Homestead Act fell short of its promises and expectations. It suffered from several inherent fallacies. Most Western land was not suited to the intensive agriculture envisioned by such limited-size grants, and rainfall was often inadequate for farming. The act required improvements and envisioned self-sustaining farms but did not

provide for operating capital; much of the better land had already been, and would continue to be, incorporated into farms, ranches, railroad land grants, and other claims. Land speculators and corporations took much of the land to advance their own interests.

The Homestead Act was historically significant nevertheless. Once the Civil War removed the South as an obstacle to opening the West, the act beckoned to settlers and enhanced the image of the West as a place of opportunity and adventure. It spawned numerous other homesteading measures, some offering up to 640 acres, during the next half-century. Its nod to women was startlingly progressive and portentous. Not to be overlooked, amendments to the act eased service members' procedures for getting land and applying their service time toward the residency requirement. These benefits were part of the federal government's practice, which extended through both world wars and the Cold War, of rewarding its military personnel with bonuses, grants, and other favors.

Age of Westward Expansion; Farming.

Gates, Paul W. History of Public Land Law Development. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968.

Lindgren, H. Elaine. Land in Her Own Name: Women as Homesteaders in North Dakota. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996.

Robbins, Roy M. Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776–1936. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1962.

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